Remarks by Jeff Baron
127 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 6
I'm a little bit torn. I'm more torn. I come down with Bob. I'm more torn than Bob. I appreciate both Robin and Cindy's comments and the tension between, and these are my words, getting into bed with the Chamber of Commerce as we see the historic nature of this building But what we hear from the Heritage Society is that, you know, this is the path to get, as Bob says, this is the path to getting the building open more. And so the choice is, you know, on one hand sort of, doing business with, again, this is my words, doing business with the enemy versus not having, versus just letting the…
I'll make a motion to adopt resolution 2026-076, ratifying the proclamation of existence of a local emergency by the acting city administrator due to anticipated El Nino event 2026-2027.
Thank you, Chief, for the presentation and for all the work that I know your entire department and I know your staff participated as well, Brendan. And especially for, you know, it sounds like the social media stuff really worked out well. So kudos for that. Thank you. I have a couple questions about the Cars and Coffee and the Fortain events. So the Fortain event, it was 11 spots. Was it every day? Or just like 11 days of rentals or 33 days of rentals?
It was crowded with pedestrians every day. So every day they had 11 cars in the 11 spots and those cars stayed there all day?
Thank you for, for that. But there is a, there is a clause that says they're not allowed to switch out the cars. Right? So a car arrived at the beginning of the day. It's like that one car is supposed to stay in that space all day. Is that what happened?
Yeah, in the staff report, I remember we had a conversation about this. And then page 35 of the packet, so whatever page this is of the staff report, there's a list of the three bullet items. And it says, last year, council approved additional restrictions on these rentals. And the very first one is vehicles placed in the rented parking stalls remain in that stall for the entire day. So that's my, so they're not like mobile car shows. They're like, you know, you get one shot to put a car there and then the car has to stay there all day.
So I'm, yeah, right. So we sort of agree on that. And I'm just going back to this clause that they shouldn't have been swapping out the cars. There shouldn't have been a different car show every hour. It should have been the same car show for the entire day. Okay. And then cars and coffee, like what was that? They didn't rent any stalls at all. And they just, it was just an ad hoc car show.
Yes. And then you went and talked to Mad Dogs and Englishmen about it?
And so so they didn't rent any, any stalls at all. They just had that car show. Yeah. Street in the parking spots in the street.
So it wasn't in the parking lot behind. It wasn't in that alley behind. It was effectively on the street. On Ocean or on?
I have a few comments. Where to start? Hi. So we've talked about the parking spots and the 11 spots and the rules on the 11 spots. Joe DiNucci talked about parking spot rental being a bad idea. And I have to say, I'm at that point. I struggle with, it started with... sort of the Aston Martin thing in front of the gallery on Monteverdean Ocean. And they've sort of grown in size. And maybe it's time to just sort of end that practice on the sort of belief that everything is kind of a mess during the week. And we've just made the decision not to rent parking stalls for the entire week. The Mad…
Well, three of us, well, at least two of us, probably three of us will remember this conversation.
I have a question. Go ahead. Do your contracts with your reports and other unrepresented employees have salary adjustments in them?
Like your contract with, I'll use Yami because he's gone. Does he get an automatic cost of living raise every year? No. According to his contract? No.
So the numbers are in his contract. There's no automatic thing. That's right. So why is this? Why are we voting on something that says no cost of living adjustment when that's basically irrelevant for unrepresented employees?
So in previous years when we did that, Now, I'm embarrassed I didn't ask this in previous years. In previous years when we did that, so if Yanni was an employee and he was making just $100,000 a year and his contract specified he's making this and he's entitled to these kinds of merit raises and whatever, the council would have just granted him a 4% raise. It would have overridden whatever was in his contract. That's right.
To your point, I'm wondering why we should give them the 3%. You have contracts with your employees that were executed in good faith negotiations when you hired your employees. And they were given a particular salary. So they were given $100,000 a year. So it's up to you. You have the authority to give them the 3% raise. But I'm wondering, but this seems like we're giving them a 3% raise by reducing their CalPERS contributions. So what I feel like, and I'm working this out in my head as we sit here. What I feel like is I should take 3% from their salary and give them the 3% CalPERS
Do we adjust the bans? I'm sorry for that. Do we adjust the bans every year? I'm OK adjusting the bans.
In past years when I wasn't apparently doing my homework, when we gave a 3%, when we approved a 3% increase? Did the bans change or did the salaries change? When you guys approved a cost of living adjustment change, it changed the salaries.
But it didn't automatically change the bans.
But this is my, I think the thing I'm having, like the thing I'm having kind of an issue with is that you enter into employment agreements. Like when we all worked in private enterprise, like we entered into employment agreements and we had contracts, like those of us that weren't unionized had contracts that said you get paid a hundred thousand dollars a year. And every year I got, you know, maybe if I was a good employee, got some sort of raise, but it was never a, like I'm okay with you having the leeway to give your employees raises, for sure. Within the bands, within like sort of…
Do you want us to, like, we definitely had, so... I'm definitely okay with number three.
Like that's the conversation that we had a lot of conversation with Lex last month. So we could approve number three and. The market equity adjustments. Yeah. What we've been calling pay bans. The pay bans, which is what we were just talking about.
Can you make a motion on that? I'm looking at the documentation with the resolution. We would have to modify it. It can't be picked apart on the dais. You could.
There are a lot of pages in here. There's a lot of warehouses that would have to be changed.