City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. It's Wednesday, July 1st, 2026. Welcome to the regular meeting of the Larkspur City Council. It's 6.03 p.m., so I'll call this meeting to order. Madam Clerk, can we get a roll call, please?

Councilmember Kandel?

I am here.

Councilmember Markleis? Here. Councilmember Way? Here. Vice Mayor Paulson? Here. Mayor Andre?

Here. Please rise and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Well, thank you for joining us this evening. I understand there's a big soccer game going on. So thank you all for coming. All right, so we will move on to public comment. This is a time for members of the public to address the City Council regarding items that are not on the agenda. So if you would like to address the City Council, please come forward to the podium and state your name and which neighborhood you're from. Welcome.

Thomasette. Thomas Atkins, 634 Riviera Circle, Larkspur, one block from the west entrance of the high school. I support the program of the placards and the parking restrictions. However, I find major problems with the placard system that I believe needs to be revised so that enforcement can be...

more effective the first few months that the program was involved things sir i'm sorry so um are you talking about the parking program in the larkson marina neighborhood is that what you're talking about okay that item is on the consent calendar so um why don't we pull that item off the consent calendar and you can discuss if i may i called yesterday to your secretary's office who specifically said this is the time i should make

My presentation, I specifically saw it was 4.3 on your list, and I was told not to do it then.

Okay. City manager, yeah.

I'm going to speak on behalf of the city clerk. I think the gentleman was told that barring the council pulling an item, because only the council has the authority to pull a consent item, this is the appropriate time to speak. The mayor does have, as do any of the other council members, the option to pull the item if there's going to be a more robust discussion about it. So the answer you got yesterday wasn't wrong, and the mayor's instinct that she'd like to potentially pull the item is correct as well.

Okay, great. So I'll pull the item off of consent and we can have a more robust discussion.

What does that mean?

That means that at the next item here that's coming up on the agenda, we're going to take that item off the consent calendar. And that way you can come forward and make your public comment at that time.

You want me to stop now?

Yeah, if you could stop now and we'll bring you back up.

Just so you understand, if you make comment at public comment, we can't have a discussion about it. If we pull it off the consent calendar, then it becomes a discussion item so we can have a little bit more back and forth. I think it'll be better for what you're looking for.

I'm not sure it's important for discussion. It was my intent to inform you of difficulties with the placard system. Maybe I could work with a city manager or somebody to improve the system.

Yeah, great. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. Thank you. Okay, anyone else? Any other members of the public who would like to come forward and make a public comment? Seeing none in the chamber, how about anybody online?

Looking for any raised hands in the Zoom audience. And there's no public comment.

Great. Thank you. We'll close public comment. Okay. So this brings us to approval of the consent calendar. I will pull item 4.3, which is a review of the preferential parking program in the Larkspur Marina and Heather Gardens neighborhoods for discussion. Would any other member of council like to pull an item off the consent calendar?

Madam Mayor, we missed number three, which is the presentation of the climate.

I apologize. Okay, we will go back to item number three, which is a Climate Action Forum update.

It's a short presentation, so we'll get to the consent calendar soon, I promise. All right, good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the City Council, and members of the community. My name is Shannon O'Hare, and I am the Assistant City Manager for the City of Larkspur. And this evening, I'm giving you a brief update on the Climate Action Forum and our activities. So some background for members of the community who may not be aware of the Climate Action Forum or the full breadth of what the forum does. I'd like to think that this room is full of people who are here for my presentation, but we might have some new folks in the house who are here for other things. As outlined of our Climate Action Plan, it's Larkspur's goal to reduce greenhouse emissions to 40% below 1990 levels of emissions by 2030. About a year ago, a little more than a year ago, the city council passed a resolution creating the Climate Action Forum, which would be a space for members of our community, staff, our partner agencies to all collaborate to how we can reduce our greenhouse emissions to get to that goal of 40% below 1990 levels or beyond. On April 9th, 2025, that was the inaugural meeting of the forum, and it was created to complement and help inform other community regional partnerships and further our goals. And after a series of meetings over 2025 and 2026, The CAF coalesced around five impactful and feasible options to reduce our emissions and achieve the targets from our climate action plan, as well as some other countywide plans that we had been collaborating on through the years, including the countywide electric vehicle acceleration strategy and the Marin County Building Electrification Roadmap, which really operate as extensions of Larkspur's climate action plan and our neighbor's climate action plans. So one year later, after we met in April, the CAF brought five greenhouse gas reduction priorities to the city council. They consisted of EV charging infrastructure, building electrification, equipment electrification, vehicle electrification, and public outreach and education. The city council at that meeting endorsed these above priorities at that regular meeting on April 9th. And the CAF and city staff has collaborated in the time since to move forward with a work plan for these five priorities that I'm presenting this evening. And we really are focusing on what we can achieve and hope to achieve in this fiscal year. So we have something actionable to report to you folks the next year. And also, if there's any questions from the council during this presentation, please feel free to interrupt me or ask for any clarification or expansion on our activities and what we're doing. I'm happy for this to be a back and forth conversation. So under our EV charging and infrastructure goals, we've increased EV charging options at our new library. And when we... build our new recreation facility there'll be increased options at Piper Park the city will engage commercial and multi-family sites to discuss the potential for EV charging and capabilities in Larkspur for Larkspur's employees customers and tenants of those properties and the city is working on improved visibility signage and outreach regarding EV charging options in Larkspur We have a whole lot more than we've had. Things are moving really quickly. Folks who already have EVs usually have an app and know where these things are. It's really about broader awareness. One of the biggest, even still, barriers for folks to purchase an EV is either having charging on site next to your home, especially if you're renting or you're residents, and also just that range anxiety. The idea of I don't want to be stuck somewhere and I don't want to have to be towed. So when you see that there's more options and that things are changing really quickly and you're not relying on one or two public chargers and maybe some Tesla superchargers, that can make a difference. And it's also something that's very achievable. So in the work plan, staff continues to evaluate EV charging policies for our public chargers and how to best use those and strike a balance between making sure that there's enough availability and folks aren't staying too long, as well as recouping our costs, at the same time incentivizing folks to use our chargers and to make that attractive to people. We're also always looking for grants from outside agencies and ways to help us both with installing the chargers, any grants there might be for ongoing maintenance. Really anything that's out there that's free or cheap money is great. And on the side of multifamily and commercial landlord engagement, outreach is going to take place in summer of 2026. On building electrification goals, it's to adopt and enforce advanced green building and electrification reach codes that strongly encourage particularly the installation of heat water pumps, space heaters, and induction cooking. These are some of the things that CAF has identified. And I also want to shout out to CAF. There are a number of people on the Climate Action Forum who have worked in this space, who have done it in their own homes, done it at their properties, who've really helped staff understand how this is working in the community and in the industry. These are some things that when people are making improvements to their properties, I don't want to say it's necessarily easy, but it's very doable, even if you have an older property or a historic building. to to modernize and to electrify also promoting electric applying benefits in city communications and at the counter in the community development department again it's about awareness the space is moving fast what's available is moving fast the cost has gone down letting folks know that the next time you have a project or if you're interested This is a lot easier than it was 15 years ago when it was only the most committed who went through and were ripping up their homes to make this a reality. And then also just considering subsidizing or any incentives for replacing gas powered appliances with electric alternatives. This is something that we're monitoring to see if it's possible to bring to the council at some point. if there's opportunity. Under the work plan, we're bringing, the city will bring building electrification code options and overview at an upcoming city council meeting that'll be in a workshop format. And then multifamily site engagement outreach also to take place in summer 2026 to see if we can, if there's any availability in the community development department to reach out to some of these folks about how these things are possible. Equipment electrification goals enforce our current municipal code provisions that require or strongly encourage residences and businesses to electrify lease blowers, landscape equipment, and small generators. This also includes us. Under our work plan, the city recently purchased an all-electric ride-on mower to augment and, over time, hopefully replace if all goes well. Our gas ride-on mower is used at Piper Park and our mini parks around Larkspur, as well as, again, increased outreach regarding leaf blower use to be launched really in fall to do an education campaign. gas powered leaf blowers are prohibited in most circumstances in single family homes in Larkspur. And they're still around. And a lot of times it's because there's contractors coming from all around the Bay Area, et cetera, who may or may not know what our local municipal code has. So focus on education. Because there weren't many pictures and I have an opportunity to show a picture here. This is not exactly how it will look. We'll have some shade covering, etc. But this is the ride-on mower model that we've purchased. We don't have an exact arrival date yet, but we're very excited. We're hoping it gets here sooner rather than later. So when you're... walking your dog, taking a jog, playing pickleball or tennis in Piper Park, and you see one of these, know that we're saving on some greenhouse gas emissions.

Can I just make a quick comment on that? I just want to say I'm really proud of the city of Larkspur for being the first city in the county of Marin to adopt an electric lawnmower. We are leading the way in this area, and it makes me really happy. So thanks to staff for bringing this forward.

Yeah, I have to credit, I will not take credit, Public Works Department identified this and told staff there's a model that we think can work now, or at least is worth trying out. When even a few years ago, we didn't see a ride-on mower model that we thought would fit the purpose for Piper Park. If you see it out there, grass grows really fast. So, under vehicle electrification... um adopting and implementing city policies to electrify the municipal vehicle fleet on an accelerated timeline promote and share existing rebates and incentives for ev purchases with the community promote ride and drive events ev test drive events and adopt any model reach codes that require EV-ready wiring for all new residential parking. That'll be part of a building electrification discussion or workshop. Part of the work plan is the goal is to co-host a webinar, a one-person event, possibly text trucks if it happens, or another tie-in to take place in Larkspur in the next fiscal year that would show off vehicle electrification. We'd be happy to send some of the cool, I'm hoping, very cool electric vehicles we have to touch trucks if they'll have it. So people, again, can see that this stuff exists. It's not sci-fi. It's out there. It's being used. The city's being a leader in this area. As well as exploring staff potentially bringing the potential for increased reach codes as part of the building electrification workshop and exploring the possibility of free or discounted EV charging promotions for Larkspur residents with newly registered EVs. This would be kind of a contest giveaway or a free promotion to if you used one of our public chargers. to see if there's the possibility where you could get a charge point discount for the year.

And Shannon, our CMPA fleet is now 50% electric. Yeah.

And to be clear for anyone who might be interested, there is nothing on the replacement schedule in our fleet for the next year for going electric. We're actually making very, very good progress. But the city itself has a very small fleet relative to some of our neighbors. And part of that is we're a small city, but also we don't do water services, we don't do fire services, and we don't do police services. And those have a lot of vehicles associated with them. So some cities, when you hear about their fleet electrification and how many vehicles they're purchasing, it's because they provide those services, whereas our partner agencies provide those in Larkspur. And then the most fun part, public outreach and education. Just increase outreach, the city manager newsletter, and other in-person events. And the work plan for this is that there'll be a special edition of the city manager newsletter in September that's just all climate, right? Do you want to hear about rebates? Do you want to hear about all the cool stuff we're doing? Special edition. Put all of the information in one place. As part of that, to add to having compelling content, to add Larkspur resident testimonials, particularly people who've electrified their homes or gone green in various ways. Increase our web presence and increase graphic design collateral related to climate issues. There will be a resilient neighborhood workshop and webinar in our library in September 2026. And for events, resilient neighborhoods tabled at Music in the Parks at the June 19th, the last Music in the Parks event. The city is planning to table at the spring Bon Air Fair in May 2027 and have sustainability be a component of that. And we're also planning ways to coordinate with our schools. We were lucky enough and privileged enough to have some members of the high school attend one of our CAF meetings, and they really identified a lot of things that are happening at the school level for sustainability. that we could potentially piggyback on, collaborate on, expand on. And then also updating and expanding our library sustainability features. We had a diagram that came out with the library opened. We're adding to that to add additional climate information, add information about the habitat garden that's now there, and really, again, educate the community about what the city has done to increase sustainability. And finally, just increased climate communications at the library and recreation events and programming. Those are two of our highest touch outreach points to the community, and they're also usually pretty fun. Get to show a couple more pictures, which is nice. An example of this is that we created a coloring book of our library and its sustainability features for children. This is for a little bit older children. I had to remind the person who was coming up with this that my three-year-old would have an interesting time, this more of the adult coloring book thing for, um, kids a little bit older, but again, it's just a way where when you walk into our library, you don't necessarily know everything that went in to make that building sustainable, all electric, um, and climate friendly. And then this was resilient neighborhoods tabling at our music in the parks on, um, on June 19th. So thank you for everyone who was at music in the parks, but also for resilient neighborhoods for coming out to Larkspur and, um, and talking to our folks. So that's the conclusion of my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions about this item.

Go ahead. Yeah, great. Thank you, Shannon. That was really helpful and clear. And just to, you know, sort of 30,000 foot view perspective. So my, you know, I looked it up. I think every Larkspur resident burns about five and a half metric tons a year. And it seems like, you know, we're still a third away. We need to get to three to reach our goal. And a lot of it is residential. I think MCE has actually reduced the carbon footprint and it's still in the vehicles. So on that list, would you say public EV charging is the most important thing we could be going after? And that seems really stubborn. How do we, if we only have three and a half years or so to reach the 2030 goal, how do we get there?

Yeah. So when we identify, you'll see EV charging in some ways was there twice, right? There was like EV charging was called out as well as electric vehicles. That was actually two different priorities identified. And that's because there is so much, we have so far to go there. And there's also a fair amount people can do at the individual level and some we can do locally. I think the, one of the things staff, which has been exciting about the new library building and the opportunity for that is that we're able to see in real time on the backend of that app staff who has access to it, how people are using our EV charging now that we have more of it versus a couple of spaces when they're using it, what the demand might be, et cetera. So to answer the first part of your question, yes, it's one of the things we can be going after that, If you install an EV charger, it's there. It's immediate, right? Like someone can plug their car in the minute it goes live. At the same time, we want to make sure that we're putting chargers where it makes sense and that folks are using them, et cetera, because I don't want to say there's diminishing returns, but a lot of the EV charging and I think where... um, where there's a lot of work to be done is that multifamily sites. And then when folks get Navy and have it in their own home, nearly everyone, not everyone will have some kind of charging at their residence. It has made that investment. So public charging is great. It's something we can move the needle on and it gets, it gets used a lot. Um, and frequently, but I don't think if we just like upped by 300% that you'd see the carbon reduction go down, you know, accordingly at some point you can, you can only go so far. Um, But yeah, transportation is a stubborn area, but we're not alone. We're not alone. The globe is with us on that one.

I don't have any questions. I just want to make a comment. I want to say that it's been an honor and a privilege to be the council liaison for the Climate Action Forum. We are so lucky to have a really great group of engaged citizens who really care about the climate. Recently, we've been having students from Redwood join the conversation, and that is so exciting to me. We're going to figure out ways to get into Redwood and have more conversations there. And then Shannon has been an incredible partner from our staff and so supportive. And just to go back to what Gabe's question was, you know, as the CAF identified that the best places to make impact were schools, uh electrical i'm sorry building electrification and then ev infrastructure since vehicles and buildings are the largest culprits for carbon emissions the city itself doesn't have a huge footprint when it comes to buildings and vehicles. So what's really important in our priorities is community outreach and education and making sure we're getting in touch with our residents and informing them of ways that they can make changes inside of their homes and through their driving behaviors and many of their behaviors, very small, simple changes that can actually have large ripple effects. And so we will be spending a lot of time trying to get outreach into the community and educate the community. Look for me on the 4th of July parade. I will be making sure that everybody is aware of our Climate Action Forum and some of the upcoming events. So we hope you all would love to join us. We'd love to have you. The Climate Action Forum meets every other month on Wednesday from 6.30 to 8.30 p.m. at the Larkspur Library. So if you're interested, you can find more information on the sustainability page on our website. Thanks.

Thank you. Any questions? Yes.

Shannon, great presentation. Thank you. Question, do you know the cost of installing EV charging stations, you know, as far as if there was a person with a multifamily, you know, units and they wanted to install four of them or something like that? Are they subsidized? How does that work?

Depends. But is there a separate actual solution for multifamily? All of the public works director. It depends. So the thing to remember about any site is there's the cost for if you have conduit there. And if it's that and if you have enough power for the increased power load for the EV charging, the actual installation of the chargers, which is actually not a huge cost and is where there are a lot of grants out there. And then the ongoing maintenance of those chargers. which can also vary. And especially if you have high use and multiple users and turnover, et cetera, servicing those chargers over time, the servicing of it is actually what can kind of add up at the lifetime cost of having a charger. But I'll let the public works director speak more directly.

Okay. Also, do you know, do the companies who are running the EV charging stations, do they do maintenance? Do they subsidize it? Because I'm sure they get some benefit for having their chargers everywhere.

Say subsidize. There's a number of different ways you could have your chargers. And I speak for this only public. If landlords are doing things, et cetera, they might have contracts I'm not quite sure about or what's offered at an individual level there or a business level. But if you look across the state at cities and municipalities and public charging, You can, some of these companies, you can totally have them service and they have regional folks who had it for a while. There were a number of startups who would service them for you and know how to do it. And that's a different model. And then what's pretty common is there's some hybrid of where your public works, usually public works and maintenance is servicing, fixing the chargers, et cetera. And then when it's a larger issue, the company would come out. And it depends on what's in the contract. Some of it's subsidized or if you have a warranty, you know, it's not at charge, but I wouldn't say that it's necessarily you're getting a great deal for it. Usually those companies are recouping their costs for ongoing maintenance and it can add up.

Okay. Thanks.

Great.

Anyone else have any questions?

Great. I'll open it up for public comment. Would any member of the public like to comment on this item? Seeing none in the chamber, anybody online who would like to make a comment?

Looking for any raised hands in our Zoom audience. And there is no public comment.

Great. Thank you. Well, I just want to say thank you to Shannon, Mr. Skinner, Director of Public Works, our city staff, and also to Council Member Margulies, who's really taken this and it's become, I think, a great forum for our residents to come and talk about really actionable items that the city can adopt. I mean, we adopt, we all have to adopt the climate action plans, but I think, you know, cities are, you know, make different rates of progress on our plans. And I think with the Climate Action Forum and Council Member Margulies' work, I think we're really seeing some measurable improvements towards our climate goals. So thank you. All right. Now we're going to move to the consent calendar, which is item four. Would any member of council like to pull an item off a consent? I'll pull item 4.3, which is the parking one. Anyone else want to pull? Okay. All right. So why don't we make a motion? Can I get a motion to pass all the other items on the consent calendar?

Sure. I'll move the consent calendar 4.1 to 4.7 with the exception of 4.3. I will second that. Great. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Any abstain? Okay, motion passes. Thank you. All right, so why don't we talk now about item 4.3. Why don't we get a staff report first, and then we can open up to public comments. Thank you.

Madam Mayor, Council Members, prior to the 2018-2019 school year, a request was made from the Larkspur Marina neighborhood and then joined by the Heather Gardens neighborhood, as in the same conversation occurred in Corte Madera in the neighborhoods that are all adjacent to Redwood High School. The conversation was that they were seeing increases in students parking in their neighborhoods, which is Your predecessors for the last seven, eight decades have been dealing with kids parking in these neighborhoods, but it had reached a critical mass. There was concern. There were concerns that some of the kids were not necessarily being good stewards and neighbors. When they would go park, they would leave trash. There were concerns about safety, that some of the kids were zipping through the neighborhoods at greater than appropriate speeds. And so there was a petition made to create some sort of preferential parking program. A preferential parking program is a program whereby the city council determines that a public policy situation is such that they are going to take a public good out of the public's right to use and limit it to specific members of the community. And so in this case, the council created a program that takes on-street public parking, and require somebody to have a permit during the school year to park in these two neighborhoods. Initially, the program covered both neighborhoods in their entirety. The Marina Neighborhood HOA, Property Owners Association, created a parking committee that was the liaison to the city to keep examining the program and the liaison to Central and Police. And over the years, the program's been modified a number of times. A critical point of why this report is brought to you every year is that from the get-go staff pointed out that if there wasn't a revenue stream, then this was going to be a subsidy of some level from the city. The council ultimately decided not to charge for this program, but said that each year it would revisit both that question and other questions that may or may not be brought up by the community. And so we do a survey every year to find out from folks what they're thinking. So that's kind of the situation at the moment. The program no longer covers both neighborhoods because we have accepted petitions to leave the program. There are members of both neighborhoods that felt the kids weren't parking in their part of the neighborhood and they didn't want to deal with the permit program. So we periodically now have people who want to petition their way back in and there is a process for that as well. I'm available to answer questions. I want to acknowledge that The city clerk and one of our other staff people do a lot of the work annually to make this program available to the residents in those neighborhoods. And Centerman Police does periodic patrols to deal with the situation.

Great. Thank you. And yes, council members have questions.

Quick question. Do you have an estimate of the cost the city is subsidizing when you throw in the police patrols and any other staff time that it takes to administer this program?

Yeah. So we provided in the staff report what we think is probably a rough idea. And based on Those numbers, it's about $17,000 cost and about $13,000 is coming in off of citations in terms of offsetting revenue. Now, the way that program is set up, the revenue goes into Central Moon Police, so we leave it there. We don't actually take any into the city to defray our costs because... the personnel that we're using to do enforcement, they're also doing other enforcement that's related. So it made sense to just leave the revenue there.

Just a couple of minor questions. So I think that tickets are a hundred bucks. Is that?

I don't know the current number. I can get that for you. That's fine. You probably do the math going. Why is this number so low? It's because the vast majority of ticket revenue goes to the courts.

Okay. Okay. But either way, it sounds like there's over 100 citations that have been issued.

Well, as it says in the report, there were about 200. 200. Okay. Last year.

Okay. And does that include e-bikes?

No, this is just people who are parked in the neighborhood.

Or four-wheel vehicles? Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you.

Any other questions?

I just have one quick question. This is regarding your comment that a vast majority of the money from ticketing goes to other agencies we use for the ticketing. Would that hold true if we had our own private enforcement, community enforcement person here working for the city of Larkspur? Could we actually manage the processing of the tickets through the city and avoid... paying off other platforms and agencies?

I have to defer to the city attorney to explain the complexities of potentially doing our own parking administration and enforcement. Essentially, to capture all that revenue, we would not use the courts at all. So we'd have to, if I understand it correctly, we'd have to create our own adjudication and petition process for evaluating the tickets. I think we're talking about a pretty high price. Am I on the right track?

Yeah.

Sorry, forgot I've got my own microphone. There are also private services that will handle the administration of citations for parking violations, but of course they also charge for the service. So the city is never really going to recover 100% of the citation amount.

Okay, thank you.

Great. Any other council members have questions? Okay. I'll open it up now to public comment. Mr. Atkins? Yes.

Again, Thomas Atkin at 634 Rivera Circle within one block of the west entrance to the Redwood High School. When the program initially began, it was very successful. But in the past year, I think the enforcement has fallen off. Let me back state that I'm retired. I spend a lot of time in my garage with the open garage door so that I see the students, et cetera, et cetera. In the past year, anywhere from eight to ten students with either no placard or an illegal placard are parking there. And it's difficult for the enforcement people. I don't want to blame them, but many of the enforcement people that come around don't completely understand the rules and regulations as set up. Let me talk about the students. I sold my car, but I kept it so that I could show it to you. It's white because of the sun. Normally, it's yellow. You see at the top? The license is written on a felt pen. Easily, I can take an alcohol sponge, wipe that out, and write in whatever license plate number I want. Another problem is when you hang it on your rearview mirror, much of this is obscured. So the enforcement officer comes around and looks at the car license number and tries to see does it match the placard. He can't do it. She can't do it. So I think the placard needs to be revised. And the second thing is there is the resident placard ID, the 0164 at the 1. That's permanent. You can't adjust that. The control officers that come around, in which I know there's a scofflaw because I watched the student get out and go to school, and you can't read the number, I say, check the permit number. He says, we have no access to that. I guess to summarize it, I support the program, but I think the placard system needs to be revised so that the automobile license is permanent and is visible to the enforcement people. I'm available to work with anybody in the city offices with my experience of lots and lots of scope flaws. Anyway, thank you.

Great. Thank you for your public comment. Does anyone else have a public comment? Please come forward to the podium. Thank you. Hi, my name is, can you hear me?

Yes. My name is Vicki Young. I live at 3 Via La Brisa, and I've talked to Jim Sports a lot. I am the point person for parking in the Wilkes-Barre Marina. And we have had restricted parking. I've lived in my home for 51 years. We have always had restricted parking. We have never had a program that's worked as well as this one. But Mr. Atkins' point is, There are so many of these yellow tags out there. They couldn't possibly be. We need to go back to a program where the residents get a sticker that they put on their car. When I see a car with a low sticker number, because they're issued sequentially, with a low sticker number in the 100s or 200s, and a brand new car with nine license plates, Somebody, and I don't know where they get them, I'm not accusing anybody, but we need to come up with something that is permanently affixed to the vehicle, because these stickers are like a dime a dozen. And I do call the police all the time. I've been told, take a picture of the license plate on the car. I'm not a tall person, and these cars are really tall, and I have done that. I don't know, I don't think it's done any good. What does do good, I stand out in front of my house, and when the police come, and I give them the license number and the make of the car, and they do ticket if you call. But that's like a part-time job. Also, on Villa Brisa, and I've also been hearing complaints from the 600 block of Riviera Circle, which is the one that is directly across from the West entrance to Redwood High School. Those kids just fly down that street. I think we need to have... We get the little... placard that says you're going like 60 miles an hour instead of 25 or something. We need to have people there ticketing. There are predictable times when school starts, lunchtime and after school. And And the police, when you call them, and they say, well, the car has a placard. But there's, as I say, it's like monopoly money, these placards. So thank you for holding this meeting and getting public comments. I appreciate it. Thank you for your public comment.

Yes, please step forward to the podium if you have a public comment.

Hi, I'm Deborah Harnett from 50 Quarter Del Bio, and we also have the yellow ticketing tag hanging off of our section for our street, too. There's a series of problems. One is the driving too fast. Sometimes they go at least 40 miles an hour, even faster. It's almost like a little drag race, especially at lunchtime. They have a short window to eat, and they want to be able to go somewhere, and the cars get filled with six, ten kids in a car, and then they're driving very fast so they can get somewhere and be back again before their lunch hour is over. Then they come and empty their trash out on the side of the street so that we get to have all their plastic bottles, bags, you name it. That's one problem. The second problem is that they take their yellow sticker and they copy it and they take yellow paper and they hang a bunch of doodads off of their mirror so it kind of looks like one. And so they aren't really legitimate parking tags. The last thing I want to say is that I am part of the Lagoon Committee and part of the Larkspur Marina Board. And we have taken on $18 million bond so that we can fund the lagoon, which you guys have been very actively helping us build or completed. My taxes will probably be over $40,000 by the time I add the bond to it. I don't want to pay $50 to have a ticket tag on my car. After spending this much money on my taxes, I feel like I should be able to... have some sort of support for the community. We're supporting the community by having a giant runoff basin for everybody. If we need tags in order to help us have our community be somewhat stable because of the high school kids, I think that should be part and parcel of the whole package of what we get for being, you know, giving to the whole community and being part and parcel of everything that's going on. So, It's a much bigger issue than most people want to think about and look at it because there's the safety of the speed. There's the junk that's being thrown out of the cars. There's a lack of respect when the kids are walking six wide and ten wide down the street and people can't drive their cars. It's a whole package of things. So I ask you to really look at it. And I think if we really charged a decent price and really ticketed people, it would fund the whole facility and not have to come from us individually. Thank you.

Thank you for your public comment. Anyone else in the chamber who would like to make a comment? Seeing none, anybody online?

Raise hands in the Zoom audience, and there's no public comment.

Okay, great. Thank you. All right, so we'll bring it back to council for any questions or for discussion. Yes.

Madam Mayor, for historical perspective, when this was first brought to the council, We did offer the council how this type of program operates normally, which is that all the decisions were made by the police department and the city administration. Most people have to pay for the privilege of public parking being taken away from the public. None of that happened here. We were instructed to take a lot of direction from the neighborhood. The police wanted people to have stickers on their back window. They want it in a specific location. That would have made administration the program very easy for them. The neighborhood voiced that they didn't want that. They didn't want to mar their windows with stickers. So we pivoted to the placards. If part of the problem is that the program that was sort of negotiated with the community isn't working for the community. One of the first decisions is to empower the police to do the program the way they wanted to do it originally that they felt they could administer. Uh, And so I'm happy to have those conversations with the neighborhood, but I think it's important to understand the whole evolution of this program and how frequently the decision in this room has been to try to balance the imposition of the program for people who didn't feel it was necessary with those that did feel it was necessary. And I think that's getting a little lost here.

Great. Well, does it make sense, just given some of the public comments, for city staff to engage, you know, representatives of that neighborhood to see, I mean, you know, does it make sense to engage and then see what alternatives there are to the placard system? I don't know what we can do about the driving too fast and the trash issues, but certainly the illegal tags or the fake tags, you know, Maybe we can engage representatives from that neighborhood to have a conversation and see what other solutions the neighborhood might be open to.

Like I said, I'm happy to do that. I just want to make sure we all have the perspective that these decisions were made in a room full of residents from those two neighborhoods. And there were all sorts of concerns that were voiced about housing. I have caregivers that come in. Are they going to get tickets? I often have contractors at my house. Are they going to get tickets? What happens when my son visits? How do I deal with that situation? I don't want to pay for this. I don't want to have a sticker on my window. There was a lot that went into this conversation. And I think before we just say it's not working well, we have to step back and say this program is not designed the way the police said it should be designed for enforcement.

Understood. I was on the council in 2018. I think I'm the only one here who was. So it was a first of its kind. We had the first opportunity to really consider a permitting program within Larkspur. So it's a work in progress. I think we've heard that there are some aspects of it that work well. And there are some aspects that need refinement. And that's how we should always be looking at programs. I know it was very controversial when we first decided on it in 2018. Brand new. A lot of people didn't know how it was going to work. But really, it was a public safety issue because of the behaviors that were happening with student drivers in many areas. So we still have an ongoing issue with that. And I think it's probably time hearing the comments from neighbors that we look at. some refinements to the program to make sure it's working the way we want it to. I do remember the pushback from some of what law enforcement had suggested Because the council at the time was more interested in a softer approach. But maybe it's time to really put it back with them. Because we're not the only city that has a parking permit program for residences. And we're not the only one in Central Marin Police Authority that has this, too. So we can use them as the experts to help guide how we make modifications to this program. That's what I would suggest.

I think we are the only ones.

Oh, did Corda Madera lose there?

I think Corda Madera.

But San Anselmo has one.

At least San Anselmo recently started the process. And there's, I mean, they have meters, which is a whole different program.

Well, then maybe the other jurisdictions we can look to for how they manage their system. We have the largest high school in the Tamalpais Union High School District, Redwood. And there's also San Andreas High School and Tamascale High School. So we have three in our narrow little area. So- We have a unique situation of an abundant number of driving high school students than other jurisdictions do. But this is a problem we can help resolve. So I really appreciate people coming forward and we can work with staff. And I really think law enforcement is our best guide for this. Great, yes.

I just want one comment for staff. My feeling is we've heard several issues that are related but not related in the sense that there may be very different solutions to a speeding problem. with a counterfeit placard problem with a trash problem. And to just ask maybe we consider them individually. I don't know if this neighborhood wants speed bumps or things that are slow, throw people down that we've done in other neighborhoods. But I'm just saying it may not have to do with the placard. There may be separate solutions to each of the issues being raised. I don't know if people are going to want those solutions, but I just think they're separate discussions. That's all.

You are absolutely right, Council Member Kandel. But I also need to go on the record saying we've engaged both these neighborhoods in my time here at least a half dozen times in each neighborhood about traffic calming. And ultimately, the issue comes down to the traffic calming feels more inconvenient to the residents than dealing with the kids. Not everybody agrees with what's said. That's what comes to that.

Absolutely. And please don't get...

I'm not trying to be defensive. There's a lot of history to this.

I'm not... I'm not implying because a couple of people made some comments today that the plan is not working. That's not at all what I'm saying, or we should scrap the plan or the program that we have now. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that if neighborhoods are interested in revisiting this and the neighborhoods want to come up with an alternative. I think we as city council are happy to hear those alternatives. But as you said, I think we've done that. This is what we came up with. Maybe people have changed their minds. Maybe it needs to be revisited. But, you know, I just, I think it's, we need more than just a couple of comments to change the plan. That's all. Does that make sense?

Yes. I will just remind the council and the community, the council's adopted policies that tell the community how to request these types of things. And so we're happy to have those conversations offline so that we follow a fair and equitable process. And it's not driven by public comment in the chamber.

I agree. Thank you.

Hold on one second.

Sorry.

I just wanted to say thank you, everybody, for your comments, and thank you, staff, for all the work that's gone into the program. It just seems to me that one stakeholder that's an obvious stakeholder from the conversation is missing, and that's the Tamalpais Union High School District. And I know they're not the easiest district to work with, but I think they need to assume some responsibility for this, and if we need to increase enforcement, Perhaps they need to participate in that. So I'm just curious why they haven't been brought into the conversation, given that they are the neighbors of Marina Vista and Heather Gardens neighborhoods. And is there a possibility to get them to come in and participate and help with the problem, find a solution that?

Well, I haven't had a conversation with them about this particular problem in a few years. Their response has typically been that they're trying to manage the parking on their campus to make it more available to students. One of the challenges here is that students are not allowed to leave the campus once they park on campus. So we have two behaviors that we know are prevalent. We know there are some students who don't want to park on campus because they want to leave at different times during the day. That's a discussion about whether or not the campus itself should be closed during the day. And I'm not in a position to engage in that conversation. The second issue we know about is that those permits are in demand. And once they're all allocated, the challenge is a lot of kids get their driver's license as the school year goes along. And so by the end of the school year, you've got a bunch of students who are now driving to school, but there's no permit for them to get to park on campus. I can only speculate, but I don't anticipate the school district will offer up resources to deal with parking in the neighborhoods, but we can try to have that conversation again.

Yeah. It just, it feels that though they, if they are a closed campus and they're trying to discourage students from leaving that they would be interested in, in enforcing this type of, you know, reinforcing that it is a closed campus and helping with enforcement. But again, I think it's worthwhile trying to get them involved. Great.

Thank you for the thoughts. And one of the commenters mentioned just putting a police car there. I mean, every once in a while, if you just have a police car sitting there and at 8 or 8.30 a.m., I think that really kind of deters some of that type of activity.

So that happens quite a bit during the year that the police position themselves to... remind everybody that they're there um in fact i drive that corridor every morning i see where they've chosen to be and it's at different locations uh throughout the school year um i mean i could go on my high horse for a while this is no different than the e-bike problem right we have we are giving young people vehicles and sending them out in the community And they're not behaving well. Not everybody, but some portion of the population. And this seems to be a problem that's growing worse. And unfortunately, whatever should be happening in society to prevent or at least to encourage better behavior from our young members of our community is not happening.

Okay, so I think, you know, we've had some good public comments. I think, you know, it would be good if staff could engage the community or representatives of that neighborhood to see, you know, what might be refined or amended in the program. But I think in general, it seems like there's a lot of support for the program from the survey. It seems like people really like the program. It's working, generally speaking, and if we can refine certain things to help improve the and mitigate some of these other problems. You know, I would be interested in finding those types of solutions. Thank you. You know, we've closed public comments. So if that's okay, we're gonna move on to the... Our clerk will reach out to you. Thank you. Okay, so I'll close discussion on item 4.3. I'll move 4.3. Perfect. Second?

I'll second.

Great. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Okay. Motion passes. Thank you. All right. So now we'll move on to city manager's oral report.

uh just two items uh since we're first is we're gonna go dark uh the council has chosen to take a summer recess so after this meeting our uh your next regularly scheduled meeting is august 19th and so i wanted to use this as an opportunity proactively to acknowledge a lot of our staff together public work staff will be here on saturday on their holiday to make sure that we all have a wonderful time with the parade. And I just want to acknowledge they're already laying out the signs and starting to set things up. And I want to acknowledge that the staff in Corte Madera, it's a joint effort. So I would fully expect to have a wonderful event on Saturday. And I want to thank them for helping make that happen. And other than that, the one thing I thought I might mention to the council and the community, because I know there's a lot of interest, is we now have a firm date for the Planning Commission's hearing to consider the Mount Tam Racquet Club's application to remodel. And that's August 11. And we've moved that hearing to the CREP Center on the Redwood campus. uh to have a little bit bigger environment because we do know there's a lot of interest in the community and that particular item and we didn't feel any of our rooms were well suited if we get a big crowd so um that'll be posted more information as we get closer to the date that'll turn it back to you madam here great thank you for the report uh i'll open up for council members for any reports okay

So I have a couple of areas that I want to report on. Sorry. Here it goes. Okay, so the first report I wanted to make was that I was in attendance for the Association of Bay Area Governments, better known as ABAG, the General Assembly on June 18th. ABAG has delegates from 101 cities and towns, as well as nine counties within the San Francisco Bay Area. We convened and voted on ratification of the executive board selection for president and vice president. Susan Adams from Roanoke Park was unanimously elected for president and Wanda Williams, a supervisor in Solano County, for vice president. The Assembly voted to support the operating budget and work program for 26-27. One note for Larkspur is there is an increase in our annual membership fee and assessment schedules. And then we were also provided a preview of RENA, the Regional Housing Needs Allocation Cycle 7, which is for the planning period of 2031-2032. to 2039. And something that was noted and is important is that they're going to start the planning one year earlier than previous cycles, which means that three years before the housing elements are due instead of two. And the housing elements will be due in January of 31st, but it will also give Larkspur about an extra six months to do our housing element planning. So um that was the association of bay area governments i also attended the transportation authority of marin board meeting on june 25th the director did remind the public that the metropolitan transportation commission mtc has planned bay area 2060 on their web on the abag website and it's open for public comment until july 23rd so if anybody is interested to please go take a look and provide public comments At that meeting, the board adopted the budget as well for the fiscal year 26-27. They adopted a draft measure 2026 strategic plan for Measure AA funds. And we also allocated some funding to Marin Transit. The general manager from Marin Transit reported that for the end of Q1 2026 that their fixed route ridership is up, so that's great. But the demand response ridership is down, and they believe that's to do with Vivlon increasing their vehicles and availability, that riders are choosing Vivlon over MTC. Two things to note from Marin Transit in June. I'm sorry. summer, for summer, June through August, they have a free youth fair for the summer. And then for this upcoming July 1st today through the 5th, it's free to get to and from the Marin County Fair. So please use public transport and enjoy it for free while it lasts. Last but not least, I did meet with Ross Valley Sanitary District this week. I want to acknowledge that we have a really nice, strong partnership with Ross Valley Sanitary District. Through continued efforts, we were able to collaborate with them with the King Tides back in January and build our Heather Gardens Pump Station project. In addition to working closely with them on this Ross Valley Sanitary District land that's been up for sale in our jurisdiction, they're in the final stages of negotiating a development and disposition agreement with the state. development companies that won the RFP award. And if those negotiations don't go through, they do have a very strong candidate in second place. Lastly, they have uncovered that Ross Valley Sanitary District taxpayers may have been overcharged for a significant amount of time. And this is based on the methodology that's used to calculate the regional charges per Section 14 of the JPA. The anomalies that they noted were related to some of the periodic measurements that they do of the wastewater, and their investigation uncovered errors both in the sampling methodology as well as the calculation methodology. So they will be doing a presentation on this at their next RVSD board meeting, which is on July 17th, and I plan to attend and will report back. They're also in the midst of trying to resolve an ongoing disagreement regarding an inherent conflict of interest in the recent vote and decision to have Central Marin Sanitation Agency to take over the management of San Rafael Sanitary District. So they are trying to resolve this issue through the channels provided in the JPA Sections 19A and B. But if they're unable to resolve the dispute satisfactorily, they will resort to filing for mediation as provided in Section 19C. So the RVSD staff is focused on the fiduciary responsibility to the ratepayers and encouraging consolidation of the districts to remove future conflicts as a long-term solution, as well as some near-term solutions, including changing the JPA so as to provide more equitable representation and ensure that all perspectives are heard and integrated.

it's expected that marin ij will report on these topics soon so you may want to look for their report as well and that's all i got hey thank you that was quite a report thank you council member margulies for attending all these meetings on luxor's behalf and being our representative um okay anybody else have any updates just

Quickly, I've been sitting in this role for about 13 years and I'm retiring. So we are actually having an election in November for city council. Everybody's tired of hearing primary things, but November election will be coming around the corner and there are opportunities to run for city council. So I encourage everyone to give Allison a call and find out what that entails if you're interested. But I am also, as a lame duck, trying to arrange council candidate meet and greets and conversations so that all of the community can meet the people who have stepped forward to run for city council. So at this time, we have three in the works. September either 9th or 10th, In this chamber, we'll have to firm this up soon, but that's an opportunity to meet the candidates and ask questions. October 1st, that one's hosted by the Chamber of Commerce. October 1st is going to be hosted by the Larkspur Community Foundation, and that will be in the Drake's Landing community room. Everybody aware of where that is? We have an actual community room near the Bonaire Shopping Center that is available for public use, and it's part of our opportunity to reach out to community members who live on the other side of the creek. That's October 1st. And then the Tamil Pius, which is one of our largest constituencies, the high-rise building, they used to, for decades, hold a candidate meet and greet, and they are going to do it again this year, the first week in October, and I'm nailing down the dates for that. The fifth or sixth, probably. So it will be open to the public. You're all welcome to come and get to meet people from the community and get to ask questions of the candidates in a casual setting and hear what their platforms are. So I'm happy to be trying to do this because we really haven't had a contested election for a while. And I really think it's an important part of our community is all of us are here as volunteers, essentially. And we want to... make sure that everyone knows that they're included in this opportunity to work in these roles or to volunteer for a board and commission and to really serve the community in a passionate interest that you may have or a skill set you may have. And this is only one role, but it's an opportunity to learn about all the other things you can do. So thank you.

Wonderful. Thanks for that report. And also to let the public know that the filing period, if you're interested in running for city council, opens, I think, next week.

No, wait. Allison's shaking her head.

Oh, the 13th. I'm sorry. Okay, July 13th. Thank you. I just have one quick or two quick updates. One, the farm stand opened a couple of weeks ago in downtown Larkspur in the parking lot in front of the Legion of Honor. If you haven't had a chance to go down there, I encourage you to check it out. It's every Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., where you can buy fresh organic produce and seafood and flowers and cheese and other artisanal food. Second of all, I think you all know, but Left Bank closed unfortunately after 32 years to the extent that there are people out in the public who are interested in releasing that space that is a prime location in our downtown. to please get in touch with the city manager. We can put you in touch with the property owner, but hopefully we will be able to release that space soon. Okay, great. So seeing no more updates, we'll move on now to business item 8.1, which is the Arch Street Landing. We will be getting a project update, I believe, from the Luxembourg Community Foundation. Oh, or is it Director Skinner? Yes, please come forward. Thank you.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of council, members of the public, Julian Skinner, and the public works director. So tonight we do have a member or members of the Larkspur Community Foundation who are with us, who will be providing you with an update on the Arc Street landing project that they're fundraising for. This is This came before you last year in a request to add to the city's unfunded project list in the CIP. And then with the adoption of the budget this past June, you did add this project in the list of city unfunded projects. The Community Foundation is working on fundraising for it, and they will talk through kind of some of what they've done so far, what they're working on now and what they're looking at doing over the course of the next year. There is another component to this item, which is a request that you act on approving an extension of a fundraising sign at the site for longer than the banner program currently permits, which is two weeks. So the city has three dedicated banner locations throughout town that we let our community partners use. One of them is at the Arch Street steps, and so the Larchburg Community Foundation has asked If they can have their fundraising banner there, but they would like it there for longer than two weeks. So it's able to be more effective as part of their fundraising efforts. So I will ask after the conclusion of the Larkspur Community Foundation's project update, if you consider that action item. So with that, I think I'll hand it over.

Great.

Thank you. Hi, I'm Alicia Alexander, one of the volunteer board members from the Larkspur Community Foundation. First of all, we want to thank you for adding this exciting project to the city's capital improvement plan unfunded projects list. I'm happy to be here on behalf of LCF to give you a brief progress update. After much consideration, as it is not a park or as grand as a plaza, we've landed on the name the Arch Street Landing, as it's at the landing of the stairs. We're meeting every other week with Julian Skinner from Public Works to coordinate our efforts with the city. We have a landscape designer, Jen Tippett, who did come a couple of months ago and present her concept proposal here. The geotechnical survey was completed. The site is viable for the proposed design. We have met with Marin Municipal Water District, and there is an active water meter on the lot already, so we don't have to worry about setting up a new meter in order to have some irrigation there. We do plan to work with Refugia of Marin on native and drought-tolerant plantings and to keep that hillside more natural. We are in the process of presenting our plans to engineering firms so that they can create final plans and give us a cost estimate and get construction bids. And we're working with Mr. Skinner on that. We've set up a fundraising subcommittee consisting of LCF board members to create a fundraising strategy, which will likely include setting up a table at select times at the site to answer questions and generate enthusiasm, outreach to different groups within the community, hikers, stairwalkers, bikers, age-friendly Marin, parent groups, realtors, approaching local businesses for their support. We have unsolicited donations already of $80,000 already specifically donated or designated for this project from people that have heard about it. And we've also applied to the county for a grant with their community grants and investment program. And I guess those grants can be anywhere from $1,000 to $50,000. So we've got our application in. We'll see. We're hoping that the Rose Bowl will bring in a significant amount of money as well. We have, at this time, 94,500 in sponsorship donations, which is about twice where we were two years ago. And the profits from the Rose Bowl this year will benefit the Arch Street landing project. If all goes well with our process, our goal would be to hopefully break ground April 15th next year or so, weather dependent, of course. And we'd hope to have the project done maybe in time for the 4th of July parade for seating. We plan to regularly update the city council on our progress. And as Mr. Skinner said, we'd love to request an exemption to the city's two-week banner display duration at the site for fundraising and education purposes. The banner will be a rendering of the draft concept along with some basic information about the foundation, a QR code for donations, and encouraging Rose Bowl ticket purchases. Do you have an image of that? So that's the rendering of the space. So this would be the banner that would go on the posts there in the location.

That's all I have. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much for your presentation. It's a lovely plan. Oh, do we have any questions?

Yeah, quick question. You're asking for an exemption for the two weeks. What time frame are you asking for?

So when we put in the staff report, the request is that program is managed by the assistant city manager. And so we've asked that you give the assistant city manager discretion to extend this up till December 31st of this year based on the needs of the fundraising effort. But give her the authorization to extend it up to the end of this calendar year.

And that authorization would include if there are problems or complaints that we would be able to revisit that, I assume, right? Yes. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you, Alicia. I know this is just a rendering, but as this comes along, I would just encourage you to work with staff about creating a more age-friendly seating arrangement. Those big, not concrete, but wooden square blocks would with no backrest and no armrest, are not considered an age-friendly design. So, I mean, there's opportunities for that to change around, but it's a great place for resting for older members of our community who may have mobility challenges, and those particular block designs don't qualify for supportive seating arrangements for them. But I'd be happy to help you think through that, too.

Okay, thank you. Great. Council Member Paulson?

Yeah. Well, first I want to thank you. I think the rendering, at least, it looks really beautiful. It'll be a really nice addition. Minor detail, it looks like at the upper right of the picture, that's the bus stop that's there. And I've been fielding some comments, you know, as a rep to TAM. People have asked, hey, you're our TAM representative here. can you do anything about this you know tear it down or something like that what's the what's the current plan like is this is not really even tam they they punted it to marin transit and then you know who who's really responsible for that i i can yeah so um there's a the

The bus shelter itself is owned by Golden Gate Transportation District, but they don't provide service at this location. Marin Transit does. And so we had approached in the past requesting when Marin Transit were doing their bus bus shelter renovations throughout Marin. We had asked that this location be considered, but it doesn't meet the ridership threshold that qualified for Marin transit to move forward, plus the complication of the shelter actually being a remnant from when Golden Gate operated service through there. I think, you know, we've discussed about opportunities to spruce the shelter up somewhat through this project. I think there's some glass on there that's stained that could be removed and that maybe even could be done sooner rather than later. And maybe some paint, but leaving kind of the bus shelter in place and just sprucing it up a little bit so it's more consistent with the improvements. And we would simply need Golden Gate Transit's permission to do that.

Okay, so they wouldn't be funding this, but they could say no, but we'll ask them to allow us to do this. And I imagine there's no reason not to. Yeah, because they handed over to the tune of 50 bus stops or 100 to Marin Transit. So this is one of them. Okay. Thank you.

We did have a discussion as a board about whether, because we've had people say, well, why don't you just take it out? But we do feel that it's important to provide shelter for people who are using public transit to come into the city, either for work or just who live here that are trying to get places.

Great, thank you. Any more questions or comments from council? Okay, great. I'll open up for public comment. Any members of the public who would like to comment on this? Okay, seeing none in the chamber. Any online?

Looking for any raised hands from our Zoom audience members, and there is no public comment.

Right. Well, I do want to thank the Luxembourg Community Foundation working in partnership with our Public Works Department in putting together this beautiful plan for a really underutilized space in our city. And I think it will be really beautiful when the project is completed. So thank you for all the work behind that. Okay, great.

Yes. I'll move Resolution 5826. Great.

I'll second that.

All right. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Any abstain? Great. Motion passes. Thank you. All right. So now we'll move on to item 8.2, the court resurfacing at Piper and Centennial Parks Capital Improvement Project 27-202. Is that, are we going to get a staff report? Okay, great. Thank you.

Madam Mayor and Council Members, this is kind of an unusual item. We don't normally bring you design elements of facilities like the tennis and pickleball courts, but earlier this year in April, we took it to the body that usually thinks about these things, which is Park and Recreation, with some ideas on when we do this capital project to resurface the courts. Uh, we could resolve some challenges that we were observing in terms of the two sports that are using these courts by creating fixed spaces that would be allocated to each sport separately. Um, And shortly after the Park and Recreation Commission voted to recommend that to you, which is one of the options before you today, you started to receive a pretty high volume of concern from players of pickleball that that wasn't going to accommodate the needs that had developed on the courts in terms of what the user base likes to do. And so I elected to take on the challenge of sort of seeing if I could get a group of Larkspur residents who are part of these different cohorts together to give me a sense of what's going on out there and if there was an alternative to recommend to the council. And I was pleased to get a lot of interest. And so we had a group of folks representing both tennis and pickleball met with me on three occasions to talk about how they use the courts and what might or might not work for them in terms of what they want to accomplish. And it was interesting because I think We quickly heard the concerns from the pickleball community about what Park and Recreation Commission had recommended. But in having the working group started to hear some concerns from the tennis community as well. And it comes down to some of the physical nature of the tennis pickleball courts. Anybody who's been out there knows that not all courts in Larkspur are created equally. Some of them have slopes in them that are sort of a permanent thing. endearing feature or not endearing, depending on your point of view. And some of them are a little more flat and stable. So after listening to the entire group, I kind of came to the conclusion that an alternative was available. It was actually to do the resurfacing and striping to match the status quo. And so that's what I'm recommending is an alternative to But what I'll talk about in a minute is some programming issues that I think we can also resolve that you don't need to vote on tonight. But I put up a diagram so as we go through this conversation, people may reference the courts. They're all numbered, and you'll hear the players talk about them as courts 1, 2, 3, and 4. And to orient you, 1 is at the west end, 4 is on the east end. The particularly sloped court is court 3. If you go out there, the north side of Court 3 has a pronounced slope. And that's not really fixable with a resurfacing to a significant degree. We would really have to tear the entire courts out and build a new foundation to have any chance of creating a truly level court set up there. And Mr. Skinner tells me that's about eight or nine-fold the cost of what is proposed in terms of a resurfacing. So what sort of came out of the discussions and listening to the players in the working group about how the courts were being used is that when we first dipped our toe into the idea of offering pickleball and we first started thinking about how to make the courts available to the public, staff suggested and the Park and Ref Commission agreed that we would essentially have time periods where whoever shows up decides what they're going to play. Couple of tennis players show up. They set the court up for tennis and they play tennis. And when there's some people waiting and they might want to play pickleball, then they take over the court. They reconfigure it to play pickleball. That sounds like. a pretty reasonable approach to sharing a facility, but it doesn't really work well in practical terms. And primarily the reason is the sheer volume of who's playing at any given time. I think I put in the staff report, if two people are there playing tennis and then 16 people are waiting to play on the pickleball plate, because you can play with four pickleball courts of four people, it's pretty intimidating for the two players. And again, I get that they probably don't feel comfortable about sharing that space. And also it's frustrating for the 16 players. We have 16 people and we want to get on the court and play. And so this idea that we would designate these periods where people would just show up and they'll pick which sport they play, I think is actually at the root of a lot of the challenges that staff's been observing for the last couple of years. And so, yeah, What I've spoken with this working group about and what I've asked Director Stone from the Recreation Department to think about for future scheduling. is we'll have very fixed and distinct time slots for these different sports to use the courts. And that way tennis players will know when they can go use a court, set it up for tennis and not have to feel that they have to yield because there's a large number of pickleball players waiting and pickleball players will know that they can count on a certain number of the courts being available when they want to play. And you probably will hear from some speakers this evening that we sort of accidentally stumbled into the, Something that's developed its own life, which is when we started allowing eight pickleball courts to be active at once, it really invited large groups of people to come play pickup games. And they have developed an entire system of how they work their way through sharing the courts and challenging one another. I don't think anybody... new and we agreed to give eight courts of pickleball a try that that would sort of be one of the evolutions so again the idea that we might have 30 let's see you know we might have eight so the 32 pickleball players going at once and very vibrant and active you can kind of understand why it might be hard for any number of tennis players to walk up and say hey it's time for you to step aside so i can play a match of tennis so that's why i think Programming with time slots should start to work some of this challenge out. One reason I'm recommending the status quo, and then I'll turn it over to you that I mentioned in the staff report, is we have a long history of supporting tennis as a recreation program. And we have a contractor who does that for us. And as part of that program over the years, we've evolved support for two different teams, a USTA program team and what they call the Marin League program team. And when those competitions are going on, they need three courts. And during the working group discussions, one of the things that came out was, could we please have a plan where court four is still available for our competitions? Because that slope in court three really is a challenge for us when we're doing competitions. So the status quo gives us the flexibility to accommodate all of that. I've also been told by Director Skinner and Director Stone from Recreation that temporary striping is possible. So if Pickleball continues to grow and they want to try to host some competitions, we can probably facilitate that rather easily without having to make a significant change at the courts. So a lot of flexibility by sticking with the status quo, and that's why that's my recommendation. And we're looking for some direction from council today because Mr. Skinner would like to move forward. This is actually multiple projects and they are all small. They collectively are about $160,000, but we didn't need the formality of a resolution authorizing a bid this evening. We just needed your direction. Let's turn it back to you, Madam Mayor and council members.

Okay, great. Thank you for the report. I'll open it right now for questions from council members. Councilman Kendo.

Thank you for that report. And I'm assuming that's a summary from everything that you've heard over the last three meetings and collated and, you know, you taking that into account. So I appreciate that. You have a lot more information than we do at this point. I have some concerns about the status quo. Um, status quo is temporary nets that rip up tennis courts. I assume when you say status, status quo, we're not keeping that, that we're going to do something different. Status quo is also storing the pickleball nets anywhere, you know, move them to the side of the court or something like that when, when tennis is going on. And I assume that's not status quo. So can you kind of help me understand, um, When you say status quo, what you mean?

Sorry, I apologize. Status quo meant the striping of the court. The issues you're asking about are relevant. I don't really need direction from you to have Mr. Skinner, Mr. Stone make the additional changes. So one of the things you had mentioned was the nets. That was a big concern that temporary nets were damaging the courts. That is a concern in the current situation. The pickleball players have assured me there are nets that will meet their needs that should not damage the courts, and they have volunteered to work with us to select a product that we will purchase that should not cause the damage they're seeing. What's happening is the posts of the nets are dimpling the court, and then they're also leaving some rust stains. And when they're being moved, sometimes people are dragging them, so they're scratching up the court surface. So all of that should go away. And then I think we could come up with a good idea of how to park the pickleball nets when something's being used as a tennis court. Right now, we've sort of left it up to the players to sort all that out. And it's not unique to pickleball. It's not unique to tennis. We could walk out to the soccer fields. We could walk out to the volleyball courts. Left to their own devices, people sometimes forget the niceties of leaving stuff the way it should be left. So we'll provide a little more guidance in that regard.

Okay. And as far as the striping goes, we're talking about striping three and four for pickleball and tennis? Yeah. And one and two strictly tennis, is that right? Correct. Okay. Thank you.

Great. Council Member White? Got my question. Okay. Any other questions? Yes.

Yeah. I mostly wanted to thank the city manager. I think members of the community have reached out and expressed appreciation for the patients and the listening and, you know, the public comment speaks for itself. They're in support. Maybe you should sit up here. Thank you.

I just want to echo Council Member Paulson's comments about your efforts, Dan, to engage both cohorts. And the public comment was overwhelmingly positive about those workshops, and they really appreciated you bringing them in and walking them through the scenarios. And they were a high compliment. So thank you for your efforts.

I echo those comments as well. I do have a couple questions. So how much does the city get from the tennis program?

Typically in a year we net about $15,000.

$15,000?

Net. That's our net. So we take in $75,000 to $90,000 in revenue typically. But because we use a contractor, we have a cost-sharing agreement with that contractor. Okay.

Okay, so 15,000 net. Okay. And it says in the staff report, court four will be dedicated or will be used for pickleball outside of these tennis tournaments, tennis competitions. So how frequent are these tennis competitions?

It's about 50 to 60 a year.

50 or 60, is that days or what is reached?

I believe that's days, yes.

Okay, so 50 to 60 days a year, okay. Okay. And then it says court three will be tennis on weekday mornings and before 930 a.m. on weekday mornings. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, court three will be tennis on weekday mornings. Okay. And do we know what time weekday mornings that will be or not yet?

I'm going to let Mr. Stone sort that out. And he sets the schedule on a monthly basis. So if it might be 1130, it might be 11. I'm going to leave that to his expertise. He's the one out there all the time.

Okay. And then outside of these hours, court three will be pickleball.

Correct.

Okay.

The pickleball community doesn't really start to coalesce in large numbers on a weekday until the afternoon. That's our observation, that they start to show up more in the afternoon on a weekday.

Okay. But most of the weekend will be dedicated to pickleball, right?

That is when we see quite a bit of pickleball activity. We see a lot on Thursday afternoons, Friday afternoons, and into the evenings, especially in these summer months, and then quite a bit on the weekend.

Okay. All right. Great. Thank you. Thanks for your question. Yes, of course.

When do the tennis players need court four? When they're having one of these competitions. Right. When is that though? How often is that?

I don't have a schedule. Actually, it's 50 to 60 days a year is what I'm told between those two competitions, the USTA team and the Marin League team.

And do we know, are those 50 or 60 days either the Thursday afternoon, Friday afternoon, or weekends?

I'm guessing they're quite often on weekends.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Well, but I'm sorry, but 50 days, I mean, there's only 52 weekends. Are we...

I'm sorry. I didn't prepare for this. I gave Mr. Stone the night off. There might be tennis players who are better equipped to answer all of these. We'll hear the comments as people say.

Okay, great. Sorry, Council Member Way. Go ahead. That's a lot of detail. But I just had two comments. Thank you very much for all the hard work with this, with having a group of passionate tennis players and pickleball players get together and kind of hash out. My second comment is this is a fantastic opportunity to plug service on the Park and Recreation Commission, which is an opportunity to volunteer within this community to help set policies like this. And this issue went forward, first of all, to Park and Rec Commission, and they really worked at it. And with the... Director Stone. But if you're really interested in how our city parks work and everything, it's a great opportunity to help guide policy, putting that out there. And the last thing I want to say is we're sort of surrounded by historic photos in this room. And if you get a chance, this photo over here is of when Piper Park was our city dump. So it has come a long way from being a city dump. In fact, it was a marshland and it was for decades used as the trash heap of the Ross Valley area. So it's come a long way. Look at that beautiful picture. It just shows how we evolve in our public parks and our public use. So don't look now because you'd have to come up here, but take a look at that picture.

Great. Thank you, Council Member Way. All right. So I will open this up now for public comments. If anybody from the public would like to make a comment, please come forward to the podium. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members, and thank you very much to Dan. I was one of the working group and it was excellently facilitated. So I'm just quickly here to talk about, I'm going to call it the Field of Dreams talk, which is really, I think what City Manager mentioned earlier on is this really unique community that has developed out of almost absolutely nothing. In fact, I think it should be a case study for community involvement of something which a city has provided and really allowed a community to thrive. So I'm, very passionate about what we do and how much fun we have playing pickleball. But really, I just want to talk about a factual issue here, which is really just talking about eight courts. So I want to thank the city manager for his proposal for eight courts. And I do think it's absolutely vital. And I'm just going to talk about that. It's about concentration. So what allows the open play model to work at Piper Park is that there is a concentration of eight courts with people playing pretty much four to five hours a day. So I'm guaranteed pretty much any time I go there from 1 o'clock on that I will get a game, and that gets me there. And the nice thing about that is that there's other people doing the same. The other really amazing thing about what's happened is the fact that there is really a beginner-intermediate set of four chords. And then there's an advanced, let's call it advanced intermediate set of four, which allows people of very different levels to play, but also to cross-mingle and co-mingle, which I think is a really useful thing. So as an intermediate pickleballer, I've been able to look across and watch advanced players play and kind of pick up things that they do. I want to say that I think Papi Park is probably the foremost pickleball community in probably in marine it's got a very very strong reputation it has a number of very very strong players in it we're talking medalists it's not almost every week on our whatsapp we'll get people writing in and saying you know so and so has run uh won that so i just want to say that this is really a pragmatic element and that i think the four court option doesn't support the open play model it might support other models of pickleball but it doesn't support open play So I'm firmly behind, obviously, an eight-court solution. So thank you very much. And by the way, Richard Bennion, 36 Craigsview Circle. So I'm a Larkspur resident.

Before you leave, Madam Mayor, would you be okay if we asked you a couple of questions?

Yes, absolutely.

All right. First of all, and I know you're not speaking on behalf of all pickleball players, but from your perspective, are you comfortable with the temporary pickleball courts, the temporary nets, as opposed to having a permanent pickleball court?

Well, so there are two – let me answer that in two ways. And I think some of my co-pickleball players would say the ideal solution, the absolute ideal for us would obviously to have an equitable solution would be to have one permanent and one shared, given that obviously we have two – only tennis and pickleball really doesn't have any of its own facilities. So there are football fields, there are volleyball, et cetera, et cetera. I just want to say that the ideal solution would be, of course, for us to have four fixed permanent pickleball and to have four shared. That would be the ideal solution. But if that's not available, then certainly we strongly back the city manager's proposal. So that would probably be my answer to it. So if you want to talk about ideal or... And I don't even want to say acceptable. That's not really the correct word for it. So it's either... we're happy or we're very, very happy. Okay.

So follow-up question, how do you feel about court three? I've heard that court three is very difficult for tennis. Is it also difficult for pickleball?

No, it's not. And I'll just, again, this is a, and again, please, I've got to be very careful about this. I don't want to seem to be anti-tennis in any way. I've played tennis, I've played squash, I've played pickleball. I love record sports. So The pickleball community has no issue with court three in any way, shape, or form. So if somebody said, look, guys, we'll give you court three as a permanent, I think you're going to see a lot of very happy faces in the room. The issue was, and it's a difficult one, is tennis would like court four for USTA, but would like court three for practice, because then there are three contiguous courts. So it's this difficult scenario of saying, well, we want... three on these days but we want four on the other days and I think that's the issue but certainly from the pickleball community we don't mind court three because the slope has a lot less impact on pickleball. I'm not saying it's ideal but you know it's half the court size so pragmatically it affects pickleball much less than it does tennis.

So hypothetically, and again, just throwing ideas out there, if court three were a permanent pickleball court and court four were a temporary court on behalf of the pickleball community, that would be something you're comfortable with?

I think it would probably be more than comfortable. We'd probably be doing cartwheels down the street. Those are my questions. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you very much. Was it Craig? And was there anyone else, a member of the public, who would like to make a comment? Please come forward.

Hi, I'm Nicole Cernsic. I've been a homeowner and resident in Larkspur for 22 years. I was also part of the working group representing over 250 pickball players. And I also want to thank Dan so much for forming the working group. He did a great job. And I also appreciate all of you that I've been able to speak with on this matter. So I'm going to reiterate what, because I know both recommendations are in the packet that you have. So I'm going to reiterate that what's most critical to us is eight pickleball courts. So we don't support the recreation director's recommendation because it reduces our number of courts from eight to four. And it also disproportionately favors tennis 75% to 25% for pickleball. So we generally support city manager's recommendation because it does recognize that critical need for eight pickleball courts. The scheduling that we talked about was more favorable. It was about 40% for pickleball, 60% for tennis. And the only thing that it falls short for me is what Richard was talking about, is that it lacks some physically dedicated staff. court space it dedicates court space in schedule only and i did i did share this numerous times in our working group um with the city manager that i really felt that the equitable situation would be for us to have one dedicated um court so i'm asking you to consider a different configuration which is what you brought up which is one court dedicated for pickleball which could be court three Two courts dedicated for tennis and then one mixed use court. And this was actually the direction that we were headed at our very first working group meeting because it satisfies the needs. It satisfies eight courts for pick wall and it satisfies three courts for tennis, which are the requirements of the leagues and the USDA matches. And there was, at the previous REC meeting, those USTA matches, we were told, occur on average, and it's also, you can see it on schedules, approximately two times a month. Sometimes they're on the weekends, and sometimes they are during the week, outside of even the times that pickleball is playing. And the other thing is it does. It minimizes the number of nets that will have to move. It will minimize damage. It simplifies the schedule so it's less strain on park and rec staff. And it will also easily identify when people who are new and show up and come to the park, it will easily identify this is where you start to play pickleball as opposed to trying to look at a schedule maybe ending up on the wrong court. And then lastly, we do believe that this is the most equitable solution because it gives both pickleball and tennis players the number of courts they need, courts physically dedicated to both sports, just like all of the other sports that are played at Piper Park. And it's a mixed-use compromise that we both have to share. So thank you so much for your time and consideration of this.

Great. Thank you, Nicole. Does anyone else want to make up a comment?

Can I ask, is there anyone from the tennis community here? Couldn't you come up and make a comment so we could ask you some questions? We're trying to come up with a fair solution. We've got to make sure we hear from both sides.

Hi, my name is Leo Giraldi. I am your contractor. I've been your contractor for the last 14 years, and I've been the coach at Piper Park for the last 26 years.

A question I have. I know from the tennis community, pickleball is loud. It's more boisterous. A normal pickleball game is 15 minutes. A tennis match is an hour and a half. You have people running on and off the courts. From a tennis perspective, if you had tennis going on courts one, two, and four, and on court three, you had pickleball, Is that a problem?

It would be because then court three, if it was packed, because tennis, the quietness of tennis doesn't bother pickleball playing, but the other way around is a problem. So the further away tennis and pickleball can be, the better for tennis playing and especially competition. Also from an instruction standpoint, it's very difficult to instruct players dealing with the noise, like even on the tennis courts, if I'm not 10 feet away from students, kids, then they can't hear me, which is a new problem that we have had to deal with, and my assistant as well. We have two instructors at Piper Park. So the situation of having court three, four team practices is practical because it's continuous. So instruction can be done very easily. It's flowing. For matches, there's no instruction, so court four, which is the flatter one, is more appropriate for competition playing, which is why sometimes it's court three that is preferred, sometimes it's court four that is preferred.

Okay, so let me ask you this. Let's say you had to just pick three courts, right? We're going to have one court dedicated to pick a ball and three for tennis. Would you want one, two, and three because they're next to each other, or would you want one, two, and four because they're flatter?

Well, 1, 2, and 3 would be preferred, which was the original compromise from the Parks and Rec Commission. Obviously, Code 3 being more sloped, provided there would be some leveling down the road, would be nice.

Well, no promises. We got to get the price tag on that. But for today, I'm just trying to figure out what you prefer.

Separating the two activities would be a huge benefit for sure, because then it would be clear. It would be dedicated to one activity or the other activity. it would be much preferred to have one, two, and three dedicated for tennis.

Okay, so with that in mind, if we were going to come up with a plan where we had one pickleball court, dedicated pickleball, two dedicated tennis, one tennis for when you need it for tournament or whenever we schedule three tennis courts, and you had decided that could either be one, two, and three, or one, two, and four, it sounds like what I'm hearing is you'd like one and two dedicated for tennis, four dedicated for pickleball, and three can be the interchangeable one.

If it has to be the interchangeable one, then four would be preferred.

Okay, so that's the question. So you would rather have the permanent one be pickleball, even if it's in between one, two, and four?

No, no, no, the other way around, my bad. Okay. But no, no, I didn't understand your question.

Gotcha, gotcha. So if we were going to have one pickleball court, two tennis courts, and one interchangeable court, your preference would be one and two dedicated to tennis, three interchangeable, and four for pickleball. Okay, those are my questions. Thank you.

So were you a participant in the discussion? I was not. Okay.

And can you answer our question about, is it true, like one or two times a month for these tournaments?

So it depends on the season. Tennis competition is seasonal. So the large activity is in the spring. And in the fall and in the winter, we have a winter season as well. For USTA, there is one match per week. Sometimes it's at home, sometimes it's away. So it really depends on the season. But between the Marine League starts in September and until basically now with June, end of July, depending on postseason, there will be at least two matches a month, sometimes three, depending on the schedule. And sometimes it's on a weekday, which is usually in the morning, which doesn't bother anybody. I mean, not a pickleball community. When it's on a weekend, it's when there's a little more sharing to do. It has been relatively smooth with a clear understanding, clear signage when tennis matches occur. So it has been pretty smooth on the weekend so far. Pickleball players, because we don't play in the morning on the weekend. We've never scheduled anything in the morning on the weekend, competition or instructions specifically to leave courts open to the community because there's a lot of instruction on weekdays. So when tennis matches occur, which is usually around 12 p.m., 1 p.m., it's a smooth transition.

Okay, so most of the matches are in the afternoon then on weekends?

On weekends, yes.

And do you have instruction on weekends or no?

We do. It's in the afternoon and on days when there are no matches.

Okay. But you would be using courts one and two if you were using for instruction. So you would only be using one of the interchangeable courts for the tournaments, right? Is that correct?

Yes.

Usually. Okay.

Yes. I'm sorry, but sometimes you practice on three quarters.

I want to remind you that tennis that's being described is the city's program. Right. This is the city's contractor. So if we say we're not going to have lessons on Saturday, that's a staff decision. It's not the contractor's decision. So I just want to be clear. That's why I've said a couple times, Mr. Stone's the professional that's out there all the time. He'll manage the courts to make sure the flow matches our intent. But I encourage you not to get too set on the answers you're getting right now from a contract employee of the city.

Okay, great. Thank you.

And I just think, I mean, we had a lot of conversation about this at a previous meeting, and we as a group empowered our city manager to... negotiate sort of on our behalf to get together with groups of both interest groups, hear both of their concerns, hear from the park and rec staff. And I don't feel like we should be relitigating this, if that's the term correctly, because this is what we empowered our city staff to do and give us a recommendation. So, I mean, we can hear from people's comments and things, but we were... giving direction to staff to do all this homework for us, do the synthesis, get the conversation from all sides or the sides that were passionate and come back with a recommendation. And I feel comfortable that they came back with a recommendation for us based on due diligence and evidence. And I feel like we're sort of opening up the can again. And I'm not sure that that's going to be helpful.

Well, I do want to finish hearing from the public, though. Oh, yeah. I agree. Let's just finish hearing from the public.

Thank you. I want to be clear.

I'm not commenting in any way on the discussion you're having about the third alternative that was submitted to you through the public. I just wanted to make sure we don't lose sight of it's the city's decision to program lessons and whether or not to facilitate league competition. So I just want you to recognize that aspect of it.

Great. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Mr. Giraldi. Thank you. Great. Please come forward.

Oh.

My name is Nancy Bialik. I'm going to pull it down so we can.

Okay, great. My name is Nancy Bialik, and I'm a 24-year resident of Larkspur. I'm at 15 Hillcrest, which is, you could rappel from my house down to Rustic Bakery on Magnolia. That's where you find us. First, thank you to everybody. We've had all sorts of conversations and letters sent and this beautiful working committee. But the city manager being involved in that is super appreciated. We wish that maybe had happened sort of the first go around before the whole community blew up over this, because we probably could have thwarted some of this anguish, pain, and time. You had heard already, so you got to a lot of the things I was going to say in terms of my presentation. I think as a group, we fundamentally agree with the proposal that eight courts at minimum supports the level of numbers that we have. We could probably have more. I bet you we could fill up all four tennis courts. But in that regard, we've left two tennis courts alone deferential to the programming of the city and whatnot. So we support the eight for sure. My whole commentary was really about use. We've kind of covered that. Like, I think you all get that this community is imploded. And beyond that, there is really the issue of fairness. And while you might not want to open up this discussion as a kind of more can of worms to settle another issue, one of the things, and you had started to talk about it, was this idea of a dedicated court. And that's something that we have always advocated from the beginning. There was even comment saying, I think the rec department said, oh, we'll give you four nice courts, and that's better than having eight lesser nice courts and we were like no that doesn't really work we were really fixed primarily on the eight courts definitely but in terms of fairness when two courts are a hundred percent tennis no line and the proposal as it stands now these two are mixed that is in no way fair to a pickleball community not to even have one with dedicated lines i mean that's that's There's no percentage of pickleball with, you know, to have dedicated to not have dedicated line. So already the imbalance is just huge. The pickleball community has always been really willing to negotiate. And I think to council members candles point, like we're willing to have court three be dedicated and court four be the overspill or the mixed use. We're not actually even asking for two dedicated courts and two dedicated tenants. because we realized Tennessee's that third court for USTA. We're just simply asking for one dedicated court and then one overflow mix, which is already a compromise, I think, on the football community's behalf. What's the stopping of it, and I think you've got to it, is the crux of the matter is this court three issue. When tennis is saying, I want one, two, and four, oh, but by the way, I want one, two, and three, it seems like they've got a sort of a monopoly on, ownership of all the courts still so i'm sort of wanting the council members to go back and the city manager to say hey let's find one day that one dedicated court that will make like us happy like you said like rich said we would do cartwheels if we got court free But there has to be a compromise with the tennis community to say, okay, we'll take one, two, three, or we're going to take one, two, and four, whatever they kind of figure out. With tournaments being two days a week, that's like 7% of the hours of the total, like, month of youth. And to go one, two, and give them four because they need it for two days out of the entire month seems, again, another challenge. not adequate use of fairness in terms of just hours and use. So I just, I, I just, I have a hard time reconciling the fairness of like any of that. So, um, If we could find a way that, you know, they're happy with one, two and three for all of their use, be it matches and programming. And then the pickleball gets four and three is the mixed use one. So be it if they want one, two and four and pickleball gets three with four being the mixed use one. That's OK with us. I mean, we're willing to bend and we're willing to go there and take the court that they don't want. So, I mean, I think, again, we could sort of just say, oh, we're going to accept this proposal because we've empowered city manager to do this and this is the job. But I think we've left out an important piece of actual fairness. Great.

Thank you, Nancy, for your public comment. Anyone else in the public chambers? Yes, please come forward.

Hi there. I'm actually not a resident, but I am Nicole Cernsich's sister. My name is Michelle Cernsich-Hodge, and I happen to be coming as a colleague in a different space. I am a Mill Valley School District board trustee. I'm in my second year. And if you've ever read the IJ, you know that we have been very active dealing with very dynamic discussions around our middle school and use of public funds and how to, in the context of your work as a board, how do you make the best decisions for your community? And so I just wanted to share a couple of different kinds of thoughts in that what I do know is there's $160,000, so there is a fiduciary responsibility that the board has to kind of high level, okay, what's our why? We need to spend this money to accommodate our community, listen to our community. The other thing is to have data. What we do a lot now, we're in the ed space where we're driven by data, but is to ask for data from our support staff and make sure we have good, solid data because we all know that when people get passionate, they come with their feelings and they come with their impressions or their biases. And so as a board member, I just would like to, you know, I hope that you've been given the proper amount of data and that it's been researched, and I don't know if that's the case, but I was wondering, was there any kind of proper survey done or evaluation of use? As this is an evolving thing, I want to also give you context. I have no bias here, because even though my sister's deeply passionate about pickleball, We come from a very long line of tennis players. I'm an MCAL, Tam High proud doubles champ. And our middle sister was ranked in Northern California in tennis and played for Berkeley for a couple of years. So we have a soft spot for tennis as well. And I think it needs some place to evolve, but you've got this explosive demand sitting in your hometown, and I even read about it in the Chronicle. So it's kind of, you know, you're getting some some potential other exposure along the way, which is which is always good in in the democratic process. So I just want to close by saying that Thank you also for being here because we're all volunteers and we make the democratic process work and allowing people to speak and taking into consideration their voice in the context of the work that you have your staff do is very appropriate and actually kind of the bedrock, I think, of our charge is to listen to our community. So with that, best of luck and I look forward to enjoying Piper Park as a neighbor, which we do a lot. We tend to go and do our, our picnics and what have you and enjoy it in that context. So thank you.

Great. Thank you for your public comment. Yes, please come forward.

Hi, my name is Chuck Finney, member of the working group representing Pickleball. I live at 707 via Casitas, so other side of the creek. First, I want to thank Council Member Way for your service to the community. Your perspective is very valuable, and it'll be missed.

You were on the South Alisio Committee, too. I was, yes. Yeah, the Scott of my state.

Yeah. I just want to kind of get back to... John Potter, A point to say thank you to the wreck and park department for in the Commission for raising the issues of concern, I think the proposal from the from the city manager to use scheduling. and to keep the eight shared courts. We'll resolve those issues in working with our community. We're committed to coming up with the appropriate nets and sharing the courts equitably. If you do end up on a path to dedicating physically one court, it's just important that we also have a shared second court, whether it's three or four. But again, I just want to thank you for the process. I thought it was excellent how we brought a controversy to an equitable finish. And I really wanted to just say thank you.

Thank you for your public comment. Is there anyone else in the chamber who would like to make a comment? Please come forward.

I'm Laura McDermott. I live at 20 Meadowood Drive. I was one of the tennis representatives on the committee. I wasn't really planning to speak, but I heard you kind of wanted to maybe ask some questions. He did.

I would like to ask some questions.

He's our criminal defense.

No, so I want to make sure that we're being fair. What I'm hearing from the pickleball community is that they want eight courts, meaning two tennis courts. What I'm hearing from the tennis community is that they want three tennis courts to be able to play the USDA matches. I think we can accommodate both those things. The question that I have is that I play tennis and pickleball. And I have recently been playing on pickleball courts that have been dedicated to pickleball. And it's so much nicer. I mean, you don't have like 20 different lines. It's just a different feeling. It's nice. And I am leaning towards providing that. But I want to do it in a way that is at least disruptive to tennis as possible. And I've heard tennis is not happy with three because it's got a slant and it's not happy with four because if you have pickleball in between the tennis, then that's a problem. So I'm trying to understand from the tennis side of this, what would you prefer? If we were going to have one dedicated pickleball court, which would you like it to be?

isn't what's on any of this. So I think, and I have to give Dan respect, I was able to attend two work-wise. I was traveling. I did not attend one of them. He was trying. I think all of us, no one's happy. It's a compromise. And it's a continued compromise. It's a continued, ideally, we're all going to talk about ideally, and it came up, and I think I said it the first time when this all heated up a couple months ago, I think you have enough interest here. Let's start looking. We were asking, I think one of us, a couple of us on the committee, can we start putting in the infrastructure for a dedicated pickleball? Not pulling from the tennis, but possibly, for example, I did hear the beach volleyball that's there that was put in by what I think Golden Gate or Golden Gate, who doesn't use it anymore. And we have since built beach volleyball courts over at College of Marin. Why aren't we looking at actually building dedicated at Piper Park? So there you could possibly put those eight courts. Maybe we have to give up one on the, maybe the compromise is for the next two years, we have these shared courts with fundraising efforts and let's go build dedicated. Let's keep both communities thriving. Yes, I played for 10 years. I play, I'm on. leo's teams i'm on the marin leagues i live here um it's a big active that that's just the adults i know in the afternoons i think where your question comes i'm not one of the students i know there's middle schoolers i've put my children through it as well i know there's high schoolers that all train um in the afternoon that's not us i'm a full-time worker so yes i'm a weekend player because i work full-time during the day um it's a compromise i think dance recognizing that i think that we all saw the the the pushback from pickleballers um so it's hard to say it's hard to it's hard to say oh give three yeah three sucks from a slant i'm sorry it does um it's like playing uphill um But if you made 300%, there's no win-win. It's a compromise. Let's put our efforts. Let's go fundraise. The lady that left, I guess, Community Foundation, let's host tournaments if you want to, and let's put the money together. I don't know if you can spend all $160,000 right now. I mean, I know it's capital infrastructure. I know Pickleball also pulls a big community from not just Larkspur. We all know that. Well, could we maybe resurface the courts now for... this continued shared use and let's identify and build. It doesn't take that much space. And let's go add, let's, let's make, let's continue to make Piper better. I think you can get the money. So that's my thoughts.

Thank you.

Any other questions? Any other questions? We've had our time. We argued hard in this meeting. It got a little, so today we're supposed to, I'm just here to support and to recommend.

I totally appreciate your speaking there because what we have to do often, it is a compromise because people are passionate on both ends. And we see that from everything from dog parks to parking permits to whether somebody likes or dislikes the library or whatever. It's all about compromise. So I appreciate you saying that.

Thanks. Great. Thank you. Yes. Mr. Mueller, would you like to make a comment?

David Muller, I live here in Larkspur. I had no intent of commenting on this particular item, but I heard the last speaker, I think, propose looking at the volleyball courts as a possible site for more racket sports. And I just want to say, since there's nobody here representing the volleyball community, but I have had some involvement in that community in the past. Those volleyball courts are used almost incessantly by volleyball players. And I think the speaker also referenced the new sand courts at College Marin. Those are not available for public use. I mean, you can't casually do a pickup game of volleyball on those courts. They're really for the student and academic teams to use. So I just want to say, when I heard that, my ears sort of perked up. No, no, no. I don't think the volleyball courts are part of this discussion. So I just wanted to say that. Also, interestingly, many, many years ago, and it wasn't Catherine, it was a prior council. I was actually involved. There was some extra money for recreation development. And I was the one who said, let's do some sand courts at Piper Park. So I suppose I have a little bit of personal interest in this as well. But let's keep the volleyball courts out of the conversation. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else in the chamber like to make a comment? Okay, see none. Anybody on? Oh, I'm sorry. Please come forward.

You got hit in the head there.

Hi, I'm Jody. Jody Alam. I live in Mill Valley. I've been a pickleball player at Piper Park for a long time. You know, having dedicated courts really encourages beginners to get out there. I just have to tell you, I'm a pediatrician and I see these middle schoolers out there playing. Started out with just two guys. We played with them. Now there are four guys, these middle schoolers that all play with each other. Every point they're like playing little air guitars between points. It is... It is just a bunch of joy, people out there having a great time. And that's what Parks and Rec is all about, is getting beginners out there, intermediate players, advanced players, getting everybody out there playing. And we all play really well together. And this brings the young people out and gets them outside and enjoying the recreation, beautiful recreation that we have here in Marin County. So eight courts is essential. It'd be wonderful if we had a dedicated court because that really helps draw our beginner players as well. Thank you.

So just to be clear, your email, you were fully supportive of the manager's recommendation. I'm just reading it.

Right. So I'm fully supportive of the manager's recommendation. I think it's a compromise. It is a compromise. It is a compromise. And we would love to have some dedicated courts. And it would be nice to help welcome these new players and the younger players onto dedicated courts. But what... we'll work with whatever happens. We just need eight courts. We cannot have less than eight courts. Less than eight courts, just we can't do drop-in play. And the drop-in, that's the beauty. It's a low bar. Gets a lot of people out there, a lot of people being active, and a lot of people having a lot of fun. Great.

Thank you for your public comment. Okay. Anybody else like to make a comment before we move online? Okay, great. Let's see if we have anybody online who would like to make a public comment.

First commenter will be Speaker 1402.

James Holmes-Larkspur. Well, we've heard from the tennis people and the pickleball people and even the volleyball people, but we haven't heard from the great majority of people who don't play any of those and who don't really have a dog in this hunt, except with regard to the general issue of resources. And in that regard, I do note that the staff report's recommendation provision states that the rec staff and rec commission approach, quote, maximizes clarity and minimizes conflict and the demand for city resources, unquote, which actually on its face sounds pretty darn good, quote, I acknowledge the compromise, but I also wonder how elaborate is the scheduling going to turn out to be and what kind of a time suck is it going to be possibly with these various contending factions. And if it does turn out to be a significant demand for city resources, and indeed now we have some votes suggesting we should actually be building new courts, I think we ought to reconsider whether maybe the Park and Rec Commission didn't have the right idea because the bottom line is the majority of folks don't have a dog in this hunt and would probably just like to see good stewardship of city resources between these various factions. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Alison, is there anyone else?

I'm looking for any additional raised hands, and there's no further public comment.

Okay, great. All right, so I'll close public comment and bring it back to the council for discussion. Would anyone like to kick us off? Anybody?

Yeah, sure. Okay. Good. Okay. So thank you, everybody, for comments and a lot of emails. And this is the second or third time we've visited this subject matter. And I think the work that was done by a group of community members who are pickleball players and tennis players and also a longtime provider of tennis lessons within our community got together and worked with the city manager to try to come up with compromises. And that's exactly what it is. It's a compromise. Ideally, we would have ideal dedicated courts to both, but we don't right now. Maybe we will in the future, but I think everybody would like to have their biggest part of the pie. but that's not how it works. And I think what I am supportive of is the hard work that went into this compromise position. And I am supportive of the manager's recommendation. We can always, we always tend to revisit things if we find that the data changes, that the level of use changes, that the times of day do. But it's pretty logical that court three is, kind of has problems for tennis, and it's flexible to have three and four be striped for use of both entities. So I think it would be ideal if we had like Quarter Madera has, which is those dedicated courts that they put in, and maybe if you all want to work on that, I can lead you in the direction of some really good fundraisers, but that's where I'm leaning at this point.

Okay, great. Anyone else want to express an opinion? Yep.

So I play pickleball and tennis. I've played both. I've played tennis ever since I was little. Pickleball is relatively new. And for a long time, well, it hasn't been that long, but in the beginning, pickleball was... just a trial, you know, let's see how it works. You know, let's put a temporary court and, and, and, you know, see pickleball has grown at this point to where it's as popular as tennis, if not more popular, you know, and I think it is time for us to recognize that pickleball players are are equal to tennis players. The pickleball players are just trying to have a temporary net put on so they can play. I think that's where we have gotten. And I think that the working group did a fantastic job in identifying pickle players need eight courts, tennis players need three courts for USTA tournaments. I agree a hundred percent with that. And I, I fully support the work, uh, the working group did. Um, the only place where I differ is I have played on temporary pickleball courts and I have played on permanent pickleball courts and there is a world of difference. You know, there just is, you know, I mean, it's, it's just nicer, you know, and I feel that We are shortchanging our pickleball community and making them feel like second-class citizens if we say, well, you can have two temporary courts. It's going to be straight for tennis, and tennis gets to use three when they want to be next to each other, and tennis gets to do four when they don't want the slope, and you guys get the sloppy seconds. That's a bad expression, the leftovers. I don't think that's the right thing to do. You know, I think the right thing to do is to have one dedicated pickleball court and two dedicated tennis courts and one interchangeable court. And I would leave it up to the tennis community which one they want. You know, I think the pickleball community is very flexible and I guess the slope affects pickleball less than tennis. And it sounds like we have a representative from the tennis community who is saying, if we got to have three, we'll have one, two, and three. It's more important for us to be next to each other than to have a flat court. Because having a pickleball in between, after having one, two, and four, and having pickleball on court three is going to be very distracting. And I get that. And I want to defer to the tennis community and say, whatever you think is going to be better, so be it. You know, we will do this in a way that helps you as much as we can. But I think we have to be fair and also do a dedicated pickleball court. So based on what I have heard, I would say that we would do court four as dedicated pickleball court, courts one and two as dedicated tennis courts, and court three as the interchangeable court with scheduling as set up by staff. If... You know, over the next period of time, the tennis community comes back and says, hey, we want three instead of four. And there's time before we make a commitment. I would be fine switching it. But it sounds like that's in our community's best interest. So that's where I am meeting. Gotcha.

So can I just ask clarification? I thought we needed four for USTA, not just three for tournament play. I mean, not four specific courts, not number four. I thought that was what I heard.

No, I believe you need to have a facility that has three courts and a bathroom, a restroom.

Oh, well, we have a bathroom.

Right. It's why we can't. I had asked the question, can we split an event between Centennial and Piper, and you can't because you have a restroom at Centennial.

Okay, that answers that question. I thought it was four rather than three. Great. Vice Mayor Foss?

Yeah, I'll try to be brief. Just start with some general reflections. I am just thinking back to our council meeting we had near Niven Park and the dogs. just the thought that in some ways we're coming out of COVID, you know, I'm seeing, you know, all the isolation and whatnot, you know, there's just a lot of joy and a lot of, you know, this is a good problem to have is kind of what I'm saying. I also hear council member Candell and some of the pickleball people about, you know, if you look at it through the lens of the scales of fairness, it seems like that is a, good solution. I also think that this is an incremental, like I want to respect the compromise that the working group and the city manager and the community came up with. I think that's a somewhat fragile and, you know, to me, a highly valuable thing. I just like when people can come up with that. And I don't want to override it with What I would be leaning towards is your lens of fairness. So in my mind, you know, I would go with the staff recommendation and also revisit this in six months, just like the dog park. We came up with a compromise and we said, look, we don't have all the information. We don't know how this is going to go. But let's let's let this, you know, be the first step in, you know, both communication and community building and and, you know, just respecting all the dialogue that's come to this point. That's that's my information.

Can I ask a question to staff? It sounds like we are making a decision now to stripe the courts. Revisiting in six months, I don't think we're going to restripe the courts in six months unless I am misunderstanding and maybe it's not that expensive to restripe one court. I mean, can you help us? Is this something we can revisit in six months and change our mind? How does that work?

Because you're having a summer recess, we would really like direction today so we can start to commission work. We need to schedule this work carefully. Our window's actually pretty tight to minimize the impact to the user groups. and also knowing all the other things that happen in piper park we sort of have this september window that's ideal for a lot of this work to take place and if you don't give us direction tonight it's really difficult for us to to commission work and get it all scheduled so that it hits that ideal spot if if we miss that window we're going to hit the rainy season and then we won't do this work this year at all

I think what council member Paulson is suggesting, I don't put words in your mouth, is that we stripe it the same as it is now. We come back in six months and maybe if we decide at that point, it's not right. We restripe one of the courts. And the question is, is that doable and how expensive is that?

I don't have a price. It would be more expensive to do it the way that you're asking. I also, if I could want to clarify, because I want to be fair to the participants in the working group, And I'm going to share my philosophy. The allocation of park resources is an allocation that is inherently unfair, and it's inherently about providing amenities to minorities, to special interests. It's not about maximizing utility for everybody. Everything we program in the park has a following, and it's some group of the community. And we've made a decision that it's valuable to enough people, and it's something we want to facilitate. So when I formed the working group, it was not a vote. It was... I'm going to make a recommendation to the council. I want to hear from all of you. So I'm hearing a little creeping in that this is the recommendation of the working group. I think the members of the working group, if they all had a chance to give you a recommendation, it would be slightly different than mine. And in fact, the one recommendation is from a working group member. It's not my recommendation. That's okay. Because I didn't give them that latitude. I didn't go into that exercise and say, we're going to keep meeting until we have eight votes yes, because I didn't see that as an ideal way to get to a quick solution. For me, it was, give me all the feedback so I can try to identify sort of something that maximizes all this interest as best as I can. And so it is my recommendation, and I want to be clear about that, because I think at least one member of the working group has put a very reasonable alternative on the table that I hear Council Member Kandel sort of gravitating towards.

Great, thank you, City Manager, for that. Council Member Caparules, do you want to chime in here before I, I'll give my thoughts?

You know, I don't have a lot more to say about it. I do appreciate all the work that has been put in by the community and by staff. You know, I play both pickleball and tennis, and I just do think that, you know, having multiple lines on the court is confusing both for tennis players and pickleball players. I would really love to get more data, as was brought up by somebody who gave public comment. And I know that there are strong, passionate players on both sides. I came into this meeting feeling very confident that there was a lot of support from all of the public comment for data. staff's recommendation and so I was feeling that you know that was the right thing to do was to support staff's recommendation I'm hearing now and I did hear previously that you know having one dedicated pickleball court would be ideal you know ideal versus compromise yeah um it's it's challenging um what i'd really like to see is is a yeah the ideal scenario is having dedicated pickleball courts and tennis courts um and i know that's some distance out so um i'd like to hear what your thoughts are mayor andre um first of all you know i do want to thank everybody um

for coming and also for city manager for convening the working group. I think that was brilliant idea. And thank you for taking the time to listen and conduct the three sessions. I am neither a tennis or pickleball player, so... I walk at Piper a lot. So I am very focused on community and what our community would like to see and where we can use our tax dollars to provide in a many that people in our community will enjoy. So what I do hear is there are a lot of people who play pickleball. And I also hear that there are people who, you know, used to be tennis or high level, really high level tennis players who no longer can play tennis. And now they play pickleball for health or joint or other reasons. So, you know, I do feel that there is a growing population of pickleball players that I hear a lot. And also just anecdotally, when I walk by Piper, I do see a lot of use of the people playing on the courts. Being neither a player of either sport, I can imagine that the lines can get confusing if you're on a court with multiple lines. I also feel that the the shared use, which I think is a good compromise. I heard issues about the nets and the rolling of the nets. And I wasn't clear whether that was going to damage. If we're going to resurface the courts, I don't know if that's going to damage the courts that we've resurfaced. So my preference would be if we're going to spend the money to resurface the courts, do we at least minimize the rolling back and forth of the nets so that we don't have to redo, you know, the courts all the time. So, you know, I, I, I, I do hear council member Candell's comments. And I think I am leaning in that direction where we have one dedicated pickleball court and that we have the tennis community choose which one they prefer. I, I, So playing neither sport, I would support that.

So I think our charge was to either take the recommendation of the Park and Rec Commission or an alternative proposed by the city manager. And the Park and Rec Commission was court four is a dedicated pickleball court and courts one, two, three are dedicated tennis. That was their recommendation. Sounds like the city manager's recommendation was One and two are dedicated tennis. Three and four are flexible for both tennis and pickleball. So unless you're putting a third idea forward, I mean, our...

I am putting a third idea forward.

Yeah. So I just wanted to say that our business item for that is those two options. And you're putting a third item together. I don't... Do we need to... I'm asking Sky, we don't have a resolution here. This is just a consensus for the staff report for that item. Do we need, if we put a third one out there, do we need a whole other process?

No, under the Brown Act, because the topic was sufficiently disclosed to the public about what would be discussed, the council is not limited to the two specific alternatives that were described. Council has the ability to craft a third option to consider. And since this is direction to staff, I think a motion is sufficient to do that.

But through policy-wise, does it need to then, since if we craft a third alternative, does it have to go through park and recreation first for them to be vetting it?

They're your advisor. Okay. And may I comment, Madam Mayor? Yes. I would not. Ask the tennis community to vote. I've enjoyed my conversations with these folks, but I also have to run the city and have my staff run the city. If you're going to do this, make court for the pickleball court. It's much easier for us operationally to do that.

We've heard from representatives of the tennis community that that's what they would prefer anyway, I think.

Yeah, but I can tell you I've heard from representatives of the tennis community. And I think that's a chaotic question to put out to the universe. Fair.

Yes, that's fair. And I also feel that if we have one dedicated court, that cuts down on a lot of the scheduling issues. I feel like having two mixed-use courts is really confusing, especially when we have some weeks with tennis tournaments and other weeks not with tennis tournaments. I feel like staff would be in the middle of a lot of the scheduling issues. And if we have just one dedicated court, that might limit our staff's time on having to figure out which weeks or which times are tournaments and not.

I think it would certainly reduce our role.

Yeah, yeah. OK, so I don't. All right. So do you want to put forward?

I will put forward. Are we making a motion or just a suggestion?

No, this is actually I would like to get a vote of some sort.

OK, I would like to make a motion.

I would like to move.

I would or I would like to move.

We have this relationship. I could do this. Correct him.

That we resurface the courts as scheduled and that we have one dedicated striped and netted pickleball court, which would be court number four. That we have court number three striped for both tennis and pickleball. We have courts one and two striped just for tennis. And we empower staff to schedule court three for tennis and pickleball when it deems appropriate.

I'll second that.

Sorry, just clarification. Four was the dedicated pickleball. Correct. Okay.

And that's how many?

That's four permanent pickleball courts and then four flex. Flex, of course. Good work.

Okay. Madam Clerk, can I get a roll call? Or are we going to?

You don't need a roll call. We don't need a roll call.

Okay. All right. All those in favor, say aye. Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay. Any abstain? Okay, great. Thank you very much. Motion passes. Thank you. Well, thank you again for, again, to our city staff who work very hard in trying to work with our community when there are many different voices. And thank you also to our tennis staff as well. Thank you very much for your service to the city. And I appreciate everyone coming out and providing your perspective to city council. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay.

Well, thank you. Now we'll close item 8.2 and we'll move on to item 8.3, which is the formation of a citizens committee to further review the rehabilitation of city hall and update on interim repurposing of the old library space. So city manager, can we get a staff report?

Thank you Madam Mayor, Council Members. As the Council is well aware, as we started to plan for the departure of the library, we started to think what should happen to this building going forward, recognizing that it is City Hall and the primary office space. So the council signed to an ad hoc committee of Mayor Andre and Council Member Way the task of working with staff to guide a preliminary evaluation of the project. And that resulted in us commissioning the historical structure report that's critical to a building of this nature within a historical district to determine what needs to be kept in terms of the facade and the structure of the building in order to preserve its historical character, while also analyzing what has to be done to make it a building that's compliant with current codes. And then also the question of what needs to be done if you want it to be a more modern interior building that should live another 100 years without significant investment. And so that was commissioned as part of that analysis that we had done by historical architects. And the Ad Hoc Committee, after meeting a few other times and had their guest was the chair of the Heritage Committee, Heritage Board, they ultimately decided it was probably time to seek some expertise from out in the community. We have a very rich community, highly educated, a lot of professionals in this community whose backgrounds are in repurposing of spaces and architecture and design. And so the committee's recommendation and What they've crafted in this recommendation is an outline of sort of the background of what people who would be on this committee should bring to the table. So they're recommending that you direct staff to start a process to solicit members of this committee through an application process. We'll do that while you're dark with the goal of either at the April 9th, August 19th or one of the September meetings appointing the committee. And then the committee will operate, I'm going to say in the spirit of the Brown Act, I've talked particularly with the mayor about I think what has worked best for this type of committee and those who observed or participated when we planned the specific plan for the Rose Lane property, we basically sat people around in a circle, a square, and We had the formality of the Brown Act, but we didn't constrain anybody to using Robert's rules or having us do votes. It was much more of building consensus and discussion. And I think that's the appropriate way for this committee to operate. So it would have public meetings. It would have published agenda. But I think we'd be trying to find that sweet spot where it's a little more engaging and a little more dynamic in its conversations than the structure sometimes would allow us in a more formal setting. Additionally, I thought it would be valuable to the community to know that we are thinking about short-term uses of the building, and so I included in the staff report some of the things we're working on and contemplating. The big two for our staff, one is consolidating some of our staff that are currently spread in other facilities and taking advantage of the vacated staff area of the library. It needs a little work, a little TLC to kind of operate for us. So we'll probably come to you with a budget for that work once we have a good sense of it. And then we need to comply with federal law with respect to providing what's called a lactation area or room. And we don't really have any sort of break room for staff. So we're talking something very modest, just basically putting a couple more walls in so that we could come into compliance. Right now, the noncompliant lactation area is my office, which I happily vacate for our staff, but it's actually not compliant with those laws. So that's the other thing we definitely have on the list. But we think really after we've evaluated the space, knowing our limitations in terms of the ADA, knowing our limitations in terms of constraints in the structure, we'll probably end up using the stacks area for storage. And we do still have some storage needs that we can accommodate there. Particularly for the library, they're still holding material here as they keep sort of evaluating what's the best thing to have over there. in the new site and then secondly taking that reading room and where that reference desk and the checkout desk were and creating some sort of meeting space that could be available for staff and for the community i think it's a simple low budget easy return during this interim period while we continue to assess the long term so That's what we're planning and working on. Just a reminder, it's an old building, so first thing we had to do was commission an environmental test. You have to poke holes here and there, find out what materials were actually used and what you're allowed to cut into or not cut into without creating hazards. I want to thank Director Skinner here because he's been doing all that in the background. That, Madam Mayor, I turn it to you.

Great, thank you. Well, that was a very thorough report. I don't have much to add other than Councilmember Way and I on this ad hoc just felt that we had reached our limits of ability to really analyze the Historic Structures Report and to really try and push this forward and that it was time to involve citizens within our community who probably had a lot more expertise than we do in different parts of this very large project. And so that was the impetus for us to suggest creating this citizens working group where we could have people come with specific expertise and who could help advise the council and could actually do the deep dive work that was necessary into the construction, but also the funding, looking at the design, interfacing with the public and trying to process all of the ideas. We've gotten a lot of ideas from the public and really being able to evaluate you know, the public comments and figuring out what was feasible to implement into a historic building. So that was the, that was the reason why we thought it was a good idea to create this committee.

So I just had one thought when further reading this about members. We write in here that they need to be residents of Larkspur. And I feel like we can we should have the opportunity to draw a bigger net out there because we're a very small, Marin County is pretty small. There may be people who live in Kent Woodlands, Kent Field, unincorporated parts of Greenbrae who could be active participants and have skills to bring in here. So I would hate to limit it to just Larkspur residents. If we can maybe change that line, um, Just so that we cast a broad opportunity for people with expertise who are passionate and interested in participating, but don't necessarily have Larkspur as their address. How do people feel about that? I agree.

Or do we just put Larkspur resident preferred?

I can't remember whether I... Yeah, I mean, it could change. It says who are residents of Larkspur. Okay. Or it could say, you know... Yeah. I mean, what if they're like a historic architect who lives here? But, I mean, whatever. I just want to make sure that we open the door for people who want to participate, who have skills. I believe it'll probably mostly be people from Larkspur who are going to be interested. But our communities are intertwined with a lot of other really skilled people.

Okay.

So don't limit it to Larkspur. Is that all right?

Yeah. I think that's fine. I can't find where that is. Oh, I'll tell you. Oh, one way. Number three.

Yeah. So membership, the committee shall consist of at least seven but no more than one members based on interest who are residents of Larkspur and appointed by the city council. I just think we just need to get rid of the residents of Larkspur part.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, let's see who we get.

Yeah, let's cap the wide net and see who we get. It might be like our rent control board where nobody signed up. Yeah.

Okay. Any other questions or comments on this? Any members of the public who want to comment on this item? Seeing none in the chamber, anybody online?

Looking for anyone on our Zoom audience, and there's no public comment.

Okay, great. Oh, excuse me. All right, so is there something that we have to move here?

I think that was sufficient direction. Okay. It sounded like everybody's in favor, so we'll move forward with that one tweak.

Okay. Wonderful. Great. And so for those of you who are listening who might be interested in applying for this committee, please do.

We'll put a simple application up probably right after the holiday.

Okay, great. Perfect. So we encourage all those who are interested to apply, and you need not necessarily be a resident of Larkspur. Great. Wonderful. All right, so we will close item 8.3 and move to item 8.4, which is discussion of the Marin County Civil Grand Jury Report, MCE Marin Clean Energy, a series of missteps highlight need for governance changes. City manager, would you like to do a staff report?

Yes, very briefly, Madam Mayor. So normally we'd be bringing the report with a recommended response to the grand jury. But this is a fairly comprehensive report about a topic the council has heard about from the mayor as your representative MCE. And I think she appropriately wanted to have a preliminary discussion with you about the report and whether or not the response should be more expansive than just what's been requested the grand jury for such a significant report in terms of breadth of information. It's actually surprising how little comment they're asking of any of the cities. So that's the discussion for the council to have. Your deadline is not till September 16th. So the formal creation of response and your formal approval of the response will come at one of your subsequent meetings.

Thank you. All right. So I just want to share with members of the public and also with council in case people haven't been following along in terms of what's been happening at MCE. I just wanted to provide a quick overview. So the Marin Civil Re-injury Report really exposed significant failures in MCE's oversight by its board. It really highlights management's noncompliance with board-mandated policies. and a lack of transparency that led to a $200 million increase in energy costs at the agency. The report calls for significant reforms, citing a complacent board and a management team that disregards internal controls. So I highly recommend that every ratepayer read the grand jury report if you haven't done so already. And I'll just say up front that I fully support the grand jury's findings. and will aim to implement many of their recommendations on the MCE Board, particularly those that deal with greater fiduciary responsibility and transparency to our ratepayers. I want to point out that this is a third-party objective grand jury report that is exceptionally well researched and meticulously documented. The committee thoroughly analyzed and weighed the evidence to arrive at the conclusions in their report. And I commend the grand jury committee for their outstanding dedication and wholeheartedly endorse their findings and recommendations. With respect to their findings, the grand jury details a loaded and weak board that has ceded significant control over time to its CEO, and the board largely rubber stamps management's preferred or recommended actions. From page 11 in the report, they write, over the past years, MCE's board of directors have ceded board authority in various key matters. These changes, usually in the form of delegations to the CEO, have involved the board's authority over purchasing, compensation, hiring and firing, agenda setting, approval of the hiring of the general counsel, and most significantly, energy procurement, MCE's main function. The report describes a management team led by former CEO Don Weiss that routinely violated internal controls and board-mandated policies. and promoted inaccurate advertising about its green power content. From page 26 of the report, quote, management appears to consider following critical controls optional and routinely minimizes violations or claims its contrary actions are consistent with the rules. The report gives numerous examples of where, excuse me, The report gives numerous instances where board-mandated processes were not followed. A major example of the violations of internal controls involves the signing of energy contracts at peak of the market pricing in the fall of 2024, which resulted in a dramatic $200 million increase in MCE's energy costs. These contracts were entered into without following board mandated process and therefore were not brought to the attention of the board until almost a year later. Because these are multi-year contracts, ratepayers continue to pay for these high-priced contracts today. Had the board been advised or consulted, the grand jury writes, quote, the board might have avoided large purchases of energy that continue to affect MCE's ability to lower the electricity cost for ratepayers. This, we conclude, appears to reflect problematic inattention by the board, management's casual attitude toward operating rules, and a willingness to engage in corner cutting by MCE management and its general counsel. Many community and environmental groups such as Marin Conservation League, 350 Marin, Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers, and Clean Coalition were cited in the grand jury report as having submitted extensive public comment regarding MCE's poor financial performance, its higher rate payer costs compared to PG&E, and inaccurate claims of the greenness of its energy. Part of the controversy around the $200 million and energy contracts that were signed at the peak of the market without going through proper channels was that a significant number of these contracts were for renewable energy credits, which many environmental groups claim to have little or no environmental benefits. So while the grand jury committee did not take a position on the technical aspects of these contracts, it did say that the public was raising legitimate questions and that the management had failed to substantively respond to the public's concerns. The committee writes on page 22, Whereas MCE management asserts it has responded to these comments, in the best of cases, it does not respond to critics, specifically or substantively. In other instances, management has provided no response, mischaracterized the criticisms, misdirected and shifted responsibility, or responded with marketing. A key recurring theme throughout the report is management's evasive and non-transparent behavior. Multiple pages are dedicated to cataloging the problematic and sometimes contentious interactions when board members have raised valid concerns. From page 33, management too frequently, one, provides incomplete responses to board members' questions and requests for information. Two, obfuscates or conflates issues and details. Three, fails to inform the board of important actions as required or informs the board late or after the fact. And four, limits legitimate inquiries and comments from board members who question management. This behavior markedly limits the board's ability to exercise its fiduciary oversight duties to MCE's ratepayers. As your primary representative on MCE and with Vice Mayor Paulson as alternate, I have been an outspoken proponent for greater transparency, oversight, and accountability at this agency. alongside community interest groups and environmental groups and many members of the public who have persistently shown up over the last year at every board and committee meeting, we have been able to push through some reforms. However, there's far more work to do. The grand jury's findings on management evasion, failed controls, and passive board match my experience at this agency. MCE has grown significantly from a local eight-member group, into a 38-member agency spanning four counties with nearly $800 million in revenues, which is roughly equivalent to the annual budget of Marin County. The energy market has also changed drastically over the last 16 years, and MCE's structure has not kept up, which is detrimental to ratepayers. It is high time that the board take a hard look at these failures and put this agency on a better path. So to protect ratepayers, I recommend that our city council endorse the grand jury's full findings and recommendations.

Well said.

And with that, I'll just open that up to anybody who has questions.

Thank you. I mean, the amount of work you've done with this is incredible. But the staff report says we're only asked to respond to F3, F4, R5, and R6, which are you suggesting a greater response to highlight what you just did or to a specific one of the recommendations that you would like to better focus on? Is there one more? I mean, how would you like to elaborate on it?

Yeah, I would like to maybe send in a cover letter that supports the full findings and recommendations. I do think the grand jury put forward some really great findings and some good recommendations and urge MCE, the agency, and the board to adopt or pursue a lot of the recommendations that the grand jury is recommending.

Other than F3, F4, R5, and R6, are there other ones that you want to highlight on or we can delve into that later? The recommendations are on page 40. Yeah. There's so many recommendations. Is this the only county that's done a grand jury report on MCE at that point? Yes.

We are the only county. Although I heard there was a member of the public in Contra Costa who emailed me and wanted to the Contra Costa grand jury to take a look at this as well, but I don't know what that process is. Yes, I would definitely say like all of these recommendations, there's a lot here, but I do think that all of them, there is a need. So there's a need for a governance assessment, which we are undergoing. There is a need to revise our operating rules and regulations, which is a foundational document for the JPA, where the board has over time ceded a lot of control. I think the board really needs, in order to exercise its oversight duties, really needs to claw back some of the control that's been given over to the CEO and to the management team. They talk about here where there have been a lot of internal promotions into very senior positions without conducting an open search process. So these are all things that I think ultimately would benefit companies. the rate payer, just in greater transparency and accountability and the board's ability to be able to provide greater oversight into the operations of the agency.

So, I mean, I would be happy to see, read, or hear what greater elaboration you would recommend. I mean, we don't have to do this until September, our response. We do have to respond to F3, F4, R5, and R6. But if you have further Do you want to elaborate? I don't recall us doing this in the past, but it doesn't mean we can't do it now. What do you think?

I was just going to comment. I think you're correctly focusing on the recommendations because I think there is a little latitude for you to say you concur in a recommendation, regardless if it directly impacts Larkspur. Some of the findings I probably would encourage not to comment on. They're very specific and they're not really, you know, there's some in here about commenting about Larkspur. individual board members and they're not by name, but they have certain qualifications. I think you stay away from that. We've historically tried not to comment on things where we're commenting on stuff we don't readily have the information to verify. But certainly the recommendations, quite a few of them, pretty straightforward. A lot of it's good governance recommendations. Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you work on that? I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm happy to work on something and bring it forward, draft of something and bring it forward at the next council meeting when we, you know, reconvene. But wanted to just get other people's thoughts, like if that was, you know, I mean, I'm happy to draft something, but would like to, you know, see where what people's thoughts were, if, you know, if people had objections, or I'm happy to incorporate, you know, our collective comments into a draft.

How are you about, I'm thinking, just thinking it out loud, and we don't have to talk this on right now, but that the current CEO is no longer the CEO. Yeah. Or the previous CEO who's outlined in many of these recommendations or suggestions is no longer in that role. Do you think that changes some of these or changes?

I think it's too soon to tell. I think potentially, yes. So it's too soon to tell. I do think that what I have seen of the acting CEO, he has been proactive in reaching out to board members who have asked a lot of questions. He's been proactive in creating or putting together public workshops on our energy contracts, which I think was great. There was a public workshop last week that was very well attended by different environmental groups. And now labor groups are now getting involved as well. So I do feel that there have been some efforts there. by the acting CEO to really try and build bridges and try to be more transparent with the public and with board members. For people who have questions, be much more willing to engage and provide factual information that can be the basis for actual policy discussion.

Yeah, I thought I'd just briefly comment. First, again, Stephanie, thank you for not only a lot of work, but a considerable amount of courage. I was part of this for two years. I've put a lot of thought into it myself. And I think that raising these questions brought in the IJ and other members. And there's a real... set of problems to be solved here. I'm in favor of expanding the response. I don't think, to your point, City Manager, I know it's, I don't think we necessarily want to endorse things that may be better done by the, you know, governance board and whatnot. But I think generally if, if, you know, Mayor Andre wants to come back with things that, that maybe unify and sort of, you know, broaden the assessment of the diagnosis of problems there. And, you know, to speak on that, I would be in favor because I observed them firsthand for two years. So, so yeah, I'm supportive of that.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments?

I just want to say that when you take on a project, You do such a great job. And I think I just, I agree with your analysis. And I think you're doing a great job with it. And I agree that if you want to expand it, I would endorse that as well. Because I think there's a lot that needs to be changed, a lot that needs to be said. And I think you're the person to do it. So I endorse that.

Thank you. All right, so what I'll do is thank you for the comments, and I'll draft something that I can share at the next council meeting when we return before this September. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, public comments. Yes. We'll open it now for public comments. Thank you.

I'm David Muller. I live here in Larkspur. And this is the item I came for tonight. It really wasn't the beach volleyball. So hearing your comments on this, I'm not going to say anything that you don't already know. But I do feel like we're all incredibly fortunate. that Mayor Andre was Larkspur's representative to MC in this capacity, and still is, because as Councilmember Paulson pointed out, people have been nibbling at this for years, but I think that Mayor Andre really did lead the charge and had the expertise and the bravery. It's been brought up to push this through, and clearly the apple was pretty rotten at its core. And it did a pretty good job of looking, oh no, we're a shiny apple. You guys have heard MCE presentations here. And I can tell you that with some energy expertise myself, some of the stuff that was presented here was that totally rosy, everything's perfect picture. And you were not getting the whole story. But it was a presentation, so no opportunity for public comment. So I just want to say I strongly, as a member of the public, strongly favor the expanded response. I don't think it's necessary to go through every single finding and recommendation, but there's an opportunity here to reinforce. What was the important findings and the important recommendations. And I do remember another grand jury report about four or five years ago now, that was the building electrification grand jury report. And each jurisdiction was required to respond to that. And a couple of building officials at two jurisdictions put out proposed responses. And almost every jurisdiction, including Larkspur, pretty much rubber-stamped those things. This is an opportunity to really say something bigger than the minimum response. And also to show that you have Mayor Andres back. I mean, it did take a lot of bravery to go out there and do this. So anyway, as a member of the public, I just want to say thank you, Mayor Andre, for doing this. It really showed that there were serious, serious problems at MCE, and I would urge that the council take the opportunity to bring some of that forward, not in a, I don't know how many pages that the grand jury report, it's a lot of pages, but something more concise that people can really get their, you know, can read, take the opportunity to read and really highlight some of the things that you were raising then. So I would encourage that an expanded response. Thank you.

Thank you for your public comment. Anyone else, anyone online who would like to comment?

We're going to raise hands from our Zoom audience members, and there's no public comment.

Okay, great. Thank you. All right. So we will close public comment, and we will close this item, and I will return with a draft at our next council meeting.

Thank you.

All right. So now we'll move on to item 8.5, library department reorganization.

Hello again, Madam Mayor, members of the City Council, members of the community. Again, my name is Shannon O'Hare, and I am the Assistant City Manager for the City of Larkspur. The hour is getting later, so I'll keep my verbal staff report very short, but I'm happy to answer any questions you folks may have. The item this evening is a reorganization of the library, which sounds maybe bigger and scarier on first read than it actually is. What staff is doing and proposing to the council this evening is to change the staffing structure of our library to add two full-time, fully benefited library assistant positions, which the city has not had in some years. and remove the years-long unfunded position of a librarian one, which the council took action as part of the adoption of the fiscal year 2026-2027 budget to add that position back in. Nobody is currently filled in this position. We're not getting rid of any staff member. We haven't launched the recruitment yet. When I met with library director Damon Hill about the needs of the library, the way our community is using the library, and how we'd be able to staff up to fully serve Larkspur residents and the Marin community at large in our new facility. Damon talked with his staff and we reviewed and it became pretty apparent that a lot of the needs of the community is actually on the circulation side of the library versus the librarian side of the library. I won't get into the details of that because I'm not a librarian. But the over under on that is that a lot of what we're seeing is increased use of books, increased use of facilities, more questions of staff. And what we really need is just more bodies in the building to either add days or extend hours. And so what we proposed is these two positions, if we are comparing more or less apples to apples on who we think we might hire, would add in the 30%, 30 to 40% increase of two positions of the library assistant versus one position of a librarian one. So it is an increase in funds. Our finance department, our administrative services director, and the city manager have reviewed this and believe that we have sufficient funds to very comfortably absorb that. And the community need is very high. So that's what the library reorganization position is. But council does need to take action to adopt funding for these two positions, remove the librarian one. And as a secondary action, because we haven't filled the library assistant position in a long, long time, there were just some changes that we made to the job description to bring it up to modern standards because we hadn't taken a look at it in a long time. So there is nothing earth shattering in that. It just now more closely mirrors what a library system will be doing in 2026 and also is closer to what our neighbors have in their job descriptions. So with that, I will conclude my verbal staff report and I'm happy to answer any questions that council may have.

Okay, great. Thank you very much for the staff report. Council Member Kandel.

Just a quick question. The numbers that you put in here as far as the fiscal impact, does that include pension, you know, any other other than salary? It includes the soft costs.

So the administrative services director, when we do that analysis and what's included in the staff report does have pension liability, assuming they'll take some level of dental coverage, some level of healthcare coverage, what it may be for the individual staff member we hire. Again, as you know, our Finance department has been historically very conservative, and we go on the higher end of what benefits folks may take. But it may vary depending on who we hire, what level of benefits they take.

That was all taken into account.

Yeah, it's all fully loaded in terms of total compensation package, not just base salary.

That was my question. Thank you.

I just have a quick question. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. I just wanted to ask about the highlighting on, I guess it's page five of the report. It says librarian one and library assistant, yep. And it says for 26-27, we have three librarian ones. Is that accurate or will we go down to two? Did the three include the funded position? And I just wanted to get some clarification on that. And now we'll have two library assistants. Or are we going to still have three librarians and two assistants?

It's the clumbiness of this architecture. And this is structured because we use it for other certain reports that we generate. The second to last column is what we had as funded positions in the last year's budget. The far right column reflects, if you approve this item tonight, what the allocation will be. There's a table in the budget book that says four right now. It's just, again, it's kind of the oddness of this particular construct, but we're supposed to have you adopt this.

And for the community's benefit, although it doesn't show up on that sheet, we actually have... Currently for librarians, the library director is also a librarian. That's not the position there, but the coverage will be offered the community. Again, our library director is often doing manager things, but he's also a professional librarian.

Thank you.

All right. Well, I will open this up for public comment. See none in the chamber. Anybody online?

Looking for any raised hands from the Zoom audience, and there's no public comment.

Okay, I'll move Resolution 5926. I'll second.

All those in favor? Any opposed? Any abstained? Great, motion passes. All right, moving right along. Wow. Okay, we're almost done. Item 8.6, Public Workshop on the City's Schedule of User and Regulatory Fees.

As I've mentioned to the council before, from time to time, we hear from you that you'd like to get some more information and start a conversation about a particular topic. And we have typically called that a public workshop because we are going to present you with information, take some feedback. But the only real direction is specific things you might like to see us bring back. We're not delving in and making any decisions tonight about the fees themselves. This tonight, given the hour, too, might just be the start of this conversation to give you some food for thought, because I know as you're all on your summer break, you'll be reading that fee schedule backwards and forwards over and over again. One thing we're really fortunate about and what my quick my presentation is going to do for the most part is focus on the concepts that are part of the fee structures. And we're very fortunate that we belong to the League of Cities, Cal Cities here, and they produce periodically what they call the municipal handbook. And it's one of the Bibles for Miss Gabrielle and me in terms of we can go and get a quick reference for. what's the current legal thinking on a fee and also, uh, what are some of the best practices for how to implement them, track them, understand them. So actually the book covers all finance, but it has a chapter entirely dedicated to this topic. And I took the liberty of providing it to you. Hopefully that's not a copyright issue and they come after me at some point. Um, So there are four broad categories of fees in California. One are user fees. So these are charges for public services, programs, use of facilities. So that's often, for example, everything in recreation is a user fee because we're charging folks to facilitate their use of our programming services. I think the ones that most come to mind are regulatory fees. So this is what I see that community development director has joined us. This is his world. So this is when we charge for planning and building for the most part. There are properly related fees. So this is when there's a fee specific to delivering a service to a property. Sewer and water would be a common example. For us, garbage is a fee that we adopt and then have our franchisor provide. And then lastly, the category that's been getting a lot of press actually in Marin lately are development impact fees. We're going to focus really on just three of those categories. We're not going to focus on the property related because we don't actually have a lot of property related. We don't deliver a lot of property specific service because we have special districts that provide a lot of that service in Marin specifically. But I have gleaned that you and members of the public might want to see some future discussions in these other categories. There is another way to think about fees, and this is where we start drifting into Mr. Woodruff's world, which is it's kind of interesting. The law kind of defines what is a fee versus a tax by sort of telling you what a fee isn't. And then you sort of have to figure out from there what a fee is. So I kind of summarized what's in the report to help you understand that. So Government charges a tax unless it falls into one of seven categories, then it can be a fee. So one is a special benefit for the payer that is not provided to those not charged. So if you come in and you need a specific service from the city that we're going to provide, and again, it's often from the community development side, that can be a fee because you're the only one who's actually benefiting or your property is benefiting from that. It makes a distinction in the law between benefit and services. Likewise, you might come in and request that the city perform something for you, and it might be very specific to you or your property, and we can charge a fee for that. All regulatory costs, so the cost of us doing code enforcement, the cost of our building official, our chief building official or his staff, making sure your property is compliant, we can recover those with regulatory fees and fines. We don't do this here in Larkspur, really, but admission to limited access government property. We did it sort of for the first time recently. We adopted the fees to rent the library community rooms. But this is really meant as a category, if you had like a public zoo, you would be charging an admission into the zoo, for example. Yeah. And then there's fines. We could charge admission to see the wonderful courts when they're done. And then another one is a condition of property development. So this is one we hear a lot from the development community is that we can charge fees as part of new development or redevelopment of property occurring. And then lastly, our assessments and property related fees. And those are often ones that have to go through a Proposition 218 process, which is a process where you give voters a chance to protest that you might be considering imposing fees on their property related to their property values and returns. So, really for our purposes, having listened to all of you about what you want to talk about, the three here that you keep sort of talking about or I hear people in the public want to know is, you know, the special services that we might provide and what we're charging for that, the regulatory costs, the fees that we're charging in community development. And then what we are charging for property development. Those are the ones I sort of hear the most from you in the public about. Doesn't mean we can't talk about all of them if you want to. I'm just trying to give you a little focus here because this is a broad, broad topic. A couple of principles to fees. They have to be reasonable. So you can't charge a million dollars because you got to have a meeting with the community development director or It's times valuable, but it's not worth a million dollars an hour. So the next thing is it has to relate to the benefit or service. So that's typically called a nexus that you have to show that the fees related to what you're doing. And then you can always decide as the council that you want to set the fee below the actual cost. So that's what you hold as one of your powers is to decide whether fees should be full cost recovery or they should be subsidized. And Larkspur has a pretty clear historical practice. We have historically directed community development and our other regulatory entities to pursue as close to full cost recovery as possible. So we go out and we calculate particularly community development, public works, our true costs, and then we use that to justify whatever the rate's gonna be for a particular regulatory practice. In our other areas, such as recreation, you have usually given the department heads considerable latitude to sort of do market research and see, so what's the prevailing cost to rent a picnic table in Marin at one of the parks? And bring you a proposal that's based on those market conditions. Those are typically subsidized. We're not really recovering our true cost of having a picnic area and maintaining it over time. But it's meant to have some level of charge, some sort of return that partially brings that back. Similarly, we don't fully recover the true cost of maintaining our fields, but we do charge a fee that helps us defray a lot of the activity that we do. And it kind of goes on and on in that respect. That's not a universal approach. There are communities that decide, you know what, we think that recreation should be as little impact to the budget as possible. So we're going to charge closer to full cost recovery. There's not a lot of recreation departments that operate that way, but I have seen that done. More typically, you will hear a city claim that they are a full cost recovery recreation department. And what they're speaking to are specific costs. They're not really talking about the whole breadth, including cost over time. They're usually looking at, in that budget year, often it's recouping staff time and isn't really about recouping long-term maintenance and capital investment. Because... Those numbers really start to mushroom and your user base isn't going to pay typically something that isn't fairly close to what they see in all the other communities around them. Why would you subsidize a regulatory fee is a question that I think immediately comes to mind and is the one as we go through these conversations that come out of this workshop, I think you're probably going to be ruminating about. The first is that you're trying to incentivize or reward certain activities. So one of the examples that we've become aware of, particularly as we work with the CAF, with the Climate Action Forum, is that some of the communities around us have created subsidized rates for certain fees that they charge to process certain green activity. So let's use EV chargers as an example. Our neighbors in Corte Madera have actually put a cap on how much it costs for you to get a permit for an EV charger. I would submit that they did not do that to incentivize people to get more EV chargers. They did it to reward people for doing that because People are going to get EV chargers if they get an EV. That fee is not a determinant in somebody's calculation about whether they're going to get an electric vehicle. But it's a reward from this town to say, we are pleased that you took this step and we want to be a partner with you and that you made that investment. So we're capping our fee to you. Sometimes, though, it's actually you trying to engineer a particular outcome. Particularly as you think about larger fees, you might actually want to subsidize them. For example, you might reward, you might incentivize a developer to consider additional affordable housing by reducing their costs to do that. So that's where you're providing an incentive to do that. Indeed. you essentially as a council can always make a finding that you're willing to take less than your full cost and essentially use your general fund tax dollars or some other pot of money to defray the total cost to the city. And that leans into that second area, which is just promoting policy. Sometimes cities set their regulatory fees more to to signal to the community how they stand about a particular avenue of policy. And they set the rate below full cost recovery to signal that they view some level of societal value that should be placed on that particular activity. So they set the fee accordingly.

Can I ask a question here? Sure. I mean, a lot about subsidies, but what if we're like, hey, I don't want to say punitive. We're not going to charge a million dollars. But, you know, we're like, hey, if you want a gas water heater, you're going to pay X dollars. But if you put in, you know, electric water heater, it'll be, you know, less than cost. So can we charge like...

higher for the gas I hear where you're going the way you do that legally is you charge full cost recovery for the one item and then the one you would rather see somebody do you charge less than full cost that's legally defensible You can't really punitively say I charge the one activity more than our cost. The law doesn't let you do that.

But how would you even determine what our cost is?

Processing costs. So we base it on an evaluation. You have a consultant that presents to you when we do the fees in April. We currently use a firm called ClearSource, and they are familiar with government operations. They come and interview the staff periodically, and they work with Ms. Gabrielle to take my costs. I have an hourly charge rate in the fee schedule. That hourly charge rate is based on what it costs to employ me. And so if I work on something that's a cost recovery item, then I document that time, and we do charge that. the entity. I don't do that a lot because most of my activity is more of general service, but the community development department tracks their time quite a bit because they're constantly assigning it to the project. So that's how we get at what the cost of those permit and fees are. Yeah.

I'm sorry, I have a question just following up on the mayor's question. Let's say we determined that certain equipment is more dangerous, maybe needs more inspections, which cost money, which we can recover. So for example, if you put in a gas water heater because of the potential dangers of gas, we have to have... more people come check that than if you're putting an electric water heater in, which we see as safer. Is that legit? Is there a reasonable standard to what we charge or what goes out there? How does that play out?

Well, again, we tend to generate our fee schedule by doing analysis of what's the typical allocation of time to that activity. So something that requires staff to be out there more is going to have a higher fee Attached to it, because we've already baked into the calculation that that particular thing. Should cost more because there's more costs to the taxpayer of us going out and and dealing with that situation. So. Those two questions kind of relate again. So we constantly focus on what is our cost and you need to pay us our costs. And then you as a council have the option of saying, I'd be willing to take less because I really want to see this activity or this choice made.

But there's no way of incentivizing behavior without just subsidizing it. I'm just worried about the top line, the revenue line item, where it's always... of subsidy, then, if we're trying to incentivize our reward behavior?

Well, there's a different aspect, though, that gets to Councilmember Kandel's question, right? Which is, you could create additional layers to your fee schedule if you ask us to create a defensible calculation of impact that we have to deal with, right? We don't do, and most agencies don't get too far afield of calculating the long-term externalities and impacts, but I have seen some cities dive into that. That's tricky to defend and can open you up to a lot of challenges. So we shy away from it. So that's why I keep saying the most straightforward thing is, Here's the true cost of us dealing with X. We'd rather you pick Y. So we're willing to take 75% of the fee or cost or whatever. Right.

Okay. Thank you.

I'm almost to the end, and then we'll just open up for general conversation. So one category that's getting a lot more attention these days, in particular because everybody's been asked to generate more housing in their communities, is do we have the appropriate development impact fees to defray the cost that those new developments are going to add to our community? Interestingly enough, we took a look, and I want to thank the community development staff for really particularly getting into this. We have some old fees that we use the word impact on, but they're technically not what California law calls an impact fee. So we'll start to actually bring you some cleanup because they – They're legitimate fees. They're just not what the law means when it says a development impact fee. So development impact fee is one where you've commissioned a nexus analysis by an expert who understands what that particular type of development means. will cost you in terms of service impact. So you just went through this exercise several months ago when we brought you a fire impact analysis and we calculated that new development was going to necessitate increased costs for us in terms of fire prevention and protection services. And so you adopted an impact fee that new development will pay to cover its fair share of new impacts and expansion of infrastructure to deal with that development. And so that's now in place. That is what the law means when they're talking about a development impact fee. We have two studies we've actually commissioned now in anticipation of more development coming online. One is to have a proper impact fee for park development, because when you bring new residents in, you start to impact the parks. And then the other one we're starting to look at again is affordable housing and I have a feeling. We've got others in the pipeline that will bring it. And you're not required to adopt these fees, but we have an obligation to make you aware of these impacts so that you can make a conscious decision of whether you want to adopt impact fees to deal with these particular things. So we feel some urgency because we know we have a lot of development issues. It's starting to get in the pipeline, so we're trying to get at least those two critical ones in place. Because our old fees exist, so we're not entirely absent, for example, with parks. But remind me, how old is the park fee? 1998. 1998 was the last time we did park fees, and they're not really in the way that they're calculated today. So that's what we're commissioning right now. But you just saw San Rafael, for example, decide to do a slow growth of their development impact fees because they didn't want to kind of cause system shock all at once. And that's a choice. That's a policy choice for a council to make.

Can you please help me understand the premise for impact fee for affordable housing? Is it that we're not getting the... Yeah. Yeah.

I'm going to let the director.

It's on his slide.

I probably condensed that too much.

It's a commercial linkage fee. And so the idea is that when you have people creating jobs, that they should pay some type of fee to help fund affordable housing in the community. I don't know if that's a good summary of it. Maybe I see skyrocketing.

So usually, and the city has a commercial linkage fee presently. And the premise of the commercial linkage fee is that commercial development generates demand for housing because employees would prefer to live closer to where they work but if there is an adequate housing supply um they don't have that choice and so the business is the the commercial development is actually driving demand that can't be fulfilled The fee asks them to pay a portion of the cost to develop a new unit that the city can then use as leverage to assist affordable housing development to actually generate those units so that the people who are working in the businesses can actually live closer to work.

Got it. Thank you.

So I think I'm at the end and wanted to open it up. I mean, again, this is sort of conversation day one. In your packet is your current fee schedule. So we certainly would love any questions you have about the current fee schedule that you'd like us to bring back and dive into further in some of these broader topics. As I indicated on this last one, we're working on items to bring you in anticipation of all of our new development for some of these impact fees.

Just a really general question. I mean, one thing we'd like to do is promote housing development where possible. And then we have a budget and cost recovery is important. Maybe... you know, community development director can give us some idea of what parts of this packet would be most relevant to striking a balance there, you know, to, you know, is there some fee or contractors coming in now? Because I keep wondering, you know, are we doing enough? Are we making it easy enough, you know, for people to build?

Wow. Let me start, actually, because I've had a lot of chats with the city attorney about how do we better inform the council and the public about what these impact fees look like in the grand scheme of new development. And one of Sky's other clients actually commissions, there are entities that will do studies for you to show you what percentage of the total cost of development impact fees are so that you make these decisions with, I think, the type of data or information that would help you feel comfortable whether or not these things are preventing development from happening. So that's something we're looking at that I think we'd bring you in concert with the impact fees. That other sort of broader, are we doing everything we can, you know, I like to think we are, but we can always do more. And I think one of the upsides to the fact that the, by accident, the whole community development department turned over in a year's time is that we have a new staff that came from other places and they've been talking about innovations from these other areas. They've worked that we're going to try to bring here to make our process even better.

I don't know what you're thinking. That's a question. Mr. City Attorney. I am curious to what degree we could use development impact fees to bring in the types of businesses or housing that we want, but to discourage the types of businesses or housing that we don't want. Does this have to be a broad brushstroke, all commercial businesses are treated the same way or all residential developments are treated the same way? parse it out and to what degree can we parse that out? Do you understand my question?

I think so. I'll give a broad answer and then if you have follow-up, we can dig into a little more. As the city manager explained, the basic premise for development impact fee is that different types of development generate demands for public infrastructure and the purpose of the fee is to generate funds sufficient to maintain levels of service so that as new development increases demand for for that infrastructure the city is able to maintain add more infrastructure to maintain the level of service Ultimately, the city council can decide to exempt some forms of development or set lower fees for some types of development. But in doing so, what it's saying is having identified that development across all classes is generating some level of demand. that the city is going to fund the exempted type of developments demand from other funding sources like the general fund. So an easy example is if a city wanted to, a city commissioned a fee and it said the parks fee is $1,000 per unit for single family and 500 for multifamily. And the city council said, we want to exempt multifamily because we want to make it easier to build those units. the city would then be saying, we are going to in effect provide the funding to make up the gap that multifamily residential development is generating. So if the fee study says over the existing planning horizon of the general plan, new multifamily residential development would likely be generating, let's say $10 million in revenue to pay for parks, It's a very high number, but let's say it was true. And the city council said, you know what, we want to exempt all multifamily from the fee. The city would be saying that $10 million to develop new parks, we're going to pay for it out of the general fund. That's the basic calculus that you'd be doing. So yes, you can do it. But you can't basically – I guess the complement to that is you can't increase the fee on other types of development to make up for that shortfall. Because what the Nexus study will do is say the maximum charge to, say, commercial development is $1,000 a square foot. You can't increase that to $1,500 per square foot to make up for the subsidy provided to multifamily housing because the fee study has already substantiated that the $1,000 per square foot is the maximum you can charge.

All right, let me give two specifics, and you can tell me if I'm way off base. Commercial. Let's say there's a hypothetically a vacant commercial space. And hypothetically, we as a council would like to encourage certain uses and not other uses or whatever it is. And we were to say that a certain use, you know, maybe. has more foot traffic for commercial use, has more impact on roads, has more impact on blah, blah, blah. And therefore, this category of commercial use is going to have a higher development fee than this category of commercial use. Is that fair?

Only if the Nexus study can substantiate that.

Okay.

So the Nexus study would have to provide a rational basis where it actually looks at the nature of the development and says these are the factors where this type of development is actually generating a higher level of demand compared to other types of commercial development for the type of infrastructure the fee is intended to pay for, and therefore you can set a higher fee for it. But it needs to be substantiated by the nexus study.

Okay, and if we do the opposite and we say, everybody has a high fee, but we're going to waive it for certain uses, does there have to be that same nexus for the people we waive it for?

No, but the council is basically saying it's going to fund, that it will make other sources of funding available to make up for the gap in funding that results from providing that subsidy to other forms of development.

But that's basically the government paying the government.

Well, you have to ultimately come up with the money. To pay ourselves?

Yes.

Okay.

On a practitioner level, we don't have redevelopment anymore. But in the redevelopment days, one of the things we would do is we would charge these fees to the developer because it's just cleaner to treat everybody the same. And then we would find other ways to invest in the project that defray other costs. When it was redevelopment, we'd often invest in the infrastructure. So we might help subsidize putting in pipes and things underground. And we might help do something in terms of pavement, something that would live on past that particular use. And I would say that's probably a safer path in terms of getting creative, in terms of incentivizing a particular project. use at a particular location.

Thank you.

So in the managers, I mean, the staff report, You're kind of asking for sort of philosophies of what we value.

Yeah, and it's late, so we might not get deep into philosophies tonight.

But, I mean, looking at the – I mean, it's late, I know. But looking at the recreation fees, and I know you're going to do a recreation fee study, it sounded like. There's so many inconsistencies in it. Yeah. I would my philosophy would be that we look at a lot of the inconsistencies like for instance sports fields adults are charged a certain amount youth are charged a certain amount and then twin city softball has a totally different charge and then you you look at futsal I don't even know what our futsal field is do we have it says a futsal field I don't even know where that is but um Another kind of inconsistency for me is Hall Gym, nonprofit rate, for-profit rate, and then St. Pat's CYO has a totally different rate. So anyway, not to solve it tonight, but just looking at more consistent. And I would want to have some justification why youth pay a different rate than adults because it's all using the same field. And then lastly... there are a lot of users of our public spaces that are a for-profit business. They charge a coaching fee or whatever it is. I think really us having an opportunity to look at the for-profit business, which is taking a layer off the top, should probably have a different rate when we're looking at that study later.

So if I could, a couple comments just for future conversation. Yes. Some historical context. The council in whatever year, long time ago, said youth should be charged less than adults. Well, I'm just questioning that. I understand. We have in the past, though, with league partners, we basically provide organized programming in two ways. The way we talked about with tennis earlier, where we find a contractor, we program out the contractor. For the other option is we partner with a league or a particular team. And we partner with them and we give them a particular charge rate for field use. But they also tend to help maintain. We have a lot of agreements. So with CYO, for example, we have some agreements about how to take care of the gym so that they'll help us deal with it. And then for Twin Cities... Softball, they've been one of our more active partners in actually investing in the infrastructure and fixing it up. So that's how some of those evolved. They all should be re-evaluated.

Re-evaluated, yeah. I mean, for example, the cricket team that's out there, they have permanent structures that utilize aspects of our field. They have their pitching table or cage and what's that called? Yeah, is that their pitching cage is permanently there. And they also have a storage shed to the side, which is permanently there. I just want to, I mean, when we look at this, make sure that we are charging appropriately for actually a 24-7 continuous use of that section of the park. is being occupied by their pitching cage.

And then lastly, so I put on the record, it's not legal to be doing private use of our parks and not be paying us rent because we have that adopted as a rule. So if you're aware of that, let me know because I will send somebody to make sure that they are paying us what they should be paying us for using our facility for that purpose. Okay. You might be surprised, too, some of what you're thinking is private activity. Even some of those tennis players didn't understand that Leo's a contractor of the city. And we take a piece of his costs. It might be some of what you think is a private. We may actually have a relationship with them.

Do we take a piece of cricket?

I can't even tell you what the origins are. That goes way back. We're like one of the older... cricket communities, as I understand it. So I don't know a lot about the history of that.

The other thing I wanted to add is that the parks impact fee that's underway right now is going to be looking at facilities and infrastructure and not programs. So what it does is it evaluates the cost on new infrastructure to parks from new residents coming into our community, not the cost of programs individually, like what the cost of a softball, you know, or tennis lessons or something. Those are programs. So it's only going to be looking at facilities and infrastructure and how new residents coming into the community would benefit impact the cost to the community of those new facilities that would be needed to service those new residents. And we're going to come back to you with a session on this fee study at some point, either early summer or late summer, early fall, from our consultant at Harrison Associates. So we will be having a special meeting on this topic.

I'm assuming there is a... Sorry. That's okay.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Oh, I know it's getting late. And I brought something to you back in April when I think this was originally scheduled for our conversation. And as you might imagine, I'm interested in rewarding people for the right behaviors that are helping us to move the needle on our climate action plan. And so, you know, I'm interested in considering subsidizations, subsidizations and incentive incentives. I can't even speak. for replacing gas powered appliances with electric alternatives um and i was trying to get a clearer understanding of our permitting plan review and inspection fees for residentials when they change out say an hvac from gas to electric or water heater from gas to electric or they're upgrading a service panel in order to accommodate these electric appliances, or they want to install a battery backup storage or an electric vehicle charger. You use that as something that our neighbors are doing in Corte Madera. So I have a bunch of items that I sent in an email to you, and I'm interested in looking at it also from the perspective in which Corte Madera seems to not only reduce the fees if they're swapping out and adding an electric utility as opposed to a gas one. But also, they say that commonly requested in minor miscellaneous building type building permit types that the fees that they show in their fee schedule include all applicable inspection and plan review fees. So they kind of bundle everything, it seems, which I like that approach. And I'm wondering if that's something we can consider as well to sort of streamline the process and make it a little bit easier. Because I got to confess, when I look at our fee schedule, I find it confusing personally. And I was thinking there seems to be a minimum permit fee. Is that a baseline fee that gets applied to everything and then on top of that? Okay.

So one thing to bear in mind when you read that language in Corte Madera where they sort of say minor related, they're empowering discretion on the part of staff to make that determination. And what they're getting at is that let's keep using EV charging just because it's an easy one, right? So I want to go get a permit to put an EV charger into my garage. And I need to actually have an electrician come in and run conduit. And so it needs to be inspected for safety. That's our role in that. But so that's a very simple one. There's not a lot of work on part of staff. But what if you wanted it to be freestanding and you wanted it to be a certain setback from your driveway and the sidewalk on a post? that might be more complicated and might involve an additional small permit or inspection. And it's these layers that start to get Complicated and that's why the fee schedules are written the way they are so that you come and you talk to staff staff gets a clear picture of what you're trying to do. And then they tell you everything that applies. What quarter of there's trying to do there is say. Hey, staff, what they're asking for is really not all that complicated, but yes, it does involve a little more than just issuing them a permit and doing 1 visit to the site. Cut them a break and don't hit them with a bunch of new fees so we can get this done. But hey, staff, we trust you. You're a professional. If you realize that what they want to do is six visits to the property and a lot of discussion with a contractor, that should get compensated to the city because that's a lot of costs.

Every project is custom. Every project is unique. That's why our fee schedule is based on valuation and not product or whatever kind of item that they're installing. We have to base it on valuation because there's no two permits are alike. And the other thing that's important to point out is sometimes the things that people do to remove gas and replace it with electric don't trigger a permit. It's not unusual for people to have 220s in their house. There's also products now where you can replace a gas stove with an electric one and only have a 110 power supply. So those products are now available, and you'd have an induction stove and an electric stove, and it would have a battery backup. So we're seeing more and more of these individual products on the market that don't trigger building permits. The other thing that is... Interesting too is that the building code is, you know, yesterday's building code, yesterday's tier one is today's standard for the building code. So the electrification is now baseline for everything. And so for new construction, that is it. They have to do it no matter what. And so what we're looking at is people with the older homes with those kinds of projects. And so what we see is a lot of people, as you've known for years, they come and they renovate their house and they redo everything and they're doing these things. They're putting 220 or 240 volts in their kitchens so they can run those electrical appliances. They're putting in electric hot water systems with recirculation. So we're seeing them. And like I said, everything is custom. And when people do this in Larkspur, they don't do it on a small scale. They often do it for the whole house. And so that's why our building permit fees are designed to address that. Because like I said, everything is custom.

The other thing I would just like to add too is you have to remember that most of the time the staff's dealing with contractors who have a rough idea of how fee schedules work and which fees they're going to trigger. And so they go into the conversation with some understanding. If you remember the public and you have the reaction that you did, hey, I'm having trouble understanding this, just give us a call. Staff will do a rough calculation for you on the phone. and it'll tell you, hey, ballpark, it's this, because you're going to definitely need this permit, and you might need this permit. And they'll run that number for you.

Yeah, okay. I mean, I understand Director Mogensen's... comment about each project is custom and that makes sense, but it seems to me we're going to probably start to see more of these swapping out incidences from gas to electric and that those aren't really custom projects. And so that's where I'm really interested in and how can we make that easy for people? when the time comes and and try to bundle a package together for them so that it's very clear to me that this is what i'm going to pay in terms of permit inspection and um uh plan review fees should i need them um so i just have a you know on these development impact fees i mean i

Part of it is, yeah, our staff obviously spends time on this, and we have to build new infrastructure to support new development. But at some point, it's like, we need to build the housing. And so do these impact fees deter housing development if if we're piling on a whole bunch of new fees and, you know, isn't it better just to get the housing bill and they start paying property taxes. And when the city starts to get money from, you know, the new housing that's built. So what's the, how are other cities dealing with, you know, all these new, I don't want to say new, all of these development impact fees, which seem to, I mean, they could add up. I mean, we just increased the fire and now we're going to do parks and maybe some other stuff, but,

Well, first, I could bring you a list of cities where they have 20 impact fees. We're just talking about sort of some critical ones. There's a whole laundry list of different impacts that different communities have identified and said new development needs to contribute. And this is how we're going to do that calculation. I don't know how Andy feels, but I think when you're talking about, you have to separate this into big development and little development because when you start going into hundreds of units, these impact fees are pretty nominal compared to their other costs, right? They're real costs. I'm not saying they're not, but on the pro forma of that development, they're pretty modest. I could see somebody coming in who's trying to build four units, which we want every unit we can get. And that could be where the impact fee is a little more of a burden to them because they're probably on a tighter margin.

The thing with development impact fees that... are really important to know, and I'm going to speak on behalf of our applicants, is that they want predictability. They want stability. They want something that they know up front what it's going to cost. Everybody that calls that wants to do a new project, they want to know what it is up front, and they want to know that it's – because they've got to do their performance before they even apply. But the one thing that they can't predict is all the variables that are involved with – market, whether it's construction costs, material costs, financing, interest rates. So what cities will do, and I had this experience in my last city with affordable housing, they had a 15% affordable housing requirement. And the council asked, well, we want to raise this to 20. So we have to do an impact study. So we did a housing nexus study to see, well, what would that cost? How would that pencil out for the developers? And we found out in 1994 that in the prior jurisdiction that um the with the given market conditions and um the comps for similar projects being built that you would only um break even at something like eight percent affordable housing provided in a project which of course is less than you know i think the state minimum and you know no wonder they're not building these you know multi-family projects is because it just didn't pencil out and so um But that was only a snapshot in time because if you went back another year, it wouldn't have been 8%. It would have been 12%. And maybe the year before that with the interest rates, it would have been different. But when you look, like I said, there's constant up and down factors. This is the one thing that developers know doesn't change is the development impact fees. And that's what they appreciate about cities is that consistency and that predictability. And so what it's important to do is when you're doing development impact fee studies is to have these nexus studies done routinely to see where you're at and where you stand under any given market conditions. And when you get the results, of course, it's a snapshot in time and it can change as you're But it's really useful because it shows you for both the city and developers that this is how a typical project might pencil out. And so it's just one of the things with the way construction works. Interest rates are high. Construction rates are high with an inflationary environment right now. So we're not seeing that much.

getting built but you know the time will come maybe things will change the economy will improve and that's when we see those spurts but that's how it is in community development everything's up and down but I do want to emphasize too that you get to ultimately decide we bring you the information and you might decide I'm okay with not collecting that impact fee I'm okay with the general fund absorbing that particular cost But right now, we haven't brought you 2026 information about a couple of these critical ones, and we need to do that.

So, yeah, I guess that was my main question was just we're not legally required to charge these fees because you just said other jurisdictions, they probably have a whole bunch of other development fees that they're levying or assessing.

No, there's no legal obligation to charge them.

Okay.

It's optional, and no two cities have exactly the same mix, and it's everything from none at all to a dozen or more.

Okay, great. Thanks.

I think we picked Park as a critical one because we have this old 1998 process for calculating a fee that's way out of date. And so we need to bring you what a 26 fee should look like. And you can make a conscious decision. You want to keep the old way of doing it. It'll definitely be less than that. 26 calculation.

I think it's important to point out too that our Parkland fee and our traffic impact fees have been, they're quite low because they haven't been updated in so long. And so the developers look at those fees and they look at Larkspur and they go, ooh, that's very nice. I appreciate that. So I've actually, you know, I've actually gotten some positive comments back saying, oh, that's nice. You haven't, updated your fair market value since 1998 for parkland dedication. So, you know, I'm pretty sure the fair market value per buildable acre is not currently $150,000. The value of land is much, much higher. So if they're going to dedicate land for parks for the number of units they're going to build, it's a bargain right now, but yet we're not seeing, you know, a lot of developers kicking in the door because it's lower and Because it really, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it's just one little tiny sliver of that pie of a whole overall project cost.

Any other questions right now? Thank you very much.

I do think just one item we will work on and bring back in the future is I do think, and probably maybe with Corte Madera as our example, bring back a discussion very specific to some of the green building items and whether or not you want to follow that sort of thought process of rewarding those particular types of projects.

Yeah, maybe look at San Rafael, and I know Mill Valley probably looked at something recently as well in terms of their development impact fees. We'd just be curious what other neighboring jurisdictions might be doing.

We can certainly, when we bring the impact fees, give you a sense of what's out in the landscape around us as well.

Okay, great. Thank you. All right. Thank you for that. A lot to digest. Are there any public comments? No. Any online?

I'm looking for any raised hands online. There's no public comment.

Thank you for sticking with us, members of the public. Yes. All right. Okay. Well, with that, I will close item 8.6. And we are going to adjourn to our next regular meeting on Wednesday, August 19th. Thank you and good evening.