City Council - Special Meeting

swear it

Good afternoon, everybody. Today is Monday, February 2nd. This is a special meeting in that it is a study session for the San Rafael City Council. I will request the city clerk to call the roll, please.

Council Member Bushey. Present. Council Member Hill.

Present.

Vice Mayor Kurtz. Present. Council Member Yedens-Gulati. Present. Mayor Kate.

Present. All five of us are here this evening or afternoon, soon to be evening. So it will be a study session. And just if you haven't attended a study session before, they're intended to be a little bit more informal, even though we're still on the dais and we still have the podium. But what we'll do is we'll start with a staff presentation. Council members, we each get to ask like one question so that way we can turn it over to our community and to hear questions and comments. And at the very end, I know staff is looking for some direction as outlined in the staff report, which by the way was incredible. Lots of links to a lot of state laws. If you haven't had a chance to read them, you can click on them now and so we will have time for that so I'll be watching the time the other thing about it it has a we have a hard stop at 5 30 because we have a closed session so right now you're like 90 minutes we have so much time let me tell you it's going to go quickly because this is a pretty dense topic so before I turn it over to assistant director Greg Minor I'm going to turn it to our city attorney for a few comments okay and I have comments to make about the

ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE LAST MEETING, BUT SHOULD THAT WAIT UNTIL THE REGULAR MEETING?

OKAY. SO MY COMMENTS REGARDING THE STUDY SESSION, I'LL SAVE MY OTHER COMMENTS UNTIL LATER. IT'S SIMPLY THIS, THAT THERE IS NO SPECIFIC PROJECT THAT'S AGENDIZED FOR TONIGHT. which means for the members of the public, they're welcome to talk about anything they want that's within the subject matter of the item, which could very well include thoughts about specific projects that have either been approved, that are applied for, underway, or considered. The limitation I'm going to announce right now relates to the city council because there is no specific property, no specific project that's under consideration or specifically agendized this evening. That means that the council members, when they're asking their questions of staff and then participating in whatever discussion or deliberation, should please refrain from referencing any particular property or project. So I think it's understood. And I just wanted that to be a reminder before we start.

Thank you so much. And I actually see assistant city manager Robinson Pinon. So I'll maybe start with you and we'll go from there.

SO YES, GOOD AFTERNOON, EVERYONE. WE HAVE A PRESENTATION TO KICK OFF THE MEETING TODAY ONCE WE COMMENCE FROM MARGARET CAVANAUGH-LYNCH AND WE ALSO ARE SUPPORTED BY ASSISTANT DIRECTOR GREG MINER AND WE ALSO HAVE MIKA HINKEL, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT HERE TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS. AND THE PURPOSE OF THE PRESENTATION IS JUST TO PROVIDE AN OVERVIEW OF STATE HOUSING LAW AS WELL AS CITY POLICIES AND REGULATIONS PERTAINING TO HOUSING DEVELOPMENT AND AS MAYOR CABE MENTIONED, to commence with a Q&A from those assembled here. So with that, I will conclude my comments and kick it back to Mayor Kate.

OKAY. WELL, I'M JUST GOING TO KEEP KICKING IT AROUND BECAUSE I'M GOING TO HEAD IT TO GREG MINER.

I'M GOING TO HOLD UP THE SUSPENSE A LITTLE BIT LONGER. GREG MINER WITH THE COMMUNITY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT JOINED WITH OUR PLANNING MANAGER, MARGARET CAVANAUGH-LYNCH. I WOULD JUST ADD A LITTLE BIT TO WHAT ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER ROBINSON-PINON MENTIONED, WHICH IS THAT OUR OFFICE HAS BEEN ASKED TO FACILITATE THESE PUBLIC DISCUSSIONS AROUND HOUSING DEVELOPMENT IN LIGHT OF NEW STATE LAWS

Wait one moment. It's really distracting because there's a presentation for the council meeting is behind you. Right. Nope. That's it. Okay. Sorry. I think all of us are like, wait a minute. Okay. Keep going.

It was all part of the plan.

Okay. Back to you.

Good to keep going? Yes. Okay. So mainly, I just want to add that today is the first of two study sessions. So today's presentation will focus on the impact of state housing laws and the city's plans on housing development that has taken place in the city. And the second study session, which is tentatively scheduled for April, will focus on the city's affordable housing requirements, as well as any follow-up from today's study session. So with that, I'll pass it on to Margaret. Looks like we got the right PowerPoint up. So thank you so much.

Good afternoon, Madam Mayor, members of the council. Welcome to the first of your two study sessions on the very dense topic of housing in San Rafael. The purpose of this study session is to share with you all the summary of multifamily housing development over the last five years since the new general plan and downtown precise plan were adopted. Highlights will include the state laws now in effect that were used here in San Rafael, the development activity that we have seen. And finally, we want to check in with you and receive some input on a few questions specifically. And I'll show you these again at the end of the presentation. A, SHOULD STAFF EXPLORE WAYS TO REVISIT THE TOPIC OF DENSITY IN THE DOWNTOWN? SHOULD STAFF RESEARCH THE ROLE OF THE PLANNING COMMISSION WITH RESPECT TO THE REVIEW OF HOUSING PROJECTS? AND C, SHOULD STAFF INVESTIGATE CREATION OF A NEW MINISTERIAL PROCESS THAT MAY ENCOURAGE HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS THAT ALIGN MORE REALLY WITH THE CITY COUNCIL PRIORITIES? In response to the housing crisis, state laws have transformed how housing projects are reviewed and approved by our city. Since 2021, the city has seen 18 major housing projects. Here are the two trends that we've identified in our city. One, the state density bonus law is the favorite development path for our housing projects. This law allows for increased density or bonus units for a project that provides a minimum percentage of affordable or below market rate units. It also allows for development teams to put aside the objective design standards through the use of concessions and waivers if they believe those standards would physically preclude the construction of a full project. 17 OF THE 18 PROJECTS USE STATE DENSITY BONUS LAW TO BUILD IN OUR TO GET ENTITLED IN OUR CITY. ONE APPEARS TO BE SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTING THE STATE DENSITY BONUS LAW SB 35. WHAT HAS BECOME CLEAR IS THERE IS VERY LITTLE DISCRETION FOR CITIES IN STATE DENSITY BONUS LAW HOUSING PROJECTS AND THERE IS NO DISCRETION AT ALL IN MINISTERIAL HOUSING PROJECTS SUCH AS SB 35. This is a good time to note what the mayor also brought up earlier. You have in your agenda report links to take a deeper dive into the housing state density bonus laws, in addition to deeper dives or additional resources that talk more about how those are going from various subject experts. Whenever we are reviewing multifamily housing projects that qualify for state density bonus laws, it's important to keep in mind that we can only, as a city, deny or decrease density if, one, the project would have a significant quantifiable effect and an unavoidable impact upon public health and safety, and there is no feasible method to satisfactorily mitigate or avoid that adverse impact. That's a very high bar. Since almost all of our projects use the state density bonus law, I wanted to take a moment and explain a bit more about how those projects or how those types of projects work. So before you is a case study that is under construction in our city at 930 Irwin. It consists of 210 dwelling units, including 18 units that will be affordable to low-income households. This project included a 10% affordable housing component. By meeting this level and type of affordable units, the project was eligible for two concessions and unlimited waivers to allow for the development team to design the project in a way to accommodate all of the dwelling units that they were able to include in that project. In this case, no concessions were used. However, waivers were requested and granted for the following development standards, including the height, all four setbacks, and the public, or what we call the civic open space. So all of those development standards were either completely waived or substantially changed to accommodate this project. Our general plan and more recently, the updated housing element set forth a lot of policies and programs that are working as we had hoped. I've added a few of those policies to this slide. Specifically, we were looking in the general plan to focus future housing where alternatives to driving were most viable, meaning near our smart stations, correct. Also to support the continued growth in downtown with quality residential projects. And more recently in our housing element that was adopted in 2023, we are to apply for a pro housing city designation and ensure that we implement the state and local density bonus programs, especially for projects that bring forward affordable housing components. As the council knows, these documents were the result of over four years of effort. The community engagement process included multiple formats, including a steering committee that convened 25 meetings between January 2018 and June 2020, a website with over 350 subscribers, as well as numerous workshops held at community centers, farmers markets, and elementary school, and at least one downtown artwork. This was in addition to all the planning commission and study sessions that you all sat through through that process. Let me share one more policy or program with you. In the general plan, we noted that we wanted to do a complete evaluation once every five years. This meeting is actually the beginning of that evaluation. Since the plans were adopted, we've seen a lot more multifamily housing introduced to our city. This table shows the numbers of dwelling units by development stage as of January 17th. Preliminary review means the city has received what's called an SB 330 application, but the project has not yet been submitted for formal review. Formally submitted means the project is currently under view by staff, but has not yet been set for a hearing. Entitled means in this case, the projects were approved. Appealed in this case means the projects were approved by the planning commission, but then appealed, which stays that decision until the council takes action. UNDER CONSTRUCTION MEANS THAT A DEMO PERMIT AND OR BUILDING PERMIT HAS BEEN SUBMITTED FOR THE PROJECT AND BUILT MEANS YOU CAN OPEN THE DOOR AND WALK INTO IT. HERE ARE A FEW CAVEATS REGARDING THIS PARTICULAR TABLE, JUST TO BE VERY CLEAR. WHILE A FEW OF THESE PROJECTS DID START BEFORE THE CURRENT GENERAL PLAN AND DOWNTOWN PRECISE PLAN WERE ADOPTED, THEY ARE INCLUDED IN THESE TOTALS AS THEIR ENTITLEMENTS WERE ACTUALLY EXTENDED AND THEY'RE BEING BUILT DURING THIS TIME. We also only included Phase 1 of Northgate and actually divided it into two different columns on this chart. Residential 1, which is the 38 townhomes, is shown under the under construction column, while the rest of Phase 1, which is 826 dwelling units, is under entitled. All in, we are at 2,710 dwelling units. How does that compare to previous years? We have a lot more dwelling units now than we've had. For the five-year period between 2010 to 2014, we built 155 units. In the next time period between 2015 and 2020, we built 304. For the period between 2021 to present, we've already built 192. If we added the projects under construction as seen in this chart, that number would increase to 560. While we're processing more applications than we've seen in the last 25 years, we're also getting better at processing them all more efficiently. Well, no two development projects are the same. Here's a database illustration to show you how it started versus how it's going. 1010 Northgate Walk took three years and three months to get to planning commission approval from its formal submittal. And as you recall, we used to have conceptual design review. These are just trying to do apples to apples for this conversation. Alternatively, 1033rd Street took nine months from formal submittal to planning commission approval. The time needed to go from submittal to final action has gone from years to months. I also want to add from a staff processing standpoint, the depth of the review and the overall complexity of the legal mandates and timelines has gotten significantly more arduous. While growth brings many positive aspects, including increased economic activity, staff's mindful that it also impacts city services. We've been working diligently on this issue, and I am happy to report that we've recently completed a park impact fee study. A new traffic mitigation fee is now underway, and we are kicking off a new public safety fee study right now. Now, in preparation for one of the questions that we are going to be asking, I'd like to dive a bit deeper on the topic of density using a tale of two locations. In the downtown precise plan, we intentionally do not include density, as the council knows. And in the rest of the parts of the city, we do have maximum densities for everything but the downtown plan area. This fact affects both heights and densities in the housing projects that we are seeing. Here's an example of the discussion for discussion purposes, using a hypothetical property that is 0.65 acres in size and a hypothetical project proposing to include 15% of the units to be rented to a very low income households. Under state density bonus law, that would result in a project that qualified for three concessions and unlimited waivers from the development standards. Inside the downtown persuades plan that formula resulted in a project with 188 dwelling units, so not very hypothetically, that is a project that was approved next door on fifth street. However, using the maximum density allowed in our general plan, which is 43.6 dwelling units per acre that would have resulted in a project with 43 dwelling units. By not assigning a maximum density in our downtown, we are getting a significant increase in the amount of housing on the same size lot located close to transit in the fifth street example. However, it also results in taller buildings. So there's a lot in play in that conversation, right? It's we're meeting our general plan goals by adding housing near transit, but there is a consequence to it. And I just wanted to illustrate that as simply as possible. This is a breakdown of the heights of all the different projects, you can see that this chart shows you, we have a myriad starting about three stories. Several different development projects all the way have five stories six stories, all the way up to, as you well know, a project coming under appeal before you has 17 stories. That's a really brief overview of how it's been going the last five years that are multifamily housing development in our city. Here are the three questions the staff would like to ask the council members. So to guide how we should move forward from here. Question one should staff explore ways to revisit the topic of density in the downtown to set a clear expectation. This is a really big lift. IT WOULD INVOLVE THE REVISION OF THE GENERAL PLAN, THE NEWLY ADOPTED HOUSING ELEMENT, THE DOWNTOWN PRECISE PLAN, AND LIKELY SOME CEQA DOCUMENTS. THERE WOULD ALSO BE IMPLICATIONS ON HOW THIS WOULD BE VIEWED BY THE CALIFORNIA STATE HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT AND OUR COLLEAGUES OVER AT THE METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION. WITH THAT SAID, WE ARE GLAD TO LOOK AT IT FURTHER IF THAT IS YOUR REQUEST. QUESTION 2. With the goal of being transparent with our community and to avoid frustration at public hearings, should staff research the role of the planning commission with respect to the review of housing developments? Staff has seen over the last few years that there's some frustration on behalf of both the public and the planning commissioners when housing projects are being discussed. As noted earlier, due to the impact of state laws and the level of discretion has now, I'm sorry, the level of discretion has been greatly diminished. Some commissioners have noted that they feel it is their role to hold the space for the discussions to take place in a public setting, while others have shared frustration with the limited role and the ability to make meaningful impact on the design of buildings. So the question before you is, should we... consider moving the basically the body of decision down to the director which would basically preclude a public hearing for items that don't have a lot of discretion left in them which would could leave the planning commission with non-multi-family housing projects and which is everything else commercial industrial etc and um policy decisions where a lot of local agencies still exist? Or would you prefer we leave the current body of decision at the Planning Commission? QUESTION 3, WITH THE GOAL OF SUPPORTING THE CONTINUED PRODUCTION OF ALL TYPES OF MULTIFAMILY HOUSING WHILE INTEMPTING TO INCLUDE SOME LEVEL OF LOCAL CONTROL, SHOULD THE STAFF RESEARCH THE CREATION OF A NEW LOCAL PROCESS TO ENCOURAGE THE TYPES OF HOUSING CITY COUNCIL WOULD LIKE TO SEE? CITIES SUCH AS SACRAMENTO AND OAKLAND HAVE CREATED THESE PARTICULAR CUSTOM LOCAL CONTROL LEVEL PROCESSES. If so, staff would recommend that this task be focused on certain areas within the city, the basically the plan development areas or the areas near our smart stations. And this is a two part question be in a perfect world what types of housing and objective design standards, which you want staff to incentivize. One reminder for all watching this afternoon that the details of our major projects can be found on our major projects website at the URL shown on this slide. And a second reminder that this is the first of two study sessions. The tentative date for session two is April 9th, and it will include details regarding our affordable housing requirements and provide follow-up to the policy and process questions that we are asking the council to give us guidance on today.

Thank you.

And just for memory's sake, here are those questions again. Thank you. Thank you, Margaret. As you said, it's a very dense topic. We appreciate the brevity in the presentation, because as we mentioned, there's a lot of information in the staff report. Being that we really do want to hear from folks in the room, ask my council colleagues if you can restrain and have just one question up front, and then we'll put it out to the community. And if the community, when you give in your comments, IF YOU WANT TO WEIGH IN ON ANY OF THE THREE QUESTIONS, THAT'S REALLY HELPFUL, AND THEN WE'LL BRING IT BACK TO THE COUNCIL, WE'LL BRING IT BACK TO STAFF TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS THAT MIGHT COME UP FOR CLARIFICATION, AND THEN THE COUNCIL CAN WEIGH IN. SO WITH THAT, IF YOU DON'T HAVE ANY BURNING QUESTIONS, WE'LL GO RIGHT AHEAD, BUT LET ME JUST CHECK, VICE MAYOR.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU FOR THE UPDATE AND THE REPORT AND WHERE WE'RE AT AND I GUESS FOR THE QUESTIONS. I think it's interesting that you use Northgate Walk as an example of one of those projects that took a really long time. And I know that Northgate Walk is not a viable project any longer, that one, right? So after all that time and work, that one disappeared. So there is a question here. How many have been approved over the last 10 years of those projects that have been approved have actually been built? And I think the question for me is around, we're talking about potentially changing the goalposts, right? Changing the standards and the requirements before we have inventory. And I'm wondering if there's any models out there right now that have looked at, let's have an example of having housing built before we're changing and putting more constraints. for having housing.

Thank you. A couple different thoughts. I'm happy to run a report to see of those two different, especially in the historic timeframes of the last 10 years, how many were entitled and not built. Or I could even add a third column of were extended their entitlements and built now. Like 703 Third Street comes to mind that's under construction, but it took a while for that to get its feet and its funding and its new owner. The other question of, so I just want to make sure I understand what you're asking. There are, SACRAMENTO AND OAKLAND ARE TWO CITIES THAT HAVE A LOT OF DEVELOPMENT GOING ON AND HAVE REVISED A PROCESS TO INCENTIVIZE THINGS WHAT WE CAN CONTROL FOR EXAMPLE IS SPEED OF REVIEW RIGHT SO IF WE SAY YOU LIMIT A HEIGHT OR YOU ADD CIVIC SPACE BACK WELL IT WILL WE CAN OFFER A MINISTERIAL PROCESS RIGHT SO THAT'S KIND OF THE IDEAS WE WERE BOUNCING AROUND AS A STAFF TEAM There are other cities that may not so Oakland's had a lot of cranes in the air as they refer to it in that in that city. There are do I think of Petaluma as some development and outside the city on the other side of one on one, they have a lot of things going on. But that's kind of a different conversation. But I think you're looking for a city that has seen some things develop but hasn't had a full on building surge. Is that is it Mike? Am I characterizing that correctly?

I think it's looking at, for us, because we don't have a housing inventory right now. We're very limited on our housing inventory. We have a lot of projects in the queue, but projects aren't being developed. But we're already talking about potentially putting some additional... constraints around potentially limiting density, limiting height, limiting things. So I'm just trying to see if as jurisdictions have changed their policies and their rules around housing, was it before or after some housing actually showed up?

Okay, I got it. And I just to be clear, we have 192 units that are built and 368 that are under construction. So we're kind of we're at the starting of that of that of that curve, right? So a city, maybe a company, a city to look for comparison purposes would be one that's has something going on, but isn't having a large, large development.

Right. And I mean, the arena arena numbers and when those are that's by 2030. Is that right?

I believe so. I would have to look that up to confirm.

Director Hinkle. Yes. My name is Director Hinkle from Community Economic Development Department. Just for clarification really for this study session, kind of the purpose and hope on this one is it's not a matter of looking at limitations, but really kind of where we're at. And I think it's really the key focus for the general plan, the policy directives, like this is what governs our development, our community. We usually have five-year markers. We're like, hey, how are we doing? We've actually, to your point, we've entitled a lot of projects. We're starting to actually see some of those market trends from now where construction's occurring. But we can also forecast out five years from now, like, are we on the right track? Is this the approach we're looking for? So really trying to get that guidance, at least from council, on the approach for this. And I think what staff's identifying, at least for those three questions targeted, IS REALLY SOME OF THE POLICY DIRECTIVES OF WHERE THE COUNCIL WOULD LIKE TO GO. PARTICULARLY WITH THE AMOUNT OF, WE'VE BEEN KIND OF LIKE A MANAGEMENT CITY. 35 YEARS REALLY, I HAVEN'T SEEN MAJOR DEVELOPMENT OCCUR. IT REALLY HAS CHANGED WITH THE NEW STATE LAWS KIND OF BROUGHT FORWARD. SO A LOT OF TIMES WE HAVE THESE CONVERSATIONS IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE WITH MAYOR CAITON AND COUNCILMEMBER HILL. Like, what are the levers? What are the things we can actually work as a local jurisdiction? And I think that's kind of like targeting those ends. If it's policy, is it fees? Is it speed of process? Those are kind of the three general buckets that we as the local staff or jurisdictions kind of have control points over. But it's also understanding really what the goal and outcomes are. we have been a pro-growth council and community. Our general plan reflects that across the board. So it's like, as we grow, how do we grow into those placements? And then also, how do we also constrain some of the balance of growth, right? On the flip side, there's always kind of growth concerns, but like there is a balance point trying to find that sweet spot. So, but really it's not a matter of limiting growth, but really trying to get understanding of where council's at and also what additional tools or tasks would you like us to explore to bring back and for consideration, so.

Thank you. One question, please, for the community.

Okay. I kind of have two. Okay, good. That's a deal. So thank you so much for the report. I guess my question is around height, being objective around the impact on public health and safety. If we were to adjust the base height limits required by our Title 14 amendment, like calibrated can we do that as an amendment or will we have to go through a whole process for like a height calibration?

It's a really good question. And it's another, as we've been talking about this at the staff level, if we change the, just the base height in the downtown precise plan and not It would at least amend the downtown precise plan itself, right? It would be, I don't know that off the top of my head, it would adjust any of the other adopted documents, but I do see the city attorney coming to the forefront.

Thank you. Wait, why don't you use the other one? Okay.

Hi, Andrea Visheshwar, Chief Assistant City Attorney. As it relates to adjusting the height in the downtown precise plan, that is a process that if that's what the council is interested in, staff will look into it and report back. But because of the state laws and how we can have a no net loss, so if we were to impose some sort of height density in the downtown area, we would need to be showing to HCD, State Department for Housing and Community Development, that there would be no net loss of housing across the city in order for HCD to approve any amendments to our general plan, housing element. So it's not a light lift. It's one where really because we would need to put in some work to put in the planning for it, we want to first take the council's temperature about that, and then we would report back more information about what that process looks like before we go down that road. Does that answer your question? Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Hill, do you have a question?

Thank you, Mayor Cate. Thank you, Margaret, for your presentation. I'm limited to one question, so I will bend it a little bit to say I'll have a preamble and then follow up with my question. I will state that this community did come together for many years and develop the general plan. And in good faith, if we are not going to build in the open space, we're going to build in the infill area of downtown. That's where our density goes. And I thought that was a very good faith gesture, gesture given the signals that the legislature was sending to municipalities across the state. I WOULD LIKE TO ASK A COUNTER QUESTION ON THE FIRST QUESTION, WHICH IS IT SEEMS TO BE ORIENTED MORE TOWARDS WHAT CAN WE DO TO CHANGE IN OUR POLICY, BUT I'D LIKE TO SEE IF STAFF WOULD EVEN DO AN ANALYSIS ON WHAT WE MIGHT RECOMMEND FOR CLEANUP BILLS AND OTHER OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS TO OUR ASSEMBLY AND SENATE FOR CONSIDERATION THAT WOULD BETTER ALIGN WITH A MORE BALANCED APPROACH TO ENSURE THAT WE'RE STILL ATTRACTING DEVELOPMENT THAT ALIGNS WITH DIFFERENT MUNICIPALITIES' GENERAL PLANS. I WOULD SAY THAT OUR GENERAL PLAN AS IT IS WRITTEN IS GOOD FAITH. but that state law has changed around it, and it can now be used in different ways. So I would ask, could one of the ways that staff proceed on revisiting density is recommendations for changes to state law?

Absolutely. We can put together a list of that and bring that back at a future study session. Thank you.

Thank you. That's Marwushi.

Well, thank you for the report and thank you for the questions. I'd like to understand more about the density question. When you described all of those meetings that we went through working on the precise plan, I was there for those. And if I'm recalling correctly, we made the strategic choice not to set a density limit, but rather to have form-based limitations in the downtown. And that was our strategic decision that we made. Help me understand what it is that you think would result if we were to abandon that plan and instead set... a density limit, how would that advantage San Rafael?

I don't want to communicate that staff thinks we do or don't want to address the density head-on. I think in that slide that I had on earlier, we have a number of dwelling units getting built. We have a number of very tall buildings coming in at the SEEMS LIKE A LOT OF THEM ARE BETWEEN THREE AND EIGHT AND ONE AT 13 AND ONE AT 17. SO AND WE'RE HEARING FROM THE COMMUNITY MEMBERS, WE'RE HEARING FROM FOLKS AT THE PLANNING COMMISSION HEARINGS ABOUT CONCERNS ABOUT HEIGHT IN PARTICULAR BUT ALSO IMPACTS ON CITY SERVICES, ROADWAYS, ET CETERA. We just wanted to bring the question to you to kick off a conversation. If the council does find that the topic of density has become an issue you want us to revisit, we could go look at those different options that are available. But what I think generally happened was everyone acted in good faith to reflect Council Member Eli's comment on that. And then the state density laws were revised again and again and to the point where base heights don't are not the the cap of a height of a building it's in this case the starting point to the height of a building um you developed a whole second plan about heights that never got utilized because the state density bonus became the preferred path so and i will now yield them well so i'm hearing a linkage then so you want to use the density limit as a way to um essentially enact a height limit

Is that right?

Well, just to add for clarification, when you have the form-based code, height is one of the items that you can waive out of per state density bonus law. There is no height restriction. So right now, is it unlimited? Potentially on development capacity ends because there's no density tied to it. So in order to kind of bring down the height elements, you would have to actually establish a density component. And that's because of the waiver provisions of the state laws. I think when we adopted or moved this forward as a general plan, we actually had a I think San Rafael is being actually very progressive in their approach and modeling for this. This is before the state housing crisis, the legislature came through and modified all the rules and regulations with this. There was a specific plan approaching it. It just, for me, it preempted and gave a lot of, like I always talk about the pendulum swing right pendulum swing really swung the other directions to the development communities in terms of how to bring housing to meet the crisis needs but one of the big pieces we have identified is for downtown with with the um no density allocation really does limit our ability or toolbox to actually control height so it's they're tied together so to that point

But the root cause is the form-based code. The form-based code with the laws that have changed since we adopted it has resulted in the sky's the limit.

That is correct. And because outside of the downtown, we actually do have density provisions and we are not getting these type of requests outside the downtown.

Okay. So it's just the unique way things unfolded.

Thank you. Yes.

Thank you, Director. I'm going to hold my questions until after we have some public comments. I'm going to open up the public comment. We'd like to hear from you. And I would love to say you have unlimited, but I see enough people in the room. So if you can keep it around to two minutes, you can weigh in on the three questions or you can share something else. Actually, we can just get it up. That's fine. That's fine. Would someone like just cutting into time? Let's go.

So I'm Richard Falk, that was a good tie-in because I disagree with the form factor allowing it to be unlimited. It did until January 1st for commercial floors for non-residential and the state recognized that that was a real loophole. That's why there was a place with a hotel, 170 stories and a little community down in this Southern California and so on. But I disagree, this is not the case for, This is not the case for the form factor because there's a part in the law that's not being followed, that if it was followed, you wouldn't get the crazy height. And so let me give you a very simple example of why that's the case. So the example I'm gonna use is a 50 foot zoned form factor and assume the 100% bonus. So let's say you have, your box, your form factor box, and you've configured it however you want to configure it, and now you're going to double the density. And the only variable that you're going to release, you're not going to go out, so you're going to go up for the waiver for height. If you double the density, all else equal, and you're only changing the height, and it starts at 50 foot, what do you end up with with your height? Not a trick question. Double it. You end up with 100 feet. But there was a project we were talking about here before. And when I'm going to use an example that went up to 180, it's 177, 178 feet. How did that happen? I'll show you how that happened. I'll show you the law that would prevent that from happening and what it says. And it just wasn't followed. Okay. So the first, the first page just described what I just said. If you look at the second page,

So you have about 10 seconds left, and I'll let you go in a little bit longer, but I know there are other people that would like to speak as well.

Okay, bottom line is the height was, it was underground parking, and there's a base plan and a project plan. They're supposed to be the same. The law says they have to be the same except for the one dimension that is changing, which is height. This plan was nowhere near the same. It had underground parking in one, had above ground parking in the other. It had full numbers of large numbers of units fully in the space in the base plan. And it had cutting out a third of it in the other one. So of course it went up because there was nowhere else to go. So it was not done right. And the quote of the law that is saying that it can't be done that way is If you could just read that and then let someone else provide input. Thank you. But you have to maintain the same average unit size and other project details in the proposed project as in the study. They have to match. If they had matched, that still would have been approved, but it would have been about 100, 110, 111 feet, not 180 feet. Thank you. Thank you.

Anyone else? Now's your chance. We have limited time, so we can always queue up too.

Ken Dickinson, Santa Fe Meadows, Mayor, council members and commissioners. I'd like to offer an observation that may be useful as you consider changes to housing policies and review procedures. I'm going to refer to the 700 Irwin Street project. It illustrates It's not just the pressure of state housing law, but a sequencing problem in how decisions are made. In that case, significant waivers were granted first, while questions about evacuation, emergency access, traffic operations, and system reliability were explicitly acknowledged but deferred to later stages. From an institutional perspective, that sequencing increases risk. Once waivers are granted, later review is often limited to technical code compliance and the city's ability to revisit core assumptions is sharply reduced. As you explore new ministerial processes or changes to planning commission roles, I would urge you to consider where in the process safety critical questions are answered. If those questions are pushed downstream, the city may be moving faster, but it may also be locking in decisions before it has the information need to make them responsibly. In my view, the lesson from 700 Irwin is that speed without sequencing clarity can undermine both safety and public confidence. Designing future processes so that waiver decisions follow rather than precede resolution of safety and operational issues would strengthen outcomes under the state laws you're having to work within. Thank you for considering this perspective.

Thank you for your comments.

GOOD EVENING, MY NAME IS MARIANNE NONNESTAD, AND GOOD EVENING MAYOR, COUNCIL MEMBER, COMMISSIONER, AND THANK YOU FOR THE REPORT. THIS STUDY SESSION ASKED THAT WHAT LEVERS OF CONTROL THE CITY STILL HAS UNDER THE STATE HOUSING LAW. I WANT TO OFFER ONE PRACTICAL OBSERVATION USING THE 700 IRVINE STREET PROJECT AS AN EXAMPLE IN ORDER TO INFORM THIS DISCUSSION. What the 700 Irving case shows is that waivers are now the primary lever of local control. State law makes it difficult to deny housing outright, but it does not make waivers automatic. In that case, the Planning Commission granted multiple extraordinary waivers, including height, setbacks, bicycle parking, and reliance on a mechanized parking system. while acknowledging unresolved issues related to evacuation, emergency access, traffic, and operations. That sequencing matters. Once waiver takes effect, the city's leverage drops sharply, and later reviews are often limited to code compliance rather than core assumptions. As the City considers whether to redefine the Planning Commission's role or expand ministerial processes, I would urge you to treat waiver decisions, especially those affecting public safety, as the point where elected officials should pause, ask hard questions, and ensure issues are resolved on the record before approvals become precedent. THAT'S NOT AN ANTI-HOUSING, IT'S GOOD GOVERNANCE UNDER THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK WHERE YOU'RE ALL WORKING WITHIN. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

GOOD AFTERNOON, DAVID SMITH, WITH THE RESPONSIBLE GROWTH OF MARIN AND ALSO AN ALMOST 30 YEAR NOW RESIDENT OF SAN RAFEL. I'M GOING TO SPEAK MUCH MORE GENERALLY AND THANK YOU TO EVERYONE FOR BEING HERE. IT'S WELL KNOWN THAT THE CITY COUNCIL IS PRO-GROWTH. But what seems to be happening is at the expense of all residents, both new and existing. I'm not a lawyer. but I'm reading and advised that Sacramento was supposed to pay for infrastructure improvements and requirements for some of these great housing developments, but always inserts a clause in every bill that allows it to avoid this. I don't know if that's something that the city's lawyers can look at. Even the planning commissioners are saying, as someone has alluded to, that they're being forced to approve projects that benefit out of town developers, not San Rafael residents. And so why aren't cities generally, because this isn't just San Rafael, but why aren't cities generally fighting back? The city council has to be aware of how residents are outraged by some of the ridiculously out-of-scale buildings that are being approved. Seven-story apartment blocks next to protected single-story Eichlers comes to mind. The infrastructure, particularly roads, are being absolutely overwhelmed. SOME OF THE SUGGESTIONS COUNCILMEMBER KURT AND ONE OF THE QUESTIONS I THINK QUESTION TWO SEEM TO BE MORE ON THE CASE OF LETTING THE HORSES OUT AND THEN THINKING ABOUT WHETHER WE SHOULD CLOSE THE STABLE DOORS. LISTEN TO THE PUBLIC, LISTEN TO YOUR RESIDENTS. SO I WAS ENCOURAGED BY COUNCILMEMBER HILL'S SUGGESTION THAT WE LOOK AT HOW WE CAN amalgam or I can't think of the word I want, but get city rules more in line with Sacramento's rules to get Sacramento to tone it down. Thank you.

Thank you. And we did receive your letter, Bill. We did receive your letter, just so you know.

Yes, and I was just going to hold it up and refer you all to the letter. Thank you. Bill Carney, Sustainable San Rafael. I'm going to try to connect the three points in that letter to the framework three points. THAT WERE OUTLINED A MINUTE AGO. SO THE FIRST POINT GOES TO BUILDING HEIGHTS SLASH PARENTHESES DENSITY. AND THE SUGGESTION IS TO BRING THEM DOWN, TO LOWER THEM CAREFULLY SO THAT THE ORIGINALLY INTENDED HEIGHTS IN THE GENERAL PLAN, A PERCISE PLAN, COULD BE ACHIEVED ONCE YOU FACTOR IN THE heights allowed under the state's law, which I don't pretend to understand, but that seems like a task to undertake and would fall under question one and be a yes to looking at density with that height in mind. The second point that we made was establishing a sea level rise flood zone or zones across the city that limit residential density, again, and require a lot of other things that are just common sense when it comes to the flooding that we're increasingly seeing. So this goes, I think, to question number three, which is the, City Council's goals and alignment with those goals. And I would expand that out to alignment with the city's broad goals of public safety, health, and welfare. You know, we're building, allowing huge, really colossal building to be built Right on the tide zone and that's got to be a safety issue. So let's go to those basic public safety and health and welfare basis of public of local government and apply them. The third thing we suggest is the reactivation of the design review board. not to provide non-compulsory advice. And my experience has been you sit down in a room with folks who are professionals, architects in this case, and landscape architects, and you talk through a project, and whether you've got power over them or not, you get a better project at the end. So I would suggest that as a, I guess tied to question number two of the planning commission's role. I think that component of the previous planning process needs to be brought back and could work perfectly well within the framework of the state. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Tom Monahan. I'm a 40-year resident of San Rafael. Thank you all for your time. Mayor Kate, council members, staff, thank you. Especially thank you to staff for working hard for the last number of years. It seems to me like tonight is kind of a report card, right, on how are we doing. So I just did some quick math. So our housing element spans from 2021 to 2031, right? 10 years. And in that time, the goal is to create, not just to approve, but to create 3,200 homes, right? That's a round number, but that's what our housing element certifies. How are we doing? Well, so far within that period of time, we've built 190 units, okay? Built 190. That's not a lot. there's 383 under construction. If you add that together, that's 573. So the 190 units represents about 6% of our goal. The 380 that are under construction represent 12% of our goal. Together, that's 18% of our goal. And I would submit that maybe another couple hundred units might get built, actually constructed, between now and 2031. So it's already 2026, right? We're all getting older, especially me. So assuming that, that would be about achieving actually about 25% of the goal number that we're trying to achieve, which is 3,200 homes. What's 25% of a goal in 10 years? It's not so great. So there has been a lot of progress. I really appreciate that. I think staff has improved and streamlined the process. It's not perfect, but it's getting better. The impacts that everybody's worried about haven't really been felt, okay? Safety, traffic, there's only 190 units that have actually been built that people are living in. So I would propose that we need to see a faster process the general plan already anticipated these number of units, okay? Those are already part of what's been studied. So we haven't seen a fraction of those yet. So as the council is considering, you know, what to do next, I'm in favor of more housing. I'm in favor of more livelihood downtown. I'm in favor of a more streamlined process. And let's get, you know, let's get half of our goal built. You know, half would be 1,600 homes. And let's see where we're at, okay? Anyway, those are my thoughts. Thank you all for your time. Appreciate it.

Thank you for your comments.

GOOD EVENING, EVERYONE. GOOD AFTERNOON. GOOD TO BE HERE AGAIN. THANK YOU ALL FOR ALL YOUR HARD WORK WITH RESPECT TO MR. MONAHAN'S COMMENTS. I THINK YOU GUYS' SCORE CARD SAYS IT ALL. YOU REALLY HAVE STREAMLINED THE PROCESS. TO SOME EXTENT, YOU'RE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT ACTUALLY GETS BUILT. YOU'RE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR INTEREST RATES, COST OF CONSTRUCTION, COST OF LABOR. ALL YOU CAN DO IS STREAMLINE YOUR PROCESS TO GIVE THEM THE GREEN LIGHT. I THINK IN DOING THAT, using the best practices we can to keep things as consistent with the character of the city we've got would be helpful. I think that you've seen demonstrated how concerned the public is with some of the anomalies that are getting approved, which are very much out of character with what we have here in San Rafael. I'm really skeptical that a 17 story building is going to be considered a landmark beauty as time goes on. rather more of an unusual oddity. And I support housing. I can even accept density. But these height things are getting out of control. And again, I think you've made great progress. You're not responsible for what actually gets built. You can only approve them in a way that is speedier than we've seen in the past. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Gregory Andrews, Sarah Phil Meadows. I would ask that whatever plan you decide to move forward over these study sessions, that it include trips to Sacramento to undo some of these ridiculous laws that the state has enacted, which in my view is A DEVELOPER'S DREAM COME TRUE, PROBABLY THE RESULT OF DEVELOPERS LINING THE POCKETS OF POLITICIANS. I THINK THAT THE HOUSING CRISIS IS FABRICATED. CERTAINLY I BELIEVE THAT THE RENA NUMBERS THAT HAD TO BE AGREED TO WERE LIES. And so, but I think that it can be changed. I think that it can be not completely undone, but rolled back. And I believe that that's what you're hearing from the public, that these developments need to be rolled back. not curtailed, but just put in character with this city. On the three questions regarding density, I really don't know if I would say yes or no to that. Certainly on the Planning Commission, you need the Planning Commission, because you need the public's input on these projects. And with regards to ministerial approvals, I would say no to that again because I believe you need the public's input. You need to hear from the public how horrendous this state of affairs is and that it's unsustainable. And so with that, I would just really ask that you, as our representatives, get yourselves to Sacramento, talk to the legislature, and get some of these laws eased up and rolled back, because otherwise this, and it's not just you, it's throughout the state, I realize that. But really, you're reaping what you have sowed with this whole process, and I ask that it be rolled back. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Any other comments? Okay, not seeing any. Thank you all for your comments. And I appreciate there's some time for the council to ask their own questions. But before you do, I did write down, I did hear questions from that, which I'm also interested in the answers. So I had heard, there are four that I wrote down. Sequencing of approvals of waivers and how that interacts with safety, health and safety concerns. SECOND, IS THERE FLEXIBILITY AROUND WAIVER GRANTING? BECAUSE THERE WERE, A STATEMENT WAS MADE THAT THE CITY DID HAVE FLEXIBILITY. THIRD, AND I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR THE ANSWER, THE INFRASTRUCTURE FUNDING, BECAUSE THERE IS INCREASED INFRASTRUCTURE, AND I KNOW MY QUESTION MIGHT HAVE BEEN ASKED IN JESS, BUT I DO THINK IT IS REALLY TALKING ABOUT THE INFRASTRUCTURE requirements so and that and then the fourth uh the role of a flood zone designation and i would add to that a wildfire designation we have wildfire we have a wui let's say which is a wildland urban interface so that already exists so it's i'm curious too around that its sister as it were flooding so if you could answer those four and then i'll bring it back to the council to ask additional questions AND I'M HAPPY TO REPEAT THEM, DIRECTOR. I JUST WENT THROUGH THEM ALL QUICKLY. I LOVE HOW THE TEAM JUST LOOKS OVER AT ME.

YOU GOT THIS, RIGHT? YOU GOT THIS?

DO YOU WANT ME TO START FROM THE TOP?

NO, NO. LET'S JUST START WITH THE WAIVER PROCESS. OKAY. THANK YOU. THIS IS AN ITEM THAT ACTUALLY WE BROUGHT FORWARD TO COUNCIL TO KIND OF LOOK AND RE-EVALUATE. WE HAVE A WAIVER PROCESS AS PART OF A RESOLUTION, AND IT'S REALLY TRYING TO PROVIDE CLARITY OF THAT, ALSO KIND OF TYING INTO THE STATE LAWS AND HOW THEY ACTUALLY INTERSECT WITH EACH OTHER. When we did analyze really some of the waiver provisions, this is really based on case law. So the city attorney's office actually supports all the development review as we go through these. And the amount of discretion related to waivers, I actually don't think are as deep as at least the comments provided here. So that's really kind of where we found on the waiver provisions. And it's the multiple bills that the state legislature continues to pass. And like some of the regulations, we're still trying to operationalize And they're brand new laws that actually supersede a previous brand new law. So a lot of these provisions really are question marks of testing within both the hcd uh rules designation they're actually part of the process when it kind of comes across for um determinations on where cities come out and also court cases as they kind of raise that but a lot of these are somewhat untested and really some of the pieces in the background really are some of the claims components to cities and jurisdictions that really are challenging to kind of maneuver through and just recognizing um the pendulum shift, right? And really that's what's been passed within the legislature is a pendulum shift on move housing forward. That's very clear. HCD's direct is very clear. Build housing. The RENA numbers, very clear. Target for these, you know, find ways to do that. And, you know, to some of the public comment, agree that we don't have control of those pieces. So it really is looking at the levers and tools and toolbox that we have and it's limited. So.

SO ON THE WAIVERS AROUND THE SEQUENCING SPECIFICALLY, I MEAN, I KNOW YOU'RE TALKING IN GENERAL THAT'S NOT BEEN TESTED AND THAT THERE'S SOME CONSTRAINTS THERE, BUT I'M CURIOUS IF YOU THINK THAT THAT WOULD BE BENEFICIAL TO THE CITY TO LOOK AT THAT SEQUENCING A LITTLE DIFFERENTLY.

I DO, AND ACTUALLY, I THINK THAT'S ONE OF THE TARGET PIECES AS WE RETURN BACK IN THE SECOND WORK SESSION ON SOME OF THE HOUSING POLICY COMPONENTS, AND THAT WILL BE ONE THAT WE ACTUALLY WILL LOOK AT IN TERMS OF WHAT OUR EXISTING RESOLUTION CALLS OUT AND REALLY WHAT PIECES ARE CONTAINED WITH THAT. and also how they intersect with the state concessions allowances. So concessions and waivers are really depending on the level of affordability, really do give a tremendous toolbox to the development community, particularly when you can wave out of almost the kind of core ones that we consider height, and then even setbacks and provisions of actual, some of the, what we consider community benefit components.

Do you want to speak to the infrastructure, demands on the infrastructure and if there's funding related to that, or even if you've heard about, I haven't heard of any funding going with that, but...

As alluded to in some of the comment too, there are always those little out clauses from the state legislation as no required requirements come to the state to actually pay for. So it really is policy directives to modify for development. But there are different infrastructure tools, but what I found they're more local. And I think there are questions as we evaluate development. One for me is working with our sanitation district partners about sewer capacity. And I'll say across the board, infrastructure is actually a big question mark. We work with our partners with and outside agencies. It was one of the first targeted tasks from this team to meet with all of them to understand where they're at. Both Central Santa Fe Sanitation District along with Las Colinas Valley Sanitation District, PG&E, and Marin Municipal Water District. I mean, if you kind of talk about where where marin county and santa fe have been it's always been kind of infrastructure questions so as we start to develop on into those pathways but the adopted general plan of the city along with the county's um you know general plan anticipated this level development we actually as the process side outreach and said hey in the next planning horizon this is what we anticipate you guys good and for the most part the answer is yeah we we can accommodate that okay what's that mean i think this is where it's starting to come into play where i know Particularly Central Santa Fe Sanitation District is actually look at that capacity analysis. All right. What does this mean to actually do the pipe connects? What are the upsizing requirements? Those are all really critical pieces as we look to implement and develop projects because their actual costs and pieces and also setting those expectations on the upfront.

Thank you. And then the last question was the role of a flood zone designation, maybe similar to a WUI or how that might impact or is impacting the decisions.

Definitely. I think that is one of those policy initiatives that this council has already been looking at as we look at some of the sea level rise studies that are coming in and the impact. I do believe the Southeast Pacific plan, will be our first really window or opportunity to kind of evaluate that since it is kind of a targeted East San Rafael strategic or specific plan to really evaluate both community vision, but also what is the development capacity within these areas and it's something that's going to have to be addressed.

And I will add one question of my own before I open up to my colleagues. So this is the first of two study sessions. We're going to give input on the three questions, if there's direction or when there's directions to staff to possibly change the way we currently do business. That's going forward. That's not a retroactive component to projects that have already been submitted or how would that land So let's say the council has a whole new set of process or systems or whatever that go into place April in May. How does that affect what's in the pipeline?

Sure. And this is some of the state provisions and some of the vesting rights. And when applications come in and actually make applications, depending on what legislation they utilize, there's certain vesting rights that they lock themselves into a certain the rules in place at the time. So any changes that are addressed from this council in both process changes or fee changes or adjustments, they'll only apply after they're adopted before they're vested. So if there are any changes, there'll be some time, but there's an existing pipeline for the most part will not be impacted.

Thank you. I don't know if you were going to stand there for additional questions or you can come back up. I will sit. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Director. So I'll turn to my colleagues and recognizing we have 27 minutes. So let's start with questions and then we'll have input on the three questions. So clarifying questions that remain. AND IF YOU DON'T HAVE ANY, THEN WE'LL GO RIGHT TO THE INPUT. SO CLARIFYING QUESTIONS ON WHAT WE'VE HEARD TOWARDS ANSWERING THE THREE QUESTIONS. I KNOW THERE'S A LOT OF QUESTIONS WE HAVE AROUND HOUSING, BUT I REALLY WANT TO HONE IN ON THOSE THREE. ANY ADDITIONAL INFORMATION?

SO QUESTION NUMBER THREE, CREATING A NEW MINISTERIAL PROCESS THAT ALIGNS, WHAT'S NOT ALIGNING TODAY OR IS IT A NEW PROCESS BASED ON IF WE CHANGE OUR PRIORITIES? Does that make sense? Yeah.

I should have rethought the seating arrangement. So I think when we look at that is recognizing our existing code, and this is where some of the general plan, like follow through for the adoption of the code amendments we've been talking about for the zoning ordinance implementation. We've never established a ministerial process within our code. So it really is trying to say, A LOT OF THESE PROJECTS OR STATE LAW PROVISIONS ACTUALLY ARE ESTABLISHING ALMOST AN ADMINISTRATIVE TYPE PROCESS. IS THAT SOMETHING THAT WE SHOULD START TO EXPLORE FOR OURSELVES WHEN WE LOOK AT OUR CODE UPDATES AND AMENDMENTS? LIKE WHAT IS THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESS? HOW IS THAT DONE RIGHT NOW? CURRENTLY WE UTILIZE THE PLANNING COMMISSION OR POTENTIALLY FOR THAT OR THE APPEALS. LIKE THERE'S NOT REALLY AN ESTABLISHED DIRECTIVE FROM THE CITY TO ACTUALLY CREATE THAT ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESS. I DO THINK THAT'S THE OPPORTUNITY.

But just to further clarify, I think that's a great question. So is the outcome that is hoped for is by us taking the time to have a ministerial review that it will be more in alignment with our current general plan and the work that was done with the community rather than because a developer may come in and say, oh, this is ministerial. So it might be, I want to say easier process, but more straightforward process than one that would be outside. So that would be the benefit or the trade-off to the city. IS THAT CORRECT?

THAT'S CORRECT. AND THAT'S SOME OF THE THOUGHT PROCESS BEHIND THIS, TO SAY THAT ONE OF THE CONTROL POINTS THE CITY HAS IS TIME OF PROCESS. Now, if you can actually meet a targeted project type and stay within the box, then you can get a ministerial process versus going through a discretionary review process that requires multiple hearings and community engagement. But if you stay within the box and you basically call out exactly what's already been addressed by the community wanting to achieve, then you get a ministerial process. No. Great question. Thank you.

Council Member Micah.

Yes, thank you. I'm curious to see in our Title 14 and the now-done-precise plan, how do we have our objective safety thresholds when we're going to apply public safety and health? And I guess the bigger question is, what are fully objective versus... interpretation of what we have right now?

So I think that's really kind of where we're at as we're trying to implement some of these policy approaches and also meet the state law provisions regarding objective standards. A lot of our standards we find are actually very subjective. Like when we kind of call out like, you know, the community's character. Well, in order to meet an objective design standard, it has to be measured and identified specifically where, how do I measure character? So that is some of the, I guess, constraints, at least some of the state law provisions that's kind of established for us. So really kind of making that. So if we're looking at like, public safety or some of the pieces, we'd actually have to figure out what that would look like. Is there a certain threshold for high-rise development that's an objective standard for the fire service? Is there one for PD? Is there one for public works? But we haven't really gone to that depth because there are questions that really have not been asked of this community. Other communities have gone through it, right? And they have fire stations from close proximity to each other as they kind of plan these things out. But as I said, we're kind of on that threshold of... turning to the next chapter of this community. What's that look like? What are the pieces in place? How do we protect what we love? How do we maintain that character, the value of San Rafael? So that's kind of the hard challenges as we go from a management community to a growth community. And this is kind of the face we're at right now.

Thank you. So I guess my other one was, there was a mention in the comments about a loophole for height between residential versus commercial. Are you aware of that?

I'm not aware of that. I know that was just presented. So happy, you know, we'll evaluate and take a look at that question.

Great. Yeah, I think those are my questions for now. Thank you.

So any other questions for, so we can answer these three questions, Council Member Hill? Yes.

Thank you. I want to make certain that we're following up on the comment made by Richard Falk. Thank you for at least your reading of it. I'd love to chase that down. Or if we don't have the answer for it now. uh as to as to question two should staff research role planning commission with respect to review of housing developments my recollection is that we we did hold a public hearing sometime back when we did the consolidation of the planning commission and the design review board and my recollection was that even at the time there was a deep frustration from design review board members that The laws had changed such that the purpose of what DRB had provided was very limited. If I could characterize it in a word, it was very frustrating for those folks. And what I'm taking in as I watch recent hearings from the Planning Commission is a similar amount of frustration that that the laws around these topics have greatly limited what the Planning Commission can contemplate. So I am interested in us looking at that. I'm getting into my comments, but I am curious. My question about that is, and it pertains to my original question on one, would those not be pretty limited in the ability to provide additional opportunities for the Planning Commission to have a different role?

They would. And I think it's also an opportunity to talk to the Planning Commission direct. A lot of times we take policy director from council first and also work through whatever changes or modifications we make to the zoning code or ordinances review, we're going to have to actually take back to the Planning Commission also. So there might be an opportunity as we look at planning these or those type of changes. staff recommendations that have a joint session to allow both planning commission and council to weigh on that but it's an involvement right and and that's really when we look to combine the drb and it's really for the factor for both efficiencies and supporting of really the development review process because it was held up as one of the issues that kept development from proceeding in some some circumstances but it does you know beg the question about like If you can't comment or provide those suggestions because they're not an objective standard, then how do you actually provide those requirements? So it's enough for taking that opportunity to go back to the Planning Commission and redo or adopt a new set of objective standards to these projects. And the real struggle is, given some of the affordable housing provisions, they can waive out of them. So in terms of a decision maker, it's kind of frustrating when they call out, I hate the way it looks or I hate the way it approaches, but then they ask for a waiver that allows it per some of the state tools. So there is, I think, a level of frustration watching this come through as they have comments or things they want to share, but in terms of the developer toolbox, sometimes there isn't much that we're going to be able to say or do about it. Thank you.

Council Member Bushey, any follow-up questions? Okay. So I'm going to turn it back to the council comments on the three questions. And we have about 15 minutes for all five of us to speak. So start with Vice Mayor.

All right, thank you. Before I answer the questions, I am going to preface my comments a little bit. I'm still working with a lot of the priorities that were defined in both our general plan and our downtown precise plan. We really need to revitalize downtown and improve our economic position. Foreshadowing for tonight's conversation around the budget, we need to do work in this area. And I do think housing brings in people, which then brings in more revenue. Second point, tonight it is fantastic to see so many people here. I am also recognizing there's very few young families here and service workers who are not able to live in San Rafael because There's no housing. So I think to address, to have more representation of the people who work here and want to live here, we don't have that full input right now. So we need to keep that in mind as well. And the state has, the third point is the state has made it very clear and objective of what we need to do to build housing. That said, we also have the opportunity to be, and we need to be as clear and objective as possible. There's so much around, you know, that if something is subjective, that just leads us into a spin, you know, because everyone can interpret it differently, which leads me to the questions. explore it's very subjective what does that mean is that two days two weeks two months two years how the question of asking the staff to explore what is that what does that take away from what else we're doing and in terms of projects that are currently on the plate. So it's a question, but it's also a concern that if the activity of exploring requires a significant amount of staff time or cost or legal concerns, I'd be highly concerned around that because I think we have work to do to provide housing. Second question, the role of the planning commission. I know it's super frustrating right now. It's frustrating for a lot of people, but I think the planning commission provides a very important, valuable role, not only for the community to come in and provide feedback or to vent or whatever it is, but I think the planning commission and with the help of the staff and the administration, everybody else, you provide that holistic view. And I think you have the visibility that a specific project would not have. And even if you have to just go through and do the check marks of fill in the boxes. I think the Planning Commission is in a unique role at this time. But I think it's very, very valuable still. And as far as a new ministerial process, I think it goes back to the first question around exploring. I think all of this ties back in. What are we talking about in terms of time, in terms of cost, in terms of legal? And how will that impact a direct impact to the projects that we do need to move forward in whatever capacity that is, but be able to move our projects forward?

Thank you. Council Member Hale.

Keep me on my toes. Thank you, Mayor. As the Vice Mayor indicated, it is a very open-ended question, and I will lean back toward where I was leading to in my initial question, which is I would like staff to contemplate if we could have a finite number of shots at suggesting to an Assemblymember or a Senator what cleanup could look like. My objective and my belief is that this community STOOD BEHIND THE PROCESS OF THE GENERAL PLAN OF THE DOWNTOWN PRECISE PLAN. AND I WOULD WANT TO MAKE CERTAIN THAT THE WISHES OF OUR COMMUNITY ARE HONORED. IT DOES SEEM LIKE, NOT SEEM, OUR GENERAL PLAN AND DOWNTOWN PRECISE PLAN HAVE BEEN SUPPLANTED. AND I THINK THAT OUR GENERAL PLAN DOWNTOWN PRECISE PLAN MADE GREAT STRIDES TO CREATE THE LEVEL OF DENSITY THAT THIS COMMUNITY WANTED. SO ANYTHING WE CAN DO TO RESTORE TO THAT. NUMBER TWO, AND I THINK IT IS RELATED TO NUMBER ONE, IF WE WERE SUCCESSFUL, I THINK PLANNING COMMISSION WOULD HAVE MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO CREATE DISCRETION. IN LIEU OF THAT, I THINK IT IS IMPORTANT FOR US TO EXPLORE THAT, BUT I ALSO THINK THAT WE DO OURSELVES A FAVOR TO ENTERTAIN WHAT OBJECTIVE DESIGN STANDARDS THIS COMMUNITY WOULD WANT TO BRING FORWARD TO CREATE MORE OPPORTUNITIES I KNOW IT'S ONCE YOU IT DOES CREATE THAT THAT TENSION THEN ONCE THEY SET IT THEN IT DOES CREATE MORE OF LIKE A FOR LIKE AN AUTOMATIC MACHINE IT'S OKAY IF THEY CAN ALIGN TO THE OBJECTIVE STANDARDS THEN IT MAY NOT GO BEFORE UH THE COMMISSION UM BUT I WOULD LIKE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT KNOBS AND DIALS ARE THERE EVEN IN THE CURRENT LEGISLATIVE CLIMATE then number three as far as creating a ministerial process i would like us to explore it insofar as if we can create uh and i will use a metaphor here for folks who haven't played chutes and ladders it's a very frustrating game but if you're so lucky that your spinner lands on the ladder that goes to the top that might be the building that we want to have that form factor if you will. I would not be interested in creating the same box on every single block. I would like there to be variation. I think it is tied to, again, objective design standards. But I would be interested in contemplating that. If that's more attractive than going through a very long process for something that is not in alignment with the community, again, this is our current paradigm. I would be interested in exploring that. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Micah.

Yes, thank you. Well, I guess I'll start answering the first question by saying I think this is probably one of the most important decisions we can make as a council looking into what's happening with development, developing the city. And I'm very much like pro-housing and building and preserving. We definitely need more housing. I have two young adults that they need houses, and a lot of them do as well. We need economic development. And at the same time, I think we need to look at what's coming and how we are, as a city, prepared for the state laws that are coming. And I think some of these state laws are not... very realistic for the type of cities that we have, considering that we are here not in New York or in San Francisco. So answering the first question, I would love to see, I don't know if this is how much, it would be nice to know how much time it will take to review all these things. So when I'm saying I would love to see these, I would love to see, hey, yeah, but how long it's going to take and how much effort from our team, right? Because I would love to see an update of our Title 14 and related plans identifying discretionary versus objective. So when we are talking about making decisions, what is really objective in our plan that we can implement? Because anything that is discretionary it's not going to go with with the state mandates um i would love to see a height and density bonus calibration analysis and see how that will work um because when i think about fourth street i would love to see the entire fourth street build up you know but the question is how high are we going? So I would love to explore that. Regarding the flood and sea level rise, I think this is something that we should also keep in mind for downtown and not only the east precise plan because downtown is also like in the flood zone. There's also the wildfires as well. And I think that probably will be one of the most important things in terms of like safety threat holes. for public safety and health um and then um this one is i don't know i think it's going to be a big issue but clarification of enforceable parking and emergency access standards to see what we have in there and when we are talking about transit public transit i you know i i maybe because I'm coming from a big city with a different type of transit, but I don't consider that we have like a really effective transit here or affordable. So I don't know as a city that we can have any impact related to that. But I know that in terms of transit is like how close you are from transit when you're building. But what do we call transit and is it affordable for people to take that you consider that you can actually take it every day? So I think those are all my related to the first question. Regarding the second one, the planning commission, I think we should definitely continue with that body. And I agree with Council Member Hill about having like a more precise, you know, more clarity and specific objectives from our plan so they can have more clarity. you know, more decisions to make. And new ministerial process, hey, if we can really agree on the first one and we have the second one, I will be interested to see how we can speed up processes.

Thank you. Council Member Bushy.

I'm going to take the questions in reverse order, and I'm actually going to answer them. Number three, my answer is yes, we should do that as an incentive, and it should be limited to certain types of buildings that we want should be eligible for the ministerial process. Back up to number two. I'm going to change the word to the question. Instead of research, I would substitute, should staff build on the role of the Planning Commission with respect to the review of housing development? And to that question, my answer is yes. The Planning Commission is a body of experts. Now, I'm condensed with our Design Review Board members as well. While they have limitations on the absolute limit on authority that they have. They have expertise and input and can I believe, help developers in what Sustainable San Rafael described as a collegial environment to have input that is useful to the developers and the community as well. And I think it is very useful to the community to have public hearings where people come and say what they think. so that the developers can hear, so that their neighbors can hear, so everyone can understand what the thinking is of the community. Moving on to question one. My answer to that is no, if the objective is a search for limitations. If what we're trying to do is find a way to put limitations back on and basically go back to the very... prolific rules-based system that we had and we all enjoyed because the community could control everything. But that approach, that strategy led us to where we are today. It was Sacramento overruling all of our perspectives on how we did that and brought us to a world where we don't have enough housing. So that's, those are my answers to the questions.

Thank you, Council Member Bushy. So I'll run through them in the regular order. ON THE FIRST ONE, I AGREE AND I APPRECIATE, FIRST OF ALL, APPRECIATE FOLKS THAT OR GAVE COMMENT TODAY AS WELL AS THE EMAILS THAT WE'VE RECEIVED. THE LANDSCAPE HAS CHANGED. THE STATE LAWS HAVE COMPLETELY CHANGED THE LANDSCAPE. I WAS THE PLANNING COMMISSIONER BACK IN 2008. AND SO IT'S JUST A DIFFERENT WORLD. SO WHEN I LOOK AT THAT, THE TOPIC OF DENSITY AND DIRECTOR HINKLE, WHEN YOU WERE ANSWERING AT ONE POINT, YOU SAID height slash density, but I actually think they're very separate. And Council Member Micah picked up on that as well. So for me, ways to revisit the topic, I would like to know what are the tools that we have. To me, height is the big trigger. And I don't mean height, the sky's the limit. We have a general plan that was done with years and over $2 million of planning, working with the community. So I want to have... TOOLS THAT ARE AS CLOSE TO POSSIBLE AS THAT COMMUNITY-LED PROCESS THAT WE DID FOR YEARS. AND IN THAT, BY THE WAY, THERE IS HEIGHT. THERE IS HEIGHT IN THAT. IT MIGHT NOT BE THE HEIGHT THAT'S BEING BROUGHT FORWARD, SO I AM VERY, I WANT TO DEFEND THE WORK THAT THIS COMMUNITY HAS DONE AS A COMMUNITY. SO MY ANSWER TO THAT WOULD BE YES TO SHORE UP THE WORK THAT IS IN OUR GENERAL PLAN, WHICH, TO BE CLEAR, IS NOT A NO. IT IS VERY MUCH WE HAVE BEEN A PROGROWTH CITY FOR A VERY LONG TIME. THE PLANNING COMMISSION, YES, I APPRECIATE, I SEE ONE OF OUR COMMISSIONERS IS HERE. I KNOW THAT'S A TOUGH SITUATION BUT I 100% STAND WITH WHAT THE REST OF THE COUNCIL SAID. IT IS SO IMPORTANT THAT THE COMMUNITY HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO PROVIDE INPUT. I WATCH LIKE MANY OF THE PLANNING COMMISSION MEETINGS, I LEARNED THINGS AS WELL AS WELL AS ANY DEVELOPER. SO 100%. AND TO THE GOOD SUGGESTION OF HAVING DRB COME BACK, I THINK HAVING IT ALREADY INTEGRATED IN THE PLANNING COMMISSION IS THE BEST WAY FORWARD. THOSE DAYS, WITH ALL DUE RESPECT, ARE GONE WHERE DRB COULD HAVE A BACK AND FORTH DEVELOPER. THAT'S NOT WHERE WE ARE ANYMORE. I WISH IT WAS, BUT IT'S NOT. I'M BEING VERY PRAGMATIC ABOUT WHAT IS FACING THE CITY. And then finally, I do like, Councilwoman Bush used the words incentivize for number three in ministerial review. And I do like that idea of incentivizing ones that maybe are in alignment. And these questions are very much also in alignment, both one and three. The city council, the current approved goals and objectives that we approved the last year talks about getting at these, which was also done through a community process. So I think we've heard from the community tonight GRANTED NOT EVERYONE'S IN THE ROOM, BUT THERE'S BEEN A BROADER COMMUNITY PROCESS OF REALLY WE DO NEED TO LOOK AT THIS AND KNOW WHAT TOOLS THAT WE HAVE. IT'S ALWAYS GOING TO BE A SENSE OF SCALE. I DID HEAR FROM THE VICE MAYOR, AND WE ALL AGREE ABOUT HOW BROAD THAT LOOK IS. I THINK THERE IS A NARROWING THAT CAN HAPPEN HERE OF THE REALISTIC TOOLS THAT WE'VE SEEN, AND YOU HAD MENTIONED, MARGARET, OTHER JURISDICTIONS. SO TOOLS THAT ARE BEING, LET'S LOOK AT THOSE SAME TOOLS. LET'S NOT TRY TO CREATE A WHOLE NEW TOOLBOX. LET'S SEE WHAT'S WORKING. THE COMMUNITY WILL CONTINUE TO SPEAK OUT LOUDLY, AND SAM RAFEL, FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE, WE ARE ONE OF THE TEST CASES BECAUSE OF OUR GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION, BECAUSE OF THE CURRENT HOUSING ORDINANCES THAT WE HAVE. AND SO THAT IS WHY WE'RE SEEING SOME OF THE PROJECTS THAT ARE COMING FORWARD. SO HOPEFULLY, DID YOU GET ENOUGH KIND OF DIRECTION FROM THE FIVE OF US?

Yes, Madam Mayor, thank you all of you for your thoughtfulness and your comments. And I have a lot of notes and I know that my colleagues do too, and we will reconvene and go through what to bring to you for the next study session in April.

Thank you. And I will also add, in addition to the April 9th, the Housing and Homeless Subcommittee does have meetings as well that are open to the public. You can watch online. You can show up. You will know about those if you subscribe to the snapshot. And if there was something that you think of later for folks in the room or talking to their neighbors or watching online, do send an email. I mean, this is an ongoing conversation with the community. So thank you all for participating in the study session. And this meeting is adjourned.

Bye.

Right.

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the San Rafael City Council meeting. Today is Monday, February 2nd. This is a regular meeting. I request the city clerk to call the roll, please. Council Member Bushy.

Present. Council Member Hill.

Present.

Vice Mayor Kurtz. Present. Council Member Yadens-Gulati. Present. Mayor Kate.

Present. All five of us are here this evening. I'm going to invite the city attorney to report out on a closed session that was held prior to tonight, as well as the January 20th meeting.

CORRECTION. SO AS FOR TONIGHT'S CLOSED SESSION THAT WAS CONDUCTED JUST PRIOR TO THIS REGULAR MEETING, NO REPORTABLE ACTION WAS TAKEN IN CLOSED SESSION. AS FOR THE JANUARY 20TH MEETING, THERE WAS A CLOSED SESSION TO DISCUSS THE PENDING LITIGATION OF WORKER'S COMPENSATION APPEALS BOARD CLAIM NUMBER, And our report out regarding that item, which we did make at the January 20th meeting, is being corrected now because we had reported that the council voted unanimously to authorize the settlement of the workers' compensation claim at 50% of permanent disability. That was incorrect. the um the correct number is that the settlement uh that was approved it was for 58 of permanent disability so we wanted to make that correction for the record thank you mayor kate thank you so good evening everyone and welcome whether you're here in person or joining online thank you for being here i especially want to take a moment to thank all of our city employees

Whether they're serving residents directly, keeping facilities running, responding to emergencies, and supporting the work behind the scenes, their dedication shows every day that our city is stronger because of them. And tonight, I'm especially pleased to recognize two outstanding examples of our WHAT PUBLIC SERVICE LOOKS LIKE. WE HAD THE EMPLOYEE OF THE QUARTER AND TEAM OF THE QUARTER FOR Q3 2025. THEY ARE SELECTED BY THEIR PEERS. SO THE Q3 EMPLOYEE OF THE QUARTER IS JIM OHAGEN. HE IS A PARK EQUIPMENT MECHANIC. JIM KEEPS SOME OF OUR MOST IMPORTANT COMMUNITY SPACES RUNNING, ESPECIALLY THE TERRA LINDA POOL. HE OFTEN SHOWS UP BEHIND THE SCENES AND IN ALL HOURS AND WEATHER. When something breaks, Jim is the person who shows up, solves the problem, and makes sure the doors open for the community. He saves the city money by fixing issues in-house, supports staff across park and rec, and does it all with a positive attitude and smile. Thank you, Jim, for everything that you do. This is well-deserved. AND OUR Q3 TEAM OF THE QUARTER IS THE SAN RAFAEL FIRE DEPARTMENT EMS EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES, OKAY, AND OPERATIONS TEAM. THIS QUARTER, THE ENTIRE DEPARTMENT EARNED THE AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION'S MISSION LIFELINE SILVER AWARD. THIS IS A RECOGNITION RESERVED FOR AGENCIES DELIVERING THE HIGHEST STANDARDS OF HEART ATTACK AND STROKE CARE. IN ADDITION, SEVERAL MEMBERS WERE ALSO HONORED STATEWIDE FOR EXCELLENCE, INCLUDING GRAHAM WINKLEMAN AND MARISSA NETTO-GOMEZ, KATIE PANEL, AND DR. JORDAN SACKS. BUT WHAT THESE RECOGNITIONS REALLY REFLECT IS TEAMWORK. MOST RECENTLY, CREWS RESPONDED TO MULTIPLE STRUCTURE FIRES ACROSS SAMUELFELD OVER THE PAST COUPLE MONTHS, PROTECTING RESIDENTS AND LIMITING DISPLACEMENT THROUGH FAST, SKILLED, AND COORDINATED RESPONSE. FROM FIRST ARRIVING ENGINES TO CAREFUL SEARCHES AND SALVAGE OPERATIONS, EVERY ROLE HAS MATTERED. YOUR TRAINING, INNOVATION AND COMMITMENT SAVE LIVES AND PRESERVE HOMES ACROSS SAN RAFAEL. CONGRATULATIONS TO THE ENTIRE TEAM AND THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE. BEFORE WE MOVE ON WITH TONIGHT'S AGENDA, I ALSO WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE RECENT INCIDENTS INVOLVING THE DEATH OF TWO AMERICAN CITIZENS DURING ENCOUNTERS WITH FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES IN MINNESOTA. AS WE KNOW, THE WORK THAT WE DO HERE IS AFFECTED BY THINGS BEYOND OUR BORDERS AND THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES. LET'S BE CLEAR, THIS IS NOT A PARTISAN ISSUE. ANY LOSS OF LIFE IS SERIOUS, AND LEADERS AT EVERY LEVEL, EVERY GOVERNMENT LEVEL, ARE DEMANDING TRANSPARENCY, A THOROUGH INVESTIGATION, AND WHERE WARRANTED CONSEQUENCES CONSISTENT WITH THE FACTS AND THE LAW. I ADD MY VOICE TO THOSE CALLING FOR CAREFUL REVIEW AND CLEAR ANSWERS. BEFORE WE BEGIN OUR BUSINESS MEETING, WE ALSO INCLUDE A LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT. THIS STATEMENT IS IN ADDITION TO THE ONGOING WORK THAT WE DO WITH THE TRIBE. WE THANK THE ORIGINAL CARETAKERS OF THIS LAND. SAMARPHEL IS TRADITIONALLY HOME TO THE COAST MIWAK PEOPLE, MANY OF WHOM TODAY ARE TRIBAL CITIZENS OF THE FEDERATED INDIANS OF GREATON RANCHERIA. AND WE HONOR THEIR CONTINUING INVOLVEMENT IN STEWARDSHIP PRACTICES THAT BENEFIT US ALL. Thank you all for being here. I will now turn it over to the city clerk to share how the public can participate in tonight's meeting.

Thank you, Mayor Kate. Tonight's meeting is being recorded and streamed live to YouTube. For members of the public, wishing to provide public comment displayed on the podium and the projector as a timer to help you stay within the two minute timeframe. You're invited though not required to introduce yourself and say what part of Centerfell you live in, or if you're from outside of Centerfell. Viewers may request a reasonable accommodation to provide public comments virtually. For more information about that, or if you're experiencing any technical difficulties, you can email me at city.clerk at cityofcenterfell.org. Thank you.

THANK YOU. SO WE HAVE OPEN TIME FOR PUBLIC EXPRESSION BOTH AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MEETING FOR 10 MINUTES AND THEN THE REMAINDER IS AT THE END OF THE MEETING. I HAVE THREE CARDS. I WILL OPEN THE PUBLIC OPEN TIME AND I WILL GO IN ORDER OF THE CARDS RECEIVED FOR THOSE 10 MINUTES. FIRST, DEMARCO A. GARCIA, YOU'D LIKE TO PROVIDE COMMENTS? WELCOME.

ALL RIGHT. GOOD EVENING MAYOR AND COUNCIL MEMBERS. MY NAME IS DEMARCO GARCIA AND I'M A HOUSING ATTORNEY WITH LEGAL AID OF MARIN. I'M HERE THIS EVENING WITH RESIDENTS FROM THE SAN RAFEL MOBILE HOME PARK ON WEST FRANCISCO BOULEVARD WHO ARE WITH ME AND SPEAKING AFTER ME. I WANT TO BEGIN BY ACKNOWLEDGING THE CITY'S COMMITMENTS UNDER THE MOBILE HOME RENT STABILIZATION ORDINANCE AND THE 2023 SETTLEMENT INVOLVING THIS PARK. THOSE ACTIONS REFLECT THE CITY'S RECOGNITION THAT MOBILE HOME PARKS ARE A CRITICAL SOURCE OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN THE CITY OF SAN RAFAEL, AND THAT PROTECTING THEM REQUIRES ONGOING OVERSIGHT. AS PART OF THESE COMMITMENTS, THE CITY AGREED NOT ONLY TO REGULATE RENT, BUT TO MONITOR THE STATUS OF MOBILE HOME PARKS, PARTICULAR WHERE THERE ARE SIGNS OF INSTABILITY OR DISPLACEMENT. THE CITY ALSO AFFIRMED THROUGH ITS HOUSING ELEMENT THE IMPORTANCE OF PROVIDING EXISTING AFFORDABLE HOUSING AND PREVENTING ITS LOSS THROUGH INDIRECT MEANS. WHAT WE'RE SEEING AT THIS PARK TODAY RAISES SERIOUS CONCERNS ABOUT WHETHER THOSE COMMITMENTS ARE BEING REALIZED. LONG-TERM RESIDENTS ARE LOSING THEIR TENDENCIES, DISPLACEMENT IS OCCURRING, AND THE PARK'S VIABILITY AS A MOBILE HOME COMMUNITY IS BEING STEADILY UNDERMINED. WE'RE NOT HERE TO ACCUSE. WE'RE HERE TO INFORM AND TO ASK THE CITY TO TAKE A CLOSER LOOK. THE ATTENDANT SPEAKING TONIGHT RELIED ON THE CITY'S PROMISES AND PROTECTION AND OVERSIGHT. We respectfully ask the city to actively monitor what's happening and to ensure that its ordinances, settlements, and housing commitments are enforced in practice, not just on paper. Thank you for your time, and I appreciate your attention to the resident who will speak next.

Thank you, DeMarco. Does that include Julio?

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Julio? Okay.

Hi, welcome. foreign continue to threaten us to leave, to leave our place. But through this night, I want to beg you to help us so that we can live in peace. Because in 2018, more oppression began on us. Sometimes we are no longer living well in peace. That is what we ask in the name of all our group who live in the 42 houses, but several of us have left because they have been threatened. And we want you to help us, that we ask in the name of God and in the name of all my companions who live there in this place. Thank you and we have an interpreter.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Mayor and Council Members, for allowing us this opportunity to speak. My name is Julio Santay, and I'm one of the people who lives on the Francisco Boulevard mobile home section. I live in Unit A16, and we're here before you guys because you are the authorities who I hope can help us. When it comes to where we live, the landlords have asked us to make sure that we keep our units clean and presentable, look nice to make repairs when they need to be done. And we've lived in compliance with that. We've done everything that they've asked of us, and yet they still seem to constantly be oppressing us and threatening us with leaving and kicking us out of our homes. And so we're here to ask you for help because all we want to do is live in peace. We want to be able to live happy, but it seems that, especially since 2018, We just feel more and more oppressed. And so again, of those of us that, you know, consist of that area, the 42 homes, although many have already left because of what's going on, we're asking you for help. We don't want to be threatened anymore. We just want to live in peace. We want to live happy. We don't want to have to month after month receiving letter after letter with threats. We're asking you for help, and we hope and pray that you guys might be able to do something on our behalf so that we can achieve just living happy.

Thank you. Armin Privet?

Hello, thank you for being here and thank you for listening to us. My name is Herman Prevett. I'm a photographer in Marin. I moved to Marin from the East Bay in 1976. I've been here for 50 years. This is my 50th year in Marin as a self-employed photographer. I would not have been able to be here in Marin as a self-employed photographer without the ability to live in a place, a low-income housing that we have at the trailer park. When I moved here in 1976, the rent was $65 a month. We had 48 spaces of mobile home spots and the rent has gone up every year. However, it went up only once a year in January, a minimal amount because of the Contemple Marin mobile home, San Rafael mobile home forget the name the technical thing it's a rent control for trailer parks there's two trailer parks in san rafael we are one of them our trailer park was taken over with new management in 2001 i mean 2021 harmony communities became the management we had a meeting with their representative the first thing the management said when asked if there was going to be a rent increase because there had been a rumor that there might be a rent increase We were, the representative said, no, there will not be a rent increase. A month later or two months later, we all received $100 rent increase. Because I knew about the rent control ordinance in the Contemporary Marin, I informed the city attorney that the Harmony was breaking the rent control ordinance. That started the two-year case that led to the settlement, which I believe was 2023. although I was the one that informed the city about the rent control, and I talked to the city attorney one time, we were never given any information about what the settlement was going to be. In fact, we thought we were going to trial, and only two days, only the week before the trial, we told them a settlement.

Yes, you could wrap up your comments.

The settlement was not a settlement that we were very happy with, And I'd like to tell you about it sometime when we have more time. Okay. I hope that we have piqued your interest a little bit, what's going on, because we have not talked to the city council before. We've talked to the city attorney. We now have some attorneys that are working on our case. I'm here to support them and my neighbors. Only half of the people that live there, in fact, less than half of the people that live there at the time of the settlement, ARE STILL THERE.

OKAY, HERMAN, IF YOU COULD WRAP UP.

IS MY TIME UP?

YES, YOUR TIME IS UP. YOUR TIME IS UP.

OKAY. OKAY, THANK YOU. I THINK WE MAY BE TALKING AGAIN SOMETIME. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. MR. GARCIA, WAS THERE ANYONE ELSE THAT WANTED TO SPEAK ON THIS?

OKAY.

So we still have time on public open expression. If you'd like to provide comments to the city council, we have time for probably two more people to speak. If not, you can always hold your comments to the end. Okay. Not seeing any additional public comment. And I know that the city attorney was here listening to that input that we received as well as the deputy city attorney.

So the council knows we have been in communication on the case. We're working on it. Okay.

Thank you. SO WE'LL TURN TO THE CITY MANAGER AND COUNCIL MEMBER REPORT. ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER ROBINSON PINON IS HERE. I WILL TURN IT TO YOU.

ALL RIGHT. GOOD EVENING, MAYOR AND MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS. TODAY THE COUNCIL WILL CONSIDER A PROCLAMATION REPRESENTING FEBRUARY 2026 AS BLACK HISTORY MONTH. BLACK HISTORY MONTH TRACES ITS ROOTS TO 1925 WHEN DR. CARTER G. WOODSON ESTABLISHED A WEEK LONG OBSERVANCE TO HONOR BLACK HISTORY WHICH LATER EXPANDED INTO A NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED MONTH LONG CELEBRATION. Our library will host several events throughout February in celebration of Black History Month, as well as curated book lists. Please visit their website for more information about upcoming programs. NEXT THE CITY IS LAUNCHING A NEW USER-FRIENDLY ONLINE PERMITTING SYSTEM CALLED OPEN GOV ON FEBRUARY 23, 2026. OPEN GOV REPLACES THE E-TRACKET FOR NEW APPLICATIONS AND CREATES ONE CENTRALIZED PORTAL FOR CITY PERMITS. BUILDING PLANNING CODE ENFORCEMENT FIRE PREVENTION AND PUBLIC WORKS PERMITS WILL BE AVAILABLE IN ONE PLACE. EXISTING APPLICATIONS SUBMITTED BEFORE FEBRUARY 23 WILL BE REMAINED IN E-TRACKET UNTIL COMPLETED. ALL INSPECTIONS INCLUDING FOR EXISTING PERMITS WILL BE SCHEDULED THROUGH OPEN GOV STARTING FEBRUARY 23. So next up, we have U.S. 101 HOV hours are changing in Marin and Sonoma counties from 6 to 9 a.m. and 3 to 6.30 Monday through Friday. The new hours are expected to take effect in late February, weather permitting, once sinus is updated. The updated hours are based on recent Caltrans traffic analysis along the 101 corridor, and the adjustment is intended to reduce congestion while continuing to support carpools and transit. And I recommend that you visit the Caltrans website for more information. I also want to take some time to congratulate Lynn Murphy on her induction into the YWCA Marin Woman's Hall of Fame. Lynn serves as San Rafael's mental health liaison with the San Rafael Police Department. For over a decade, she's connected people experiencing homelessness with service and support. She's also co-founder of Seeds of Hope, a quarterly service fair serving hundreds of residents. We are so proud and grateful to Lynn's continued dedication to our community. AND NEXT UP WE HAVE NOMINATIONS OPEN FOR 2026 PUBLIC SERVICE AWARDS. THE CITY RECOGNIZES A MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY FOR THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS IN MAKING SAN RAFEL AN AMAZING PLACE TO LIVE AND OR WORK. SUBMISSIONS ARE DUE BY FEBRUARY 6, 2026. YOU CAN FILL OUT THE ONLINE SUBMISSION FORM AT WWW.CITY OF SAN RAFEL.ORG FORWARD SLASH PUBLIC DASH SERVICE DASH AWARD. And next we have some upcoming events. So February 1st through 28th will be the third annual Downtown San Rafael Lunar New Year Hunt and Word Scramble Challenge. And you can find this information about this program at www.downtownsamrafel.org forward slash Lunar New Year. In addition, February is occurring in Downtown San Rafael and you can also find information about that in on the downtownsamrafel.org website. With respect to upcoming public meetings, we have the Pickleweed Advisory Committee, which will be on February 4th at 6 p.m. at the Albert J. Borough Community Center. On February 10th, the Finance Subcommittee at 10 a.m. at City Hall, or you may watch over Zoom, and so those agendas would post it online. We also have the Board of Library Trustees at 6 p.m. at City Hall, or you may watch remotely via Zoom, February 11th, the Fire Commission at 4 p.m. at the Public Safety Center at 1375 Fifth Street or online, and the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee at 6 p.m. at City Hall or over Zoom. You'll find more information on the city's website, including agendas and other materials. And lastly, in observance of President's Day on February 16th, City Hall and non-emergency operations will be closed. The next City Council meeting will take place on Tuesday, February 17th. And that concludes my report, Mayor Kate.

Thank you, ACM Robinson-Pignon. I will now turn to my colleagues, our Vice Mayor.

Thank you, and you're gonna tell me if my microphone's not working right. Yeah, I know, I can't, yeah. Okay, so I wanna just update on a couple of things. I attended the Cal Cities Policy Committee. I am serving on the Community Services Committee and was appointed by our president for the North Region, so that's really good, and we worked on our priorities. This is super hard because there's so many priorities that come forward. And for the last, I think somebody had told me six or seven years, homelessness and behavioral health has been the top priority. And this year, what came forward as the three that we all voted on and agreed to was seniors and aging. park and rec and access to open spaces and early learning child care and youth programs with a recognition that homelessness and behavioral health services span all of those priorities so that's how we're approaching it our next meeting will be in the end of march and we'll be attending that and really the focus of the community services policy committee is to identify the priorities and advocate to the legislators on different legislation that is going through. attended the Marin Women's Hall of Fame, and it was great to be able to be there to honor Lynn Murphy and all the work that she has done. So that was great. And then I participated the same day, but earlier, much earlier, the point in time count. I'd like to thank Nuan and Vivica who were out. We were out there at 5 a.m. We were in the census track right downtown, and so we walked most of the downtown area for that point in time count, what was interesting. Somebody mentioned to me, why 5 a.m.? Why not during the day? You see a lot more people during the day. And 5 a.m. for those who are living on the street is considered like noon. It's when you have to be up and moving and moving around because you can't be in one spot. So I thought that was very interesting and a good learning. And just a reminder, my What About Age exhibit has launched and it's at the Civic Center and it'll be on display until May 6th. We had our opening on Thursday night, last Thursday, and we had about 200 people. So it was really great. And thanks to Youth and Arts and the county, we have a great exhibit there and there's a lot more coming for the next couple of months of different programs. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Hill.

Thank you, Mayor Kate. I have one meeting to report. I attended the Marin County Council of Mayors and Councilmembers last Wednesday, January 28th. After the business meeting, we did receive an update from Director Stephen Torrance of Marin County Emergency Management on the recent flooding and the county's response, coordinated response, I should say. One thing that I think the community would be interested in is the forthcoming after action report that will be coming out to describe WHAT WENT WELL AND WHAT COULD HAVE GONE BETTER. SO I HOPE PEOPLE WILL PAY ATTENTION, BECAUSE I DO, IN THE TIME THAT WE'VE HAD DIRECTOR TORRENTS AS THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FOR THAT, FOR EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, I THINK HE'S BEEN VERY TRUSTWORTHY, SO I THINK LET'S MAKE CERTAIN WE'RE ALWAYS ABLE TO HELP LOOK AT WHAT WENT WELL AND WHAT DID NOT. AND THAT IS MY REPORT.

THANK YOU. COUNCILMEMBER URANZ-GULATI.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. I also attended, like Councilmember Kurtz, the Cal Cities Policy Committee in Sacramento, and I am in the Environmental Quality Policy Committee, and I want to focus on building stronger and more resilient communities. So some of the priorities that we are looking out for this year include disaster preparedness, energy and utilities, water and waste, water, climate resilience and environmental quality. So it's a whole full agenda, but I'm very happy that some of the projects that we work on, for instance, like the banning the plastic bags in grocery stores this year was actually effective. So I like to see progress. On January 26, I attended the presentation of the results for the sea level rise plan. This is a two-year study that the city has been conducted. And there were two presentations, one via Zoom at noon. And I think about 200 people attended. It was very well attended. And then we had like an in-person presentation today. in Spanish in the evening and so I'm really grateful that as you probably know last week from Thursday to Monday there was like a like a high tide again coming and the canal is one of the most affected communities in the state of California so I'm very grateful that in addition to provide now sandbags in three different locations in San Rafael now we added a fourth one which includes pickle weed. So that was really great. And informing the community that the tide is coming. So if they need to move their cars, because as you know, in the last, well, I don't know if you know this, but in the last king tide, there were like two families that they are completely flooded and their cars, you know, are unusable. So anyway. Definitely great presentation and three potential solutions in the billions of dollars. I really encourage everybody to take a look at the presentation to see what is with C-level rise because it's not coming, it's already here. January 28, I had an MCE Clean Energy, our first board budget workshops. They are actually doing two. The next one is going to be next week, I believe on the 11th. So that's actually very, that was very informative. And also attended the Marine Women's Hall of Fame, so that was amazing, really nice to celebrate Lynn. January 30th, it was the canal celebration, an amazing celebration for an important milestone, acquiring the piece of land for a potential park and bridge that is going to connect the canal. It's a partnership with the canal community, the city of San Rafael, Marine County, the Trust for Public Land, Canal Alliance, and the Marine Community Foundation with many individual donors. And I got to meet the owner of 101 Sports. That's where the party was happening. And I don't know if you know this, but he told me when they were looking into opening the business there that the water quality of the canal is the same one that the one they have. in Sausalito so I didn't know that and also it's not unusual to see different sea otters and there were like six pups there recently so after the event we got we got to go in the kayaks around the canal and what it was really nice two community members residents of the canal they have never been kayaking and they had the experience and they loved it so we're trying to figure out how we can partner to provide that experience to more residents so that's super exciting. Saturday, another fun event. It was the National Seed Swap Day with the Marine Master Gardeners at our downtown library. If you haven't seen it, we have now a little seed library and I am a gardener, so I absolutely love the service. So please come over and just learn about seeds and you can actually get them for free. And finally, this morning, I had an MC Clean Energy Executive Committee. Lots of conversations about budgeting. The fiscal year starts in March. So we are having a lot of meetings around that. So that's my report. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Bushy.

A couple of quick updates. I had my first meeting with the new general manager, Robert Betts of Marin Transit. I'm confident based on his perspective that we will continue to have excellent service from Marin Transit for both transit and paratransit service here in San Rafael. Like the vice mayor and council member Lynn Scalati, I also attended the Marin Women's Hall of Fame and was so very, very proud of Lynn Murphy, but was also very proud of San Rafael. Not only for creating that position, when it was created 14 years ago, it was extremely innovative and something our predecessors had to take a risk on. And we're really happy that they did. And at the event last week, I was so proud of San Rafael because our chief of police and the entire command staff were there supporting Lynn in recognition, I think, of the value that she brings to our police department. So it was a big night for Lynn and I think San Rafael as well. Thank you.

Thank you. And I'll just close out with updating two transit-oriented meetings I attended. I'm your representative on SMART, the Sonoma-Marin Area Rapid Transit. The ridership in December of 2025 was up 40% over the ridership of December 2024. Pathway use was up 35%. Right now we're at the fiscal year, mid-year, and our numbers are up 35%. So folks continue to get on the train. The board certified the ballot language. There will be a ballot measure on the June 2026 deadline. on the ballot, and I'm going to read it to you, just so you can hear it here, so the first time you see it will not be when you're in your voting, when you're voting with your ballot. So this is what the ballot language says. Without increasing taxes, continue Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit District Regional Train and Bicycle Pedestrian Pathway Service BEYOND 2029 TO SERVE RESIDENTS, INCLUDING SENIORS, YOUTH, ESSENTIAL WORKERS, AND LOW-INCOME HOUSEHOLDS, RELIEVE TRAFFIC CONGESTION, COMPLETE PLANNED RAIL PATHWAY EXPANSION, INCREASE RIDERSHIP, PRESERVE COMMUNITIES' HISTORIC RAIL INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT, MAINTAIN CLEAN, SAFE TRAINS, REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS. SHALL THE MEASURE EXTEND THE ONE QUARTER CENT VOTER-APPROVED SALES TAX FOR 30 YEARS GENERATING APPROXIMATELY $51 MILLION ANNUALLY BEGINNING IN 2029 BE ADOPTED? THAT IS WHAT THE BALLOT LANGUAGE THAT WAS APPROVED BY THE I ALSO ATTENDED TAM, THE TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY OF MORAN, AND I WAS HONORED TO BE SELECTED CHAIR OF TAM FOR THIS YEAR, WHICH IS GREAT FOR SAM RAFEL. WE HAVE A LOT GOING ON. WE TALKED ABOUT THE MEASURE AA EXPENDITURE PLAN DRAFT AMENDMENTS THAT WILL BE COMING TO THE COUNCIL FOR US. WE WILL HAVE A PRESENTATION IN APRIL ON IT. IN ORDER TO MAKE ANY AMENDMENTS TO MEASURE AA, IT NEEDS TO BE APPROVED BY THE MAJORITY OF THE 11 CITIES YOU NEED TO HAVE AT LEAST SIX APPROVE IT AND ALSO PER CAPITA NEEDS TO BE OVER 50%. SO OBVIOUSLY TAM IS INTERESTED IN MAKING SURE WE HAVE A GOOD PRESENTATION HERE THAT WILL BE IN APRIL. IN ADDITION AT THE TAM MEETING WE APPROVED CROSSING GUARD FUNDING SO CRITICAL THAT IS A VERY MUCH A PRIORITIZED PROGRAM BY NEIGHBORS AND BY THE COMMUNITY SO THERE WAS FUNDING THAT WAS APPROVED GIVEN THAT EXPENSES GO UP AND REVENUES HAVE BEEN PRETTY FLAT. AND THEN FINALLY, WE HAD AN UPDATE ON THE REDWOOD BIKE SHARE PILOT PROGRAM. SO THOSE ARE THE BIKES. YOU SEE THEM OUT HERE IN FRONT OF CITY HALL. YOU SEE SOME OVER BY THE SMART STATION. AND HAVING AN UPDATE IN TERMS OF LOCATIONS WHERE THEY'RE BEING USED. AND THEY ARE BEING USED MORE UP IN THE NORTH BAY THAN THEY ARE HERE. THAT MIGHT BE BECAUSE THE TRAIN UP THERE MIGHT BE A LITTLE FLATTER. BUT WE'RE GOING TO CONTINUE THE PILOT. IT'S FUNDED FOR THROUGH THE END OF THIS YEAR. AND THEN THE TAM AWARD WILL DECIDE WHAT TO DO NEXT. As always, thank you for all that you do between the meetings. I will now open up public comment on any of the assistant city manager or council member reports. If you'd like to provide comment, now is your opportunity. You're invited but not required to say your name and what part of San Rafael you're from.

Good evening. My name is Gregory Andrew from San Rafael Meadows, and I was glad to hear so much mention of Lynn Murphy being inducted to the Marin Women's Hall of Fame. I was going to mention it if it wasn't, but what I want to say about it is that my son and I are members of the Community Media Center of Marin, and I learned about this through the Community Media Center of Marin through their newsletter, and I was able to watch HER INTERVIEW WITH, I DON'T REMEMBER THE WOMAN WHO INTERVIEWED HER IN ADVANCE. SO I'M LOOKING OVER HERE AT THE GENTLEMAN RECORDING THE MEETING TONIGHT AND I WANT TO JUST GIVE KUDOS TO COMMUNITY MEDIA SAN MARIN FOR, YOU KNOW, LETTING THE PUBLIC KNOW ABOUT LYNN'S RECOGNITION. I THINK THAT'S GREAT. And then secondly, I do want to mention, since this agenda item is on meetings attended at city expense, that last week we had a meeting with representatives from the city manager's office, Christine Olilevich, John Stavansky, and Daniel Cooperman of 350 Marydale, where they came out and met with eight or 10 members of the neighborhood. uh... walked around not just three fifty marydale but also the vicinity over at the smart station and up along the track to uh... point out some issues to them some situations uh... sort of the lay of the land and uh... i think it was uh... most informative for miss alelovich only because i got the sense that uh... mister stefanski and certainly mister cooperman had BEEN THERE MORE. SO I WANT TO JUST SAY THANK YOU TO THEM AND APPRECIATE THAT THEY PUT OUT THE EFFORT TO COME AND MEET AND TALK WITH US AND WALK AROUND AND GET SOME PERSPECTIVE ON THE SITE FROM US. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

THANK YOU. ANY OTHER COMMENTS ON THE CITY MANAGER, ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER COUNCIL MEMBER REPORTS?

Ken Dickinson, San Rafael Meadows. I'd like to acknowledge Lynn Murphy also. I, for many years, taught for the YWCA. I created their women's entrepreneurial program. So I'm a big fan of the YWCA. Lynn Murphy was... I think the first person to do a walk through the 350 Murraydale areas of concern with us back in December, and she was super helpful and empathetic and engaging and had a lot of information and gave us a lot of insights. So I'm delighted because of my own affiliation with the YWCA, but to see her get that award also. So thank you.

Thank you. Any other comments on the reports? Not seeing any. I'm going to close the public comment and move to the consent agenda. Are there any items that the council would like to hold in the consent calendar? No, not seeing any. I will open the public comment on the consent agenda. That's items 2A through 2E. If you would like to comment on the consent agenda, now is your opportunity. And you're invited but not required to say your name and what part of San Rafael you live in.

I'D LIKE TO JUST COMMENT ON THE MINUTES. THE LAST CITY COUNCIL MEETING, THE COUNCIL APPROVED THIS 2026 GOVERNANCE DOCUMENT, AND I KNOW PEOPLE IN THE COMMUNITY ARE INTERESTED IN IT, AND I'M JUST WONDERING WHEN A CORRECTED VERSION OF THE PROVED COPY WILL BE READY. And where will people be able to find it? And, you know, I was at the November 12th retreat on this document. And I remember at that time, we talked about having a Spanish version of the document. So I'm just curious if that will happen and when that might happen also. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other comments on the consent agenda? Not seeing it, I'm going to bring it back to council. I do notice there's a typo under the approval of the minutes. I think we are in 2026, but I always get confused with the years. And it says 2025.

Thank you.

Okay. So with that correction, and in terms of the next steps on the governance document, when the city manager comes back, she can let you know. I don't know the timing of that.

I CAN REPORT THAT STAFF ARE WORKING ON MAKING THE EDITS PER THE COUNCIL DIRECTION IN THE RESOLUTION. IN ADDITION, THE MOTION ALSO INCLUDED ABOUT MAKING FORMATTING CHANGES THAT WERE NONSUBSTANTIVE. I DON'T HAVE A SPECIFIC DATE, BUT WE CAN CERTAINLY FOLLOW UP WITH MR. DICKINSON ABOUT THE POSTING.

THANK YOU. OKAY. WITH THAT, I WOULD ENTERTAIN A MOTION ON THIS ITEM WITH THE TYPO.

I'LL MAKE A MOTION TO APPROVE THE CONSENT AGENDA WITH THE CORRECTED TYPO. Second.

Moved and seconded. Roll call, please.

Council Member Bush. Aye. Council Member Bushy. Aye. Council Member Hill.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Kurtz. Aye. Council Member Yadenskulati.

Aye.

Mayor Kate.

Aye. That motion carries 5-0. Thank you. Our first agenda item is the SAFE, which is Specialized Assistance for Everyone, Team Pilot Program Overview and Recommendation for the Program Continuation. I see Chief Spiller joining us. Captain Barringer is here as well.

Good evening, Mayor Kate, members of the city council, Dave Spiller, police chief. I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce this topic. It's the three year overview of the pilot program for our alternative response model or the safe team. SUPER EXCITED TO PRESENT THIS TONIGHT. A LITTLE SPOILER, WE'RE EXCITED TO SHARE ITS SUCCESS AS WELL, BUT I'LL LEAVE THAT TO THE DETAIL THAT CAPTAIN BEHRINGER WILL PROVIDE. SO CAPTAIN TODD BEHRINGER IS GOING TO PRESENT THE ITEM AND IN SUPPORT IS AZIZ MAJID FROM PETALUMA PEOPLE SERVICES. SO WITH THAT, TODD.

THANK YOU, CHIEF. GOOD EVENING, MAYOR, MEMBERS OF THE CITY COUNCIL. MY NAME IS TODD BEHRINGER AND I'M HERE WITH THE PEDALOON PEOPLE'S SERVICES CENTER DIRECTOR AZIZ MAJID. AS YOU KNOW, WE ARE NEARING THE END OF THE THREE-YEAR PILOT FOR THE SAFE TEAM, WHICH HAS FUNCTIONALLY SERVED AS AN ALTERNATIVE RESPONSE MODEL FOR CERTAIN PUBLIC SAFETY CALLS FOR SERVICE. I'M HERE TO PROVIDE AN OVERVIEW OF THE SAFE TEAM PILOT PROGRAM AND TO RECOMMEND APPROVAL OF AN AMENDMENT TO OUR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AGREEMENT WITH PETALUMNA PEOPLE SERVICES CENTER TO EXTEND THE PROGRAM THROUGH JUNE 30TH, 2027. THE SPECIALIZED ASSISTANCE FOR EVERYONE, OR SAFE TEAM, WAS LAUNCHED THREE YEARS AGO AS A PILOT PROGRAM DESIGNED TO PROVIDE A COMPASSIONATE, HEALTH-CENTERED RESPONSE TO NON-VIOLENT BEHAVIORAL HEALTH CRISIS, SUBSTANCE USE INCIDENTS, HOMELESSNESS-RELATED CALLS, AND QUALITY OF LIFE CONCERNS. THE PILOT PROGRAM PAIRS A TRAINED CRISIS COUNSELOR WITH AN EMERGENCY MEDICAL TECHNICIAN IN RESPONSE DIRECTLY TO CALLS FOR SERVICE THROUGH OUR 911 EMERGENCY SYSTEM, NON-EMERGENCY REPORTING, AND OFFICER INITIATED INCIDENTS. THE GOAL FROM THE OUTSET WAS TWOFOLD. FIRST, TO PROVIDE INDIVIDUALS IN CRISIS WITH TIMELY APPROPRIATE CARE, AND SECOND, TO REDUCE THE BURDEN ON SWORN OFFICERS AND FIREFIGHTER PARAMEDICS SO THEY CAN REMAIN AVAILABLE FOR HIGHER ACUITY EMERGENCIES. Over the past three years, the SAFE Team has become a fully integrated and essential component of San Rafael's Emergency Response Framework. OPERATIONALLY, THE SAFE TEAM RESPONDS 12 HOURS A DAY, 365 DAYS A YEAR, AND NOW HANDLES NEARLY 3,000 INCIDENTS ANNUALLY. THIS REPRESENTS ABOUT 8.5% OF THE POLICE DEPARTMENT'S TOTAL NUMBER OF INCIDENTS. THESE CALLS PRIMARILY INVOLVE NONVIOLENT BEHAVIORAL HEALTH CRISES, WELFARE CHECKS AND SUBSTANCE USE AND QUALITY OF LIFE ISSUES. BY DIVERTING THESE INCIDENTS FROM TRADITIONAL LAW ENFORCEMENT ONLY RESPONSES, THE SAFE TEAM HAS SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCED PATROL WORKLOAD WHILE IMPROVING OUTCOMES FROM INDIVIDUALS IN CRISIS. The data tells a compelling story. Since the program began, we've seen a 12% reduction in priority one response times, which translates to officers being available more quickly for life-threatening emergencies and crimes in progress. Safe team interventions have diverted individuals 235 times from emergency departments and 183 times from the justice system. Additionally, safe responses prevented 337 individuals AMBULANCE TRANSPORTS, KEEPING ADVANCED LIFE SUPPORT UNITS AVAILABLE FOR MORE ACUTE OR MEDICAL EMERGENCIES. FROM A COMMUNITY STANDPOINT, THE PROGRAM HAS BEEN EXTREMELY WELL RECEIVED. RESIDENTS, SERVICE PROVIDERS AND FIRST RESPONDERS HAVE COME TO RELY ON THE SAFE TEAM AS A TRUSTED AND COMPASSIONATE FIRST LINE RESPONSE. THE SAFE TEAM EMPHASIZES STABILIZATION, VOLUNTARY SERVICES AND CONNECTION TO LONG-TERM SUPPORT, REDUCING UNNECESSARY HOSPITALIZATIONS AND ENFORCEMENT WHENEVER APPROPRIATE. IN THE NEARLY 9,000 CALLS FOR SERVICE THE SAFE TEAM HAS HANDLED, THEY HAVE ONLY NEEDED LAW ENFORCEMENT ASSISTANCE ON 160 INCIDENTS, WHICH IS ABOUT 1%. THE SAFE TEAM HAS ONLY NEEDED THE FIRE DEPARTMENT FOR ASSISTANCE ON 149 INCIDENTS. Throughout the pilot, Petaluma People's Services Center, or PPSC, has served as our contracted provider. They bring deep experience in behavioral health and crisis response, and over the past three years, they have developed strong operational integration with both our police and fire departments. Their institutional knowledge, staff training, and established protocols have created a seamless emergency response model that would be difficult to replicate without significant disruption in cost. Despite being in five other jurisdictions in Marin and Sonoma County, PPSC says San Rafael is by far the busiest city. In addition to the overview of the program's success in the course of the three-year pilot, staff is also requesting the council consider authorizing the city manager to extend the existing agreement through June 30th, 2027 at a not to exceed amount of $775,000 per year. THIS CONTRACT EXTENSION PROVIDES THE CONTINUATION OF SAFE TEAM FOR AN ADDITIONAL YEAR AND WILL ALIGN THE CONTRACT TERM WITH THE CITY'S FISCAL YEAR, IMPROVING BUDGET PLANNING, GRANT ADMINISTRATION, AND SERVICE CONTINUITY. FROM A FISCAL STANDPOINT, THE SAFE TEAM PILOT HAS BEEN IMPLEMENTED RESPONSIBLY. ACTUAL EXPENDITURES HAVE REMAINED WELL BELOW BUDGET, TOTALING APPROXIMATELY 1.88 MILLION OVER THREE YEARS COMPARED TO THE ORIGINALLY BUDGETED 2.425 MILLION. FUNDING FOR THE PROPOSED EXTENSION WILL BE SUPPORTED BY A COMBINATION OF GRANT FUNDS, THE CITY'S CANNABIS REVENUE AND THE OPIOID SETTLEMENT FUND RESULTING IN NO GENERAL FUND IMPACT THROUGH JUNE 30, 2027. HOWEVER, IT'S IMPORTANT TO EMPHASIZE THAT THESE FUNDING SOURCES ARE TIME LIMITED. BEYOND FISCAL YEAR 2027 AND 2028, AVAILABLE FUNDING BECOMES EXTREMELY LIMITED AS OPIOID SETTLEMENT REVENUES WILL EVENTUALLY BE EXHAUSTED AND NO ONGOING SOURCE HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED. STAFF REMAINS COMMITTED TO PURSUING ADDITIONAL FUNDING STRATEGIES. THE POLICE DEPARTMENT WILL CONTINUE TO COLLABORATE WITH THE FINANCE DEPARTMENT AND THE CITY MANAGER'S OFFICE TO EVALUATE ALTERNATIVE FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES. WITHOUT NEW DEDICATED REVENUE, THE CITY WILL BE CHALLENGED TO SUSTAIN THIS PROGRAM AT ITS CURRENT LEVEL OVER THE LONG TERM. From an operational and cultural perspective, I would like to share what a tremendous success the SAFE team has been for the San Rafael community. The goal of delivering an alternative response to our existing police and fire services has been realized and the members of the PPSC have been welcomed with open arms, both from public safety professionals as well as the community the team is supporting. We are pleased to have this resource and we're incredibly gratified for the positive impacts realized thus far. I'd like to introduce or turn it over to Aziz Majeed, who is going to explain the impact the SAFE team has had on people's lives.

Thank you, Captain Barringer. Good evening, everyone. It's good to see everyone again. Aziz Majeed, I'm the program director for the SAFE team. I've been with the program since it started four and a half years ago and been here at Centerfield since the beginning three years ago. I'll keep it short and sweet. The 3,000 calls a year sounds really nice, and we are diverting, like Captain Barringer said, 8% to 10% of the total call volume per year. I just wanted to... the impact it has on the individual within the community. I wanted to share a couple of impactful success stories. So it's more than just numbers. Of course, I'm gonna keep it HIPAA compliant and very confidential. So I'm not gonna use any names or any specifics, but these are a couple of calls that did happen in the last six months here in Centerfell. The first one was a young individual that was a 14-year-old freshman in high school, was always a stellar student. And in the last couple months, he unfortunately started using drugs a little bit, became delinquent, stopped going to school. And not only that, he started engaging in self-harm behavior, which then developed into suicide ideation. Now his counselors and his teachers noticed this behavior, reached out and dispatched the safe team out to the school. This individual's also only Spanish speaking. We had two Spanish speaking team members on shift that day. And the team spent an hour and a half with that individual in the school, building rapport, deescalating, safety planning. They were able to successfully transfer him voluntarily to this crisis stabilization unit where he was connected to a higher level of care. He was given a case manager and also medication assistance as well. What also came out was that, unfortunately, there was some abuse going on at home, which was the reasoning behind the delinquency and drug use and so on and so forth. We're also trained mandated reporters. And so the team on duty also immediately contacted CPS, the county CFS, and that individual is now in a safe environment and in a safe home of another relative here in Centerfell. uh one more story that i wanted to share and i'll keep it in the homelessness realm is there is an individual that has been on and off the street for 10 years so this is chronic homelessness um you know using been kicked out of some shelters and not as you know we have limited number of shelter beds here in in santa fe and in marin county as a whole We've been working with this individual for over a year. So a lot of this was the building rapport, getting them connected to services. We have a bilingual case manager and navigator to assist with this individual as well. This is someone that is also somewhat service resistant. And we were able to get this individual a shelter bed up in Santa Rosa. It was one of the last beds available. And the team took the time out to directly transport that individual up to that shelter bed in Santa Rosa. And he checked back in with the team just this past month. He's got section eight housing. He's been clean for three months and he has a long-term case manager. And also he's getting some of the medical care that has been neglected with chronic homelessness. And sometimes we get these, you know, cards or appreciation emails from those members in the community. And I just wanted to paint a colorful picture for all of you that you know, beyond the numbers, you know, these are all each individuals and people with their own stories and own trauma and own background. And, you know, we're grateful to be here in San Rafael in this community to be able to provide our services and guide those individuals into a successful outcome like the ones that I just shared. Thank you.

THANK YOU, AZIZ. IN CLOSING, THE SAFE TEAM HAS PROVEN ITSELF AS A HIGHLY EFFECTIVE, FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE AND COMPASSIONATE RESPONSE MODEL THAT ENHANCES PUBLIC SAFETY, IMPROVES OUTCOME FOR INDIVIDUALS IN CRISIS AND ALLOWS SWORN POLICE PERSONNEL AND FIREFIGHTERS TO FOCUS ON LIFE THREATENING EMERGENCIES. While there are options highlighted in the staff report, staff respectfully recommends that the city council adopt the resolution authorizing the city manager to execute the contract amendment with PPSC to continue safe team operations through June 30th, 2027. Thank you. And I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you, Captain Barringer. Thank you, Aziz, for those stories. It's good to have the stories. There are people's lives behind just the numbers, and the numbers are impressive, by the way. So let's start with questions from the council first. Vice Mayor Kurtz.

Thank you. And thank you for the report. Great to hear. When you last provided, I think you've been here in between. There's been a couple of times you've provided different updates. One of the questions that's come up and I've been advocating for is a 20 more hours. And I'm wondering if outside of funding, let's say we have all the funding in the world. Is that really, would that be considered your top priority is to increase the number of hours or are there other priorities that you would bring up as up on the list?

Increasing the hours is definitely a priority that we continue to look at and evaluate. Obviously, you mentioned funding. If we had unlimited funding, we would love to have a 24-hour model. We also looked at let the data drive that decision-making. And we really think there could be a benefit to an overlap, almost like an 18-hour model, where we have two vans, and then that allows for lunchtimes because they're taking breaks. And so there's a delay in that service, and that might cover that opportunity there. Our data would show that about 4.5% of our additional call volume right now is being handled by officers that would go to Petaluma People's Services Center. So that if we have 8.5% now, you're looking at additional 4.5%. You know, my fuzzy math, we're looking at about 13% of our overall call volume right So it's tricky. Where we would have the most touches would probably be in that 18-hour model, but then we're missing that six hours where we don't have 24-hour coverage.

No, it makes sense. And then another question is around the funding. We're able to consider this proposal this evening because you were able to get a huge grant. So thank you for the work on that. Are there other grants out there?

There are. They do come up, but they're competitive. We were denied at least one other grant. So we're continuing to do some outreach and look for other grants that are maybe available.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Urens-Gulati.

Yes, thank you so much. It just feels like it was yesterday when we approved. I can't believe it's been three years. And thank you so much for explaining actually those examples. That's wonderful. I guess my question is, so Lynn Murphy also works with people that are in-house in our cities. So I wonder if the SAFE team works together with Lynn or is it separately? I just wonder how the team works.

Yes. I'm going to ask Aziz. Would you mind taking that?

Yes, certainly. So there's a lot of overlap in the sense where there's the certain types of individuals we work with. And then we sometimes work with the same individuals. I'd say in general, we're not running a lot of calls directly with Lynn Murphy because we're on the dispatch channel. And so we're getting dispatched directly into the community with calls that are coming through 911. But there are instances where we support each other. So if we're out with an individual that's houseless and maybe already has some sort of rapport with Lynn Murphy or can use Lynn Murphy's services, then we refer that client to Lynn Murphy with us being an ongoing support system when there are crises that arise. And vice versa as well. There are situations where Lynn is out with someone that is maybe suicidal or having a rough day or maybe even needs assistance with transportation or something that Lynn might not be able to help with in that moment, and then she'll call us out. So it's that type of working relationship.

Sounds like a great team.

It's a great team.

And my second one is around funding as well. I imagine that the county is probably very grateful because especially considering that you are not sending a lot of people to jail, Marin County Jail, and with Marin Health and Human Services. I just wonder if you have any approach with the county to maybe write some grants together. And I think that the county was also hiring a grant writer. So wondering if that could be a resource that we could use.

Yes, Council Member. We are in constant communication with the county and looking at options. We can certainly explore grant and maybe a collaboration together to try and find mutual grants that would benefit us both. Thank you, Captain.

Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Bushy, do you have any questions? Okay. Council Member Hill.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Captain Berenger, and thank you, Aziz, for being here this evening. I have a question, and my colleagues have asked the questions that I really wanted, which is around, is data driving the hours? So I appreciate that question in response. Beyond the numbers, how would you characterize the geographic response profile? Is it mostly dense to the downtown? Is it counterintuitive to that thinking? I'm curious around where calls typically come in.

It is pretty dispersed. About a year and a half ago, we did a quick analysis with San Rafael PD. Big bulk of the calls are in the downtown area, as well as we do get a good amount of calls in the canal area as well. We've done a lot of outreach in that area. But I'd say it's pretty evenly spread across all the San Rafael. We get quite a lot of calls in Terra Linda and West San Rafael. But I'd say, you know, bulk hotspot is the greater downtown area, Crystal Park. Thank you. Yeah.

And for context, they handle about 10 to 11 calls for service in a 12-hour day. So it's almost a call an hour that they're heading out handling that, and it's all over the city.

So I just had additional questions around the data. I know in previous presentations, you gave a breakdown between folks that were housed and folks that were unhoused. And actually your examples that you gave, Aziz, gave one of both. And I know for me, that was a very surprising statistic because I think when the council first approved the program, we assumed the majority would be unhoused and that's not the case. So could you just share that? Because I think it's an important reminder and also for the community to know.

Yes, there is a misconception, and I think when I first started the program, I also believe that it was going to be predominantly unhoused. So that was going to be, but that's not not necessarily the case.

Yeah, actually, all of our data cumulatively in San Rafael, roughly 55% to 60% of calls are with individuals that are unhoused. So it's a pretty even split. There is a misconception, and it's a common one in the community and even business owners, that we're either just a homeless outreach team specifically or just for the homeless community, but we get a lot, a lot of calls in homes for individuals that are having mental health, behavioral health crisis calls. needing connection to services, substance use crises, welfare checks, mediations. We get a lot of calls to homes.

I appreciate that. And I think the council is still committed, not speaking for all of you, but we're committed to providing that mental health support for people that are housed as well. I mean, there's a real gap in services they are speaking of, services that are provided. So the county has a mobile mental health crisis team. I'm curious how the interaction with the SAFE team is with what they're doing. Does it overlap? Or now that we're so robust here with SAFE, are they really just more in other parts of Marin County?

It's a little bit of both. Okay. If the SAFE team is on a call, Aziz mentioned a call that he was on for an hour and a half. If there's another crisis that comes up and they're tied up because we're not going to leave that individual, then we will reach out to the county and their mobile crisis response team. We still continue to reach out to them. So we have not abandoned that. They're an integral part of our mobile response to people in crisis. But our default is to the SAFE team first. They also have detention authority where the safe team does not. And so in a situation where we're going to be placing an individual on an involuntary mental health hold, if they are refusing to go with the safe team voluntarily, we will ask the mobile crisis response team to come in. Or Lynn Murphy, she's also a licensed clinician, so she can also help with those involuntary holds.

And I haven't followed up with the supervisor specifically on this, but I was under the impression that there might be some funding constraints to that county mobile mental health crisis going forward that some of the funding that they have depended on might be not there going forward. So you haven't heard that. Okay. So maybe that was just... Not true. I don't know. We will follow up with them. No, because it seems I'm really trying to understand that they're a key part of the safety net. And if they were to limit their services, that would impact us. But we can talk to the supervisors about that. I want to follow up on the questions that were also asked already about funding and get even more specific. You talk about diversions from hospitals. So the natural next step is funding from the hospitals because we're diverting. Those diversion numbers are unbelievable. So can you speak a little bit to how those conversations have gone and is there a way that we can support those conversations? The hospitals have boards, they have governing boards. And I mean, we're saving them, literally saving them money.

We did apply to, I think it was Marin Health, and that was one of the grant opportunities, and we just didn't get the funding. I think we, myself, could do a better job of doing more outreach to the hospitals in partnership with PPSC. I know in Sonoma County, they're certainly looking to make that ask to the hospitals. So I think it's continued to be explored.

So if that's something we could look at, because many of the hospitals do have a community services budget, it's probably not called that, but they do have money that they allocate to local jurisdictions. So again, as we're going to be scraping every dollar together to keep the program going, I know any of us, all of us would be happy to be part of those conversations. And in that same tactic or same thought, and Council Member Micah talked about this, in terms of the justice system diversion as well, Because as I understand it, probation often has access to funds that no one else has access to. And I don't know if that is another possible, I see the chief getting up. Because I'm just trying to think again, if we're doing diversions and there's money being, I know there's never.

Yeah, when we, that's a great question. When we initiated the pilot, we actually received some one-time money from probation who manages the prison realignment fund. It's legislated AB 109 funding. So that's still on the table. That's an opportunity for us to make another ask. There are some operational challenges I think that the county has when it's one organization as opposed to touching the entire county. But as the county continues to examine this in the wake of the grand jury report from last year and other organizations continue seeking additional funding for alternative response models like safe these. Funding like a B 109 or the prison realignment money is certainly an opportunity for us to explore.

Fantastic. And thank you. And again, because we have the grant, I know it's not as dire now, but as we look ahead, I think we're going to continue to want to keep this going forward. And before I open it up to the public, if you could just say the phone number for everybody, because it is a phone number that anybody in our community can call.

415-458-SAFE.

Thank you. And I'll probably have you repeat it at the end as well. I know we all use it up here, and it's for if you see someone in crisis or if you know someone personally in crisis, they can use it. So thank you for that. We'll open up public comment. There might be additional questions that come forward. If you'd like to provide any input or questions on this item, now is your opportunity. And you're invited but not required to say your name and what part of San Rafael you live in.

Good evening, Mayor Kate. Good evening, member of the council. My name is Dariush Davidi. I'm a resident of San Rafael. I also have the honor of serving as the chair of our Police Advisory Accountability Committee. My responsibilities includes oral boards, which is interviews of our police officers, community building, attending community events. But my favorite thing to do is to go on police ride-alongs. On one incident, we responded to a call on the canal, and upon the officer arriving to the scene, he assessed that the situation was a 5150, which was a young teenager who was a danger to self. He called the SAFE team, and we saw a group of young, not fancy clothing, very approachable group of people. approached this gentleman the mother was present I know with ice being around some neighborhoods are scared to call the police also so I think safe to them means someone that's not really affiliated but so that was an interesting that the family felt more safer talking to safe So we stood at the scene while they administered their protocol. The person was able to be in a safe place and they were able to diffuse the situation. So it was nice to see that our resources weren't being used as police officers and SAFE was there to remedy that. I'm also a business owner. I also serve on San Rafael Chamber of Commerce. Our business community is very favorable of the SAFE team. Most know the safe numbers by calling them if there's a situation, they see how quickly they respond. And also as a resident serving on my board of HOA, residents also benefit. So I can say it's one organization that unanimously the whole city is on board as far as being favorable. I ALSO WANTED TO GIVE A SHOUT-OUT TO LYNN MURPHY. MAYBE THIS MEETING SHOULD BE DEDICATED TO LYNN MURPHY DAY. WHILE WE'RE ON TOPICS OF SHOUT-OUTS, I ALSO WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE CAPTAIN BEHRINGER'S BEING PROMOTED TO A CAPTAIN, SO CONGRATS. I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING ELSE TO SAY, BUT I'M ALSO, THERE'S A LOT OF PRIDE, A LOT OF PROUD IN OUR CITY, SAN RAFEL, JUST LIKE MEMBER BUSHY WAS SAYING. SO THANK YOU FOR HEARING ME. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMMENTS. ANY OTHER COMMENTS ON THE SAFE TEAM ON THIS ITEM?

Good evening, Mayor, council members, Ken Dickinson, San Rafael Meadows. First, I want to say I'm a big fan of the SAFE team. I met them at the Golden Heirs Craft Fair in November and had a really nice conversation with a couple of them. Earlier this evening, however, the council met in close session regarding litigation involving the Safe Team service provider. And I'm curious about that and how often that happens. Separately, the city is also involved in litigation related to a sidewalk injury in the Murraydale area. In the past, I've appreciated this assistant city's attorney's clarification that such cases are not unusual, that responsibility may rest with the adjacent property owners and that the city has mechanisms to mitigate the liability. Even so, these situations highlight a broader issue as the city expands. Homelessness related services and facilities is also expanding its operational footprint, infrastructure and demands and exposure to risk. all of which carry real costs in staff time, legal resources, and long-term planning. The Safe Team staff report reflects a similar concern on the funding side. The program is effective and valued, but it relies heavily on temporary and declining revenue sources. WITH NO IDENTIFIED ONGOING FUNDING BEYOND FISCAL YEAR 2026-27 AND A POTENTIAL GENERAL FUND IMPACT THEREAFTER. AT THE SAME TIME THE SCOPE AND GEOGRAPHIC REACH OF THESE SERVICES ARE LIKELY TO GROW PARTICULARLY WITH THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE 350 MURRAYDALE INTERIM SHELTER. my request to the city council is that the city take a more integrated and transparent approach one that connects cervix expansion with sustainable funding infrastructure readiness and proactive risk management so the public can better understand how these pieces fit together compassionate services and sound governance are not in conflict but they do require careful alignment thank you for your time thank you any other comments on this item

Good evening, Gregory Andrews, San Rafael Meadows. Two questions. The first is a broad question about the SAFE team and how it works. And what I am asking about that is, is SAFE physically located, a base of operations in San Rafael for their response? I don't know where they're located. And secondly, what determines safety? IF IT'S SAFE TEAM THAT RESPONDS, IT'S THE CITY POLICE, CENTERFIELD POLICE DEPARTMENT RESPONDS. IT SOUNDS LIKE THERE'S SOME CERTAINLY COMMUNICATION AND THERE'S BEEN SOME REFERENCE TO THAT MADE TONIGHT, BUT I JUST WOULD LIKE A DESCRIPTION OF HOW DOES THIS OPERATION ACTUALLY WORK? WHERE IS IT OUT OF? THE COORDINATION. AND THEN THE SECOND QUESTION IS MORE SPECIFIC, 2350 MERRIDALE, WHICH IS WHAT PLAN, WHAT IS THE EXPECTATION OR PLAN? THIS STAFF REPORT DID NOT HAVE A SCOPE OF WORK ASSOCIATED WITH IT. SO MY QUESTION IS, WHAT IS THE EXPECTATION of the SAFE team's involvement with 350 Marydale. If anything in particular, what do you anticipate or what is planned for SAFE's involvement at all with 350 Marydale when that goes up into operations? Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments on this item? Okay, not seeing any, I'll close the public comment. We had input and we also had three specific questions. Where is SAFE located? Who decides how they respond or who responds? And then how would this, the 350 Marydale, I mean, Mahone's there now, so there's probably parallels there, but how will that SAFE interact with 350 Marydale?

Yes, thank you, Mayor. As far as where do they work from, they work within, they have an office space within the San Rafael Police Department, and then they respond out. We try to keep them out in the field as much as possible, not only from a visibility standpoint, but from an access standpoint. As far as who decides on whether the safe team gets dispatched or paramedics or police officers, the dispatchers are the ones who have that discretionary authority on who to send. They went through a significant training in the lead up to it with the SAFE team. And much like they make a judgment call on whether to send the fire or police officers or sometimes both, they do the same thing with the SAFE team. And then as far as 350 Marydale, I didn't, what was the question on that one?

I think the question was about with having a temporary tiny home village, how will SAFE interact with that site? And what I was saying is there's probably similarities to Mahone because one of those will be going away, but maybe you could speak to that.

Yes. So as a part of routine, they will do outreach along the sanctioned camping area that's there now. They will respond to calls for service and go in to be of assistance to people that are inside the sanctioned camping area. And we probably see the same thing will happen up at 350 Marydale.

Great.

Thank you. I'll turn to my colleagues for any additional questions before comments. Any additional questions? No? Okay. Vice Mayor, why don't we start with some comments?

Great. Thank you. Huge fan. I've seen you called many times. I do also want to comment that having it go through dispatch is very helpful. And many times dispatch will say, oh, yeah, we already know. We've already received other calls. So it's very helpful to have that. The fact that the data you provided can be quantified to dollars, I think, is just huge for us to be able to really make that message clear to people that how much this is saving not only us as an organization, but it's saving others as well. And whether it's the hospitals, the insurance companies, wherever else, I mean, we are providing a huge service for the whole community. So absolutely. And SAFE over a very, very short time has become part of the San Rafael emergency family. And it's great to see people out in the community. And I think the community feels very happy to have SAFE and knows of it. The vans are very visible. And so it's great because I will be having coffee with somebody and somebody will say, oh, they're safe. So that people know, and that's really good. So thank you. I'm really happy to support this. And I'm going to, we're going to find more funding for sure.

Thank you. Council member, your answer. Thank you.

Yeah, I echo the sentiment from Council Member Kurtz. I see you everywhere. I think you have the best name. It's safe, you know, when you're trying to talk about the service. I have called in the past 911 and they will connect you. So I know it's not ideal, but it also works if you don't remember. And I think... from the people that I know in the canal they all very much appreciate it so I have never heard anything you know bad about the program and I'm very also happy to support it and figure out how we can get funding after 2027 or July whenever it's going to expire thank you thank you Councilmember bushy

My colleagues have said it very well, but we are all very supportive of this program, delighted with the level of detail so that we can show and quantify the benefits to the community, and also to go beyond that to the subjective benefits to the community that we have this service available. We don't have to send our SWAT-trained police officers to deal with these situations that they're not trained for. I think that the most alarming thing people would find is that the funding only lasts for a little more than a year. So we have got to be laser focused on that next tranche of funding and ideally to expand the hours because this process is really, this program is really working for the police department, for the city of San Rafael and for all of San Rafael's residents. So we need to move it forward.

Thank you. Council Member Hill.

Thank you, Mayor. Again, thank you, Captain Berenger, and thank you, Aziz, for being here this evening. I concur with my colleagues' comments, so I will not try to repeat them. The only thing I will add is thank you to the entire department leadership for supporting this bold action, having this conversation as a concept years ago sounded good. And the ratification of it and the implementation of it, I'd like to thank many people in the leadership of the police department for embracing this bold move, and specifically you, Captain Barringer, because you've been the face of of coordinating all of this. You've been sitting before us, I think, at every readout to bring us along. So I am very pleased in terms of all the comments that are coming through and how it is impacting our community. uh related and every i think every um member of the council so far up to this point has said funding is a concern i know our next agenda item will be contemplating that and i know that beyond just safe this is very important so thank you very much

Thank you, and I concur with what has already been said. And more prompts for Captain Barringer. So this program, just to remind the community, was funded thanks to the ARPA dollars, American Rescue Plan dollars. We did not have this funding. And if it wasn't, the one silver lining of the pandemic was to have those ARPA funds. And because Captain Barringer and his team went and talked to the folks up in Oregon around the CAHOOTS program, that was really the genesis of it. And of course, up in Roanoke Park, Aziz and his team were already starting And so I'm proud that as a community, we utilize those dollars and put our values forward using those dollars and launch this program. And if I understand correctly, I think Novato has also launched it. So again, I imagine a world where all the cities and towns, now I know SAFE probably can't extend themselves as much, but really having that type of resource for both housed and unhoused folks. I mean, that's an incredible vision. So I'm glad that we've been a leader there. here in Marin County on that. So thank you to your team as well. I've met the individuals that respond and boy, their ability to be compassionate and present in the moment is unsurpassed. Really phenomenal team. So thank you. With that, I would entertain a motion on this item, please.

I'll read the motion. I'd like to adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute an amendment to the professional service agreement with Petaluma People's Services Center to extend the term of the contract through June 30th, 2027 to continue the operation of the safe team in a not to exceed amount of 775,000 per year through the term of the contract extension.

I'll second. It has been moved and seconded. Roll call, please.

Council Member Bushy. Aye. Council Member Hill.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Kurtz. Aye. Council Member Yedentumladi. Aye. Mayor Kate.

Aye. That motion carries 5-0. Thank you to you and your team. Thank you, Chief. Our next agenda item is the Fiscal Sustainability Framework. And I see Assistant City Manager John Stepanski joining us and Finance Director Paul Nabazio.

Yes, and they're going to be pulling up the slide momentarily. And so this presentation has been previewed before in the Finance Subcommittee. Again, it's to provide some context and framing around fiscal sustainability, including potential ballot measures that the city may contemplate IN 2026. AND SO WITH THAT, WE'LL TAKE AN ADDITIONAL MOMENT AND THEN I'LL TURN IT OVER TO DIRECTOR NAVASIO AND ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER STEFANSKI FOR THEIR PRESENTATION.

ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU FOR THAT WARM-UP, ANGELA. GOOD EVENING, MAYOR CAIT, MEMBERS OF THE CITY COUNCIL, JOHN STEFANSKI, ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER. I'M HERE WITH PAUL NAVASIO, OUR FINANCE DIRECTOR, AND WE'RE HERE TO PROVIDE AN UPDATE TO THE CITY COUNCIL. AS ANGELA SAID, The full council to get an update on the presentations that we've been making to the finance subcommittee, as well as some additional things we want to share around the city's budget outlook, as well as a framework for fiscal sustainability. So before we dive into the presentation, I just want to take a moment to state that ensuring the fiscal sustainability and stability of a city is something that requires regular ongoing strategic financial planning. This is not just something that we handle as a part of our normal course of business in our budget process. But rather, it's something that Paul and his team in our finance department are constantly looking at. And they're looking to make sure that we're keeping a broader, longer-term fiscal outlook in order to plan for and anticipate opportunities, so good things that could be coming, as well as challenges coming. So we have enough time to make adjustments as needed to ensure that we're able to continue to maintain the service levels and address the emerging myriad of community needs that we hear about almost on a daily basis. But with that, just a quick overview of our presentation here before I hand it off to Paul. So we're going to provide a look at our general fund forecast as well as priority funding needs and then have a discussion around some budget balancing options. as well as a discussion around ballot measure strategy and recommendations for the upcoming June 2026 elections. As you can tell by what I'm talking about and Paul will dive into here on the next slide is that the city is looking at a number of different financial challenges, not completely unique to the city of San Rafael, but rather a sign of the times for jurisdictions within the state and within the region. And so Paul will walk through those items, and then we'll also introduce Kurt Beelow from FM3 Research, who's here to detail some community survey results. And then we also have Charles Heath here as well, who will be available to answer any questions the council may have regarding our planned revenue measure strategy.

So with that, I'll hand it off over to Paul.

Thank you, John. Madam Mayor, members of the council, I'll jump into the fiscal part of the presentation just to highlight some of John's introductory comments and to set the table for this. We are already in and foreseeing for the, at least for foreseeable short term, sort of a challenging fiscal environment as it relates to essentially the city's ability to sustain current service levels and programs in the array that we provide this is made even more difficult the last conversation being a prime example of additional funding needs that we have outside of what is currently in our budget so as we look to not develop but to maintain and manage to a longer term kind of financial planning it's important to incorporate both what's required to sustain what we currently have ensure that we're spending the dollars on highest priority needs and pivot where appropriate to reallocate existing resources the higher priority needs there is never going to be enough funding to do all of the needs that are out there but identifying what those are kind of order of magnitude and what opportunities we have to address them and prioritize them is going to be important. And as John said, not just through kind of the annual budget process, but again, one of the reasons why we've scheduled this presentation this evening is of course the scheduled expiration of our existing library services parcel tax this coming June. But in the context of at least having that conversation, we wanted to have a broader context of sort of what all the other needs are so that the counseling community are informed, not just in terms of kind of short term needs, but how decisions made in the short term fit into a larger context, if you will. So we have a updated general fund forecast that we continue to update. In fact, and we share this information as was noted with finance subcommittee in meetings, I guess at the end of December, and then again in early January, and so this is really just based on our existing budget the council does have next month on your agenda our mid-year budget update and so we're going to be updating this and as we're fond of saying and you probably got the impression now rather than looking at the budget one time a year it's always budget season and so anytime we have an opportunity to provide an update and and fine-tune we want to take advantage of the opportunity and this is this is one of them um OUR INITIAL BASELINE GENERAL FUND FORECAST DOES SHOW AN EMERGING STRUCTURAL DEFICIT BEGINNING THIS COMING FISCAL YEAR AND AS NOTED HERE IN THE RANGE OF TWO TO THREE AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS WHICH BY ITSELF WOULD NOT BE A HUGE PROBLEM EXCEPT FOR THAT IT IS GROWING OVER THE NEXT THREE TO FIVE YEARS IN THE PLANNING HORIZON AND IT IN TURN ASSUMES RENEWAL OF THE LIBRARY PARCEL TAX. THERE ARE ALSO SOME ADDITIONAL BUDGET PRESSURES THAT WE'VE STARTED TO BUILD INTO THIS FORECAST. THE FINANCE SUBCOMMITTEE AND OTHER COUNCIL SUBCOMMITTEES ARE AWARE OF SOME OF THESE. WE LISTED AT JUST A HANDFUL OF THESE. San Ratel Sanitation District plan to separate from the city. There's a small revenue impact, negative impact to the city. We're in conversations around renewing and updating the fire services agreement with Marinwood Community Facilities, Community Services District that will require additional funding on the city's part. um based on some of the options that we're looking at this is not intended to be an exhaustive list but there's also change in legislative environment court cases around continuing to restrict cities abilities to either impose new fees and in some cases continue collect fees that we're already collecting and so we're factoring in the potential impact of having to backfill for some of those in this forecast The forecast that I'm going to share, I would say, is necessarily somewhat, the assumptions are generally conservative. We're trying to be as conservative as we feel prudent with the revenue estimates. So it's not to quote unquote sound any alarms, but we also don't want to paint a rosy picture that goes away the next time we get a quarterly sales tax update in terms of what's going on. and we have built in essentially an inflation indexed cost of living adjustment for expenditures through the out years and again a lot of those will be determined in the coming months and over the next year or so particularly when we get into the next round of labor negotiations which has a huge impact obviously on on the city's budget um so the uh CURRENT FORECAST SHOWS UNDER THOSE ASSUMPTIONS STRUCTURAL DEFICIT OF ABOUT JUST UNDER $3.5 MILLION STARTING IN FISCAL YEAR 26-27. IT GROWS BY ABOUT A MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. THIS SHOWS THE FORECAST THROUGH 2030-31. we did want to include a couple of years beyond 2031 because as the council is aware that is the planned schedule for the city having initially paid off a significant unfunded liability within the marine county employee retirement fund and so there will be some budgetary relief but that is still several years in in the offing the the next chart i want to kind of couch a little bit in context because at first blush it maybe is scarier than it needs to be this would show uh the end result of that forecast on our general fund fund balance over the next couple of years we've reformatted this chart from the one that we shared with the finance subcommittee but just to walk through it through fiscal year 24-25 the city's Reserve policy was set at 10%, you may recall, and then we increase it to 15%. And so that's those red lines that kind of offset the 10% and then the 15%. We have been successful in managing and hope to continue to continue to manage to that 15% reserve level. So as noted in the slide, you know, absent, and this would not happen, but absent corrective action to develop a balancing plan for next year and beyond, we would be necessarily drawing down our reserve and our fund balances to the point where they would essentially be depleted by fiscal year 2930. So this is just a change in fund balance if we just used deficit spending, if you will, and that's not going to happen. I wanted to also touch on the long list and again, not exhaustive list, but some of the items that have come up almost at every council meeting and through our budget discussions of areas of insufficient funding within our baseline budget. We just kind of group them together. I want to stress that these are estimates. Some of these numbers I would say are harder, more precise than others. We know that our utility costs have been increasing, electric, gas, water, et cetera, more than what we have been putting into the budget on an annual basis. It's on our list to address in this upcoming budget. Council has heard before about underfunding of our equipment replacement, whether it's fleet and vehicle replacement, and as well as our public safety, separate equipment replacement funds. There was comments earlier about just in the world we live in our insurance premiums and liability not just our exposure but our actual costs associated with managing those liabilities is increasing faster than our revenues and so the more we put into that bucket it limits our ability to then address some of these other needs infrastructure in and of itself is a huge area we've estimated The difference between what the city is allocating to just maintain our current streets and roads per the PCI index is about $2 million short of what we should be building in. Sidewalks is a component in part because they're important and in part because they lead to a lot of our liabilities. Our storm drain system, we're actually in the process of updating or developing a storm drain master plan to help identify exactly what that funding gap is. uh public safety as uh calls for service increase in order to maintain response times we mentioned the the safe team in terms of ongoing recurring funding needs and then community economic development with the work that's doing there especially as development we are making real good progress in um uh being able to augment community economic development activity with revenues that are being provided from these development projects but code enforcement economic development those things don't have a built-in kind of funding source deferred maintenance etc so again it will never be enough money to cover all of this but part of the framework that we're working on is to identify the highest priority needs and then come up with a plan that will, A, ensure that we're using existing dollars in the areas that are most important, and then rather than the one silver bullet that solves all the problem, what are the strategies to deal with each of these areas of priority need? so in the short term um you know this is just sort of the um kind of simple version of what a budget balancing toolkit looks like we talked about reallocation of existing funding tightening some budget in order to address issues in the short run we are likely to be looking at needing to implement some level of expenditure reductions in the coming year hopefully And I think at this level, we can say trying to minimize direct impact on services as best we can. In the staff report, as noted, I believe the council is aware that the city manager has implemented a kind of quasi hiring freeze, hiring pause for this fiscal year as we sort through some of these issues twofold. One, it does help kind of put the brakes on some spending, but at the same time, whether it's probably not in the short term but as we look at next fiscal year we certainly want to avoid any expenditure reductions that potentially could impact staffing levels and having some vacant positions available to jockey is is just a good approach so city manager has implemented that on the revenue side um We are continuing to, number one, ensure that we're collecting the money that we should be collecting and should already be collecting. And we've also identified, and it's also listed in our work plan for this fiscal year, couple of areas where work is underway to identify opportunities to increase cost recovery, particularly in the recreation program area, as well as, again, in planning, building code enforcement. The last one on the slide, not singling it out, but it's come up in a couple of conversations, given our desire to put more resources into economic development, which then helps drive local support, local economy and revenue. uh coming up with a reliable funding source for economic development and we've discussed council has actually brought up the idea of working with the county to potentially recoup back some of the hotel assessment that is currently being collected and paid for by hoteliers in san rafael so that we can reinvest those dollars locally and have a little bit more control over that so just put that in there as an example and remind the council that that's not been lost Turn it back over to John to touch on the where ballot measure strategies may fit into this longer term plan for sustainability.

Yep, thank you Paul. So another thing that's identified in the City Council's three year strategic plan and the work plan for this year is to develop a revenue measure strategy, which is a part of this presentation and just at a high level. You know what our objectives here when it comes to building out a revenue measure strategy is kind of. You know, straightforward, right? We want to preserve the existing revenue measures that we have. So that means pursuing renewals and extensions or replacement tax measures or exploring options to generate new additional revenues to increase, to address any kind of funding shortfall. So the things that Paul is talking about. And then last but not least, I think this is really important, is to continue to find ways to diversify our tax revenues to mitigate the impacts of economic cycles. So this is, you know, don't put all of your eggs in the sales tax basket because then you live and die by the economy. How can we diversify that so we're able to weather the ups and downs in the economy a little better? SO WITH THAT IN MIND, THERE'S A NUMBER OF OPTIONS FOR BALLOT MEASURES THAT WE AS STAFF AND IN CONCERT WITH CURT AND CHARLES HAVE BEEN EXPLORING IN THE LAST COUPLE MONTHS. THE FIRST HERE IS THE MOST IMMEDIATE ONE, WHICH IS THE RENEWAL OF OUR EXISTING MEASURE D, THE LIBRARY PARCEL TAX, WHICH EXPIRES THIS JUNE. THAT CURRENTLY IS GENERATING US $1.2 MILLION A YEAR FOR LIBRARY SERVICES. We have our existing paramedic parcel tax that is at its cap that we've had that on the books for decades, and so we would need to go back to voters and San Rafael to increase that cap. But one of the things that we'll talk about on the next slide is as a charter city. WE'RE ABLE TO LEVY A PROPERTY TRANSFER TAX AND WE CURRENTLY HAVE IT ON THE BOOKS THAT'S AT .2 PERCENT OR TWO DOLLARS FOR EVERY ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS IN PROPERTY VALUE IN A SALE THAT'S BRINGING IN 1.5 MILLION A YEAR IN REVENUE BUT YOU KNOW WITH JUST MODEST INCREASES OF THAT PERCENTAGE AS YOU'LL SEE ON THE SLIDE THERE THE REVENUE THAT THAT KIND OF TAX MEASURE CAN GENERATE FOR THE CITY DOES GROW TO A LEVEL THAT IS WORTH EVALUATING And then, you know, we always have the option to pursue an additional parcel tax, something that could be particularly tailored towards a specific use like public safety. And then there are other potential tax measures, hotel tax, business license tax, and utility users taxes, which given I think the way utility prices are right now, I don't know that would be what we would advise exploring. And then at the bottom here, kind of a little fun quirk and feature of California local government revenue is exploring a Prop 218 property base fee for stormwater improvements. And we have our public works departments working on a stormwater uh master plan and so maybe later down the line this would be something that we could look to do as a city as well it doesn't necessarily have to coincide with a election um so potentially uh go to the next slide SO OUR PRELIMINARY RECOMMENDATIONS THAT WE'RE SEEKING SOME FEEDBACK FROM THE CITY COUNCIL ON TONIGHT IS, ONE, TO PROCEED IN JUNE WITH A STRAIGHT RENEWAL OF MEASURE D OR LIBRARY PARCEL TAX, AND THEN EVALUATE LATER ON THIS YEAR A REVENUE ENHANCEMENT BALLOT MEASURE IN NOVEMBER. SO THAT IS, AS I WAS MENTIONING EARLIER, Either a property transfer tax, a general purpose. We would still need to evaluate what the rate and the structure, what all the details that would look like as we go through our budget process and then also how we see how a June measure would fare. Or we could pursue a new parcel tax that we're currently eyeing for funding around public safety. So police fire, a safe team could be something that we would be looking to fund. But because that's a special tax, it would need to have a two-thirds voter approval, and the use of those funds would be restricted. Then just... Eyeing out to 2028, something that we are considering at this point in time is to do a potential renewal of our existing sales tax, transaction use taxes rather, measures E and R and consolidating those into one. measure that would then extend the life of those. And really, this is a means for us to be thinking forward as measure R expires in 30, measure E expires in 32. So we want to make sure we're providing the city the proverbial multiple bites of the apple as it relates to securing those because those are some of our biggest revenue sources as a city. And then just on the back burner, but always options for us, like I said, paramedic tax, adjusting the cap or, you know, looking into this Prop 218 or about measure around stormwater. So as we round out our portion of the presentation, I'll just share that Paul and his team has been working with our consultants on updating our fiscal models. This is the big Excel file with all the macros and makes the nice charts and is really one of our primary tools for forecasting the city's budgets going out. And so they're fine tuning that five year forecast and we'll be bringing that to a finance subcommittee in March, I believe is what we're tentatively targeting, hopefully. And then as we go through our budget process, continuing to refine our funding needs list and looking to make sure that we're sequencing all these ballot measures as a part of this revenue measure strategy we're presenting tonight. And then we just have a number of our consultants that are on board that are helping us with all of this work. um so from a timeline standpoint there are a number of things that we're juggling right now as it relates to this fiscal this fiscal sustainability framework and our budget process um earlier this uh i guess was last month um you know we went out to the community and did some polling around a renewal of measure d which the results kurt will walk through here shortly but we'll look to do something similar later this spring early summer to get a feel for uh what we think makes the most sense for a november ballot measure should the council uh provide us that feedback um throughout all of this we'll be meeting with the finance subcommittee which meets monthly uh so we'll be providing periodic updates at those meetings AS FROM A TIMING PERSPECTIVE FOR THE JUNE BALLOT MEASURE, FOLLOWING THIS MEETING, WE WILL RETURN TO THE SECOND MEETING IN FEBRUARY ON THE 17th WITH RECOMMENDED LANGUAGE FOR THE RENEWAL OF MEASURE D. AND WE WANT TO DO THAT THEN JUST BECAUSE WE NEED TO GET EVERYTHING TURNED INTO THE COUNTY REGISTRAR BY EARLY MARCH. SO OUR TIMELINES ARE STARTING TO COME UP ON US. And then the budget process is going on under our typical calendar. So we'll be back in front of the full council with preliminary budget in May, budget adoption in June, and then just eyeing the rest of this year, November 26th. to do a ballot measure the last time the last chance we'll have to you know call an election so to speak at a regular council meeting would be the only meeting that we have scheduled in July so we are targeting all of these deadlines to make sure that we're you know making sure the council is fully up to date the community is up to date as to what the plans are and making sure whether we're hitting these statutory deadlines so THAT'S IT FOR OUR PRESENTATION, BUT I WANT TO NOW CALL UP CURT BELOW FROM FM3 RESEARCH. CURT AND HIS TEAM IN EARLY JANUARY AS HE'LL WALK THROUGH CONDUCTED A SURVEY OF VOTERS WHO IS GOING TO PROVIDE SOME DETAIL ON HOW A POTENTIAL RENEWAL OF MEASURE D WOULD FAIR. we'll pull this up and then kurt i think we got the clicker for you there so that's it yep that's it

All right. Thank you, Sean. Hi. Good evening. Kurt Balo from FM3 Research. Balo rhymes with halo or J-lo if you want to. Remember my last name pronunciation. It's a funny one. I'm happy to present the results tonight and I'll be going through this fairly quickly. I know they're just going through the litany of different sort of finance and planning things you need to consider tonight, but this is helpful for making some decisions in an upcoming near term. I'll first go through some of the methodology. Why not have it turned on? It is on. All right, got it. Okay, so just a couple notes about our survey we conducted. We did the interviews just, these are very hot off the presses interviews. We conducted them at the beginning of this month. We did it with voters who are likely to vote in this June's primary, a little over 400 of them online on phones. The main things here are that the margin of sampling error is about 5%. And if any questions were split sampled, where half got one version and half got the other, it's about a 7% margin of error. Fairly standard approach for these types of surveys, so I think that we can get to the results here. The first section is some of the contextual questions that we had, which are, when we're evaluating the viability for a measure, it's one thing to be like, well, how would you vote on it? That's obviously most important, but you want to understand the sort of lens through which voters might be considering a measure. Are they happy? Are they cranky? How do they view the needs of the city? Does this measure potentially line up with how they feel like the city is being a good steward of the funding? Those sort of things. And that's sort of this first section here. And so we ask this old Gallup question that's been asked for decades, you know, right direction, wrong track, and a plurality of response to the survey. And this is not all residents or even all adults or all voters. These are likely gubernatorial primary voters. So this is a subset of your residents here. And a plurality of 38% felt like, generally speaking, the city was on the wrong track. Not that dissimilar from, you know, rounding here, we'll call it thirds, more optimistic, more pessimistic, and more mixed. And we are seeing a ton of research like this everywhere. This was particularly in the last few months, as things at the federal, state level sort of trickle down, there's a lot of anxiety amongst voters everywhere. So what are they worried about here specifically in the city? We did ask this question that maybe helps us understand a June election, but also give us a little peek toward November as well. We presented a variety of things that may be considered problems in the community. You tell us as a respondent, how serious of a problem do you think it is here in San Rafael? Extremely very somewhat or not too serious a problem. We focus on the more intense reactions, extremely very Those are summarized on the right-hand side. And there's two things that stood out the list here. you know, pretty reflective of the prior agenda item here. Homelessness and cost of housing, top of the list here. You have 45% of respondents who said those are extremely serious problems. Two-thirds or more saying extremely very serious problems. And virtually everywhere we ask, particularly in the Bay Area, or frankly anywhere up and down the West Coast, those are two of the top issues in every community. You are not unique in that regard. Just below that dashed red line are a variety of other items where majorities still said they were extremely very serious problems. So cost of living more broadly, housing a little more intense, but cost of living more broadly, risk of wildfires, and then traffic. Something that in 2020, 2021, 2022 was not a problem. We've seen that pop up in a variety of places. And here you have similar levels of concern on local streets and on the freeways. Second slide here. Now you'll see those orange bars are starting to get much smaller. The blue bars that are people saying it's not too important, those are getting bigger. And you'll see a variety of different items here about too much growth and development. crime, condition of the local economy. There's still portions who feel intensely concerned about those, but those are a far cry from something like we saw on the prior slide, housing and homelessness. Below that dashed red line are things that are like really de minimis concerns broadly here. And maybe most pertinent to this survey is the insufficient library services. No one really feels like that's a problem. This is phrased as a problem, insufficient. So that wasn't seen as a, and so I want to, I'm trying. I might need. Yes. All right. I'll just point out on this slide here that the library highlighted that one. But the amount people pay in local taxes, not a top concern. And this is not city taxes, probably local taxes, but it's a two-thirds measure, as John noted there. So if 39% feel like that's an extremely very important concern, that's a material number. If we're looking at a majority vote measure, it'd feel a little different. Next couple questions here, favorability questions. We often ask these in our surveys. Just generally, do you have a favorable, unfavorable opinion about the agency that we're working for here? Citigroup, more overall, half had a favorable opinion, about a third unfavorable, so more favorable than the negative there. Council, a little more mixed, 40 to 35, but part of that is the undecided gets a little bigger. Voters aren't as familiar with their elected bodies as they are with the agency that they're governing. Look at the library, though, 81% really high, and police and fire also really positive, too. So a lot of really generally positive impressions of the city, maybe a little more neutral on council, and really positive when it comes to specific city agencies and departments, though. And this is a track for some prior research you had conducted. And this is, I think, maybe a little reflective of electoral moods here. So the first item is, you know, basically how satisfied are you with the job this fee is doing providing services, generally speaking? Currently, 56%, a majority are satisfied, 29% dissatisfied. Back last year and a couple years before, those numbers were a little bit higher. The dissatisfied numbers were basically the same. The difference was maybe a few more people moving into more of a neutral category, so it's still... A MAJORITY OF THESE VOTERS ARE FEELING PRETTY POSITIVE, BUT THIS IS A LITTLE MORE UNCERTAINTY THERE. AND THEN WHEN IT COMES TO THE JOB THE CITY IS DOING MANAGING ITS TAXPAYER MONEY, THAT'S ACTUALLY GOTTEN A LITTLE MORE SHORTCOMB SPECT THERE. NOW, THIS IS OBVIOUSLY IN THE GUISE OF ALL YOU'RE HEARING IS ABOUT BUDGET DEFICITS AND CHALLENGES AT EVERY SINGLE LEVEL RIGHT NOW OF GOVERNMENT, FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL. SO WE'RE SEEING A LOT OF THOSE TYPES OF CONCERNS IN OTHER LOCAL JURISDICTIONS AS WELL. This is a little interesting. I'm just planting a seed, not as much for this June, but potentially going forward. This is a proxy question that we often ask in the context of a revenue measure, which is, do you feel like the city in this case has an appreciable need for additional funding? And this is unspecific. This is not saying for this or generated by this man or just what's your gut feeling. And we look at the percentage who feel like there's greater some need for funding. And that gives us a sense of kind of a crude proxy of support for revenue measure. And you might be a little bit of a victim of your own success here where only 48% half feel like there's an appreciable need for more funding. The measure we're looking at here is to continue the existing funding, but in terms of more funding, this electorate, A gubernatorial primary, like for a little bit older, a little bit more traditionally more conservative, doesn't feel as strongly about that. What about, you know, roughly even numbers feel like the need is very modest or unsure. So there's some uncertainty there, which is maybe not surprising either. And then one last little bit of this context here was about the library itself. You conducted a survey last spring where it was asked with the library facilities and services, hey, how satisfied are you with them? And those numbers were really nice and high. Two-thirds said, yeah, I'm satisfied with them. Very few people had negative impressions. In this survey, we split it a little bit just to ask about services separately from facilities just to see if there's any distinction. And guess what? There isn't. And the numbers are still continuing to be very high from last year to this year. So perception of the library, really positive, both physically in the structure and everything, and also like the general services. So that's a good, nice jumping off spot for considering a revenue measure. So let's get to that one. So this was a hypothetical 75 words that could appear on the ballot. This is what we tested based upon past research and things we're seeing in other communities here, worked with city staff and legal and finance to craft this, but this is essentially a renewal of your existing measure here for, and the key thing here is the additional nine years. So this is meant to go for nine years. And this is a two-thirds vote threshold. So how we ask this question, it's kind of helpful to think about this. We either read on the phone or have someone read online the 75 words, and then we ask, how would you vote? They give us a yes or a no. We push them a little bit. We say, well, how about is that definitely or probably yes? And then if someone's initial reaction is to lean back and be a little undecided, we ask them if they're leaning one way or another. And so that gives us three flavors of yes, three flavors of no. And let's just aggregate those. And it's helpful in us interpreting viability to know about not just the total yes votes, but the intensity of those. So for a two-thirds renewal measure, guess what? This is right at two-thirds. So that's with all three flavors of yes. So that includes 6% who initially were, I'm not so sure, but probably leaning to a yes. And that gets us to that level. The no vote, about a quarter, and not that many undecided. It's a pretty straightforward thing. This is libraries and a parcel tax. There's nothing confusing about the mechanism or about how the money would be spent. So very few people were undecided right at that vote threshold. One of the crude rule of thumb that we look for for a two-thirds measure is obviously you want to be at two-thirds. hopefully higher than that, but you want to get to at least in the 40%, definitely yes. So on that intensity metric, you're kind of meeting it right here. If you've got to get in those 40s, definitely yes for a two-thirds measure. We did ask a number of follow-up questions, but one of them was, if you were a yes vote, any flavor of yes, in your own words, you tell us why you would vote yes. So this is not asked of everybody. This is just of those 67% who are inclined to vote yes. And it's art and science combining these because people can say multiple things. These will add up to more than 100%. But broadly, look at those top three categories, and it's the benefits of libraries. I support them. They're good for our community. And looking through some of the specific comments that weren't all that specific, it's just about they're important for San Rafael. They're an important public community benefit. On the no side, same thing. This is just after that roughly a quarter-ish who said they'd vote no. Not everybody else. They were much more specific. It was about taxes. Taxes are too high. Very narrowly focused. There were other concerns. Already voted on a measure. You had something last cycle. Cost of living is too high. But really, it's just taxes, taxes, taxes. All right, so what we did in the survey is we said, well, here's a variety of ways that funds from this measure could be invested in your libraries. And we asked respondents to indicate how important these were. And we were presented in random order, and it's a long list, so we did some split sampling here to better understand which sort of services and benefits and investments resonate most strongly. And the scale we used was extremely very somewhat or not too important. Again, I'm a bit of a broken record, but we focused on the intense reactions, extremely very important. We summarized those on the right and sorted by it. And you'll see Couple slides here, but the first one here, it's a lot of about kids and youth, right? Safe kids, places for kids, different ways we frame that, children's book collections, children's reading rooms. So a lot of things about the benefits for children and youth. Maintain the book collections and children's book collections, kind of in the same bucket there. And then two other items on this first slide, which is keeping the library staff from being laid off. And then this middle one, which is an interesting thing that popped up somewhere else in the survey, which is access, providing access to people in your community to technology, Wi-Fi, things of that nature. Second slide here. Everything here also seen as extremely or very important by three out of five or more. A little less intensity here. And this is where we talked about preventing cuts to children's reading programs, maintaining library hours. You know, those are things where, like, if you lay off staff, the result of that is... reductions in these services, but we talked about laying off the staff that actually generated a little more intensity. We talked about a couple different things in here around continuing a stable funding source for the library. Turns out that when we just said it like that, it resonated more strongly than when we said it was originally approved by voters in 2010. Just kind of keeping it simple seemed to resonate a little more strongly here. And then moving down the list, now we're in the less than three out of five and extremely important, we're into the 20s and not in the high 30s and 40s. And it's preventing cuts to library hours, keeping the downtown library open seven days a week. Again, when we went and talked about preventing the laying off of staff, that resonated more strongly than these sort of items. One other little element is that that's kind of how the money is spent and the benefits of it. And then there's sort of how it's spent, the logistics behind it, the accountability provisions. And we have a slightly different question structure, which is if this measure had this element, would you be more or less likely to support it? And blue bars are shades of more likely, orange less likely, and the gray bars doesn't make a difference to me. And you'll see here, top, there's a tiering here. Two items that got to 40%. Hey, I'd be much more likely to support something if this is an element. Public spending disclosure and keeping funds local. And I'll just say that you'll notice here that audits were below that a little bit. And then resident oversight, those sort of things, historically have resonated stronger than disclosure. But in the last couple of years, we've seen disclosure kind of rocket up the list. whether it's voters who are just more, you know, a little less trusting of audits and oversight. They just want to know that they can access the information that seems to be resonating everywhere right now. And keeping funds local versus providing locally controlled funding, there was kind of a big difference there. So different little things here for us to consider in that below that second dashed line, we went in through some phrasing of the inflation adjustment. So when we talked about annual tax rate adjustments, That didn't do much for the respondents. They weren't too keen on that, but we talked about it in terms of to account for inflation. That's not going to make somebody more likely to support a measure, but it maybe gives them a little more comfort that those increases are bound and, you know, some sense about that. And we also, we asked about a nine-year measure, and we also did a split sample asking on an 18-year measure, and voters were more inclined to support a measure that had a nine-year term than a 18-year term. So in the survey, we also said, here are some rationales for voting yes. Here are some rationales for voting no. We can't completely simulate the electoral context, but we can at least get a little sense of a ceiling and floor if we kind of push and pull out of measure. And the pros and cons here is that it didn't move much. Support was at 67%. It went up to 68 after saying, here are a bunch of reasons to vote yes. That isn't maybe as much movement as you'd like to see in that direction. But on the flip side, here are a bunch of reasons why this is a terrible idea. It didn't remove much either. So pretty steady level of support there. And just to make sure underneath the surface that something wasn't changing, you look at that first and last vote, we still kept the intensity nicely in the mid 40s. So the support for the measure is still above that sort of 40 threshold. But we're hanging around that two-thirds. We're really sort of oscillating just a little above, a little below the two-thirds vote threshold. And without going through all the details of the rationales for, you know, supporting a measure, we presented a lot of them. The scale we used is how convincing of a reason this is to support a measure, very somewhat, you could say, not too convincing, you don't believe. OUR CRUDE RULE OF THUMB, AGAIN, IF AN ARGUMENT HAS SEEN AS VERY COMMENCING BY 40% OR MORE, IT'S PACKED ON A LITTLE BIT OF A PUNCH. AND YOU'LL SEE HERE THAT LOCAL CONTROL, WE SAW THAT IN ISOLATION WAS IMPORTANT. IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT TO VOTERS HERE IS THE MONEY IS GOING TO BE SPENT HERE. A dedicated funding source so that it can't be spent and diverted into other needs. Voters really like that. And that access, I know that just says the word access, but that was the Wi-Fi, computer access, those sort of things. Those are the three things that generated the most intensity. Now, everything here was seen as broadly compelling. We got into this is just a voter-approved measure that was approved twice in the past, and we kind of explained the 2010 election, the 2016 election. That isn't as compelling to voters. They seem to be more concerned about what's happening right here and now. On the flip side, we went through, hey, there's reasons to vote no. And nothing got to 40% very convincing on this side, which is probably why the decrease wasn't a whole lot. Cost of living maybe got the highest level, but the intensity is kind of the same for all these. Measure P was, hey, we just voted on something that was actually the least compelling of the rationales to vote no. It turns out it's more like taxes cost living, just real pocketbook issues. So that gets us to just a couple of conclusions here. People view the library very favorably, you know, and think, you know, majorities feel like the city's doing a good job providing services. It does look like a renewal measure is viable, but it is no sure bet. It is hovering right around that two-thirds vote threshold OVER THE COURSE OF THE SURVEY SO WE'VE GOT A LOW CEILING AND HIGH FLOOR SITUATION ACCORDING TO THESE RESULTS WHICH I THINK IS PRETTY CONSISTENT WITH RESEARCH YOU HAD CONVENTED IN PRIOR LAST YEAR AND WE HAVE A GOOD SENSE I THINK OF WHAT THINGS RESONATE MOST STRONGLY IT'S A LOT ABOUT KIDS AND YOUTH AND PUBLIC ACCESS TO TO TECHNOLOGY AND THINGS OF THAT NATURE HERE IT'S COST OF LIVING AND TAXES ARE REALLY ONE OF THE BIGGEST CONCERNS AND I THINK THAT YOU KNOW Getting something like this passed, you have to make a decision on this relatively soon, and it will need community engagement on the flip side of this to come out and be supportive of something that's really hovering around two-thirds.

All right. Great. Thank you so much, Kurt. So that concludes the presentation tonight. I know it's a lot of information. It's a double feature, if you will. But we're here for any questions, but also looking for feedback from the council this evening around the proposed revenue measure strategy, as well as any other feedback you have on the fiscal sustainability toolkit that we've walked through. So thank you.

Thank you for that presentation. Thank you, Kurt. That was a great presentation with a lot of information in it. I'm sure we can all go and digest that more. And so just to be clear on this item, we're receiving the presentation, but there is no decision being made this evening around any fiscal toolbox options. I just want to be very clear because we went through a lot. Director Navazio.

Yeah, I would just underscore that the context is that in order to make the deadline for the June ballot, staff would be coming back at your next meeting with a potential action item to place measure on the ballot pending feedback and direction from the council.

Right. I just want to clarify, and I think that's important. So yeah, so the community understands, we all understand up here, it's an opportunity to ask questions and to provide input. So questions, Vice Mayor?

Thank you. Good report. Lots of data. Always love it. One question I have was way back at the beginning where you talked about, I just want to confirm, you had said the data you were showing, our impact was assuming A LIBRARY RENEWAL MEASURE PASSED. IT WAS STILL THAT DATA? IT WAS PROJECTED THAT WITH THE PASSAGE IT WAS STILL THAT? CORRECT. I JUST WANTED TO CONFIRM THAT. Is there any consideration at this point around the impact of Medicare and if there's impacts on Medicare and the insurance reimbursement and if that is being projected into our estimates at this point? That was one question. And then the second question is around on the viability of the measure, thinking about the measure. Do we ask if, depending on what else is on, do we know how do other, if other measures on a ballot impact our measure or is everything just taken independently without looking at the whole scope of what else is on the ballot? I'm not sure.

Yeah, I can take the first one. We have not factored in any direct impact on the Medicare question. I do know that this does impact at least a couple line items in our budget in terms of ambulance billings and what we're collecting and how the insurance works, but not basically current state of affairs through the forecast horizon. We haven't incorporated any substantive changes.

Okay.

And then for your last question around the impact of other revenue measures on the ballot, I think I'll turn to Kurt and then maybe Charles as well, if you want to provide some color on that as well.

Yeah, I can answer that quickly. In the context of this survey, we typically do not do that just because we're speculating. Everyone remembers last year the Bay Area housing measure that everyone was really worried about that never materialized. So it's really hard to kind of predict what's going to be on the ballot or not. Sometimes in surveys, if we are concerned about that, we might ask that as a negative statement. Hey, there's lots of other things on the ballot. Historically, though, voters tend to view things a little more and value them independently, unless there's a number of items in the same jurisdiction where the math is easy, like multiple bonds, something like that, where they can do the math. If it's different finance mechanisms, voters tend to think of them in isolation, historically. If there's anything you want to add to that, Charles, please do.

Yeah, I think it's important to note that voters perceive renewal measures differently than they do tax increases. And so the big regional measure that's going to be considered in June is the SMART measure, which is a straight renewal of their existing sales tax. Your measure is a renewal as well. And typically, despite some of the economic anxiety and challenges out there, voters will entertain a renewal more so than an increase. There are some potential, well, I guess I would say I'd be more concerned if we were facing other local tax increases, you know, for example, if the school district or the community college district locally were proposing a tax increase, I think that would be a bigger threat than these sort of competing renewals.

Thank you. Council Member Bushey, do you have questions?

I do, and I'm going to stick with my habit of taking things out of order so I can take the easiest one first. The easiest one first is on Renewal Measure D. I find your presentation compelling. I see that it's a close call to get it across the line, but I'm confident in our library organizations to assist in that. So putting aside the easy question, moving to the much, much more difficult question, and that is about our financing framework, the overall picture of what we're doing here. My question focuses on how you treat capital costs versus expenses and what you're doing for our capital improvement plans that come through here every year. And there's a big number at the bottom that says unfunded. So how are you capturing the things that are already there? And these are big capital items. How are you dealing with that in your framework?

I'LL TRY TO ANSWER THAT IN TWO WAYS. THE FOCUS OF THIS FORECAST THAT WE SHARED IS PRETTY MUCH EXCLUSIVELY THE GENERAL FUND. AND I WOULD SAY THAT IN TERMS OF AN ONGOING RECURRING FUNDING SOURCE, THE GENERAL FUND PROVIDES PRECIOUS LITTLE SUPPORT TO THE CAPITAL PROGRAM. we have over the last couple of years through the budget process when we've had some excess fund balance we've allocated one-time money to capital to both augment like things like streets and roads augment storm drain projects but for the purpose of this forecast um there's again relatively small amount of general fund supporting capital the flip side of that is it's one of the main drivers of the unfunded or underfunded needs list when you start listing streets and roads sidewalks storm drains building facilities even equipment replacement Those are areas that absent new funding or a major reshuffling of our existing funding, we're going to be very challenged to keep up with.

So what is your strategy for capturing this missing, this very large missing component in the bigger picture framework?

Yeah, great question. I think preliminarily, and I think what... tried to point out and and we'll do a lot more work on it is um there's a concept in here on the framework of matching the solution with the need and so it's like for storm drain here's a strategy for streets and roads here's a strategy there's some cities that have said hey let's put a bond or ballot measure for infrastructure and you have everything in the kitchen sink and then there's a little less um direct nexus between the money that you're being raised and a particular need or project. So I think to answer your question, part of your question, the concept within the framework is to, identify the right solution for the problem, and it might be a different solution for the streets and roads piece than it would be for storm drains, for instance.

And what about instances where you don't have a solution? Because I think that that is the case for some things.

Yeah, well, I guess that gets back to the comment, which is there's likely never going to be enough money for everything. I think really what that question sparks in my mind is also the need to not only, you know, look at, you know, also ballot measures are not the silver bullet for all of these solutions. So the other funding sources that are out there leveraging our dollars in terms of grant used to be the state and federal government provided a lot more support. And we're looking forward to that coming back around again. I also think that it's going to be important, not saying anything you probably don't know, that we need to be very creative and thoughtful in sort of the financing mechanisms that we use so that where is it appropriate to do pay-as-you-go funding, where is it appropriate to do some short to medium term financing, and really try to leverage the city's resources as best we could, because the capital are not only large ticket items, the longer they're delayed, THOSE COSTS CONTINUE TO GO UP. AND A LOT OF TIMES THERE'S OPERATIONS AND MAINTENANCE COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH THOSE IMPROVEMENTS. SO I GUESS ALL I WOULD SAY IS WE WOULD HOPE TO TAKE A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO IT, BUT ALSO NOT OVER-SIMPLIFY WHAT THE SOLUTIONS MIGHT BE.

THANK YOU.

OKAY.

COUNCIL MEMBER HILL?

THANK YOU, MAYOR CAIT. THANK YOU AGAIN, DIRECTOR NEVAZIA, FOR A it felt similar to what we had met about, but it actually had a lot more information in the presentation today. And I especially appreciated the, the, the modeling of where the dip is. I appreciated that if we did nothing or at least sustained the current measures that are in place. I think that that was very stark. I'd like to focus attention on the pension liability schedule and That, of course, is in the future. But I'm curious if you could characterize that. Why is that so rigid? I mean, I think one way to think about it is we are on a schedule right now, and we are on a schedule to continue to pay it at a very aggressive rate until that date. I guess I'm curious why it would not be recommended to do any amount of smoothing mechanisms, if you will.

Well, I think my thought there, Councilmember Hill, is that it's less a matter of recommend taking a smoothing approach as to what options do we have for smoothing. Preliminary discussions, for instance, with the pension system, this methodology, their actual evaluation is fairly locked in in terms of, hey, can we either, you know, Yeah, you could stretch it out. I mean, you could play around with the actuarial assumptions to have some benefit in the short term, right? And then push out sort of the benefit that we're showing in 2031, 32. You've asked consistently, since I've been here, whether there's opportunities for us to sort of bridge that gap. I would say the closer we get, those might appear to be attractive, but that would be essentially like short term borrowing, like a line of credit that would give you money now and then you're paying a little bit interest if the financing works. There's also not a concern, but just need to be cognizant that the timing and the numbers are also a function of what happens in the financial markets and the investment returns. And so those are also very volatile based on what happens with inflation. We may actually see some relief in the short term on some pension costs based on recent investment gains, but they're not something that are So it is an area we need to look at. I don't have a great answer for you, but it's actually a bright side in this, which is it's not a dire picture through the forecast. There is that benefit and we need to account for that in our plan.

yes thank you and you've been very consistent in your response every time i bring it up which is the closer we get the easier it is to contemplate something like that so i'm not suggesting that we do it but i appreciate the opportunity to ask that question and then i um can i add one more piece to that and it ties a little bit maybe to councilmember bushy's question um

And I don't want to speak out of school, but some of the conversations we've had is we need to have a conversation about not only the path to 2032, but what are the priorities for that funding and not wait for 2032 to get there? Because for instance, it could be that, okay, we're going to, scrape by as best we can but then five million dollars is going in again you know but have that conversation before it has the potential to you know um be right in front of you and then it's much more difficult to be strategic about it thank you um i have three questions on three of the mechanisms that you that you had described so property transfer i appreciated the the gradation

And I'm curious if you could characterize, I know this evening we received a report on library tax, but with respect to property transfer and how it's implemented in other communities, clearly at 0.02, it seems very conservative. I'm curious if you had to gauge a sweet spot in terms of how a community would respond. RECEIVE A PROPERTY TRANSFER TAX ON THAT SCALE?

LET ME TRY TO ANSWER HALF OF THAT QUESTION. SO FIRST OF ALL, JUST TO CLARIFY THAT THESE PROPERTY TRANSFER TAXES IN CALIFORNIA ARE SOLELY THE PURVIEW OF CHARTER CITIES. SO WHEN YOU LOOK AT WHAT CITIES HAVE THESE, THEY'RE ALL GOING TO BE CHARTER CITIES AND THEY HAPPEN TO BE NOT EXCLUSIVELY BUT PREDOMINANTLY WITHIN THE BAY AREA. SO THE PLUS SIDE IS THERE ARE COMPARABLE data points if you will um all around us um i would say that the 0.2 percent is if not the it's about the low among the lowest rates doesn't mean it's easy to increase it it doesn't mean it's um but the cities around us will typically um I would say and I have a list of them for another time in the one to one and a half percent range. And more recently, cities have implemented a little bit more kind of progressive structures where there's different rates depending on the value of the resale. So we're doing some analysis on what that might look like and also compared to move. But there are let's just say there are cities nearby who are um no bigger than san rafael who have a property transfer tax that are generating like 13 million dollars a year in property transfer tax instead of the one and a half percent the one and a half million that we generate and that's one of the reasons why it

LEASE ON PAPER LOOKS TO BE SOMETHING AT LEAST WORTH KICKING THE TIRES ON THANK YOU THAT SOUNDS VERY ATTRACTIVE MEASURE G WAS MY NEXT QUESTION I KNOW THAT AND THIS IS MAYBE MORE FOR REMINDING THE PUBLIC WHERE WE ARE WITH MEASURE G THIS COUNCIL DID PROVIDE A a smaller tax um for one of our licensee classifications uh for cannabis and uh just to remind the public when would our next opportunity to potentially restore uh that tax to its original level i think my recollection was every two years um

that's a good question my sense is is that it's at the discretion of the council i think i think it is it's every two years but micah um would you be able to come up and maybe speak to um or at least verify that as it relates to measure g

Yeah, Dr. Henkel, my question, my question, I'm glad I could help you get the blood flowing. Measure G. Don't answer emails while you're doing this. Yeah, no, it's okay. No, it's okay. But what's the question again? My question was related to Measure G. I think my recollection is that this council had taken action about a year ago to provide a reduction in taxes for one of our licensee classifications. My recollection was the the delivery service, and that our next opportunity to restore that tax would be in about a year from now is my record.

Yeah, it's a two-year window. I'll have to confirm that with staff, but that's what I recall. It's really consistent with what we've done in the prior years for that measure. And it's also me forecasting kind of where that particular industry is going, and there's already change with the federal law. the window of opportunity as we kind of explore um options I think will come into play like now so so as we look across the board for I guess revenue collection or business growth or economic development activities I do think this will become more of an item I know we're already targeted in that and it is actually part of the council doc adopted strategic plan and work program on evaluation of the cannabis tax so those continue to be that that approach

Great. Thank you. If you'll indulge me with one final question, um, uh, is around the transient, sorry. Yeah. The TOT, the TOT. Um, I, I appreciate that you had a slide on it and, um, I saw that, uh, we, we, what we are talking about is a 2% that is going to, uh, county visitors, uh, bureau. And, um, I was surprised because what I thought I saw on the slide was an amount a year that was more than what I had thought. So I don't know if you could tell me if we were able to, and this is optimistic, but if we were able to recover 100% of that 2%, what would that be? Okay, so just to clarify it,

CURRENTLY, THE CITY COLLECTS TWO HOTEL TAXES SLASH ASSESSMENTS ON HOTEL YEARS. THE CITY TRANSIENT OCCUPANCY TAX, THE TOT, IS AT 10%. AND THAT'S WHAT YOU SAW ON THE SLIDE GENERATES THE BUDGET IS $3.9 MILLION. IT'S ACTUALLY DOING A LITTLE BIT BETTER THAN THAT. THAT'S ONE OF THE BRIGHT SPOTS ON OUR REVENUE. SO ABOUT $4 MILLION A YEAR COMES THROUGH THAT CITY-IMPOSED TAX. we also merely collect on behalf of the county an additional two percent essentially a hotel assessment so if you do the math if 10 gets you 4 million then 1 5 of that is collected and passed on to the county which funds convention and visitors and so the concept uh just on that little piece is um you know if that were split, say, 50-50, that would generate close to $500,000 to $700,000 a year that could support targeted economic development here in San Rafael.

That sounds very attractive as well.

Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Yaren Scoletti.

Thank you. Most of my questions have been answered. I do have a question around the budget, and I noticed that one of the variables is the Marinewood emergency for 600,000. So I don't know if it's a question or a comment that maybe they need to go through, you know, elections to pass that through Marinewood, because... I'm trying to formulate a question like I'm not sure that the constituents that we represent will be happy about supporting that.

So without getting too deep into that question, I'll just say we are working with the council ad hoc subcommittee on this issue. And one of the challenges for the city is just that the Marinwood Community Services District's Fire Department responds to a significant number of calls also within North San Rafael. And so we have a joint interest in coming up with a financially sustainable plan to ensure adequate staffing and coverage coming from that entity.

Thank you. And I think those are all my questions. I guess the universe that you have used is like 410 people. That's okay. Thank you.

Thank you. And as I'm a member of the subcommittee and there were excellent questions already asked, I don't have any additional ones. So I will open up the public comment on this item. If you would like to provide input or thoughts or questions on the fiscal sustainability framework, now is your opportunity. Okay, not seeing anyone. I will close the public comment and bring it back for comments because I know you are looking for comments from the council. So go ahead, Vice Mayor.

No, I think it's where we're at right now. I think it's clear from seeing the current budget situation and with Measure P that, I mean, it's not Measure P, sorry, with the renewal of the tax measure that, I mean, from the library services, I'm happy with the community results that we've seen. And I think our community does respond in support of libraries that I would be in favor of moving forward.

Thank you. Council Member Duran-Skaladi.

Thank you. Yeah, I concur. And I think the library is doing such an amazing job and they have like great programs. So I think that that will definitely help when we go to the community. So and for the budget, I look forward to our next budget meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Bushy.

I just want to emphasize the importance of the financial framework. This underpins everything that we do. We couldn't get those numbers for police and fire and library without thinking about this ahead of time. And the timeline is very long. So this is. the most important thing we do. So bring us bold plans that we can be proud of in the decades to come. And that will, of course, include renewing Measure D. Thank you.

Council Member Hill.

Yeah, thank you, Director Navazio. And I think we can also thank pretty much every department head and every department for looking at this because this, as you put it, there's a nexus point between what we capture and then what we spend it on. I think that's really important. I appreciate the modeling. It shows us if we don't do anything, I appreciate that point of view very, very much. It carves out what we need to be thinking about over the next several years. And I appreciate every knob that you've presented. I would love maybe the next time when we look at this, what would it mean if we were successful with every knob too? I also like to contemplate a happy path as well. And then with respect to Measure D, I also am supportive. I saw the qualification of what would be necessary around community engagement and making certain that we have to, it's going to be tight. I appreciated the characterization that nothing would be guaranteed. Nothing is guaranteed, but I appreciated your characterization. Thank you.

Thank you. And I concur. Thank you, Director Navazio. Thank you, ACM Stefanski, for a great presentation. Kurt and Charles, always a pleasure. The framework, I am gratified that we're looking at the big picture. And I thought Councilmember Bushy's questions were excellent in terms of that long-term planning. No one wants to sit here and KNOW THAT YOU CAN'T HAVE ALL THE MONEY TO DO ALL THE THINGS, AND YOU SAID THAT SEVERAL TIMES, DIRECTOR. WE ALL KNOW THAT. WE KNOW THAT IN OUR PERSONAL LIVES, WE KNOW THAT IN THE CITY, AND BEING REMINDED OF THAT. AND THAT'S WHY THE COUNCIL MEMBER, THE COUNCIL GOALS AND OBJECTIVES, THE THREE-YEAR GOALS AND OBJECTIVES, WERE ONE OF THE FIRST TEARING OF THE PRIORITIES OF WHERE WE'RE GOING TO BE SPENDING OUR EFFORTS AND OUR RESOURCES OVER THE NEXT THREE YEARS. WITHIN THAT, THE WORK PLAN. AND SO THE WORK PLAN, DEPENDING ON WHAT IS ABLE TO BE ACCOMPLISHED, DEPENDING WHAT TYPE OF FUNDING IS AVAILABLE, I KNOW WE'RE GOING TO BE HAVING THE WORK PLAN YEAR TWO COMING FORWARD I THINK IN APRIL OR MAY.

IN MAY.

SO I THINK THAT'S ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE THE COMMUNITY CONVERSATION. AND DIRECTOR, I REALLY APPRECIATE THAT EVERY SEASON IS BUDGET SEASON. AGAIN, HAVING SAT ON THIS DIAS FOR A LONG TIME, WE'VE ALWAYS TALKED ABOUT THE BUDGET UP HERE, BUT I FEEL LIKE IT REALLY HAS BEEN AN INTEGRAL PART OF EVERY SINGLE CONVERSATION, AND I THINK THAT'S IMPORTANT. I MEAN, I KNOW IT'S IMPORTANT BECAUSE IT DEMONSTRATES THE TRADE-OFFS THAT WE ARE CONSTANTLY, THE FIVE OF US, STAFF AND THE COMMUNITY IS HAVING TO DO, AND HAVING TO CONSIDER THOSE TRADE-OFFS. AND OF COURSE, THE FIRST ADDITIONAL POSSIBLE REVENUE MEASURE IS MEASURE D OF THAT BIG BUCKET AND THE BIG PICTURE. AND I'M HEARTENED, EVEN THOUGH THE NUMBERS ARE TIGHT, IT'S A SCARY TIME IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW. AND SO TO ME WHEN I LOOK AT THOSE NUMBERS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE GREATER WORLD, I ACTUALLY WAS HEARTENED. PEOPLE RECOGNIZE THAT THE LIBRARY CONTINUES TO BE A DEMOCRATIC PLACE AND IT'S WELL RUN HERE IN SAN RAFALE. SO I ALSO WOULD SUPPORT PUTTING THAT ON THE MEASURE, ON THE, BRINGING IT FORWARD TO THE COUNCIL TO CONSIDER PUTTING ON THE VALID AT OUR NEXT MEETING. Thank you so much for your presentation. And this item is closed. We will move along to the next item, the most patient people in the room. Our last agenda item. Oh, wait, do I need to vote on this?

Yeah.

Oh, wait, hold on. Let me vote on this. I forgot because we're receiving the presentation. Go ahead, Council Member Hill.

I MOVE TO RECEIVE THE PRESENTATION RELATED TO THE FISCAL SUSTAINABILITY FRAMEWORK AND PRELIMINARY RECOMMENDATIONS RELATED TO POTENTIAL 2026 BALLOT MEASURES.

MOVED AND SECONDED. ROLL CALL, PLEASE.

she got it she got the guy you got the eye okay councilmember hi that motion carries five zero thank you okay our our

Final item this evening, and we are so grateful to your patience, is the Downtown San Rafael Arts District Public Art Program 2025-26 Implementation 5 Public Art Proposals. And I am just delighted that this is on our agenda this evening. Welcome, Stacey. Welcome, Craig. I know Local Edition is here. It's a great way to end a very comprehensive meeting. So when you're ready, I will turn it over to you.

I NEED TO ANNOUNCE THAT I NEED TO DISQUALIFY MYSELF FROM PARTICIPATION. THIS MATTER HAS A LOCATION THAT IS WITHIN 500 FEET OF MY RESIDENCE, AND THUSLY I CANNOT PARTICIPATE. SO I WILL BE LEAVING THE DIAS NOW AND I HOPE SOMEONE WILL COME RETRIEVE ME FOR A PUBLIC COMMENT.

WE WILL. THANK YOU. THANK YOU FOR THAT, COUNCIL MEMBER HILL.

ALL RIGHT. GOOD EVENING, MAYOR KATE AND CITY COUNCIL. I'M CRAIG VERAMAY. I'M ONE OF THE CITY'S ASSISTANT LIBRARY AND RECREATION DIRECTORS. AND I ALSO WEAR THE HAT AS THE STAFF LIAISON FOR THE CITY'S PUBLIC ART REVIEW BOARD. HAPPY TO BE HERE THIS EVENING. WE'RE HERE TO DISCUSS A PROPOSAL TO INSTALL FIVE NEW PUBLIC ART INSTALLATIONS IN DOWNTOWN SAN RAFEL. And before we get started, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge a few folks and individuals and organizations that have been a part of this. I think this is a really big deal for San Rafael, and I hope that we can celebrate this milestone moment. um one of the groups i want to thank is the california arts council uh downtown santa fe was designated as one of 14 cultural districts in 2017 and in 2025 the state certified 10 additional cultural districts meaning that santa fe is now one of 24 districts statewide i think that's a really impressive accomplishment for san rafael and something to celebrate WE'RE GRATEFUL FOR THE CALIFORNIA ARTS COUNCIL'S ONGOING WORK TO LEVERAGE THE STATE'S ARTISTIC AND CULTURAL ASSETS AND WE'RE ALSO VERY THANKFUL FOR THE GRANT FUNDING THAT HELPS SUPPORT PROJECTS LIKE THIS ONE. ALSO WANT TO CELEBRATE THE DOWNTOWN CENTERVILLE ARTS DISTRICT WITHOUT THEIR ongoing efforts over the last 10 years, we likely would not have been certified as a cultural district. There were a few organizations that have been involved with us all throughout as stakeholders. Artworks Downtown, the California Film Institute, the Downtown Business Improvement District, the Marin Society of Artists and Youth and Arts, They've put in countless volunteer efforts and hours to help make the San Rafael Arts District what it is today. It's a district that's growing and has really helped support public art in our community. I also want to thank the Public Art Review Board, artists who submitted proposals. We received so many proposals. I know that Stacey and Local Edition will speak a little more to that, but had a really great response to this. Many community members were involved in sharing their opinions about this project. I think more than a thousand community members submitted survey responses or showed up at outreach events. AND I WANT TO THANK STACY WHO HAS BEEN A REAL CHAMPION FOR THIS PROJECT, HAS REALLY TAKEN POINT ON THIS WITH THE COMMUNITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT AND HAS BEEN AN INSTRUMENTAL ROLE IN THE SANDERFELD ART DISTRICT STAKEHOLDER GROUP. SO I'M GOING TO MOVE ON TO GIVE YOU A QUICK OVERVIEW OF THE AGENDA FOR THIS EVENING. IF WE CAN ADVANCE THE SLIDE. There we go. So I'm going to briefly share an overview of the city's public art review process. We are recommending that council approve the installation of five pieces of public art. You'll notice that there are two resolutions. I think that is now a moot point. The thinking for staff was to bifurcate this to allow council to potentially participate without having to recuse. BUT THE, YOU KNOW, YOU'LL SEE VERY SIMILAR LANGUAGE HERE. I THINK AT THIS POINT WE WILL MAYBE ASK THE CITY CLERK IF WE NEED TO CONTINUE WITH TWO RESOLUTIONS OR IF THERE WOULD BE AN OPPORTUNITY POTENTIALLY TO CONSOLIDATE INTO ONE RESOLUTION.

I WOULD DEFER TO OUR CITY ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, BUT WE DO HAVE TWO RESOLUTIONS IN OUR AGENDA PACKET AND THE CITY COUNCIL HAS REVIEWED TWO RESOLUTIONS. I THINK IT WOULD BE EASIEST FOR THE MINUTES TO HAVE BOTH.

ADOPT AS RAN. AND SO I'M GOING TO MOVE ON TO THE NEXT SLIDE THEN. THE PUBLIC ART REVIEW PROCESS FOR THE CITY IS INTENDED TO HELP MAKE SURE THAT WE'RE ALIGNING WITH THE CITY'S PUBLIC ART REVIEW GUIDELINES. WE RECEIVE PROPOSALS, STAFF THEN REVIEW THEM TO ENSURE THAT THEY MEET ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS. WE REVIEW THEM FOR LOGISTICAL MAINTENANCE AND SAFETY ISSUES. AND THEN IF THEY DO ADHERE TO THE GUIDELINES, WE THEN ADVANCE THEM TO THE PUBLIC ART REVIEW BOARD. This project was reviewed by our Public Art Review Board at their January 14th regular meeting. They recommended that it be brought forward to City Council, and now it's here before you. So the Public Art Review Board does take a look at several selection criteria. We review project readiness, qualifications, funding, community engagement, maintenance, design, and diversity. These are all important criteria for us to ensure that the public art really does adhere to the city's guidelines. Quick note on diversity. Our goal is to ensure that we continue to add to our art portfolio. The review board intent is that they help us monitor the overall development and really encourage a balance in the city's collection over time with respect to the background identities of the artists, as well as the styles of expression, the media, and the genre of art. And so I'm excited about this project. I think that this really does speak to that. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Stacey to introduce herself and our consultants here.

Thank you, Craig, very much for that. Good evening, my name is Stacey Lauman, Economic Development Division. Thank you for taking the time to talk about this. I agree, it's a pretty exciting thing for the city of San Rafael. So just as a reminder, we came in front of you in June 2025 to ask for you to approve an expenditure of $250,000 from our arts grant from the California Arts Council. So we allocated $250,000 to be spent on public art for this purpose and in collaboration with our selected consultants, Local Edition Creative. So the purpose of the public art program is to enhance RFL's vitality downtown. and celebrate our cultural identity, as Craig mentioned earlier. And the program's objective has been very clear, which is to introduce five new high-quality pieces of art for the public enjoyment and draw attention to Marin as a cultural hub within Marin County. So again, I'd like to acknowledge our Downtown Samoa Arts District Steering Committee. They've worked really hard on this, and we also had a jury participate, so... Folks have dedicated their time and interest to conceiving of this project and bringing it forward to you today. With that, I'd like to introduce Terry Loring and Sage Loring of Local Edition Creative. I'm also happy to say that our presentation is going to get quite a bit more colorful from this point forward. We've worked together for the last six months to develop and curate the program for your consideration tonight. And they're here to share with you some of the specifics of the artists and the artworks that have been preliminary selected by the Public Art Review Board. So come on down and join me. While they're coming down, I just wanted to mention that... We presented to you previously and I will remind again this timeline. So in early or in mid last year, we came before you to approve the program. In August, we selected some semi-finalists from over 120 applicants to the program. We had a public outreach process. Terry's gonna talk about that a little bit. We selected some semi-finalist art proposals. In January, we went to the Public Art Review Board to consider finalists there. And here we are in front of you, the City Council, for final approval of the locations and the artwork. And in keeping with our timeline, we anticipate that all of the artworks will be installed, with the exception of our second year sculpture, all of our artworks will be installed in summer to fall of 2026. So with that, I'll turn it over to Terry Loring. And I'll step back for a minute because Sage is also going to speak. So we'll do some chair shifting.

Okay. Thank you, Stacey. And hello, Mayor Kate and council. We are very pleased to be back here. It's been a bit of a journey and I really do want to thank Stacey and Craig so much for their collaboration and partnership throughout this year. It has been quite a journey. We've all put to collectively a lot of work and we're really just very proud of the artworks that are going to be presented. Sage is going to share those artworks with you. I just had a couple additional slides to share with I know that Craig and Stacy highlighted the selection committee, and I really wanted to just point out some of those individuals that were a part of all of this, because it really did take a lot of people in the community. They spent their time, and they really are dedicated to seeing this through. So Bo Blanchard from the California Film Institute, Elizabeth Setton with Artworks Downtown, Karina Ramirez with the Multicultural Center of Marin. Meg Riley and Kathy Leather from Marin Society of Artists, Morgan Schoffler with Youth and Arts, Sarah Shepard from Sarah Shepard Gallery, and Sarah Tipple with the Downtown Business Improvement District. So as we talk together with the committee and really guiding them through the process of what we're looking for, considering those guidelines in place and the criteria that Stacey mentioned, there's a few other things that really just to look for, as people, the artists are submitting their designs, their artworks, originally they submitted just a body of work, and then we selected artists to go forward with the design phase. Each of those artists were paid for a design fee and a concept for their particular space that they were assigned to. And so there were some criteria just for our committee to consider as they were looking at these designs and really were looking for originality. These pieces are all original pieces of artworks that are going to now be owned by the city. Technical proficiency, there's a lot to think about when you're installing artwork And besides the design, how is it going to be installed? Will it translate from paper or digital technology? properly into the physical realm. Consistency, you know, that really helps when you see an artist's body of work, what components of their work can you see in the design concept that might've been done also in other places and public spaces. So you can see again, how that translate, that will translate into the works that they're presenting for the city of San Rafael. Presentation, the quality of the artwork submitted, and the artist's statement, you know, it really shows their intent and their investment into what they're presenting for the city. Three of these works were specifically designed for the city of San Rafael. So a lot of these artists put a lot of thought and time into what they wanted for those spaces. A LITTLE BIT ABOUT OUR COMMUNICATION SNAPSHOT, WHAT WE DID FOR OUTREACH TO THE COMMUNITY TO LET THEM KNOW ABOUT THE PROGRAM. WE HAD FLYERS. THERE WAS A NEWSLETTER. I THINK IT WENT OUT AT LEAST ONCE, MAYBE TWICE. EVERYTHING WAS SENT OUT IN ENGLISH AND IN SPANISH. social media posts, over 2,500 flyers were distributed throughout the city hall, the libraries, community centers, arts organizations, businesses. We did pop-up events, which included showing here, actually in the city hall lobby for a week, the artworks were on display, the proposals, Pond Farm Brewing, we had a pop-up session there, Trick or Treat on 4th Street, and then the storefront window display right there at City Plaza. And here's a just an overview and a lot of you have seen this, since it was right here in the lobby so it was a really nice overview of just each of the proposals which included the narratives of the artworks being presented. And with that I am going to turn the MIC over to sage, so he can share the design concepts and the artworks just.

Okay.

Thank you all. It's very nice to see you again. There's nothing else to say. They've already said it all. Very rigorous due process and we're super honored and excited. We've got to engage with a lot of the community besides the stakeholders in this process. So we're at a point where All of the laborious stuff is done, and the fun, I think, can begin. It's still work, but this is what makes us so excited, is to bring artwork to cities. And this is just a few pieces of art, but I'll let everybody know, if the artists that were chosen or other artists who want to contribute to this, This is the gateway. This opens up more opportunities for them. So they should be encouraged, not discouraged. This is very typical, this tip of the iceberg, and this gets people to be more involved in the community as well. So we'll just go over the artists, just let you know a little bit about them.

So first up is C Street Garage. Oh, let's see how I get, oh, here we go, okay.

Okay, the C Street Garage. The artist is a resident of St. Helena, and it's Brian Valenzuela. The artwork that he put together, it's really beautiful because he chose to do this mirrored image, a day and night, a duality. It's called Handle With Care, and it really is about dual meaning. Handle the community, the people that live here with care, but also the environment. And one thing we'll notice throughout the whole evening is that there's a theme. It's an ecological theme with the murals. And that just really fits San Rafael. The style and the way that the subject will all be different, but the actual ecological theme kind of resonates throughout it. So they all complement each other. It's a really good spot for this to happen.

One thing I wanted to add about this particular design that doesn't really represent itself in what you're seeing on the screen is that the artist, Brian, his signature style in the areas that are gray, which for his is in this concept hands, but he does this with people in his body of work, too. But he writes, handwrites handwrites. words of poetry script words that just kind of are powerful meaning of care and love and he's going to do that on the hands of this mural so and again he doesn't use spray paint this is all brush paint and then with the the hands it's going to be done with with paint markers this will be about a probably a six week to eight week process and scaffolding with the pedestrian pass-through It's a it's a beautiful tribute. It's a piece that from afar, you can admire it. And then when you get up close, there's just so much more to discover. Oh, yeah, there we go. I forgot this was in there. So you can kind of get a better idea of how that will will translate in the actual mural. Okay.

Okay, so the second street retaining wall, we were, this call for artists actually went out to all of California. We wanted to just see, A, mark at San Rafael and get people excited about this area and see really who would want to apply. We've got plenty of artists from L.A., San Diego, all over the place. So there was no lack of quality and interest. Again, this is a big deal. And of course, locally as well, there was a lot of interest. And as Terry and Stacey and Craig went through, we had a lot of qualifications. We had to make sure that everybody could fit before they were ultimately considered and selected and so right here Wyatt Hersey is from right San Anselmo right next door and he actually is born and raised there so this is a super local artist he's got a few pieces actually in Marin So he's very excited. His piece right here is San Rafael Tapestry. And he's just honoring the cultural, historical, ecological pieces, but in a very nice, heavily kind of graphic illustrated design driven way. So again, that theme carries through from what you just saw, but it's just in a very different style. And it also fits this spot. So if you're at the traffic light, you have things to look at. If you're biking, if you're walking, it just flows so nicely along there. A lot of intention. When we actually did one of our pop-ups, there were some people at Ponds Farm that went to high school with Wyatt. So they were super excited. So when we were in the public, it was very nice to engage with people and hear their feedback and see the excitement and hear just about, in general, how everybody knows this is such a meaningful process. And this is also going to be done all in brush paints as well. So, funny enough, all of California, but it all did end up being Bay Area selected artists. And Paz de la Casalza, she actually is from San Francisco. very well-known artist as well. And this is her style. She did not really create this style for the fountain, but this is kind of her, this is what she likes to focus on. Water, flow, energy, you know. And again, it's just worked out so well that all these artists had a natural theme that fit the area and very different styles. And this is an untitled piece. It's very, it's kind of abstract and And I think it fits for what it's supposed to be. It lets just people kind of take it all in. It doesn't have to be, a lot of artists don't like to name their pieces, so it doesn't have to have a name, but it really fits this area. And she's inspired by the hills that you can see right behind the plaza, the trees right there. The fact is the fountain is actually very good for this kind of pattern. Sure, it looks like water, but it's abstract. It's very modern art. And also, those top columns will also have that pattern continue, but they're going to be tiles. So the tile element is very different as far as the texture and how you see it. It resonates in a different way, so it's mixed media now. So we have these two elements going together. It's going to be quite lovely. And we have met with all the artists and had multiple phone calls, in-person meetings. They're super excited. They're very, they visited the site. So, I mean, you've got a team that's not just excited to get as an art would like to do a commission project, but here they're very, very excited to contribute to the city. AND GOING ON TO THE SCULPTURES, VERY FORTUNATE TO GET TWO PIECES OF ARTWORK THAT WOULD BE A LOT MORE EXPENSIVE, BUT WE LUCKED OUT IN A LOT OF DIFFERENT REASONS AND WAYS THAT WE ARE ABLE TO HAVE THESE TWO PIECES COMING UP FOR A BUDGET THAT FITS IN WITH THE PUBLIC ART BUDGET. So Martin Taylor is a prolific sculptor and he's actually done so much work in the Bay Area. He lives in the peninsula and this piece was an existing piece. We didn't have the money to actually commission sculpture work because it's very, very expensive. So our goal was to find existing pieces that would fit where we wanted to place them. And this was a piece that when we, when Martin sent his application, we talked with him about, you know, where it potentially would be, which is going to be located up on the new Meridian on 4th Street. It's basically a gateway piece. It's a piece that welcomes people coming in to 4th Street, to the art district. It's an uplifting piece and it's called Touch the Sky. And it really is about just kind of going for things. It's aspirational. And it's got an element of LED lights. So the lighted portion of it, it's beautiful at night. And we're going to acquire this piece permanently for the city. So it's a beautiful piece to have. And even temporarily, it will actually be placed, I think, somewhere before it's permanent place so people can view it even before it gets installed. So again, everything has went through engineer specs, everything's been cleared. So it's just down to showing everybody what's coming up.

Yeah, I was just going to add to the placement of it. So once the Meridian is completed, which it sounds like right now will be sometime in the fall. So we're hoping to acquire this piece during the spring of this year and then place it temporarily out front of the community center. so that people can have an opportunity to interact with it, see it up close, engage, and then be excited about where it's going to be placed permanently when it goes, when the Meridian is ready for it. So that is our ideal plan. And then the last and final piece is a temporary installation for City Hall entrance. And as Stacey mentioned, we've worked in this to be a two-year program. So we'll start with one for the fiscal 26-27 year, and then another one will come in for 27-28.

And the thought, too, is, again, to... have this program somehow. We were so fortunate that this grant came through for the city that maybe more grants can come through and we can continue the program. And we're hoping that the California Arts Council members and other stakeholders will come out here and see that and give us opportunity to help facilitate more artwork. So this piece is very high end, beautiful abstract piece, and it's currently on display in Hayes Valley. So, I mean, if you'd like to see it, you can go down there and see it in person. And again, we're very lucky. Oleg Lovikin, he's an artist from East Palo Alto. And his family, he comes from a family of stone artists. uh cutters so that's his first medium a long history of that and he got into other medium working with steel so this piece again it's it's typically something we think we wouldn't be able to acquire for the budget we had but he really wanted to place it here he thought it's a good spot he actually liked the contrast of the um the building architecture with this, it's a, it's a stark contrast. It's very modern, but again, if it's placed for a year, this, the beauty of it is to get people thinking, you know, it's art subjective, but placed there for a year still is a very impactful way to interact with it. And it'll definitely catch people's attention. It's quite beautiful. And again, it's one of the things where you can just look at and it's, it's going to be very nice for the mocha as well. It's such a modern piece that I think it'll drive traffic for a lot of People are coming to see these sculptures as well as the murals. and everything's we mentioned this before as far as you know care that's part of the the considerations and murals would be very easy to take care of they'll be coated with an anti-graffiti uv coating if the city wants to wash it every once in a while the pressure washer if something happened to it you know dirt dust accumulates but really it's it's fairly maintenance free the sculpture is the same thing one's on there temporarily won't have to worry about it for touch the sky Maybe light dusting, hosing off every once in a while. But these are all pretty self-contained pieces. And Touch the Sky has been on display. It's been on display in some harsh conditions, so it's been touring around. This is, again, an existing piece, but it's very new. I think it's only two years old. So, and the reason I think one great, for us, one great get is Martin is moving to France for a residency for four years. So the timing is very good. So he's selling a lot of his art to fund that stuff. So all these things really worked out in our favor to get these high quality pieces. So I think, I guess that's it, huh? I guess that's it. Any questions?

I think we all just want to clap for a moment. oh my gosh thank you again so much i just want to you guys have been so uh excited about this and it's encouraging we really appreciate it well thank you sage and thank you terry i know we'll have um uh commentary but first i just want to start as we normally do with any questions and so uh question no questions only please questions only um in terms of the two sculptures uh

Are we going to be able to prevent anyone climbing on them? I can't imagine, but in their current state, do they have signage or fencing or...

so the sculpture that will be on the second and fourth street that will have some hedges around it inside the median so we don't anticipate there's going to be very much pedestrian activity in that space in the case of the sculpture that will be out in front of this building if you approve that it's a very substantial piece and it's been engineered to stand free freestanding so i've been i've seen it in san francisco and there's a sign that says Please do not touch and please do not climb to the extent that, you know, we won't be able to police people's activities 24 hours a day. We have not anticipated any kind of fencing or partition around it.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. And actually, I'd be curious what Sage and Terry have to say with that, because you've been doing this a lot longer than we have. And not just these pieces, but in general, when a community puts in an art piece like this.

Yeah, Stacey summed it up very well. But the nice thing about sculptures nowadays, I guess, is that artists are already thinking ahead for that because they see that people start, you know, Climbing or pulling or whatever. So they're thinking about that in the engineering of it from the onset. So when you think about touch the sky, that has been built for people to interact with, to get up close. And obviously you don't want to have them climb on it, but we put signage out, but it is still safe for those people. things we don't encourage it we don't want it to happen um and same thing with oleg's piece um you know that giant sculpture surprisingly it's self-standing it doesn't need to be anchored into the ground it's very sturdy and it's a heavy heavy piece so yeah they're built for this yeah fantastic thank you councilmember iran scolatti

Yes, thank you. I love it. It's great. The plaza, the new painting, is the fountain still going to have water or it will be dry?

so you know that is a decision I think the city is looking at I think you know right now the scope of this project would not really speak to whether the fountain would be operational or not but we have touched base with our public works department and talked about operational needs for the fountain it has some deferred maintenance I think the recommendation from staff right now is that we would work to decommission the fountain and no longer use it as a water feature and I think that

YOU KNOW ONE OF THE REASONS THAT STAFF AND OUR PUBLIC WORKS TEAMS IDENTIFIED THE FOUND AND AS PART OF THIS UM PROJECT IN A SUITABLE LOCATION IS BECAUSE OF THAT INTENT OKAY THANK YOU UM AND THEN WELL I GUESS THIS IS MORE LIKE I NOTICED THAT MOCA IS NOT INVOLVED IN THE COMMITTEE UM AND I WAS JUST CURIOUS TO SEE IF MAYBE THEY DIDN'T APPLY OR MAYBE YOU ALREADY HAD ENOUGH people in the committee that you didn't need anymore. Anybody else?

Yes. Thank you. Actually, one of the jurists is Sarah Shepard and she is on the board of Marin Mocha.

Perfect.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Bushy. Any questions?

Can we get more? Yeah.

No, the answer to that. I don't have any questions either. So I'll open this up to public comment. If you'd like to comment on this item now is your opportunity. Uh,

Daniel Alm, President of West End Neighborhood Association, and I'm excited to see in my neighborhood we are receiving two pieces of artwork. We are a neighborhood that is the gateway to San Rafael from the west side of the county. I would like to note we are also a neighborhood without any public spaces or public parks, so to be recognized with two pieces of artwork is really great, and hopefully I'm speaking for Councilmember Hill, who is absent from this conversation, but we are excited to have that.

Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Any other public comment? Not seeing any, I'll close the public comment and bring it back for commendations and excitement. I'll start with the Vice Mayor.

Amazing. I mean, I was so excited when I read through the staff report to see it. I also had noted in my notebook a long time ago, which ones I liked and some of them were selected. So I was really excited. So that's great. It looks beautiful. I'm really excited. And thank you to the work you have done in such a short amount of time in city time. That was like lightning speed. So it is amazing to be here at this point, and the fact that we're going to be able to actually see some of this in early summer, I'm saying late spring, early summer, is amazing. So thank you all, and looking forward to it.

Thank you, Council Member Bushey.

I just want to focus for a minute on the nuts and bolts of how you got here, the process, the people that you had involved, the outreach, all of that, and the fact that there's no one here opposing any of this. speaks to a very well thought out, well done process. So compliments on that. And also on the procurement side, I know some things were, you know, fortuitous, but you spent this money very wisely. I mean, for these, particularly the sculptures are, VERY REASONABLY PRICED. SO THIS IS A DELIGHT TO HAVE A WELL RUN AND WELL FISCALLY MANAGED PROCESS THAT BRINGS FORWARD SUCH BEAUTIFUL PIECES FOR SAN RAFALE. SO CONGRATULATIONS ON ALL FRONTS.

THANK YOU. COUNCILMEMBER URAN SCALATI.

Yes, thank you. This is very exciting. I concur with Council Member Bushy about the process. I remember when you were going out there to the public and it was very well advertised. So I think everybody felt that they got an opportunity to voice their opinions. And I'm really excited that you went out to a lot of artists to submit because that shows the interest for the city. And I think the art is beautiful. And I'm... I love art in cities. I mean, that's how art and the arts is what makes us different, I guess, from animals, right? Well, maybe not all of them. There are some chimpanzees and other species. But anyway, so I feel it really represents our city. I'm thinking already, like, hey, the entrance in the city from 101... Central San Rafael would be a great place right there where the flags are to put something. So I'm already thinking, hey, how can we continue this? So congratulations and thank you so much. We are really going to enjoy this.

i'll just concur what a great way to end a very big meeting and i was reflecting that when i moved here over 30 years ago there actually was public art there was some art that was out from the library so even though it feels new we are returning to a long time tradition that has been in san rafael for various reasons it went by the wayside and so to reconstitute that in this time feels amazing AND I ALSO HAD SUCH DEEP APPRECIATION FOR ALL THE FOLKS THAT PARTICIPATED. IT'S KIND OF SCARY TO THINK OF A CITY COUNCIL, NO OFFENSE TO US, BUT APPROVING ART. AND EVEN THOUGH, YES, WE'RE THE FINAL STEP IN THIS, THE REALITY IS YOU HAD A JURY OF EXCEPTIONAL PROFESSIONALS. THE WORK THAT SAGE AND TERI THAT YOU HAVE DONE HERE, BUT WHAT YOU'VE DONE IN OTHER PARTS OF THE BAY AREA. AND I REMEMBER WHEN YOU CAME TO US, WHEN STACY introduced us to you and your deep, your ability to really engage with the community, which has been mentioned up here on the dais really came through and you have 100% delivered on that. And these works of art are incredible. So thank you. Thank you, Craig, for helping to shepherd all of it. And of course, Stacy, for your ongoing enthusiasm. keeping it going um i cannot wait for can we have like five separate ribbon cuttings i don't know if that even is a thing but i just think you know let's try to do it that way and really um just maximize the joy that these pieces will bring so congratulations for all the work that you've done i'm honored that we get to be the ones to make the official motion so i'll start with how vice mayor how about you make the first motion on this item

Yes, I agree. Thank goodness the experts actually got to this because if it was left to us, I'm All right, adopt a resolution approving the installation of three murals and one temporary sculpture. At for public locations in San Rafael as presented by the downtown center fell arts district and authorizing the city manager to execute art license agreements with each artist. and amending the professional service agreement with local edition marketing llc to increase the agreement by $10,000 bringing the total not to exceed amount to 260,000.

Second. Second.

Moved and seconded. Roll call, please. Council Member Bushy. Aye. Council Member Hill is absent. Vice Mayor Kurtz. Aye. Council Member Yadens-Gulati.

Aye.

Mayor Kate. Aye.

That motion carries 4-0. Council Member Bushy, you want to make the next one?

I move that we adopt a resolution approving the installation of one sculpture in San Rafael and authorizing the city manager to execute an art license agreement with the artist. Second. Second.

moved and seconded roll call please councilmember bushy hi councilmember hill is absent vice mayor kurtz aye councilmember yudens galati aye mayor kate i that motion carries 4-0 thank you all congratulations and we'll sit here and clock while we get councilmember hill to come back in okay here he is um so before we adjourn we have open time for public expression this is a continuation of the open time that we had in the beginning of the meeting if you'd like to approach the council on any item not on the agenda I don't see any additional public expression. So this meeting is adjourned. Good night, everyone. All right.