City Council - Special Meeting

Good evening, everyone, and happy new year. Welcome to the January 7th, 2026 special meeting of the Larkspur City Council. We have a special meeting before we go into our regular meeting. So can I get a roll call, please?

Council Member Kandel.

I'm here.

Council Member Margulies. Here. Council Member Paulson.

Here.

Council Member Wayne. Here. Mayor Andre. Here.

Here.

Okay, great.

All right, so this evening we have a special meeting regarding consideration and possible action to adopt a resolution proclaiming a local emergency in the city of Larkspur. We are going to open it up now for public comment regarding this item. Is there any public comment here? Oh, I'm sorry. Could we get a staff report, please?

Yes, Madam Mayor, I'll be very brief. Typically when there's been a significant weather event that causes damage in Larkspur, it's a regional event that we can anticipate that the state or federal government will recognize immediately or in the immediate aftermath as an emergency. We've learned in the case of the tidal flooding that we'll be also giving you a presentation about a little later that we will not be seeing that sort of declaration occur. So some of the local agencies are taking upon themselves to declare an emergency, according to what Eric did last night, and we're proposing that you do it tonight. This action, by making this declaration, empowers us to submit to various agencies for potential grant monies, either for us, and it also can empower some local residents who've experienced damage to potentially pursue some relief, should that be made available. I think we all have concerns that that FEMA may not be all that inclined to help the California area at the moment, but we'll, we'll at least open those doors and possibilities. So that's the sole purpose and intent with this action. But I know it's a pretty broad reading resolution and that's because of the nature of how you declare an emergency. We sort of use the same resolution, no matter what the intent is here. And of course the events essentially at its culmination now. So we're in the aftermath cleaning up. With that, Madam Mayor, I'll turn it to you for questions.

Great. I'll open it up to the council for any questions on this item.

That includes the overtime work that Public Works and our maintenance supervisors had to do.

Yeah, I probably should have said, so the Office of Emergency Services for the county is the lead. We actually contract with them, as do all the other Marin towns, to sort of help us deal with all of the paperwork and organization that takes place whenever these types of events occur. From Friday onward, they were providing us guidance, although we have a fairly experienced team on how to document and potentially recover things like the overtime costs and any other material costs that the city incurred. And we will submit all of that in the hopes of getting a return on it. What OES is proposing to do is take all of the costs incurred by all the governments in Marin and put them into one application. That should be something that Congressman Huffman and others can use to sort of draw more attention to the incident and its effects on our communities.

My question has been answered. Thank you.

I just had one question. Thanks, Dan. I just wanted to ask, so by declaring a local emergency, it will also give you sort of elevated powers, one of which would be to give you additional spending authority. Is that accurate?

If it was necessary, if we were still sort of in the process of responding to the event, yes. When you declare an emergency, I am your acting emergency officer. So at that point, the normal constraints on my authority are lifted so that I can respond to the emergency. To illustrate that for the public, You declared an emergency or your predecessors did when COVID hit. And at that point, then it allowed me and members of the staff to act more quickly between council meetings. We aren't allowed to just frivolously use that power, but if something has to happen and we can't wait two weeks or we can't organize a special meeting of the council, it would then give me the authority to act. In this case, I have no expectation of doing that. The public costs to Larkspur have already been incurred. They were all within my spending authority, so it was never an issue. And so, again, this... This resolution's intent is to empower us as we try to pursue any relief money that the city or our residents might be eligible for.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Paulson, do you have any questions? No, thank you.

I do have one question. So are we able to only claim for damages or costs that we have incurred, or can we ask for money for, say, future use, for instance, upgrading our pumps or getting more pumps installed? Does that fall under?

That's not related to this declaration. We would certainly point to the total incident and the fact that we felt compelled to declare a declaration were we to be pursuing monies to help us with infrastructure. I do think tonight we don't have on the agenda a specific presentation about the event. During my city manager report, we're going to give you a briefing and the community a briefing of what our preliminary decisions interpretations of what happened are. I can tell you that the problem, and you're going to hear more about this, is way beyond pumps. But yes, we will certainly identify in the coming days and weeks with our fellow agencies what opportunities there are to improve infrastructure, and then we'll certainly be out looking for what monies might be available to support that.

Okay, great. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, so I'll open it up now to public comment. If you would like to make a public comment, please approach the podium and state your name and whether you're a resident of Larkspur or which jurisdiction. Thank you.

My name is Ross Asselstein. I live in San Anselmo. A friend of Catherine Way. She and I were on a search and rescue team together for quite a while. There you go. Guilt by association. I've been looking at the... projects of flood zone nine for 15 years and being incredibly frustrated. And I can say that I'm just crazy enough to keep pursuing what is the right way to spend the last of the money as we get to the end of this process. I'm just crazy enough to read things like Army Corps of Engineer report from 1961 that formed the basis for agreements in 1965. In 1961, the Army Corps said, we're going to build levees. but they're going to slowly sink into the ground because that's marsh, and you have to maintain them. There was a contract put together in 1965 before that work started that said the Army Corps would build it, but we had to maintain it. Larkspur, Kentfield, Greenbrae, and Ross have been paying into a fund for 60 years to maintain the levees and the dredging, which is technically not required, and the concrete channel. What has happened, if you know funding at all, is it's always looked at and chipped out away. And what you have is the maintenance of levies now is a little better than gardening and keeping gophers out of it. There's more than that, but it's not really what was required with original intent. I made a shift from criticizing things they're trying to do in San Anselmo on a project we don't want. After I read this and went through the history of funding, And I read a report from 2019 that kind of got lost in COVID that detailed everything that's going to happen with the levees and sea level rise. That was a turning point for me where I was like, I know exactly where all the money should be spent. And that's what you'll see. The two times I spoke in December at the Board of Supervisors, I said, what the community deserves all up and down the Ross Valley is to at least look at choices now. One of them should be every dollar going forward, both the end of the fee we have now and the historical fee from 65 should be spent on levies. At the time I said that in December, I was ignored, didn't get any calls back. And I thought myself and a few interested people are going to have to walk Larkspur and do a lot of education. What has happened? is probably unfortunate for some people, but it's probably one of the most important floods we've ever had because it's going to be a call to action to fix the levees. And it's okay for Larkspur to lead now and demand that every dollar we possibly can be spent on the levees and pumps, etc., It's not selfish. It's part of a contract from 1965. And I look forward to working with Gabe on this. He's doing an amazing job. Accolades to him.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you very much. Are there others who'd like to comment in the chamber? Welcome.

Hello, everyone. Happy New Year. David Mahler. I live here in Larkspur. And as I was observing the results of the flooding over this past week, I couldn't help but think that this is a preview of what we're going to see, not on an episodical basis going forward, but on a more regular basis. So just to put this in context, as we're thinking about the combination of the King Tide's and the storm surge and the rain all coming down, that's on top of what has already occurred is about an eight inch rise in sea level right here in the Bay Area. It's forecast to rise another one to three feet by mid century and another three or not another, but a total of three to six feet by end of century. So just think about the flooding that we had here and think of that as kind of a normal condition rather than a once every multi-decade. So as we're thinking about this, we need to be thinking of it in the context of climate change and making sure we're doing everything possible to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. So I just want us to think about that, not think about climate change absent flooding or think about flooding absent climate change. But they're all tied together. And we think about the impacts on people in Larkspur of some of our climate change measures. It's because this is what our future is going to look like. And the more we do now, the less bad it's going to look in the future. On the specific... Proposal that's in here, the specific ordinance that's proposed. Just two thoughts on that. I think it's in the third recital. It refers to the conditions that led to the flooding. And I'd like to propose that it says, whereas the king tides increased in height by storm surge. I can't quite read this well without my glasses. Hold on here. It's the third recital. Whereas king tides increased in height by storm surge, wave run-up, and rainfall have caused blah, blah, blah. How about adding into that those three things combined with rising sea level due to climate change? Let's acknowledge what's going on here. These are not one-off things. They're all combined. The other thing I do have to question in the resolution is twice in the uh uh the findings in finding one and in finding four it says that the uh disaster and extreme uh peril to the safety of persons and property have risen throughout the city of larkspur that that throughout is in there twice i i don't know maybe it needs to be said in there it sort of caught my eye it seems to me that the impacts were somewhat localized and i don't know if putting the term throughout in there might diminish the uh effectiveness of our resolution since it was hardly throughout. Thank you very much.

Great. Thank you for your comments. Would anyone else like to comment in the chamber? Please come forward.

I'm assuming we're commenting on things other than the flooding, or is this only on the flooding right now? I'm sorry. Okay. I'll wait.

Great. Thank you. Okay, and online, do we have anyone who wants to comment on this? Okay, great.

Thank you.

All right, so I'll close public comment and bring it back to council. I guess we have a couple of edits to the memo or to the proclamation. How do people, what do people feel? I'm sorry, Skye, do you want to chime in here? Sorry.

Are you saying you want to talk about the proposal from the speaker? I'll let Mr. Woodruff speak to there throughout the city. I'm going to be blunt. As a practical matter, as your pragmatic city manager, I would strongly encourage you not to mention climate change in this resolution. It's only making an unlikely scenario 100% unlikely. We're trying to get the federal government to give us money. And I would not mention things the federal government doesn't like to hear about right now.

And regarding throughout, I would say that we should keep it because in past instances in which there have been storms and flooding, there were opportunities after the fact to recover funds for what was not initially thought to be storm-related, but after the fact was figured out to be, and it were in areas that were not the primary focus. And so to ensure that the resolution covers the entire city. I'd suggest leaving throughout in there in case similar circumstances arose this time.

Okay, great. That makes sense. Thank you. Okay.

Any other? No, I served on the County Disaster Council representing the cities for 10 years. And I'm really pleased to see that we're jumped on this right away. And I'm really pleased to see that Office of Emergency Management has been working collaboratively with the cities now. This is just procedural to get us in line for money. should money come about, and a lot of cities don't jump on these things right away, and they get put further and further down in the line. So I would like to move this resolution because we just need to have all of our cards available in case there is an opportunity to get reimbursement.

So what's this resolution number?

You can move it. You've got it right there.

Okay. I will move Resolution 0726 as written. I'll second it.

Great. Can we get a roll call, please? Or all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, great. Thank you.

May I make a comment? Yes. Just a comment to the public. If you make a suggestion and it doesn't end up in our resolution, we still appreciate the suggestion and welcome as many suggestions as you have so that we can consider them. Okay, thank you.

Thanks for that.

Okay. All right, so...

Sorry. All right. So I have to adjourn this special meeting at 6 42 PM. And then, uh, we will now go to our regularly scheduled meeting of the Larkspur city council on, uh, it's Wednesday, January 7th, 2026. And, um, we will, um, start the meeting. It's a 6 43 and I'll call it the regular meeting to order. Um, and, uh, Alison, do we need another roll call?

Okay. Thank you. Here. Here.

Here. Okay. And now I think we go to the Pledge of Allegiance. If you are able, please rise. okay welcome everybody and um now i'll open it up to public comment for matters that are not on the agenda this evening so if you have um to if you want to address the council on anything that is not on the agenda this evening please come forward to the podium you have three minutes

It's me again. I'll tell you one small little detail. I think we all know that the moon and the sun lined up that had this tide happen. Last time it happened, 1912. Next time it's going to happen, 2045. It's as soon as it is from when we had the last big flood. So we have a project called 2045.

Great. Thank you very much. Is there anyone else in the chamber who would like to comment on something that's not on the agenda? Please come forward.

Hi, my name is Diana St. James, and I am a resident of Larkspur, and I'm also president of Friends of Larkspur Library. And we have formed, underneath the auspice of Friends of the Library, a committee that is organizing a community book brigade that will lead us from the old library to the new library on opening day. And there's a representative 1,000 books that will move through Larkspur to the new library and open it up. And it is made up of people from the Larkspur Library Foundation, Rose Lane, the library board, the library, the wrecking crew, and friends of the library, as well as the community foundation. So it's got a great mix of people putting it together. But we are realizing that we are only one part of the library's opening day events and So, while I know you have plenty of other things on your mind right now, I just wanted to put it out there that I'm hoping that there'll be someone on city council or from the city that we can liaison with for all of the rest of the opening day festivities. Okay. Because we're thinking that there would be speeches, attendance by VIPs, recognition of top donors, a photo area, social media, all those kinds of things that... Um, we've had big scissors for ribbon cutting. So, um, that would be great if it is going to be the two of you. Okay. We will, um, be in touch then as far as, um, what our plans are. Okay. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Diana. And, um, I appreciate your public comment and yes, um, uh, council members, uh, way and Kandel are on our ad hoc library committee. And so they will be happy to work with you on this. Thank you. Okay, any other comments in the chamber? And Madam Clerk, how about online? Okay, great. Thank you. All right, so I will close public comments. And now we'll move to presentations by the Larkspur Quarter Madeira School District. Welcome.

Thank you so much for having us here this evening. We've been here before, obviously, but again, for the public, my name is Brett Geithman. I'm the superintendent of Larkspur Quarter Madera School District. So last time we came and spoke to you about school safety, which we're going to touch on a little bit this evening, but part of the bulk of our conversation is really in regards to the exploration of a bond extension. So we currently have a bond in Larkspur-Porter Madera that expires in 2030, and we're exploring the extension of that bond. So I will start running through some slides real quick. So what we recently approved at school board level was an updated facilities strategic plan. We had a plan that took place that was developed in the 22-23 school year, involved a variety of different stakeholder groups, was an extensive plan. However, Just as we've implemented that plan since that school year, what we've noticed is, I think that we've all seen, is that prices for not only materials, but also prices of labor has significantly increased. Additionally, other needs have also arisen, and we'll share those, like fencing and other safety measures. And so what we did was decide to reconvene the facility's strategic planning team, take a look at recommendations that we've received from our insurance company, from outside research firms, from other stakeholder groups, and then also take a look at our actual expenses since the implementation of that plan, and then re-up and revise that particular plan. so that plan was approved by the board of trustees it's now a 2026 through 2036 facility strategic plan the original plan was primarily focused on maintenance of our facilities so there's certain things right that need to be done on annual maintenance that also include things like replacing roofs uh replacing windows those types of things that happen those routine maintenance or routine replacement cycle items When the plan was originally written, it was estimated at $6.67 million plan over the 10-year period. So looking at roughly $670,000 per year. The actual costs due to those rising labor fees as well as material fees have been anywhere between $800 and $1 million each year. So with that taking place, as well as additional projects that we've had to take on, such as taking a look at school fencing, we also own Marin Primary and Middle School. They have a significant roofing project that is very expensive to fix. The 10-year plan has actually been revised to a $15.5 million plan to include those escalators and those additional projects. When we took a look at this, you know, and just take a big step back to the goals of the plan itself. I know many municipalities and school districts have strategic plans, right? Facilities, strategic plans. The idea is, you know, with Larkspur-Port Madera School District, we believe that our schools are the hub of the community. We partner very closely with Larkspur Parks and Rec. We have partnerships with the city of Larkspur, Port Madera as well. A lot of community members use our schools, and we really feel it's important to keep our schools in great shape and keep them, most importantly, safe for our students, our staff, and our overall stakeholder groups. Taking a look at this, we really wanted to also ensure that as we're making upgrades to our schools, we're also taking into account all new innovative safety measure approaches while also staying eco-friendly. I think we've just heard a lot of commentary about the environmental impacts of of ways that you build and ways that you you uh conduct business and so we want to be um make sure that uh we're so on solid ground with that in terms of guiding principles i won't go into each one but one of the ones that we talked about last time was septet when we were here so that's that crime prevention uh component the school safety measure that's a national framework and that's something that did inform the revision of this actual plan um Okay, I'm going to turn it over. We're actually going to breeze through this. This is informational if you want demographics of the district. But when we talk about additional needs, turn it over to Dr. Atkins. Oh, I'm starting with the IM. Celebration. Sorry, I forgot. I get to start with celebration. A couple things. If we take a look at the far left, what this is, this is a picture of our kitchen floors. So there are things that happen in school districts. So we had the safety inspector, health inspector came out and said our kitchen floors did not meet. the requirements. So we had to go in and replace our kitchen floors. So there you go. We were able to do that. This here is a picture of the Refugio Marin project. We have a phenomenal teacher, many phenomenal teachers in LCMSD, one of which is Dana Swisher, who all of you I know are aware of. Refugio Marin, this is a $300,000 grant they secured and have replanted the entire front of Hall Middle School with native species that also will serve as learning centers for students both at Hall and at Redwood. And then over here, we have our Hall Middle School gym refresh. And so that gym was built over 20 years ago. It hasn't received even a fresh coat of paint. So we did a gym refresh there, make it a more inviting space for students, holding athletic competitions in a way that we can gather here in LCM. So when we think about the components of our facilities strategic plan and needs that we have, it really falls into some major categories, one of which is safe and secure campuses. We talked about those needs for fencing that were cited not only by our insurance company, but also by independent researchers. That comes at a cost between up to $3 million to implement that fencing component there. But we also want to make sure that we have ADA-compliant pathways across all of our school sites. We also want to ensure that we have controlled access points and safe ways for our students to have to exit in the case of an emergency. And so there's a lot of those different features that need to be upgraded.

Um, other things, again, lighting, storage, those different components, storage for emergency, uh, drills or emergency preparedness.

And, um, yeah. Oh, and actually I want to, sorry, I want to talk about that, the gym really quickly. This is something that I know we had talked about, oh gosh, probably a couple of years ago, we were looking to, uh, um partner with the city of larkspur on grants and i know that a grant was was explored for this you know our again our schools serve as a hub we would like to put in some battery storage into hall middle school gym because not only if there's an emergency during the school day but if there's an emergency in our community outside of school hours we know that our gym is going to be that hub and we want to make sure that we have electricity in that gym to serve our community okay i'm gonna turn over dr atkins

And you'll also see in our facilities needs assessment, a lot of it is our essential repair. So these are the items going through and we've costed all of these out over the next 10 years, including upgrading our HVAC system, our plumbing infrastructure. We know we had some fire line leaks this last year at Noe Cummins, repairing our roofs, and again, upgrading our cafeteria facilities and just our day-to-day maintenance of our campuses. We're also looking at our smart and sustainable schools. So looking at possibly installing solar installation, again, the backup batteries that we discussed, possible EV chargers. And following this conversation we just had, looking at our drainage improvements, as well as possible lifting up school buildings for the rising sea. And then also upgrading just our programs to support our students. So looking at our increasing our STEM and modern educational programs, providing STEM labs at all three of our campuses, upgrading the music space at Hall, upgrading our classroom technology. It's been a real emphasis of our board this year, as well as modernizing our technology structure across campuses.

Also, we're looking at sports and athletics because we know that also schools serve as a major hub for that. Another thing, again, we partner closely with Larkspur Parks and Rackon is our turf field out back, I should say, and then our gym as well. So our turf field is coming on nine years. Turf field usually lasts eight to ten. Those are expensive. It also has the old filler. So when you think about eco-friendly and also health and safety of students and other athletes, that's something that's a high-need type of item to take a look at. So again, partnering on those projects to ensure that our athletics and our facilities are designed to support those different competitions and opportunities for students. Okay, I'm turning over for funding.

So tonight we're bringing to you the big topic is how are we going to afford all of it? So this is just an overview of how much we are spending. So we do right now have a balance of $4.6 million in our Fund 35, but we will see that. We'll go through that rather quickly with that $15 million price tag. We do also, by state ed code, have to contribute 3% of our annual revenue to our routine maintenance. However, every year, in addition to that 3%, we're contributing between $150,000 and $170,000 from the general fund in order to support our routine maintenance. That's dollars that could be added for additional support staff, additional intervention teachers, summer school programs that support our students. But instead, we're having to contribute that money every year for routine maintenance. So looking at our additional funding, one thing that we have looked into is Prop 2. So November of 2024, state passed Prop 2. We've been working with consultants, and we are actually eligible for $7.9 million of state funding. But in order to secure that, we have to put up 40%, which is $5.27 million, which we do not have. So at this time, we are leaving $7.9 million on the table until we can find that to pass. So one thing that we are looking at is possibly going out for bond extensions. We do want to point out, and I think, well, I'm just going to stop there. That was your baby. I'm here when that happens.

So during 2020, 2021, we know interest rates dropped significantly. One of the things that we took advantage of, right? Again, all of us were... incredibly consumed with COVID and providing for our community. However, when we saw those interest rates drop, we refinanced all of our bonds, saving taxpayers $7 million plus on the life of those bonds.

I can point that out. We take this role very seriously as being stewards of public funds and being very conservative with our dollars. It's important to us. What we are, we'd like to consider the possible bond extent. The way this bond extension that we are looking into extends the current tax rate of $24.10 for $100,000 to the assessed value. This is rolling off the tax bills in 2030. We would like to go out for a bond extension to continue that. That would secure $44 million for the district towards these projects. This is just an overview of bonds. I think you all have been through it. So we are looking at having a June 6th valid item for a bond extension. That is our overview, but this is time for you to ask questions.

Yeah, one of the reasons just to go on, I know the June, it's right around the corner. And one of the reasons why we feel it's so imperative to go out for a June bond is, as Dr. Atkins mentioned, there's $7.9 million waiting for us. We want to be in the front of the queue for those Prop 2 monies. If we wait until November, we're going to be much further behind. Additionally, we've heard loud and clear from our community that that that security fencing at our sites is a need. We've been cited by our insurance company that it's also a need in order for us to start on a project like that. If this bond were to pass in June, we could go ahead and get the ball rolling to get those measures in place and support those community interests. So we love feedback. We love questions. You know, we consider you great partners with us and just appreciate you having us here this evening.

Thank you for the presentation. I'll open it up right now to council members who have any questions.

Sure. I'll start. Well, thanks for coming. I mean, there's a couple high points. I think you guys run such a great operation. I remember the restructuring of the debt at the time. That was a really big deal. One thing I'm wondering is, so the original strategic facilities plan, the 6.62, 6.67 million, that went up 130%. Now, that can't all be inflation. What part of that is increasing scope? Yeah.

When you take a look at that plan, well, actually, I'll let you answer. Okay. If we take a look at a couple of the major components of that are $3 million for fencing and an additional million dollars, over a million dollars for the maroon primary roofing issue that we're having right now. So when you take that, so when we look at the scope of the 10 years, that's 6.67 is averaging now what would be $10 million. You add on the 3 million for fencing, the over a million for the roof, and put an escalator there, and that's where you get us to the 15. And just some other little things that have popped up over time since the plan was initiated.

Eric von Blumberg went through each of our buildings that we own, both that we lease and that our students are in, and went through all of our needs. And we have a very comprehensive cost out for it. So it's not just numbers that we take up. I mean, it's the thorough investigating.

And that's all on the... I'm locked support coordinator website you've got the.

The needs assessment is extensive so it's every single building it's mapped out he's taken the manuals for every item placed into our schools mapped out when those will fail or estimated failure that what the replacement costs could be with an escalator and that's for every building we're happy to show it to the Council if you're interested, but it's an extensive price list.

So, I mean, one reason I'm asking is I'm thinking about Measure K over at TAM and, you know, working with Leslie Harlander and Karen Labeca, you know, and then, you know, cost came in and there was, you know, I'm wondering if you've kind of put it through that ringer to see, you know, that the fiscally conscious groups are going to say, you know, you're not spending on a cafeteria, you know, you know, the arguments, how they went in the IGA.

We reached out to cost earlier before winter break. And then we actually met with them this week.

Okay. Okay. And just one more is the maintenance that you mentioned about 100, 150 annual. So the thought is that that brings this down, that that would be eliminated? Or I mean, some of this, I would imagine has to be done, even if you do upgrades and

We could use the money from the bond to cover that additional money that's needed for routine maintenance and not have to use our general fund dollars. Right now, we're having to make a contribution from the general fund to our routine maintenance to cover that. We could use the bond funds. The projects would still have to happen, but then we would have that $150,000 to $170,000 in our general fund for student programming.

Okay. I'm sorry. And there was one more. So can you just help me out this parcel tax that you have the Lux for quarter Madeira parcel tax, which is about a thousand dollars per million of property. This is completely separate, right?

Separate. And the parcel tax is just a flat rate for all parcels. So it's not per million dollars. It's just for the parcel. So yes, this would be separate. Those dollars primarily go towards staff and to our salary and none of these dollars would go toward the statute of administrative salary.

And the bond extension would then appear on someone's property tax bill or where is it?

Yep. So it would be the same. So right now it's on there. So you have measure A from 2000. Okay. So should it pass, it would have, of course, a new title and it would continue, but it would be at the same rate. Okay. You would have measure A.

Okay. Thank you.

Great, thank you. Council Member Way?

So this is, thank you for your presentation. And I'd love to have a chance, not tonight, but another time to sort of sit down and have a conversation with you about during COVID, a committee of grassroots members of the community got together to discuss why the Corta Madera-Larkspur kids go to five different school districts and whether that's a valid reason method any longer. And that group met pretty regularly and Valerie Pitt was on our team and Sloane Bailey from Corte Madera, Sherry Mowbray, who happens to be in the audience right now, Ruth Dell, Michael Futterman. We really tried to brainstorm if there's a better way to run our schools. And I'm not going to get into that now, but I would love to sit down and share some of that information with you because I think this was a brain trust of people who really care about Larkspur-Corna Madera schools and have experience as school trustees. And I think some of the comments that we all discussed will be brought up during this campaign, and you're going to have to figure out how to answer those questions of the community, because a lot of it was very detailed. And I'd be happy to sit down with you and sort of share what we talked about, because I think that will be the things I will bring up, because I don't think we had decent answers to some of those questions. And I... would like you to know in advance so you can be prepared. So I'll reach out to you.

Thank you.

And maybe some of the other members of that committee, I see Sherry, we're nodding her head. We met for maybe two years or a year and a half during COVID on Zoom and even included Mary Jane Burke before her retirement. So I'll share that later, but I will reach out to you about that.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions from the Council? Okay. Thank you so much. Do members of the public, are there any members of the public who would like to comment? Anybody online? Nobody online? Okay, great. Well, thank you so much for the presentation. All right, so now we'll move on to approval of the consent calendar. Would anyone on council or a member of the public like to pull any of the items off consent calendar for discussion?

Sorry. You're fine, of course. Because of changes in state law that went into effect January, I do need to make a brief oral statement about item 4.5, but if council members want to pull anything or comment on anything else first, I can wait.

I don't see anyone wanting to pull anything off consent. So should we pull that one off consent?

No, this is new state law. It expands on something that was already on the books. But basically, when counsel is considering changes to what the statute defines as executive compensation, which includes department heads and other positions at that level, prior to taking action on changes in compensation. A brief oral summary is required prior to that action. So just to summarize what's in the written report, what's being proposed is a 3% increase for the management unit, which includes department heads and others who are within the definition of executive management. And that is effective the first full pay period of July, 2026 and 2027. There'd be a $50 increase in the auto allowance for members of the unit who drive zero emission vehicles and an increase up to basically an additional $40 for technology expenses allowance for the same employees. And that's it. That's all we need to do.

Great. Well, thank you for the update and the overview for members of the public. Okay, so if nobody wants to pull anything off the consent calendar for discussion, would someone like to move the entire consent calendar?

You may just want to see if the public wants to pull something off. You may want to see if the public might want to pull anything off.

I thought I already asked, but would any member of the public want to pull anything off the consent calendar for discussion? Okay, see none. Anybody online? No? Okay, great.

In that case, I will move to pass the consent count.

Second. All right. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Great. Thank you. Motion passes. Okay. Now we move to the city manager's report.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, Council Members. I have two things tonight. The first is I want to introduce to you and the community our newest employee. We have a new community development director. I'm going to ask him to come forward. Andrew Mogensen has joined us as of Monday and hit the ground running. He's already asking me questions. all kinds of appropriate questions about why do we do this this way, which is what you want to hear when a new director comes on board. But, Andy, do you want to take a minute to introduce yourself?

I'm honored to be here. I look forward to serving the community. I've been working for a local government for 23-plus years now, so I'm very honored to be here, and I look forward to working with all of you.

Great. Great. Welcome, Andy. We're very excited that you've joined us, and we anticipate a very busy year, as I'm sure City Manager Schwartz is already maybe giving you a preview of, and so we all look forward to working with you.

Welcome. And with that, I thought that I would invite Public Works Director Julian Skinner to come take my time to do a presentation to give you our initial impressions about what occurred in the most recent weather event with the flooding explain some of the the physics of what happened, but I want to caution the Council. on two points here one is very preliminary impressions from us it takes time to fully digest and debrief when these types of events happen and there's still a lot of things that we're studying and that other agencies are studying the other thing is this is not agendized so this is not this is an informational presentation it's not a open discussion and debate about next steps That will come in the future as we bring you more information. But I do know folks kind of want to know what happened and our first thoughts on why it happened. So Julian's going to walk through that. And then before I turn it over to him, I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge that the county. in creating and revising the Office of Emergency Management and truly, I think, improving the partnership between the county and the cities on how we handle events. It was very perceptible. This is the first significant event that Larkspur's experienced where OEM took charge and guided us through parts of the process and the difference between how we used to work, which was a good partnership, but how we're doing it now that it's night and day. It was very impressive and And I want to acknowledge the investment the county's made to do that for all of our residents. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Julian.

Good evening. Julian Skinner, Public Works Director for the City of Larkspur. So I do have a short presentation, put a few slides together. I apologize, some of them a little cartoonish. We've pulled these together in the last couple of days as we download information and we're able to get out to some of these sites now that the waters have receded. This first overview is the primary areas of concern. We understand there was a lot of street flooding, nuisance flooding here and there. These were the three primary areas that triggered phone calls from the public and response from all of us here, Public Works, Fire and Police were out responding to events in these locations. Going from left to right, Larkspur Plaza Drive. So this is a street that comes off of Doherty, right across where the new library is going. It heads back towards the creek. There's a number of condominiums there. And then there's a channel that comes back from Corto Madera Creek. The street is very low. It's prone to flooding. It's flooded quite a few times in the past, not to the extent recently that it did over the weekend. But the intersection of Creekside Drive on Westford Plaza Drive was completely underwater. We received a number of phone calls from concerned residents out there from photos I've seen. It did get up on the private property. It was in other parking lots also. Moving to the center, this is probably where a lot of our response was, is the Larkspur Marina neighborhood. As I get into some of the later slides and talk about what happens in tidal flooding, this area is a little unique because it has a body of water where that tidal water was trapped. So the Larkspur Marina is Riviera Circle. It has two intersections. Basically, it's the two streets that intersect Doherty where the entrances to the high school parking lot are, Redwood. And it's a big loop street that goes the whole way around. The houses on the Outer part of Riviera Circle have frontage on Corta Madera Creek where the side channels and then the houses in the middle front onto an interior lagoon. The lagoon is connected hydraulically by pipes to the creek. There's no pumps in place there. The water passively moves in and out between the creek. and the lagoon under normal conditions. And what we saw in this event was the creek actually came up, passed by the houses that are outside on the creek, came to the street, passed the houses on the inner side of the lagoon, and flowed straight into the lagoon. So in essence, during these four high tide events we had, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, in each one of those events, Corta Madera Creek came up over and between these houses and flooded the lagoon. And then the one on the far right here is Redwood Highway area. Again, we saw really high tides here. They came over where the railroad tracks used to be behind Trader Joe's and flowed straight down Industrial and then onto Redwood Highway in front of Trader Joe's. And we had street closures and deep street flooding over there also. What was the preliminary or primary cause for this event? The first thing we look at is we know it was raining, but in the context of winter storms, this was not a very significant rain event. The primary factor here was the height of the tides. And so king tides were forecast, but they came in significantly higher than forecast for winter. A number of reasons that I'm sure we'll hear from the National Weather Service as to what those were over the coming weeks as they try and dissect the difference between the tides we experienced and the tides that were forecast. So you see here the five days circled. It started a little bit on Thursday. It was New Year's Day, so we weren't working, didn't get a whole lot of phone calls that day, but we definitely got phone calls first thing Friday morning when folks were up and about and people were getting back to work and they started to notice that Things weren't quite normal. A lot of folks here go through king tides every year, multiple king tide cycles. And I think as we got into Friday and Saturday, people noticed things were a little bit different with this one. This is a zoom in on that tide chart that I just showed before. And so basically what you're looking at, this is a five day cycle and the blue line represents the forecast high tide. So it goes up and down each day and each day. The mid-day, early afternoon high tide was projected to be a king tide. And then the blue is what was forecast. The red is the preliminary data for what the actual tide level was. So the worst day was Saturday as far as tide elevations. That's the day that Highway 101 was closed in both directions in Larkspur, Cordova, Madera. The preliminary data is that tide elevation was 8.7 feet. So for reference, it was projected to be about 7.2. So it was a good foot and a half above projected. I've got a couple of indicator horizontal lines here that give you some reference on what these tide levels mean. A one in 10 year tide or a tide that you would anticipate to see with a 10% probability every year is about 7.8 feet. So we're a full foot above what a 10 year tide would be. A hundred year tide is a 9.5 elevation. So it wasn't a hundred year event, but you can see how close we're getting to a hundred year. And then the FEMA hundred year flood levels. So you pull a building permit and you're required to build your structure above the FEMA 100-year floodplain, that elevation is elevation 10. So 1.3 feet below a 100-year FEMA flood level. Again, king tide flooding is not new here. We do experience flooding at the bottom left here. I've just got some typical kind of what our triggers are for elevations and our response is We know when tides get up to about elevation seven, we have some low areas on Larkspur Plaza Drive and Riviera Circle where we know the water is right at the same elevation as the street. And so it typically comes up through the storm drain system back through the creek and it'll start to come out of catch basins at about elevation seven. If you get up to about elevation 7.5, that water is starting to come out of those catch basins and it's starting to spill and get across the street. to the point where the streets are down to one lane or they're barely passable. Elevation 8 is major street flooding. That's the water is the whole way across Doherty. The water is the whole way across Larkspur Plaza Drive. And that's when we start closing streets. And so that's elevation 8. And again, we got up to 8.7. So a good eight inches above the point where we would have to close streets on the Saturday. And they were a little lower on the Friday, the day before, and then Sunday and Monday. But Doherty was still, and Lucky Drive off of the freeway, were still closed all four of those days at the height of the high tide.

Julian, if I could just add one point before we move on. Not pointing fingers, just make sure folks understand all the questions we keep being asked is sort of why we weren't ready for this. What I'd like folks to understand is we program ahead of time. We monitor this prediction constantly. Our staff is constantly relying on these weather predictions, and we program how we're going to deal with the weather event based on those predictions. So one of the things everyone, not just Clarksburg, but all the marine agencies that were affected We're going to be waiting anxiously to hear from the weather service what this deviation is all about because we programmed for the blue line and we got the red line.

Can I ask a question? I don't want to interrupt, but if we'd been told it was going to be the red line, what would we have done differently?

We would have known that we were going to experience the amount of street flooding that we experienced, and so we would have actually communicated a different level of concern to the residents, I suspect. It's always a delicate balance. If we were to issue high levels of concern when we're actually going to be at the blue line or below the blue line, folks are going to tune us out over time. So that's why we rely so heavily on this, because once we know we're going to experience a traumatic event, we communicate that to the public. And so in this case, We were expecting the blue line, and we know how to deal with the blue line.

So I guess my question is more, if we knew we were going to hit the red line, what we would have done is just tell everybody, hey, there's going to be flooding. There's nothing infrastructure-wise we wouldn't have had we wouldn't have done anything different other than close the roads and warn people that we're going to have to close the roads.

Is that accurate? I think Mr. Skinner is going to explain the difference between an atmospheric river flood and a tidal flood. And that will answer your question. Okay.

I wait patiently. Thank you.

I'm just, I mean, this was an agenda, so I'm just a little concerned if we get too much.

I understand. I feel we can answer basic questions. If I feel we've drifted too far, or Mr. Woodruff does, he'll stop us.

I think if we want to make a very elaborate conversation about this, we need to make sure public can be here, too, to know. So go ahead.

Um, so we have, I've been here 10 years and we've seen a couple of eight foot major street flooding tides before. They were always in conjunction with a significant atmospheric river, um, where we had flooding in the Ross Valley and we had water coming down, uh, from San Anselmo through quarter Madera Creek. And that was raising the creek. Um, And then with that storm surge in those events, we know that the tide is going to be higher because of all the water that's rushing down from the valley, making the tide higher. In this event, this was not a Ross Valley rain event. I understand it was. It was raining and it was a nuisance for everybody that was out there responding to these flooding events, but the rain was not the cause of it. In fact, my cell phone goes off like crazy when we have big atmospheric rivers because I get pings from all of the stream gauges that are upstream. And none of them were going off. I don't think they even got to elevation six in San Anselmo. It really was not a question of flooding coming downstream. It was more what was going on offshore and the pressures and the weather system and it pushing the water higher. This is just, these are my cartoons, so bear with me. Just a couple of, because I keep getting a question of, well, how is this different? So this is typically what we deal with all through the winter. Typical scenario where a community where most of our drainage goes out to Corta Madera Creek, ultimately to the bay. So typically it rains on the land and we have storm drains. We have catch basins. The water goes from the land into those storm drain facilities and then mostly by gravity, but some by pump also in some of our low areas. It then goes out to the creek and then it gets carried away to the bay and the land is dry. What happens in all of our floods that we've had over the last 10 years when we've been here and we've been talking about significant events is we have a lot of rain coming down, falling within Larkspur, and again, falling in the creek and causing the creek to rise. And this does a number of things. One is that we get so much rain landing that it's more than the catch basins, the manholes and the pipes can handle and they can't efficiently take that to the creek. And so it starts to pool on the land and you get flooding. The other thing is, as we get water from the Ross Valley that makes the creek level higher, the pipes that flow by gravity from our land to the creek aren't able to Dump as much water in a creek that has a higher water elevation because it's all it's all about hydraulics and the higher the creek level it is, the harder it is for that water to get pushed out to it via gravity. So that's that's the typical flooding that we're that we're used to. But what we saw over these four days was quite different. Instead of the moisture and the water that we saw in the streets coming from the sky, it came directly from the creek. So what happened is the Quaternary Creek, the bay, the creek all rose up to a point where, as you see on this diagram, it got up and it spilled out over the land. And it did that in each one of those three locations that I pointed out. And as that water, even if that water rises up an inch, you look at the area, the width of the Creek and the land over which it goes, that's a whole lot of water coming over. And we know that we have water that comes from the Creek over onto the streets at about elevation eight, this was 8.7. So there's an eight inch high wall of the creek and the bay coming over the land in some locations. And then here's the interesting thing. I almost got as many calls when the tides went down and the Creek went down because a lot of folks couldn't understand why there were still water in the streets. And one of the reasons is because the Creek and the Bay is such large bodies of water and they're dumping all that water on our streets. They're dumping the water on as much faster than we can get rid of it. So the water comes in over the banks and it's landlocked in our low lying areas. And then we have to rely on our storm drains and our pumps to slowly get that water back to the creek. That's a much slower process than the creek filling those areas. And so this was really highlighted in the Larkspur Marina Lagoon where the creek came over on all three sides from the channels and the creek filled the streets, filled the lagoon. And then folks were calling because the creek was going down and the lagoon was still high. Well, now the lagoon is just draining by gravity out small pipes back into the creek, nothing close to the flow that was coming in when the creek first flooded it. So we did bring in some pumps to try and assist that. And we made some headway. But unfortunately, we had this for four days in a row. So we pumped it down. The next day, the tide came up. It filled the lagoon up again. And so we went in that cycle. This is a cross section. It's a little difficult to see here, but this is if you were to stand on Riviera Circle looking north and just take a slice down the street. So on the left is the creek and then you move across the street is in the middle and the lagoon is on the right. So this is a real cross section that shows what the land is. So the creek bank elevation is about at this particular location. It's fairly typical, but the street does go up and down to accommodate drainage. Creek bank elevation about 7.8. The center line of the street's about 8.1. There's a bulkhead wall that's being replaced now, but the old bulkhead walls at about elevation 6, the water came up to elevation 8.7. So it came up behind these houses, past these houses, into the street, past the next house, and directly into the lagoon. Here's a photo I've highlighted in blue here. We're standing Riviera Circle on the kind of the north loop part. It's a little difficult to see, but if you see the kind of the white ripple in the water, kind of where the blue arrow is, that's the water moving in from the creek. The creek is behind these houses, the streets in the foreground, and then I'm standing on the sidewalk in front of the houses that are around the lagoon. So this is water coming directly from the creek crossing the street and going straight to the lagoon on Saturday morning.

Julian, quick question. The profile that you showed a couple slides back, I'm wondering, you know, the dashed line there is kind of the threshold where, you know, the water will spill over. Is that uniformly around the perimeter or, you know, are there low spots? You know, give me a rough idea of the, you know, second dimension here, you know, as you walk it.

Yeah. So, um, roughly the streets at about elevation eight, as you go around Riviera circle, But it goes up and down, and that's to allow for drainage so that in a normal condition, the street has some slope to it so the water can get to the catch basin. So the street goes up six inches, then it goes down six inches, then it goes up, and it has all these tiny little ups and downs, mainly for drainage. So it's not consistent, but the street varies from about 7.5 to 8.5, the street elevation as you go around. And then the individual houses, it kind of depends on how they did the landscaping. Most of the houses are up at an elevation, the finished floor of the house as you go around there are up at an elevation where they're higher than this. And then typically your garage drops down a couple of steps about 16 inches lower or so. And then most of the houses out there have pretty short driveways, but they're fairly flat. So as I was driving around to the extent that I could, I would probably say about 50% of the driveways that I saw had water. They had sandbags and visqueen plastic up in front of them. But I would say at least half of the driveways around there had water that would have got into the driveway if it was into the garage, if it was able to. But it's a really flat neighborhood. It's also settled. over time. So we would have to do a pretty comprehensive survey to see where all the highs and low spots are. But driving around, especially on Saturday, it was pretty consistent that almost between every house, there was water coming from the backyard to the front yard.

I see. And I was kind of looking at the tail of the green arrow, not the street in the middle. And that, you know, height, I'm wondering, you know, I'm sort of thinking about levees. You know, that is an option that we need to think about, you know, in the coming decade. And is that seen, you know, again, this is maybe for another time, but would levees have any...

I think we want to wait to the future to talk about the solutions because getting to the question earlier, I think then we're getting into substantive and not just delivering what happened. Fair enough.

And I'm sorry, just a quick question, just going to the next slide that you just showed us. Is there, it may be too early, but do we have any numbers of how much damage was done or to private residences, anything like that?

Not at the moment, no.

Okay.

These are a couple of aerial or drone or helicopter. I'm not sure what they are, but I just clipped these from newscasts. I think you all saw there was a lot of news coverage. And they're not great quality because I snipped them from a video. But basically what I wanted to convey here is that if you look at this, it's showing that you've got Creek Street Lagoon. It's pretty much all one body of water. At this point, and this is a high tide, the high tide doesn't come up and go away. It's a gradual curve. And so the high tide comes up and it lingers for a while and it allows the water levels to become equal somewhat. And so at this point, what you're looking at is the creek is spilling to the street, to the lagoon, and it's getting up to that 8.7%. As I mentioned, we did take pumps out there. We knew that it was going to be a temporary measure, but if folks needed to get out of their house at least, we wanted to do our best to try and get the street pump down. Again, we weren't really sure based on what the tide predictions were, how long these elevated tides were going to go on for. We brought our own pump in in the morning, and then we realized it wasn't really making much of a dent. So County Public Works and County Flood Control lent us another pump. And then the contractor, Gelati Construction, that's working on the bulkhead project, they brought a pump in. And so we had... Three six inch pumps working around the clock to pump the lagoon down. It was pretty disheartening at the high tide the next day when all the water came right back. But we kept them going because we couldn't anticipate what the next high tide was going to be. And I think finally it was yesterday that the water didn't come, it didn't breach again. And so the efforts we'd made to draw the lagoon down, we're able to keep building on those. draw it down. And we've been running the pumps 24-7. It's been a little bit challenging because when you get a flood like this and the waters come up on everybody's property and then they recede, the water that goes into these structures that we pump from has all the mulch in it, all the bark from all the landscaping, and it clogs the pumps. So we have personnel on these pumps 24-7 to unclog them and keep them running. So thanks to County Flood Control and Gelati Construction for helping us out through this. Only one pump is going to run through tonight and then tomorrow we'll take away the other two pumps and we'll be down to our one pump and we should be down to normal lagoon levels by the end of the week. This is one of the other areas. This is Redwood Highway. This is actually behind Industrial. This is the old railroad tracks that's now Smart right of way. We're technically in Corte Madera here, but the water doesn't really know which jurisdiction it's in, and we all kind of work together here. This was one of my First calls during this event was with the Corte Madera public works director to chat about this location. Initially, we thought the levee had had breached here and the water was coming through, but it actually the water just got up so high it came right over where the old tracks were and came through. And they did also send a video. So this came from Corte Madera personnel who were out there. So this again is in behind Trader Joe's and behind industrial. So this is all the smart right-of-way we're on now. And then we're gonna turn and we're gonna look down industrial. So you can see how far the water's coming up on some of these vehicles and the trash can there. And I believe that was Friday and then Saturday was higher still. This is a photo that the police took. This is kind of hard to see. It's hidden there, but there's a car where it's not supposed to be. So this was a car that was driving down Redwood Highway and the water got so high, the car just kind of started to float and it ended up in a landscape strip in the front of the parking lot. They didn't choose to park there.

Okay.

And here's a shot of Larkspur Plaza Drive. Again, this is an area that we see a flooding because it's so low with a lot of our events. But again, this was just on another level at this intersection. I think that was the last slide.

So we can certainly answer basic questions. We will have a future agenda item as we fully understand this event. And at that time, we'll be able to have a discussion with the council and the community about what we may or may not be able to do to mitigate this in the future. As you have all seen, we are not the only affected community. And actually, I think even though it was very dramatic for us, there were some other areas in Marin County that had it probably worse than we did. And I do want to acknowledge and thank that our public safety crews, we brought in a lot of extra folks. We were out there working. I'd say the vast majority of the public understood, very cooperative, and that just makes it easier for us to keep everybody safe through an event like this.

Great. Well, thank you, Julian and Dan, and also to our staff who worked very hard over the weekend, especially our public works crew, but also I think CMPD did a very good job as well. and also Central Marin Fire. We had a fire the day after the flooding. And so thank you very much to all of our public safety personnel who really were working through a holiday weekend to really keep all of our residents safe. The other thing I heard too is, I was at a press conference with Jared Huffman, and I was standing next to the National Weather Service guy. And so one of his comments that was interesting was that they misforecasted the strength of the winds. And so the wind was actually pushing the water into the bay, and so the water wasn't able to recede as quickly. And so that was causing a lot of problems as well, was just the strength of the winds. That was, you know, the strength of the winds was, you know... and the direction was much stronger than forecasted. So I think that compounded some of the problems that we were seeing. Okay, well, thank you for the presentation. I do think that we should bring it back as an agenda item so that the public can participate and we can give more information and then have a fulsome discussion on what mitigation measures we might be able to undertake. Great, thank you. Okay, so now it's council members' oral reports. Does anyone have any report that they'd like to update?

No? I'll go first.

So just briefly, you know, given the topic, I have a Flood Zone 9 meeting coming up in a week or so. And another thing that TAM, Transportation Authority of Marin, has been working on, and, you know, this event really highlights the urgency of the issue, is all the sea level rise measures. And I pulled up the 200-page document. Anybody in the public, just go to Google Transportation Authority of Marin, and at the bottom you can download the 200-page report, and it looks at what some of the measures, what some of the risk mitigation infrastructure changes and all we can do, like... raising the roads and putting in levees and so forth. So I just, I think this is a great time for the public to be engaged because of the severity of this event. And king tides are very predictable. I think in addition to wind, it was also air pressure. You know, if it's low, air pressure that the water naturally rises. But, you know, we know today when the next king tide is, which is, I think it's December 24th, whatever, at the end of the year. So I hope we have more good discussions. And I'll look forward to, you know, informing the council of more riverine flooding, which is flood zone nine, and then this type of flooding, which is sea level rise. And then there's the off chance that both occur at the same time. So something that I think will be increasingly important. Thank you.

I just want to take the opportunity to commend Mayor Andre for jumping right in and participating in helping the community over the weekend when this all started. I was out of town and I was texting Stephanie to say, have you been following any of this? And she was so on top of it. And I'm just very proud. pleased to say that. And also her public presence when Congressman Huffman came and all the other county administrators were there. It was Mayor Andre and Mayor Thomas from Corte Madera who were front and center. And I think we should thank them very much for doing the extra to really represent us and represent our council.

Thank you so much, Council Member Way, for your comments. It's really my pleasure and honor to represent our community. It's unfortunate that we had a confluence of storm weather and king tides that compounded this problem. I want to, after we sort of have the opportunity to understand exactly what happened, I think I would like to talk to the public in terms of, you know, what can we do better? And I have some ideas, and so we will definitely get that on the agenda so people can come and comment on that. But thank you very much for your comments. Okay, so now we'll go to public hearings, and it will be about the fire protection impact fee. So can we get a presentation on this? Great.

Okay, good evening, Madam Mayor, members of Council. As you'll likely recall from your meetings just prior to the start of the new year, we're here to discuss the adoption of the fire impact nexus, a fire impact fee nexus study and the fire impact fee itself. and so i just have a few brief comments and slides here for you as a reminder on at your november 19th meeting you discussed adoption of the fire protection impact fee which would apply to new residential development and you directed staff to return at the next meeting with an ordinance to amend the larkspur municipal code to establish the fire protection fund and the and implement the fire protection impact fee which was heard at your december 3rd meeting And so we are here tonight to kind of put the bow on the whole project, so there are three action items for you this evening and i'll just run through them quickly and you do have to take them in order. So the first action item and staff recommendation is to adopt resolution 04 dash 26 which would adopt the fire protection impact fee nexus study in compliance with state law. The second action item is to adopt ordinance 1095, which would amend the luxury municipal code title three and add chapter 3.36, which establishes the fire protection impact fee, which the city would collect on behalf of the central Marin fire department. And the last action item is to adopt resolution 05-26, which would establish the fire protection fee amounts. And just as a brief refresher, that's $1.46 per square foot for new single-family square footage, $2.05 for new multifamily square footage, and $2.82 for new assisted living or memory care square footage for new projects. So that concludes my report. I'm happy to answer any questions. And Ruben from Central Marin Fire is here as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Alex, for the presentation. I'm going to open it up to council members with any questions. I know this is probably the third time that we've been reviewing these documents and these numbers. Any questions from council? Okay. I'll open it up for public comments. If anybody has any questions or comments from the public about this. Yes, please. Mr. Holmes.

James Holmes, Light Spirit. I am. First, I think the report is a very clear and stark demonstration of the real cost to the community of the state's radical demands for multifamily housing, around 25 million. That's shocking. And I think when I read that, it seems to me it makes it very clear this can be argued that it's a problem. an illegal unfunded mandate from the state. But aside from that, I question the allocation of the cost between existing and future populations. The text of the report and the staff report is very clear that it's the new population in multifamily housing. That is the reason for the additional need for the fee. But as I read it, as I read the report, it seems like it's allocating between 9% and 11%. of the cost, depending on where you look, but we'll say 10% to new population and 90% to the existing population, and that seems disproportionate to me. I also question, it's clear to me that the real, quote, burden, unquote, the resolution's term, being imposed on the fire department is the result of new multifamily units. And so I wonder, why should the single-family housing be penalized for the additional cost which is being imposed for purposes of multi... high multifamily units. It seems to me that the cost should be allocated in terms of the new development and that the problem is the proposed new development and new population in multifamily housing. And finally, given the need for affordable units, I question whether the cut should be As much as 50% or as little as 50%, I think there should be as little as possible assessed to affordable. And I think the, frankly, unneeded multifamily additional market rate should get most of the cost. So in short, I think that the cost, I don't question the need for a fee, but the costs seem to be overly imposed on consumers. single family, and existing population.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Holmes. Is there anyone else in the public who would like to comment on this item? Okay, great. Anybody online? Okay. Alex, do you want to answer some of the questions that were raised by Mr. Holmes?

I would say that the report looks at the maximum justifiable fee in all three categories that are discussed. So there really isn't an avenue. or an authority to increase the multifamily fee beyond what's established in the study. The council, if it wishes, could reduce the single family portion of the fee. Unfortunately, our consultant is not here. I think she would be able to answer a lot of questions and Ruben may be able to hop in. There is a methodology as to why the costs and the proportion of costs is split the way it is. And it's just so that new residents are only paying their fair share. They're not making up the difference that, everyone else in the town is also contributing to, if that makes sense.

Yes. Hi, Mr. Martin. Thank you, Madam Mayor, members of the council, Ruben Martin, you're fire chief for the Central Marin Fire Authority. So the way the methodology works is our consultant looked at what the existing cost of replacing the buildings today, if there was no growth going on in the community tomorrow. And so they determined what that cost was based on current construction costs. And then they looked at, okay, as the community tends to grow, can the fire department continue to grow with the community as it grows? So they estimated that based on the RENA numbers that were collected, assigned to the city of Larkspur by the association of barrier governments was that it would probably increase the population by approximately 10%. So what the breakdown is, is that the existing or the new development shouldn't bear the full burden of replacing the and or increasing the sizes of our existing facilities what they're looking at is if our facilities need to increase or we need new fire protection equipment and or fleet to then service the new population this gives us an avenue and a fund to be able to grow as the community grows so it's basically the new development pays their fair share as the community tends to grow So they're only responsible based on state law is that they're only responsible for the portion of the expected growth of the population, if that makes sense.

Yes. Thank you very much for explaining that. Great.

All right. Any other questions or comments on this item?

Okay, so I think we have to move it in the order that Mr. Othon brought up. So would someone like to do that?

And we have to do an individual vote after each three? Okay. So I'll move Resolution 04-26, Adopting the Fire Protection Impact Fee Nexus Study.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

Any abstaining? Okay, great.

Passes.

I'll move Ordinance 1095, amending the Larkspur Municipal Code to add Chapter 3.36 to establish a fire protection impact fee on behalf of the Central Marin Fire Authority.

Second. All in favor? Aye.

Any opposed?

Abstentions?

Passes. So I'll move Resolution 05-26, adopting a fire protection impact fee in the city's schedule of user and regulatory fees.

Second.

All in favor? Aye.

Any opposed? Any abstentions? Passes unanimously. Thank you. Congratulations. All right. Well, thank you for that. All right, now we are going to move on to business items, which I think many of you are here for. So thank you for hanging in there with us. We are going to discuss the request for an addition to the unfunded projects list in our capital improvement program for the Larkspur Community Foundation for mini park improvements at the base of the Arch Street Steps. Are we going to get a staff report?

Very briefly, Madam Mayor, for the benefit of those who haven't had time to read the staff report, the city's budget process essentially consists of two primary documents, the budget itself and the capital improvement program. That's a five-year program in which the council allocates funds into different projects so that we can do those projects and we can plan for initiating them. We do also include in the CIP a table called the unfunded project list, which we consider a bit of a policy statement. It is projects that the council has identified as ones that are of interest to the community, but there's no known funding source. That of interest to the community is important to staff because when the council places a project on the unfunded list, it's in our interpretation, it's the council telling staff that if funding does develop, staff should expend staff resources and time to mature that project into a funded project. And so that would be distinct from just anybody walking in with any project they might want to have done. Typically, the unfunded list comes from the council, but from time to time, we do hear from the community about something that interests them, and that's the scenario we have before us today. Last year, the Larsford Community Foundation began dialogue with staff about potential for a piece of city property being turned into a small mini park or plaza. What you're going to hear about tonight is the results of some discussions that occurred with staff about some of our concerns and desires, if we were going to support bringing this to you. And I appreciate that the folks you're going to hear from tonight were very responsive to our feedback. We subsequently had them make a presentation to the Park and Recreation Commission. We included that agenda item so you could see what the commission discussion entailed. But tonight, you're going to hear from the Larkspur Community Foundation and then have the opportunity to give us direction if, when we bring you the CIP in this year's budget cycle, this should be on the unfunded project list. So with that, Madam Mayor, I'll turn it back to you to answer any questions, or you can turn it over to the representatives from the foundation.

Great. Does anyone have any questions right now? So in our unfunded list, which I see is $113 million, give or take a few, We've not in the past had too many public-private partnerships until the new library and the Commons Foundation stepped forward. And that was an ability for us to move that unfunded library project up higher with that relationship. Did we create a policy, I'm trying to remember, about... um public private partnerships should we get an opportunity for some donation to move an item up to a higher level in our portfolio in our of responsibility projects i'd have to

Do some quick research to pull it up. Okay. In roughly 2013, 2014, the council adopted a resolution expressing its strong support for community-based projects coming forward or community-funded projects coming forward and that it wanted to see more public-private partnerships. And so... Staff uses that as a guideline to be open to that conversation. You know, we tend to look at these different projects and sort of ask, okay, to bring it to council, is it a viable project and concept? And do we think that the funding engine is a realistic engine? And I think this project certainly meets both of those bars.

Great. Great. Any other questions right now? or staff before we have the presentation all right well i would like to invite members of the larkspur community foundation if they would like to come up okay good evening can you hear me yes

Madam Mayor, welcome to that position, and council members, we're happy to be here tonight. My name is Laura Anderson. You've all met me before, but for those who are listening, our family has lived on West Baltimore since 2003, and for 22 years, I have been an active community volunteer and currently serve as the president of the Larkspur Community Foundation. I'm here tonight with Alicia Alexander, one of our nine board members. She'll be speaking later. And Jenny Tippett, who is our pro bono, I want to underscore that, local landscape designer. And she will also be walking you through the concept designs. So tonight I want to start off with a few thank yous. Thank you to the Park and Rec Commission for their support. Thank you to the city manager, Dan Schwartz, and Julian Skinner, our public works director, for pulling together the documents for your agenda packet tonight. And finally, I'd like to publicly thank all the people that wrote in letters of support. They should be on your agenda packet too. And that was just a week of contacting people, not a really big push. There are plenty of other people who we could ask to send in letters of support. if we had a little bit more time. And also, all the people that signed our very impromptu petition that we offered along with Free Hot Cocoa at the Chamber of Commerce's holiday event in early December. And those people signed their name on another attachment on your agenda. So first a little about LCF, which LCF, I'm shortening Clarksburg Community Foundation to LCF for my own edification or your edification in my arched lips. The foundation is a volunteer-run nonprofit that champions projects and events that make Larkspur a more connected and beautiful small town. For 12 years, we have partnered with the city and other entities to fund such things as music in the park concerts, landscaping at the new library, community garden maintenance, and most recently, the beautiful art wrap on the utility box at Ward and Magnolia. We have two more coming. Now we are excited to begin discussing the idea of adding a new mini park right there. That's the before. We're hoping this is the before picture and we will have an after picture soon. So we're hoping that we can add a new mini-park to Larkspur's capital improvement program. Since this is the first time LCF has initiated a project like this, a little background information might be useful. After hearing many comments from community members, about transforming the city-owned parcel at the base of the Arch Street stairs into a more usable and welcoming space, LCF enlisted Jenny Tippett, a local landscape designer, to create renderings to share with the city. Alicia and I then met with Dan Schwartz and Julian Skinner on June 17th to introduce the idea and incorporate their suggestions. We then presented the concept to Larkstra's Park and Recreation Commission during public comment on June 26th. Then after the commission invited LCF to return for a more robust conversation with questions and answers on November 20th, we collaborated with the city to fine tune the renderings. At the November 20th park and recreation meeting, the commissioners unanimously approved moving this concept forward to the city council's or the city council's consideration. So that brings us to tonight. Our objective this evening, okay, this is, here we go. Our objective this evening is printed on the slide. I'll read it aloud. Our objective is to encourage the city council to direct staff to add this mini park or plaza, whatever we're going to call it, to Larkspur's capital improvement program as an unfunded project. Our vision is to create a sustainable, accessible, inviting outdoor space that showcases Larkspur's many attributes and encourages community connection. Sorry. And I just have to add that I feel like we need more connection these days and a place like this fits that bill. So now I'm going to hand it off to Alicia Alexander, who I mentioned is on our board and is a 25 year resident of the Twin Cities.

Good evening. I'd like to start off by seconding Laura's thank yous. We've had a lot of support in this unknown territory for us to get to this point. This is, like she said, the first project of this size and type that we as a fully volunteer organization are offering to and hoping to partner with the city to create a space that will really benefit our community. The identified site is highly visible, and we have heard many comments about this empty lot having great potential as a third space, a gathering space outside of home and work for individuals to meet, connect, exercise, and enjoy the sun. It is an historic downtown, which we know gets a lot of attention, but because of its highly visible location and potential popularity, we believe this project could be a great springboard to fundraise and partner with the city to create additional gathering spaces in other sites. For instance, if this is successful, the undeveloped mini park at the entrance to Hillview would be an ideal place for LCF to help create an additional gathering space for residents as the new housing development goes up on North Magnolia and retailers expand in the business area. funding sources, which is the big question. Based on preliminary estimates we've received from local contractors, we expect the project cost to be about $250,000. We realize the true cost is really unknown at this point, as we know we need to take the following into consideration. We need to do an engineering study to figure out what we're really dealing with on that hillside. The cost, we also know, is very dependent on the hardscape materials chosen and add-ons like tables and benches. There is a well on the property, which we've talked at length with the city about, and probably the best option for that is to abandon the well. And abandoning that is about $5,000. There's a bus shelter there. which we have found out from Marin Transit, average ridership is three people getting on the bus there each day and 11 people getting off. So we need to decide if it's better to, our original plan was to refurbish that, improve it, make it nicer. We do feel like because people use it to come to our town that we would like to have some sort of a shelter there. we'll need to explore whether we would like to refurbish it or maybe potentially put a smaller bus shelter there since the ridership there is so low. Irrigation, if it's possible. We are checking in with Marin Municipal to find out the cost of adding a meter to existing pipes that are there without having to rip up the whole street. We do plan to add a line item to our budget because we know annual maintenance is a concern when there are any new spaces like this in town. So we wanted to add a $2,000 budget item to our annual plan to help maintain the mini park once it's created. We started working on funding sources for this project. We have set aside $30,000 from our budget this year as seed money. We also plan to designate the proceeds from our September 19th Rose Bowl dance to the project. Put it on your calendar. LCF, we have a lot of resources and a very active board to try and inspire public to financially support this park. Early response when we've talked to people, when we've talked to businesses in the area has been very positive. We actually already have two generous donors who've donated $35,000 to support the project. They heard about it and they gave us the money immediately just so that it's there and we're holding on to that so that hopefully we can get this done. Other ideas we have for fundraising could be fund a seat, adopt a bench, get your name on a brick, things that have been used in other gathering places and plazas around the county and the country. There are lots of different applications for recognition with the park materials that we'll plan on using. And then, of course, perhaps if Measure A funds or city funds do come available, we would welcome that as well. And with that, I want to introduce Jen Tippett, who's our landscape designer. She's been a Lark's resident for 33 years, and she's been really doing a lot of work with us, volunteer time to bring this concept to life. Thank you.

Hi, everybody. Thanks for your time tonight. In June, the LCF invited me to design a welcoming space where residents and visitors of all ages can gather, relax, And Connect, because of its central location in the heart of our historic town, it offers a meaningful opportunity for community members, city stakeholders, and others to work together to reimagine and revitalize the space. The design aims to create a comfortable, natural setting that invites a wide range of users, including public transit riders, coffee drinkers, people out for a walk or run, and even parade spectators. It would be a great platform for that. Our approach incorporates using a lot of the existing grade and preserving the beautiful, mature buckeye tree that exists there by introducing a raised plaza supported by a low retaining wall. A central planting area will feature a new focal tree, which could be a multi-branched magnolia if we choose to go that route, that enhances the character of the space. Let's go ahead and look at it. This is where we are right now, and this is the reimagined space. Accessibility is a key priority. A wide ramp along the front paired with multiple support railings ensure that the space is usable for everyone. The benches along the back wall, along with a few cafe-style chairs and tables will further improve comfort and functionality. We plan to use locally sourced ecological materials throughout the project. I think the initial thought is that we source from like McNeers. We use a sunset pavers and we're really working with the grade that we are given. The step back from the sidewalk, which is five feet wide is a three foot entry with 18 inches of rise dedicated amongst three steps. railings along both sides, a five-foot ramp along the left side, which enters into, really, it looks larger than it is. It's 1,000 square feet. So it's not a big kicking around a ball kind of area. This is really going to be a place where people sit in the sunshine in the morning and have a cup of coffee, watch a parade, and just gather. Different angle, this is from the front, if that helps. You visualize there's a bike rack along the back side. Another take on it. And then sort of a top view. Once again, I think it's a little misleading because it's not nearly as big as it's looking in these renderings, even though they're scaled drawings. The main plaza itself is about 1,000 square feet. We talked about considerable upgrades to the bus shelter. Should we choose to do that based on ridership? So this is our current plan. We welcome your comments and suggestions. For other inspiration around Wren County, you can visit the Lumberyard or the Depot in Mill Valley, which are similar styles of both community gatherings as well as sort of an aesthetic that we're looking for.

Great. Yeah. Thank you. What a wonderful rendering and concept. And I just love, you know, taking a space that really is underutilized right now and just making it something more beautiful and more usable for our community. I'll open it up to the council for any questions or.

Sure. I have a quick question. You mentioned the size a few times. Is it because of the grading that we couldn't make it bigger because you need retaining walls?

Cost will be a factor for sure. That far left-hand corner is the retaining wall. I think I have it drawn at 18 inches. It's going to be a little bit higher in that back corner. We don't want to lose the buckeye. So that's another prohibiting factor. We want to keep that established tree there. And I don't know how far back into the hillside we really need to go in order to make it a usable space. Everything's drawn to scale. So those benches that are drawn are six feet wide. And the hope would be that we could use locally sourced products from people that have to cut down an 18-inch redwood tree. Let's turn it into a bench. So we're really trying to be as feasible as possible.

Thank you. Go ahead.

So I like the idea, but I'm just going to be perfectly honest with you. We've had that – Larkspur doesn't have a lot of land that we own. We don't have a lot of buildings that we own. We have nice – we have a lot of pocket parks and neighborhood parks and then, of course, our big Piper Park. But we don't have a lot of real estate that is a value that we could potentially sell to use the proceeds for any other budgetary needs that we have. And this parcel has always sort of been in that list of potential revenue sources for the city. It's in a very desirable area for a home development or a multi-family home development or something. I don't know how much that land is valued at now. I would, maybe Julian knows, but I would assume the way real estate prices are here, a million, million and a half maybe for that lot. So I have a lot of ambivalence that we lock up a potential resource we may need to liquidate should we have budgetary needs. So I'm not sure how to square that concern that I have, but if we vote for it to go on the unfunded form of projects and plans, there will be a lot more conversation about that if we move forward. Not only neighborhood outreach, you know, jurisdictional boundaries as to where our property lines are. All of that will have to be figured out. And probably at that time, should we decide to move forward, we can further advance that conversation about whether this land would be better resource used for other purposes that we may have in the future for funding of our fire departments, our police departments, et cetera. So I'm just laying it out there. I love Little Park. I love that idea of the gathering. I know Laura and I have chatted about this for a long time. I just want to be realistic that as policymakers, we have to come up with decisions about what's the best, greatest use for the public's trust and the public's use. And that will come down the road. But It is a valuable, could be potentially a valuable parcel that the city may need for other purposes.

Is this something that the city is considering in the moment? No, not in the moment.

It could be 25 years down the road. Well, the way Larkspur works, it could be 25 years down the road. You know, that's unclear. But I just know when we've done a tally of what we own as a city, we don't own a lot. I mean, we have a tremendous regional park, Piper Park. and we have other parcels. But our infrastructure needs are also crucial conversations that we have to have going forward. And how we pay for those may have to include, I'm putting forward my idea, some of the resources we have that we may need to sell to fund other things. But that will be down the road.

And I would say that this doesn't prohibit you from doing that down the road at all right so yeah i get you probably yeah we're this we're this is uh in my mind a pretty simple and as i was speaking to the contractor this is a pretty simple um not huge pylons going in this is a pretty simple working with the gray keeping our retaining yeah it's really low um minimal job such that if it needs to go another direction it certainly can good to know yeah

And I just wanted to add a comment to that. Catherine, I know you and I have had many coffees staring at the parcel talking about this. So this is not a surprise that you're bringing this up and I appreciate that you've been so candid about your concerns and I get it. I just wanted to, for the record, say that it's my opinion that creating a new park like this in that location will add value to that parcel should you choose to sell it down the road, make it whatever you wanna make it. In the meantime, there will be people who will be attracted to Larkspur and want to buy houses here because there are gathering spaces like we are trying to create. So just put that in the... Yeah, no, and I just want to be clear.

There are no plans that I have ever heard of us to sell that or whatever, but we have had conversations about what resources we own as a city, this building, The public works department building, we lease part of it. I mean, we don't have a lot of ownership of things. So that is always sort of fit into our portfolio of an asset. So I just want to keep us focused on that we have a lot of demands on assets. But thanks for doing this work.

It's a fun exercise, and it's nice to envision what it could be. Yeah.

do you have questions um i just want to thank you guys for the concept the beautiful design and all of the effort you've put in to bring it forward to this point um i i love the concept and i it's helpful to hear um from uh catherine's perspective that you know it is an asset and a resource to the city that could be sold but that it doesn't preclude us from moving forward in this direction We don't have any immediate plans to do that. I was sort of – I felt – when you said you mentioned the cost of $250,000, it just seemed really low to me. I just haven't seen anything accomplished in that magnitude. So –

The original estimate that came back from Zach Wall, who I work with relatively often and works in this area, he's a known contractor. He's like, yeah, this is not big. This is not huge retaining walls. He said originally it was 140. And did that include the veneer on the retaining wall? Yeah, that included the veneer on the retaining wall. So once again, it's a thousand square feet on the main pavilion area or whatever you want to call it. So we're not talking about a lot of space.

Okay.

Yeah. So could it get higher? Yes. We talked to him six months ago and it could change, but we're really focused on working within the grade and Okay.

Well, then the next question is, you know, this would require an engineering study. And I know Laura mentioned that you already put aside $30,000 in your budget. Is that part of your next step plan to... How would that work in terms of an engineering study? First, if it got included, it would need to be included from your perspective as an unfunded project. And then would you pursue an engineering study to look at the real costs or get more material?

I am going to defer to Dan and Julie. This is uncharted territory for us. We are trying to take baby steps here, and I'm not sure. The main goal tonight was to get this listed on your unfunded project list. And then my understanding is the next step is getting the engineering estimate going. And yes, we do have the funding. I don't know how much that costs, but I think that we would be able to cover that with what we have now. But again, I'm looking for direction from staff on what we do after this meeting.

There are certainly a lot of different avenues. I think the one I'd recommend is that we do this in partnership so the city would retain the engineer that the community foundation would help us select. And that way we could make sure that we don't miss anything legally and that way Mr. Skinner is very involved with the engineering study. But if you put this on the unfunded list and they have the funding to do it, again, that's your sort of policy direction to us that We should contribute Mr. Skinner's time to make this happen, for example. At this scale, we're not talking about a huge staff commitment.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions?

Okay, I just have a couple of questions. When I look at the map for the city lot, it looks very long and narrow. So is that 3,000 square feet? Is that the rectangular box that's in the staff report? And that excludes the Arch Street right away? Is that correct? Okay. So really, it's 3,000 square feet, the long and skinny... parcel that that's if we were to if if we had land to sell it would be that piece right excluding the arch street right away just the city yeah just the city lot is that correct yes so um the way that they have

the mini park on their exhibits and actually straddles a portion of the 3000 square foot city lot and the art street steps right away. So the The city lot, if you're asking, would there still be part of the city lot left after they did this and would not be connected to Magnolia anymore? So I think that even though you don't need the entirety of the city lot, to build the mini park you're basically encumbering that whole 3 000 square foot lot by building the the mini park even though it doesn't use it all up if that answers your question yeah that that makes sense and then yeah i was just trying to figure out if we were to try and monetize what exactly was monetizable so it just sounds like it's that 3 000 square foot rectangular lot yes

Okay, great. Thank you. All right, that was my question.

I have one more question that Dad raised, really for Sky. If we build a mini park in the right-of-way, is that any kind of legal issue for blocking it, or is there anything to be concerned about?

I can't think immediately of any problems just because it's in the right-of-way. Although I guess we would need to investigate to make sure that the form of ownership that the city has for that portion of the right-of-way, maybe this has been well-established. But other than that, the only other legal consideration I can think of is sort of building on the conversation about – about future removal of this improvement to do something else with the property. If it were actually designated as a park, there are some provisions in state law that limit a city's ability to eliminate a park without providing a replacement park. essentially someplace else um so we would need to understand whether or not those provisions of state law actually applied to this if that was an option that the city wanted to leave open in the future and if we wanted to could we call it something other than a park to get around that yes i think okay good question thank you okay um i'll open it up to public comments on this topic

Anybody in the chamber would like to comment? Yes. We already received many letters, and we read every one. So thank you for those who have submitted letters. Yes, Mr. Holmes, please.

James Holmes, I think it's a fine idea, Richard, to put it on the unfunded list. Originally, if my memory serves, originally it was acquired by the city to be a parking lot, and it turned out to be too difficult to develop as a parking lot. I think public land should be used for public purposes, and I think most other Larchborough residents agree with that, and that the disposition of public land is very controversial as witness to what happened when it was proposed to put the parking lot downtown up for use. possible development. So I think that this proposal is consistent with that policy and with the original policy. It's also consistent with the periodic policies or plans to beautify the Arch Street stairs, which I think have come and gone to some degree. And I know there were trees planted there at one point, and I think they've kind of disintegrated. I encourage a couple of things. keep the well, uh, possibly a seat could be built over that or something, but that well was put, put in there. And, uh, I think it should be considered as an asset. Uh, and, uh, secondly, uh, as a user of the bus stop and I, uh, I would certainly, uh, encourage the retention of the bus stop. And I think that would be consistent with our, our general plan provisions relating to, uh, facilitating transit and accommodating transit users i just one other point i remember when i was a little boy that's this was a part of the uh probert uh lot uh probert used car lot most of it was on the other side of arch but occasionally he had a line of cars there and i can also remember a story about how this was one of the last lots owned by the original family that developed the property And the story was that periodically the city would tell him to come and clean it up, and he was very ragged and bent over, but he would be seen there directing somebody to clean it up on occasion. So this may be one of the last remnants of the Wright family who came to trouble's end. But in any event, I do think it's an excellent idea, and I hope that you follow the Larkspur Community Foundation's recommendation.

Great. Thank you for your comment, Mr. Holmes. Yes. Yes, of course. Yes. Please.

Well, I was the one that went out and met with the well company. And there were two estimates that we received. One was for abandoning the well, which is, I guess, typically what you do when you have a piece of property like that that's going to be used for as a recreation area. The second estimate was to actually use the well and to install it because there's no pump or anything and it's just a 200 foot deep hole in the ground. And so the other option was to install a pump which then you have to have a holding tank for and to make it usable and put in the holding tank and the pump, it was about $35,000. So a large price difference between the two. Then you also have to find the place for the pump. And I'm not sure we could research the safety of keeping it and having it be a barricaded area, but I'm not sure what that would entail. When we spoke with Mr. Skinner about it, he said it would probably be in the best interest to abandon the wells. And I do have the paperwork on that if anybody would like to see it.

Okay, great. Thank you for the research and the information. All right. So I guess any comments online? Sorry, I didn't ask about that. Okay, no comments online. Okay, great. All right, so I guess I'll bring it back to council for discussion. Anybody want to start?

I would love to start the conversation. I am so happy about the public-private partnership we have with the library. that I think it is a model for us to use moving forward. We basically hear from the community that this is something that we want, and they're willing to contribute to the project and take some ownership of it. It benefits the entire community. And it's just a win-win, you know, in my perspective. And I understand the perspective that we may at some point need this land for something else. And I think we would have to, you know, legally cover our bases so that we could use this for something else if that did come up. But I see no reason to leave it the way it is when we have an option to make it much more usable, community-friendly. It'll benefit the stores across the street. I mean, I think it just benefits everybody. So I would be happy to put this on the unfunded projects list.

Great. Thank you. Would anyone else comment?

Yeah, I'd echo the comments, and I'd be happy to put it on the list as well.

Yeah, I'm in agreement. Okay, sure.

Great. I agree. I think that this is a great project. It's really beautiful and it will beautify the space. And I also agree that it's a great spot for our residents to gather and it will create a great sense of community and it will beautify our community as well. And so I also really appreciate the public engagement here. I mean, this is this is what's so wonderful about Larkspur is that we have so many people who are extremely talented and who care and have expertise in different areas, and they're willing to work on these types of projects. And so I, I also support this. And I also hear, you know, council member ways, yes, comments as well. We need to be practical. But in the meantime, you know, in lieu of having a specific use for this space, I think that this is a, wonderful and beautiful options. So I would also be supportive of putting this on the unfunded projects list. Okay, great. So do we have to move this? Oh, I'm sorry.

I think I have sufficient direction from that conversation and all your comments.

So staff will move forward and plan for this to be part of the formal adoption this year.

And I'm sorry, I didn't mention it, but I just want to thank the Luxembourg Community Foundation for taking the initiative on this. As Mayor Andre said, it's our community that takes ownership and has ideas to better our community that makes it such a wonderful place. So thank you.

Wonderful. Okay. So next step is now we will move on to, so if any, are there any other comments? Well, thank you very much for staying and for your wonderful presentation. Yeah. If you guys are leaving. All right. So now we will move on to item 8.2, request for monies from the transient occupancy tax fund from the Larkspur Chamber of Commerce. Are we going to have a staff report? Yes. Okay, great. Thank you.

When the council adopted its budget this year, initially the council chose to leave $50,000 unallocated in the transient occupancy tax fund. That is also called the business enhancement fund by the council. And the purpose of that fund has historically been to make investments in the community that are intended to help our business community. The Council took that action because at that time you wanted to have additional dialogue specifically with the Chamber of Commerce before you made a decision about how much you might allocate in support of the Chamber for this current fiscal year. Subsequent to that, you had a chance to have that dialogue And ultimately, the council allocated $30,000 to the chamber, particularly because there was concern about making sure there was cash flow within the chamber to support the wine stroll, which is one of its more significant events that it does each year. The Chamber's now here to do another presentation. They've provided you with information that's in the packet, and they are requesting that you allocate to them the $20,000 that remains essentially assigned to the fund balance at this time. So that's what the basis of this discussion is. You do have some additional comments and requests that came in subsequently, so we'll leave it to the Council how you want to entertain those. I do see the chamber's ready to go to talk to you about their

Mayor Humphrey, before we hear from the Chamber, can I just ask a clarifying question? So you had mentioned that we had given $30,000 to the Chamber. I'm looking on their budget report. It says City of Larkspur reimbursement $50,000. Did we give them $20,000 last year, or did we give them more last year, and they allocated $20,000 to this, and maybe because they do it on January to December, and we do it on a...

I can see the person who you should ask that question to because that's their document. But, you know, in our fiscal year, the current fiscal year, we have given $30,000 to the chamber. Do you know how much we gave last fiscal year? I believe it was $50,000 the year prior.

All right. Thank you. Thanks.

Okay, good. Welcome.

Welcome. Hi. Thank you very much. I am Marty Murphy. I'm the executive director of the Larkspur Chamber. I've also been a resident of Larkspur since 1999, so I hold our community near and dear to my heart. And with me is Julie Richards, who is our treasurer, to also answer any questions. First and foremost, welcome and congratulations, Mayor Andre, to your new role. And I would like to thank very much Mayor Andre and each of you, the city council members, as well as dan and our city staff for taking the time to review these materials with us and also for your partnership in 2025 and continued discussions presently as referenced and i'm normally extemporaneous but i want to be short sweet and specific As referenced in the written materials submitted to the city manager and to all of you, tonight I'm going to briefly highlight our December activity, some of our near-term plans, and how the remaining requested budget supports funding for the work first half of 2026, because again, we run on, and I did make a notation to this as well, we run on that calendar year. And of course, all of this has been submitted for public record and review as well. To follow up from our presentation in November, we enjoyed a very brisk start to December, and before even any of our events happened, we welcomed Lori Michelle Emerson as the newest board member. This is very important because Lori is a downtown Larkspur business owner. She helps manage the hut and owns Hachidori Studio, and has been a very important part of the downtown community for many years in the American Legion. region, and we're excited to partner with her. She has lots of fresh ideas, including smaller events in that area. So Lori is going to be a very important part of us bringing back that retail presence into our board. And right after that, we welcomed our first time, at least in my history, in your history, of a joint chamber member mixer with Corte Madera. I've increased the partnership with Corte Madera chamber member mixer. It was very well attended, and that partnership leverages a lot more of opportunities and connections for our business community. Right after that, and excited to see Jay here tonight because we really enjoyed an important partnership downtown with our first ever downtown Larkspur open house on Magnolia for the holidays with Citrine and their annual very well-known and well-loved Maker's Mart as the anchor. That included our Larkspur Corte Madera Foundation, tremendous support and partnerships with them with their hot cocoa stand, as they had mentioned, We also brought in the Boy Scouts with a wreath sale. The Redwood High School Foundation had two different classes doing a bake sale. We had carolers and partnerships with all of the local business communities on December 6th and 7th right downtown in Larkspur. Then we pivoted right up to the Lark Creek shops where we supported marketing and promotion. I helped in the Santa booth. It was super fun. And we also brought, this was an important thing, we had Corbett's, new owners of Corbett's come up in a table there to the Lark Creek shops. We had Hayes Valley Medical, which was across the street, come over to the Lark Creek shops to no danger of crossing the street. And finally, then we had Lori Emerson there as a business owner pop-up. So we're trying to bring, again, disparate parts of our community together in these events. And I will say what I appreciate is that they were smaller events. They were very high touch, very impactful. I received many thank yous on the success of the businesses in downtown Larkspur from these events without closing streets and all the things. And then we went on just before that to support Perry's Tree Lighting. They renewed their membership as a result of that and received a lot of, again, high touch cross fertilization in the area. And finally, the Hanukkah celebration. And I did want to take a very important moment as it was on December 14th. to thank you, Councilmember Kendell, and the Central Marin Police Department for providing additional security on that day. And Rabbi Mendel and Central Chabad of Central Marin really provided an important note of positivity and light on that day. So that was December, and we have had continued collaboration with the city. I'd like to thank the city again for your sponsorship of the holiday downtown lighting, and then I partnered with Corbett's, lastly, to get the lighting up on the trees, yours truly, and I will be taking those down tomorrow. Can be done. I hope we do more next year. Basically, as well, you saw in what we did in a wrap-up, we had four member mixers. I've grown the social media extensively, which has been enormous promotion and benefit to our members. We're now screaming towards 2,100 followers, and that has a real impact to our business and our community and outreach. and continued support and new engagement, member engagement. We had over 10 new members in the last couple of months. And today, apropos of the floods, I would just say that I just reached out to the Grateful Dog, which is a business over in the industrial area. We're going to be meeting in person next Tuesday, and we're promoting that they are still open. I put that on social media right away. i'm trying to find out how real time impactful within my what i'm able to do affecting our businesses especially during challenging times looking ahead with purpose my biggest focus that we're launching tomorrow is a survey this is something that we wanted to do last year but i just started i wanted to make sure i knew what to ask we're launching a survey tomorrow that is going to be available to all members, non-members, community partners. I'm going to be distributing it tomorrow in the January newsletter, which I'll submit on social media, and I'm just going to hit the pavement for a few hours and go over to Country Mart, Bonaire Center, our different municipalities, and learn what people want and understand truly so our decisions are impactful and we use your money wisely. And we've already been leveraging partners like the Larkspur Community Foundation. I'm meeting next week with the new executive director, Josh Costello of the Lark Theater. I've already met with the new owners of the Mount Tamraca Club area. It's this constant collaboration. Let's leverage people, let's work with people. And finally, when we look at the funding request and moving forward, we want to see several things in addition to expanding our social media support and marketing support for the city and for our businesses. We are looking, in addition to a fundraising event this spring, more high touch, more frequent, smaller events. For example, I've already spoken with Corbett's and the new owners in the spring to better serve in closing that North Magnolia corridor is to do something in the spring with them that they can do in their parking lot It has access to them to bring those businesses together. So in addition to larger fundraising events, larger community events like the Weinstroll, I also have already heard, and I think the survey is going to confirm, that we can create these local small touch of events. And the Chamber has extensive experience in this. We now have more partners than ever to make this happen in a fiscally responsible and efficient high impact way. So thank you again for your time. We really appreciate your consideration and I look forward to a very productive and expanding 2026.

Thank you, Marty. Any questions? Julie, are you going to, do you have a presentation or? Okay.

She's just here for all the important stuff.

Okay. Great. Yeah. So do I bring it back to council for any questions?

I have a question. Marty, first of all, thank you for that presentation. Do you keep any statistics on your membership and the areas in Larkspur that those members are from? So, you know, X percent is from North Magnolia or from, you know, the different areas.

That's a great question. So, first of all, I could do a data sort. Happy to send that after the fact. That's something else that within my survey. I didn't want to bother with all the options, but basically the questions are, and if you have any last-minute thoughts, I can still edit it on the Google form. Are you currently a member of the Chamber of Commerce? Yes, no, was, and that, so forth. What type of business? Where is your business located? Which, again, if I put the... shoe leather work into this. I'm going to reach out to these folks. How would you describe your business's performance over the past 12 months? Top challenges you're facing? If you are a member, what chamber benefits do you find most valuable? If not a member, what benefits would be most valuable? How well do you feel The chamber currently supports your business. How important is it that community events are located near your business? What types of community activities or events are most likely to help your business? What time of day is best for member mixers, educational seminars, and so forth, which they can give multiple options? And then what is one thing the chamber or city can do better? And I added a question. Is there anything else? And would you like to schedule a meeting with me? I did own a small business for over 10 years in Quartermateria and Healdsburg. I have worked in retail. I have worked in large companies. I have done a lot of management. It's my pleasure, and I already have provided business counseling this past year. It would be my pleasure to expand that service as well.

Thanks. I thought I'd re-ask the question. How many members do you have?

We currently have 93. 93.

Okay. And is that trending up or down?

you know, Spark, Redwood High School Foundation, Redwoods, Presbyterian, Marin Primary and Middle School, the Schurig Center. These, especially these community and nonprofit partnerships are important to me because that's something else we can leverage for events and activities that are impactful to our community. I've already reached out to Spark to say, hey, when we're looking forward to spring events, How are we making these family-friendly and partnering with our schools in ways that could benefit them and so forth? So that's a good question, and I have put an extra emphasis on that because a healthy community is a healthy business municipality and region.

And out of curiosity, how much of the budget of the chambers would this money represent? Is it like 20%, 50% of your budget?

Here, I've got the budget statement. We look at the when we look at revenues, we kind of look at like a school, I would say, like a three-legged school. We have our membership dues, which is one leg. We have the city, which is one leg. And we have our vets, like the wine stroll, which is a leg. Some legs are bigger than others, but they're all important because if you take one away, you're going to fall over, right? So we count on The city mostly for being risk averse. We count on that money because that's a sure thing. Membership can go up and down. Event revenue can go up and down. But this is like kind of that stable leg, if you would. So it's really important to us.

Yes, I would say I had this in my notes and glossed over it to say it is part of our planning and being assured to plan that to begin some of these activities or based on the survey and my frequent in-person conversations with business owners and so forth. If we want to do something and all of a sudden we don't know if there's going to be enough money there. That can be hard to plan proactively. And I remain part-time. It's fine. That's not the part of this. It's part of having even operational costs. Or even when you do a small event, are you running a stage? Are you running tables? We're reusing any items like I mentioned last time. We've got tents and ice buckets and anything we reuse. Trust me, A-frames, we're reusing it. But even so-called smaller events... can require, in addition to time, maybe some signage, or just nominal things that even when you're keeping it really tight to the bone with costs, there's still some costs. But very good question, thank you.

Sorry, I have a... Did you... Go ahead, I have questions, but...

I just have a follow-up on that, and Julie, this may be more for you. So I'm looking at the budget from last year, and I see you have net revenues of $20,000. The city gave $50,000, and I guess you got $20,000 left over. You need $30,000 from the city to break even from last January through December. If the city gives you this additional $20,000 along with that extra $20,000 that you have from last year, I'm assuming this will go through December. So when we have our budget in July, you know, you're not going to ask us money in July or August and say, hey, you know, because this is going to be all you're asking for for the fiscal year, for your fiscal year.

Well, this is like the part where we talked about, like you guys are on a fiscal year, we're on the calendar. So we're asking for this 20 for this part of the first half of 2020.

So this is for the first six months? Yes.

So then when we come back to you in... April, right? We're going to ask for 50 again, but that's for the end of 26, the first half of 27.

Okay, so I guess where my question is, is that, so you have 50 down here from the city of Larkspur for the year 2025. No, this is for past, I'm looking at your budget for last year. The budget for last year, it says there's an entry for revenues, the city of Larkspur reimbursement, $50,000.

Sorry, I don't have the form.

I'm looking at, this was in the packet that we were given. It says Larkspur Chamber of Commerce budget overview.

Yeah, I would say 2026, I think.

So these are projections, not your actual numbers. Okay.

Yes.

Okay, so... All right, so then I was looking at this as your 2025 actual numbers. Have you provided the actual 2025 numbers so we can look at that?

Yes, we can do that, but yes, this is a budget. This is the plan. This is not, but we can absolutely do that.

My misunderstanding, because last time we had spoken... I personally had said, listen, I would feel much more comfortable if we could see how the money is being spent, what your budget looks like. And I thought that.

Our P&L looks very similar. So we based our 26 budget on our 2025 P&L. Because based on this, it looks like you actually only need 30,000 from the city because you have 20,000 left over. No, we need to run, even though we're a not-for-profit, you want to have some profit at the, you know, like we want, and then we will hold some in reserve. And this is also like, what if something doesn't happen or occur, you have some unexpected expense, you can't budget for zero. Yeah.

I understand, but I also understand the city's responsibility in trying to figure out how to use our resources to cover your expenses, not to give you a surplus so that you can build up reserves for future years.

Sarah, the part that you use is just covering our expenses, and then whatever else we do is covering our surplus. But if we didn't plan for some surplus, we wouldn't be running... a well-run business. No not-for-profit ever looks to plan to have a zero bottom line.

I guess I'm kind of confused. It's my mistake because I thought this was the actual numbers from 2025. I guess that's actually what I was looking for. We can do that.

Like I said, our 2025 numbers are not quite as good as this. We ended up around $14,000 maybe. A positive at the end of the day. So we're trying to improve that a little as new business would, but it's not dramatically different than this.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that.

I have a question. Thank you guys for your presentation. I appreciate it. And I also was hoping to get 2025 numbers because I know that it has been asked for by the council. But one of the questions I have is, is it accurate in terms of revenue what you did take in in terms of the wine stroll? Is that from... That's an accurate number from this most recent wine stroll. Okay. Because it seems that that is one of your largest revenue generators. And what I'm hearing from vendors downtown on Magnolia is that that's not actually generating business for them. In fact, it's causing them problems because we're shutting down the street. And so people who are trying to come to business are So it's just of concern for me that the largest event, which is how you raise your money to run your operation, is not necessarily aligned with what our vendors downtown.

No, and I very much appreciate the question, you know. I've spent so much time speaking, especially because I own my own retail business, to all of the merchants downtown about these events and really worked hard to focus on their preferences for the event. We had no competing vendors. We did have the side open for people to come in and shop, and we had a good discussion with Coakley Co. about that to make sure that was going to happen around the corner. Everyone I spoke to was very pleased about that. And you might have a detractor here and there, but everyone that I spoke to up in, I don't know, people were so happy about the presence and the outreach and the focus on sales on the small businesses. And we had a children's, a kid's zone,

Remember, she enjoyed it.

Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just felt surprised because people were so happy. So I don't know the many people that weren't unhappy. Yeah, Margaret from Lambiente, who originally was very upset when I had just joined about the holiday magic on Magnolia, hugged me. and joined the chamber as a part of all of this. And I know that, again, up and down the street, where do I start? From Tina MacArthur with the real estate, Marjorie at the lingerie shop, Two Birds was thrilled, L'Ambiente was thrilled, Coakley Co., very happy, Saria at Excellence, I thought, based on Citrine's feedback. They were also very happy with their sales and productivity. Actually, it was really exciting, John Carling at Carling Arts. I provided personally a table and took down to him. It was the first time he'd been out on the street. He was very happy about that and having that additional presence and marketing. And then Nicole at Nicolette, I've known them for years. We used to be at the trade shows together buying clothes. They were very happy because they also supported their Give a Cleat event. So in all full and Liberty Group increased their prosperity partnership with us from 25 to 7,500 and we're thrilled with the presence. We made sure they had the wineries in front of them that they wanted. They've been thrilled. They've in fact increased their funding in support of us. So I'm curious as to who wasn't happy because I heard the opposite.

Well, I don't think it's important for me to talk about exactly who wasn't happy. It's just that I did hear that. And what I do hear is that shutting down a street, Magnolia Street, downtown Larkspur, is not conducive to running business. And it's not supportive of commercial opportunities. I do remember being there for my campaigning efforts, and I didn't see a lot of people going in the shops. I saw a lot of people participating in community, which is wonderful. I definitely saw a lot of people drinking a lot, too. But, you know, at that point, I didn't see people popping in and out of the shops. And so I do get concerned that one of the largest events that you do that is a huge contribution to your revenue source is not necessarily profitable. promoting business downtown. It's bringing people to the downtown. And perhaps for other people, drinking and shopping is a perfect combination. But I didn't necessarily witness that when I was there.

And the Lark Creek shops, I'm remiss not to say that we worked very hard to include the Lark Creek shops in a safety walkthrough plan. They were thrilled and over the moon to be included in this again. And I think bringing 1,200 people to our downtown and the subsequent extensive press coverage, if you saw all the articles in Marin Magazine and elsewhere, that they were very happy. But to your point, which... When I worked for Peloton, it was 1% better. You can always get 1% better every single day. I really believe that. And that's why there's a survey because I want to do things based on facts and organization and what people really want to have and not just create activities, but create impactful. And we can't, run the chamber for non-money. So somewhere between, you know, we're trying to find this out, but we have to deal with the reality of, you know, covering the costs of various events. But that's exactly why I want to do the survey and find out what people really want, to your point. Is that what they really want? And then how do we pivot? And then also, how do we survive financially, even though we're running on a very tight expenditure budget? So I hear you, and this year, because we really listened to when we closed the street, how we closed the street, what was going on, how the tents were faced, the interaction and focus, and I don't know if you saw on social media that I did a shout-out to all of the downtown businesses. Prior to that, we drove it, and our whole message was about local businesses. And so, again, the majority of the folks I spoke to were very pleased. But that's why there's a survey. I'm happy to be proved to tweak things. That's all I care about doing this job, especially part-time. I just want to do a great job for the community. It's fine.

Thank you. Thanks, Marty. Anyone else have any other questions? Mark. Okay. Well, I do just want to point out a couple of things because I am the liaison with the chamber. I think it's important to point out that, first of all, they do have to cover their costs. The money that the city contributes cannot be used to pay the executive director. So they do have to fundraise. I mean, you know, the $50,000 is about a third of their overall budget. And I think, you know, we can't really expect them to not have fundraising. And then we want to cut the city's contribution. That really puts them in a very difficult position because a lot of this, a lot of this takes time and energy and resources. So, you know, I just want to point that out. And I think Marty has done a very good job of outreach to the, to businesses throughout Larkspur, not just the downtown area, but I think, you know, Throughout Larkspur, we do have several commercial districts. And I think she's done a really good job of reaching out to all of these different business owners, getting feedback, again, trying to tweak things so that everyone's got an opinion about but to the extent that you can make things better for the people who are being impacted, for instance, by the wine stroll or other events. I think she's done a really good job just to maintain open communication lines so that people can actually provide feedback on events like the wine stroll and the holiday events and the dad band events as well. So yeah, And I also want to, a lot of the work also is just very long-term. right? I mean, the wine stroll is one day. And I think, you know, it's the question is, are we building community? And then are we bringing in foot traffic? And are we bringing in just more people into downtown Larkspur, you know, throughout the year? And I think that's really what I think Marty has done a really good job with the social media and other things, the events as well. But, you know, it's, I think all of it, really, the more robust and more engaged of a chamber that we have, I think it helps to just drive incremental business. So, I mean, I've spoken to other chambers in Marin, and every single one of them receives funding from the jurisdiction. Like, none of them are standalone, you know, financially independent. standalone entities. So they are all getting, um, support from their jurisdictions and, um, you know, it, it, yeah, it takes time and resources to, to do all of this. And so I just think that, um, for the city, as we're talking about, um, partnerships with community groups or private, um, as an important partner for the city. And this year in my comments in December, I think it's really important that we have a vibrant, business community. And that is definitely something that I want to focus on, that I want to reduce commercial vacancies. I want to make it easier for businesses to open, small businesses to open. And I was going to reach out to the chamber because they have built an infrastructure where you do have the relationship with the business owners. I would like to understand what are some of the barriers to opening businesses, especially for small business owners, and what can the city do to help bring down some of those barriers? I talked about looking at parking minimums. I talked about traffic studies. When are they really needed? I heard someone who recently opened a business and they had some issues that lengthened the timeframe to opening, which costs money. So anyways, all of these things I would like to better understand. And I think that the chamber can be a useful partner in terms of just helping us collect some of that feedback and helping us as we review our policies or policies planning codes or whatever, helping the council better able to determine what can we do to help stimulate and maintain a very vibrant business environment.

I appreciate that. And I just would briefly say that the reason I want to, the survey is also when I ran my own business or worked for other people and managed their business, the numbers tell the story. And I do want to take, I like factual data as opposed to, you know, emotionally based or anything I want to see factually from that survey. I do have a time bound that there'll be closing at the end of the month because, you know, if things drag on, it's not helpful. And then I, I was looking forward to very promptly, you know, correlating collating that information and sharing it back with you all because it is important and I did ask you know what else can the city do because I agree what are those barriers as well as what do what do the people really want so thank you okay great thanks okay so I think we have to bring this back let's see what's the oh yes sorry yes we did receive a couple of

We did receive a public comment on this, but is there anyone in the chambers who would like to comment on this?

Thank you again.

Hello, Mayor, city council members. I'm Jay Holland, and I've been up here before. front of you speaking about this issue and I have prepared a little more voluminous statement but after considering it I really just want to make this bottom line point and that downtown Larkspur knows that smaller events are best for it I've gone to every retailer and In that one block area and down to North Magnolia, I've gotten the signatures that I've submitted in the past, and every single retailer to a person or business to a person that signed that agrees that the smaller events are better, more effective for driving business, more effective for driving traffic in general, more regularly. They also agree that the bigger events hurt their business. This last wine stroll was great. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a debacle, but there were two fights. There were arrests made. There were drunken people stammering all over the place. And damage was done in stores. We had thefts. And Marty's doing a great job. And I value her hard work and her efforts and her earnestness. But Downtown Larkspur, just like Greenbrae, Bonaire, just like Creekside Shops, just like Marine Country Mart, they have purview over their arena because they are most familiar with what is going to be most effective to do what they all want done, which is improve their business and their visibility and all of that. So I'm here in front of you to ask for a small budget. The downtown Larch for that one block area plus North Magnolia can use to create some permanent beautification elements, maybe some hanging plants, maybe some benches. I mean, we'll, we'll come up with what these things are, but to, to, to create also a budget where we can have a monthly event. This concept that I've designed is really easy to manipulate for theme, for timing, for whatever it might be. And it includes all the retailers. not just in the downtown area, but others are welcome to come and, you know, put their tables or their tents during whatever event this might be that we've themed. So I'm not trying to distance ourselves from the chamber. I'm trying to create this microcosmic element within the chamber where we can best serve ourselves. And that's the bottom line.

Great. Thank you.

JJ, are you okay if I ask you a question?

You bet.

All right. So there are two models. Okay. There's the model where the chamber represents the business community of Larkspur and the chamber has a board. And hypothetically, there's somebody from downtown Larkspur on the board and somebody from North Magnolia on the board, somebody from Bonaire on the board. And they all get together and they Each one voices what's in the best interest of their area, and then the chamber says, okay, well, we now understand what's best, and we're going to do things best, and law experts are taking it all into account. There's another model where you say, hey, each one is going to have their own organization, you know, and they're going to do things just for downtown Larkspur. North Magnolia is going to have their own organization. Greenberg is going to have their own organization. And they're not going to kind of work together. They just kind of work in their areas. Are you advocating for that second model and saying, hey, you know what?

The second model is what exists. As far as I understand, and this goes back to when I was first brought onto the board, I went with another couple of folks that were on the board to Marine Country Mart. They had no interest in having us on their property. I mean, they are autonomous businesses. Those businesses pay cam charges, and they are masters of their own universe and future. They don't want our involvement necessarily. Same as I understand it with Bonaire. And Creekside Shops, I mean, they're, again, a segment in the city that's managed by an organization, and there are cam charges charged to all the retailers or the businesses there. And they put together elements, right, to create events, right? They're all required to open a certain number of days, certain number of hours. They can't close on a weekend. They have to stay open until 6, right? All that creates continuity. We don't have that organization downtown. We can't tell independent retailers when to open, when to close, or what to do. So this is our area, and in downtown North Magnolia is the organic part of it all. So your first point, I think, or question was, would it be best if we got a representative from each of these areas, arenas, And had a board member representing each one. I think, honestly, that's the best. And I proposed that a few months ago when we were trying to recreate this.

Let me ask you, because what I thought I heard Marty say was that there is somebody on the board that owns a business in downtown Larkspur. And I don't remember the person's name.

Where is that? Okay. Marty, can you come to the microphone?

Marty, can you come to the microphone just so we can catch it?

It's not downtown Larkspur. And I know that spot. I don't know this person. I'm sure they're wonderful. But that is not the heartbeat of what's going on downtown. And I mean, I blow the sidewalks on that street every Saturday morning. I talk to every retailer every Saturday morning. And trust me, what we're talking about here now in this meeting is important to these retailers that we do something as a community for them. to help organize and bring this together. And I will totally admit to you, I am not a detail guy. I'm not an organizing guy. That's why I'm not suggesting that we denigrate this relationship with the Chamber. We keep it strong, but we just segment it in a way that's more effective.

Okay. Thank you for answering my questions. I appreciate that.

So, Jay, I mean, we talked about this before, so it sounds like what you... you're supportive of the chamber and the $20,000 request, and you are submitting in a suggestion that the downtown business development agency or whatever you're going to call it receives an additional 10, 15, 15. Okay.

So I, I haven't looked at the budget numbers for the chamber. I don't know what they're spending. I don't know what their costs are, but So that's their affair, right? What I'm asking for is $15,000 to use to beautify downtown Larchburg, to try to create something of a budget for organization for events, because we're going to need some help, and I can't do it, and put that money towards something that's going to create business, traffic, notification, mutual benefit for the whole community.

So I understand that, and we've talked about it. But the city, as policymakers, if we do a budgetary allocation, has to go to actually an established agency or established business entity or… We have a relationship with Wrecking Crew.

Okay, okay. That's what I was getting at. They would receive them.

They'd be the fiscal holder. Okay, that's where I was going because I didn't know that you had that.

Well, could I ask a question? I mean, since you need to partner with someone, why wouldn't you partner with the chamber?

I'm going to answer that very carefully. Because when I was on the board and after I've been on the board, I just don't feel like the effectiveness is there. Like, Marty just said, I really thank a lot of Marty. I like her. But I don't know who she was talking to. These retailers are pissed. I mean, there were two instances where someone, yet I won't name, was cussed out on the wine stroll. Someone on the chamber board was cussed out by a retailer or two during the wine stroll. I mean, it was a big deal.

Okay. I guess the difficulty is, you know.

I understand your question. Pardon me for interrupting. Right. Let me just add this. You made a suggestion, Scott, earlier about having a representative from each. Let's call it just a geographic area. Personally, I think that's ideal. I think having people from basically disparate areas around Larkspur, who may not live in Larkspur, who may not have businesses in Larkspur, who may have a business and don't live there. I think that needs to be reconfigured. I think if we had a representative from, let's say, the key areas as a board member, and it doesn't have to be me, but we can find somebody that would be more than willing, if I'm not chosen on the board, to represent downtown Larkspur. I mean, there are stores closing down. I'm not going to name names, but, you know, last year was tough for a host of reasons that we all know about. And there are stores threatening to close. There are three stores closed already. We have, in my understanding, no real laws and rules and regulations around what kinds of businesses can open there. I mean, if you're a business that isn't open on the weekend, like Liberty Group, they're friends. I love these guys, but they're closed on the weekends. So that affects the retailers to the left of them. Because when you walk by a retail store that's closed on a street, it's almost like walking by a morgue. You put your head down. And notice, it's a casual experience, but it's a real experience. You want vibrancy. You want open. Real estate agencies that are downtown, they're not beneficial to business and foot traffic. You know, that's where people go to see a realtor or where realtors go to do their business. And I'm not here to, you know, speak ill of real estate agencies by any means. But we have a downtown retail environment that's the stores of which are owned and managed by individuals. I think there's maybe one outfit there that's got two locations. But if they're not open on Saturdays, Sundays or weekends or whatever it is, that denigrates the downtown traffic and just the overall vibrancy. Am I answering your question or not?

Yes, I think you've answered my question. Thank you. I think, look, I agree with Councilmember Kandel's comments. It's just, you know, what model is the best model for this? Obviously, I think I've said this in the past. It would be preferable if we could create an organization, an umbrella organization like the Chamber, where we had you know, where the city had a specific partner where we went to for, you know, business interests and, you know, strengthening our business environment. And so, and having it broken into different groups makes it challenging. And also, you know, just in the spirit of collaboration and just you know, working together, my preference would be that, you know, we are able to find a way to, everyone can work together. Right.

That's what we're looking for. I mean, that's the common ground. Right. So what is the reconfiguration of it? My opinion is it was the first thing that Scott offered up is to have a representative from the geographic, choose the geographic areas and have somebody named to the board from that area. And that's it. That solves it all. I mean, Marty can still run it. I got no qualms about that. But we need to have, like, this survey that she's going to do. I think it's a great idea. We're going to really find out what's going on. But we got to listen. We got to apply. That's the two-part process.

Okay. Okay. Well, I appreciate your comments. And you clearly, you know, obviously care very passionately about, you know, our downtown area. And it is a core part of our community.

It's our platform. I mean, above all else in this community, no matter where you go, whether it's to the Trader Joe's, I mean, this is really what sets the score for the rest of the world when they come to Larkspur, when they hear it. Our logo, it's this building we're in now, this Oedipus, and the picture of the theater. That's that little area, like it or not. That's the geography that we've got to celebrate. And we can invite people in and they can benefit from that too.

Right.

But that area there has to be healthy. Yeah.

Okay. Well, thank you. I know this has been a very long public comment. Let's see. Is there anyone else in the chamber who would like to comment on this? Thank you, Jay. Thanks, Jay.

Don't give them 30 minutes. You don't get 30 minutes.

I'm going to try and just make it super quick. We have different business districts, different interests. I've been a board member of the chamber. We were a founding charter member of the chamber. I would love to see it successful. Needs to have a control group or somebody from each business district. is a representative. When you have someone, at least like previously, it was in Greenbrae, I represented over 100 businesses, but I'm being overruled by someone who owns a theater and all our merchants, money, prosperity partnerships is being sent to fund a party in downtown. That doesn't benefit the businesses of Greenbrae or Larkspur Landing. So that's why we kind of, we proposed that control group to the chamber of folks. I don't think it went anywhere.

When you say control group, what are you talking about?

talking about having a mayor rep, a downtown Magnolia rep, a Larkspur landing rep, somebody who represents more than their own business.

So you would be amenable to that, what Jay just said, you'd be okay with that. Yeah. If there was one chamber, but there was just representatives from each different area on that board to represent the interests of that area.

Yeah, exactly. As far as like a voting control. So if there's like eight members on the... chamber board, there needs to be people that vote or just the representatives. I

I guess I have to just refocus, counsel, on the item that's on the agenda is about a request for funding for the chamber. And at this point, the conversation's veered into the structure of the chamber and its internal organization and reputation. I just want to make sure that we stay on track for the Brown Act purposes. Okay. Yes.

And thank you, Scott. Thanks for that, too, because we're also – The way the chamber is set up in our town, it's a separate entity. It's not run by us. And so we don't have as much control as being able to allocate certain positions on a board because it's an independent agency. It's an independent group. It's an independent 501c3 or whatever number that is. So just to keep that arm's length there. You can make suggestions. Yeah.

That's great. I just don't want people to think that the chamber represents the other part of town or represents the Green Break and Larkspur Landing or anything like that. It does not. Thanks.

Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you for bringing us back on track, Mr. Woodward. Yes, we were starting to get all right. So what is on what is being asked or what is before us is the allocation of now I forgot $20,000. Yes, $20,000 to the chamber for the period of January to July 1, 2026. So that's that's the question before the council.

So thanks, Jay. I totally get it. I saw your letter and we've talked about this before that as the attorney redirected us, the specific agenda item is just for that request. I think your idea should be brought forward as a valid request in the same way this is. And I think if it's amenable to the mayor, we can put it on the agenda to do that also and have that conversation. But unfortunately, tonight, it's just this particular request for money. And because it wasn't agendized to add an additional request, I don't feel like we have that opportunity to do that now. Doesn't mean we can't. And I think your letter that was submitted is groundwork for that further conversation. And perhaps we add it to an additional agenda for a greater conversation that way. But am I correct that way that we we really can't step over that into an additional financial allocation without having agendized it.

That's correct. I mean, if the council wanted to defer action on this until things were agendized for discussion of both proposals, that would also be fine. But all that's agendized for tonight is just consideration of this request from the chamber.

Within that, the council could

decrease the amount, alter the amount, condition the amount, but that's all that's on the agenda.

Okay. I just wanted to be clear that we're not ignoring, I don't think we're ignoring the additional requests, but the agenda is specifically for this request from the chamber for the 20. Does that make sense? Yep. I just need to explain that. Thank you. Okay, so I guess I'll start the conversation because my mic is on. I feel like the Chamber has gone through a lot of ups and downs in the last many years, and we've had a lot of conversations about the Chamber, probably more than many other cities of our size, but I feel like we're on the ramp up to a better organized team. I think they've been able, and I have requested for a number of years, the hard data, and they've been able to provide that for us. And I appreciate that. It's always a work in progress, and I think we were also presented with another valid idea that I would love to have agendized so that we can actually debate that in full. But I am perfectly fine with allocating the additional 20,000 to the Chamber as a request. And that's Resolution 0626. Okay.

Any other comments? Yes.

In deciding allocation of funds, we have a certain amount of money that is allocated to the business community. And in determining whether it's appropriate, the two things that I use are, first of all, is the money going towards the entire business community. And the second is the amount of money appropriate because we may need it for other things that, you know, are requested. And, Marty – I think you said some great things when you were talking and it felt like you were really trying to be inclusive and you were trying to represent the entire business community. And I really do appreciate that. My concern is I'm not sure that the business community feels that they are being represented. So I, I am okay with the $20,000. Okay. But I, I'm going to say it on tape. I'm not going to do this again unless this problem is resolved. It's either got to be the chamber represents the entire business community and therefore our 50,000 goes to the chamber or it doesn't and the different business communities represent themselves and we'll give 10 to this and 10 to this and that's the right thing for us to do to make sure all businesses, that we are supporting all businesses and not just a certain group of businesses. There has been a suggestion put forward that the board of the chamber be made up, and I'm sure the bylaws could have some requirements where the board, you have to have a member from the different areas in Larkspur, and those members get a vote, and however you want to do it. You're a private organization. I'm not going to dictate how it should be, but I'm just letting you know that When this comes back again for another funding request, one of the factors of whether I am going to be in favor of giving funding is that I feel comfortable that everybody is being represented and that this $50,000 is going towards the whole business community and not just a select part. So those are my concerns. Again, it's $20,000. It's not going to break the city's bank. I want to support the Chamber. I want to support the business community. But we've been having this conversation, it feels like, for a very long time. And I just want to either fix it or abandon it. So I'm saying give it a little more rope. We'll revisit this again in a couple months. And hopefully this gets resolved. So those are my thoughts.

Yeah, and I guess we've been on this very long. I haven't said much, but to be brief, I want to echo what Scott said. I've been, you know, when I joined the council, I worked with Julie Cervetto. I worked through COVID. I've worked with the chamber. I have some real concerns tonight. I don't know, you know, in addition to your criteria, is it serving all the members? Is the money proportional? It's also seeing the value. And I've run a business myself, and I like the idea that was floated earlier where a specific need or proposal that has a measurable ROI is brought before us, and we can throw money at that. I don't just want to throw it in a general pot. So I'm pretty uneasy tonight. But again, $20,000 is not a lot, and we're going to revisit this again, but echoing a lot of what Scott said.

So I'm going to echo what Scott and Gabe just said, too, is that I'm also really uncomfortable with the notion that we are funding the Chamber of Commerce but hearing sort of two different realities. from a vendor downtown and what chamber is proposing. I mean, Marty, I think you have done a lot of work to reach out to the different business communities and try to engage them. But this has seems to be a problem that to me is simple resolution. And it is the one that puts forward that on the board sits somebody from each business district. Therefore, each district can have a stakeholder to represent what their needs and ideas are. And it's hard to sit here as a city council member and think, you know, $50,000 of our budget has gone to the Chamber of Commerce and... Certain districts don't even feel like they've had any representation. And what I'm hearing from somebody from downtown is that, you know, they have a different reality of the big event that is the one event that is primary revenue driver for the Chamber of Commerce. And so I, too, would support... allocating the $20,000 tonight but won't do this again next year unless I am convinced that there is a chamber that's working for all of the business community in Larkspur and that there is agreement among that chamber that the events that are going to be planned will serve the entire business community in Larkspur, not just a certain group.

element of it okay that's pretty clear what we're all thinking yeah okay so with that do we need a motion on this I think council member Wade did make the motion I did I will second that motion all right so all in favor aye any opposed abstains you abstain okay one one exception Okay, great. All right.

Thank you.

So thank you very much, Chamber. All right, so that passes, and then I guess we will revisit this also probably during budget season as well. Great. Thank you.

Okay.

We're down to 8.3, I guess.

All right, now we are to item 8.3, introduction of ordinance 1096, amending sections of the Larkspur Municipal Code, amend provisions of the 2025 edition of the California Building Standards Code. Can we get a staff report, please?

Mayor and members of the council, before you is the introduction of an ordinance to essentially adopt the Universal Building Code or the California Building Standards Code. Sorry. The Building code is updated on a statewide basis every 3 years. As you know, this will actually be the last 1 before there's a pause for 6 years. But, um. What most cities do is they take that building code review it potentially incorporate or keep locally already adopted local. Amendments to the building code, but generally we adopt the state code and we point at it through our own municipal code to say, we are taking the state code and it is going to be ours within works for. And that's purposeful because the general intent of all cities is that the bulk of the building code be the same no matter what community you're in. And that you only do local amendments to ensure that any modifications that are appropriate to your community are added to the building code. So it is time to do this. We honestly probably should have done it. three months ago. But as you know, we've had some vacancies in the community development department. So we've now been able to put this together and present it to you this evening. And this is just the first step to introduce and weigh the first reading and then you would adopt it at your next meeting. As a comment, the building code, the cycle, it's fundamentally the same as it was in the last cycle and we've brought forward the local amendments that you've adopted the past because they all still apply uh and are strengthening the code in certain areas that remain appropriate in larkspur great thank you any questions on those from council okay seeing that uh no one is here to provide public comment anybody online who wants to provide public comment on this item

Okay. All right. So is there anything to do here? We just waive the first?

You do need to take that as an action.

We do have to take an action. Okay. So can I get a motion to waive?

I will make a motion to waive the first reading of aforementioned ordinance as mentioned in the 1096. Second. Okay.

Okay. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Any opposed? Abstaining? Okay. Great. Passes. Item passes unanimously. Okay. And then 8.4, city council appointments.

That's your item, Madam Mayor.

Okay. So, well, after speaking with all of you, I tried to accommodate, you know, feedback and interest and, you know, what people were interested in. So this is the list. Any comments, changes that people want to make?

I want to comment that you did a fantastic job.

Thank you for all your comments and feedback. And I also want to comment that I am no longer on the police authority. I'm the alternate, but tomorrow there's a special meeting that was called a couple of weeks ago, and it's a really short one. So I've told the mayor that I'll just cover it tomorrow. But after that, I'll go as the alternate. It's a 4.30, 10-minute meeting. Other than that, thank you for doing it the council member way.

I appreciate that.

Okay. Is SMART supposed to be on there? I'm always confused because it's like MCCM.

I believe that that's done by another authority. That's fine.

Yeah. So we will try to.

Yeah. So we can talk about that. It's the only thing I thought needed to be changed, which is just recently, is the 4th of July liaison. Do you want to change? We now have this subcommittee that's between Larkspur and Corte Madera. Do we want to change that?

Let's wait until your subcommittee. Council Member Way is referring to is the town of Corte Madera has reached out to us to discuss how to govern and manage the parade and the Fourth of July activities. They have historically been managed through the Corte Madera Chamber of Commerce. And there's some sentiment that it might be time for a change. But I think until we actually have a proposal to change. Okay. historically the liaison means I engage with the chamber CEO and make sure Larkspur provides its share of resources.

Maybe we could have the Larkspur Chamber of Commerce take that on their head.

I'll refrain from comment.

So anyone want to move the council member or committee appointments?

I'll move that. Sorry. Sarah will move that. I'll second. Prime mover.

But I'll move to ratify the mayor's updated appointments for 2026. Second. Second. Great.

All right. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Abstain. Okay. Great. Thank you. All right, so as we adjourn, I did just want to make a few comments, or brief comments. Our community lost Ellie Mednick, who was the executive director of the Lark Theater. She passed away just before the holidays. She was the executive director at the Lark for... 14 years. And, you know, she brought just a lot of forward thinking and collaboration with external parties to the Lark. And I think that it was just a wonderful, she was just very pioneering in how she brought partnerships with like the Metropolitan Opera, with other, you know, theaters, with live shows. music and shows. And so I think, you know, the success of our theater, The Lark, is really well known. And I think she was a big champion of it and, you know, knew that it was a key element of downtown Larkspur. And so she was actually nominated by the chamber this past year for the spirit of, for their business of the year award. And because of that, she actually won the spirit of Marin or the Lark theater won the spirit of Marin award. And that was really exciting, I think for, for Larkspur. So I just wanted, as we adjourn this meeting, sometimes we do adjourn in memory of the, And I just wanted to say a few words of tribute to Ellie. So thank you, Ellie. All right. So with that, it's 937 and I will adjourn this meeting.

Thank you. Thank you.