City Council - Special Meeting

Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for a special meeting of the Larkspur City Council. It's Wednesday, August 19th, 2026. It's about, it's 5.32 p.m., so I'll call the meeting to order. Madam Clerk, can we get a roll call, please?

Council Member Margulies? Here. Council Member Way? Here. Vice Mayor Paulson? Here. Mayor Andre?

Here. All right. So the first thing on our agenda is we will be adjourning to closed session and we will reconvene in closed session. I'm sorry, we will reconvene in open session around 630 or so. Thank you. Good evening everyone. It's Wednesday, August 19th, 2026. Welcome to the special meeting of the Larkspur City Council. We just returned from closed session with no reportable items. So now we will adjourn to our special meeting. number two, I guess the second special meeting of the Larkspur City Council. And it is 6.33 p.m. Madam Clark, can we get a roll call, please?

Council Member Kando?

I am here.

Council Member Margulies? Here. Council Member Way? Here. Vice Mayor Paulson? Here. Mayor Andre?

Here. Thank you. We will open it now for public comments. This is the time where members of the public can come and address the City Council. You please step forward to the podium. If you have to, if you would like to make a public comment, if you would like, you can state your name and where you, which I think that's after.

Yeah.

The pledge is after. Okay. So I'll open it now to public comments.

Would anyone in the chamber like to make a public comment, but just on these, this items on here, the business, I'm sorry.

Yes. On the business item, which is adopting a resolution to award a construction contract to Appenna Engineering for the pathway repaving project. Would anyone like to make a public comment? Seeing none in the chamber, anybody online?

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

Great, thank you. So we'll close public comment, and now we'll move on to business item 3.1, where we will be discussing the awarding of a construction project for pathway repaving.

And

Mr. City Manager, are we going to get a staff report?

Julian, you want to do a quick report on this one?

Great, thank you.

Good evening, Julian Skinner, Public Works Director for the City of Larkspur. The item before you tonight is a request to award a construction contract to Apena Engineering for our capital improvement program project to repave some of our bike paths around town. This project is included in your adopted 2627 capital improvement program. It's funded. We went out to public bid, as we always do. We received four bidders. And at Pena, we're the lowest bidder at 194,457. The engineer's estimate was 250,000. Their low bid is within the budget. And so because the bid award amount is more than 75,000, we're required to bring this contract to you for approval. So that's the end of the report. I'm available for any questions.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Skinner. I'll open up to city council. Does anyone have any questions?

Just real quick, Julian, since I'm not familiar, what portions of the bike path are being repaved?

This is citywide. There are a couple of segments that will receive more work than others. The pathway that goes behind the Creekside neighborhood, so from Larkspur Plaza Drive, and then it kind of loops around and comes back to Magnolia. The entirety of that path is in a condition that it requires complete repaving. And then there are some sections on the Magnolia path that's on the east side of Magnolia that require some lengthy repaving sections. And other than that, there are spot locations or some on the path that's behind Niven Park and through Meadowood, some other areas. So we did a comprehensive field walk of our seven miles of class two paths and anything that required a repair or repaving was added into this project. So it's kind of a mix of locations throughout town.

Great. Thank you.

Great, thank you. All right, I will open this up to public comment. Does any member of the public would like to make a comment on this item? Seeing none in the chamber, anyone online?

Looking for any raised hands on Zoom, and there's no public comment.

Okay, great. All right, so we'll close public comment, and we'll bring it back to council. Can I get a motion?

So I'll move Resolution 64-26. I can second.

Great. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Okay. Motion passes. Thank you. All right. So now we will adjourn to our regular meeting. It is now 6.37 p.m. on Wednesday, August 19th, 2026. And we will, Madam Clerk, can I get a roll call, please?

I'm here.

Here.

Councilmember Weill. Here. Vice Mayor Paulson. Here. Mayor Andre.

Here. If you are able, please rise and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. All right, we will now open it up to public open time. If any member of the public would like to come and address the City Council on any matter that is not listed on tonight's agenda, please step forward and come to the podium, please. Thank you. Hi, Joe.

Good evening. I'm Joan Lundstrom, former mayor, former chair of the Corte Madera Creek Blood Control District, too, for a bunch of years. I'm concerned how the city of Larkspur is preparing for this winter's El Nino storms, combining with king tides and sea level rise along Corte Madera Creek. A front-page story quotes that we're expecting the highest sea levels ever recorded on the California coast. With the unlucky coincidence, the tidal cycle is also going to be at its peaks at the end of the year. And before the meeting, several of us were discussing when those king tides would be. Brown Thanksgiving, good timing. November 24th to 26th, December 23rd to 25th, and the end of January, 21st to 22nd. And what I would like to do is urge the city to make a very specific plan to reach out to the community about what we're going to do. This is not the same old, same old, go get some sand for sandbags in Piper Park, or we have a bunch of signs for flooding. It takes coordination with... internally, the public works, emergency, police, and the sheriff, highway patrol, Caltrans, and Corte Madera, because floodwaters don't know any boundaries, and they all converge. just where, in particular, the Greenbury interchange. For example, just a few weeks ago, somebody who lives over in Hillview Gardens observed that kind of a mini king tide was almost to the bottom of the Bonaire Bridge, and there is a low spot on Bonaire Road on the hospital side that does, on the approach, get water, got water now. So the concern is the approaches. So the critical part of a specific TAN plan would be to, worst case scenario, For example, flooding on Bon Air Road that might impact access to Marin General, and then also what we already saw, the Green Bay Interchange, which has a whole history of flooding because that approach over the years has sunk like 13 feet into marshland. Within my lifetime, I'd like to just point out that the Corps of Madeira Creek meandered from the bay upstream to the College of Marin with extensive marshes on each side of the creek. In 1965-66, the Army Corps of Engineers straightened the creek, putting the dredge spoils into the marsh. The nearby hills were also topped in 1965. 54 to create Hillview Gardens. And then other hills got topped to create the Larks Marina, Creekside, and also Cape Marin, which was created from dredge spoils from the Army Corps of Engineers. So we have landforms that were marsh that's part of this. I would suggest that city be... proactive in reaching out to communities, neighborhoods that might be particularly prone to property damage and also access, particularly emergency access. And to also publicize this early and educate us all what might happen, particularly since he said it's a historic winter, regardless of rainfall. And we know that we're in a microclimate of Larkspur, Corda, Madeira has got One of the heaviest rainfalls in all the Bay Area. One year I was here, it was 14 inches in one day. So who knows? Be prepared. Like the Boy Scouts say, be prepared. Great. Thank you, Jen.

Is there anyone else in the chamber who would like to make a public comment? Yes, please step forward.

My name is Corey Birkin. I live in the Larkspur Marina. And during the January flooding, our home sustained substantial damage in excess of $50,000 in repairs to address the results of the flooding under our house. We had water behind the house coming over the baboon wall. We had water running on the sides of our house. And we had water in front of our house. Our cars, we had to move them to higher ground, but the water was up over the, we don't have hubcaps anymore, but it was up over the tires. And it was very, very scary for us. And there are storm drains in front of our home that have been blocked for a long time now. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Skinner and speaking with him. I want to thank him for being responsive to our neighborhood for everything that he has done and what we anticipate he is going to do. It's my understanding that the storm drains in the Barksboro Marina will be cleared, but I would like to know when they will be cleared and what kind of documentation there will be about the level of blockage that currently exists and what level of clearing we will get once the work has been done. I also would like to know about the inlet outlet pipes, including the underground connecting pipes, outfalls, cisterns, and flap gates, not just the visible street inlets. We'd like to have an understanding of the condition of those pipes and get documentation and verification that those have been been addressed. It's very scary to think that we've undergone this level of damage and flooding in our neighborhood. And the predictions, as the former mayor spoke so eloquently about, are for worsened conditions for this coming El Nino. It's all over the local papers and the national uh papers and uh we need to to act and make sure that we're doing everything we possibly can to mitigate this and to prevent as much damage as is possible and be hopeful that the storms the the atmospheric rivers do not coincide with these extremely high tides thank you very much for your consideration of my comments thank you very much for your public comment

Is there anyone else in the chamber who would like to make a public comment? Anybody online? Oh, wait, I'm sorry, there's one more person. Please come forward to the podium.

Hi, my name is Jennifer King. I'm a friend of many people on the Larkspur boardwalk. And I've been very upset by that big pile of dirt with the plastic over it. And I really want to plead for restoring the marsh as originally planned.

I'm sorry, Ms. King, I believe that the issue that you're talking about is going to be on our agenda tonight for discussion. So why don't we, if it's possible, let's talk about that when we get to that item.

Thank you.

Great, thank you. Is there anyone else in the chamber who would like to make a public comment? Okay, we'll go online. looking for any raised hands from our zoom audience members and there's no public comment okay great we'll close public comment um all right so we'll move on to presentations of which there are none and um they'll move on to item four which is approval of the consent calendar would any member of council like to remove an item off the consent calendar for discussion okay see none Is there any member of the public who would like to remove an item off the consent calendar for discussion? Seeing none. OK.

I'll move the consent calendar.

I can second it.

Great. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Great. The consent calendar passes. We'll move on to the city manager's oral report.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I feel like stars must have aligned because I planned my whole city manager report for you advise you on regional and local efforts related to anticipated storms and dealing with them. Foremost, I want to acknowledge that the continuing shift in the way the county approaches collaboration with the cities is paying dividends, and the county executive office has assigned staff to serve as leadership to have a coordinated regional education and outreach effort. so that all agencies are on the same page as we prepare to educate the public about how to deal with the projected storms and how to deal with flooding should it occur in their area. And I also want to acknowledge that our new Office of Emergency Management is working to plan out strategies if we do experience flooding, where we're going to have people in danger that we need to regionally coordinate to deal with. Locally, the last week we convened our executive staff level in conjunction with Central Marin Police and Central Marin Fire staff level task group to begin to analyze what we can do locally with our resources to help people prepare. And then also so that we're prepared in the event of various scenarios taking place. We anticipate working with our group and the county to do some tabletop exercises so that our staff is as prepared as we can be. One of the things we're working on are some education pieces. One's gonna be particularly targeted to different neighborhoods because one of the things that the staff learned during the tidal flooding in January is that we have a lot of residents who had not experienced tidal flooding before. A lot of people have experienced stormwater flooding, but not tidal flooding, and they're very different. So we're gonna educate people on what those differences are and how to be prepared. You heard speakers referencing when the king tides are high. We are concerned particularly that the December tides may be high enough that we would experience tidal flooding. Also, the public should be aware and the council should be aware that we are finding, and as are agencies across the country, that this year's tidal almanac is just wrong. It's about half a foot wrong consistently, but it is almost always wrong. And so we rely for a lot of our strategies. And one of the reasons that we had to make some adjustments in the field in January is because in January, the title predictions were half a foot off from what they actually turned out to be. And unfortunately, and we could have a long discussion about why or why not this might be, the National Weather Services are not able to explain to us exactly why the tables are so off. The other thing we're doing is in particular, the Marina neighborhood, which experienced some of the most significant tidal flooding. So we're working directly with the Property Owners Association and an engineering firm that that association hires to analyze what we can do to better mitigate the situation. As the council knows from prior presentations, and we'll be talking about this more with the neighborhood, when it's tidal flooding, you kind of have to unfortunately wait for the tide to subside to pump the water out. So it's having folks be prepared for what to do during the different portions of the event that we'll be working on with that neighborhood in particular. A lot more to come, but I wanted you to be aware that these activities are in process.

Okay, great.

Other than that, School's back in session and the staff's adjusting to it. So I hope everybody's a little patient because we've noticed traffic's already starting to get a little school time-ish again. So with that, I'll turn it back to Madam Mayor.

Great. Thank you for the update. So I appreciate the public comments and thank you for your report and thank we will commit to further communication with the public. And if it's appropriate, we'll bring it back to council for a discussion on what we will be doing in preparation for the King Tides.

I probably should have said to Madam Mayor, I believe it was yesterday the Board of Supervisors received a comprehensive presentation from their staff of what this regional initiative looks like. Okay, great.

Thank you. All right. So now I'll open it up for council members, for council members' updates and reports. Would anyone like that? Sure.

Well, it's been a long time over the summer where we haven't had a lot of meetings. But I did, as your representative, attend the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority meeting in July. And the two big things to sort of report on wildfire prevention that's been going on is that the presentation was really about all the work that's being done to model fire behavior in the built environment. The built environment is a different environment than a forest fire. And a lot of tremendous work is being done in that to really try to anticipate fire behavior in the built environment, which I think Marin is on the cutting edge of that by working with Stanford and Berkeley and other institutions about how to model behavior like that so that we all know. The second thing, and this just happened today, was the California Board of Forestry and Fire Prevention approved for the first time in the United States Zone Zero defensible space requirements. And that just occurred today. It's been a long effort to look at legislation that will require the homeowner to remove all flammable vegetation within five feet of the built structures. It's been a hard... fight by fire professionals and others to try to get this across the finish line. But apparently today is the finish line. So what the new Zone Zero rules are going to be phased in over the next several years, so people need to know. But our local fire prevention specialists, Todd Lando and others, have been really instrumental in getting this passed. But all new construction will have no vegetation that's flammable within the first five feet in California going forward. And then we will be phasing it in for the built environment now. But look forward to hearing more about this because this will fall into the wildfire inspections now that this, if the governor signs it, which is supposed to happen, will become state law that no flammable vegetation where embers can catch within five feet of the built environment. So that just happened today. So keeping us up to date on that, and I don't have anything else.

Great. Thank you, Council Member Way.

I'll follow up on that. Only on that topic that we were on the fire council and they had informed us that they're going through the different neighborhoods now and checking properties to see if you do have enough defensible space. They are going to be leaving. They've done about a quarter of the properties in Larkspur at this point. They will be leaving a flyer on your door where you can go and it's a code you can check in and get a full report of what has to be done in order to make your house compliant and defensible. So please keep a lookout for that. That's all I have.

So, I go to the SMART board meeting on Wednesdays. Today, it's continually good news about the ridership at SMART.

So July was the best month ever for the smart train, 163,000 trips. And some of that is from the county fair. And there was another event in Windsor called Kaboom. But generally, you know, they're finding each month is trending up. And on a typical weekday, there are 5,500 people on the smart train. And, you know, I think that's, Sometimes people will see the Smart in Larkspur driving by on the highway and they seem empty, but the numbers are really good. And it's coming to a point where increasing capacity and ultimately maybe getting some fare box recovery is coming. So I'm pretty encouraged by that. And the trips are usually about 20 miles. So it was 3.2 million passenger miles just in the month of July. One other thing that I thought is really worthwhile is I just brought it on my phone. I installed the mascots program and I want to encourage our council members. It takes 60 seconds to install. And, you know, for example, I just put in, you know, if I want to get from here to Roanert Park, you know, it's showing me how I can get bike, smart bike, or I can take the bus, what the cost is, the time is an hour and 17 minutes. So it's a little bit like having, you know, Waze or, you know, some, you know, Google Maps or something on your phone just for public transport. So, you know, there are a lot of people who, you know, that's their best option, you know, either to afford or, for mobility or for whatever reasons. There's people who are interested in reducing greenhouse gases. I find this is really, you know, one of the best deliverables. It's not something we developed. They use it in New York City. And, you know, we've adopted their software. And it's just a very nice way of, you know, trying to get around using pure public transportation and trading it off. You might want to jump in a car if, you know, if you have less time to do it. But anyway, it's called mascots and it's the coordinated system. And we're finding that, you know, smart and Golden Gate Transit and all these other different agencies are coordinating their schedules together better through this. And also there's been just in Golden Gate Transit, there's been about an 8% bump in ridership. They didn't have the fare or anything, but I think the efficiency is starting to drive a little bit more usage. So,

um you know mostly good news right now for for that and um that's it for me thank you uh thank you um yeah so over the summer i attended the july 26 trans transportation authority of marin meeting at that meeting the board approved a scope update for the richmond san rafael san rafael bridge access project As many of you may recall, in 2018, nine county Bay Area voters voted to increase bridge tolls to bring money forward for multiple projects around the Bay Area, one of which was this Connector 101-580 Connector. And that project specified that the money that was then approved for expenditure $135 million would go towards building a direct connection between 101 and 580. So the TAM administration actually voted or sent a letter to the Metropolitan Transportation Committee to ask that the direct connector language be removed from the funds and that it would just be brought into a more general goal of improving regional connectivity and traffic operations between US 101 and the bridge. So that was approved, and I actually voted against it. I believe that we do need a direct connector, and what Larkspur is not currently represented in the conversation at this time, that happens on the TAM Administration Projects and Planning Executive Committee, so I've requested a seat as a primary stakeholder, especially given that the timing is critical. We have two very large developments coming down the pike potentially with Oak Hill and the Ross Valley Sanitary District project, which will increase the traffic on our surface road between 101 and 580. And so it would be nice. There are three different potential projects under environmental review right now. one of which does not include a direct connect. The other two do include a direct connect. So the board had asked for the removal of the direct connection language to have more flexibility in ways to spend the money, the $135 million that has been allocated for this project. So I will report more when I have more to report on that. And then the only other item I wanted to report on was as the representative to the Ross Valley Sanitary District, You may know that Ross Valley Sanitary District and Central Marin Sanitary Agency are actively moving through a multi-step dispute resolution process. I submitted public comment on the August 11th regular board meeting to the Central Marin Sanitation Agency, reasserting claims made by Ross Valley Sanitary District that rate payers in Ross Valley Sanitary District have been overcharged. This is a result of the change in the way that calculations are made from charging for flow only versus flow and strength combination. The last bill we received for our quarterly treatments was 50% higher than it had been previously. An independent analysis was done by Water Resources Economics. They were hired by Ross Valley Sanitary District and the request is that the commission, the sanitary commission, have a meeting where they permit this Water Resources Economics Board to come in and present their findings. which also show that many comparable cities are not doing flow-only charges. They're doing flow and strength charges. And then I requested action for change. Not only did I want the water resources economics to present their findings, but ultimately to reverse the flow-only calculation decision in favor of returning to flow strength. as well as potential governance reform requests to maybe move forward towards a population weighted voting model similar to that on the marin wildlife prevention authority i argue that the current five-seat board structure is lets a narrow 3-2 vote impose major costs without proportional representation of the rate payers affected

Great. Thank you, everyone. It's been a busy summer, but I appreciate all the updates. I just have a few updates for our community as well. First of all, I want to let everyone know that a citizen has filed an appeal of the Planning Commission decision on the Mount Tan Rapid Club proposed design. And so we will be scheduling a city council hearing of that appeal on September 16th, which is two meetings from now. Second, Councilmember Kandel and I are your representatives on Central Marin Police, which comprises Larkspur, Corte Madera, and San Anselmo. And I've had some questions about people from residents about the use of flock cameras. We do use them here. Central Marin Police does use them. They have been an effective tool for law enforcement. But we do understand that residents have concerns about the sharing of personal data. And so our contract with Flock ends in October of 2026, and Chief Norton has decided not to renew the contract. So we will let that expire, and he will be exploring other technologies and other software that might be useful in law enforcement. Okay. Thirdly, an update on MCE. I am your representative on our local utility provider, MCE. In June, the longtime CEO departed from the agency. And so the agency, the board has created a CEO search committee to find a new CEO for the agency. I do sit on that committee. And so the work is underway. We will be going out to executive search firms for requests for proposals and the search of a new CEO for MCE. And secondly, there is a board meeting tomorrow night, and MCE, as you all may know, is the subject of a Moran Civil Grand Jury report. MCE is required to respond to the Marin Civil Grand Jury Report. And so a draft of the responses to the report is available online and the board will be discussing it tomorrow night. And as a city council, the city of Larkspur is also required to respond to the MCE Civil Grand Jury Report. And so we will be bringing a draft of our responses to our meeting next week, which would be Wednesday, September 2nd. Yes.

When you're done.

Okay. And just one last thing is that Friends of the Larkspur Library is having a used book sale this Sunday from 10 to 1 at our new library. And we encourage all residents to come out and pick up a few books to support the programs at our new library and to support Friends of the Library.

Great, great. I just had one more thing, and I can't believe I forgot this. We have an election coming up in November, and for the first time ever that I know, maybe Joan Lunscombe can correct me, but we have seven candidates for city council who have been elected. certified and who are competing for city council, which is unprecedented in Larkspur that we have that many individuals who have stepped forward to be officers of public service. And I really appreciate that. In that end, the Larkspur Community Foundation and the Chamber of Commerce are sponsoring two candidate meet and greets. The first one is Wednesday, September 8th at the Lark Theatre. And it's open to the public and it's an opportunity to meet all seven of the candidates or those who can attend and to ask questions and to hear from them. The second event will be October 1st, and it is going to be held in Greenbrae at the Drake Community Room. Very familiar with Drake Community Room. If you need directions, just ask us. And that will be another opportunity for having all the candidates in one room and a meet-and-greet. And the forum will also have some work with the – League of Women Voters. I'm trying to think of the League of Women Voters term. So I'm really excited and I'm really pleased that that many people have offered to step into public service. So hang into that. Please come. And what the Lark Theater would like people to do, and you can see this on the flyer, is to pre-register. There's only 180 seats. So it's no cost, but they just want to make sure there's enough room. So that's all.

Wonderful. A lot of updates, but we have a lot going on in our city. Yes. Okay. All right. So with that, I will close council members' oral reports and we will move on to number eight business items. The first of which is an overview of the actuarial valuation of other post-employment benefits and GASB 75 report for fiscal year ending June 30th, 2026. We welcome our Administrative Services Director, Emilia Gabriel.

Good evening. I'm Emilia Gabriel, Administrative Services Director with the City of Larkspur. The next item is an overview presentation of the other post-employment benefits, also referred to as OPEB, actuarial report that was prepared as of June 30th, 2025, and it will be incorporated into the audit report for the period ended June 30th, 2026. The City of Larkspur is contracting with McLeod and Watts to perform the OPA actual valuation calculations every two years. With us online via Zoom tonight, we have Regan Connor. She's the consultant on the project, and she will provide you with an overview of the latest report. So I'll turn it over to her to begin our presentation.

Great, thank you.

Yeah.

Hello. Sorry, I'm going to try and get my camera on here. I'm Reagan. I'm a consulting actuary at McLeod Watts. And as Amelia said, we just completed the new June 30, 2025 actuarial evaluation that also has results for GASB 75 reporting for the fiscal year end 26. So valuation reports are performed to prepare these GASB 75 results and then also to help with plan funding. And the city's report does both. So we're going to recalculate the plan liabilities as of June 30, 2025. Then we're also going to provide that accounting information for fiscal year end 2026 and develop the funding levels for fiscal year end 2027 and 2028. So what benefits did we value in the report? There's an explicit subsidy. So this is probably what you think of when you think of retirement benefits. So this in particular for the city, there's subsidized medical coverage and that coverage is going to vary by employee type, dates of hire and years of service. There's also something called an implicit subsidy. Sometimes retiree premiums at certain ages are not expected to cover their expected claims amounts. So the implicit is about 13% of the liability in the city's report. What are we not valuing? We're not gonna value any benefits for active employees before retirement. And then we also aren't going to value any potential future employee benefits. So we know that people are going to be hired after this valuation date and those people do have a potential liability, but we're measuring everything as of June 30, 2025. So who's included in the valuation. So this is just basically the way that the city's OPEB benefit is tiered. There's some different benefits for miscellaneous employees, fire employees, and then there's just the different tiers of dates of hire. So this slide here just shows kind of who's hanging around in those different tiers. You can see tier one, mostly everyone's retired. That second tier, no one in the fire employee section, seven actives and three retirees. And then that later tier where they get the lower benefit amount, all actives, no one's retired yet. So some important assumptions that we have to make in our reports are the discount rate. I'll hit more on this in a few slides, but the city uses its full trust rate as the discount rate for liabilities for both the GASB results and the plan funding results, and that is 6.15%. We have to make an assumption for the healthcare trend, how medical premiums are gonna increase And then we also have to make assumptions for how many retirees are going to enroll, who's going to cover their spouse, who's going to cover their child, and then just other demographic assumptions. So this is retirement rates, termination rates, and mortality rates. So first, we're going to just look at the accounting side of things. So for accounting, you have to select a measurement date. And this is just kind of a screenshot in time of when you're looking at liabilities. So for the city, the measurement date is the last day of the prior fiscal year end. So for fiscal year end 2026, the measurement date is June 30, 2025. So the primary information that's reported for GASB is this net OPEB liability. And this is just the difference between all of the past service liability. So liability that's already been earned through past service, which we refer to as the total OPEB liability. And then you're going to subtract out your assets. So what's left to pay off, basically. Okay. So the change in that net OPEB liability each year isn't recognized right away. The differences between what actually happened and what was expected to happen get broken out into these four categories and are recognized immediately. over a period of time. So your first category is going to be assumption changes. So those assumptions that we just looked at. So the discount rate, retirement rates, termination rates. If we make any assumption changes to the election percent or that covered spouse percent, then there's plan experience. And this is just how the cities usually it's the population. It also includes like premiums and claims. um, increasing other than we expected, basically just anything happening that we didn't expect to happen. Then there's investment experience. So how your trust performed, um, and then any plan changes. So the portions that aren't recognized are your deferred inflows, which are your reductions in the netto pub liability. And sorry. And then the deferred outflows, which is the increase in the net OPEB liability. So for GASB, there's different guidelines on which discount rate you can use for PAYGO plans. You have to use a bond index for plans that are funding at or above GASB. the actuarially contribution, you can use the full trust rate. And if you kind of fall somewhere in between, then we have to solve for that rate. The city is using the highest discount rate, so the full trust rate, because there's an average over the past five years, the city has contributed 100% or more of the actuarially determined contribution on average. And then this is just going to expand on that. So this side of the chart here, this is your contribution history. So these are the ADCs, those actuarially determined contributions from 2018 to 2026. And then this middle column is what the city actually contributed. So you can see it has been increasing every year so that because Now this five-year average is over 100%. So that's why you're able to use that full trust rate. And then this side just shows the funded ratio. So it's just your assets divided by your total OPEB liability. So for fiscal year end 26, 18% funded. And then this is the accounting results for fiscal year end 2026, measured as of that measurement date, June 30, 2025. And this chart over here just shows how things changed between the prior fiscal year end and the current fiscal year end. So we went from about 7.2 million to about 6.7 million. So there's a decrease in that net OPEB liability. The major player here was City of Larkspur contributions. There's a $250,000 contribution to the trust. Retiree benefit payments were made. You get credit for the implicit subsidy contribution, and then nothing was taken out of the trust. So you're increasing your asset value. Your net OPEB liability is decreasing significantly. Then the second most significant item here is this ongoing plan operations. So this is gonna include your assumed asset returns, administrative expenses, benefits earned by actives, and then interest on liabilities. And then there was a little bit of change for just assumption changes, investment experience, and then some plan experience. So then the second part of the report is that refunding. So our reports develop actuarially determined contributions, which I have probably already referred to as ADCs to pre-fund the planned benefits. So we develop these ADCs to help the city pay the full current year service costs. and then to have a way of systematically paying off the unfunded actuarially accrued liability. In a couple slides earlier, I mentioned that net OPEB liability. That's the GASB term for it. On the funding side of things, it's referred to as an unfunded actuarially accrued liability, but it's that same total liability minus assets. So from the new valuation, here are the ADCs that were developed for fiscal year end 2027 and 2028. So for 2027, 693, 2028, 712. And then these are just our projected sources that will fund that ADC. So the three sources are the implicit subsidy contribution, which is something that we calculate. So for 27 and 28, these are right here in line one. These won't change. These are set in stone unless the city has any plan changes. Item two here, this is just the estimated city paid premiums for retirees. So based on our internal projections, we'd expect the city to pay about $501,000 for fiscal year in 2027 for those retiree benefit payments and $531,000 in 2028. And then there's this contribution to the trust. So if it's the city's funding goal to contribute 100% of the ADC, this number you just solve for by subtracting these two numbers from the total ADC. So if for some reason this benefit payment amount in 27 is lower, the trust contribution will need to be increased and then vice versa. If the retiree benefit payments end up being higher, you might make less of a contribution and still meet 100% funding of that ADC. And then this is just a projection of those benefit payments. So the blue are the explicit payments, what's being paid for premiums. The orange is the implicit payment. So that difference between the claims and premiums. And then we just kind of show this gray is if the trend was increased by 1% each year. And so this is projected out a pretty far away. Something to remember when you're looking at this chart is that no new entrants are considered. So this is the benefit payments for the population as of June 30, 2025. And that is all I have. I'm happy to answer any questions that you guys have.

Great. Thank you for the presentation, Reagan. I'll open it up to council members for any questions.

Great presentation. Thank you. My question is actually for Ms. Gabrielle. Based on all this information, it seems like there's a balancing of how much we want to put into this versus invest in whatever we're investing in. Given the current economics, interest rates and stuff like that, would you make any changes or recommend we make any changes to the amount that we are contributing to this? Or would you recommend we kind of stay the course at this point? Do you understand my question?

Okay. The trust, we're currently invested right now at $1.5 million as of June 30, 2026. So I just got a report from CalPERS actually last week on the 14th. And so the trust, as I'm looking at the performance, For one year, it was 14% performance, which is pretty good compared to what we're seeing, like if you're investing just in Leif, I should say, or CalTrust, where you get about 3% to 4%. So it's a good... uh strategy to continue to invest in the trust uh it's a restricted trust so that means that we can only use those dollars to pay for retiree contribution and we can also pay for pay as you go and i believe we can use those funds to pay for our current employees if we need it to withdraw from the fund so it's restricted but we can access the funds So in the budget in fiscal year 26, 27, we set aside $250,000 to make a contribution. The ADC that is recommended is about 60, I think 65,000 or so. So the recommendation will be, of course, that if we make more than the 65, we're better off doing that. I don't know if the city manager wants to add any comments to what I just said.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Anybody?

Okay, so thank you for that information on the 14% return. So currently in our budget, we've budgeted $250,000 contribution, but you're saying the ADC is about $700,000.

It's $65,000. I'm sorry. This is the estimated contribution to supplement to get to the ADC. So the ADC itself, I think, is $700,000.

Yeah. But is that the right number, the $700,000 number? So if we need to contribute $700,000... to fully satisfy this year's expected payments or expected payouts.

Yes, but we're making payment as we go to retirees, which last year we made, it's $520,000 of the 700,000, right? So the 700,000 includes the explicit contribution, the implicit contribution, and then any supplemental amount that we want to contribute to the trust for a total of 700,000.

Oh, I see. Okay, so you're on slide, well, there's no slide number here, but I see. So the expected city contribution is $65,000, but we've set aside $250,000. Is that the right way to be thinking? Okay, so it's not the $250,000 versus the $700,000. It's the $250,000 versus the $65,000. Okay, so we've set aside more than enough. to satisfy our annual contribution to the OPEC Trust.

It's an estimate. The $500,000 is an estimate. Like we pay $519,000 in 25-26 to the retirees that are receiving the subsidy. And it will vary from one year to another year because some people are like on Medicare, for example. So they're going from regular... to Medicare. So that reduces our contribution basically to the retirees. And we've had changes just in August. Three of the members that are retired are now on Medicare. So that's going to reduce our contribution for this fiscal year. Okay.

Great. Okay. That answers my question. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Great. Thank you. We'll open up to public comment. Any comments from the public on this item? Seeing none in the chamber, anyone online?

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

Great. Well, thank you for the presentation, Reagan. And also, Amelia, thank you for your presentation. All right. So we will close item 8.1 and we'll move to item 8.2, review of applications to the City Hall Citizens Study Committee. City Manager, would you like to give a an update or report on this one?

Very briefly, Madam Mayor. Mayor Andre and Council Member Way were the ad hoc committee that had been studying the City Hall situation with City Hall. Now that the library's left, what's our plan to rehabilitate and invest in this building? And after we advanced it through the process of getting the historical building analysis done and having discussed potential uses, the committee felt it was time to look for a citizens group to dig into these numbers, particularly people who may have backgrounds and expertise that would be useful in a discussion about how to rehabilitate and preserve this asset for the city. And so we've been soliciting applications per your direction and are bringing you the list of people who have applied so that you can consider whether you want to appoint them to this committee.

Great, thank you. So just a question. We said seven, no more than 11 total on the committee, including the two council members and heritage boarders that that's on top of.

My understanding was you weren't no longer contemplating that a council member would be part of the committee that you were appointing these folks to be the committee. There is language in the committee document that your intent is that this be a an open meeting held in a collaborative way with consensus building, not just among the committee, but with members of the public may be attending. So for those who've been with us a long time, I had took the instruction to be very similar to when we did the master planning for the parcel that now hosts the library. If you recall, that committee had, I think, 15 people on it, but there was often 30 people in the room. And everybody was participating, and I think that's probably how this would operate.

And you anticipate a staff facilitating it as opposed to a council member facilitating it?

That was my understanding from the direction. If the council wants to facilitate it, staff has no objection to that.

I'm just trying to remember what we decided a while ago.

Yeah, I think the concept was that it was going to be primarily, you know, the committee was going to figure out how they were going to organize themselves, that they wanted to elect a chair. If not, you know, the committee would be, all the meetings would be open to the public. And we want the committee to be sort of the liaison between the council and our community to get feedback. And, but we did not want them necessarily to be subject to the Brown Act because that's a very formal and restrictive way of running meetings. So they will be open public meetings, but they won't be Brown Act meetings. And we will have published agendas and, you know, People will be able to watch video recordings and we'll take meeting minutes, but again, it will be less formal than a formal Brown Act committee. But the hope is that we have a historic structures report, but I think a number of things that council has not had a chance to do, but... We need a use study or use analysis by staff in terms of what type of use do we want to see happen in this building? We obviously need to house our staff. How many square footage does our staff need? We obviously need city council chambers. But beyond that, what do we envision as a community, envision what the space is going to be? And then that the committee would have the opportunity to invite subject matter experts as they view necessary to help them. For instance, the public works director, or I'm sure if they wanted to talk to Page and Turnbull, I'm sure they could come and have meetings with Page and Turnbull to answer any questions about the historic structures report. They can invite a municipal bond advisor or a tax measures advisor. So, you know, we want to be able to empower the community to draw on the resources that it needs, but we really need a working group to go through. We have literally hundreds of comments, public comments on City Hall, and we need a methodical way for... people to go through the comments to evaluate and assess and figure out what can feasibly get incorporated into a plan and what can't.

So just to clarify, you're thinking it is an independent group that has staff helping guide some of it, not us at that point, or Heritage?

Right. I mean, I think, you know, I think we can start and kick them off and sort of say this is what we're hoping to get from them in terms of recommendations. I don't think it precludes us from going back. And if at any point, you know, there are touch points and they're reporting back to us and we want them to explore other, you know. further explore or analyze certain aspects of the project, we could definitely do that.

Legally, you're asking this group to provide recommendations and advice. You're not empowering them to make decisions. So the decisions will come back to the council and will occur at a council meeting.

But may I just ask a question? Because Mayor Andre, you did say that you would encourage this group to hire legal experts and get guidance from those types of people. Do we have a budget for that? Or how will they know what they're, you know... expenses can be, because those could cost us some significant amounts of money.

I think that comes to us to decide.

Yeah. Okay. So that would come back to us and they would ask or request, say they want to do a youth study to understand. Okay.

Yeah. Or city manager may have, we may have people on retainer who might be able to help

I was going to say what the mayor said. Most of what I think we envision, we probably already have all those folks under contract. Or we can do it in-house. At this point, for example, for a youth study, we have enough data that we've developed with the help of prior consulting work. that your staff can compile it. So we won't need to outsource that. We have a municipal advisor under contract. So that person's always available to us. So I see that being a key person that this committee would likely seek advice from. We have an attorney under contract already. So I think somebody in his firm could help us if we need that assistance. So I'm not sure that we'll need a lot of new resources. And if we do, we'll come back to council.

Okay. Well, I'm thrilled to see seven applications. And I'm really pleased with the quality of the individuals who's raised their hand to be on this. So I don't know how you want to proceed. Do you want to go name by name or how do you want to? Yeah. Do you have something to say?

Just brief clarification. So seven and how many are allowed? Did we say up to 11?

Yeah, we said seven to 11. We said seven to 11. We, got seven candidates or seven applications. Um, and I do, I agree with council member way. I think we got some really high quality, um, applicants who have really relevant backgrounds and experience that can help us, uh, think through our options, um, on city hall. So I, I don't know that we want to talk about every single person, but, um, I'm, um,

I was just really pleased to see that all of them and their applications reference what their individual professional skill set is. That reflected back to what we outlined is what we're looking for in the City Hall Committee for membership, which is having a background, if they could, in finance, business, real estate, architecture, sustainability, fundraising. And almost every applicant spoke to that. So I feel comfortable with accepting the pool.

Just a question. The sixth application, the person didn't put their name. I'm assuming that's Mr. Wagner because he's the only one. I think you just forgot to put your name on the top of it. So I just wanted to make sure we were looking at the right one.

Great. Good catch. Oh, I see. Okay. Okay. Great. And yes, I believe we have a number of the applicants here, either in the chamber or online. So I do want to thank everyone who came forward and put in an application. Like I said, I think we have a highly... The great thing about Larkspur is we have some really talented and dedicated people. you know, community members. I mean, it's just amazing. And also what really pleased me as well was everyone had a rationale for why they were interested in serving on this committee. They're, you know, how much they care about our community and what happens with our public assets and wanting to, you know, just continue public service and give back to our community and help shape um what our community looks like going forward so i thought that was really uh wonderful to read so i i would like also like to just move the entire pool of candidates forward into the committee

I just want to comment that I'm in favor of that as well, but not just because it's the easiest thing to do. I think they're all really qualified. And I just want to thank everybody who applied. I think it's a phenomenal pool of people, and I am looking forward to putting this in their hands and getting their feedback on this. So thank you.

So should we do public comment first before we move all that?

We should. I would like to invite any members of the public who would like to make a comment on this item to please come forward. Seeing none in the chamber. All right. Anybody online?

I'm looking for any raise hands from our Zoom audience members and there's no public comment.

Okay, great. We'll close public comment and we'll bring it back to council.

Yeah, I'll just add the same sentiment that the volunteerism, the skills, and also the need. I spent some time this summer thinking, what are we going to do with this place? So I very much appreciate seven more good minds being put to use here. So yeah, I think the whole pool looks good to me.

And I'll just echo all of my council members' comments on the quality of our community, the education, the eagerness to be involved. We are very fortunate to have seven people step forward with the right skill sets. And yeah, I'm definitely ready to move forward with the whole pool.

Wonderful. I don't know. Do we need a formal motion or do we just, is that enough direction?

Well, I know that you feel they need to vote to appoint. The city attorney says okay.

Okay. All right. Well, congratulations to all the applicants. And we will reach out in terms of organizing an initial meeting, a kickoff meeting, a kickoff meeting. And we very much look forward to all of you serving on this committee. So thank you. All right, so now we'll move on to item 8.3, and this is a discussion on the Tidal Marsh Restoration Mitigation Project for the Bonaire Road Mitigations Project. Here we are. Welcome, Mr. Skinner, our Director of Public Works.

Julian Skinner, Public Works Director.

We do have a request before you tonight to authorize a reservation agreement for the purchase of mitigation credits. I've been here 10 years. I haven't come before you with such a request before. So we put a little presentation together to show you how we got here, what it means for now and for moving forward. um so this is related to the bonair bridge mitigation uh projects which were related to the bonair bridge replacements is the clicker connected okay Next slide. So the specific request before you tonight is that you approve a reservation agreement. The amount of the agreement is $115,650. That amount is included in your adopted capital improvement program for the mitigation project. It is a federally funded project. So 88.53% of that request will come reimbursed from Caltrans. The other is local funds. This reservation agreement represents 25% of an ultimate mitigation bank credit purchase that we're looking to move forward with. So what this is related to is, as I mentioned, the Bonner Bridge Mitigations Project, which, as the city looked to replace the Bonner Bridge some years ago through that environmental process of replacing the bridge, the city worked with regulatory agencies to get all the permits that required the bridge. bridge has piers in the creek and spans over the creek, and so permits were required from the Regional Water Quality Control Board, the Army Corps of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife, and the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. As typically happens in these projects, when you're installing new infrastructure, it could have impacts on the environment, and so permit conditions are created for you to mitigate the impact of your project on the environment in some projects you do mitigations directly on site and they get worked into your new project but it's difficult to do that with a bridge because you're dealing with a new concrete structure over the creek and there's not a lot of opportunity there to offset some of the impacts so these off-site mitigation projects came from that process there were a handful of them um and we started working on them as soon as the bridge was finished construction we started working on the mitigations and so um they included um replacement of two docks um on cordomadera creek some storm water improvements on magnolia and then the subject of this mitigation bank request um is replacement of some tidal marsh over at piper park so One of the impacts of the bridge replacement was that it displaced some tidal marsh. And so there was no viable location near the bridge. And so the closest location to restore tidal marsh was identified through this process as in Piper Park and specifically at the location of where the city's dog park was at that time, because it was identified that at one point that was tidal marsh. and so this project was created and folded into these federally funded mitigation projects to remove the old dog park and turn it back into marshland um and then wrapped into that project was also because we were moving the old dog park the project included building a new park in piper park so that's how we got the new um dog park This is a map that shows all of those locations. So the star here is working out is the Bonner Bridge. And then we have the five mitigation sites here, the docks on the kind of the north half and then the green projects. The new dog park, Magnolia, Stormwater, they were all completed. So they're finished and that part of the project was closed out. The subject of this request is this restored tidal marsh. This is the one portion of the mitigation projects that we were not able to complete. Here is a blow up of that area. So the yellow kind of highlights the footprint up at the top left. That's the old dog park that the plan was to remove the old dog park, turn it back into marsh. The bottom right is where we identified the new dog park would go. And then the parking lots highlighted because because this was a federal aid project, we were required to make some ADA projects throughout the site. So we made some ADA improvements to some of the parking spaces in that location, too. And here again is just a blow up. We're focusing now on the old dog park area. And so the yellow outline here is what was the old dog park. And then there's kind of a black dash line that goes a little bit above it and a little bit to the left. That's the kind of the extent of the fill that was placed that covered up the old marsh that was to be removed with this project. So, as we completed some of the other works in the mitigations projects we started work on removing the old dog park we built the new dog park first so that we wouldn't go without a dog park for a while so we built a new dog park when it was up and running. Then we started demolishing the old dog park. We had excavators out there, and they started pulling up material that did not look like dirt, tires, pipe, pieces of wood. We said, this is not really what was in our contract. Let's figure out what's going on. And so we talked with Marin County Environmental Health Department, who we work with a lot in Piper Park, because we know that – Hall Middle School and the Central Marin Police Authority building were both built on top of a former landfill. And so they go and they do inspections at those sites and we coordinate with them on those inspections. They came out to the dog park and said, this is probably part of the old landfill, too. You can't dig this up. You've got to stop work and we've got to figure out what to do here. So. We had a series of meetings with Marin County Environmental Health Department. They're assigned as the lead enforcement agency for this specific old landfill by CalRecycle. So CalRecycle is responsible for landfills active and old in California. And in this particular location, they've delegated that authority to Marin County Health. That's why we're working with the the county through this. When this happened, we immediately notified the four regulatory agencies that had permitted the bridge project and conditioned us to do this marsh restoration and let them know we'd run into a condition where we had to stop construction and we were trying to figure out how to move forward. And so we were kind of at a standstill. One of the unknowns here is that the extent of the Piper Park landfill, it was not known and it's still not known. So it was not understood that the landfill actually went out and was under the old dog park. So that's one of the things that we were running into. And some of the first exercises we did was to try and understand if we were really in the old landfill or not. And then the County Health Department ultimately decided based on the material that's here, we're going to proceed as though this is part of the old landfill. So that requires a whole process with them of putting in proposals, testing the material, and coming up with a plan for how to make sure you don't impact the environment with whatever you're going to touch in the old landfill and make sure that you cover up the old landfill appropriately. Um, so as this dragged on, this was in about October of 2023. Uh, we realized this is going to take some time to figure out winter's coming. We've got this area exposed. We're right next to the marsh. Um, so we did get approval to cover the area, um, with, um, impervious material. So we covered it with clay so that when the tide came up, we got the winter rains. Uh, we wouldn't have, uh, the, the rains and the Creek washing the, uh, landfill material into the marsh. And so from that point, we coordinated with Marin County Health to try and figure out what we needed to do specifically at that location based on what We had conversations with all the permitting agencies to let them know what we were looking at, what our issues were, and that the scope of this project was probably going to get bigger or was going to have to change. We were not going to be able to create tidal channels and cut them into an old landfill. That just was not going to be a feasible goal. solution. Water and landfills, you don't want them to mix. So this tidal marsh restoration was basically going to let the tides come into that area twice a day and take sediment in, take sediment out and let plants grow and thrive. And so having that closer over a landfill just was not in any of our permits and wasn't feasible. The other party in this conversation was Caltrans. So Caltrans administer federal highway funds, including the federal bridge highway program that paid for 88% of the bridge and the mitigation projects. So we're working with all of these agencies. What do we need to do at the excavation site? What do we need to do to amend these permits so that we can fulfill our obligation based on we've already built the bridge and we need to close the bridge project out and we can't um do that on paper until we fulfill all the mitigations and then talking with Caltrans who are funding it and if we do something different other than um the wetlands restoration here can it still qualify for the federal funding so we're going around in circles it was an iterative process to chat through all and say if we do this can we get paid for it if we do this can we amend a permit If we do this, what does that mean for the landfill restoration? So a lot of coordination with all of these agencies. We first look to see, okay, this site is close to the landfill. Is there something else nearby that's similar, and so we discovered that the reason they landed on this location back 10 or so more years prior when the project was designed during the permitting is because there weren't really any other good sites. We only identified three other potential sites that were on Corta Madera Creek that could possibly work as expanded tidal marsh, but two of them were not city property. And they're adjacent to berms where it would be problematic to cut channels through to let the water go through. So those were deemed unfeasible. And the third was not quite big enough. We have a certain size that this tidal marsh needs to be based on the impact at the bridge. So We landed on we really don't have a feasible alternative site nearby to create another marshland. So we started talking about other alternatives. And in addition to this, we have to keep in mind that we still need to undo or remedy the excavation that took place at the old dog park site. So we have kind of two challenges is one is we have to meet our mitigation requirement. We have to do an alternate mitigation somewhere. And then also we have to leave behind the old dog park site in a condition that the county environmental health will sign off on and say, you've done what you need to do to protect the old landfill or the environment from the old landfill. One of the challenges is I talk about a lot of the stuff that happened 10 years ago. That's how long it takes for a lot of these processes to work out. the thought of trying to come up with another title marsh creation somewhere else and starting the design process, the environmental review of that site, you can see that we started looking at this project taking a lot longer to close out. And so we started looking more at mitigation bank. And so these are pretty common in the construction world. If you have So the first scenario I mentioned was you have a project that has a mitigation and you're able to mitigate that on site. Like you build bioswales into your street or whatever, and you're able to do your environmental mitigation right on site. The next category is I can't do it on site, but I have an offsite nearby and I can do that, which is what we did with the dock. and the stormwater cleaning on Magnolia. So it was an environmental mitigation, not right at the project site, but an offsite mitigation that the city did the project for. The next level of mitigation is we don't have a city project that we can do that has a direct relation to this impact, but somebody else does. And so we can pay them and we can participate in their project and get credit for having paid for that. And then that will complete our mitigation requirement under this project. It's actually pretty common. And so we started looking at mitigation banks. We did talk with the permitting agencies in Caltrans to make sure if we switch into a mitigation bank and we have to pay money for it, will the federal bridge program pay for it? And they said, yes. If it's triggered by your permits and your permitting agencies all say, yes, that's a like mitigation, then it can qualify for the federal funding.

Julian, can I ask you a quick question? Yes. Who is the party on the opposite side? So if we say, hey, we want to do something different, does this fulfill our obligation? Who says yes or no? Is that the Federal Bridge Authority?

No. Well, to a degree, yes. So... Because this is federally funded, this project has a NEPA clearance. And so Caltrans, which is the National Environmental Protection Agency Authority Act, which is similar to you hear a lot about a CEQA in California, but on federal aid projects, you also have NEPA. So Caltrans are the delegated NEPA agent for this project. So they have to sign off from an environmental standpoint and say, yes, your project still meets NEPA with the mitigation bank. So that's part of a Caltrans approval. The other Caltrans approval is they need to say, yes, we will pay for it because it still falls under your bridge project. But then all those other four permitting agencies also have to sign off on it and say, yes, we will amend your permit, and we're just going to strike out title marks replacement of Piper Park and put, in this case, Halo Ranch Mitigation Bank. And in some cases, that's staff, and in some cases, these permitting agencies have boards or commissions. So it kind of varies. But yeah, there's a series of... of boxes to check, and that's why we've been working on this for two years.

Thank you for explaining that. Appreciate that.

Thank you. I do want to note, just to get these permits originally was a two-year negotiation. So on both ends, this is not an easy process. Go ahead.

So I think I was the only one here that was here 10 or 12 years ago with your predecessor when we were dealing with all these things. But the amount of regulatory agencies required to do anything is astounding to me. For this one small project, I believe, the Bonaire Bridge replacement, it's extraordinary amount of regulatory agencies. So Appreciate how much you're jumping through those hoops. From what I understand, I mean, that Piper Park was our city dump, and nobody really mapped where all the garbage went. So, I mean, it was not a surprise. I think this was a surprise that we found this much debris in there, but now we have to deal with it. And it sounds like the alternative is to cover back up the debris and Am I correct with this? Cover back up and... If I may... We're not done yet?

No, but if I may, Madam Councilman, I'd really like the public record to correctly reflect that while the city back in the 50s started an informal and probably illegal dump, the official and formal and legal dump was run by and shut down by the county. And that's important, so I'd like it to be on the record that it was not the city that shut down the dump. Okay.

But it was... Long before our time, but it was also a process where there wasn't, you know, this is the designated area where all of the debris material will go. We discovered when we dug up the dirt, they dumped it over here too. So I just want everybody to know that this was an unexpected calamity in many ways because there was no documentation of exactly where every dump truck dumped out the garbage. But my question is, for that area that we've excavated, toxic materials of any sort that they have, or are we to that point?

I mean, I, did I just open a can of worms, but no, I mean, that's, that will be part of the process of the process County for the closeout. So yes, we've been out there. We surveyed, we've tested and that'll all be run through the County and they'll take a look at the material composition. We have a consultant who's working with us who will recommend how to properly close out the excavated area. Okay. Yep.

Julian, I'm sorry. One more question. Just out of curiosity. Hypothetically, we say, yeah, we're not going to do that. It's too hard and we already built the bridge and we can't find any place to do this. So do we get fined?

Give the money back.

I mean, they're not going to make us tear the bridge down. What happens if we just aren't able to do it?

Yes. So some of these regulatory agencies do have the authority to fine. We'd also probably never be able to do another project in the city that required regulatory agency approval. Again, if we didn't follow through on this one. And yeah, there are some funding strings that are attached to completing your mitigation. I won't say Caltrans will ask for $30 million back, but they may start asking questions.

Okay. Just curious. Thank you.

So, yeah, so mitigation banks, so basically people purposely build these, they create marshlands or stream habitat, there's different kinds of mitigation, because they have land where they can do it, and they know that people will pay them because it's a commodity that people are in need of finding for their projects. This is common practice. And so we looked around. There's a couple of different mitigation banks. And the one that we identified as being the closest match is Halo Ranch that's up in Petaluma. And so the other thing that these mitigation banks do is they go through their own environmental and through their own permitting process. to construct their wetlands or their stream habitat or whatever they do. And they work with the same regulatory agencies. So when we go to the water board and we say we want to buy mitigation credits for Halo Ranch, they know what Halo Ranch is because they permitted it. And when they permitted it, in this case, they permitted it as water. available title credits for a quarter madera creek marsh so a lot of this work has already taken place behind the scenes they've done all the hard work they did their environmental documents um to create halo ranch and now they're out there for people that need mitigation to purchase Um, and again, this is, they've already got all their permits and, but we have our permits for the title marsh. So the permitting part of this is we need to amend our permits just with a strikeout. And in addition, that says, um, the permitting, the mitigation for our project is that we purchased halo, uh, ranch credits. That's how the. kind of how the process works, but there is still, there's back and forth with all of the regulatory agencies to make sure that we've got the right amount of credits at Halo Ranch. So Halo Ranch, I want to say there's about 40 acres or so. They're doing it in phases, so I think they built about 40 in the first phase. They've got less than an acre left. We need about a quarter of an acre. By the time we get the yes okay from all of the permitting agencies, the Halo Ranch credits will probably be sold out and then we'll have to wait for their next phase. But they do offer this reservation program, which is the agreement that's before you tonight where you pay a 25% deposit on credits and then that reserves them for you for five years. Hopefully it doesn't take us five years to finalize all the permits, but that's the process that we can go through. So that saves us from having to buy pay the full cost of the permits now and then run into a wrinkle with one of the resource agencies and we have to change something. So we can pay 25% deposit, which is the $115,650. It reserves those credits for us. It's non-refundable, but they are sellable. So if we end up going a different route, we can probably turn around and resell the credits.

And we should be getting reimbursed for this at some point.

Yes, this is eligible for a Caltrans reimbursement. 88% of it, yes. Same as the bridge.

And I'm sorry, just one last question. Is for Petaluma, is this just kind of like a windfall that they have something that needs to be done and we're just like paying to do something there?

No, it's not the city of Petaluma. It's a private company that builds this infrastructure and to help the environment. They're building marshes of streams and it costs a lot of money to build it. And they're finding people to pay for it here and there because they're buying the credit. So it's, and I don't know the full specifics about whether it's a nonprofit that's doing this or if it's a company that this is how they make their money. But this is basically their purpose built for people to purchase. Thank you.

julian can i ask a quick question um you mentioned um about putting down a deposit to reserve the credit uh and then you said we would have to go through the permitting the regulatory permitting agencies to adjust our permits to reflect that we're now doing our mitigation project at halo at Petaluma River, wherever the Petaluma Marsh Wildlife Area through Halo Ranch Mitigation Bank, which, if any, of the regulatory agencies do you believe might be a hurdle or blocker to moving this process forward?

it's hard to say we've been dealing with staff level conversations. And as I mentioned before, some of these have to go to their boards or to their commissions to get approved. So it's, you know, staff can't make a hundred percent commitment. But specifically I believe there, there was another mitigation bank that was more favorable to one of the four agencies, but three of them preferred this one. So this is the one that we have gone with. The fourth one has used this before, but their preference was another one that they were more involved with. So this is just part of the negotiation. We didn't want to have to buy two. So we've gone with the one that three of the four were directly involved with its permitting process.

Interesting. So there is a slight probability that one could reject this altogether, which would essentially kill the deal.

It wouldn't kill the deal. It would check off three of the four boxes and then we would individually need to negotiate with that one agency. What is it? Okay, this bank didn't work for you. What is it that you would like?

Interesting. Okay.

And then hopefully that doesn't cost another $450,000. But typically what they instead do is they say, okay, we'll take this mitigation bank, but it's not quite enough. Can you do a little bit of something somewhere else too? Okay. So that's typically what happens. Okay. But we'll know when we go through that process.

I see. Okay. Thank you.

So alternatives, like I said, we could pursue something similar to what we were going to do. Let's go and create a new tidal marsh somewhere. Really expensive. Start the whole process over again. Environmental review, permits, and... The other complicating factor in this that I keep mentioning is Caltrans. So this is a federal aid project, which is good in the sense that 88.5% of the costs get paid for through the federal bridge program. But it is federal, and so it subjects everything we do to a lot of paperwork and to NEPA as well as CEQA. So whatever project we would want to do to take care of this mitigation is still going to have the federal funding, the federal process, and the NEPA review attached to it. So that's why we think going to a mitigation project that already has all those boxes checked. is the best course of action. And we don't really want to be looking for, let's create another project that's still gonna have federal aid ties to it. It'll cost a lot more money and the progress, it'll take a lot longer to complete. And then closing up the former dog park site, the excavation we did is also part of the federal project until we put it back the way it was. And we get a sign off from environmental health and all the permits acknowledge that we undid what we did. So I know I get asked all the time, what are we going to do with that area? Well, for now, what we need to do is put it back the way it was like we weren't there. then we can close the permit out. And if there's conversations about what happens at that site in the future, that really, my recommendation would be that's a completely separate process. We don't tie it to the federal funding. We don't tie it to any of the open permits. We closed the existing, the old dog park site down, put it back where it was, get the permits checked off, get the NEPA checked off, get the Caltrans federal process checked off. And then if we want to have conversations about what we do at the old dog park, we can start fresh with a new process and we're not tied to some of these processes that have been going on for 10, 15 years. So that was the last slide. So again, the request tonight is that you authorize us to execute this reservation agreement for the $115,000. And then we'll come back to you in the future when we're further along in the process, give you an update on the permits, and then probably be looking at the final payment to close out the purchase if you allow us to move forward tonight.

Wow, wonderful. Okay, well, thank you for that very thorough presentation, and obviously thank you for all the work you've put into this. I mean, what an ordeal this has been. Does any member of council have any other questions right now for Julian?

Yeah, thank you, Julian. That was really comprehensive and very informative. Appreciate all the work. The deposit of $116,000, is that refundable?

It is not refundable, but it is transferable. So if another agency needs a mitigation credit, we can sell that to them. OK, but we can't we can't give it. We can't say to Halo Ranch, we don't want this anymore. Give us our one hundred fifteen thousand dollars back. But let's say if some city elsewhere in another county says we have a mitigation need, they go to Halo Ranch and they say, do you have any credits left? And they say, no, we don't. But Larkspur bought some and they don't need them anymore. You might be able to buy them from Larkspur.

I just want to add. There are always agencies that need mitigation credits. So this is low risk in terms of our ability to sell the credit if we need to.

Okay. And it's 100% transferable or?

It's subject to negotiation. It's how bad somebody wants it. I don't know what the record is of what these have transferred for in the past, but.

Okay. And Julian, just out of curiosity, how did they come up with the price for this? Is it, they just set a price? It's going to be $462,000.

I mean, they have costs for, they went through a lengthy process. They had to go through all the permitting. They may have had land purchase price. So they have a project cost. And at the end of the day, they have whatever money they wanted to have left for their nonprofit or for their profit, whatever it was. And then they back calculate and they come up with a cost per acre that works with their model.

Thank you. So if this is approved tonight, we haven't gotten to that point, what's the timeline? Some of the concern that we've received in public comment is the mound of dirt covered with a tarp and wondering where, if this is approved tonight, is there a timeline we can give the community about how that would be mitigated?

I don't have a definitive timeline because some of the authorization and the approvals are with outside agencies. And so we've got to work with them. I know the county is anxious to have this resolved as we are. So I'm hopeful that if we lock in and we're going to do the mitigation bank, that we can work with them to quickly identify issues. how we're going to restore the old dog park. Some of the other permitting agencies, it will depend what their schedule is and when their boards and commissions meet and final processes like that. My hope is six months, but this has gone on for a while and a lot of the things are just not going to be under our control.

Do you think the impending super El Nino may have an impact on that of the excavation site that we need to be concerned about until this is resolved?

Um, not that I can think of. It's already at the edge of the marsh, and so it's already being impacted.

By tidal rise?

By, yeah, by tides. You know, it may, we may get tides that are up higher on that parcel than they were before, but everything right now is covered. It's temporarily covered. It's not the ultimate finish, but, and we do go out there and we have to do inspections to make sure that everything's still covered, so.

Okay, great. Well, thank you for that. If no more questions from the council members, I'd like to open this up for public comment. Are there any members of the public who would like to comment? Please come forward. Yes, please come forward to the podium. And you have three minutes. Welcome.

The number nine boardwalk one for 46 years. I brought two houses on the boardwalk up the creek and in city. I watched this bit of a fiasco out there from my porch when they brought in a pile of trucks of dirt. I knew the project was over. They covered it with plastic. The plastic deteriorates in the sun, blows into the marsh. The sea turtles eat the plastic. So that might have been a great thing. It's been ugly. Orange fences, black fences. All this plastic was brought in and left there. I'm certainly interested in the clapper rails, the great blue herons, and all the wonderful birds that we have in the marsh. And all the fish we have in the month. But it's also been a horrible eyesore. We've had a lot of fiascos around the creek, around the marsh, since I have been there. Some of them just really lately. But that's been a big one. Last time they replaced the plastic, they actually vacuumed the ground. the short hill. So it's been a fiasco. Hopefully it could be at least returned to where it was when the dog park was done. Taking out the dog park, they didn't even cut the fences off of the ground. They bent the crudely done project and the dirt came mostly probably from the plastic field that was excavated to make a bath for the rubber tires of plastic for that sports field behind the school and so it can drain stuff. One other little pile of dirt that has been forming and growing continually corner, before you go out to where the dock used to be, there's a pile there that just keeps growing slowly. And it's greens, it's gravel, it's dirt, and it just slowly pushes out into the marsh. So, you know, things like this, I wonder whether these credits will keep your feet dry when the tide rises. This is like clean coal, folks. You know, come on. So hopefully something can be done. It's been unattractive for years and bad for nature and bad for the city. Hopefully something will happen. You cannot dig in the edge of the bay without finding tires and without finding mercury. The mercury is still coming down from the gold rush days. And when I was a kid, all tires were thrown into the bay. The bay was bobbing with tires in the 40s. loaded up to the shoreline, and that's where they ended up. I, years ago, did some cleaning up there and picked out sliding glass doors, lots of tires, and a commercial dryer drum from the local drive-by. And I just piled them up on the street in the park. So there you go. Great. Thank you. Also very frightened of the fact that you guys now want to cover that with a skate park.

Yeah. Yeah.

People that use it will be fucking in our parking lot. The large square boardwalk constructed and now rents from the school for $60,000 a year.

Yeah.

Great. Thank you very much for your public comment. Thank you. Is there anyone else in the chamber who would like to make a public comment? Thank you for staying to comment on this.

Isn't it possible to clean up the garbage underneath there and take away any toxic waste or whatever? And I'm sure that would be way too expensive or something, but it just does seem like... We are making a mess that we expect our descendants to clean up and our ancestors and left us kind of mess and should we clean it up rather than just. So what would it cost to explore is it really that toxic under there and and it be another landfill. In a safer place.

So can I respond?

Yeah. Okay. So first of all, I'm sorry, the comments have to come to the council. We can't ask questions directly to staff. And just to respond to that, what I heard was that we are in the middle of a very complex process. project right now with all the environmental conditions and different agencies that have to approve this. So the recommendation is that we leave it just for now until we finish the current project, which we kind of owe because of the bridge. We have certain things we have to do and get that all done. And then once we have that done and we have all the federal agencies, we've paid our debt to them, basically, and we're clean, then we come back and revisit this and see, okay, can we clean this up? How much is it going to cost? What do we do with it? You know, all that stuff. So I think that's a very legitimate question and a question that I would like to address. I just, what I think I heard was we need to do this other stuff first. That's all.

Earlier you talked about flood control. And the more large that's marshy is the less water that's going to be instead of some. So that's my view. And thank you so much for explaining all of that. It's the first time I've heard that kind of a whole story. So thanks.

Thank you for your comment.

Thank you.

Likewise.

Okay, anybody else in the chamber who would like to comment? Yes, please come forward. Hi, Jillian. Hello.

My name is Jillian Schultz. I'm obviously a resident of Larkspur. I'm also a biologist and ecologist. And I came to comment on this because while the last point was good, like maybe it's not going to become something else, it almost the possibility of restoring it. But a quick survey on my cell phone during this found there are numerous projects around California where municipalities have had garbage dumps in marshes that they've excavated out and then restored the marshes. So it's very possible, even if it's something that happens in the future. Second, marshes are known to be extremely good at greenhouse gas capture. They are carbon sinks, especially Cattail Marsh. And they're even better than, say, like our redwood forests or many of our other terrestrial ecosystems. So they're going to hold that carbon in place. Third, marshes. We destroyed 90% of the marshes on the San Francisco Bay estuary. in the last 120 years. And the ecosystem service that marshes perform, which you just mentioned, was that they are nature's flood control. They slow the flow. They slow down that tidal surge that comes in that when combined with a high water rain event, creates the massive flooding that can be so destructive. So I understand the need to solve this problem now for the mitigation, but I do think that for the future, what does need to be considered is restoring that marsh and any other places that can be identified around the city because basically we're screwed. I mean, I've been telling students for 30, 20 years ago, I was like, we can still do something. Now we're at the mitigation point. And yeah, so we need to figure out ways to mitigate them now. Thank you.

Thank you so much for your public comment. Is there anyone else in the chamber who would like to comment? I see none. Let's go online. Anybody online?

Looking for any raised hands from our Zoom audience members. And there's no public comment.

Okay, great. So we'll close public comment and bring it back to the council. Any other last comments or questions? Okay. Okay. Would anyone like to move this?

Sure. I will move to the adoption of Resolution 63-26. Is there a second? I'll second it.

Great. All those in favor, say aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Great. Motion passes. Wonderful. All right. Thank you, Mr. Skinner, for your excellent presentation and for all your work on getting us to this point. We are very close. It feels like we are... That's like the second yard line. So thank you for getting us there. All right. So now we're going to move on to item 8.4, which is a public workshop on Cal Green building standards and the FlexPath program. All right. So we are going to have our community services director, Mr. Mogenson, and also our chief building official, Mr. Avila here. Thank you very much.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the Council. You may remember we talked about the California Building Code on March 30th. So we're going to be growing on that last workshop that we had on that date tonight. So just kind of a big overview. You know, our building code is constantly evolving. It's a very complicated document. It takes up, I think, four or five hours. with feet of width on our chief building officials bookshelf. It's a very complicated document and it is updated every three years, although they have done some minor updates every 18 months in recent years. There are two main state agencies involved with overseeing the building. The California Building Standards Commission and the California Energy Commission. They both have different roles in their administration of the building standards that we apply to our building permits here in the city of Larkspur, as every city does in California. And as I mentioned, our building code is updated on a three-year cycle. I'm gonna give you a brief history of CalGreen. CalGreen was first created in 2008 in response to AB 32. You might remember the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. Originally, CalGreen was a voluntary building reach code, and it later became the baseline mandatory statewide building code on January 1st, 2011. So what first started out as A REACH code later became the standard. The current version of the CalGreen code, the 2025 CalGreen took effect on January 1st this year. We presented about that back in March 30th. That is the current version of our building code. When Cal Green became the baseline building code, there of course, once you make the reach code a baseline code, you need a new reach code. So they created two new optional reach codes that went beyond the mandatory requirements. A reach code, for those of you who don't know, is a local building code that's adopted by ordinance that exceeds the state's baseline building standards. Cities originally adopted these reach codes to help fulfill local climate action plans or other policy goals related to AB 32. Because as you remember, the state basically put that responsibility on all the different jurisdictions in California and said, you're going to help us reduce carbon emissions. And so that's why cities were looking at potentially adopting reach codes. It's one of the options that they could do is make those reach codes mandatory. So CalGreen decided, okay, we're going to create some new reach codes, and we're going to create two different tiers. We're going to have a Tier 1 that's more stringent than the baseline building code, and then we're going to have Tier 2, which is a much higher standard for achieving energy efficiency in building construction. But with each three-year building code cycle, the elements of tier one typically become the baseline building code. In other words, it was sort of like a crystal ball, like, hey, this is what's going to happen in the next update. And that's proven true by and large with most of the three-year cycles. So what we see right now in our 2025 CalGreen code was what was a reach code in the 2022 code. But CalGreen has evolved over time as a means for the state of California to implement its energy efficiency policy goals, because AB 32 applies to them as well. That is also a policy of the state of California. And this is a slide you might remember from our March 30th meeting where we talked about, you know, what's the difference between the 2025 Cal Green Code and the Tier 1 codes. I'm not going to go through all this, but I just want to keep it in here as a reference in case we want to talk about it. But as you know, our current building code requires EV charging. We now have energy efficiency and electrification is now the baseline. And we have now under the current 2025 Cal Green Code, we have an energy budget. So you have to work within that energy budget. And if you do something that takes up a lot of energy, like using natural gas, you're going to blow out your budget and you're not going to be able to do anything else under the current building code. So again, this is from our last council meeting. And I'm going to jump ahead to the next slide. We may come back to this. So one of the challenges with Tier 1 and Tier 2 is they do increase building costs because they require higher performance building materials, more advanced equipment, and specialized design work. So some cities are very hesitant to adopt these Tier 1 or even Tier 2 reach codes because Tier 2, of course, is even more costly for builders. And so some cities were looking for some alternatives, some kind of a Goldilocks where it's not quite tier one, but it's not the baseline. And there were a few programs out there in California. The one that was most popular in Marin County was the FlexPath program. And that was a way to implement a local reach code that would be less costly or prescriptive. So it had like a point system that you could get points for doing certain things. And that all got thrown into chaos with the California Restaurant Association versus City of Berkeley decision, which, as you may recall, in 2023 required everyone to undo their building codes. And they said, well, you can no longer ban natural gas. You have to allow people to use natural gas. And so that was a pretty disruptive force with everyone's reach codes, because a lot of cities had adopted a reach code that ban natural gas and suddenly they had to go back to the drawing board and redo their codes. And that was true for the state of California as well. And so California went back and looked at Cal Green and the 2025 version was crafted around that court decision. And remember, I just mentioned to you about the energy budget. Well, that was the solution that they found to get around that natural gas ban. OK, so courts say we can't ban natural gas, but we're going to make it really, really hard for you to install natural gas appliances through this energy budget methodology. And that's what we have in place today. That's what applies to all of our building permits. There is a substantial penalty for the use of natural gas. And then, of course, we had another wrench thrown into the system last year. And you may remember AB130. AB130 really, really put a wrench into the building codes once again. AB 130 came out of the LA fires. You probably remember that was a really hot topic in the assembly after that happened the following year. AB 130, what it did is it established a six-year moratorium on state and local changes to the residential building code standards. And I should say it's a six-year moratorium for local agencies. It's a three-year limit moratorium for the state. So the state now can't come up with a building code update every 18 months. Sometimes they would sign out a bulletin saying, yeah, we're going to make these changes. They said, no, you can't do that anymore. You've got to stick to that three-year cycle if you're the state. But for cities, we're not allowed to do a reach code now because of AB-130. There were some narrow exceptions in the bill, very narrow exceptions that were written in for emergencies, fire safety, accessibility, or alignment with approved general plans. There was a lot of discussion when the bill came out because people were looking at those exceptions that were written into the bill. But... To date, no California jurisdictions have gotten approved by the California Building Standards Commissions for those. They have tried, none have been approved to date, even the general plan path. And this applies to other neighboring cities in Marin County, with the exception of Corte Madera. Corte Madera is the only jurisdiction in Marin County that has a valid approved reach code in place. This is for their FlexPath program, which applies to residential remodels over 500 square feet. And that system is actually still in place because they got approval by the California Building Standards Commission before the AB 130 moratorium took effect. So they are the only jurisdiction in this county that has a California Building Standards Commission approved reach code that's in place right now. None of the other cities have been able to do that. They have tried. They are all waiting to hear back. They have submitted documentation. They have not gotten a response. And this is true statewide. Nobody's heard anything from the CSBC yet. The California... CBSC. So... The whole purpose of AB 130 was the state said, we need to align our building codes across jurisdictions. We want to overcome this patchwork system because if you're a builder, every city had a different building code. If you have a different reach code than the next city over and you're a contractor, that was a pretty confusing environment. And so there were a number of reasons why they wanted to do that. They wanted to bring everybody on the same page when it came to the building code. The widely varying building codes are seen as having implications for housing feasibility, affordability, and rebuilding efforts, and they thought, well, if every builder's on the same page, it'll make it a little easier for them to build. So where are we now? Well, the current regulatory landscape for... And by the way, AB 130 only applies to residential building codes. So the residential structure doesn't apply to commercial. But the regulatory landscape is completely different from where it was just a year ago. We've... We've seen no movement on those cities that have attempted to get approval for a local reach code. It hasn't happened. The CSBC has yet to approve any cities' reach codes. And so everybody's in a wait-and-see position. They haven't heard anything. They haven't seen anything. Nothing's been posted out of the CSBC. So that moratorium, nobody's going anywhere right now. You know, what are we doing as staff? Well, we're always monitoring the situation. We're paying attention. We're going to workshops. We're watching this very closely. But we're not anticipating any movement on this. We haven't seen any for the entire year so far. So we're not expecting anything.

What do you do? Where do we go from here?

Well, what are our options? The state has taken the lead from cities. For so long, since AB 32, cities were encouraged and motivated to take the lead with these efforts. As you know, buildings are a major, major source of carbon emissions. So it's like, we got to take this into our own hands. But now the state is taking that lead with this moratorium on the building code. There is that. The current Cal Green code, as we talked about in our March 30th presentation, is very robust. It does a lot of the things that we identify in our climate action plan that we had goals are now already baseline mandatory building code requirements, such as electrification. That is now the baseline. Electric hot water heaters, that sort of thing. What we've seen, even in the current 2025 CalGreen building code, is we have seen some effort to focus on existing structures. As you know, we're very concerned about our existing built environment and bringing those up to code. We want to see them be more energy efficient. We want to see our carbon reductions. We've seen some movement in that in the current building code. So, for example, the current Cal Green building code has very stringent requirements when you replace your HVAC system. You cannot just go out and buy an off-the-shelf HVAC system or put any old thing in. You have to put in a system that is much more energy efficient than what you had before. And that's now mandatory in the building code for an existing structure. And we anticipate we're going to see more of that in the next building code cycle. We think we're going to be seeing the state say, you know what? We're very efficient. We're seeing kind of a law of diminishing returns for new structures. Let's focus where we can get the most bang for your buck. We think that the state is going to be focusing on those remodels in the future building codes. So we're anticipating that in the next building code cycle.

And so with that moratorium, what other options do we have?

Well, AB 130 didn't prohibit us from putting a local reach code on commercial development. It didn't prohibit anyone from doing a voluntary green building program, but those both have some challenges. If we wanted to have a commercial reach code in Larkspur, And most cities tend to be hesitant to do that sort of thing. It can be a hindrance on economic development. When builders are out there, they do things on very, very thin margins. And we are in a pretty unpredictable and inflationary market for building materials and equipment. That still persists. It's very difficult to get transformers right now if you need a power transformer. Anything that's imported, whether it's from Canada or whatever else, there's lots of challenges with building materials. So it's become very difficult for builders to price things out six months, a year down the road. So if you have a really, really big project, you're thinking of that construction taking a year, maybe two years. I don't have anything like that in Larkspur at the moment, but that's what you're thinking about as a construction manager. And we've only had one eligible new commercial building since 2024. We didn't have any last year. The next one that we might see could be hypothetically like the Mount Tam Racquet Club because that's a fully commercial building. But we just don't see a lot of solely brand new commercial development in Larkspur. We just had one. I think it's the building on Magnolia. There's a little shop up on North Magnolia. I think that's the one it was. And anytime you do a local commercial reach code, any kind of reach code, you have to have resources for setup and implementation, plan checks, whatever inspections you've got to do. And we typically do cost recovery on everything here in the city. So you have to cover for the cost recovery for increased plan checks. And those costs are usually passed on to applicants. We don't subsidize those. That's how we do our plan checks. And then the other option under this current moratorium is voluntary green building programs. And a voluntary green building program really just depends on, the success really depends on the value of the subsidy being provided because, you know, we are a business. These are transactions. Our customers at the counter are contractors, are developers. And so if you're going to offer a subsidy that's going to make a difference for them, you know, they're going to look at what's in it, what's the cost benefit for me. You know, that's really what you have to look at. Our permits are transactional, so what's... Is this going to make up for the cost of me doing this if it's a voluntary program? And we don't have a lot of resources to offer in return. Participation for a voluntary program may be limited. There really are no examples of a voluntary green building program. There aren't any in Marin County. I'm not aware of any in the Bay Area. So we haven't seen that happen. Of course, and just like setting up any special program, you have to have resources for setup and implementation. And the only catch with having a voluntary green building program, just like any building reach code, you have to update it with every building code cycle. So whatever they come out with a new building code cycle, we have to come back and revisit that program, whether it's voluntary or any kind of code. So we're always constantly trying to keep up with what the state requirements are. So those are some of the challenges with commercial or a voluntary green building program. And so with that, you know, just to kind of give you an idea, what does it cost to build? This is numbers from the Turner Center from 2024. And, you know, this is minus cost for land. It doesn't include fees. It doesn't include financing costs. Just sheer square foot raw numbers. But these numbers are pretty low. I mean, I've heard nowadays, you know, we're talking about Mill Valley and they currently have an estimate of $600 per square foot that they put into their valuations for the cost of building. So these numbers from 2024 are low and we think that those numbers in reality today are actually much higher here. So, and again, these are just averages for what does it cost to build. So anytime you do any kind of reach code or program, you have to think about, you know, what is this, how does this affect developers bottom line? So, you know, we're here tonight to get feedback from you. We wanted to give you this information about where the building code is right now to talk about AB 130, to talk about that general plan path that had been very much discussed over the last year. And we wanted to pose some questions for you, you know, in return. I'm going to leave it with that. And, you know, we're here. I'm here with Matthew. We're happy to answer your questions about where we're at right now. But like I said, every other jurisdiction in Marin County is in a wait-and-see approach, and that's what our recommendation is as well.

Great. Thank you for the presentation, Andy. I'll open it up to Council for any questions. Anybody?

Yeah. Do you have some, Catherine? No, I'm waiting here. Okay, well, first of all, thank you, Andy, for your presentation. And as you may know, last night we had a special meeting of the Climate Action Forum, and Andy came in and presented the same information to some of our engaged residents and other engaged climate activists who were in the room. um i think one thing i want to just set straight for the public record is that you know the building codes historically have changed every three years but because of ab130 they will not be changing now until 2031 unless there is some significant upgrade that takes place so on the flip side of that that is an opportunity for us to do something that will be consistent for five years as opposed to having to worry about changing it when three years comes. I do want to say that it's unfortunate and discouraging because when we as a council unanimously voted to pass the Cal Green Tier 1 reach codes, It was right before this AB 130 took place. And the information we received from staff was that there was very likely an opportunity for us to use the general plan as a mechanism to still adopt those Cal Green Tier 1 plans. And we don't know that that's not a mechanism. What we're hearing from staff is that CBSC has not reviewed any of our peers who have submitted um under this new regulation so there we're in a wait and see kind of game um and i don't know is is cbsc at um under any requirement to review within a certain time frame is that Do they have any kind of shot clock that the cities now have as a result of the state putting them in positions where when we have applications or permits, we have to review them within a certain time period? Is that not a standard for CBSC?

I'm not aware that they're under a similar kind of shot clock or statutory timeline to complete review. And just to expand on that, even if they were, but they were Beyond the time period, the only mechanism that Larkspur or any other jurisdiction would have to compel them to complete the review would be litigation to seek a writ to compel them to actually complete by some court set deadline. It's not a cost-free mechanism.

Okay. Thank you for answering that. So what I want to say is that the Climate Action Forum, after having discussion and receiving the information from Andy, which was the request was, you know, how can we move these Cal Green Tier 1 plans forward? We're in a wait and see. So the Climate Action Forum suggested what we would like to do is ask for council to approve direction for staff to come back with some ideas for incentives to encourage our residents who are doing rebuilds and remodels to consider using greener products for things that are heating air and water specifically. So HVAC systems going from an old furnace to a heat pump and or going from a gas burning water boiler to a electric water boiler. There was definitely some ideas around potentially We shared some ideas with staff on ways that we thought we could do some things creatively. And so CAF wanted to ask council to consider having staff take direction to come up with maybe five ideas, creative ideas for ways to incentivize our residents. Additionally, CAF was interested in pushing forward with some higher EV requirements specifically for commercial. Andy, if you could go back to your slide that had the CalGreen... codes that will be helpful because you'll see under EVs, we didn't have this last night, so it's helpful to see this tonight. On the top, the toolbar is a little bit in the way, but commercial, they don't have to actually have EV ready. In other words, installed infrastructure, they only have to have EV capable. If I'm reading that correctly, that means...

They do have to have chargers.

It's 25%. Help me understand the difference between EV ready, 25 installed, and 20% EV capable. What is that?

For a hotel, for example, they would have to have 40% of their stalls EV ready, meaning they've got the conduit there. But 25% of those would have to be installed. So, I mean, this, by the way, is kind of simplified. The actual EV code itself is really, really complicated. So we're just trying to kind of give a really high level snapshot. But yeah.

Okay, thank you. So the recommendation from CAF was to push forward with higher standards for commercial EV charging, and then also to ask staff to come up with a handful of ideas on how to incentivize our residents to do more greening when they're doing remodels. It's not... Brand new construction, to Andy's point, has already been raised, the level of green. But what we really would like to see is remodels and expansions. taking the next steps to green their environments too on existing built environment. And then there was a public comment from one of our members. I don't know if everybody had a chance to read that, but we are really focused on multifamily and rental and tenants. They don't have the same capacity to green their environment. So if there is a way we can work with the county and with other cities to really collect, well, certainly collect data locally in Larkspur to understand how we could help green those and provide incentives in those environments to make those buildings more energy efficient and certainly, hopefully, more affordable for our tenants.

Yeah.

Great. Well, thank you for that update. So, wait, can I just, to your... I see that as an item, too, is how could the city offer incentives, you know, voluntary incentives? Well, be some, I mean, just two examples of an incentive that we could offer. I just don't know what they would be other than, hey, this would be a great thing for you to do. Would there be a monetary or?

Yeah, I mean, one of the things we could do is subsidize Tier 1. If somebody wanted to build to Tier 1 requirements or wanted to green, we could forego the cost recovery of what we charge for our permits. There are financial incentives there. There was also potentially things we could do through policy. In fact, Mayor Andre had a suggestion where potentially, and this is a little bit more complicated because we're going through a far reconstruction right now, but where you could essentially offer somebody additional FAR if they, you know, give them an exception for FAR if they're doing greener building. Another idea would be to fast track permitting for those people who are trying to build that are using, you know, greener materials to come up with a program to make the process more, to, you know, expedite the process for them. There are different ways. None of them are easy. And, you know, also the last thing I'll say is having, I'm going to call it a playbook for lack of a better expression, but for somebody who wants to put in battery storage or solar or EV charging infrastructure, if you do all these things, check all these boxes, we'll give you a permit in a day and, you know, make it just super easy for them to do that.

I think one thing that could address your question. So essentially... anything we've seen along these lines is choices of time and money. And time and money foregoing is a loss to the general fund. We can recommend those things, but you as policymakers have to decide that the value of that subsidy is worth the policy outcome. I think where staff has struggled is that so many of the items that excite us in terms of seeing our residents make these changes to electrification, they already have fairly short mandated turnaround on permits. And so our, look at that. You know, our, our costs to expedite this further, you know, you, you as council members have to decide if a reduction of a permit by a few days is worth the cost because we almost certainly have to outsource some of our work to expedite. So, yeah. We don't have those numbers yet. We haven't worked on that. And that's kind of some of the direction we're looking for this evening. But it's important that we set those goals and you tell us, these are things we really want to see people doing. We can come back and talk to you a little more about that. One of the things I talked about with the staff today, hearing some of the feedback from the Climate Action Forum last night is maybe going back through our logs. We occasionally have folks who've abandon their projects because they say you know what doing my projects more complicated going to take more time than i want to do these are not projects where people come in and they say i want to take out this appliance and put in that appliance it's a remodel and the remodel often requires them they trigger codes that they don't necessarily want to deal with so i i told the staff, I think a starting point to be responsive to the climate action forum would be to say, let's evaluate those times when people pulled their, walked away from their permits or asked for a refund, find out what the barrier was to that. And then that's a starting point for your conversation because we know what were real barriers that happened to us. Now that doesn't happen a lot. I think Andy indicated me, you know, maybe three, four times that he's aware of. Yeah, we put one example in the staff report of one that just happened, like, I think last month. So there aren't a lot of these, but that's a starting point to kind of get an understanding of what's causing people not to pursue some of these innovations.

And if I can just respond really quickly to the city manager's comment about the general fund, the Climate Action Forum does have a small budget of $50,000. And I think the members would like to see that budget used as rebates for people who are doing things to green their homes. It wouldn't go very far, but it's something and it's what we have to work with. So it wouldn't all directly hit the general fund. There is some provision for us to provide some sort of rebates through our $50,000 Climate Action Fund budget for this year.

More comments. So for me, this comes down to economics and economic choices. I think we have codes for safety, and we're not going to say you don't have to comply with the codes. We have time that it takes to do things because we have limited staff, and we're not delaying things on purpose. I think it just takes time. So I don't know how much we can cut, like Steph said, without hiring new people, which is a cost. And the reality is I think most people would like to be green, but it's more expensive. which is why they don't. And the question is, if we want people to make a green choice, who's going to pay the cost? And I don't know the answer to that. I mean, either you say the builder has to pay it, which gets passed on to the, you know, the owner or the tenant. You say that the, you know, the owner has to pay it, you know, or the city pays it. I mean, those are our choices, you know. And I think it's an ethical or moral decision that we just have to make, you know. I don't feel good passing that on to people who want to do the right thing and say, well, you just pay for it. If we want people to do this, we should be willing to step up and say, fine, we're going to supplement you to do this. But that means there's other things we can't do. So it's really just us as a council coming up with our priorities and saying, okay, where does this fall in our priorities? With everything that we have to do as a council, everything we want to do for the city, where is this? And how much money are we willing to throw out? Is it $50,000? Is it $100,000? Is it nothing? I don't know. But I think that's the difficult conversation that we are going to have to have if we really want to incentivize people. We really want to help them. And the only thing, if there's something that I'm missing and there's some incentive, some non-economic incentive that we can give people, you know, that's not going to cost the staff indirectly like lowering a time limit so we have to hire more people and it costs the city money that way. You know, if there's a non-economic incentive, fantastic, I'm all for it. But it just feels like that's kind of the decision we're going to have to make.

Yeah, I appreciate your comments, Scott. And at the end of the day, everything is a cost, right? Whether it's time, money. So I understand where you're coming from, but I will reiterate, in 2021, we passed an emergency resolution to... do implement a climate action plan. And these are actions that are going to have impact on our carbon footprint, which we designated as a priority for this city. And the ways to do that are, you know, as we've determined through the Climate Action Forum, through somehow improving the EV infrastructure and getting people to drive more electric vehicles, which the city doesn't have a lot of control over that, or you know, affecting the built environment. And because the city's footprint is rather small, we really need to figure out how to get our residents more on board with taking action. And so whatever we can do to incentivize them, and the request at this point in time is for staff to come up with some ideas, simple, and then let us know what is the cost of that, right? I mean, we can't make a decision about whether or not we want to subsidize until we understand what the cost is. So one of the other recommendations last night was, you guys know how many applications come across your desk for heat pumps and for battery storage and for solar. We don't know that. You know, maybe you can help us understand, you know, where we're getting the most applications. And then perhaps we could focus on a program in that area. The other thing that was discussed were, you know, our fees. And we have a fee schedule that's being revisited. And, you know, our neighbors in Corte Madera, they have, if you come in to replace your gas burning furnace, your fees are going to be higher than if you are replacing putting in a heat pump. And, you know, you can't charge exorbitant higher fees, but, you know, just enough to disincent. So I don't don't say I don't know the answers. What I would like to ask is, and what the Climate Action Forum would like to ask is, is if we as a council could direct our staff to come back to us with some ideas.

And I completely agree with that. And I'm completely on board with that. I am just giving the opinion when staff comes back to us with ideas, I think we are going to have some economic choices to make. So I'm just throwing it out there that at the end of the day, I think what staff is going to say, well, here are your options. This, and it's going to cost you this. This, and it's going to cost you that. And then we are going to have to say, okay, do we want to pay that or not? Right. I mean, we can't do it now because we don't know what those choices are. And that's why I agree with you, we should know those choices. So I would agree with you with that recommendation of staff.

That said, there is the opportunity to increase requirements for, say, commercial developments, even though we have so few. It is an area that is not costing us. I'll speak for myself. I don't want to deter commercial development in Larkspur, but... But my feeling is if we increase the requirement for EV infrastructure by 10%, that that's not likely going to deter the total project. But again, I don't know the answer. I mean, it's not expensive to put in an EV charging system. It does require more power. But if they're building and creating a new commercial development, they're probably having to upgrade the power anyway. So it's the right time to ask for it. And we do have to be thinking about 10 years out as Marin is probably one of the counties in the country with the most per capita EVs. And we're likely to continue on that trend and to move in a direction where there will be more. So we want to encourage more infrastructure from our development.

So I can sort of do a synopsis. It sounds like the recommendation that staff has is to revisit this in six months, the topic six months from now, once we know that there's more of a response from CSBC. Your suggestion is then on top of that, that we ask for some changes examples of incentivizing residents that we could implement in that next six months period of time, if possible. We don't know what those are yet, but you listed a few options. Maybe there's more that we can see that other cities are doing. And then the third thing I think I heard was, and I don't know where this is in the staff report about moving forward with commercial tier one. I didn't see that in a recommendation. So can you, Tell me what you're thinking of that. I mean, I think it's on...

It wasn't... Yeah, you go ahead, Andy. You can talk to it.

We don't recommend it because it can prevent things from getting built. It is very, very expensive to go to Tier 1.

And the recommendation from CAF was not full Tier 1 for commercial development. It was putting a policy in place to encourage... more than what is baseline code for EV infrastructure for commercial development.

So two of the suggestions that are more encouraging, incentivizing as opposed to creating a formal requirement process.

The last one where we are able to make changes that we're not, there's not a moratorium on adopting CalGreen tier one codes for commercial. We could consider and CAF would like us to consider asking commercial developers to go above and beyond what baseline requirement is for EV infrastructure. And another example that came up was potentially giving them an exception for parking if they put in more EV infrastructure, not having to have as many parking spots. So that way it could be lucrative to them as well. That was an example that came up.

Yeah, I just want to say I'm agreeing with the recommendation for staff to come back with something for us, whatever it is that we all agree to. The only thing I am asking for is whatever you come back to us with, that you give us some kind of financial analysis. This is what it's going to cost. Either this is what it's going to cost the builder to put X number of EVs in. This is what it's going to cost the city to hire extra staff to get things done quickly. Whatever price tag is associated with these so that we can make an educated decision on cost-benefit analysis. That's my only request.

Okay, I do have some thoughts on this, just hearing the discussion. But before we go further, I'd like to hear public comments because I know people have been waiting very patiently. So is there anyone in the chamber who would like to make a public comment? Great, Jillian, come forward.

Hi, my name is Jillian Schultz, Markford resident. I do attend the CAP meetings. I was unable to attend last night. And I just want to echo the sentiment that in the spirit of reducing our greenhouse emissions as a city, trying to incentivize this idea of incentives. I am in the process of a remodel right now. We are putting in a heat pump. We just put in our new induction range. You know, I would say even like a hundred dollar rebate or something would be an incentive for people, for putting these things in. It doesn't have to be, it could be a token and that can help to just anything to try and move us away from the natural gas. Yeah, so I just wanted to echo that. Thanks.

Thank you, that's helpful. Do we have any public comment online?

Looking for any raised hands from our Zoom audience participants. And there's no public comment.

Great. Thank you. All right. So we'll close public comment. Yeah.

So look, I've really enjoyed the discussion here.

I really like the voluntary incentive program because I think people can figure out for themselves after doing the calculations whether or not they want to adopt a greener standard than what's required. So I really like the voluntary incentive path. I also agree with Council Member Kendall. I would prefer to see a non-financial type of incentive. So you know, the floor area ratio, where if someone wants to come in and put solar panels and a battery and, you know, induction stove, and they want to build a little bit more than what their FAR allows, like, why not? You know, or if a developer wants to put in EV chargers, and we can waive or reduce the parking minimum for the developer so they can build a larger building, they would probably see that as an incentive. And that is something that the city can give, and it doesn't necessarily cost us a financial incentive. So I really like that idea, the voluntary. I am a little worried that the Cal Green Code is very complex, and it's very broad. So I think we need to give, maybe it's through CAF, but I think we need to figure out what are our priorities, whether it's EV or solar or, you know, I mean, through the cap, like we can't have staff going through the whole code trying to figure out what we want to incentivize. I think we have to be targeted. Like these are the priorities. This is what we want to target. You know, this is what we want people to do and then design or come up with some incentives for that. I think, you know, we don't want to, we don't want them to spend a lot of time trying to Go through the code and figure out. So I think I'm okay with, you know, maybe CAF sort of limiting and figuring out like what what are our priorities that we want and maybe it's already here, but I don't think it's fair to say to staff, you know, come back to us with Yeah, with all these different options to incentivize all these different things. So two pieces. So, you know, I think we need to be focused and targeted on what we're trying to incentivize. And then, you know, just a few options on the incentive front that isn't, you know, overly taxing. So maybe CAF can work with staff on narrowing down the scope of this.

The consensus last night was Airbnb. Heating and cooling and water heating and cooling were the areas that we were focused on. Those are more specific to residential replacements, upgrades, than new buildings. EV infrastructure was mostly brought up in the context of commercial only. We are targeting EV infrastructure through public-private partnerships in a different path. But when it concerns our community development department, it's more about heating water and air. Or cooling water and air. And then also people applying for permits to do commercial development, asking them, figuring out a way to incentivize them to add more EV infrastructure.

Okay. Okay. But I also heard from you earlier, too, about multifamily residential and apartments. So...

We're looking for more EV infrastructure. For those? Yeah. OK. Yeah.

I have a question for staff. I have heard that maybe we can give incentives like the FAR doesn't apply or we can make exceptions if you do this or we can make exceptions to parking. My concern is that we have FAR for a reason. completely separate from electrification. We have required parking for a reason. And if we intertwine those two, is that... just doesn't i it doesn't feel right because they're for for that then all of a sudden we're going to have you know people with not enough parking spaces and that's going to affect other parts of our community or you know the neighbor's going to say hey i want to you know how come my property i can't build as much as this person you know because i mean the reason that we have the far is not for electrification purposes it's for you know, safety, you're on a hillside, you know, there are reasons that we have those restrictions. And I'm curious, staff's thought about using those as incentives, if that would create any kind of problems for anyone on staff that wants to answer that.

I mean, I think I would think of it this way. So Within the concept of, let's use floor area ratio, within the concept of someone applying to get a larger floor area ratio than the code allows, they're still constrained by a variety of other health and safety restrictions. So when they come to you and they say, the calculation is X, but I really want to build to Y, will you give me an exception for that? staff done the analysis to say Y is still within the parameters of being safe. So I interpreted the mayor's suggestion as we should look at, well, maybe we tie giving you Y instead of X to you do some things that we want to see done on this other policy front. I think that's how we'd go look at it.

My question is, if it's safe to do Y, why don't we just give it to everybody?

Well, that's why you told us to go work on the floor ratio policy. So I think that's coming soon.

It is. The direction we got from Planning Commission, their recommendation was to emulate Corte Madera's methodology. But I just want to give you an example of how challenging it is for us to come up with incentives. If you are coming in for a floor area ratio exception, you're putting an addition onto your house, right? It's bigger than what we would normally allow. Well, that addition has to meet the current building code anyway. So how do you incentivize someone to do something that's already the baseline, which is to put in the electric hot water and electric... HVAC system, you know, if they're for this new condition space, because it does have to meet the new 2025 Cal Green Code. And then how do you incentivize parking when you're within a half mile of transit? Because as you remember, the state no longer requires any parking within a half mile of transit. So these are examples of how challenging it is for us to come up with incentives, just in a nutshell.

Right. Yeah. So, I mean, I think this warrants further discussion and, you know, dialogue for sure, which is why, you know, maybe working with the CAF, trying to figure out what is it that we want to incentivize and then how do we do it? Yeah. One last thing I'll say is just that I was listening to a podcast, Dave Roberts, a Volts podcast. And he normally deals about – he normally does podcasts on energy. But this one podcast, he was talking about housing. And the state of Idaho was trying to figure out ways on how to expedite and just build more housing. And so they implemented – and this is the state legislature for all of Idaho. So they've now implemented six-day shot clocks. And if you come in and you want a permit, the city has six days. And if you don't approve it, then the resident can go out and hire their own, I can't remember which organization, but a certified inspector to approve the permit. And then the city has to refund any permit fees that... You know, and the city has to refund any permit fees that the resident has paid. So I'm just saying, I'm not sure that that applies here, but I'm saying people out, I think people recognize that we have a housing shortage. We are trying to stimulate housing and economic development. People are trying to come up with creative ways of, you know, fast tracking certain things. you know, providing incentives. This is not, you know, we are not experts here, but to the extent that, you know, there might be some examples out there that we might be able to borrow or build on, you know, I think it might be helpful.

Yeah, I was just going to say, because I haven't heard that podcast, but I've seen it in the literature about what you're talking about. And I think that shot clock is for new construction. And it's essentially saying after six days, the applicant can self-certify with the help of an expert. But I think a lot of where we're struggling and looking at is on the remodel front and incentivizing further electrification when you're remodeling. And that's a challenging topic. And I think that's what Andy's trying to get at. We've been trying to bounce ideas off of each other. But for example, on that table, a lot of remodel permits are issued in 10 days or less. And so it's... the turnaround is so fast already. It doesn't seem like that is an incredible incentive.

The state already has shots. So I think money becomes an interesting topic.

So then you look at our neighbors, for example, as councilman Margulies said, they've, they've looked at their permit fee structure and said, well, maybe we can build some incentive into that. And so maybe that's an area to look it's cost question. Um, But that's another area we can go to. And then we could certainly keep bouncing around this idea. Are there other policy concessions the city might make if people pursue the policy goals we have in this area?

Yeah.

I also just want to acknowledge you have a written comment that I think staff will definitely talk about because Mr. Flynn has written in and one of the things he said is you should use this moratorium to really collect data about the smaller multifamily homes. And I strongly agree with them because I think that is the sort of lost segment of the housing stock in the whole state picture. So much of what we think about is how are we going to get new construction to do what we want it to do? And then how are we going to get a single family home to remodel a certain way? What about that fourplex? What about that six plus where the economics are really challenging? The big players, the hundreds of unit complexes, they have the borrowing power that when they're going to remodel, they can remodel in a way that pursues state codes and our goals. But I think that small segment, I think he's spot on that we should use this period to try to understand as best we can, what are the barriers for those property owners?

Gee, that rental registry would come in really handy right now. Great point.

Okay, so does that give staff enough direction? Yeah, or if you want to come back with questions, is that working with the Climate Action Forum and then

Yeah, I think we've got clear direction from you.

Great. Wonderful. Well, thank you for the presentation. It's very thorough and helpful. You're most welcome.

I did want to acknowledge Chief Building Official Matthew Beals here. Thank you for being here, Matt, this whole thing. He pointed out to me the workshops that are already starting to discuss the 2028 CalGreen code updates. So he'll be attending those. And hopefully we may, through those workshops, also hear if they're ever going to approve any of these exceptions that, some agencies have submitted because certainly if, if that door opens, then we'll be coming back to you about pursuing that.

Okay. Great. Just, um, thank you for keeping abreast of. I'm living next to a very large construction project and I've heard very positive things about how efficient the, uh, the building inspectors, et cetera, have become in Larkspur. So I usually don't hear that from general contractors, but I just want to give you a shout out for that because, um, this construction project's going to be going on for a while and I'm sure you're going to be back and forth. So thank you for making it efficient.

All right. So I think that brings us, I think we are done with item 8.4 and that brings us to adjournment. So we will be adjourning to our next regular meeting on Wednesday, September 2nd. I'll see you then. And thank you and good night.