City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. It's Tuesday, August 4th, 2026, and we're at City Carmel-by-the-Sea City Hall, and I'd like to call this regular meeting of this Carmel-by-the-Sea City Council to order at 4.35 p.m. City Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Councilperson Barron, would you like to lead the Pledge of Allegiance, please? Thank you. In general for this meeting, if necessary, the council will be taking a 30-minute break around 6.30 p.m. The meeting is going to be a little different today. We had a closed session just before. I think you'll realize that. Talk about city administrator. And there's still some business we have to do in a closed session. So we're going to do the extraordinary business and the public appearances. And then we'll be going back into a regular session, closed session. while we still have the other one in sessio

You are allowed to have at least five minutes.

Thank you for that incredible performance, not only the violin playing, but your PowerPoint was wonderful. And thank you for being here tonight. All right, so next on our list is the public appearances. Nova, would you like to read the public appearance notice?

Thank you. How many people are going to make a public comment tonight? All right, so about four or five. And if you want to make a public comment online, please put your hands up too.

That was a very nice piece that you sent out, and I'll be there. What date was that again, just for everybody?

Okay, very good. Hope everybody shows up. All right, who's next?

Good to see you, Richard. And I hope you have some success with this round. I tried it once myself. Who's next?

Could you please continue your statement?

Thank you Maria. Who would like to speak next in the chambers? No one. Online, I'll give you ten seconds to put your hand up. Cindy. All right, we'll wrap up public comment. I knew Cindy would do it right at the last second. Go ahead, Cindy.

Thanks, Sydney. We're doing the best we can. All right. We'll wrap up public comment. Thank you, everybody, for participating tonight. I'm just going to go ahead and do the announcements. It doesn't take long, and that way we can start off with our public hearing right after our closed session, which we're going to go to shortly. City Administrator, Assistant, Acting, I don't even know. Acting City Administrator. You're the Acting City Administrator. No announcements, sir. Thank you. All right. City Attorney, do you have any announcements? No announcements. Like I said, this is going to be fas

Thank you, Mayor. Just a quick item about the Tor House. So this is quite a big deal. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has a quarterly magazine, and it's titled Preservation. And so the summer of 2026 issue has a profile of the Tor House, which is featured on the cover of the magazine. And there's also a photo essay and feature about poet Robinson Jeffers inside. So the magazine can be read online. You go to savingplaces.org. forward slash preservation magazine and then click latest issue and that'll give you a chance to see the beautiful photographs and read the profile.

Thank you and congratulations on your talk at the Carmel Foundation. Thank you. I heard it went very well. I couldn't make it. Margaret and I had a late anniversary dinner after she broke her arm. So I'm really sorry I missed it. I'd just like to say one thing. I'd like to thank everybody who's been involved with the pit project, Alrica Plaza. It's been a long, long time to get to the point where there's no longer a pit. I don't know if anybody noticed lately, but the contractor that's doing the concrete has just done a phenomenal job. And it's not filled with concrete yet unless they poured a

All right. So I guess we're going to have to clear the chambers.

Okay. Tell you what, you guys can stay here. We're going to leave and go down into the downstairs conference room and we'll be back at 5.32, that gives us a half an hour. We'll do everything we can to get back here at 5.32. All right, thank you. We stand in recess for a closed session. All right, everybody. back from closed session. City Attorney, do you have anything to report out from the closed session?

Okay, thank you. We'll return to our regular meeting. And we have one public hearing for tonight. It's consideration of adoption of fee schedule amendment to the fiscal year 2026-2027 fee schedule, including updating fees citywide, community planning and building, public safety and public works, and discussion and direction regarding a fee waiver policy continued from July 7th, 2026. And Jamie is going to take it.

Sorry, we had a cell phone go off here. I think it was Donna. But we're back and Jamie can continue.

Okay, thank you. Anyone have a question on the presentation that she just gave?

Go ahead. Thank you, Jamie. The first one, I think I actually should probably ask Brandon regarding the city administrator fee waiver authority for exceptions. So I'm just wondering how easy or difficult will you make it for people to prove that they have a financial need for a waiver? For example, if somebody's on a fixed income or over age 62, like what do they need to do to prove it without making it too difficult for them?

Okay, perfect, thank you. And then actually I have two questions really quick about the parking citation. So I was wondering if I could ask the chief on those. So somebody asked me this question, and I thought it was a good one to ask you and have everyone hear the answer. So they brought up rental cars. For example, if we're now talking about a second hire for a second offense, but let's say it's a different driver and it's within the one-year period, is that person going to get the higher offense, even though this is their first time in Carmel, just based on the fact that it's a rental car?

Okay, and then this is a little bit unrelated, but I was wondering, since we have that program, I think it's about like $30 where a resident gets the sticker for one year and they get the extra hour, for example, downtown parking. Does your automated license plate system know that that's one of those cars that gets the extra hour when you're giving tickets?

So their license plate is already in the system and it will know that?

Hi, Chief. Hey. Mine's about parking too. Okay. So if, this is about if you spend over two hours in a spot, the fees. Right. maybe it's not categorized legally as a fee, but if somebody parks like in front of someone's driveway, for example, can you tell us maybe that's a fine? I don't know if the legal difference, but how much are those charges?

Okay, and that's, just to be clear, maybe I should ask you, is that set through this fee schedule or is it a separate?

Yeah, I just bring it up. I had a couple residents reach out and they were like, hey, I just wanna make sure there's a strong financial deterrent to that type of parking behavior.

Jeff? The second and third offense fee, the dash means the other cities don't do it at all? Correct. Do any cities do it?

I'll just tell you, I just got a $128 ticket from the wonderful city of Monterey. So I don't know, I don't know exactly what I did, but it was for parking on Garden Road.

So since I'd like to put you on the spot, how did this come up and do you think it's a good idea?

Do you have the ability to do this right now? Yeah, we do. We do.

So this is not an administrative issue or time-consuming? We can do it. All right. I'd like to know what the other council people think about that particular thing, but we'll go out to the public first. All right, that's it for questions for me. Jeff, do you want anything before we go to public? All right. Public comment, please. Hopefully we have somebody that wants to make a comment about that. She's a brave soul.

Thank you, Shirley. Well said. He checked off one of my items I was gonna bring up, so timely. Anybody else? All right, going online.

Got it got it Cindy you have that one Brandon that's an interesting idea all right I think nobody else last chance here all right let's bring it back for discussion should be interesting I'll start with you Hans we've got several issues plus any other issues that you want to bring up that

Do you want a fee schedule? Do you want to segment that?

Let's start with the parking fee because I think that's the easy one to talk about. Complicated, but... Can you hear?

So when I was a middle school teacher in Teach for America for two years, I found that... bringing the hammer down was generally a good way to change behavior. And so on this one, I think that we need to raise the parking charges. I think there's certain parts of town where somebody would just park and it's, you know, kind of on par with what you'd pay for a day's parking, you know, on cannery row, or if you go to the beach boardwalk. And so I'm for hire on the first offense, I could even go up above the state average. You know, I think I'd be at like somewhere like 80. I do agree with a secon

Okay. Alessandra, let's go with you next.

Okay. Thank you, Mayor. I agree with Tamara's comments and I agree with Hans that there's definitely room to increase those fees. I started off low, but certainly I'm open to discussion. I was thinking something like $52.50 for the first one because that takes into account the $12.50 that the county takes automatically. You could do $67.50 for the socket. and 8250 or 85 for the third, but I'm certainly open to hearing the rest of the council if we want to negotiate on those.

All right so we're only talking there'll be another opportunity to talk about things other than parking yes okay we're just taking one at a time so I'm okay with raising the parking fees so that they are in line the parking penalties so that they are in line with neighboring jurisdictions the the problem I'm having with anything past that is basically the unintended consequences of pushing what is now a downtown parking problem into the residential neighborhoods. And I realize that we pretty much already have that problem, but it seems like fees higher than this are simply going to make that w

So your thoughts are to raise it to 48 and just leave it there. Don't have the escalated charges.

You know, my, if, if I were a emperor, I would raise it to 48 and not, and not have it not have it escalate. You know, I, I don't think that You know, it sounds like punishment. You know, the comments from the public and whatnot. It sounds like the idea here is sort of listening. The idea, it seems like there's talk about deterrence and there's talk about punishment. And I think that the talk of punishment really leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I don't think it's our job to punish people. And I don't think that that's a good look. So I can live with the 48, 60, and 80, but I would actually pr

You're not against it completely, you just prefer it.

I would say so far, but we haven't gotten to the second part of the conversation.

Okay, all right, good. All right, so I'm going to go back. I'll just tell you what I think. I tend, of all those speakers, I agree with Bob the most. And I agreed somewhat with what Jeff is saying. I know a lot of people that work at restaurants and they're not going to be happy with me if we do that. But at the same time, on the same angle, we're trying to get people to leave downtown. So I see that part of it too. So that's my thought. And I think the times three just sort of complicated. I think in general, Bob's comment, like let's walk before we run. Let's just, get even and start doing t

Yeah, I will just say I'm not interested in punishing anybody, but I am never going to over park on Garden Road ever again. And so that's what I'm trying to do. So I will go as high as you will let me go.

I just wanted to mention, because I'd also looked up some other cities. Granted, these are not neighboring cities, but Laguna Beach has $70 to $90. Santa Monica is $65 to $90. Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, and Del Mar are all in that same $60 to $90 range. So I think we can go up to, like I said, $52.50 if we wanted to. If not, I'm fine with the $48. I do like the idea of the second and third offense because I think it is about deterring behavior that we don't want.

Okay. All right. So you'd go for basically the program that's there, 48? You'd like it a little higher, but you'd go for 48, 60, and 80?

Okay. You'd go for that? All right. So do you want us to vote on that or because there are three separate things it's not gonna be sort of like Jeff said last night on the consent agenda we had to break it out.

Oh, staff proposal. All three of us raised our hands for those three. Thank you. All right. So that puts that one to bed. Thank you. So let's go back to the waiver of fees then, and we'll start with Jeff this time.

Okay. So this is where I have some, I think, significant issues. there are sort of two paragraphs in this, there are two paragraphs in the city administrator fee waiver authority. The first talks about the, the first talks about, the sort of ability of the city administrator to weigh fees and the second paragraph talks about examples of where the city administrator might use his or her judgment to weigh fees and I'd like to talk I'd like to talk about these in my comments I think would be better understood in the reverse order so I'll talk about the first paragraph first I think that You know,

Thank you, Mayor. I agree with my fellow council members and the reasoning on both of those. And also regarding the historic properties, what Shirley brought up and what I was sort of getting at also last night. It might need to be a future discussion, though. I don't think we have time tonight to do something like that. But I think especially if we're not going forward with Mills Act, we do need to find ways to create incentives and to ease some of the pressure and burdens and show some appreciation to folks who have historic homes and are putting in the time, effort, and money to be able to

Okay. Other than the historic homes? Are you basically a no or basically a yes?

I agree with Jeff and Bob that it does create ethical issues in the future that we want to avoid. So I don't think that we should be giving the city administrator and any future city administrators that sort of power because it does have a possibility that things could go wrong.

Yeah. I I am not a, not a fan of how it's drafted. I didn't expect that there would be so much agreement on that score actually, but I think that it's pretty broad in terms of the language pretty broad discretionary power there. And so I would much prefer to have to us go through the work of having like a defined list, like Jeff mentioned And so, yeah, that's my preference is to have a defined list, so.

All right, it sounds pretty clear that it's a no, but it has some possibilities. So somehow we need to spend enough time to develop that distinct list in the limit and maybe bring it back at some point.

And I think we could potentially take the lead on it. I don't view it as a fee waiver, per se. I think it actually is just you could lower them, you could eliminate them. I feel like it's kind of our prerogative. I remember asking you about this. I've actually been interested in this for a while. I can't remember if I asked you or Chip, but somebody gave me a dollar amount of how much it would actually cost. That must have been chipped, but that's something we could easily pull together.

So it's not trivial, especially given our budget situation.

but it's caramel by the sea and it's historic. I mean, somebody made a really good comment about that last night. I don't know if it was here in the public. I mean, that's what we are and we should be investing in it and that's one way to do it.

we want to give free staff time for these historic projects which is wonderful if that's what the council wants to do we can tell you how much that is and come back and propose some programs if you want to agendize it for a future meeting I mean there's also the cost of the historic consultants sure maybe the city puts a fund together to help subsidize that instead of the mills act but the mills act had significant fees as well so it's All right, so it sounds like you've got two assignments almost now.

Well I have a procedural question. Can we approve the fee schedule without these two paragraphs? Yes. So it seemed like that's the right thing to do, right? Well, I have some other questions about fees. There's a couple other categories.

and move on yes all right Hans you want to go to number three simplified descriptions oh simplified descriptions including legal costs as a heading oh the legal costs yeah so the only concern I have with this is You're basically, if I'm doing a home renovation or I'm building a house, I'm essentially giving the city a blank check, right? And they're just going to charge me whatever it costs them. And there's something along the lines of like what you do in insurance, where you have like a deductible, thinking from the perspective of the insurer, you know, is there some element to which the cit

I don't have anything to add. I'm okay as in the report.

Okay, I'm okay with it too, but... You heard. Yeah, thank you.

It was a good point, Hans. Thanks for bringing it up. I think I think you got the point. Number four, unusual services. Is there something we need to do on that?

No. I assume you're starting on this side. Everybody's good with it?

Everybody's good with it. All right. I have, I really apologize for doing this because I should have done it earlier, but I've been hit with certain situations, sort of like the historic houses. There are just some costs that I would like to have staff take a closer look at. One of them is the landscape plan check. There are a few instances where I've had residents question this, where they just thought, wow, I have to pay $875 to put a few native plants in front of my house. And they did. And I've done it, and I'm not asking for money back. But I'm basically taking my beautiful garden and put

Yes, you can. Is it the same you know 800 ish whether somebody's like building a new house and they're putting in brand new landscaping over the whole thing is there any is there another tier or is that that's it no matter what you're doing I don't know immediately off the top of my head I'd have to scroll through the the fee schedule I think that's it Cause I'm, this is one of those where I I'm with Dale. Like I, I completely agree whenever we can add tiers, because what ends up happening is you have a lot of people building a brand new house, scraping the whole lot takes a lot of staff time.

Or people just do it and they don't come in and get a permit, which I would never do, of course. Second one, Brandon, is pressure washing. I was just involved with some pressure washing. Commercial district getting ready for car week. And in the process of doing that, I was reminded that you have to, let's just say it's Pepe and he wants to clean up all the stuff in front of his bakery, which builds up pretty fast. If you want to do that, you have to get a temporary encroachment permit and it's $453. So it's $500 to pay the pressure washing company. It's almost $500 to get the permit and the w

Related to that, I would also suggest that you have pre-approved companies, if it's legal to do that, that you know follow the rules, that you know how they do the signings. They suck the water up so that you don't have to have public works people go out there and babysit them like we did at the very beginning a couple years ago. It's something that we need to look at. Yeah, thank you. Okay. The same thing is related to signage fee. It turns out when somebody wants to put a sign up, it's $1,000, I think. And if you had three companies that were pre-approved and you know who they are, they know

I mean, there might be some issues that it's going to be sooner than that, but it'll hit us. Yeah. Okay. That's all my things. Thank you. It was a productive discussion. Anything else before we close this one off? Since we're doing this for you.

But all the issues you brought up tonight are taken care of and now we can approve it?

I'm sorry. If you're going to come back with this, do you want to take a stab at like a tiered landscape plan check option that we could do if we wanted to?

I like the idea of tiers I think that makes sense on a lot of these things but at least starting with with that and maybe three different levels like a very basic project an intermediate project and then like a full brand new landscaping so Brandon maybe just pick two and I think the ones we're picking are the of the landscape plan check and the sidewalk encroachment that

If I've got three, I'm looking one, two, three. Okay, cool. So I guess I'm going to object. You know, we have a process for fees. You know, we have the fee schedule come up every year. We have three months of budget discussions. We have something in writing here, which unfortunately was not put in resolution form, no disrespect to staff, was not put in resolution form. So it needs to come back next month. And now we're gonna bring something back next month and it won't be right because work like this is never right the first try. So we're introducing something into this process that is gonna r

So do you want to withdraw your suggestion or do you want to leave it? Okay, we're going to go for it. Yeah, we've got direction. Okay, so do you want to read off what the resolution is? Because you're going to have to execute it. It might be better.

Correct. Same thing with the waiver of fees. That's right.

It's probably a good thing. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Good discussion, public and council. Thank you very much. And we're going to go to dinner now. Sorry for those of you who are waiting around, but Hans didn't have a big lunch today. And it is 7 o'clock. And dinner is downstairs.

I'm just thinking, do you think this one's gonna be a long one? Do you think we can get through the next little one or do you? Financial? That's totally up to you. What's next? Financial stewardship. It's fast for me.

It's not fast for me, okay. It's not gonna be, sorry. All right, we're gonna come back. What's the fastest we can do it, everybody? 7.20. 7.20, we'll be back at 7.20, thank you.

Thank you, everyone, for waiting for our dinner. Appreciate that. We're back in session at 722. And we're going to move on to orders of business. First one is discussion and direction on financial stewardship work group ad hoc, which was continued from July 7, 2026. Jamie?

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for your presentation, Jamie. I think this is actually probably for Brian. I was just wondering if an ad hoc committee in general is disbanded, how much time needs to pass before it can be reinstated?

So just to follow up on that, next year with the new council, a new council could decide to do the ad hoc. And would that perhaps be considered OK, considering it's new members of the whole body as a whole?

Okay, but it would still be kept at two?

Bob, no questions? Hans? Okay. Public comment? Come on up.

For us to hear directly as you move through whatever decisions you want to make so that was my answer if you could clarify sorry to ask you a question could you be more specific about what you're asking us to give you feedback on

Okay, something above what you just saw in the presentation.

Okay, so the people that were on it. Yes. Thank you. Anybody else? We had one other one. Kelly.

Okay, that's fine. I'll give you some time.

How long are his? You took about five minutes there.

Thank you. Two pretty powerful statements. And Nancy, I think a lot of your questions were answered. All right. Anybody else? Nobody there. Maria, I guess you're online now.

Thank you Thank You Maria Anybody else? Okay, we're going to close public comment and come back for council deliberation and discussion. Jeff, you want to start?

Sure. So staff has presented us with, so first thank you Hans and Bob for all the excellent work you did. Staff has come back and presented us with three options. I definitely have a least favorite option, which is keeping the committee as ad hoc. I think we should either turn it into a standing committee or be finished with the work. I'm a little bit torn. You know, I was I'm kind of struck by this slide that is in this that's in the staff report about the amount of work required to to do this. And, you know, I hear, you know, there's a lot of talk now about KPIs and metrics and stuff. And, y

OK. Thank you, Jeff. Alessandro, you want to go next?

Sure. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate very much the work that Bob and Hans have done. I think it's a great job. Certainly the comments that Kelly made and Jim Beck's comments really summed it all. You can't quite take, you know, go further than that. Certainly they did work with our fiscal policies. They improved the budget process, the discussion of the revenue opportunities, the tri-annual budget reporting, addressing the deferred maintenance needs and coming up with a plan. So I would just want to hear from Hans and Bob what they would like to do, but I certainly would support them in the di

What about in terms of continuing it as an ad hoc?

Well, it sounds like, according to our city attorney, that it cannot continue as an ad hoc.

All right. Thank you. Bob, you want to go?

Hans? Yeah. So first of all, it was fantastic working with you, Bob, on this. And I think it was a great experience. I think we achieved a lot. I also wanted to thank Brandon and Chip and Jamie and subsequently Marissa for their openness and you can imagine that this was a departure from the way that things operated for a long time. And they really did come with an attitude that was not defensive. It was an attitude of, yeah, let's do this. And so I just don't think that that's been recognized enough. And I thought that that was extremely helpful. I thought we had great staff work along the wa

Those were all good statements. I don't really have much to add to it, except I really want to say how incredibly successful this was when we In January, if everybody remembers, there were, what, 10 ad hoc committees? And we basically decided to clear them all out. And then this was the first one I think that came up. And we originally agreed to have it for six months. And then we decided to keep it through the whole budget season, which I think was a really good thing to do. It's probably on the borderline of how long ad hocs should last. But our city attorney said it was OK, so it was OK. Yo

And there's going to be some payback at the other end. So I have a question for the two of you and all of you. Who should be on that committee? We have some really unbelievable finance people in this town that have tremendous track records. Should we have people from outside the city on that committee too to add their expertise?

Yeah, we spent $100,000 for all of this stuff up here, and apparently I'm told we can have meetings if we rearrange the furniture down there. So I think that that's the kind of environment. I don't think that they're going to be pounding down the door to come to the meetings, but there's definitely a handful of people that are in my mind that I would encourage to be there, and I think we could make it more participatory than sort of your average meeting City Council meeting and I think that that that's probably a good way to square the circle. Alessandra?

I'm fine with everything I heard as I said I support Hans and Bob.

Jeff? I think standing committees are composed of council members period so I don't think you I don't think you even have the option of including members of the public as members of a standing committee. Brian? Is that true?

Can can standing committees consist of a people other than council members? All right. Well, that's easy. So we just encourage those smart people to show up at the meetings and participate as public comments. All right. Sounds like we have pretty unanimous support for a standing committee for better or worse for staff.

Might I suggest that first of all, I think it's probably logical to start with that the two existing members of the stewardship committee become the charter members of that committee. I might also suggest that we have a final meeting of the stewardship committee to wrap it up. And maybe at that meeting, you could help define some of these guidelines and bring it back to us at the next meeting. I mean, they seem to be the most qualified. Yeah, that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I'm going to look to your colleagues.

Yeah, I agree. I was going to suggest something similar that the two of them put together how they see it going and then we can approve it as a whole.

So how much do we need to do tonight? How much can we do at the next meeting when they come back with the framework?

Okay. I think Bob and Hans are going to agree to be on the committee. Are you okay with that?

What other, do you need us to vote? Do you need us to do something besides say, here are the two members, they're going to have a wrap-up meeting for the stewardship committee?

Okay. Do you have everything you need then?

The things that are important to me, so on the other boards that I serve on, the standing committees are instantiated by the charter of the board. And they have set meeting times. So, for example, on MST, there's an operations committee and an admin committee, and they meet every other month. Opposite to one another on community human services. There are a number of board committees and they meet every month So I would like to see those I would like to see a structure that's a little bit more formal like that rather than sort of ad hoc if you were and I would like to see that the meetings are

Thank you, that was excellent. All right, I think you've got your marching orders.

Okay, thank you. Great discussion, thank you so much. All right, so we have a really exciting one next, from my perspective anyway. Resolution 2026.060 authorizing the city administrator to execute a construction contract with Silcon Constructors for the beach access 12th and 10th Avenue stairway. Repair Project Carmel Beach Coastal Protection and Access Improvement, bid number 2526007 for a total not to exceed amount of $364,417.13, including base bid $223,149.70, add alternate $80,531.24, and contingency $60,736.19. Staff report. I don't know, do you want to do a presentation, Shari?

Can you, if I could ask a question? Please, yeah. Could you tell us exactly what this includes?

Thank you. I've got one for Shari and two for Brandon. So one thing I noticed that is normally not included when we see these is this ad alternative for $80,000. And I was just wondering if you could explain to the public what that is.

OK, I appreciate that. Thank you. And then my question for Brandon, one of them is because it was 2024, you weren't here with the city. So there was something on the city website, and it was an engineering report from Kylo in Monterey. And this was just for a temporary fix. So if you could explain to everyone the difference between the temporary versus what we're doing now.

Okay, thank you. And then my last question, Brandon, is there are reports that there's going to be a strong El Nino. So if you could give the council and the public an update next month, perhaps if we could discuss all of, not discuss, but have you give us an update on all of the beach issues, the erosion on the bluffs, the 8th Avenue sand ramp, and maybe even, we're not going to do the 4th Avenue outfall, but if there's anything new we need to know about that. Not only the status if we've done anything on those, but what is going to be done to protect them and make sure that nothing gets wors

Excellent. Thank you. Appreciate it for both of you. Thank you.

Yeah, I have a question. So when I look at the bids, when I look at the bids on the packet, I see that the silicon construction, the lowest bidder was $223,000 and change. But I see that the grand total was $303,680.94. And when I look down the list, what I see with wave construction and, in fact, all-star development, is that the grand totals are less than $303,680.94. So I want to make sure I'm understanding this right. So Silicon construction, they were the lowest bidder, but the highest alternate. And so we don't have any choice but to use the lowest bid with the highest alternate, which m

Well, how do we, like, how do we as a council sort of and I don't know how to say this, hold you to that since the grand total here is basically $40,000 more than- It's a fair question. What choices do we have to hold Silicon to, hold you or Silicon to task here?

Is there a way to set the guardrails so that the project doesn't come out to $364,000 when we could clearly do it for $40,000 less using one of the other bidders? Like do we have the mechanism to do that here in this forum? I'm going to look to Brian for that answer.

What have you asked? Well, the issue I'm having is that the base bid on SOCON is $223,000, which is, frankly, only $5,000 less than the price on the bid on wave construction. But their ad alternate is $80,000. And so the ad alternate on wave construction is $40,000. So when you add those two things together, the grand total price of the project under Silcon, which is what staff is saying we are legally obligated to do, is $303,000. And the total price of the base project and the add-on for wave construction is $268,000, so $35,000 less.

So I understand that. So I got that from staff. My question is, was then what can we do about it here? So what I'm inferring is our only two choices are either to accept the Silcon bid for the base and the additive, which makes it $35,000 by the time you have the contingency, $40,000 more. for the total project than it would if we used wave construction. So we've boxed ourselves into the corner by specifying that we would use the base bid and not the base plus the add-on if we wanted. Or we can just do the base bid with silicon and cause staff, you know, ask staff to scramble to do the additiv

Can we require staff to negotiate down as part of this resolution? We shouldn't. Can we require staff to negotiate down the price of the ad alternate with SOCOM to something close to the ad alternate of Wave or just or say either you negotiate it down to $40,000 or $50,000 or you just scrap it altogether?

bid that they put in because the whole purpose of bidding law is for them to give their price not for it to be... Well if they're the selected bidder, I mean normally if we had four contracts, let's say if we didn't have an alternate and normally we had four contracts and we selected one and staff it would still be within their authority to negotiate right go back to the the bidder and say hey you know we'd like five thousand dollars off and we're going to give it to you but we'd like five thousand dollars off no you can't do that no your authority is under the public contracts code it goes ou

OK. So let me ask a different question. We had this conversation an hour ago about your signing authority, which is $59,999. Can we approve the base bid and not this stuff? And could you then go back to Silicon as a separate matter, and negotiate a sole source contract with them not to exceed $59,999 and then just do that without coming back here?

I would just add that you might not get the same pricing because there's sort of like some economies of scale and mobilization costs and things like that, so.

Well, how do you think then that Wave Construction did the ad alternate of $40,300 given that you think the cost is $50,000?

So I don't know who they are supplying. Different markets. Jeff, I appreciate the light of thinking you're going down, but we need to get this contract approved. How many of you are willing to approve it as written? I do have one question, though. Go ahead.

You talked about community character earlier, and we just had the conversation about the money, but now the community character. So who actually approves the design of this thing? I understand that you're trying to get it to look like what's there, but who's approving what it looks like?

My only thing, I know that we desperately want these stairs, but the only thing that I would say is we also want it to look the way that we want it to look. It currently doesn't have any railings on it, right? And so this is a community where outside we have these crazy handcrafted railings. I'm not saying that we need that on these beach stairs, but the details do matter. And so... You know, it does make me like a little bit nervous that nobody's going to approve what the design of the thing looks like.

I believe it has to be replaced exactly the way it is. Otherwise we have to go through a lot more with the Coastal Commission. So as much as I appreciate Jeff's efforts, I think we really need to get on with it because I mean, these were damaged in early 2023 and here we are like three and a half years later. So... It'll be nice. The only thing that scares me right now is with these storms coming. I'm hoping that when we get this done that they're going to be durable and be able to withstand the storm. But I really do want us to move on with this. It's been quite some time.

I think the discussion was valuable that we just had, and it might have brought up some things that we want to pay more attention to on the next project like this. But I'm looking for a motion to approve.

It's been a long time. I forgot all about it. But I do that once in a while. Public comment, please. That was a lot of questions. No public comments.

Anybody online before we stop that? Sorry. There's no hands raised online. Okay, good. Go ahead. I'm sorry, I don't want to do a full public comment.

Yeah, I have a comment. I want to be clear that my comments and what I may or may not do in 30 seconds are definitely not a reflection on the two of you or on any part of staff. I understand what Bob said, that we're caught in this sort of legal maze of trying to figure out how to balance the law with what I see as basically getting a better deal from someone else. And unless the motion contains instructions to staff on somehow reducing the ad alternate, what I'm looking at is a grand total that is, what I'm honestly looking at is a grand total that's $35,000 more than what we could have other

Congratulations. We're gonna get new beach stairways. There was a cheer from the audience and the whole city. But we're just sort of tired, so we're not going to do it. All right, so now there are two items left, and we don't have the closed session anymore because we did it. There was a suggestion from the dais to do item number five first. thinking that it was a simpler one to get out of the way. And then we'll have a discussion about what to do with item four. So if that's okay with everybody?

It's not okay with me, but I'm sure I'll be outvoted.

I want everybody to be happy. Don't have to. Yeah, I mean, I'll go with the flow. Okay, so we're gonna do item five, provide direction regarding a potential urgency ordinance addressing home hardening and wildfire safety regulations citywide.

OK, I'm going to start with Hans since he's our fire expert.

No, you know, this is one of a number of areas that we were looking at. And from the very beginning, we knew we wanted to, again, kind of agitate in this area and get something in front of the council. And we had came up with something back in March. And here we are. And so As Brandon said, we basically outlined two different tracks. One was stuff that we considered kind of no brainers. Hey, let's bring that as an urgency ordinance. And then other modifications that we thought were required more discussion or were more sort of material dependent conversations, we thought that those were better

So you recommend all four of these and participated in creating this policy?

So you and others, you were part of that team? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Alessandra?

Thanks. I don't have too much more to add. I certainly would support it. Definitely one and two, but I'm fine with putting all four in. And then I do agree with the decision on the other items to hold off and leave that for design traditions.

Just trying. Okay. Thank you. Any questions now that we've heard from our fire expert? Anybody from the public want to make a comment? Thank you, Nancy. Are there any hands online? No.

Thank you. Kelly, were you going to make a comment? Come on up.

Perfect. Thank you, and thank you for your work in the committee. All right, we'll continue our deliberation that I prematurely started.

Thank you. I have a couple of comments. First, I am what I'm struggling with is the the reason behind doing this as an urgency ordinance and not as a normal ordinance. You know, Brandon, you sorry, Brandon. The staff presentation talks about putting these things off into the design traditions, which is admittedly sort of a long way away. But I think we have sort of a burgeoning problem in the city with regulations that are not really codified anywhere. So for example, we have a ban on beach fires which is codified in a coastal development permit, which doesn't appear anywhere on the city's web

Oh, so we have an urgency ordinance, right? Is that codified on the city's website? It is on the website. So we have these things that are, I'm corrected. We have these things that are like sort of done without like without going through the process. And so we also have like, remember, you know, back when, I don't know if you were here, we have an urgency ordinance that has to do with pushcards. you know, push carts downtown. Does anyone even remember those when the state allowed, when the state allowed push carts? So we have an urgency ordinance on the books that specifies the system for adhe

So it's also codified. So Jeff, I know you want to move to the ADUs and get that in tonight.

So I'm having a problem, correct it again, I'm having a problem with the sort of the fast track nature of this and not going through public comment, not going through sort of a more typical process, a couple of things. Number one, gravel adjacent to structures. That does border on the design tradition issue, whether you can have gravel adjacent to structures. Am I going to be corrected on this too? No. Well, I don't know. And what? I shouldn't say no. I don't know. Continue. And fire resistant windows, the sort of interference, the sort of intersection between fire resistant windows and what y

I'm interested in it. I'm definitely interested in it. So to answer the question, I'm interested in it. I think that the city would be better off if we slowed down and took two extra months to go through the normal ordinance process.

two hearings at the city council. I mean, some of these things would normally go to the planning commission first for their input, right? Isn't that right? If they're, if they're, if they were going to be codified as a regular ordinance, presumably in title 17, like they would sort of by definition go to the planning commission first. And so that would be a more, a more open process towards getting like planning commissioners feedback on what they think about putting gravel, how they think putting gravel next to structures affects the design ethos of downtown. That's the sort of process I'm ta

Brandon, I seem to remember having a, Can I say something? Yeah, sorry. I remember having a conversation with you, and I could be misremembering this, but basically, if it's an urgency ordinance, it can truly happen, even though it sort of touches on something that's related to our zoning code. If it's an urgency ordinance, it can go into effect immediately. That's right. Yeah. But if it's a regular ordinance, don't we still have to go through the whole Coastal Commission? If it's Title 17, yes. Right. So it's not... Now versus two months from now, it's now versus a year from now. Right. And s

I agree. Does somebody want to make a motion?

I need to ask Bob a question. Go ahead. Do you remember? No. where gravel stands in the design guidelines discussion? The answer is probably no.

The option is dirt. Hans, go ahead. Do you make the motion?

Well, I was going to say we're just providing direction here, but I'm happy to make a motion. My motion is that we provide direction to staff to come back to us next month with an urgency ordinance with these four components along the lines described here in the staff report.

All right. Let's just go ahead and get a vote. With the sunset clause?

I think Hans' statement showed it was unnecessary. It's already going to sunset and be part of the design guidelines on its own. Thanks for including that, Brandon. That was well thought out. All right. Thanks for everybody that would participate in that. That could save us some fire issues in town. And it shows that we're making progress. All right, so now we're gonna have a discussion on policy direction regarding the permitting of accessory dwelling units, ADUs and draft amendments to Title 17 relating to ADUs. We're obviously bumping close to our possible curfew time. So if we're gonna hav

Thank you. Jeff, why don't we start with you? Just a quick question. Could you talk a little bit about what is currently in our municipal code regarding ADUs?

So there's a section, there's a section in our code, we can't find the number, 170850G, three that talks about ADUs, and it says, ADU shall conform to all requirements of the underlying residential zoning district. Any applicable overlay district and all other applicable provisions of this CAM chapter, including but not limited to height, setback, lock coverage, four area ratio, landscape, and historic preservation requirements, cumulatively with the primary residence, unless the unit is contained in a non-conforming structure. Do we do that now? Do we, so why do we not, why do we not enforce

So we went back to recap, we went back to that requirement because we believe that the HCD We believe that the laws promulgated by the legislature regarding housing that were sort of enforced by ACD conflicted with our laws. Yes, that's correct. And so we made this decision eight years ago, however many years ago.

Go ahead Hans. Well Evan, first of all, I just wanted to, I do have a question here, but I just wanted to say fantastic job. I found that this was like like just a model of a fantastic staff report. And I think there are ideas in here that like you have come up with that are gonna have a big benefit for our city. And so thank you for that. I think it stems from you doing a lot of hard work. This is one of those areas where I'm sure there were other people, but it sounds like you really led the charge. So thank you. My question is, So there's basically two entities that we need to sort of get a

AND SO I'M GOING TO TRY TO, IF WE HAD SOME OF THE THINGS THAT YOU TALKED ABOUT, YOU HAD SOMETHING ABOUT JADUs, ADDING SOME LANGUAGE THERE, YOU HAD SOMETHING ABOUT POTENTIALLY THE HEIGHT LIMIT, LIKE EXAMPLES LIKE THAT WHERE YOU HAVE SOME, YOU'RE PROVIDING SOME ADDITIONAL FLEXIBILITY. But if we held tight on, held firm on, for example, just total square footage limits that are in our existing city code? Like if we did those things in tandem, is it your take that HCD would go along with that?

May I? Yeah. But don't we already have something on the books that was approved by HCD and the Coastal Commission? Or at least the Coastal Commission, I mean, as part of our LCP.

But they're not reaching back in time, are they, to go back to 2018 to say, well, we're going to retroactively say that your ordinance is bad. I mean, that's not how these things work, is it?

So when it conflicts with the Coastal Act, but we know that this doesn't... Where they don't exist.

Sure. The question I'm asking is, what do we need to do? Like, I'm asking sort of about the next year. Like, what do we do for the next, like, how do we resolve the conflict that we have? So granted that this, granted that this, you know, that we have a conflict with the Coastal Act, with the law, but where do we

asking my question than I'm doing, because I'm tired, sorry. So we, like there are two things we need to do. We need to update the ADU ordinance, which is somewhere in some process somewhere with the Planning Commission and whatnot. And we need to update our policy guidelines to, we need to update policy guidance to fix or possibly fix whatever hole exists now, because we haven't done this in eight years, since 2018. Yeah. And both of those things are allowed by the way this item is agendized? Yep. Policy direction on the ordinance and maybe policy direction on the policy? That's correct. Okay

I have a question. Like why are we doing this and not you? I understand the policy setting of policies, but can you put a matrix in front of us that makes it in perfectly clear terms what the inconsistencies are and what you're asking us to decide?

Have a better favor. Are you asking us, do you want us, do we think you should tighten up our ADU ordinance to make it more difficult to build an ADU? Is that what you're asking? I don't think. Or should we not do that so we could build more ADUs satisfy our housing.

Okay. We can ask you questions in the discussion, I'm sure. Yeah, sure. Yeah, so let's move into public comment, unless anybody has a big question you want to ask right now. Public comment? Have we sufficiently confused everybody? As much as I'm confused? Okay. I'm starting to understand it. Hi. Yeah, Mike, thank you. Welcome. Thanks for being here.

I already guaranteed him that all of us have read all the public comments. But he's going to do it.

Thank you. And I appreciate you putting in writing so that we can.

You did. You did. And it's a very interesting situation that you're in. I don't think I've ever seen it. Are you gonna make a public comment, Chief? I was hoping we'd have one more. Nancy, you're not gonna say anything? Little nudge at 9.20 at night.

Hopefully we'll clarify it a bit before we end this tonight. And that's part of this, right? That's part of the problem. Anybody else? Nobody online? Maria, you're not going to say anything?

Thank you, Maria. All right, we're going to bring it back. And I'm going to go to Jeff again. Jeff, I just want to thank you, Jeff, first of all, for this being here in the first place. It's clear that it was needed. And your discussion on water early and so on really sort of spurred this happening. And we appreciate it.

Thank you, Dale. And I had to thank Hans for your work on this as well. I am, as you can imagine, focused on the policy. And what I would like to see is now that we have this direction from the Coastal Commission to, as Evan says, maybe I'm not using this word, harmonize our interpretation of our laws with our LCP, I would like to see the council reiterate our support for the Section G section 17 dot dot dot dot dot G accessory dwelling units which talks about section section 2.C which talks about the requirements of ADUs so that is my that is that is my wish I think that the ordinance is goin

How does something like rooftop decks on ADUs enter into this discussion? And then I have a question about what a fully harmonized ADU ordinance would look like on a 4,000 square foot lot.

That's not part of harmonizing with the LCP. Or the Coastal Act.

Well, hold on. Didn't I, I apologize, but didn't I hear when you read your section of the CMC Part G, didn't it talk about volumetric analysis?

Yeah, it says all other applicable provisions of this chapter, including but not limited to, So it doesn't call out height. It doesn't call out volume metrics, but it calls out height, setback, lock coverage, for error ratio. historic preservation requirements, et cetera.

Another aspect. So could you, in as simple terms as you can do here at 930, tell me what a fully harmonized situation looks like on a 4,000 square foot standard Carmel lot?

I've got a house with an 1,800 square foot house, including the garage, maxed out FAR. Yeah. And now it's fully harmonized. We've got our ADU ordinance in place. What can I do?

But I can't put an 800 or 750 square foot ADU on the back of my house to make a 2,500 square foot house?

So the kinds of units that we're seeing built right now wouldn't happen?

Interesting. Well done. All right. Anybody else have any discussions, comments?

Go ahead. Thank you. No, that's what I'm asking.

I thought you were going after the public again. Oh, no. So Bob makes a good argument about the deed restrictions, but I have a question for something that was just up here that Evan showed us. It was page 14. It's under background. Because it says updates to the ADU handbook 2025, and I just want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly, it says, clarifies that ADU law prohibits deed restrictions on ADUs. A deed restriction would be an additional standard and thus cannot be opposed on ADUs. So would that contradict what Bob was suggesting? It's right at the bottom right. I think it's dif

Okay. That would be interesting to get your thoughts on that. That's not right.

It's not right. Nancy? Nancy? Can I? Why don't you wait until after she's asked all her questions.

I was just going to start with comments.

So just in general, just basic. For me, the keys with the ADUs are having the setbacks, the four-foot setback with the side and rear yard, the height limits, keeping it at 12 feet. It must be a subordinate structure and must have the same or compatible architectural style as the main house. I think since our housing element does rely so heavily on ADUs, and so far it's the only area that we are actually seeing production in numbers. I don't want to do anything that discourages construction of them, and I want to continue to encourage people to build them, yet I do believe strongly in what Jeff

So Brandon, I have a kind of question for you. So to summarize, it sounds like we here will be providing council direction to staff to change how staff is applying our current municipal code provisions relating to ADUs. That's right, we will go back to the strict interpretation.

Yes. Meanwhile, you will work on creating an ADU ordinance update basically. Okay.

So how does the water issue that Jeff brought up a while back interfix with this? Do we even need it? Can we even talk about it? It's a better question.

OK, so it's still hanging out there somewhere.

OK. Yeah, I just wanted to highlight, I know Alessandra just mentioned a concern about kind of shutting down ADU production in general, considering it's part of our housing element. when you go back and you look at Evan's data, especially if you look at like sort of the more recent period, of the 38 ADUs that received a building permit since the January of 2024, only 15 exceeded the square footage limits for the site so 39 of the 22 ADUs that received a building permit since the beginning of 2025 only seven exceeded the square footage limit so that's 32 so I think that gives me some comfort th

If I could clarify, or if you could clarify what you were talking about with deed restrictions, were you talking about if somebody wanted to build something larger than their allowed 1,800 square foot on that lot, that if they deed restricted it, we could approve another structure? Is that what you were getting to?

Might give them a little more room. Yeah. $1,600, yeah. I've seen a situation like that recently. But that's...

Alessandra, what about you? How do you feel about this?

I'm fine, and I certainly agree with what Hans is saying. It's a form of housing, and let's just get it to fit a little bit better within our character, but still encourage it because it's a key part of our housing element, and it's something that we're actually getting done.

That's what I'm looking at. So I think it's code section 17.08.050.G. So the motion would be to instruct staff to interpret 17 blah, blah, blah, G in accordance with the words that are written on the page in our code. Strict adherence to section G, yep. So I'll look for a second and then I have a question.

And incorporating the comments on rooftop decks, which I support. With Alessandra, I see a lot of things going up and down. If that's your motion, I second. Okay, so now I have a question. What's the cutoff for, we had this discussion the other night, sort of what's the cutoff for applications that are in process?

Well, let me, while you're thinking about that, let me say that that might be a policy discussion for the five of us. Because if the five of us want to treat applications that are in process under the old policy guidelines, then we don't need his answer to the question. It's only if we want to treat applications that were in process to the new policy guidelines.

What I'm remembering from a month ago was that there were at least three of us that wanted to, that maybe or maybe didn't include me, but I know that that I know that that sentiment was expressed during that hearing that that particular application was in process. And so regardless of what we did, what I wanted to do the other night that we are now doing tonight, that we should treat the people in the pipeline as the interpretation of the law being the old one.

Yeah, I think there's a fairness issue again. They were told something and in a lot of cases people have invested thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in architecture and et cetera. And so that does, it doesn't seem, it doesn't seem fair.

I would agree with the fairness issue. I mean, it's if they were told a certain way and it's already begun, they have to be continuing on with what they were told.

So, okay. And so the definition of in the pipeline is that they have paid money to the city. That's right. Application fee. So once they pay an application fee, they are in process. We're all, we're sort of okay with that. Okay. I'm okay. I'm okay with that too. You're off the hook, Brian. I don't want to, I don't want to fight that battle either.

Thank you, Council. Thank you, members of the public for that great discussion. We now have future agenda items. Anybody have a future agenda item they want to bring up? And of course, you can always bring it up at another time before our agenda setting meeting, including the public. If you ever want an agenda item, you can send us an email. Bob and I are on the agenda setting committee. But you can talk to any of your council people and they'll get the word to us.

All right. So I have one. Go ahead. we gave away $100,000 and we're also looking at, you know, historic fees. And so I'm thinking about offsets and I have kind of a crazy idea. We've talked about with the TOT, regardless of what happens with the revenue measure that we've proposed, a lot of you have probably heard this, but they call them OTAs, but like Priceline Expedia, basically our TOT is not collected on the 20% of the hotel room value that kind of goes to Priceline Expedia.

Yeah. And I was talking to Mark Watson at some point and we did some calculations and I think he, he thinks like maybe like, I came up with kind of the same number, like maybe like four or $500,000 a year. And so I'd love to think about that at some point. I mean, obviously, we're having a couple of revenue measures on the ballot. It would have to be, I don't know if I can ask Brian, but I think it might have to be a special election. The thing I wanted to say was, I think I could justify doing a special election if it's going to bring in $400,000 and only cost us whatever it's going to cost u

All right. So that's a future agenda item. All right. Sounds like that's it. All right, thank you everybody for your attendance. We stand adjourned.