City Council - Regular Meeting

Here we go. Good evening, everyone.

Welcome to the September 16th, 2026 meeting of the Bucksburg City Council. It is now 632, and I will call the meeting to order. Madam Clerk, can you do the roll call, please?

Council Member Kandell.

I'm here.

Council Member Margulies.

Here.

Council Member Wayer. Here. Vice Mayor Paulson, Mayor Andre.

Here, if you're able, please rise and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag, to the flag of the United States of America, and to the flag of the United States of America, and to the flag of the United States of America. Thank you all for joining us this evening. We are now going to open up the public comment. This is the time for members of the public to address the city council on any items that are not on tonight's agenda. If you would like to make a public comment, please approach the podium and please state your name. Thank you. You have three minutes.

Good evening, Mayor Andre, and council members. I'll turn the mic on. Good evening, Mayor and Council Members of the City of Larkspur. My name is Paul DeSoto, and I'm a long-term resident of Larkspur. Sunday, it was my honor to attend the memorial service for Laura Lager, recipient of the Spirit of Larkspur Award a few years back, and well-known for her efforts on behalf of our city. Today, it is my honor to help move one of Laura's last wishes one step closer to fulfillment. This is the passage of the Larkspur Native Plant Resolutions. This resolution will improve the health and livability of Larkspur by improving the base of its ecological community. So it will be significant local action to help meet our global biodiversity crisis. It was presented to the Larkspur Climate Action Forum in June, which suggested its presentation to the city council. Passage of this resolution would be a significant achievement for the current council of the only Marin city named after a native plant and would allow Larkspur to join the growing list of California cities and towns that have passed similar resolutions. The electronic copies of the resolution were sent to the clerk who gratefully acknowledged their reception before tonight's meeting. We kindly ask that you place this resolution on the agenda of the October 7th meeting so that it can be discussed, hopefully approved. Thank you very much.

Thank you very well, Colin. Is there anyone else who would like to make a public comment? Please come forward. Thank you.

Hello. Hello. My name is Jill Templeton. I don't live in Larkspur.

I live in Strawberry, an unincorporated community also named after a plant.

And Paul was one of my teachers at home when he displayed biodiversity to me in his entomology class while threading me to their knees.

But I wanted to acknowledge Laura's passing. She was a dear friend of mine and fought very hard for this community.

And this was one of their last votes. And I think it is biodiversity. We need to recognize that plants are not just plants, but they are part of the chain of life that we all live within and bring us great joy as well as sustenance.

So please do consider it. Thank you. Thank you for all the time. Is there anyone else in the chamber who would like to make a public comment? Okay. Seeing none, we'll close public comment and move on to presentations, of which there are none. And that brings us to approval of this consent calendar. Is there any member of council who would like to pull an item off of consent for discussion? Seeing none. All right. Can I get a motion?

So moved. I'll second.

All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Great. Same calendar passes. This brings us to the City Manager's Oral Report.

Madam Mayor, Councilmember, members of the public, I just have two items for you. The first is that tomorrow at noon, we are hosting with the Resilient Neighborhoods Organization a Lunch and Learn event called Sustainable Home Basics at Clarksburg Library. You can still sign up and reserve your spot if you go to resilientneighborhoods.org. I think it will be a wonderful opportunity for our residents to learn more about the types of things you can do within your home and in your neighborhood to create better energy efficiency. And then later next week, on Tuesday, September 22nd, we'll be kicking off the process with our new City Hall Study Citizens Committee. It'll be at 3pm and kickoff meeting. It's in the city council chambers and everyone's welcome to attend it. It'll also be streaming online and there's information about that on our website. I'll pass it back to you, Madam.

Great, thank you for the update. I'll open it up to council members to see if anybody else.

This is not a usual location for us, so if the mic doesn't work, just let us all know. I want to remind everyone that we have an election coming up and we have seven candidates running for these positions. We had our first candidate evening at the Lark Theater about 10 days ago and a good attendance, 75 to 80 people there. The second opportunity you have to meet your candidates is October 1st at 530 at the Drake Community Room, which is right over the creek. over there. And everyone is welcome. And this is an opportunity to meet and greet with the candidates who are running for office at the Larkspur City Council. It's co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters and by the Larkspur Community Foundation. So please, everybody, come and be actively informed on who you can vote for. Although that only applies to Larkspur residents. You can't vote if you belong somewhere else. Because I know there's a lot of people who are here who are not directly Larkspur residents. So that's all.

Thank you. Anyone else have a report? I do.

Yeah. Thank you. So I just wanted to put a shout out for our Larkspur Sustainability Spotlight. We had a special edition of our city manager's newsletter. It was all about sustainability. The Climate Action Forum brought five priorities to council, one of which was to do education and outreach So we're doing the best we can to get all our citizens and residents involved in doing their part to help reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. So if you haven't yet signed up for the city manager's newsletter, I encourage you and for you to do that so you can get lots of great information, including the information that city manager just mentioned. We're having a lunch and learn tomorrow about eight ways to do meaningful impact within your own home, small changes you can make to help but do your part to protect our planet. I also wanted to recommend on a separate topic to council, I've had some discussions with some of our nonprofit organizations who have said that they're not using the library because of the base charge we put in place. So I wanted to suggest that We revisit that base use charge for the library. We had discussed revisiting the policy after we had several months under our belt. And I think it might be a good time to do that because I hate to see some of our Larkspur nonprofits that are doing work to try to generate funding for projects in Larkspur not to be using the beautiful resource that we just built. And then I just wanted to mention that I attended a board meeting for Central Marin Sanitation Agency on Monday evening. I represent Larkspur's Ross Valley Sanitary District. I am the representative for Ross Valley Sanitary District on the Larkspur City Council. And the board has agreed to agendaize a discussion on their November agenda. This discussion will be regarding hiring an independent technical consultant to look at the overall methodology for calculating rates, including sampling methodology, load calculations, et cetera. I encourage any resident that lives in the Ross Valley Sanitary District to show up and urge the board to move forward with the request. The last time the calculation methodology was changed was in 2013. There were two independent studies done to warrant and back up the change. This time there has been a change with no independent technical study and we're urging the Central Marin Sanitation Agency to take up a study. And so I encourage anybody here who is part of Ross Valley Sanitary District to come out and urge them to do the same. Our rates are going up. So that's it for me.

Yeah, I just wanted to mentioned two things coming up. I'm serving on the Flood Zone 9 board, and there's a lot of concern about the Super El Nino, and we all know January 4th Riviera Circle, and this parking lot was pretty much underwater here. So it's a board that's been around and has really focused a lot in San Salmo, but the county is pivoting, and we know that sea level rise and then riverine flooding and this compound flooding is becoming a big risk. So the next meeting, I think, is October 8th. And I'll maybe ask that to be published more broadly. But I'd love to get more input from Larkspur and surrounding communities what we think we need from the county. That voice has been very quiet for eight years or more, maybe 15 years. Also, the mayors and council members are having a meeting two weeks from tonight at the College of Marin at 6 o'clock to really put a panel together to say, what are we doing about all these threats? You know, we're getting out of fire season and we have the NWPA. You look at your property tax bill, it's about 150 bucks every year that you're paying for this vegetation management and a variety of things. And then we have flooding now and it's, you know, we're trying to, you know, as the county and as 11 municipalities to get together and that information and your voice is really appreciated. So that's two weeks from tonight. September 30th, 6 o'clock, College of Marin. There will be a Zoom link if you just want to listen in. But I really think that the more we get the message out, the awareness, the more prepared we are, we know that the weather is changing and getting harsher. That will be very helpful. So thank you.

Thank you. Okay, great. All right, so I'm just going to give everybody a quick preview of some upcoming meetings at Council and our next meeting on October 7th. The King Mountain Open Space Association will be coming. They will be doing a quick presentation on the purchase and dedication of the 160 acres of the top of King Mountain that has been purchased by a philanthropic foundation and then donated to the County of Marin. So it will be preserved as open space for everyone to enjoy. So that will be on the October 7th agenda. And also on the October 7th agenda is Ross Valley Sanitary District. They will be coming and doing a presentation on what they will be doing in preparation of the king tides. We will have a presentation from our staff tonight about what we, the city, are doing and preparing in terms of king tides. And then we'll have the Ross Valley Sanitary District come on October 7th. And then on October 21st, we will be talking about a potential commercial vacancy tax to deter long-term vacancies here at Rossburg. And lastly, I just want to mention MCE. I sit on the board of MCE representing the people of Larkspur. You may have read articles about MCE this week. I can't say too much about the litigation as it's ongoing, but there is an MCE board meeting tomorrow night. We'll be talking about the litigation matters. We will also be talking about a potential interim CEO appointment and also the initial survey responses on the governance assessment. So that meeting is tomorrow night at 630. Somebody asked, what's MCE? Oh, I'm sorry. MCE is Marin Clean Energy, and they are our local energy provider. And so they purchase. So unless you physically opted out and chosen PG&E as your energy provider, you're most likely an MCE customer. Everybody who just opted in is And you have to specifically call them to opt out of MC. Right. All right. With that, I will close the council members reports and we will head into start our public hearing. So this is an appeal of the planning commission's decision to approve application PLN 26-0031 Larkspur Plaza Drive. There's a request for design review, hide exception, fence hide exception, parachute tree removal, and grading permit to permit the demolition of all existing site improvements and construction of 14 new structures totaling 10,750 square feet, eight new tennis courts, and 77 parking spaces. So before we start, I do want to just give everybody a preview. of how we're going to be running this hearing. There are a number of you in the room and we know that the planning commission meeting was also, there was a lot of discussion there. We want to hear your views. When it's time for public comments, when we open it up for public comments, we will invite people to come to the podium to make your comments. Please make sure that you are addressing the city council and not staff, and not other members in the audience. Please direct your comments at us and city council will be hearing all public comments. Please keep your comments civil and let's all try to, we want to hear everybody's comment. Let's make sure that we stay focused on the issues and that we don't have personal attacks. So what we will do is, We are going to have a presentation from staff where they will do a presentation and answer questions from council. Then we will have the appellates team come and make a presentation for 10 minutes. And then the applicants team will make a presentation for 10 minutes. And they will open it up to public comment. So if there are members of the public who would like to speak, we'll invite each to the podium. You'll have three minutes each. Um, and then the applicant's team will be able to do a summary presentation for three minutes, and then the appellate's team will be able to do their summary presentation for three minutes. And then we will close the hearing and bring it back for deliberations at city council. Okay. Great. All right. So with that, um, I'll turn it over to our staff, senior planner, Alex O'Faughn, and, uh, venue services director, Andrea Mogeson for their relocation.

all right thank you good evening madam mayor and members of council the item before you tonight is the appeal of your recent uh planning commission approval of project pln 26-003 for the property at one larkspur closet drive which more commonly referred to as the mountain cat racket club uh the project we've just heard from the mayor but i will just reiterate proposed the demolition of all existing site improvements and the construction of a new tennis club The existing proposed site plans are there for you on the screen. In total, speaking in total, the proposed site plan reduces the built square footage by about 39,619 square feet. The project, as designed, required the approval of five entitlements, design review for the original construction, a height exception to allow a portion of the proposed clubhouse roof to exceed the allowed height A fence height exception to allow vegetative barriers to exceed the permitted height limit for fencing. A heritage tree removal permit to remove a total of six heritage-sized trees. A grading permit which would allow more than 1,000 cubic carats of grading in conjunction with the project. The project was heard and unanimously approved by the Planning Commission at their August 11, 2026 meeting. On August 19, within the 10-day appeal period, the City received an appeal from Dr. Howard Ordman, Assigning three concerns as the basis for the appeal. First, that the existing conditional use permit, which is UP 11-177, must be amended as a part of the initial part of this project. Excuse me. Second, that the project did not address various public concerns regarding club amenities. And last, that the project did not adequately address COO rights. So to the first point for a bit of background, UP use permit 11.77 was approved on March 19th, 1974. That use permit approved a commercial recreation use on the property, which the application materials described as a tennis and athletic club. The approval was subject to three conditions of approval. These included restrictions on construction hours, a requirement that any outdoor lighting on the site return to the Planning Commission for approval, and any paid tournament event conducted on the premises go through the proper use permit procedures. The project performed this evening retains and does not alter the approved use or violate or seek to amend any of the conditions of approval associated with that initial use permit. The project and use of the subject site remain consistent with the general plan's land use designation and zoning requirements. And for these reasons, for these reasons, excuse me, the amendments of the use permit is not warranted. The second point of the appeal is the appellant asserts proposed amenities fail to address community needs, including a place to meet, covered or indoor pool, covered tennis courts, hard surface courts, or an appropriate space for gym equipment. Probably read it a few times in the reports that were prepared for you, but I will reiterate the amenities offered by a private club to its members are at the discretion of that club and its ownership. The facility is not required to provide any services to the public for the public benefit. Neither the Planning Commission or the City Council have the discretion to require certain amenities be provided unless they can be reasonably linked to the required findings for approval in front of you this evening. And the final point of the appeal, the appellant asserts that the project does not adequately address sea level rise. The eastern portion of the subject property is located in a flood zone. For the requirements of being in a flood zone, all structures must be elevated at least one foot above the base flood elevation whenever you do new construction. For reference, the base flood elevation on that property is 9.7 feet and all structures are proposed with a pad of 10.7, which meets that requirement. In addition, there are multiple conditions of approval pertaining to flood control, drainage management, which are imposed on the entitlement reports. The project does not involve a change of use and will continue to operate in the same manner. The new structures are substantially the same or reduced size and the project remains consistent with the general plan policies, the land use and zoning designation, and these all require compliance with both the Class 2 and 32 CQUID exemptions. For reference, the Class 2 CQUID exemption is for replacement or reconstruction of the structure when it retains the same use and is either the same size or a reduced footprint. And the class 32 secret exemption is the infill exemption, which has a number of criteria that the project occurs on a property within city limits. And the site is no more than five acres. It's not home to any special species status, etc. We can get into that if you would like. So I just want to wrap up here for you some concluding thoughts. The project is smaller in scale than the existing facility and retains the existing approved use. It complies with all conditions of approval associated with the original use permit. Again, the amenities offered by the club are at its own discretion and cannot be altered during the entitlement process unless that alteration is reasonably linked to a required finding for approval. The project complies with all flood zone drainage and stormwater requirements. Both CEQA exemptions remain applicable to the project and overall all findings for approval can be made. So in conclusion, staff recommends that the City Council hold a public hearing, consider public testimony, discuss the appeal, and adopt City Council Resolution 70-26, denying the appeal and upholding the Planning Commission's approval of the project subject to findings, conditions of approval, and a Class 2 and 32 steeple exemption. And that concludes my presentation for this evening.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Raffan. Before I open it up to Council Members for questions, If the city attorney could please explain what a de novo hearing is, that way everyone can hear what city council is actually, what we're here to decide tonight.

Sure, I'd be happy to. The type of public hearing that the city council is conducting is often referred to as a de novo hearing, which means that the city council is not constrained by the planning commission's decision or its findings. The city council... is required to, if it can make the same findings that are set forth in the... City Council basically should review the record with fresh eyes and reach an independent conclusion about whether or not there's adequate evidence in the record to support making the findings for each of the applications that had been submitted for this project. City Council can rely on the... statements of planning commission may consider them, but ultimately city council has to act independently to make a determination about whether or not there's sufficient evidence in the record to make the findings for each other.

Great. All right. So now I'll open it up to city council members for questions.

To our city attorney, I just want to make sure that we everyone in the room is on the same page about what we are actually deciding, what we are not deciding, what we have the authority to decide, what we don't. So for example, it was already mentioned that as a private facility, we don't really have the authority to tell them that they should put a gym in or that they should, you know, put a swimming pool where the public could probably use it, whatever happens to be. So the other things that we are considering, first of all, I'd like you just as our city attorney let us know if that legally is sound. And the second thing I'd like you to do, if you can, is the other things that are being brought up, other than the exceptions that we're making for fence height and things that we're deciding, what other things are we really talking about tonight that's going to determine the decision?

Okay. So first, let me re-review what was just covered in the staff presentation, just because it helps answer the first question, which is, What this applicant is seeking is design review, tent site exception, height exception, heritage tree removal, grading permit, demolition permit, and those decisions require a finding under CEQA, either that the potentially significant environmental impacts have been adequately identified and mitigated to less than significant level, or that the project is exempt from CEQA because of either statutory or were referred to as categorical exemptions that have been created through administrative regulation. So in order to make, in order to approve each of those requested permits, for most of them, there are associated findings that the city council must make. So I will, this expands on my previous answer. what does it mean to make a finding? So, because that's relevant for members of the public to understand is that city council has to look at the evidence in the record and determine whether or not it can conclude based on that evidence that certain statements about each of the applications can be asserted with a sufficient level of certainty based on substantial evidence. So if you review the staff report, there are things that are described as findings that have to be made for many of those permits. City Council has to look to the evidence and determine whether or not it can make the findings based on the evidence.

In other words, can it say that these statements are true?

So having said that, to get to your question about what is the purview of the City Council, if City Council believed that there were aspects of the project that could be brought into greater compliance with the requirements of the code, or would be necessary to be able to make the findings, it could attach those as conditions to the permits. But they have to be ones that are related to City Council's ability to make the findings. It can't just be that City Council thinks that this would be a good idea, or that members of the public request it. It has to be something is tied to the ability of the project to comply with the requirements of the code and that the council could not make the findings without attaching the condition. If there's evidence in the record to support making the finding without the condition then there is not a basis to attach the condition to the permit.

And then as to

there is an adequate basis stated in the staff report for making two of the categorical exemptions under CEQA, and therefore no additional CEQA review is required. And part of those includes reference to technical studies that are necessary for one of the exemptions. And I'm sorry, if you wanted to repeat the second question, I think I might have lost track of it.

I just want to make sure that that we're all on the same page. This one says, you know, we don't like it because it sounds to be a real identity or something like that. That's not really our decision to make as a private property. It's more of the things that you just laid out that we have to explore. Is that accurate? That's accurate. Thank you for clarifying that.

Since we're on clarifying legal matters, could you... outlined for me the quote, the use will not be detrimental to the general welfare. How does a council decide the term general welfare?

Okay. Well, first of all, the statement will not be detrimental to the general welfare. To the extent that that is a finding related to the conditional use permit, as was outlined in the staff report, that would only be relevant if what was being applied for But in this case, as was discussed, the use as defined in the municipal code, so the way that zoning works is that it divides the city into two districts and says that within each district, some uses are allowed, some uses are allowed with a conditional use permit, and others are prohibited. for each of those three categories it actually lists the use and for land use and planning terms what's in the code is what's relevant as the use in this case it is a commercial recreational facility that is the use that's defined in the code this will be this is currently a commercial recreational facility as defined in the code if council approves this application it will continue to be a recreational uh commercial recreational facility after redevelopment there's no change in use as that term is used in the planning and zoning world.

And so the findings for the CUT don't become relevant as a result of that.

Now, for some of the other, for some of the things that are applied for, there is a finding required related to a narrower sense of general welfare. And that includes, for example, when we find one of them to site, Pitch to evade in the findings. Yeah. So thank you.

So the finding for the Line review.

Yes. States that the Pitch to evade at the bottom. Okay. Yes. So the will not be detrimental to the public health safety and welfare of the persons residing in or working in the proposed structures or in developments adjacent to the proposed project. So for some findings, such as the CEP, which are not relevant for this application, there is a requirement that the City Council make a determination that the application will not be detrimental to the general welfare. And this is, although it's not relevant, I'll just say briefly that it is a finding that is related to the city's exercise of its constitutional police power, which is another technical term. But under the California Constitution, cities are given what is defined as the police power, which is the ability to regulate for the general public health, safety, and welfare. And it's a broad concept intended for city councils to be able to say, We think that a thing that is proposed to occur or that is occurring is harmful to society as a whole in a way that we believe we can lawfully regulate. There are a host of federal and state regulations that constrain the exercise of that authority, but it's a broad concept. But it's not the concept that's relevant to these findings. What's relevant to these findings is this narrower sense of, is it detrimental to the welfare of persons working or residing in the area, sorry, working or residing in proposed structures or in developments adjacent to the proposed project. So in this case, the finding is a narrower one of are the buildings that are proposed unsafe to the people who will be occupying them or detrimental to adjacent properties? And that's where you go to the evidence that's in the record and staff has done an excellent job of outlining the fact that in this case, the buildings will be constructed to building code. There are really no impacts on adjacent properties.

And I'm sorry, just for clarification, because we had somebody speak at our last meeting who said that they were a neighbor and there was a fence going up on their property and it was going to affect their property negatively. Is that detrimental?

It's potentially detrimental to that property. And so if that evidence were submitted tonight as part of testimony and the council concluded that after hearing all of the evidence, including anything that staff had to say about the fence, that some aspect of the fence would be detrimental to adjacent properties, that would be a basis to impose a condition to modify the fence. And if there was no way to craft a condition that would address the potential impacts and council could decide whether or not that particular impact was great enough to deny the project as a whole, but it should first look at, is there a way first, is it really a detrimental impact or is it a preference against it? What is the evidence, weigh the evidence, and then look to whether or not there is a condition that could be crafted to modify the fence in a way that would reduce the impact from one that council felt was not so detrimental. And then if it was really such a significant impact and could be mitigated through a condition, consider whether or not to kind of project on that basis.

Thank you.

I'll probably just kind of continue. So, you know, Scott is an attorney and, you know, Skye as well, maybe some of you in the audience, but just for, you know, basic grounding here and orientation, Is this correct, Sky, that the city can't dictate the club's business model? That is correct. Okay. And, you know, as a council, as a municipal code under which we're sitting here tonight trying to enforce, we're, you know, in loose terms, we're more on the negative side of things, not the affirmative side. Negative meaning like, oh, you've crossed this height limit. You can't do that. Or you've got this much light or this much noise. You can't do that. but we can't go on the affirmative and say that, and then I believe, you know, is this correct? I, you know, jotted down the Nolan-Dolan doctrine of unlawful exaction. So we run the risk of, you know, taking from the owner's rights if we try to get into that area and say, you need to run your business certain ways. Is that actually correct? So let me get to that one last question.

Just to expand on a few things. Again, I think it's important to understand in terms of the city's capacity to regulate the business model is that city council through the municipal code has already said that a private recreational facility is a conditionally permitted use on this property. So the existing use is one that the zoning code for decades has said was allowable with a CDP. City has issued the CEP and the business has operated that way. So the business model itself, the use, is one that the City Council has for decades said was allowable and has allowed with CEP. There are obviously proposed changes in some aspects of the nature of the business. But from the City's perspective as to the use, it's still the same. So it would be beyond the scope of what is in the municipal code to say, well, it's a recreational use, but we want you to operate it with these particular amenities. Unless, as I have explained, there was some aspect to those proposed amenities that had impacts to potential people coming onto the property or adjacent properties that needed to be modified through conditions of approval. As to the takings issue, this is a really complex area. One thing I'd say about it is that there is a risk of denying an application. However, I would point out that the property is already in economically viable use. The business owner is already operating a business there. And so I would be hesitant to say that there's a significant risk of denying an application one time. when it's already developed property that is being used for an economically successful purpose. Additionally, under California law, it is rare that a taking is found to have occurred after a single denial of an application. However, if the council denied the application tonight, the application can be submitted, Again, that happened several more times with meaningful changes to the application each time. At that point, there would be some risk of a finding of a tweaking because a court would have to look at, yes, there's already an existing economically viable use, but the use that's being proposed is one that the zoning allows and the city seems to be standing in the pathway of making the changes that the property owner would like to make to their business model. Okay, great.

And one more question. So one of the key findings we're looking at is the... the conditional use permit. And this is for, I guess, for Seth, Alex, and Andrew. Was the original conditional use permit part of what the planning board saw? Because I don't think it's in our package. It's in there. It might have been used in a miss because it's basically a . Sorry. March 26, 1974. 77. 74. Oh, 74. And just a general question. I mean, from your summary, Alex, it sounds like there aren't any master plans. There's nothing. It was very simple. You can do construction during these hours. You have to have this kind of lighting. And there was one more. But there's no other stipulation, no other restriction, no other condition on the conditional use permit. Yes, you are correct. Okay.

Thank you.

Mr. Menard, do you have any questions? No comments? Okay.

okay well then uh if council has no further questions for staff uh if the appellate team could come forward you'll have 10 minutes to make your presentation please first good evening members of the city council larkspur

I'm going to read this, and it may seem somewhat repetitious because you've all been talking about what I'm talking about. Hopefully, I'll just make it clear by just simply reading what I have prepared. I wish to appeal the decision of the Planning Commission to approve the proposed plan at 1 Larksboro Plaza. I feel the proposed plan will negatively impact the community. Firstly, the project is apparently being processed without the amendment to the existing use permit, P11.77. If a use permit amendment is required, the commission must address the findings specified in the Larkford Municipal Code 18.76.050, including finding D, that quote, that will not be detrimental to the general welfare. The negative impacts are numerous. The proposed plan does not address the need for covered courts. Many of the tennis players have issues with being in the sun and being affected by weather, etc. The surface of the courts are in the proposed plan. plan are all clay courts. This is going to be difficult for many people to adjust to. Having a mix of clay and hard court services would be a more equitable solution to this unilateral clay courts. The Commission generally prefers the hard court service, excuse me, the community generally prefers the hard court service. The new club as planned has a very limited amount of gym equipment. Many members of the community and the club would like to see a more abundant assortment of exercise equipment. While it's not necessary to have such a big gym area, as the club members have been used to addressing this concern, I believe it's important to many of the members. The proposal also fails to address the needs of the swimming community.

A three-lane outdoor pool just does not cut it.

The new plan fails to address a place for exercise classes and other areas where junior members could congregate. And then questions remain concerning the claimed class two and class 32 CEQA exemptions. I believe the applicant has not fully addressed the future of the tennis club in terms of sea level rising. The new club would be built at the same level essentially as the existing club. I believe my concerns are echoed by over 300 members that have signed two different petitions, one submitted by the tennis members and one submitted by the swimming members. And I believe my feelings are backed by many of the people here in attendance tonight. Additionally, I've had conversations with members of the club who have a wealth of experience in the planning and development arena. These members share my feelings that the plan is not a plan that would result in a robust club. Most members of the club would find other places to swim and play tennis. Few members would want to join a club with a narrow swimming pool and eight clay tennis courts. Finally, I would like to add that I wish success to the applicant I want to work with him, and I think there's a lot of members of the club and community that want to work with him and the LLC. I don't believe we're asking for major changes in the layout of the club. I believe tweaking the clubhouse ever so slightly or adjusting the layout of the tennis courts, widening the pool, covering a few courts, all this could be made without a significant effect on the wishes of the applicant. And I want to thank you very much for hearing me out. And that's my conclusion. Howard Ortman.

Could you say your name, please?

Yeah, Howard Ortman. I'm a member of the Mount Tamracket Club, and I'm a resident of San Anselm.

Excuse me. I just want to remind everybody. Oh, you can talk to us. You can talk to us. And that happens, but that's how things get. Great.

Thank you, Mr. Robin. Question. Yeah. Oh, yes.

I'm sorry. I have a few minutes left and I'd like to let Jillian, the swimming member, just say a few words. Okay. Sure. That's it.

Good evening. My name is Jillian Castle, and I live in Lawrenceburg. I've been a member of Mount Tam for 20 years, during which I played tennis, participated in most of the wonderful fitness classes, and have been a lifelong swimmer. I represent all the loyal members of the club, many of whom have been members for much longer than I. The club has helped generations learn to swim, play tennis, train for competition, improve fitness, stay healthy, compete, and enjoy each other's company. Through the years, we have become a cherished and valued community of friends and cohorts. Children, as babies, learned the skills of swimming and tennis, attended sports clubs, became lifeguards, camp counselors, front desk receptionists. Adults enjoyed all the options of the club, as well as social evenings and competition. And for the past three years, Some 50 participants have been able to attend a state of the science weekly physical therapy class in the gym. We are the community of Mount Tamarack and Club, and we are currently 900 strong. The current plan of one Larkspur Plaza claims to be an inclusive plan that will benefit Larkspur. In fact, it will eliminate most, if not all, of the members of this community. USTA competition is held on hard surface courts nationwide. The number of members who swim for fitness cannot be accommodated by a two to three lane outdoor pool. There will be far fewer fitness classes in smaller buildings, not to mention that the current plan hopes for only a membership of 500. I understand all the rules and regulations and dotting the I's and crossing the T's. But in short, this plan is not inclusive of our community, who is a significant community of Larkspur. Probably most, if not all of us, will not join this club. I also don't wish Mr. Harris to fail. I want him to succeed. I hope that he can work with us. And I hope that the city council that deals with all the infinite rules and regulations and whatnot does not forget that we are the citizens and we count too. And we feel like we've been thrown under the bus. And I thank you.

Do we not applaud after speaking or something? No. Yeah. We want to just make sure that everybody is heard, and we want to make sure that people with all sorts of different opinions feel safe in coming forward with their perspective. Great. All right. We're going to open, can we open it up right now? Can we ask questions and questions of the appellant? Yeah. Okay, I'll open it up to the city council for questions. Ms. Orman should come back up since she's the appellant. Yeah, Ms. Orman, can you come to the podium, please? Sure. Thank you. Great. Okay, I'll open it up to council members for questions.

Hi, Mr., Dr. Orman, is that? Dr. Orman is. I read we have your statement. Thank you for highlighting some of the issues. Can everyone hear me? I think to lay the groundwork, I think it's imperative that we all have to come to an agreement that for 50 years, the two owners, I believe it was two owners who ran this athletic club, sold their business. So they sold their business to Mr. Harris two and a half years ago or about two years ago. Essentially, he's letting it remain Mount Tam Racquet Club, but it's his business now. It's not the two gentlemen. They've cashed in, they've retired, they've moved on. So in that two and a half years, have you had interactions in which your comments and concerns were expressed to Mr. Harris as some of the ideas that you would like to see as you outlined in here?

Yes, we've been meeting as of today. We've been talking and trying to hammer out

So you've had opportunities to express your interest, dislike, ideas for him as the new business owner and the new property owner, and he has been receiving those in the last two and a half years, regardless of what he's going to do with them or not. He's had a meeting with you individually. He's had meetings with the club members. He's expressed some of his initial ideas. Was that correct? That's correct. Okay. just trying to belay the land. The second thing that I'm interested in, when the attorney spoke about detrimental to the general welfare and how narrowly that is defined by code, was that clear to you that general welfare, as far as the attorney explained to us, it's not the whole world or the whole community. It's very narrowly defined. by the people who actually are inhabiting that workspace?

Well, I've just been recently made aware of the fact that this law or this municipal code was even there. So I haven't had a long time to, you know, rummage around and think about it until just in the last few weeks, honestly, you know, getting advice from members of my club who are it's not official legal advice. That's okay.

We're not all in that kind of background either. So I'm just trying to sort of see our options are in one lane that we have to make decisions on. And so I'm just trying to assess what capabilities or what opportunities you've had to express your opinion to the current owner. So that's all. Thanks. Yeah, sir.

It's kind of, the permits existed, but we weren't all going down to our city hall and pouring through the documents.

Thank you for your comments. I can see the passion about this issue in the community. Maybe you can help me understand one of the first points in your brief was that the project was approved without amendment the existing conditional use permit. And, you know, the question I had asked about planning staff was, it originally said the construction hours had to be in a certain time, the lighting had to be in a certain time, and paid tournaments had to get permits. That was the, what amendments do you have in mind? Like, what's missing? So when you say it was approved without amendments, just clarify.

My amendments would be just to the facility you know, a mix of tennis court surfaces, that there would be a wider swimming pool, some of the things that I expressed in my appeal. I don't have a lot of issues with the shape, you know, I think the architecture of the club, of the proposed club is great. And so I don't have any bone to pick with that.

So it would be specific to some of the comments you made, like, you know, the swimming is not going to accommodate enough, and it's not shaded. So you would think that would be put into the amendment, would be to add that as a condition. That would be added as a condition, and I would feel for it.

And a few other. Let me just try to understand your comments.

Thank you. Thank you.

Any other questions? Well, yeah, thank you for your time, and I appreciate all your comments. I also love that my council member Gabe asked the question about the conditional use permit. The other point you made was about the CEQA exemption. Yes. And suggested that the plan does not accommodate sea level rise. But what I'm reading from our staff report is that it actually exceeds. So can you explain to me why you believe that it doesn't?

I believe they mentioned that there was 120 yards of soil was being imported to build a new club. And it's about 10 yards. 10 big truckloads, I believe. And 10 big truckloads is not going to change the level of the club. And when I drive into the club on pink tides, there's water coming up through the gutters or through the drain spouts in the parking lot. So it's just not, it's not, it shouldn't be addressing those in, you know, it's just for his own benefit and the benefit of the club members in the future. If it's going to be redone, do it right.

Okay. Yeah. I did read in the report that it suggested that the requirement is 9.7 feet and that, in fact, they'll be building an elevation of 10.7 feet. So they're actually exceeding the requirement.

I don't know if they do that with that many yards. Anyway, you know, it's a fine point that I maybe need to consider.

Thank you.

Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Great. Thank you, Mr. All right. So now I'd like to ask to clarify that.

Yeah. So for the staff, that soil addition comes from their geotechnical report that was submitted by. It's not just a hypothetical. It actually came from.

Yes, they've worked it out. What they expect to have from the cut and fill. I think there's I think there's 400 cubic yards being

So that's through the Miller Pacific Engineering Group and their technical report. Yes. Okay.

Okay, great. All right. So can I ask the applicants team to please come forward? You have 10 minutes to make your presentation. And please state your name for the moment. Thank you. Yeah, sure.

I am the team. Mark Harris, one of the owners of the property and the organizer of this project. First, let me just say thanks for your time. Thanks to the planning department for their professionalism and for all their hard work and really to all the city staff we've engaged with for their time and energy through this process. I also want to thank Howard for his input and for our four recent private conversations and engagement. I do I have felt from you, you're over your more generalized support for this. And I also understand that you're really troubled by some of the details. So, look, I mentioned my name's Mark Harris. I live in Mill Valley with my wife, Blythe, with our two children. We're members, we're currently members of the MTRC. I play tennis there when I can. My kids use the fitness facilities regularly. It is important to clarify. We did not buy the business. We own the property only. We do not own the MTRC. It's a bit of a technicality, but I think it's important, and I'll come back to why later. For what it's worth for the council, I'm not a developer by profession or trade. I'm not a club operator. I've just taken this on as a community member, as a passion project. When I first secured an option to purchase this land, my very first call was to Dan Schwartz. That was in the summer of 2022. So four plus years ago. And when Dan and I talked, I made it clear that I didn't have any interest in forcing something on this area that was or is unwanted. That would actually be the opposite of what I was hoping to accomplish here and what was motivating me. And so my first act of diligence was to call Dan to flip this concept at a very high level and to ask for the city of Larkspur's feedback and advice. And I just say that. So, you know, what I received from Dan was, you know, appropriately neutral and diplomatic responses, but I share it. not because of his responses, but because of my orientation. That was my orientation four plus years ago. And it is as true today as it's ever been. I'm not interested in forcing something on Larkspur that is not wanted. I did this because I was motivated to try to create something positive in our collective backyard, something special and something lasting. And I have over the last, three-plus years encountered happily, a lot of support and enthusiasm across the community. More recently, following the Marin IJ article that ran, I've received really an outpouring of support and help, offers to help from Larkspur residents, and I'm really grateful for that. On the other hand, as you know, there are really passionate objectors also. Most of those are current members at the MTRC. I'd say, you know, 25% or so of that member population have really registered their unhappiness. Those are in the petitions that are before you. The reality is that this parcel is a focal point for the passions and the interests of many. And whether for or against, I think that's a good thing. Some of us may see it differently, but I think we all care about and have good intentions about, you know, what happens here. I think it's really important actually what happens here. It's an important piece of, it's an important parcel and an important location in this town. So, Over the past year plus, we have met with local stakeholders of all kinds, nearby HOAs and neighbors, local business owners, Chamber of Commerce, city representatives, community organizations, local business people, and just others invested in Larkspur's future and overall well-being. These photos are from an event last December in the gym at the MTRC. We were about 300 or so people turned out to get a preview of our plans. and we answered questions and exchanged information for hours where they're late into the night, there were a lot of really upset people there. I think if you've given your patronage and your loyalty to a place for years, or in some cases, decades, and then that place decides to shut its doors, that is jarring and it's frustrating and it's dislocating. Most of the concerns from my just, anecdotal experience, but also reading everything in the record, come from those who want indoor swim or indoor tennis. And I think it became clear at this event and seeing our plans for the first time that we didn't have those large indoor structures. Beyond the indoor programming, there are broader questions and concerns that have been raised and posed by people who rely on this place for, I think, very important parts of their daily routines. What I think, though, has been kind of unfortunate is I think many have equated this plan with the shutting down of the MTRC. And this just could not be more factually incorrect. And I'm happy to take questions from the council later if that's of interest. But it's actually just the opposite. The MTRC was shutting down of its own accord over three years ago. That's when we met. We partnered after we purchased the land. We partnered with the MTRC to create a situation such that it could extend its life and stay open and serve its members. And that's been happening since the summer of 2023. We are actually the ones who made it financially feasible and have enabled it to remain open today and for it to remain open until the last possible minute if our project goes forward. I feel... I can't help but feel that if the plans for you were for a shopping center or a medical building or a housing development, while I knew these concerns would still exist and this group of petitioners would still be upset, I'm not sure there would be petitions. I'm not sure if they would be here tonight. I think there would be different objectives for different reasons. It's just ironic and I think a little bit painful to me that it's what we have in common, a shared use case that has bound us up together in this appeal and in this conflict. We actually share a lot of common ground with the groups of people that are opposing this plan. The disapproval actually lies in the details of the property plan. And we recognize that these details can't appeal to everyone. For those people who don't see their preferred programming in this future proposal, I can understand how that feels unfair, and I can understand how that can feel personally offensive, particularly after being a loyal customer for years or decades. And we don't take those feelings lightly, and we are listening. We've been listening. And there are opportunities in the future to continue that dialogue in private forums if this project goes forward. If this project is going to succeed, then it's going to have to appeal to a really broad cross section of this community. Many hundreds of Larkspur and neighboring families. But if this project is going to be viable, it also has to account for the realities of trying to make a lower density, recreative use case work given the land construction and labor costs that are a reality in 2026 and beyond. And those factors are really top of mind in what's driving this plan. We have to minimize the volume of of construction and the structural footprint for this to be viable. So let's get into the approach a little bit. I think if in the end we favor the idea of preserving a lower density tennis, swim, and community gathering use case for this parcel, Then the real question is not whether it mimics the exact offerings of the MTRC, but rather, how do we make this particular use case of recreation viable at this very moment in time, given these factor costs that I just mentioned? We've done a lot of work on that latter question. So you all know this is an expensive address. It is really valuable land. I think everybody probably experienced since we purchased the land. There's been lots of speculation and lots of rumors about what the future of this parcel would be.

I'm sorry to interrupt. So your 10 minutes are up. I don't want to... It sounds like you have a presentation. You know, just to be fair to the other side who had 10 minutes.

Okay, sure. Sorry about that. I don't know how that happened. But that's my bad because I thought I had time. But... Should I just maybe just quickly show you kind of the design and show you the approach?

It's all in our packet. We have your design in our packets, which we've all read. So if you wouldn't mind, if we have questions, answer the questions. Absolutely. Great. I'll leave my first questions.

Thank you. Could you please just clarify what you said about buying the business versus buying the building? Because I didn't know that. So you've purchased the building and the land, but who's actually running the club?

Yeah, the prior owners retained ownership of the business. And we own all the land. We own all the facilities. We own all the buildings, everything. And we've allowed them to sort of stay there and operate. And we've done that. I don't think they mind me saying, we allowed them to operate rent-free. so that they could keep it open.

Until, and if you get your plans.

Yeah, now in fairness, I do want to say they are paying taxes. They are paying properties taxes. But look, this was a business that when we encountered it, it had shrunk from 1,600 at its peak to about half that. Indoor fitness has been a business categorically that has struggled in the last decade and then you know, when COVID came and happened, I think that just presented a whole nother layer of challenges. And this is a group of people who worked really hard. They kept that place going for 50 years. It's very hard to keep the business, you know, going for 50 years. It's quite a testament to them. But I think they were at a point where they're, you know, getting close to 80 years old, they were ready to retire and move on to solve their partnership. And they had made those decisions. And so the club had come to kind of end of its life. And It's unfortunate, I understand that. I'm actually, what I'm hoping to do and trying to do if this project goes forward is not to bring an end to that, but to actually try to protect and preserve this use case at this property, which is a little bit of an irrational thing to do in 2026. But I'm operating not from a place of economic rationality, but from a place of personal motivation and passion and a hope of doing something good.

I have a question. I'm hoping you can help me understand. I heard you say the need for a broad cross-section of community order for this to succeed. I also think in your plans, it's all play courts. And help me understand why if you're trying to attract a broad cross-section, you wouldn't want to have two different types of courts so that people prefer one or the other and still be happy in that club.

I mentioned to Howard, I am open to considering an alternate surface for a couple of courts. I didn't want to be bound to a specific thing or contractually obligated. There is a reason they are, Clay. We think it's going to be a great source of differentiation and something really compelling. It is much more better for your body. So, um, I've been a participant in this local tennis scene now for going on 15 years. I love to play league tennis. Um, uh, I love this tennis community. Um, most of us are middle-aged, uh, whether it's early middle age or late middle age. And, uh, it is just, and you know, I know this is just a personal view, but it's, it is, it is a really favorable surface for, um, uh, for people who are aging and who want to play a lot. It's just much softer, much better on your body. It's cooler by a lot temperature-wise. I don't know if it's technically permeable, but it's basically permeable and better for the environment. And it's just kind of aesthetically pleasing. So there are a whole bunch of reasons why we think it's special. I know there are people who feel uncomfortable with it. I also know there are people who are really excited to have it. But, you know, I'm not particularly a fan of hard courts, but it's not to say that I wouldn't consider having a couple. I think there's a lot of new technology out there. There are other interesting court services. I'm open to looking at that for a couple of courts, but I really wanted this place to be focused and to stand for something. In my experience with business, it's good to have an identity. It's good for people to know kind of what you do and to not try to, you know... be too many things for too many different people. And we do have to compete with other clubs that are not very far away.

Thank you. So, Mr. Harris, thank you so much for all that. And I think we kind of cut you off. I'm wondering, you were going to present plans. The only thing that might be relevant is, you know, we have all these people and, you know, on the council, we're in a position where We want to follow municipal code. We need to, you know, respect owner's rights. And we also want, you know, the community to get all the benefit that it can. And maybe if you could just go through the plans and tell us areas, you know, you've heard all the concerns from the appellant, for example, you know, where would you be flexible? Because here we are in a limited role trying to make the findings of the, you know, planning commission, but yeah. You know, I'm really looking for a compromise where people are, you know, we can get some win-win out of this. So if you can maybe walk through any area where that's possible. Is this activated?

Am I able to get back into it? Yeah. Okay. So an area where I don't think it makes sense to be flexible is this was when the owners got this, got their hands on this a little over 50 years ago. It was an abandoned supermarket and they creatively repurposed it. It's 50 years. plus thousand square feet. It's not salvageable today. It was never intended for this purpose. The use case is already challenged enough. And to try to reconstruct it, something doesn't make sense. So that, I would say, that doesn't work. This is just about us incorporating history and nostalgia and stuff into design. So I know you don't want to sort of trace through that. But here's the site plan. So I can use this to to speak to it a little bit. I think, look, I mentioned to Howard, I think it's an interesting idea to explore whether a tented structure would be possible. People who love indoor tennis love it because they can go when it's raining, but they also love it because it gives them protection from the sun. You know, My own views on that is we live in California. To me, it seems like it's sunny all the time here. You know, I'm, clay courts drain pretty quickly. I'm not super, I'm not super motivated by the rain, are you? But I think actually being able to stay out in the sun is a real thing. And so I have mentioned to him, I, since he first approached, I found out that Stanford has this tenant structure. I've been meaning to try to get down there. I told him I'm willing to explore that in good faith and to research it. I have no idea what it entails. I don't know if putting up a very tall, tinted structure becomes like basically a sail, a giant sail for which there is massive wind load engineering and sort of structure and foundation needs that come with it. But I'm happy to look into it. And I think if it's reasonable and it works aesthetically and the town would approve it, I'm open to considering it. I don't know if it's doable or viable. I don't know that I would do it. I told him I couldn't commit contractually to doing it, particularly at this stage, but I'd be open to looking at that.

Sorry, one other question. So I think we have two communities, the swimming community and the tennis community. So on the swimming side, I've lived here for 15 years and just went into the club recently. It's wonderful. That is a very small pool. Maybe you can just talk a little bit about the economics. So it sounds to me like you had a membership that was 1600. you know, the profit and loss is not supporting that scale of facility. And so there's a downside of the pool is quite large. I assume there's a lot of maintenance, but what would it mean to have a larger pool from business side? I mean, is that, I'm sure you've thought this through, but you know, for the benefit of us all, because it seems to be the middle ground we're seeking.

Yeah. Look, I just would say that, um, we're really operating kind of, um, on a very fine, walking a very fine line on cost. We want to keep costs in a certain zone. The truth is I need a lot more information to know before I'll know what this will cost. But we can use our common sense. We can use judgment. We work with people on rough order of magnitude kind of basis. And so the pool is the size that it is because commercial pools are way more expensive than I ever ever would have guessed or understood or guesstimated based on my experience with residential projects and residential pools. As you get bigger and you step up to new thresholds, you have to get different kinds and sizes of industrial equipment that takes you into new cost categories. So we've managed this into sort of a space that we thought was doable. It's still very expensive, I think, relative to a lot of the other things you see on this visual. I'll be candid. It is not catering. It is not designed. I've heard this very specifically from this crowd. They do not consider this a lap lane swimming pool that is legitimate. And I don't disagree with that, but I'm trying to make it do a couple jobs. So it is fundamentally designed to be a family pool, a family swim pool. It's not going to be great for people who love to swim laps all the time, but we made it lap lane length and we made it wide enough for three lanes and And the thought is at times of the day that are less likely to be occupied by families, mornings, et cetera, it could be reserved for people who like to use swim as a way, as a means for exercise. And so we're trying to get a couple, trying to be crafty and creative. We're trying to get multiple jobs out of a pool that is also fitting within a budget.

Thank you for your, yeah.

Sorry.

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Mark, for your presentation and for reaching out to council members to talk to us about your plan. You know, I don't, my question really is more about this cross-section of the community, and I heard earlier something about, oh, something earlier about only the ability, I'm sorry, I have to get my computers on, the ability to only accommodate 500 members, is that accurate?

No, I've never, I've No, I've never said it. I'm not sure where it came from, although I'd say that it's not a horrible kind of guess as to what we need for this to be viable. It's actually a pretty good guess. And maybe I've said it on that basis. Like for this to be viable, we have to attract about that number of families for it to function, for it to work in terms of our sort of very high level sense of the economics.

Okay, so that actually is a minimum.

Yeah, I think it's a floor for this to work. It has to be in that zone.

Okay, I'm glad to hear that. I was thinking that would make it extremely exclusive.

Well, that's actually double the size of the number of local clubs. I mean, you know, so it's, but it's not double, but it's a little bit bigger than some other clubs. So, but that is the, that is the level that we think we're going to need the, That's the level of memberships we think we're going to need to sell if this is going to work.

OK. All right.

Thank you. Yeah. I'm trying to open this door, but there's a band playing.

So let's take a two-minute break. And if somebody could move it fast, then we're all . It's open. I'll try to figure out how to keep this one open. And we'll tell you how to air it here.

Is there a service staff that we can control? There's a band playing out here. So .

Thank you, Mr. Harris.

Sit down.

I have a question for staff. It sounds like Mr. Harris is having some conversations with members of the community.

But if we approve this, you know, if we approve it tonight, I mean, how does that work? If he wants to amend his plans, he has to come back through the entire process to get approval for whatever changes he wants to make?

The code does allow some degree of minor alterations to a project between entitlement and construction. If the council feels there is something that they want to be accommodating, some aspect that they want to evaluate, we certainly can add that as a conditional approval.

Okay, great. Thank you. All right. All right. Well, thank you all for being patient. So I will now open it up to public comments. Can I just see a show of hands of how many people would like to make a public comment? Okay. All right. So why don't we go to two-minute public comments? We normally have three, but just so we don't want to be going late into the night. We also have people online who also want to make public comments. So I'll say two minutes each. If you all could come forward to the podium, please state your name. If you'd like, you can also say, you know, which community you live in.

Can I just interrupt for just a second? Just so everyone knows, the Council has all of the written comments that came in, not only to this meeting, but to the Planning Commission meeting. So all of those emails, all the petitions, everything is part of what we do our homework about. So if you are going to just repeat yourself of something you've already submitted by email, just recognize that we already have that information.

If I can just add to that, you know, thank you guys all for being here, being patient. You know, as a council member, I might be speaking for my colleagues as well. You can see what's in front of us. If you could, the most helpful comments would be either something that we've missed, you know, there's a lot of public record movement and repeating it will help much. If there's some middle ground here in the discussion, you know, something that would be constructive and move us towards, you know, a good decision that that would be, you know, simply to repeat that you don't like it and you want to see them there. You know, there's, you know, we've seen the petition, there's 300 of you, and it would be really helpful to get some details. Thank you.

All right, great. So with that, we'll open it up for our first public comment.

I would just like to know if you got my two emails, guys. Yes, we have our emails. We have our emails, yes. Okay. It's important that it's in code in Marksburg that you have to get permission before you destroy other people's property. If he didn't get permission, he can't remove those trees. It's very important. I mean, if he's willing to work with people that live on Larkspur Plaza Drive. I don't think he ever met with Larkspur Isle Homeowners Association. I never saw that. And that's the one, that's the huge one, 186 units on Larkspur Plaza Drive. And right where my unit is, it's right there where he wants to put the entrance in that sharp, sharp turn. And it doesn't even make sense. And there's like, A transformer or mortgage sewer sewage areas. I mean, I, I would, I asked the architect to send me pictures, a renderings of the back or back parking lot and he didn't send it to me and it's not in any packets. So I can't see it. So just take into consideration if it's going to be a huge sewage area, you know, Please do not, do not remove that beautiful back area. I'm glad it's not the housing element, but if he's willing, and Julian said he wouldn't have to take out any of those three, four beautiful trees, 14 trees back there, if he didn't put paddles, rocks, because trucks are going back there now for the gardeners have their trucks that go back there and work on the trees and

Thank you. This is such an important night. I do, before I start, knew that it was going to go from three to two. So hopefully I cut out most of what I was going to say and only stick to the points. But Mr. Halsman Paulson, I think there are three communities, not two. There's tennis, swim, and health. There are those of us who use the club for health reasons. And I think that is new. We have not been talking about that significantly enough. And that's what I would like to address. So thank you for bringing that up. My name is Maria O'Rourke. I live at 30 Palm Avenue. Like it or not, we're here today addressing the project due to the choices and decisions made by the city council and the planning commission. Ultimately, accountability for the final decisions rests with you. As a resident, all I can do is highlight issues that are worth examining so we have full disclosure and transparency. Bloxburg has had a long established core value as stated in the general plan, that it is to address policies concerning community servicing, serve in servicing recreational health and multi-service facilities that serve the needs of the Longstreet community across age groups. Specifically related to older adults policy, FAC 1.4 of the general plan separately states provide recreational facilities and programs for older adults. I'm 83. I am an older adult. It directs the city to work with private and public organizations to identify programs and facilities available to older adults and to identify ways to augment existing programs or add new programs where appropriate. So my question is, how did the city, and I'm assuming I'm talking about the planning commission because you haven't done this yet. How did the Planning Commission evaluate the loss of the existing communities serving recreational and health functions of Clarksboro Plaza, particularly those serving adults? Older adults. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Andre. My name is John Cummings and council members. Thank you very much for hosting us tonight. I'm a resident of Clarksboro and Palm Hill. I've submitted comments, so I won't repeat what I've said already, but two things I'd like to bring up which were not addressed earlier. Number one is I really would encourage you to listen particularly to residents of Larkspur. I think there are a lot of voices here who probably submitted petitions and even objected to this plan who are not residents of Larkspur. I'm entirely in favor of this project. I would hope you would uphold the Planning Commission's recommendations. I think in addition to what has been said, the alternative solutions here, if the conditional use or the use permit is not granted for the very same use that this facility is intended for, while we not serve everyone in this audience's direct need, it does provide massive benefits to this community. It addresses a parcel land at the end of Magnolia Avenue that is as Mr. Harris discussed, very valuable, but also something beautiful that we can all be very proud of as marks for residents. So I would encourage you to do that. Again, back to the issue of alternative uses, potentially in higher density, I would very much encourage you to adopt this in potentiality that more higher density use is here, and that creates issues where traffic and safety at that very vital board of New York schools. So thank you very much. I encourage you to vote in favor of this. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Kathleen Foote. Like Mr. Harris, I'm a resident of Mill Valley, but for at least 35 years, I've been a member of the tennis club. And I'd like to speak in support the appeal, particularly the aspect that relates to the conditional use permit. It seems to me to be perfectly appropriate to amend the use permit. What technically I suppose you're looking at is just simply design issues, but everything that's been talked about tonight really has been much more about use than about design, and appropriately so. The applicant's design, as it was, you know, going through the planning commission thing, it increases parking by 18%. It reduces the number of tennis courts by like 38%. And the number of swimming lanes by 57%. You go from seven lanes now to three lanes. That's very significant change. The design... includes viewing areas, if there's a large bar area, a lot of, even though there's a much smaller physical structure. At the planning commission meeting, there's a couple of areas that are sort of unidentified. They're just, there is grassy areas at the planning commission meeting. When one of the commissioners asked Mr. Harris about those spaces on the big corner one, he said, well, maybe the restaurant at some point. So, you know, maybe that's good, maybe that's bad, but in any event, it's the kind of thing that a conditional use permit, an amended conditional use permit, would be more than appropriate, particularly given, as everybody recognizes, the importance of the property itself to the community, its relationship to all of the public facilities along Doherty. schools and all of that kind of stuff. And, of course, the point that was made regarding the general plan and the new specific aspect of it. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

I'm Brian Baker, a member of the Mountain Racquet Club. Basically, I'll just be short. There are two communities when they talk about detrimental to the community. It's really two communities we're talking about. One is Larkspur, and I think it'd be very hard-pressed to say that the plan is detrimental to Larkspur and that community. So we're talking about the community of Mount Tam and the membership of roughly 1,000 members. Mount Tam has been around for 50 years plus. And many of the members have aged along with the club itself. And the club has served that member, that community very well. And as we have aged, and Howard alluded to it, there are certain things that take place at Mount Tam that are important for this demographic that are members. One of which is many of us are very averse to the sun. And that's why we have been campaigning with Mark, not me personally, but others to put some kind of a covering roof or bubble or something over the swimming as well as the tennis itself. And it really just comes down to the community that Mount Tam built is not the community that will be served with Mark's plan. Now, he has full discretion to build his own new community, but the resistance that he's getting is from those of us who now will be without that community that we have joined. Current ownership could do the same plan, okay? They have more of an obligation to existing members because we're paying dues. And so they would have to, in many ways, conform to what we wanted. Mark doesn't have the obligation. He wants to build his own community. And we're appealing to him to think about the existing members in that community and what you can do to actually encourage us to continue to be part of the community that he wants to build.

Okay. Thank you very much.

My name is Vivian Holley. I'm a member of Mount Ham. I'm one of the people that are in the population of seniors now that I've turned 80. And I'm probably on the younger side for a lot of the people that use the facility. At least in the water aquatic program, I'm probably one of the younger ones. I'm also disabled. And when we look at community, and public use, I'm sure that Roxburg is a great community just like Mel Valley. I'm sure there's a lot of people here that have great before we cover them. And I'm also sure that a lot of us are getting very limited mobility wise. And so it's not we and them, it's here's a facility right now that has programs for disabled people, has the most wonderful exercise class free to the community. And you can go in there whether you have Parkinson's or either you've had a stroke or brain surgery like I did. You can go and exercise with physical therapists. And I can't imagine losing that and not replacing it. And what I see going up on Starmark is a country club more, and you've got a big grass for families. Put the pool there. That's enough space to give us a pool, and we can still rehab, and we can still serve some of the people that are being served now that are going to be out on the street without a place to go. So public use would be something that would help us seniors and us disabled people.

Thank you.

Thank you. We, maybe the grammar's weak, but you can understand. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Sally Marshall. I've lived in Marksburg since 1987, which I think is longer than most of you. And I've been a member of Mount Tam Rankin Pub all that time. I have swum virtually every day. It's been open and I haven't been out of town. So I think I'm one of the primary users of the pool. But aside from that, what I want to add to what I've written to you before is yes, I realize that you can't dictate to Mr. Harris what he does, but you do have one possibility. You do not have to approve his exemptions. You can say, do what you want to do within the rules of Larkspur or accommodate the needs of the community. You don't have to approve all of the variances that he's asked for. You can ask for some compromise. Maybe you can't do that legally, but you can certainly go and inform the state. I know you can't force it, but you certainly don't have to just give a blanket approval because somebody asked for variances. I know that, having been a homeowner in Larkspur. You don't automatically approve variances. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. I'm Gabriel Patino, a longtime member of Mountain Rocket Club. I'm here tonight to ask you to uphold the appeal and halt the proposed redevelopment in its current form. While the Planning Commission focuses strictly on the developer's technical design checklist, the City Council has a broader mandate. Under Larkspur's zoning laws, you are required to determine if a project protects the general welfare of the community. This project fails that test. The developer claims this is simply replacing one private health club for another. That is fundamental mischaracterization. This project removes a multi-generational indoor outdoor recreational resource serving 1,000 marine residents and replace it with the exclusive high fee outdoor only clay core facility. Specifically, This redevelopment will demolish the only five indoor tennis courts in Marin County. Indoor courts are not a luxury. They're vital community infrastructure. They are the only spaces that allow our seniors to stay active without dangerous sun exposure, and they are the only courts that keep our families, youth programs, and community active during rainy winter months. Once these five indoor courts are torn down, they're gone forever. Land in Glassport is too scarce and construction is too expensive to ever rebuild them. We're not asking you to permanently block this property owner from developing his land. We're asking you to step in as our elected leaders to protect our community welfare. We urge the council to overturn the commission's decision Keep the public record open and require a comprehensive environmental and community impact review. Please protect Larkspur recreational infrastructure. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Hello. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Sean. I've been playing tennis for most of my life, but with a a brief hiatus in the middle part of my life, and I've been a member of MTRC for about two years now. I'm at the club usually three or four times per week, and I've been doing my best to follow this plan as the information has come out. The first, I want to make a couple of quick observations and then leave with a question for the council. My first observation is that I don't believe that 25% statement that was made earlier is accurate, I have yet to meet a member of the club that supports this plan in its current form. That 25% statement may be based on the number of people who signed the petition, but that does not represent the current members that are in support of this plan. Another statement that I would like to make is that MTRC is special because of three things. The first thing is its community of people. The second is its scope of services. And the third, which I think is the elephant in the room, is its relative affordability. We do not know how much this new club will cost to join. I joined this club not because the bathrooms were kept up and the courts were flat. I joined this club because it was affordable and because I couldn't find another place to play consistently. does look like a country club to me that I will not be able to afford. I have other more important things that I need to spend my hard-earned money and I think that's a major concern of many people who do not support this plan. That worries me a great deal and I've been very disappointed in this process and quite honestly in some of the questioning and the adversarial relationship that I feel some of the members of the council have had with folks in the audience. It's been difficult for me. Thank you. Thank you. Can I make one last question? Okay. Maybe could you give us a warning instead of just cutting out? Okay. Oh, can you not see the lights there? We didn't know about. Oh, sorry. Can I just ask my question? Yes, ask your question. Okay. My question for the Council is what are the people with political influence, power, and money in this community going to do to preserve this community when the bulldozers pull up to the plaza? Are we going to find grants, new areas, new ways to support the people who are in the Parkinson's class, the covered pools, and the covered task force? Or are we just going to vote and watch this community disappear? I believe we can do better. Thank you. Thank you.

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Hi, my name's Jake Schutt. I live in Marksburg, California. I am grateful that the spirit of this project will be maintained with this proposed plan. I know from watching a lot of what's going on around our community at large, this could be something significantly different. And I think that this is a much more desirable outcome. I know that Mr. Harris has worked with the community and I suspect that he'll continue to do that. The fact of the matter is that the club is in existence today because of the largesse of him willing to work with the community. And so the fact of the matter is that that club doesn't have a business model that's currently working and required the current owners to sell it. I'm in full support of the project and I urge you to approve.

Hi, I'm Kathy Moxman. I live in Larkspur. I have two kids that are in the school district at Neal Cummins. I'm here to support the project. We are current members of the Mount Tam Rocket Club. I've been probably for two or three, probably about the same time Mark bought the property. We didn't even realize it, but we are there many times a week with the kids. Swimming is a great outlet and very family oriented place. The last thing I'll say is that I reached out to Mark on Saturday to talk about the project with them. He was immediately available, talked to me for 30 minutes on Saturday, answered my questions, listened to my feedback of just how to make this a really, you know, family-oriented place that will add value to our community, and he was very receptive. So just again, I won't take up this full two minutes, but here to support the project. And I do think and hope that it will be a good place for families and hopefully a wider community in Larkspur.

Thank you for your comment.

My name is Jennifer Schaefer. I'm a Larkspur resident. I'm pretty well informed on this issue. And I believe approval for the project of one Larkspur Plaza proposal should be swift. For me, this is a no-brainer. I'm really confused why we're debating the design elements and, again, the idea and proposal of a private property. But I think we all know, right, that the property's been sold. Redevelopment is coming one way or the other. And so, for me, the only real question is what the site becomes and who shapes it. And I think parks for residents like myself and others who have spoken should have a voice. William Larkspur Plaza preserves something rare, recreational space where we can play tennis, we can swim, we can gather as a community. And once it's gone, it's not coming back. So tennis in Marin is good for Marin and it's certainly good for Larkspur. The alternative, which I understand, could be high density housing, it could be low income housing, I don't know what, right? And so that would probably be coming from an outside investor with no stake in Larkspur. That's not appealing and won't serve this community. The One Marks for Placid project is the opposite. It's local people investing in Moraine and our community. So I want to acknowledge Mark Harris for three years since buying the property. As he mentioned, he's allowed the club to operate rent free. He's engaged in good faith with this process and that deserves to be met with good faith, not indefinite delay. We're three years in now. So for me, this opportunity to develop this site thoughtfully with care and in a way that actually serves our tour will not wait forever. If this council lets this stall any longer, I'll be disappointed. And I think, you know, you guys can all imagine what the alternatives are. So I urge the council to approve this project. Thank you.

Can I say one more thing?

I think Jeffrey Swisher at the planning committee had an awesome idea about creating a recreation center for Larkspur, totally independent of this project. So if all the opposition got together and rallied around and fundraised for a recreation center, that seems like an awesome use of all this great energy in this room. Thank you very much.

Hello, Lucy Ellens. I'm a Larkspur resident. I also wanted to express my support for the project. This is the second meeting that I've attended where Mark has presented. And I think that his ideas are exciting, could bring something unique to Larkspur. I think some people pointed out You know, that you should consider hard ports. I would say that we do have a lot of hard ports in the area already, and this would be something unique. I echo what the previous speaker, Jennifer, noted that some of the concerns that have been raised tonight are things that would really be suited to a community center, which I agree our community could use. We have come together previously to get the library project done. And maybe we can round together to do a community center. But again, that would be separate from the project that, uh, bar is proposing for trying to fill the doors.

Thank you. Thank you. Hi, I'm Caitlin Brown. I'm also a resident and also a mountain town member. And I don't have anything more elephant to say than the last few women who spoke before me. I am in full support of this project and I encourage you to approve it. I think it will continue to serve the community in a way that's really positive. And I am fully on board with continuing to figure out other alternative solutions for the town or in partnership with the town of Port Madera to try to serve this missing need that some of these community members are bringing up. I, of course, think there is a need for alternative exercise for aging and the and to serve all of these people who are so passionate. And I'm happy to engage on that, but I don't think that this is where that needs to happen. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, counsel, for your patience and great information. My name is Gretchen Hoskins. I have lived in North for 26 years. My family have been members at the ham club. And we use all the facilities, the health, the tennis, the swimming. And I am very sympathetic to those members who are so attached and invested in the continuation of their facility. It's hard. Change is hard. But that's what we're looking at. That facility is done. And there's not going to be another one that comes in that provides all of the amenities that have been asked for. And in fact, I do believe that unless you vote against this appeal and give Mark his permits, that we will have something very undesirable there. And I did want to ask, I'm listening to the attorney. It seemed to me that he was saying that your authority does not extend beyond permitting within our codes. It can't do anything about the business model. You can't say, oh, well, a different tennis court. And having gotten to know Mark a bit in this process, He's really interested in collaborating. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hello. Good evening.

My name is Tommy LaManna. I'm a Larkspur resident. I am also a commercial property owner on the Magnolia corridor. which includes a silver peso, so I understand how passionate this community can be about local businesses. I am here tonight in strong support of the One Larkspur Plaza application. I want to name what's happening tonight. This appeal isn't about code or zoning or the construction management plan. It's about programming and pricing at a private recreation business. Questions this city council has no purview over. Questions no level of Larkspur government has purview over. Bringing them here anyway after unanimous approval is an abuse of the process, an attempt to exhaust an applicant and city that has already done their job correctly. What's actually in front of you is an amazing opportunity for Blacksburg. Significant private investment in the downtown parcel that has needed reinvestment for a long time, brought forward by an applicant who has met every requirement asked of him. This is a well-designed, code-compliant project that offers real benefits to our residents, our business owners, and the city as a whole. This is the kind of projects towns wait years to attract. And most importantly, this is what the residents of Larkspur want. I urge you to uphold the Planning Commission's decision. Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, hi, my name's Ryan Radke, and I've been a member of Mount Tam 47 years, pretty much my whole life. And I'm thankful for Mark for keeping the Mount Tam open during these three years. That's very appreciative. But one thing that hasn't been talked about is I go down and play basketball every day and I see a lot of people going out and play basketball and that's just what I do. I'm a tennis player. I play basketball and there's no proposed basketball court on this facility. And, you know, I probably wouldn't be I've been a member of my whole life. I probably wouldn't be a member of this new club if they didn't have a basketball court. And also what makes Mount Ham so special, what makes Mount Ham, Mount Ham, the people that have been there for a long time know is the indoor tennis courts. Like, you know, I became a nationally ranked tennis player. I played here at Redwood. I played number one for four years. And the indoor tennis courts, like when it was raining, helped me practice, get better. And, you know, And with no indoor tennis courts, it's just not going to be the same. So that's basically all I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is . I live here in Palm Hill, Lake Mark. Tennis is a big part of my life. I'm a very passionate tennis player, watcher. I've had amazing battles. Tam Racquet Club with Paul, who has always been an amazing coach there. And, yeah, I have a lot of great memories from Mount Tam. It has been amazing. But as someone just said, and I wanted to thank everybody here because the fact that tennis is having these moments, this discussion, I think is important. Change is hard. And I think, well, It was time for Mount Tam and it's going to be hard for several people, neighbors, etc. But I want to thank Mark because he mentioned this plan to me a couple of years ago and for two years I've been like, what's going on? What's going to happen? And I want to thank him for allowing so many people to continue to have these tennis battles at Mount Tam and And the last thing is that if my math is correct, I think almost everybody here is aging. And there are two little kids that you saw running and making noise. Those are my kids. And I think I'm very excited about them and their future. And I think that Mark's plan will be something that my kids will be able to enjoy for many years to come.

Hi, good evening. My name is Larry Knott. I've lived in Larkspur for almost 30 years, and I've raised my children here. I've been a member of Mount Tamaracki Club for decades. I served on the Larkspur 2050 Committee, and today I'm a board member of the Larkspur Library Foundation. I'm deeply invested in the future of Larkspur, particularly the northern end of downtown. I think we're at an important moment. We have a new police station. The Niven property has been redeveloped. We have a vibrant new library. but we also have the former Lucky Supermarket sitting empty, a reminder of what can happen when an important property doesn't have a viable vision for its future. The reality of Mt. Tam is that keeping the old club as is was not a viable option. The former owners wanted out of the business and sold the property years ago. Mark has allowed the club to continue operating while pursuing a long-term solution. I appreciate his candor about the financial realities of maintaining the staging facility. So the question isn't whether the property changes, it's what does it become? That's especially important because one Larkspur Plaza is identified in Larkspur's housing element for potential housing development with a realistic capacity of 50 units. To imagine what kind of development that would mean for this site, just look down Magnolia at the new housing next to Rustic Bakery. That's 20 townhomes with portions reaching four stories. and the housing element site has a capacity of up to 50 units. I'm not opposed to housing, we need housing, but Mark's proposal gives us a different opportunity, a beautiful, thoughtfully designed property that preserves recreation, tennis, swimming, exercise, while creating a place for people to gather and connect. It can also add beauty and greenery to a prominent corner of Larkspur and I believe encourage further development in this part of town. Once we lose a recreational property like this, we're very unlikely to get it back. I strongly support Mark's plan and urge the council to approve it.

Thank you.

I'll be really brief. I'm Jill Knott. I've been in March for 30 years, and I've been a member of the club for probably 25. I play tennis all the time. I swim there. I work out. I'm really going to miss it, but I accept the fact that it came to an end. And I thank Mark for keeping the club going. I mean, it's a wonderful thing he's done for us and we're still out there doing it. I fully support it and I encourage you guys to improve the plan. I care about Larkspur and I think it's wonderful that someone wants to put an investment into developing that side of town. We live in Hillview and I think it's been kind of an eyesore with what's going on with Lucky and I hate to see it sit there empty and I hate to see it turn into mass housing. I think it's wonderful that we can continue having recreation in Larkspur and that someone wants to invest in building a really beautiful plan with lots of greenery and buildings that fit in with this history and historic buildings of Larkspur. So I encourage you to support it. And I think it's a wonderful thing for our city. And hopefully we'll encourage other development as the guy from the Peso said, it'll spur on other things that might happen in the Lucky sign as well. Thank you.

Hello, Council. Thank you for hearing our comments. I'm Linda Garrett. I live in Creekside in Larkspur. I've lived there for 29 years. I have been on the HOA board. We have 70 homes there. I don't know a single person in our development adjacent to this future club that objects to it. We are all thrilled. We're excited. We think it's beautiful. I love Larkspur. When I have out-of-town guests, I walk them down Magnolia. I'm so proud to live here. a unique community. I've lived in Luton and so on. I've lived in Tiburon. This community is beautiful. We are blessed with a beautiful geographic setting. We are in a little valley with a beautiful mountain. We've got the bay. We have Cincinnati on the hill. This is just remarkable to be able to have a beautiful development added to this end of Magnolia Avenue that will take the old Lark Creek Inn motif, the things that our forefathers gave us, and continue for future generations. I 100% support it, as do my neighbors. We really hope that this Council allows this project to go forward and does not have more and more delays. We're very eager to see it go in. Many of us will join. and enjoy it. And again, I think it enhances Larkspur, the thing that we are known for, our cute community, our beautiful buildings. I think this is going to be additive, enhance, and not detract. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening, and thank you. My name is Nori Alcatree. I have lived in Larkspur forever and a day, and I also grew up in Moranth, And I'm a longtime member of the Mount Tam Racquet Club. And ironically, I don't play that. So thank you very much for the opportunity to come down here and to listen to the community to both sides. I disagree that people don't have a right to appeal. Of course they do. And I haven't been down here for a long time, you know, because nothing has really come up on my radar screen. So I'm pleased to see that it's all been cordial. You know, we're a community. We're trying to figure out what works for the community. And I really appreciate that. And the longer I'm here, the more I really want to see that play out. I am very disappointed that the club is closing. And so for all the members, I really feel your pain. And I'm really touched. I totally get it. I totally get it. And, but I don't have a solution. I wish I had the money to, you know, have purchased it and to have renovated it in a way that we could, that it could continue because it's been great, but I don't. And I have been racking my brain. Well, how are we going to, you know, that's what I do. Well, how are we going to do this? What are we going to do? But I, I think that, you know, quite frankly, that ship has sailed and we're not going to get the, the, the Racquet Club back to where we wanted. So for those people, I've heard whispers of lawsuits. I'm a lawyer myself, and I will tell you, I would urge you, don't go down that path. You're not going to get what you want from it, and it will take forever. And that's just my two cents on that. For Okay, just for the developer, not the developer, for the new owner, if this does pass, we are your neighbors. And we just hope that if you are here, that you're a good neighbor to us and that you listen to us. But most importantly, really why I stood up here, I've heard that we clearly have a need for some community center And I have some thoughts on that, you know, and other people, we can get together and do the library. I think we can do the same for the community center. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi there, Patrick Stewart, resident of Floresburg. As of about a year ago, I've been a member of Mountain Rec Club since August. I reviewed the plans. My only qualm is it's nothing to do with the city council. I wish the poll were larger. I've been a member for another 20 years, and maybe another four or five of my kids are growing, but that's none of the business for us, this council. Beyond that, I'm strongly in support of the plan as it is. I think that any alternative beyond this will be a far worse option for the city of Larkspur, and we all know what some of those are. Thank you very much.

Council members, my name is Ray Johnson. I'm a 30-year resident of Larkspur, 20-plus years member of the Mount Camracket Club, and in fact, I live within walking distance of the club. So, you know, I come here with two paths. My first path is the new club probably won't fit me as well, right? It's a little bit disappointing, right? But really, the bigger picture here from the city council perspective is what is good in Larkspur. And what is good for Larkspur, which is bad for me, is you better recognize what Mark is. He's a unicorn. You know, you make it hard for him, you'll never find him again, right? I've walked in this club the last 10 years, and every, you know, every couple times I wonder how townhouses haven't been built here yet, right? You better look hard at the alternatives, right? The other thing, it's a public record of what he paid for the properties. right, which I believe is $13 million. I'm not supposed to look that. Carry on that some million dollars a year, at least, probably more, right? So every time you delay it, right, you make it harder for this to get done, right? And it's amazing that he allows the collectors to stay open. That's it, call it a pass. So I appreciate your attention. I fully support his efforts. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Lily Worgen, and my family lives directly across the creek from this . Sorry. My name is Lily Worgen. My family lives directly across the creek from Mount Tamaracket Club. It's awesome to see the amount of community involved here, and I hope that the community will continue to thrive. I do, however, realize that this is a private business, Um, so my, as a, as a neighbor, my, my only concern would be in, in change of light pollution or, um, or of the view, view shed. And so far I am enjoying the, the aesthetic as a neighbor, but I, um, am not seeing kind of a full scope of renderings from, from every angle. So that would be helpful.

Thank you. Hi, my name is Sasha. I live in Riviera Circle in Laksma Marina. And I just like to say, if we don't talk about flooding, then this whole property is going to be underwater and there'll be nothing to develop anyway. All right, so is there anyone else here in the room who would like to make a public comment before we move it online?

I know I've got a comment, but I have a question. I had documents prepared over the council. Can I give those out?

No, sorry. Yeah, you can give it to the court afterwards and she can distribute it. Thank you.

Okay, Alison, let's go to .

James Holmes, Larkspur. My concern is whether this project qualifies under Larkspur's ordinance as a commercial recreation facility. It's recreation, yes, but if it doesn't have an open fee-based business operation like the current facility and it's more like a social recreation facility like the Lagunitas Tennis Club or the Meadow Club, then it does not qualify for a use permit at all, let alone fit the current permit. Here's the definition, LMC permit. 18.08.530, recreation, commercial, quote, any business offering games, amusements, or recreation facilities for a fee on the business premises, end quote. So it has to offer these on a business, on a fee basis on the premises. It doesn't specifically say to the public, but offering on a fee basis certainly implies that. This definition isn't just a technicality. It ties into the underlying rationale for the zoning exception and the general plan's public interest values because commercial recreation facilities provide a broader public benefit than would a closed social club, unless you just say that, well, at least it's better than a big apartment complex. True, but cynical. The issue of whether the proposal meets...

Mr. Holmes, thank you for your comment.

Our next commenter is Alice Lynch.

Actually, this is, can you hear me? This is Raymond Lynch.

Yes, we can hear you.

Thank you. I've been a resident of Larkspur since 1994, and I've been a member of the club since 2006. I value it very much. And I'll try to be brief. I think one of the council members said, what have you missed? And I'll tell you what I think you've missed. There's a prong that you have to meet that this is not detrimental to the general welfare, and that has not been met. That's been treated as though it's non-existent, but it's an obligation that you have under the code. It's constitutional, and I don't think that it's been met. It is essentially a factual inquiry that is required. And I've listened to the whole thing tonight, and the overwhelming amount of evidence against this plan based on the general welfare of the community has not been met. You have an obligation to consider that, and that's factual. And on this record, it's not been met. I would also add that Mr. Harris, who's the developer, came on and was allowed to make about a 20-minute presentation. A lot of it was factual. But I don't see anything in the record that supports that fax, in particular, the financial information that he presented. It's not found in the record, yet it was tossed into the record here, and it needs to be substantiated. I think that the council has an obligation to consider the community and to consider the code. And the standard to reach the conditional use permit here has not been met. You've heard all kinds of different things, and I would urge you to consider that and to deny that. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Next speaker is Kathleen Mulcahy.

Yes, good evening. Thank you for having me. Can you hear me?

Yes.

So Kathleen Mulcahy, I am an owner in a condominium that is in direct alignment on the same side of the street as the Racquet Club. I just want to go on record as saying that Mr. Harris has not approached our community of 11 owners and he has not approached our HOA board. I do have three concerns, one of them dealing with the environmental impact report. I don't know if one has or will be done, but a building of that age most likely will have asbestos. There's a creek that feeds right next to our building that goes right up and abuts the property of the Mount Tam racket club. So I definitely have airborne concerns and drainage concerns. The second thing is the alignment of the courts right now without really discussing with the neighbors. Some pickle board, pickle courts have been added. And it's very sound obtrusive to our community because we're in a direct earshot of that bang, bang, bang, bang. And it's kind of abusive in the summer and springtime when you want to be out on your patio. So I'm hoping that if that sort of configuration continues, that there's some sort of a sound barrier. And last but not least, just so the council knows, this is a high density area. So in the Larkspur aisle, there's probably about 173 privately owned units in their condominium. We have 11 owners in our condominium. Our next door neighbor has nine. And then there are three apartment complexes in addition on that same street that we are on. So high density, one in, one out. Creekside has limited capacity. the input into one of our egresses during the weekdays from seven till nine, probably to reduce the exposure of people cutting through to go to school. So that leaves us at a high density.

Thank you so much.

Your time is up. Thank you for your public comment.

Next speaker is Ruben Galvin.

Mr. Galvin, go ahead.

I'll ask you to unmute.

Mr. Robin, I'll ask for more time to unmute. Yes, we can hear you now.

Good evening, Council. My name is Ruben Galvan. I'm a field representative with the Norco State Carpenters Union Local 751, which covers Marin County. I have a very important question. Will there be strong labor standards on this project? meaning fair wages for the workers and their families to afford their housing, health insurance benefits, opportunities for apprentices from state accredited programs, and meaningful labor compliance to uphold labor laws. Because when strong labor standards are not in place, it becomes a race to the bottom. We leave the door wide open for bad actors, contractors who might misclassify workers to avoid paying proper wages, deny workers health insurance benefits and apprenticeship opportunities, unsafe job sites, engage in premium fraud, tax evasion, and in the worst cases, commit wage theft. I want to be clear, I'm not against development, but I do want it done responsibly. So again, I will leave you with this question. Will there be strong labor standards on this project? Thank you for your time.

Great. Thank you for your public comment. All right. Seeing no more public comment online. Okay. Well, thank you everyone for sticking with us. Now what we're going to do is we will move to the applicant team's summary comments, three minutes each, and then we'll move to the appellant team. So the applicant's team can come forward. Mr. Harris. How many minutes do we have? three minutes.

Okay. I'll keep it really simple.

First, I got it.

Okay. Okay, I just correct the record on the lurks for miles, we did actually reach out to that community three separate occasions, we did get a response that had been forwarded to the board and they would let us know if they're interested in meeting we never heard from them. So that's Having said that, for the second person who commented, if you want to make notable a condition of the permit, I'm fine with that. Okay. I think the only thing I'm going to add is just if this goes forward, we want to be a mainstay in the community. We want to help and we want to invest in other positive elements of this community. I recognize this is an opt-in business, and that means not everyone in the community will use it. That's part of the reality of it. But I hope we can, as appropriate, help to host community-wide events, a fundraiser for a good community cause. Maybe we can host afternoon concerts that are open. broader to broader larkspur i don't want to create more counterprivacy for the things i might say but just underscore that the kind of role that we would like to play and and then just on a personal note i want to say that i'm really sorry that some of this some of the some of the programming and features of the current facility are going in a way that are very unlikely to be preserved and i understand how important they are to people and i feel really really conflicted about that. And I don't think this project can accommodate all of that. But as I said to Maria over coffee, and I said to Howard, I do believe this area needs a community center. And if this does go forward and we are invested in the community in that way, I would love to help with that. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, Mr. Orton.

Summing it up, we've heard equal comments, some wanting it, some not wanting it. I just want to say that I want to see this project go forward. But I want to see it go forward with some of our needs clearly met. That would be the tennis courts being covered. That would be having the swimming pool widened. I don't feel these are big asks. I don't think it's going to be a major financial change to have two or three more lanes added to a swimming pool. As far as engineering goes and all that, I just, I'm sorry, I can't buy into that. And I would just say, you know, that we can work with Mark, I can work with Mark, I think there's members who can work with Mark to get a firm commitment on this stuff and not just a promise that, you know, we'll look into this or a promise that we look into having covered courts or something. But I would like to see something

You know some definitive things that we can agree on I think that sums up what my feelings are Okay, well thank you all for staying and for offering us your perspective learned a lot and It's clear that we all care about our community. And I really appreciate that. And so, you know, we, we will bring it back to council. We will deliberate.

Just a reminder, America. So I will close the public hearing.

So I'll bring it back to the City Council for deliberations. I think before we deliberate, I do want to make sure that the questions get answered, that the public is asked. So I'm going to place questions. Okay, so the first question was about the tree removal on the slice of the property that potentially belongs to somebody else. Is there somebody who can salvage us that way?

Yes, I mean, that is correct. There are three trees proposed for removal, which do not occur on the applicant's property. There is a condition of approval. It's a condition of approval number 12. It's pages 2 and 3 of Exhibit B. So it's that the applicant must obtain their property owner's permissions for these entries.

Okay, great.

Perfect. I'm glad that was addressed. Thank you. Let's see what other questions I have here. Okay, so the question about the, I'm going to, the question about being not detrimental to general welfare, we spoke a lot about, so I'm going to handle that last. We can come back to that question. And then the last, or the last two questions So this project is exempt from CEQA. So did they have to do an EIR or no?

No, it's categorically exempt from CEQA. There is no requirement to do an EIR.

Okay. And so we have residents who have concerns about asbestos and drainage and other things. So if we approve this project and we find out that there is asbestos or other things, what is the process for handling that?

There's already a process for asbestos removal with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. There are procedures that all of these projects have to go through and will be reviewed by the building department, the public works department. So all of the drainage and potentially hazardous substance questions will be addressed.

Just to supplement that, it's one of the things that comes up sometimes when exemptions are being used under CEQA is that there's an underlying assumption that which is accurate, which is that there are a number of standard requirements for any project that they must comply with either because of federal law, Larkspur law, and those are built into the analysis of whether or not the exemption will apply. So in this case, something like the demolition and potential impacts that's addressed by building code and air quality management district.

Great, thank you. And then the last question about labor standards. Is that something that the city can mandate or stipulate, or what is the policy about that?

Yes, similar to what we've discussed earlier in the meeting, you could condition that if you can reasonably link it to one of the findings you're being asked to make this evening.

Madam Mayor, I would not do that. I'm here to stay on record. Your staff's not prepared to draft that kind of recommendation. State law is very clear about labor laws. All projects have to follow the state code. Your chief building official is more than capable of enforcing the law, as my designated enforcement officer for that purpose. I do not think you want to slow down this discussion or penalize this applicant by trying to ask us to take another two to four weeks to try to even craft what that language looks like.

Understood. I just wanted to make sure that we got through all the questions or we were right. Okay, so City Attorney, could you address the question about whether this fits into the definition of commercial recreation facility?

I would be happy to. So the definition of a commercial recreational facility in municipal code is, as was stated, any business offering games, amusements, or recreation facilities for a fee on the business premises. I don't think there's really that much room for debate that what's being proposed is a membership-based fee system on private property where what's going to be offered is the ability to play games like tennis or engage in athletic activities like swimming in a pool or exercising in a gym. don't really believe that there's much reason to question that. Additionally, I'd say that the second sentence is that is, this includes gyms that do not have instructional services as a primary use, which means that it does include gyms that have instructional services as a non-primary use. So that is an example in the code of what constitutes a recreational facility. I think that what's being described as part of the application very clearly fits with that definition.

Okay, great. Okay, so now we're back to the whole, you know, is this detrimental to the general welfare? I think I am pretty clear on what that is, but just if you could just briefly summarize the whole conditional use permit, that there is no change in use, therefore that provision doesn't apply.

I'd be happy to go over this again and maybe expand a little bit on the comments I made earlier about general welfare. So, again, the zoning code for this site says that a commercial recreational facility is allowed with a CUP, which is a conditional use permit, that was approved in 1974 and has been in continuous operation since then. Our view, my view as the city attorney, staff's view as professionals who have significant training and experience in this area is that what exists on the property now is a commercial recreational facility, and what is being proposed is a commercial recreational facility. The nature of some of the offerings of the use may change, but the fundamental nature of the use defined in the zoning code is not going to change as a result of this application. Since the CEP's already been issued and has been continuously operating, The property owner has, under California law, a vested right to continue the use. There's no need to amend a CEP to allow for the continued operation of an existing use that's already been established under that CEP. If there's no amendment to the CEP, there's no requirement to make a fine date for findings that are necessary for a CEP. So if we thought that an amendment to the CUP was required, the council would be required to make the same findings, which includes a finding that it will not be detrimental to the general welfare. But in this case, what's being proposed is an alteration to the same use. And so there's no amendment to the CUP required. And so that finding isn't legally required. I'll also say, as I said, I want to expand a little bit on what I said earlier. I think it's very clear based on the record that there are impacts to some members of the large community who are members of the club who make use of the existing offerings at the racquet club that are proposed to go away as part of this development. There's no straightforward definition of the general welfare, but I do think council needs to bear in mind while thinking about this is impacts that are when making findings related to general welfare, it's assumed that there's some significant proportion of the population who would be affected either positively or negatively by the proposed action. We've heard that the membership of the club is currently 800 members. Our tour has 13,000 plus residents. I do think council needs to consider whether or not the members of the club who use the facility, offerings that are proposed to go away really constitutes a significant enough portion of the community to constitute an impact to the general welfare of the city. And just to clarify, that would be if 100% of the members were works for residents? Yes. Thank you for further refining. I mean, it's 800 members. Some of those are not members of not residents of Clarksburg. Some of them will continue to use the services that are being offered after the change in uses that are proposed if the council approves the applications. So we're talking about a fraction of 800 people. Whether or not that constitutes a significant enough portion of the population for the impact to be negative in terms of the general welfare is something that I think the council should consider as it moves forward in deliberating to the extent that it wants to talk about impacts on general welfare. But again, that is not a finding that the council has to make based on the actions that are being proposed tonight.

OK. OK, great. Those are all my questions right now. Anybody else have any questions for staff before we ?

There was one comment regarding that it's not consistent with the general plan.

Yeah.

I've looked to the staff to supplement what I'd say, but I would say that the provisions of the general plan that were cited really refer to things, recreational opportunities that the city is offering, including ones where the city would partner with a private enterprise to make them available. But it's intended to focus on things that the city would

So recreational activities in our parks, recreational activities in tennis courts, we own that kind of stuff.

Okay, all right, so I'll open it up now for comments from council members.

Sure, I'll start. First of all, Notice the audience has been up, but I want to thank everyone, everybody online. It's really, in some ways, a difficult decision to see so many. It's encouraging to see how, you know, thoughtful and civil everybody's been. And I want to thank both the appellant and the applicant. I think you guys have really, you know, modeled, you know, communication, which is constructive. I feel conflicted. I mean, I'll start with the simple part. You know, we were here, you know, to see this with fresh eyes or de novo and to look at findings and see if we can make those findings, which were, you know, we've repeated several times. And, you know, on all of them, I feel like I can make the findings. I do believe, you know, for example, the sea level rise, if you're going a foot above, you know, You know, from all the documentation from all the evidence I have, I can make that finding and the conditional that they use permit. Again, I think it was a very simple shopping center and then became very non restricted. I don't think we're violating anything like that. But as one member, you know, so eloquently put, this is really a lot about pricing and programming. And, you know, what's the role of the city council and I feel like I was mayor four years ago and You know, when Skylark was bought, I feel deja vu. You know, this was something that was really a community asset. It was something that was loved by the community. And I struggled here for six or nine months on the dice, how to respect property rights and ownership and, you know, the fact that we have become a very expensive area and people get priced out with the fact that there's a lot of value in providing these services. You know, I'll say that, you know, Mr. Harris, I was very encouraged by your openness to some of the things like can we cover the courts and so forth. And I was tempted to say, I'll deny, I'll go with the appeal and deny the plan under these conditions, but I appreciate your position. I mean, you're really stepping forward. I just would love to see a way where some of the financially viable ways of accommodating the community, whether it's covering the court slightly widening lanes could be done. But, you know, again, I feel like I'm overstepping my scope and getting into the economics and the business model, but that's where the conflict is for me because I, you know, have heard from dozens, if not hundreds of people, you know, who really have these values and I don't see an easy way out. But, you know, just to simplify, you know, I can make the findings, you know, which is our job here. So that's kind of where I'm going to rest.

First, I just want to thank everybody for respectfully disagreeing. People talk about what they love about Larkspur. That's one of the things that I love about Larkspur. I've been here for seven years. There's been tons of disagreement. It's always respectful. And it's just so important to be able to have that and talk to each other. And everybody has to say the same thing. Having said that, we are trying to be a business-friendly community. We don't want to put up obstacles to stop people from opening businesses. We want them to follow the code, but we don't want to artificially put up obstacles for people. I think the challenge, Mark, is just that the last owner was fantastic. They did a whole bunch of wonderful things for the community at a really great price, and they couldn't do anything for us. They were losing money. but they set up something that is really loved by the community, you're stepping into that footprint right now, and that's what you're hearing. So the reality is I don't believe we are in a position to tell you how to run your business. I think the reality is you're listening to your potential customers, we're telling you what they want, and you're gonna make a financial decision you know, how to do this to find that balance between your financial needs and doing what the community is asking you to do. And that's your decision. And obviously, if you make the wrong decision, if you don't protect enough against floods, you're just going to flood. You're going to lose money. Or you make a bad business decision and you don't put in the right exercise equipment, certain people are not going to enjoy it. And that's just the balance. I really appreciate everybody's feedback on both sides. But I think from our perspective, what we are allowed to do or supposed to do is relatively limited. You know, we're basically saying, did you do everything you're supposed to do? I think you did. You know, I think you followed all the laws and I don't see any reason why the music council should put up obstacles to delay this. So that's what I mean by this.

Okay.

Um, there there's passion on both sides. I was a member of this club for many years, for many years. And I hear you about the exercise class before my husband died. He took the Parkinson's exercise class there, but before it was at Mount Tam, it was at five points in Cordova era and Lisa brought it over to Mount Tam. So health and wellness has other opportunities. in our general area that I think we have an opportunity to look at to serve some of the needs that may not be available in this new business model that Mr. Harris has. On a side note, when I was first elected, I had long conversations with Diane First, who was a Port of Madera council member, in regards to having a Twin Cities Community Recreation Center. And if anybody wants to revisit that, I would love to revisit that Once I retire from this role, I can ask for money. So I think we have an opportunity to work with our neighbor who has a large parcel in Town Park. And they already have a community center to work with them about looking at some of these needs that the community has that are now being provided in a private business, which is the Mountain Rapid Club. and may not be provided with the renovation that the new owner is taking a 60 plus year old building and bringing it up to the standards of use today. And we have opportunities to look at some of those programmatic things like tennis and pickleball. Somebody mentioned, I know Mark is a tennis aficionado. So pickleball is definitely not happening there, but we have, We have public courts within Marin. We have public courts within Puerto Madera. We have new locations all around Marin that are currently opening. There are pools at Redwood High School that we're sitting in right now. There are pools at College of Marin that are Olympic sized pools. There's got to be creative ways in which we can think of the service area that may not be met in this renovation, but still have other resources within our community to serve those needs. You mentioned the third element, not just tennis and swimming, but health. And I think health is incredibly important, and the age-friendly nature that we're trying to adopt in our community to provide resources of exercise and gathering and places for our aging community. Our new library and community center, we designed spaces there to allow for passive gathering spots and for passive recreation opportunities there. Plus, we have voted as a council to build a brand new recreation office complex that includes classroom space right over here, right in Piper Park. And we've signed those agreements and that's about to start. And there will be building size rooms so that classes like we described in Parkinson's exercise class, we as a community and as a city can offer. So I want us to understand that there is loss There is a whole component of people who have loved this place and have been active members and are going to lose something. And there's a whole group of other people who are going to gain something. They're going to gain a top-notch tennis establishment. But the loss and the gain are the policy questions that we get asked to ask and try to solve. And we can never find a place where everyone is 100% happy. That's just the way it works in a town. It's the way it works in a family. What I feel we have to do is look out for what's best for Larkspur, and we have to follow the law. There was one comment that we don't necessarily have to follow the law, but that's not how it works in Larkspur. This isn't the federal government. We have to follow the law, and we ethically are bound and respect that, and we lead with what our city attorney, our city manager, our city staff help guide us to understand. And we have to understand our ordinances and our codes and our limitations and our restrictions and to work within them. And Mr. Harris has worked within our rules. He's worked within our rules with our staff. He bought the place almost three years ago. I get a lot of feedback that sometimes we're trudgingly slow in Larkspur. And I don't think that's where we want to be right now. We want to be essentially supporting our businesses supporting new renovations and new ideas. I feel like the Planning Commission listened. I watched the whole Planning Commission meeting, and they really listened. Thank you. One of our commissioners is here. They've done feedback to Mr. Harris and his team, and he's responded to the best of the ability that we can. So concurring with Councilmember Kandel and concurring with Councilmember or Vice Mayor Paulson, I think This project has met the expectations that we have asked of it. He's compromised on a lot of things. Not everybody's going to be happy. And frankly, I don't play tennis, so. But I know a lot of people who are passionate swimmers and they're not going to be happy about this. But it's a private business. He bought a private business from a community, from another owner who had a private business and he's making the renovations to the context that he believes is the best market plan and his passion. So that was lengthy and said, but I affirm what the Planning Commission had held. And my opinion is to deny the appeal.

All right. Thanks, Council Member Leag. Council Member Marks, please.

Well, I just want to thank everybody for coming out and participating in this conversation and expressing themselves. And, um, you know, change is very difficult and I feel the pain of people who will be losing on this side of the equation. I also was a member of Mount Tamarack club for many years and enjoyed, um, the community of provided and all of the, um, facilities that have provided. But I do also echo my colleagues in that I think it's our responsibility to what the Planning Commission has approved. I find all of their findings as well. And I believe it's important for Larkspur to support new development. I know that as one door closes, another door opens. And I think that what... Mark has done in terms of reaching out to the neighbors, in terms of talking to the existing members of the club. He's tried to hear everybody, but he also is constricted by economics. And he made it very clear that he needs to do a minimal construction for his plan to be viable. And in this day and age, it is very difficult to get a business off the ground and construction costs are high. And, you know, I appreciate that he's looking at and willing to discuss ways to potentially accommodate covered tennis. I don't want to get into the business and it's not our position to get into the business of telling him how to build his business model and what he should be offering in his private club. And, you know, I hope that perhaps when our Council Member Wei retires, she will take that charge. And I do believe that our community does need to find a way to support health and wellness for our aging population and to provide more resources. So I'd be happy to work on that with you, Catherine. But I echo my colleagues and would have to deny the appeal.

Okay, well, thank you all for coming out and again for expressing your views. I think, you know, I'm going to echo a lot of what my colleagues have already said. You know, I think coming into this process, I wanted to hear from our community, even though I've read the extensive public record. But I do feel that what we are losing here, because this was such an integral part of our community for so long, that there is a sense of loss for many people where the new facility may not serve their needs. And I think as council members, we have the responsibility to balance our community's desires, but also a private owner's vision for his property, and also, as has been stated many times, what is in our code. And so we do have to follow the law. I can make all the findings for this project. I would only hope that as Mr. Harris has worked through this process, that to the extent possible and economically feasible, that he tried to incorporate a lot of the public comments that he's heard I will say that I met with Mr. Harris, and it does sound like he has incorporated some of many of the public comments, but, you know, because he is balancing economics, not all of the ideas and not all of the community's desires are going to be, you know, he can't incorporate all of the things that we all want. And so I do go back to Council Member Way's comments and also Chair Schlicher's comments at planning. I do think this is a great opportunity for SM Larkspur to look at opportunities for, you know, expanding our services programming for our aging population, for people who want to age in place. And Horta Madera, I think, is a little further along than we are. And I think this is a great opportunity for us to partner with them to find opportunities where we can share in delivering enhanced services to our residents. So, I hope Council Member Ray will tip that up, but I'm also happy to work with her and also our colleagues in Corte Madera to explore what might be possible. But I do feel that, you know, I can't make findings to deny the project. There's no change in use. Therefore, having to look at the general welfare, that is not necessary for us to make that binding here in this project. And I'd also just say, in terms of making the more narrow binding of it not being a detriment to people who are working there and for the people around um in that general vicinity you know it's it's a hard standard i mean you know i i hear that the chain what is coming you know is detrimental to some people for sure but the standard is is not relative so the standard is is it detrimental Is this project detrimental to the surrounding neighborhood and for the people who are going to be working there? It's not a relative thing. So it's not, is option A more detrimental than option B? Is option A detrimental, period. And so I can't make that finding. It is not detrimental in my mind to the workers and the people who live in the surrounding area. So I am going to... And all the planning Commission's decision and 90 deal. So do we have to make a formal vote on this. Okay.

All right. So there is a resolution. There is a resolution. That's right. So we should that contains the findings that add to the motion.

Yeah, I'll move. The resolution. I don't know if we need a number for that or Yes.

7026. Thank you.

I'll second the motion. Okay, great. Madam Clerk, can we get a little... Oh, we can just... Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Okay. Well, the motion passes. Thank you all for staying with us and for expressing your perspectives. This will be an ongoing dialogue with the city council. And we look forward to just working through how we can better serve our residents. Thank you all.

Thank you.

One last thing. All right.

It is going to be detrimental to me. It's going to take away my property value, the noise. He wants the entrance with those three trees that don't belong to him on the sharpest curve, the sharpest curve, right next to the creek bed. Have you walked back there? Have any of you walked back there to see what I'm talking about? So I'm going to take a quick break.

But we'll resume in about two minutes. But we are going to be talking about the city of Larkspur's preparations for the upcoming winter storm season. So if any of you would like to stay with that conversation, that will be happening in about two minutes. Welcome. We are back in session. It is still September 16, 2010. It is 9.30. So we are reconvening our meeting. And we will now be giving a staff presentation on the City of Larkspur's preparations for winter storm season 2026-2027.

I'm sorry, we can't hear with the conversation all the way in the back. It's kind of loud.

Thank you. Okay. Mr. Skinner or Senator Schwartz, do you want to...

Julian's going to do the lion's share of the talking, but I get to go first with some introductory comments. Great. In one of your recent meetings, you had a public comment that sort of was wondering why the communications hadn't started about the winter storms. And I had talked to several of you offline and members of the public. That was by design because we've been coordinating with a number of agencies. In effect, your public course director, Julian Skinner, and I probably between us in the past seven working days and probably attended 10 meetings on this topic. So the information campaign is being done in coordination with the county so that we have uniform messaging. And that's something we recognize and I want to applaud the county for recognizing hasn't always been the case in the past. They're doing, in my mind, an excellent job of making sure that what they're putting out matches what we're putting out and vice versa. So I think that's going to be very helpful to our communities. And to that end, last night, we sent out our first major campaign, which is we want everybody to sign up for Alert Marin. That is going to be your number one source to be told what's going on, what the conditions are, and what we would like the public to do through any of these storm circuits. So if you haven't already done so, please go on. Sign up for Alert Marin. We have information on our website. We're going to talk about it in this presentation. We send out an email to anybody who subscribes to the city manager's newsletter. It went out last evening. It has information on how to subscribe. If you're not signed up for the city manager's newsletter, do that too. We'll continue to push information out through that channel. The county, that is their main way. They are going to be telling people in real time what they think you ought to be doing in response to whatever's happening on the ground. We will continue to use Nixle. That's the third thing we encourage people to sign up for. That's what our local public safety first response teams will use to give you very specific neighborhood and Marksburg instructions, such as what roads have been closed, what detours we want you to take during these events. So all three of those channels are going to be key for getting communication throughout these incidents. And so I wanted to throw that out there. And we will continue to work with our regional partners. Fortunately, I think we may finally get Caltrans to the table, which has been a challenge. And of course, we all know they're a major player for our area as well. With that, Julie is going to take you through the slide deck this evening. It's meant to be interactive with the council. And then we'll open up for public questions and comments, and take it from there.

Great, thank you.

Mr. Skinner?

Okay, good evening. Julian Skinner, I'm the public works director for the city of Larkspur. So I do have a slide deck to go through here. This is our winter storm and king tide for 26-27 preparation.

Sorry, Glenn, I did forget one thing. We do have representatives of central police, central fire online. So if you have questions specific to those agencies, they're present virtually for us this evening.

So this is something that we do every year at the city. Every, pretty much as soon as long winter season ends, we start getting ready for the next winter season, doing various things. And we're here before you tonight based on some of the forecasts and some of the events that we're seeing in the Pacific that are leading to predictions of an overly wet winter this year and windy, storms and tides and things like that, plus the events of last January, where we saw a pretty unprecedented high tide without much rain event. So briefly, I'm going to go through traditionally what are kind of we call them hotspots in Larkspur, where we've had issues in the past with winter events. I'll talk a little bit about El Nino. There's a lot about it in the news, and there's new things about it every day in media. Talk a little bit about pink tides. These happen every year. They happen in the summer, too. We do have some forecasts. This year is going to be extra challenging based on when some of those fall. We'll talk about some of the community messaging, as the city manager mentioned a little bit before. and actually go into some of what we're doing to prepare and talk about the coordination with some of our partner agencies. And then I have a listing of some of the resources that we'll also have on our website for some of the information I'm going to provide. Tonight is very user-friendly. If folks at home want to get on their computer at home, for instance, and see how high is the tide actually right now, there's a website that will show you that. So primarily in winter, we have two distinct types of flooding that we can experience here. They can actually happen at the same time, which they can build on one another. And that's when we get some of our more significant events. The first type of flooding we get is called river rain. So that's typically a result of rainstorms. So the rain falls into the creeks and it collects and it comes down and it ends up And large spur on the streets and then floods are storm drains. The other type of flooding is tidal. So this is where the bay and quarter of Dare Creek are getting high, either from tides or atmospheric conditions, not necessarily from rain, just from other things going on and the tide rises up and then that water pushes back into us. The first one here is the River Rain. This diagram on the right shows the Ross Valley watershed. You heard Council Member Paulson talk before about Flood Zone 9. So most of this area here, the Saras Valley watershed from just north of San Anselmo is part of Flood Zone 9. And basically all of the precipitation that falls within this area falls in the various creeks and makes its way to Coordinated Air Creek and passes through Larkspur. And so as the diagram on the left shows, This type of flooding is typically, we're getting a lot of rain coming down, it's getting into the streets, it's getting into the storm drains, and it becomes too much for the streets and the storm drains to handle, and it starts coming out of the ground, and then it starts flooding under properties. So again, this is associated with heavy rainstorm, including atmospheric rivers. We live in a wet area, gets a lot of rain, typically the Ross Valley over the winter, But, you know, typical winter storms are not usually much of an issue. What causes concern is atmospheric rivers or multiple storms back to back to back. And this is rain events where the ground doesn't have a chance to dry out. So a lot of the first rainfall that comes soaks into the ground and it doesn't end up in runoff and it doesn't end up in the streets of the storm drains. But when you get storms on top of storms of these atmospheric rivers, you get so much rain, the ground gets saturated. And at that point, everything that's falling in this precipitation is immediately running off and contributing to flooding. So these are big storms. These are not your typical winter storms. They don't typically lead to flooding. And then what you see with these events is their storm drains or pump stations all get overwhelmed. And your flooding is typically in low-lying areas where the water gathers. And it can be adjacent to small creeks as well as Corvadera Creek. And these impacts of this river rain, flooding from rain, can be made worse by high tides because it makes it harder for the water that's coming down these creeks, the storm drains, to discharge if the creek level is high, and it can cause some of those waters to back up. And typically, your cue that a flooding event is a river rain event is you hear about flooding upstream in San Luis, San Isabel, and Ross. The water comes down through the watershed, and it will cause flooding issues in San Anselmo and Ross, and then it will get to us progressively. These are kind of our hotspots. They're not exact, but these are the general areas where in the past we've had issues with flooding associated with rainstorms. And so there's the obvious locations that are near Cordova and Arrow Creek, such as Hillview and Bonaire, Larkspur and Marina. Creekside and Larkspur Plaza Drive. But we've also, if you go back historically, we've had heavy rainstorms that have caused issues at College Court and Magnolia. At Magnolia, Madrone, Monta Vista, and King, and even in other gardens. This is a photo that I found of flooding at, this is Magnolia and Madrone during the 1982 flood. So this was 16 inches of rain over a couple of days. move on to tidal flooding. So again, in this scenario, it doesn't necessarily have to be raining, but raining does make the overall impacts worse. But in this scenario, the bay and the tidal waters are just getting high and they're pushing up up the creek through the storm drains. And at some point they can push over low lying areas of land. And so you basically see a reverse flow. The creek gets high and it starts spilling onto the land. This is primarily caused by king tides, which we get over summer and winter. The summer ones usually aren't that much of an issue, although we did this past summer have some of the highest king tides that we've experienced. We did have water in some of our streets. And atmospheric conditions can lead to increased tide levels. And so, again, this type of flooding is where the bay and the creek are spilling over onto the land. And our pump stations and our storm drains are getting overwhelmed because this water is backing up into them and that is coming out into the streets. For tidal flooding, typically, it's your low-lying areas that are adjacent to Corta Madera Creek and the bay that are going to experience this flooding, including 101, as it did back in January of this year, 101 flooded. And again, this can happen independent of rain, but if it is raining and there's water coming down the watershed, it'll just build on top and make things more impactful. But we could have tidal flooding here in Larkspur and they don't have any flooding issues at all upstream in San Anselmo and Ross if it's not raining so These are the areas that are typically most susceptible to tidal flooding. Again, these are areas that are right next to Corte Vedera Creek, areas that flooded in January. So starting on the left side of the screen, Larchford Plaza Drive, the intersection of Larchford Plaza Drive and Creekside is about two and a half feet lower than the elevation of the last king tide. So that area consistently floods with a lot of king tides. It was impassable during the last king tide. The Larkspur Marina, Doherty Drive area, so it's Riviera Circle. Those homes are surrounded by the Cortimaneric Creek on the north, and then there's two finger channels on either side. So there's a lot of water there with a lot of opportunity to get overlanding on the property and in the streets. And then on the far right, we have Redwood Highway. So most of this area of Larkspur on the east side of 101 is in the 100-year flood zone. Water, in this case, came over the smart tracks and flooded industrial and Redwood Highway, and it also came directly from the creek at the north end of Redwood Highway. I've shown a couple of areas here that are not our jurisdiction, but again, when we have these impacts, our neighbors have these impacts too. Lucky Drive is split 50-50, about half of it's port of error, half of it's county. None of it's Larkspur, but if the water makes it there, it's very easy for it to make it to Doherty, and it becomes all of our problems. And then 101, that's under Caltrans and CHP jurisdiction, also flooded and was closed last January, too. This is a photo of Redwood Highway just around the Trader Joe's driveway, looking north towards a gas station in the back. kind of hard to see, but there's a car that's hard to see because it's half under water here, and this was in January, this was an 8.7 foot high tide. So one of the things that we're going to be doing again, we do this every winter, but we've stepped it up a notch based on what we anticipate for this winter is we're going to be staging flooded and road closed signs. at what we consider to be the hotspots. And again, this will be determined by whether we have a lot of rain coming or if it's just a high tide. But these are the locations that we'll be monitoring for putting out signs. We'll typically stage signs, then we'll put out flooded signs, and then we work with Central Marin Police if we think a road needs to be closed, and then the road gets closed and we corrode the closed signs out. I'm going to move on to talk a little bit about El Niño. I hear something new about it every day. Basically, it's an oceanic phenomenon. It already exists out there. It's not a weather event itself, but it's a condition in the ocean, and it can lead to weather conditions. It can increase both tide levels, and it can lead to increased rain levels. The latest, it may have changed since the last time I looked at the NOAA website, but they're saying there's a 69% chance that we're gonna have a historic El Nino event this winter. So again, what El Nino means for us is the likelihood that we're gonna have enhanced heavy rainfall. So this means atmospheric rivers, multiple days of heavy rainfall. We know that can lead to landslides and debris flow. So a lot of my presentation is based on flooding around the creeks. Because that's what we experienced in January and that's what we prepare for in public works. But we also know that when we get heavy rain, we also have areas of the city that are susceptible to landslides and debris flow. That's when the ground gets saturated and it starts flowing down into streets or taking trees with it and things like that. We have had some in the past, so they do happen here. And then even if it's not a debris flow or a landslide, just a saturated ground can lead to instability for trees and we can have trees falling. If they fall in the park and there's nobody in the park, it's a pain. But when trees fall and they block evacuation routes, those are instant emergency response conditions. We've got to keep those streets open for our first responders. And then the other impact of El Nino is coastal erosion, a lot of heavy wave impact and storm surges. So we're going to see elevated tide levels.

If I jump in. Sure, comment. Back on that last slide. One of the things we learned in January was we had a high number of residents who hadn't really lived through a storm surge of any significance in the past in Larkspur. And so one of the messages we'll be putting out that I want to state tonight is folks have done a lot of landscaping, particularly if you live in our hillside communities. You've done a lot of landscaping since the last time we had major storms. and you didn't have somebody do an erosion control analysis for you, we strongly encourage you to have that conversation with someone who's a qualified expert in landscaping and erosion control because you might get a nasty surprise about when your yard gets saturated that it's not prepared to handle that much water.

This is a slideshow. I'm moving on to talk about king tides now. So the last impactful king tide we had happened to be the most impactful one in the last 30 years. It was January of this year. This is a snapshot from the NOAA website. It's a website that shows the predicted tide levels, but it will also Based on some of the weather stations they have, it will in real time show you what the tides are doing. It has other weather information too, but we primarily use it for this. And so there's a blue line here. Every day there's a cycle of two high tides and two low tides. And one of the high tides is higher than the other. That's the way the weather patterns go. And so obviously for flooding, we're looking at the highest of the high tides that are predicted for each day. That's the blue line. So you see each one of these sets of two weeks here is a day. So this is six days worth of information working from left to right. But the other line that's on here is the red line. The red line is what actually happens. So the blue line is what all the type books and the NOAA website said was going to happen. The red line is as it was recorded. And so this was this January of 2026. The predicted tide was a 7.2, which is a typical winter king tide. What was actually recorded was an 8.7. There was no El Nino in January of this year. There was no atmospheric river. Yes, it had been raining for a few days, but it was not significantly contributed to by the rain. There were just atmospheric conditions that led to this tide being 8.7 feet high instead of 7.2 feet high. So a foot and a half, basically. And there's a little key that's maybe hard to see here, but what do those elevations mean, the 7.2 and the 8.7? So as you heard before in the previous presentation, the 100-year flood zone in Larkspur is in the 9.710 elevation, depending on whereabouts in the city you are. So that's what FEMA says the water level would be once in a hundred years, or technically there's a one in a hundred chance of us seeing elevation 9.7 to 10 every year. And so the elevations you see here, we know that in our lower lying areas, when the water gets up to about elevation Above 6.5 and in the sevens, we have low-lying streets that are lower than that. A lot of them are protected by some lower-level berms, but if we get water in our storm drains that come back to the creeks, we'll start to see water in the streets at around an elevation of seven. And then around 7.5, we'll start to get a significant amount of water in the street that is very visible. Typically, the center line of the street is still available at that point, but we definitely have street flooding We get up to about elevation eight. This is when the water not only is coming up through the storm drains, but it's coming over the banks of Puerto Madera Creek on a private property and then spilling onto the street. And in some cases, in areas of Doherty, it's coming straight over the banks and onto Doherty. So at about elevation eight, we know we have an issue with the creek overtopping and getting into the streets. And so for perspective, it was seven tenths of a foot higher than where the creek will overtop into the streets in January.

If I could just add, one of the issues that came up for all agencies in January is we used to be able to take those blue lines to the bank, plan around them. And that red line, that delta is becoming a pattern that we've seen all throughout 2026. So either somebody really messed up the calculations or the predictions, which is a possibility, Or we have other phenomena in play. But regardless, we can't count on predictions anymore. That's one of the lessons from the January 26th incident. So all of the agencies are now assuming that that extra delta might happen and planning accordingly.

That's a great question. So that's true of the amplitude, but the timing is precise. It's fairly accurate.

That part has stayed fairly consistent. It's this pattern. Even in lower tides, you're still seeing this pattern where the prediction of the height of the tides is off. But the waves are typically correct because those are being driven by phenomena like the moon, so they're fairly predictable.

So just a follow-up question. Sitting here today, we know with 99% certainty that whether it's 8.7 or 7.2, it's going to happen Thanksgiving, and it's going to happen Christmas. Those are the two dates we have, which is when staff is on holiday.

So yes, yes, but. It's always the yes, but, right? So yes, but the county and OEM, they're not going to take that for granted. So they are now doing 96-hour watches. So they're not assuming the pattern will hold because we We don't want to rely on predictions that are already showing us problems. So they're using a 9-6 hour window and will alert all agencies if they believe the time pattern has deviated significantly.

And then the other thing you'll notice here is I mentioned every two blips is a day. So this is a cycle of five days. When we get these king tides, we usually get elevated tides for three or four days in a row before they subside and then we wait a month for the next to come in. So this is not a one day high tide and then everything's fine the next day. This is usually three or four days, which is what happened in January. We had four days in a row of creek overtopping into the streets. We've been watching this actual versus predicted. These tide books we've been using ever since I've been here to kind of guide what we do each winter and how we prep for different storm events. If an atmospheric river's coming in and we're at a time where we're nowhere near being tied to when I was concerned about it, as if an atmospheric river were coming in and we had a king tide forecast for that time. We've always been looking at this tide data and we've been looking at the real time data a lot more this year based on what happened in January. So we saw a fall off after January where the tides were getting closer, but still not exactly what was predicted. And they were about six to eight inches higher than predicted. And now as we get into winter months upcoming, this is a snapshot from two days ago. the tide was almost a foot higher than predicted. And it was not raining two days ago, don't really have an explanation for it, that's what's going on. And so we're taking that into account as we're planning for these events and we're gonna be making some educated forecasts of where we think the tide's gonna be that are gonna prompt the preparation and the response to some of these events. The other, side part of this is one of the known impacts of El Nino is swells that can further increase tide levels. So again, some of this is kind of uncharted territory because we haven't had this occasion where the tides are just without explanation higher than they have been. So at the moment, we're not sure if some of this is some of the El Nino we're feeling already or if that's going to be another six-inch bump on top of this. So these are things, this is why we're looking at these every day at this point. I mentioned the king tides. Typically, we have a couple of them every summer and every winter. I'm going to show you a few more months than that just because we now have this unknown delta between what's predicted and what we're actually going to get. So what we would traditionally call your king tide this year is in December, and then you also have one on either side of that in November and January, what we would ordinarily call king tides. If we look at September, so this is two weeks from today is the September high tide.

The book says 6.44.

If you add a foot, which is what we're at right now, that's a 7.4. That's water in the street. That's our flooded signs out. We're not quite road closed yet. but we've definitely got some things we're going to have to respond to. If that turns out to be 18 inches higher than the 6.4, you know, then we're at 8, and then we've got water coming over the banks, and we've got to start considering closing streets and other impacts. So, you know, this is, key times are, you know, Thanksgiving and Christmas, but... This is in two weeks. We're going to get a real test, and we're going to get a glimpse of what we're going to see, I think, coming out. It won't typically get rain this early, so that's not much of a concern. We have had significant rainstorms in October before. Five years ago, we got a pretty big atmospheric river in October. So this is the end of October is another test for us. It's a 6.8 forecast. So again, we see these numbers at the moment where Looking at if I added a foot and a half to this, what's it going to look like? What do we need to do? How do we need to prepare for this? And again, I'm showing you the peak day. All of these events are going to be three to four days of this. Most of them are going to be in the early morning to noon time. So you're going to see a high tide that's going to peak in the morning at some point for four days around the 20th of October. That's going to be anywhere from 6-8 to 8. depending on what our surcharge looks like. Here's the first of what would typically be classified as the king tide, anything over seven. So it's forecast as a 7.1, which is pretty much what our January event was. So this is definitely on our radar. The 25th is the day before Thanksgiving. So this is going to be three or four days. at a time when typically a lot of agencies are shorter staff than normal. Folks are heading out of town to see relatives and things like that. So we're already starting to prep and make sure we've got all of our schedules set for this event. The next one is Christmas Eve, 7.4. This is the highest of them. So the timing is what it is. Um, it's good in one sense in that, um, probably will be less folks driving to work on these days and kids not going to school. So there will be less traffic. Um, but you know, it's also a time of year when, when folks travel and they go visit friends and things like that. And again, where we typically might have, uh, less staffing and our partner agencies might have less staffing. So, so. These are the big dates that we're planning for. Like I said, we're going to have some tests here at the end of September, the end of October, too. And then January goes down a little bit to 22nd. It's a 7-3. I don't know that I put February on here. I didn't. February is a little lower. And then March, we're almost done with our key times. So that's kind of what we're planning with now as far as the events that are upcoming. And this is just the tidal. Atmospheric rivers, I don't have a forecast for. We'll usually get a heads up about 14 days out that something's coming. And then the information gets better and better as it gets close to the date. You know, seven days, we get a better idea for how big the storm is and then which way it's trending. There's numerous models. Some say they're going to go south and some say they're going to go north. And sometimes it's the day before and we don't really know how much we're going to get. But the gene types, we know when they're coming. and we know what the bottom is, we just don't know how high they could get. So this is just a slide that lists out all the community messaging that we're gonna be doing this year. Again, a lot of this is things we've done in the past, but it is an enhanced version. We've upped the information on our website. We're gonna keep adding to it. We're gonna add the links that I'm gonna show in this presentation into the website. We've already talked about staging signage, so it's easier for us to deploy. We're going to up our messaging in the newsletters, and we're going to be handing out additional information in our usual public engagement locations, like library, you know, with REC. Upping some of the social media messaging, and then we will be doing targeting mailers. We know where the low-lying properties are. I think we had impacts in January of this year, so we'll be reaching out to those folks to let them know that nothing is for certain, but there's a good chance, based on all the information we have, that if you had an issue in January of this year or were close to having an issue in January of this year, then some of those same conditions are materializing and that there are things that the city is doing to prepare for that.

And there are also things that we would ask that homeowners property owners look to do on their these events and protect their offer some sort of some other events that are

Okay, so to present state law, we did suspend the meeting while we restart our Zoom connection. It's now been restored. I see that any of our online participants are back online. I'm going to ask Mr. Skinner to resume his presentation.

Okay, I think I was just finishing up the community messaging meeting outline. The tools that we'll be using, or we've already started to use and will continue to use throughout the season to inform folks about El Nino impacts this winter. As far as what we've been doing at Public Works, so we've been inspecting and cleaning storm drains, our catch basins, our pump stations, We run through them all every fall before winter. We make sure our pump stations are all working, all the electronics and pumps so that they'll come on when needed. We have purchased a six inch pump and we'll be staging an additional six inch pump for the entirety of the winter season. In the past, we've relied on renting a six inch pump and a staff member has driven over the East Bay to grab the pump and bring it over when we need it. And so the council last year authorized funds to purchase a six-inch pump so we can have it here in Larkspur and get it where we need it to sooner. And then just based on the forecast for this year, we feel it will be advantageous to have another pump on hand and not have to rely on availability when we have a huge event. at a rental center, so we're gonna be doing a monthly rental on an additional pump. So we'll have two at our disposal. In addition, the council authorized purchasing a generator so that if the power goes out at the Vaughn Air Pump Station, we'll be able to run that pump station and keep the storm drains from backing up into that neighborhood. Most of our other pump stations have generators built in. Heather Wood and Boardwalk. And then we've been operating the communications, working with the city manager's office to put data together and look at areas where we may want to do some targeted messaging and some citywide messaging and coordinating more than we would in a typical year to try and get the message out as much as we can. And then also working with our neighboring agencies

Mr. Sears, we have a question. When there's a flood caused by the rising tide, do we use pumps? And if we do, where do we pump the water?

So it depends. I have a slide about pumping a little bit. Okay. So the other thing we've been doing is I mentioned working with our partner agencies. So Marin County Flood Control have access to some surveys, some recent survey data. So they've looked at the coastline all throughout Marin to identify areas that are susceptible to tidal flooding. So they're looking at areas that are on the coast next to the bay or creeks that are lower than a certain elevation where if the creek or bay level rises, the water can get on the land. This is, I zoomed in here, it's pretty fuzzy, but This is Doherty and Riviera Circle here. And so if you see color here, it means in one of the scenarios that they ran, there's water coming from the creek onto these streets directly. This is not through storm drains. This is coming over land. And so what we're doing with this information, and this is citywide, is we're evaluating where are these low spots and what are we able to do within the public right-of-way to address these. Is it sandbags? Is it something longer? Is it a few hundred up to a thousand feet? And that's a lot of sandbags. Are we looking at portable walls and things like that? And so we're working with the county on evaluating what's available. And this is, in this area here, it's potential for barriers installation. And then the other component of that is If we do have a barrier installed to stop the creek from coming onto the land, and we have that separation, we can also then use pumps to get the water, if it's raining, out of the storm drains and over into the creek. So if you have a physical barrier between where the water's coming from, the creek, and the street that's flooding, yes, you can use a pump there to get the water out. If you don't have a barrier and the creek is coming over into the street and it's all at the same elevation, you're pumping water around the circles and the pump isn't gonna do anything for you. So part of this is, as I said, part of this is evaluating where could we block the water from coming in? And if we're able to do that, where would be pumps to get that water out? The information that we have shows all properties. So it's showing a lot of people's backyards, cities, counties, towns typically don't go on a private property and install flood control. So what we're going to do is get noticing out into the neighborhoods. If we have a small piece of private property that's right next to where the city thinks we need to put sandbags or a wall in and it makes sense to go an extra 10 feet, we'll get the property owner's permission and we'll do that so that the water doesn't come around their property and then just flood the street and then the wall in the street isn't really doing anything. But in a neighborhood, if we have 60 or 70 properties and they all are showing that they have low backyards and the water could get from the creek into the street, we'll be notifying those neighbors and working with HOA if there is an HOA and try to understand if there's ways that we can help those residents work together to do what they might need to do on their properties. So the first step of this is the identification. We'll have boots on the ground. The September flooding events, we're going to be out there. We're going to be walking to all these locations to kind of true test where we think that sandbags or little walls might help. And in the county's evaluation, they're looking at providing protection up to an elevation nine. So that's what they mapped as far as This is where we would look to put barriers in so that if the tide got up to nine, we could keep the tide out. And again, these are not going to be perfect. These are not Army Corps of Engineers flood walls. These are sandbags or these are plastic walls that are temporary and they're going to let some amount of water through. They're not. And then some of them are movable and some of them are not. And we'll have that evaluation. Maybe that we end up, do we identify there's a section of street here that we just need to block off and we're going to need a sandbag wall there for the next two months. And then we're going to have to have a conversation about what does that mean for access? Are we looking at getting people up and over or are we sending them in a different direction? So those are all things we're going to be working through over the next two months before, you know, likely that Thanksgiving is going to be the big, everything's in place event.

George, a couple of quick questions if I may. Does the city of Larkspur have these portable plastic walls?

We don't have any. We've been working with the county. They're working with vendors. The idea is that if they do a big bulk purchase, then the other cities can tag along and the city, the counties may also have some of them that they're able to provide to us if we're able to provide the labor to install them. Because a lot of these areas, like I mentioned before, it goes quarter there, then it goes county, and the county are going to be out there doing some of these on their property. And if it's next to Larchburg, then while they're out there, it makes sense. So, yeah, we don't have any yet. We have some sandbags. We're going to be ordering more sandbags. That's what the top photo is here. But the bottom is the two products the county is looking at now. One's called the Tiger Wall. One's called the Gator Wall. But they're basically... plastic and there's different vendors, but one is inflatable. You put water in it and it's strapped together and it stops the water from coming through. The other is just kind of an L-shaped plastic that the weight of the water on the toe of this plastic sheet keeps the vertical part upright. There's actually a video of these online where somebody throws them into a running creek and everything stands straight up and stops the water from coming. So at least in the marketing video, they're pretty effective. But the county is going to vet through this, and they're likely going to do some bulk purchasing. And the county already knows what we're looking at as far as video footage-wise for all of these. We just haven't done the food swap yet and decided which of these alternatives are going to make sense and are going to be implementable in the future.

two months to that's the other thing we'll need to start. And one more question. You know, I see a lot of people very rough approximate, you know, assessment. If you were to use the Gator or the Tiger or sandbags January 4th of this year, what would make, you know, I mean, let's say what would, what would make a difference?

I actually liked, well, The county has an answer to your question that I'm going to paraphrase, and it's not going to be a popular answer unless you have universal participation. And every single point of potential water intrusion has been dealt with. You've lost the battle because water is going to come in. So January would have happened because I think even if we There's so much private property, there's so much for water to be here. And I think we all have to be practical. And we are gonna try to do these things that everybody should be on their own property, possibly planning for the possibility that they're going to have to deal with water.

So it really is the tragedy of the commons. It's like a roof. You can roof, but if there's one spot, then you don't leak.

Well, if the mayor doesn't mind sharing a little bit of a conversation we had earlier today, she was in New York where they're building huge walls. I mean, the reality is at the end of the day, The solution, so there's no water, is a big, expensive, long-term solution. And so what we can try to do with these solutions is mitigate as much as possible and reduce the time that the water is present, right? So one of the challenges in January that I think Julian's going to get to that we can try to help with some is reducing the amount of time the water's present. But it's going to come. And I know people don't want to hear that, but that's what's going to happen.

Okay. Can I ask a question? Do we as a government have the power, if we wanted to, under some emergency power, to require private property owners to put up some protection? We're saying if 10 people do and one person doesn't, then 10 people who did, it's a waste, because through that one and I did, do we have the ability to do that? I don't believe so. I don't think so.

Yeah.

We would need to look at that. I mean, there are emergency powers where the city could itself go on, probably exercise power to go on to private property to do a temporary installation, but to mandate that the private property owner do it, I would need to do some research. And there may be consequences for going on to it right now.

Again, the The same people that we would use to do that are the people that are keeping people from dying. And remember, our priority in these events is that people don't die. In fact, you know, we kind of all chuckled earlier about the car that was halfway through the street. If Chief Norton was here right now, he would tell you one of the big problems in January for his people was people decided to ignore the instruction not to drive a certain way. And several cars got left flooded In the middle of the street, because the priority of the police department and fire department is not your car station you're not stuck in the car. And that's how we're going to approach all of this, so we don't necessarily have people to start going on properties and trying to to deal with the situation we're going to be just trying to keep people as safe as possible.

This is kind of an overview. There was the question about pumps. And so on the left here, you can see a typical pumping situation. So we do have a number of pump stations in the city. I mentioned Vaughn Air Pump Station earlier. So what you have there is you have a low-lying neighborhood. That's Hillview. They have storm drains that go to a pump station. And then the pump station pumps the water out to the creek. Then there's a berm. the maintenance road that goes behind Hillview that keeps the water out. So you have a physical separation between the neighborhood and the community. So as long as you have that physical separation, whether it's a berm that's shown in the photo, the image in the left here, or a wall, as long as you're pumping it, you're taking it from somewhere and you're putting it on the other side of a barrier, then the pumping can be effective at keeping the water level low where you're trying to evacuate the water line. Contrast that to the right. If you don't have a berm or a wall or you have one that's too low and you have overtopping and the creek is coming directly over and the creek and the street are all at the same water level, you can pump from the street to the creek all you want. The water is going to come straight back. You're pumping in circles and and it's just not gonna be effective. So yes, pumps are part of the equation, but you gotta have a means for stopping the water and creating that physical separation for the pumps to be effective. So that was what the city is doing moving forward. Some of the information we'll be pushing out as far as what homeowners can do to prepare, and also what they can do during an event is we are encouraging folks to sign up for a loan grant There's a link in the presentation that will be posted online. Evaluate your own property and what's on your property that's value to you or is there for your safety and whether it needs to be protected, whether that's with a wall or with sandbags. If you have low areas of your residence, either the garage, a lot of garages are a couple of steps down from the main floor. And when you built your house to all the flood standards, the first floor living level had to be at a certain elevation for flood reasons. Garages are not habitable and they're typically a couple of steps below that. So if you use your garage for storage and you have valuable things in there or things that you don't want to get wet, you may want to consider putting them up on the second or third shelf in the garage or moving them somewhere else higher in your house. And then a lot of additions like sunrooms and things like that can be sunk in and added on the houses that aren't necessarily as high as the rest of your house. So evaluate those areas of your property in advance. And then I have a slide that shows where sandbags are evaluated, whether sandbags would help your condition or not. During an event, we ask everybody to stay out of floodwaters. We've all seen the videos of kids On wakeboards behind pickup trucks in flood waters, it's not a good idea. There's stuff in the flood waters that you don't really want to get in contact with. You typically should anticipate that flood water is contaminated. There's also hidden hazards you're not necessarily going to see. When we get a lot of water in our storm drains, it can actually pop the lids off of manholes. And so it doesn't take much pressure. to pop a cover off an animal and have it dislodged. And if you're running through a street and it's flooded and it's dirty flood water, you may not see that there's a two foot diameter hole there that's eight feet deep that is gonna cause a lot of problems if you encounter that when you're in those flood waters. So we ask folks to stay out of the flood waters. We've been working along with Ross Valley Sanitary District about some of the messaging that they're going to be doing in advance of the winter. They have their own challenges in the winter. As you know, they collect the sewer flows from houses and businesses. It goes down pipes and it gets pumped to a treatment plant. There are places in their system where floodwaters can get in. And so their systems can get overwhelmed when we have flooding events because they get unwanted stormwater into their system and it makes their system work harder. And so they asked folks, if you look outside and your street is flooded, you probably don't want to be flushing your toilet or running your washing machine because when you flush the toilet, what you're flushing out isn't necessarily going to get where it needs to go if the sewer system is overwhelmed. So I have a link to their website too. They have a lot of tips like that for what you can do to prepare for these events, and what you should and shouldn't do during the events. And then the last one is, I know we have somebody from CNPA online, and they're always our partners as our fire during these events, and to that extent, so is County Flood Control and Town of Cordova, we're all coordinating during these events. But one of Central Marin Police's messages will be, stay off the roads unless you absolutely have to. limit your travel, leave the streets available for first responders to use. If you can't see the centerline of the street above the floodwaters, you don't really know how deep the water is, and vehicles can get stranded and damaged. The other thing is if you are driving in shallow floodwaters that you're okay driving through, Just keep in mind in residential areas that when you drive through that standing water, you're sending a flood wake on either side of you. And that house that has sandbags out in front of their garage is just keeping the water out. When you drive through and you create a wave, sometimes it can send the water over and be the difference between somebody's garage flooding and not. This is Riviera Circle. This was in 2017. So this was an atmospheric river. event and here's There's a street over there somewhere, but all I see is water. I'm standing. Actually, I'm driving in my car. I think I'm in the street. But all you can see is water from the street all the way to the garage. This homeowner's place sandbags in front of their garage. So that's something we encourage folks to do again. City Public Works crews are not typically going to go on private property and do these fortifications for homeowners.

This is a map showing where our... We did have some discussion today with some of our partners about identifying volunteer groups that may be able to help residents who are not capable of doing sandbags, because we recognize we do have residents who may find it physically challenging to do it on their own. So we are working on that.

Our sandbag station, public sandbag station, is a type of park. We have sand there, we have bags, we have shovels, we have more being ordered. So that's the one location. We used to have a location in Head of Gardens by the pump station, but that site got eliminated when we redid the pump station project. So this is the one area in town. Pitch County has a website. They have all of the sandbag stations in Marin identified on there. And I mentioned our partners. I've talked about them before. I won't repeat them all, but we have been having ongoing meetings with all of these agencies to talk about how we can work together and help each other out, both in preparation for and in response to some of These events, again, you look at a map, water flows by gravity, doesn't care whether it's going from Larchburg to Cordova to County to Caltrans and back again. So we've all got to work together. We can't push the water onto our neighbors. We can't have them push the water onto us. We need to work together to identify strategic locations where we can mitigate as best we can some of these high flows and in a lot of locations, We're talking about the Old Redwood, when I showed the Redwood Highway and the Trader Joe's, the locations where we need to put barriers there, there's six different agencies that would need to be involved to sign off stuff, have barriers go up in that location. So we're working through all of those details now. I'll try and wrap it up here quickly, but I just want to focus on a couple of the isolated areas that I mentioned before. Larkspur Marina, their HOA has been working with Foth Engineering. They've been doing a lot of analysis on what happened in January and what they might be able to do moving forward. This neighborhood's a little unique in that it has a lagoon central to it, so not only do you have the properties on the outside that are surrounded by the creek, but there's a lagoon in the middle. There's no compensation with the lagoon, so Historically, we've taken our pumps over there to pump out the lagoon when we've needed to. That was pretty ineffective versus an 8.7 type coming in and filling that lagoon up kind of like a bathtub into a Dixie cup. And so FOSS looking at, in addition to barriers to try and keep the water out, what are some of the options for pumping this out? Again, we can't pop against the creek. We can't stop it from coming over, but we may be able to get rid of it sooner. We know if we have four days in a row of king tides, we don't want the water sitting in the street for four days in a row. So what does it look like to get that water out? As soon as the tide goes down, a lot of our other areas that I'm going to show you, the water goes down in the street too. In this location, it doesn't. It gets trapped in the lagoon. So that's something we're working with. with HOA and their engineer to look at strategies to mitigate that. They did replace their bulkhead walls, so the wall that goes around that inner lagoon is now higher and sturdier, and so we've got more options and more tools for flood control this winter based on that improvement that the homeowners did. And this, again, was on the list when we looked at the survey data with county flood control and evaluated barriers And then this is also a location where RVSD has a couple of pump stations. So they're very interested in what happens here as far as flood mitigation goes.

Mr. Weissman? According to council policy, it's 1030. And so I need an indication from the council if you want to end the meeting or you want to finish this item. Yeah, so I'll take a motion to continue the meeting.

How much longer do you think we've got going on here?

I think I've got about three slides left. And I just see that Captain Khalili might want to add a few things. Yeah. So all this is the neighbors?

Hi. Hi. Okay. The next area I'm going to show is Larkspur Plaza Drive. So this is the Larkspur Isle condos. And then there's another, I think there's another three or four condos and some apartments down here. Historically, this area has flooded with regular king tides, the intersection of Creekside and Larchford Plaza Drive. This is an area that has a pump station, but it's an old pump station. If you recall from our storm drain master plan, this pump station was identified as being old and undersized. So you've already authorized us to do the design work to replace the upsize that pump station and replace the flood wall that's along Larchford Plaza Drive. Those are a couple of years out probably based on all the environmental review that would be required implement those projects. But this is an area where we'll be walking and looking at the existing flood wall and see if there's some patching or something that we can do to help it out this winter. We've met with a couple of the HOAs out there. They also are in locations where there's private property in their backyards that are connected with the creek and they're below Elevation 9. And so they have This area has water coming from the street when our street floods, but they also have water coming in from the backside directly from the creek. Redwood Highway is the other areas I mentioned before. Everything on the east side of 101 is within the FEMA 100-year flood zone. This is an area that's bounded by the old railroad tracks on the east, and then the freeway, as we know, in January, pretty much this whole area was underwater, including the freeway and the freeway had to be closed. This is where there's a lot of jurisdictions here, Smart, Caltrans County, Corte Madera, all have pieces of property and all have jurisdiction here, so we're all working together to evaluate options to protect this area as best that we can. And then I think this is the last slide. This is the link, and so the presentation will be embedded. online, and then these links will also be added to the El Nino page. That's the first link I'm showing here. That's where we're going to be posting our information for these events moving forward. Marin County One Rain is, if you're interested in how much rain we got or what the stage level is of the creek over at the Bonair Bridge, they have weather stations and creek gauges there. You can also see if you're Curious what's coming down the line. There's a creek gauge in San Anselmo. There's a couple of cameras too, if you're interested in watching that. And then the next one is NOAA, N-O-A-A-S, the tide information. So that's your forecast and your real-time information. And then a couple of links here for Marin County Office of Emergency Management. I highlighted the Alert Marin, where you can sign up for the notifications the city manager was mentioning. We typically use National Weather Service for our forecast to figure out how much rain is coming. At atmospheric rivers, it breaks the rainfall up into six-hour increments, so we know how much rain is coming over a six-hour period, and that tells us how strong of a storm and how much water we're going to get and how we need to prepare. And then the Ross Valley website is here, too. They have a page that's dedicated to king tide preparation. And that was my last slide.

Nicholas Alberson- See they got to release on right in my one. Thank you. Comments.

Good evening, council members. Thank you, City Manager Schwartz. I just want to mention and reaffirm that Alert Marin is the primary source of information in the county. Office of Emergency Management, they'll be doing all the heavy lifting as far as obtaining all the information from the National Weather Service and putting out regional information that will affect all of us, not just in the Central Marin area. So I highly, highly encourage all of our residents, all of our visitors, all of our schools, all of our businesses to sign up for Alert Marin because that will be the most accurate, up-to-date information. Our responsibility as the police department will be to put out localized information. And what you'll see is oftentimes we'll just regurgitate some of the information that OEM issues through Alert Marin information. The one piece, and Julian, you did a fantastic job, very, very detailed presentation. The only thing I want to add to that is the responsibility of the first responders is to triage the pending calls and respond to areas that are needed. And so your first responders, your local government, DPW is doing a lot of the heavy lifting on this. The one piece that I don't think we've discussed is the responsibility that we are respectfully asking of our residents. These are not wildfire events where if you're lucky, you have one or two hours to prepare. These are events in the case of King Tides, we know months in advance. With storms, we know days in advance. And so these events, when they occur, are very taxing on first responder resources. And so I would like to just ask and remind the general public that we do burden a lot of the responsibility here, but so do you. And so don't be a victim. Take proactive measures to prepare and be self-sufficient. And as far as the law enforcement side of it, if you don't have to travel during these events, please don't. We will shut down the roadways. We will not be manning these streets to direct traffic. You will see signage out there that says road closed, travel at your own peril. And so at the end of the day, this is a partnership. We will do our part, but we're asking the community to do their part as well. And that's all I have.

And then if I could just close with talking to the council and how it We have a lot of partners, as we've mentioned, so we've confirmed Ross Valley Sanitary District's general manager will attend the next council meeting. It's for several different topics, and one of them will be the preparations they're making and the investments they've been making in their system to cope with what's anticipated for the winter storms. And then I've spoken to the director of OEM about coming either at the second meeting in October or the first meeting in November. I think will really benefit because he's been doing the circuits. So we'll get all the latest and greatest that he has to offer. That's Stephen Torrance, which I know a lot of you've seen. And he's really picked up a lion's share. And I want to acknowledge Captain Clealy started today. We're working really hard to make sure that we have a good command system during each of these holiday events. You heard Mr. Skinner say, you know, we'd, have staff that want to take holidays too, but we've got a commitment from our maintenance staff. They're going to be present in force during the king tides, and we will make sure we have a command team of both public safety and civilian personnel present through each of these events.

Great. Well, thank you for the thorough presentation, Mr. Skinner. Does anyone on council have any questions? Oh, yeah.

I just want to say thank you for Julian and the entire staff for being so proactive on this. And if there's anything that we can do as a council, it's a fortune. Please let us know. We're on agenda. If there's some budget items or anything that has to be done, because this is important. I want to make sure that you guys have everything achieved.

I'll spotlight one that might come to you pretty soon. You may have seen in the press that Cloverdale's already declared An emergency for the storm season. They're the first city to do that. The county's studying what Cloverdale did. The reason they did it is because when you declare an emergency, you free up the public works director. A lot of process goes away. So the county's looking at the legality of that and they're going to give us their opinion. We may be bringing that to you soon, too, for that sole purpose of giving Julian a real life story. Great.

Sorry, just a quick question. Yeah, Julie, thank you so much. I'm really, yeah, I'm so encouraged, you know, also seeing the county step in and, you know, I, you know, coordinate all this. Two questions about the county. One is, I believe they have 11 deployable pumps. I don't know if those are available to us or how that'll work. And then they've also added, I believe, 30 sandbag stations. So we had looks for the one in Heather Gardens and the one in Piper. Is any of that going to be for us along the creek?

So as far as the pumps go, the county has purchased pumps based on what they believe their need will be for the winter, much like I showed that we have two pumps. Last winter, we did borrow a pump from the county. Actually, we borrowed two pumps from the county. So Their pumps are theirs primarily for where they need them for their operations, but they're open to mutual aid requests. If we need a pump, we will go out and we'll ask for a pump like we did last year. Last year, when I asked the county for a pump, they had a six-inch pump. We borrowed it from them. So it's the same. They're not there for first come, first serve, sign out. They're there for the county to use and deploy. And if they have surplus to what their needs are, and they evaluate that they don't think they're going to need a pump for a week, then traditionally they have then let that out to a partner for a week.

I'll find your second question. The county is setting up a sandbag station at College of Marin, and so we've started including our messaging, particularly for our residents on that side of the creek or who are in the North Magnolia area. That might be a better choice for them. But a reminder that sandbag stations are primarily for emergency purposes. And the county has some nice resources that we're directing people to of all the different vendors where you can purchase not just sandbags, but other types of barriers for water. And there's quite a few vendors here in the county stores that carry a lot of this type of equipment. And that's not subject to the first come, first serve nature of an emergency sandbag station. Thank you.

But the reality is you got to get it now. You don't wait until the rains fall.

I fully endorse what Kevin clearly said. We know they're coming, so let's all start preparing.

I have just a couple of quick questions. Is there a phone number that residents can call for non-emergency stuff, but there's like a tree fallen, that they can let the city know that there's something happening?

Yes, so there are two Public Works phone numbers that are listed on the website. One is our normal operations time phone number, and we're actually making sure now that it rings to a physical phone for the winter, so because it goes to a phone tree, but we're having it rerouted so that that phone will physically ring when we're in winter so that it doesn't go to voicemail and Then there is a phone number that's on the website for after hours. It goes to the county dispatch. So if anybody has a public works need that's after hours, they call this after hours phone number that's listed. It'll go to county dispatch. So you have a large for public works need. There's a tree down on Magnolia or wherever it is. And then they have the contact for our after hours personnel. and they'll dispatch public works out, they'll dispatch fire, depending on what is reported, what they think is needed. But those two phone numbers are available on our website, yes.

Great, yeah. That's great. And we could just make it more prominent or easy for people to find.

We'll copy them onto that El Nino page and make sure they stand out.

Yeah, that's going to be our main page during these events. Everything's going to be there, one-stop shop. And if Assistant City Manager, who's leading our comms team, and she told me she's preparing a citywide postcard with a QR code. We're going to send everybody that postcard so the whole city hopefully knows about that website.

Great, great. And then second question, have we thought about maybe opening, you know, a facility for people who, I don't know, lose power, can't, you know, they can't flush their toilet. What I've heard is they can go somewhere during one of these events?

Yeah, so of course the new library has been designed to serve that purpose, provided it's in safe conditions, which we would fully expect it would be. The power issue is one that OEM is in talks right now with PG&E about making sure we have a joint alert system if we're going to experience power losses. So we're waiting to get detailed briefing on that, but we heard today that those discussions have started. So we hope to be plugged, sorry, I was going to say plugged in, didn't mean to pun, but into that so we understand and are getting that messaging in real time.

Great. Okay, yeah, let's go to public comments and also, I'm cognizant of this time, I think it's 11? Yeah. Okay, so let's go to public comments. Sorry.

Hi. My name is Natasha Chalmers and I'm a resident of Loxborough Marina. I think a lot of you know me from the Planning Commission and I think most people here are actually from my neighborhood and a testament to all staying out so late because this is really important to us. And we were really happy to hear that this was on the agenda tonight, as we sat through the whole of Mount San Francisco just to get to this. This is a really, really, really important issue because, and I'm sure you're well aware of the unprecedented flood that hit our neighborhood last January. And we were impacted by the King's Hide in a way I think no other area in Oxford were. And as Julian Skinner's just pointed out, we have three upcoming king tides in an El Nino winter. So we're expecting tides even higher than those experienced in January. And we saw on the news reports how bad it was back then. And I also want to just make a comment about the NOAA tide predictions. Those are out of date. They are a little wrong. They are at least five inches too low, at least. So most of the time they're about a foot too low. That is known. My understanding is that you could get updated in 2029. So that's a little late for us. I have someone on my team actually that can explain that better than I can, that they are out of date. So as a result of what happened last January, I now head up a newly formed flood control committee that's focused on finding solutions to help our neighbourhood from this expected flooding this winter. And I've been working with Julian Skinner and I really want to thank him for your, for that presentation tonight. That was great. So I really appreciate that. So as Julian mentioned in his report, our neighborhood is commissioned an engineering report at our own expense. So we're paying for this to identify solutions. And I'm here tonight to ask for support from the city. to help us with a number of actions. And I know you talked about the county. We've also reached out to the county and we have started working with the county, but to be honest, we haven't got anywhere with the county. We were hoping for more support from them. So they referred us back to the city. So we're back here trying to work with you and with June. So here are three things I'm going to ask of all. June and I discussed at length the storm drain system. This really needs to be cleaned in our neighborhood. It's full of mussels and dirt, and it needs to be done before November's king tide. And the storm drain system includes an inlet pipe and outlet pipes, and they could travel between the lagoon and the creek, and you saw some images of that. In addition, the gates that control the inlet and outlet pipes are broken, and that was one of the reasons why all the one of the many reasons that we have problems and those need to be repaired again before November's king tide. Secondly, we need additional pump capacity to pump water out of the lagoon and the street into the creek in between each of the king tide events. So as you know, we know the dates of the king tide and they're over three days. So during that time, there are multiple high tides. The tide then goes down, there's low tide, and we have an opportunity to get water out of the streets, out of people's backyards, out of people's homes and garages, back into the creek. Last winter, we were using the pumps. We had two six-inch pumps, which the city has. We ended up having to hire our own pumps because the flooding actually occurred over a weekend. So we didn't actually get access to the city pump at first. But we had the six inch pumps and they didn't do anything. So as part of this report that we have from the engineering company, they have indicated that we need all 12 inch pumps. Which is not that cheap, as you can probably guess. In addition, the pumps that Julian has and the pumps that the county have They're there to serve the entire community, not just our neighborhood. So there's actually no guarantee that we have access to those pumps. So we need to get our hands on these four 12-inch pumps before November. And then finally, our report shows that we need barriers such as sandbags or those water-filled tubes, the gator walls, the tiger walls, all the things that were shown in Julian's report tonight over certain portions Court of Madeira Creek. And right now we're trying to identify the specific areas that require these barriers. But what we do need from the city is your assistance in providing these barriers and helping us install them. As some of these do run over private property and we have a lot of elderly people in our community who cannot do this themselves. In January, a lot of people helped other people, but still it's not enough. And I'm really pleased to hear about potential volunteers Um, and I'm actually really encouraged to hear that the city manager is open to budget items. Um, is we've also just paid for $20 million new walls. So, um, we have a lot of expenses in my neighborhood. So I personally and the committee that we're, that we have in our neighborhood are happy to work with the city to determine the best way to accomplish these goals, but we really need to move quickly. We're already roughly through September and we only have 10 weeks until the first king tide. And then finally, I understand that the city and the county are looking at long-term solutions at sea rise, but we can't wait until the target current date, the current target date for 2024. That's just too late for us. And I'm also wanting to ask the city if they can commission a flood study that would start straight away that would look at permanent flood solutions Great. Thank you very much.

I don't suppose there's any way I can borrow one of those powers because that last meeting was so long. My phone's going to die and you're going to sit down.

You can pull that plug out right there. So sorry. Do this. We want to charge it.

That's the best place to go.

Go ahead.

And maybe not the one that we're relying on. It's got enough there.

It's like somebody else. It's somebody else. It's almost 11. Yeah. Let's move forward.

Sure. Thank you very much for the presentation. Natasha as well. Thank you for that. I have just one statement about the, I think that's seven point four, I think it is. Based upon just some rough math, if we assume the 7.4, it's going to be as far below the actual as it was this last January. That's going to be at nine feet, which I know we're talking about the county is meant for nine foot. But so it's very possibly going to go up above that. So I just suggested maybe for 10 feet instead of nine feet. Second, this last January, the water lagoon went up by about a foot a day. Is it possible to perhaps pump out four feet worth of water from the lagoon in the days leading up to the flooding so that we can help absorb some of the flood water that we anticipate coming in?

Great, thank you.

Hi, my name's Cheryl. I'm also the Riviera Circle community. and I wanted to be here present physically, even though it's difficult for a lot of us to be here, to thank you for your service and also say we really need your help in our neighborhood, especially, we were very hard hit and this season is gonna be worse. And I understand there's things that, at least I've heard from neighbors, the city or the public works can do, like clean out the storm drains. They actually, some of the engineers and the construction workers building the new walls so that the pipes that were 18 to 24 inches actually the size of a tennis ball because of the muscle growth. And so that's obviously very ineffective. And then we heard that they haven't been cleaned out because of difficulty finding where you can put, once you clean out those drains, where you put the refuse. But those are things we, you know, eyes of the president can't solve that. And I just, we really need your help to get in there and solve some of these problems, like clearing out the storage drains. Because the water came over the berm, and then it just stayed for so many days, and we were underwater many more days than any of us would have liked. Thank you. Thank you.

My name's Corey Birkin, and I live in the Marksville Marina. I've been there for over 30 years. When we first moved in within a year or so, there was some flooding, but we've never seen anything like what happened this past January. The first sign that Mr. Skinner showed was right around the corner from my house. We were flooded. Our street was on the news, on the TV. And we took a lot of water in our garage. We had about a foot of water in the garage. We sustained some pretty significant damage under our house. So all of our ductwork had to be replaced. And so I've done that. I've put in moisture barriers, three sump pumps, Just today, my wife and I were testing the plastic barriers, the bottom right and the side of the plastic red ones. We tried that, the bud tape, and we had hoses. So we're trying to do as much as we can on our own. But quite frankly, this meeting and what the city has put on the website has got me really scared. I'm scared for my property. I'm scared for our community. reassure that we're trying to do things. And so I really appreciate that the storm drains are going to be clean because the storm drains in front of my house on either side have not been cleared. They've been blocked for over a year. And so I'm relieved to hear that something will be done on that and the inlet and the outlet gates. I know that that's important for the water to be able to flow in and out to be able to get the water out of there during the The pumps that Natasha spoke about seem to be essential, and I'm sure I speak for our whole community how much we appreciate anything that the city can do to fund that and help us get the adequate pumps that we need. Also, the barriers across that will stop water from coming in from Cordova Creek, the engineer spoke at our homeowners meeting, and he emphasized that that is really important and I know it's private property, but I'm sure that our flood committee would go door to door and speak to every neighbor and get permission and do everything that we can if we can get sandbags or some of the barrier in place to keep the water from coming over. So appreciate all the attention that you're giving this and the seriousness with which this potential calamity is being addressed. One question. We're not supposed to drive our cars in the flood. So what are we supposed to do with our cars before the floods? Where are we supposed to put them? So maybe somebody could answer that. Thank you again for your time and consideration of this important issue that is affecting all of us.

Thank you for your public comment. Hi. Thank you. Cindy Morgan, also in Larkspur Marina on Corte del Valle. And I'm I'm very appreciative of all the work that has been done. I'm very impressed with the presentation and all the resources that are becoming available. I think all of us in the neighborhood understand that these are all acts of nature and there's only so much we can do. As a neighborhood, all the residents are doing what we can. We are doing our part to fortify our homes. We are doing following guides to do what we can to mitigate flood damage. And what we're imploring the city is to help us and to be partners with us and to have you do what you can in the areas that are the city's jurisdiction. That means maintaining the lagoon in terms of levels, draining that, and taking care of the storm drains. Mr. Skinner in his presentation reported that water is coming, but what we can do is try to minimize how long that water is present. Storm drains are clogged all over. neighborhood i can attest to that i had a lake in front of my house for four to five days after all the tides received because the storm drain was so blocked only little trickles of water came through and that's just it's it's the jurisdiction of the city it's your responsibility to clean those and maintain those and they're not being maintained as a consequence we had extensive property damage done and i appreciate But my question is asking where to park our cars. My car was total parked in my old driveway because of that lake. So we do ask that you do what you can with the areas that are the jurisdiction and responsibility of the city, which are the storm drains and maintaining the Love Love Lagoon, which is a repository for storm water and runoff water. We're doing our part. We ask that you help us and partner with us to try to minimize Any sort of damage that can happen in the future. So thank you very much for what you've done. I look forward to looking at all the resources and hopefully continuing our partnership.

Thank you for your time.

Hey, sorry about that. I'm stressful. So my name is Gabby and I live in Riviera Circle. During the last, and some of those houses, actually one of those was mine. It's right on the corner across from Redwood. So I'm underwater in all kinds of ways. But during the last pink tide, my neighbors were trapped in their homes. Drivers were rerouting through our neighborhood pretty quickly. It was pushing the flood water like up through our garage and into our neighbor's garages. Pets were stranded for houses that didn't have people there. There was raw sewage. going down the streets and it was left on our front yard that we had to clean up later. And that's where my kids and a lot of our kids here walk, play, where kids come to Redwood. The proposal I heard from Mr. Skinner, while detailed, it's pretty much a communications plan. You have one pump that you're talking about buying and then putting in some barriers that you're getting a proposal for. Telling us we're about to flood is not flood protection. One pump for 160 homes is not flood protection. Mighty five barriers is not a plan, it's a hope. The king tide comes back this holiday season when families are home and a lot of city staff are on reduced schedules. We know the dates, we know the water levels, or we think we do. It's pretty much the most predictable disaster in Larkspur and predictable should mean preventable. um tonight we'd like to ask that uh the council does four things uh we have a funded barrier plan with locations staffing and a deployment schedule not a maybe enough pumps pre-positioned and tested to actually move water a traffic plan that keeps cut through drivers out of our flooded streets and a protocol to prevent sewage overflows and clean them up fast when they happen With 160 homes of about 6,000 are tied in Marksboro about 2.5% of the population here, but blocked emergency access and gridlock detours are a citywide problem. So we'd like to ask your help in solving this and some resources, not just for our neighborhood, but for the city as a whole. And again, I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you.

Louis Tannenbaum, I've been here before. A few years ago, I asked your help to reform our community facilities district that would allow us to proceed with the bulkhead projects. We're very grateful that you did that. The bulkhead project is completed. A couple checks outstanding, but we work very closely with people on that side of the room. We've worked with this group before with the gate project, and that was also successful. Last year, I met with Julian in the middle of the second or third flood episode. I wasn't sure if it was him, but when he turned, I saw that he had a target on his back. So I knew that that was him because I had a target on my back. And we both agreed that it was an uncomfortable situation and that the way to get rid of it, it was to be transparent and proactive.

So those are very important words.

We have a very unique relationship with the city of Larkspur. We, meaning LMPOA, Larkspur Marina Property Association. We own the lagoon and we're responsible for the bulkhead. We are responsible for replacing the gates, but Public Works is responsible for maintaining them. So it's a very incestuous process. Fortunately, the people that they use as consultants are the people that we use So we're speaking to the same people often at the same time. We're in this together.

It's very clear after last year that no matter how much pumping you do, if there's enough tidal effect and surge and rain, and it goes over the banks of the Puerto Madera Creek, you're gonna get flooding. The problem is, is that if the drains are not open, if the sewers are not clean, That compounds it, and that's something that we can control.

That's something that I'm going to repeat what everybody has said. We need those drains cleaned. We need you to help us work with Ross and get the sewers clean as well. As far as pumping goes, we paid $20 million for the bulkhead. It's our ticket. But we also spent $50,000 on a flood control study at Foth Engineering that we will share with Public Works. And that will tell us and tell you exactly how many pumps we need, what diameter they have to be, where they should be placed. We've never been able to really say, what can we do to get one feet of water out, two feet of water out? That's not the answer, but it's part of the solution to get the water down to levels that are livable. Last year, we completed the end of the season and we said to ourselves, can't get worse than this. This year, I hope we complete it and say, wasn't that bad, could have been a lot worse. To do that, we need your help. Thank you. Thank you.

Can I ask a quick question? So both you and Natasha were talking about flood study as a fifth request, but you've done a flood study. It's commissioned.

It's due on my desk yesterday. It's commissioned. It's 99% done. I haven't seen the final version. Sorry.

So can I come up? Yeah, please. So I think what you're asking is about, well, the flood study is something I had asked for. The engineering report that we commissioned is really only for short-term solutions for what happens in terms of pumping and water levels in the lagoon.

Yeah, it's strictly related to our community. It's not broad-based, and it's what we can do this year and the next few years to get through this. We expect to see that, and when we do, we'll share it, because I think it'll give public works some direction.

Great, thank you. If there's no more public comment here in the room, let's go online for public comments.

Kathleen Waukehe.

Hi, yes, Kathleen Mulcahy on Luxor Plaza Drive. Julian, thank you, you're an angel. So yeah, I'm gonna mimic all those in Riviera, same thing on Luxor Plaza Drive. So storm drains, an issue. One is completely clogged at the dead end of the road that we have. Parking, a gentleman brought it up. That was something that I haven't seen yet, and I think it would be really positive. All of us in Larkspur Plaza Drive have to park somewhere else, and we can do that in advance. We just don't know where that is. So if we can start as a city to outline areas that are safe to leave our car for overnight, during the day, three days in a row, that would eliminate some potential issues. And then lastly, I'm thinking, listening about the temporary barriers and such, it might behoove the city to do some coordinating of all the neighbors that align the creek in order to do some sort of a bulk discount and get into the selection of picking something that is viable and doing something that is got a bulk discount to reduce the price with all of us on board to, you know, make it a firm wall barrier versus holes in a leaking sieve. Thank you.

Thank you.

Jonathan.

Jonathan, if you can unmute.

I'll ask Jonathan to unmute again. He might have gone to sleep.

Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Sorry, guys, long day. I live at the end of Larkspur Plaza Drive. And during the January event, because I'm retired, I was at the intersection of Larkspur Plaza Drive and Creekside, where there's a dip. And people would go through there and tides go up and down. And when 101 was closed, we had a lot of detours of food delivery and whatnot from San Rafael. I felt badly for them. The signs are great. The little A-frames that go up, they say there's a flood ahead. But when tides go up and down, it's a cry wolf scenario. What I would like to see is these A-frames have some kind of reflective tape depth gauge. So you can tell by the depth of the A-frame what you're seeing because people go there when it's low tide, they sail through and they don't really realize. So if they can see a visual thing where the thing is, where the signage is placed, how deep it is, they can make a more educated decision. That's it.

Great. Thank you for your comment. Anybody else? Okay. All right. So.

I know it's late, but can I offer a couple of quick comments based on some of the speakers? Our friends in Corte Madera have suggested that probably the solution for parking is to suspend the 72-hour rule for not being required to move your car and then just encouraging residents to park their car wherever they feel most comfortable. Because we've looked at our maps of potential areas we could designate as parking areas. and a lot of them are in the flood point. So it doesn't work. For example, a parking lot right here would make a lot of sense, but as all of you know, it'll be underwater too. And Corbin here has the same problem. So one of the things they're starting to tell their residents is we're not going to enforce the 72-hour rule of moving your car and go park up in the hill on a public street. We're going to put the message out to the community you need to be tolerant that your neighbors need somewhere to put their car for three or four days so that it doesn't to tell the water. So we're working on that. So then we have a joint message that's easy for CMPA to help with as well. And then we'll continue our conversations with the committee of this neighborhood. There's a lot of details to get through, but I want to be clear, we're not going to go on private property unless we're dealing with our own issues and our infrastructure. We can cooperate. We can try to provide resources, but we are going to need your cooperation because we are not going to come on your properties. The county is the same way. They've made it really clear. We don't call them a private property, but we can collaborate and try to provide resources. And then we'll talk offline. We are working on some of the other things that were described. Kenna joins having regular meetings with the group. And we'll go from there.

Okay, great. Thank you all for staying late and for providing us with all the things that your community is doing to prepare for the upcoming King Tides. What I will say is we will be having more conversations about this. So our BSD is coming in October 7th. And I will check in with our staff on a regular basis to see if we're making progress on the five items that you guys have listed. And we can always also agendize this topic, you know, sometime in October, probably the second meeting in October if we need to, just to check in and get a status update on what some of these items are. I don't know that we can commit to all of these five items, but certainly, you know, with respect to the pumps, if we can find rentals, we can try to get them in advance. I don't know that it's feasible for the city to spend a lot of money on these, I don't know, very expensive pumps. But let's see what we can do and what resources are available to us. Okay, great. All right. So it's late. Yes.

It's late. I kind of have a lot to talk about on this subject. Would it make sense to carry this over to the next meeting?

It would make sense to carry it over to two meetings away, not to the next meeting. We've got an agenda with other topics.

Could we do that?

Because I know it's 11 o'clock. Well, again, so the next meeting, RBSD, so you can talk about the sewer component of this. 21st, we'll probably have OEMs, so we'll use that as our point to continue this conversation.

Wonderful. Okay. And with that, that was a discussion item. Thank you all for participating in our discussion. And now we'll move to adjournment. Thank you.