City Council - Regular Meeting

No, Mayor.

No, I do not have any. Okay. Thank you. Number three, disclosure of ex parte communications on items where the Town Council acts in an adjudicatory or quasi-judicial capacity. Does anyone have anything to disclose? Number four, open time for public expression. This is limited to three minutes per speaker on items that are not on our agenda. City Council Chambers, Anybody in the Chamber which wishes to speak Cindy anybody on zoom for public comment. City Council Chambers, There are no raised hands online, Mayor Thank you item number five is the mayor's report. City Council Chambers, First, I want to showcase firewise a volunteer Community based organization that provides simple effective steps to help reduce the risk of destruction from wildfires by encouraging residents to take proactive steps. Some California insurance companies offer homeowner insurance discounts if a residence is in a Firewise site. Currently Marin has 90 Firewise groups encompassing more than 25% of Marin's population and geography. In addition to the Barber Winship Firewise group approved six years ago, Ross has two other Firewise groups. The Laurel Grove Firewise community recently became Firewise USA certified. Congratulations. This Firewise site includes Laurel Grove and streets off Laurel Grove Avenue in Ross, Kentfield, and Sam Rathal. The Lagunitas Road Firewise was recently launched and is making big strides toward becoming Firewise certified. This site will include about 200 homes south of Lagunitas Road and west of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard on Willow, Willow Hill, Madrona, portions of Lagunitas, Thomas Court, Woodside Bridge, and Poplar. please email LagunitasRoadRoss at gmail.com if you're interested in helping form this site or would like more information. Second, I want to thank residents for attending or watching our Marathon January 8th Council Meeting regarding the Ross Fire Station and related issues at the Marin Art and Garden Center. Some of you were able to stay the full five plus hours to hear the detailed, complex presentations and robust discussions. Many residents gave public comment before the meeting and or at the meeting. Thank you for your participation and deep commitment to our town. For those of you who are unable to attend or who had to leave early, I encourage you to review the full reports and watch the complete recording of the meeting. And then I include links of the Friends of the Ross Firehouse Reports, Town of Ross Elections Code Report, and the recording of the meeting with the PowerPoints. Thanks to friends of the Ross Firehouse representatives, town staff, and consultants for providing reports and presentations. Thanks to Marin Art and Garden for hosting our meeting, and especially to town clerk Cindy Martell, who worked for weeks to ensure the room was set up properly and the Zoom link and PowerPoint worked well. These issues, which include design, construction, operations, and finance, are complicated and nuanced, and I sincerely regret that these topics have been dividing our town for more than a year. I am optimistic that we will find a path forward at our council meeting tonight. That concludes my mayor's report. Next is number six, council committee and liaison reports, Terry.

Good evening, everybody. The Age-Friendly Ross Task Force, in collaboration with the Marin Commission on Aging, held a very successful District 2 collaboration meeting with other age-friendly leaders and county commissioners on the Commission on Aging. The meeting was held at the University of the Redwoods with about 25 people participating, including District 2 Supervisor Brian Cobert. Participants shared what their towns and District 2 are doing to support older adults, people with disabilities, and caregivers. Based on the evaluation of this meeting, there will likely be another collaboration meeting this year. The Ross Age-Friendly Task Force today held its fourth annual Valentine's Day lunch, and we had about 80 people there. It was a wonderful event. We had the Shady Lane Singers, Shady Ladies Singers. We had Branson A Cappella Choir. We had a great guest speaker from Vivillon. So music, people gathering, and Beach Krul, used to be on the town council and his past mayor was our moderator. So we will be holding our next one, our fifth next year. So stay tuned. The Transportation Authority of Marin I sit on that for the town is in the process of finalizing a small 5% adjustment to the current measure, a expenditure plan. The expenditure plan is a half cent transportation sales tax approved by the voters in 2018. It generates approximately $35 million annually to fund local road repairs, safe routes to school, transit services, and various transportation projects. The TAM reviews the expenditure plan every six years to align with current needs. We are in that sixth year. and we need to amend the measure. Again, it's a small change, but there will be a 45-day public comment period from January 22nd to March 9th. There will be a notice of public hearings on March 26th. Amendments will be presented to each city and town, so they're going to have to come to Ross and ask for our approval for these changes. So stay tuned. And just an FYI, for those of you who do commuting or go back and forth between here and Sonoma, you will notice that Caltrans is finally changing the time for commuting and those signs are going up one at a time up and down that corridor so at some point it's going to be a nine a six to nine a.m for that commuting lane um and it's going to be 3 to 6 30 in the evening so it'll be a hopefully we'll see it'll be a little bit better thank you thank you terry anybody else

I had something that I wanted to bring to council members' attention from the MCCMC meeting that we held a couple weeks ago, and that is that the MCCMC is going to be complying with the Brown Act going forward, which means that all future meetings for MCCMC will be in person. And the next meeting will be on March 25th in Sausalito. City Council Chambers, MCC MC is also sunsetting the homelessness committee, and it will be assumed by a county wide homelessness committee and the other thing I wanted to mention to people was Ross valley fire department has launched a new website people want to check it out. City Council Chambers, Number seven staff and Community reports Ross property owners association diane.

Good evening, Madam Mayor and members of the Ross Town Council. I'm here tonight in support of the Ross Property Owners Association and want to give you an update on what we've been doing. And Councilwoman Terry Dowling already started with what I'm going to start with, but I just wanted to say we are, I'm facing all of you who are now living in Ross, we are in the midst of our membership drive for 2026 so tonight i'm really doing uh kind of an advertisement for all the things that ross property owners association does because we would like nothing better than to get all 800 residents of ross to be members of the property owners association So supporting and following up on what Councilwoman Terry Dowling said, the Ross Age Friendly Task Force did present the most wonderful luncheon today. And I think Councilwoman Elizabeth, you were there also. OK. And Julie and it was a It was a vision of what we can do as a town with all the groups that were cooperating to put this on. The task force led it, but it was also led by our town's recreation director, Maureen Borthwick, who is amazing, and Katie Ledour from Cedars. And we had RPOA also supported the event. So there were our 60 plus Ross residents actually had a lovely time today. at the Marine Art and Garden Center, which also contributed to it. So, upcoming RPOA sponsored events include the Ross Spring Fling in March, Live on the Compens on April 17th, the Ross Auxiliary Spring Dinner on May 9th, and the Garden Walk for Ross School on May 17th. You will be receiving information about the 2026 membership drive. Some of you have automatic renewals, which we love, but you'll need to note that there are some changes in that, so I want to draw attention to it. And then I want to remind everyone that in addition to what's coming up, the Ross Property Owners Association is responsible for the holiday lighting on Ross Commons, the Winterfest, the hanging flowers, decorations on the Ross Bridge, tables and lighting in the post office, collaborating with a town on possible upgrades, holding an emergency response class on the Commons, and wait for it our upcoming historical walks program whereby you will be able to walk by a place in Ross and with a very small little sign very small that use your phone and get a history of what took place in that spot and that is being led by Tom Gaffney who's just done a heroic job so I just want to thank the town because the town also supports the property owners association and just point out what City Council Chambers, A great collaboration, we have going in Ross, thank you.

City Council Chambers, Thank you diane and thanks to our POA.

City Council Chambers, Next is town manager Johnson, yes, thank you, Mayor would you mind if we pop back to the previous agenda item because Mr Martin is here as your liaison to the zone nine yes.

City Council Chambers, liaison report from flood zone nine Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. I'm not bringing good news tonight. The Flood Zone 9 Advisory Board has had two recent meetings, one on November 18th and the second meeting on January 28th. At the November meeting county staff provided a review of various projects, including the grant and park pump station, the lower college of Marin. restoration project in stream improvements in the quarter madera creek and setting up an ad hoc budget subcommittee. At the next meeting of the advisory board, approximately two weeks ago, on January 28th, discussion focused on FEMA's recent ruling that the removal of Building Bridge 2 in San Anselmo cannot proceed until all downstream mitigation measures are completed. Without this, the project is dead. Christopher Blunk The director of the Marin County Department of Public Works stated that staff will meet as soon as possible with the dozen or so affected downstream property owners in San Anselmo and Ross to discuss possible mitigation measures. If the county cannot secure unanimous approval from the impact downstream property owners, the removal of Building Bridge 2 cannot proceed. Director Blunk stated that mid-April will be the deadline for accomplishing a consensus among property owners, the affected property owners, with the proposed mitigation measures. During the course of the meeting, it was revealed that the county was aware of FEMA's ruling prior to the advisory board's November meeting, but failed to disclose it to the advisory board. Advisory board members expressed dismay. and the need for accurate information and transparency in order to function as a viable advisory board. Director Blunk promised greater transparency in the future. An odd thing occurred on Super Bowl Sunday, just hours before the kickoff. Director Blunk called me. He stated that the county flood control projects face similar issues to the Building Bridge 2 project, where there's an unmitigated downstream rise in flood water. The removal of the fish ladder in Ross was one of those projects. As proposed, the Corte Madera Creek Flood Risk Management Project, which includes the removal of the fish ladder, would not be approved by FEMA. Apparently, flood walls downstream of the fish ladder require additional freeboard or extra vertical height above the base flood elevation to comply with FEMA regulations. The plans for this project returned to the drawing board, thus delaying the removal of the obsolete fish ladder again. By the way, the county was aware of this issue when the flood zone nine advisory board met on January 28th, approximately two weeks ago, but it failed to disclose it. So, any questions I'd be glad to answer.

Thank you for the report. One question I had is we have our windship bridge project. Was that at all mentioned in any of these? I know it's not, maybe it's not in Flood Zone 9, but will we have a similar issue with our windship bridge project?

Yeah, it hasn't come up. It wasn't discussed at all. As you stated, it's not part of the Flood Zone 9 project.

But essentially, both projects were delayed or came into trouble because they didn't look at mitigating the downstream risks. Correct. Okay. Thank you.

And Chris, do you have any timeline as to when that mitigation of the flood walls downstream of the fish ladder might occur?

You know, it's complicated because the height of the walls are an issue for property owners and people in general. They've been an issue in the past, and at this point the county doesn't know how it's going to approach it.

Any other questions?

Aside from our fish ladder, I thought there was a southern project in the Corte Madera Creek to widen it and allow for more flow. Is that affected by this?

That's the lower quarter-meter creek, and that's completed. But within the channel itself, there is no widening except at the end of the channel where it's been improved.

And that wouldn't help with this, if that's been widened, wouldn't flow go out of it?

Not really. If it were closer to the town of Ross, it might, but it's already in the natural basin. It's too far.

Thank you.

Sure.

Well, thank you for your report, Chris. To Manager Johnson.

yes thank you mr martin um okay so thank you to um council member dowling for uh discussing that today's valentine's day luncheon i heard it was another big success thanks to everyone including the volunteers for putting on the event i hope that everyone has noticed how nice our ross commons look right now some may have been confusing it with the greens at pebble beach but seriously this is what fertilizing and seeding and most importantly allowing the seeds to grow by keeping humans and canines off the fields for a few months that's the that's what can happen when you do that staff is a bit worried that they are having to repair the fences often due to what appears to be small humans injuring the fences I hope everyone will continue to be patient while all fragile Roscommon repairs itself until Little League starts in a few weeks. Our esteemed town clerk, Cindy Martell, has announced her retirement effective March 31st. While we are sad to see her go, we are excited for her as she begins this next stage of life and a new adventure. Our recruitment to find her replacement has begun and they're big shoes to fill. In addition to this recruitment, we continue to recruit for the town's vacant building inspector position. And if you know of anyone well qualified, please do send him or her our way. All the information is on the town's website. The ADR cancelled its February 17th meeting due to its conflict with the school's winter break. The next meeting will be held on March 17th. And that means that your March 12th meeting will not have any design review items. There won't be anything ready for the Council to review. uh and then lastly we received some welcome rainfall yesterday and expect a larger storm to come in on sunday and early next week public works staff have cleaned out the storm drains again and we encourage residents to prepare their property for potential storm impacts thank you for the opportunity to report thank you number eight is our concern yep matt

Sorry, one question, town manager. Is the March meeting going to have the CIP? I'm just wondering about just scheduling.

Yeah, that is what our, that's what we're planning on. There was just too much going on tonight. No problem.

Yeah. Thank you.

All right. Number eight is our consent agenda, items A through H. Does any council member wish to remove any item from the consent agenda? Does any member of the public wish to remove an item from the consent agenda? Anybody on Zoom?

No raised hands on Zoom, Mayor.

Great. Could we have a motion to approve the consent agenda?

I move that we approve the consent agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Great. Cindy? Elizabeth.

Mayor McMillan? Yes. Council Member Dowling? Yes. Council Member Kircher?

Yes.

Council Member Salter. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Robbins. Yes. All right, with a vote of five, the motion passes. Thank you.

thank you item number nine public hearing on planning projects part one a is to shanley lane design review minor exception permit a variance and town council consideration of adoption of resolution number 2600 approving the project subject to conditions excuse me point of order mayor may we move um item c up to the first project is that would that be okay um sure we can do that is that okay with you sorry with staff yeah yeah we can do that okay so we'll do 67 bolinas so they can get out of here sooner rather than later um 67 bolinas avenue design review demolition permit non-conformity permit variance and town council consideration of adoption of resolution number 2605 approving the project subject to conditions okay

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Tonight, the owner at 67 Valinas is seeking town council consideration for design review, demolition permit, a nonconformity permit, and a variance. The project is proposing to demolish the existing nonconforming residence, a studio shed in the rear, and a detached garage. In their place, the applicant is proposing to construct a new two-story single-family residence with an attached one-car garage. Addition site improvements include new landscaping, patios, synthetic turf, a deck and walkways. A variance is requested to allow the proposed patio and deck to encroach further into the side yard setbacks and a trash enclosure within the front and side yard setback. On January 20, 2026, the ADR group was in support of the project with several revisions to include removing the second story deck, relocating the trash enclosure, and reducing the depth of the lower rear deck. The applicant did revise the plans to remove the second story deck, to relocate the trash enclosure to the east side of the lot, and to reduce the size of the lower rear deck. I also want to bring up that prior to issuing a building permit, the applicant shall submit a detailed construction management plan for review by the planning department. And staff request that the town council consider adopting resolution 2605, approving design review, a nonconformity permit, a demolition permit, and a variance. Thank you.

Thank you. Questions from council members? Any public comment on this item? Does the applicant wish to make any kind of a presentation? You don't need to. OK. So we'll bring it back for any discussion or a motion.

I move we approve Resolution 2605.

Second.

I didn't get that. No, I got it. Mayor McMillan, yes. Councilmember Dowling, yes. Councilmember Kircher, yes. Councilmember Salter, yes. Mayor Pro Tem Robbins, yes. The vote of five, the motion passes.

Next, we're moving back to A2 Shanley Lane, design review, minor exception permit, a variance in town council consideration of adoption of resolution number 2600, approving the project subject to conditions.

Okay. The owners at 2 Shanley are seeking town consideration for design review, a minor exception permit and a variance. The project is proposing to demolish the existing angled garage and reconstruct it to align it with the main residence. The new garage will remain the same size and will match the main house. The project also includes landscape improvements by removing the kidney-shaped pool and constructing a new rectangular-shaped pool in the rear setback. Additional site improvements include a seven-foot side yard fence along the west property line. And a variance is required to allow the new garage to encroach into the side yard setback a new rectangular pool to further encroach into the rear yard setback, and to allow patio and trash enclosure within required setbacks. Minor exception is also required to allow that seven foot side yard fence. On December 16, 2025, the ADR group was in support of the garage and the proposed pool, and the ADO members also The ADR members did not support the location of the pool equipment, so the applicant did revise the plans to relocate that pool equipment within a buildable envelope. And also, prior to issuance of building permit, the applicant shall submit a detailed construction management plan for review by the planning department. Staff request that the Town Council consider adopting Resolution 2600 approving design review A minor exception permit and a variance.

Thank you. Council questions? Any public comment on this item? No raised hands, Mayor. Thank you. Does the applicant wish to make any kind of a statement? So we'll bring it back for a motion by the council.

I move we approve resolution 2600. I'll second.

Mayor McMillan? Yes. Councilmember Dowling? Yes. Councilmember Kirchherr?

Yes.

Councilmember Salter?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Robbins? Yes. With a vote of five, the motion passes.

Thank you. We're moving on to item 9B, 10 Walnut Avenue, design review nonconformity permit and town council consideration of adoption of resolution number 2601, approving the project subject to conditions.

good evening the applicant and homeowner at 10 walnut avenue are seeking town consideration for design review and a non-conformity permits the project is proposing landscape improvements exceeding 2500 to 2500 square feet the project is proposing improvements to the existing deck pool area and surrounding landscape and construction of a new equipment shed in the same location as the existing shed A nonconformity permit is required to allow for the reconstruction of an existing nonconforming pool shed. And on January 20, 2026, the ADR group was in support of the project as drawn, including the nonconformity permit for the pool shed since it's being placed on the same location. Prior to issuing a building permit, the applicant shall submit a detailed construction management plan to be reviewed by the planning department. staff request at the town council consider adopting resolution 2601 approving designer view and a non-conformity permit thank you thank you questions by council any public comment no comments online any comments by the applicant great we'll bring it back for a motion please i move that we adopt resolution number 2601 second

We're moving on to item number 10 which is to.

receive and file the certification of sufficiency of the petition for the proposed citizens initiative entitled quote friends of ross firehouse initiative close quote cindy krista

Good evening, mayor and council members. Town manager Krista Johnson channeling town clerk Cindy Martell right now. Okay. So just a brief summary is, well, one moment. Ben, would you like to introduce your colleague?

public didn't hear it sorry i'll start over uh with me is miriam saluman she's in a partner or an attorney in our office and works on all the election law materials that are before you tonight so she's here to answer any questions on the next several items you have that have to do with the election code it's good to meet you guys

Thank you, Ben. OK, I just have a short brief introduction for you. So on June 30, 2025, proponents of the Friends of the Ross Firehouse Initiative submitted a petition seeking to qualify a citizen-sponsored ordinance for the ballot. In response, a ballot title and summary was prepared by the town attorney pursuant to Elections Code Section 9203. The document is attached to the staff report for this item. The ballot title and summary was submitted to the proponents on July 15, 2025. And then the proponents published their notice of intent and filed an affidavit of publication with the town clerk on July 24, 2025. the proposed initiative petition was filed with the town clerk on october 2nd 2025 bearing 329 unverified signatures a stipulated agreement dated october 14th between the town and the proponents of the proposed initiative extended the verification of signatures until after the presentation of the town's elections code 9212 report On January 8, 2026, the Election Code 9212 report was presented to the Town Council, and then subsequently, on January 12, the Town Clerk's Office, in conjunction with the County, examined the signatures the proponents had collected to verify the sufficiency of the petition. By a letter dated January 22nd, the county of Marin notified the town of the verification of signatures. This letter from the county is also attached to the staff report. The county verified 296 signatures. where 173 were required. Because the petition has been signed by the requisite number of voters, the town clerk has determined that the proposed initiative meets procedural requirements to certify the petition at the council's next regular meeting, which is tonight. This receive and file agenda item is for the town clerk and requires no council action. Thank you.

Any questions from council to town manager Johnson? Any public comment on this item?

There's no public comment online.

Okay, we'll bring it back. I don't think we need to discuss this just ministerial. Correct? Great.

Thank you.

The next item is item number 11 town council consideration to take one of the following actions as required by the elections code 9215. And do I need to read all this? Good. That was the answer I was looking for. Thank you. So let's see town manager Johnson.

Thank you. I'm prepared just to provide a few brief introductory statements, if that's okay. There's a lot of information and it's pretty technical in the staff report, so I'm just going to mainly, I'm just going to hit the basics. So again, on June 30th, the proponents of the Friends of the Ross Firehouse submitted a notice of intent and they subsequently initiated, circulated an initiative petition. proposing an ordinance entitled a citizen initiative requiring the town to maintain an operational fire station within town limits and to prioritize the use of the recently closed fire station at 33 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard for this purpose. So the proposed initiative would amend the Ross Municipal Code to require, among other provisions, that the town maintain an operational fire station within town limits and prioritize rehabilitation or reconstruction of the existing fire station site. The proposed initiative further specifies minimum operational requirements, including staffing levels defined as 2024 levels, consisting of at least one active fire engine, one reserve engine, and a minimum of two firefighters on duty at all times. If adopted, the ordinance could only be amended or repealed by a vote of the electorate unless otherwise provided in the measure. The proposed initiative petition was filed with the clerk on October 2nd. And then on January 2nd, the county verified the sufficiency of the signatures. And then just now the town clerk certified the petition as sufficient to qualify as an initiative petition for the ballot. After certification, the election code section 9215 elections code requires that the town council choose from one of the following courses of action. One, adopt the ordinance without alteration at a regular meeting at which the certification of the petition is presented or within ten days after it is presented. 2. Submit the ordinance without alteration to the voters pursuant to election code section 1405 or 3. Order a report pursuant to election code section 9212 When the report is presented to the town council, the town council is required to either adopt the ordinance within 10 days or order an election pursuant to number 2 above. As you know, the elections report was ordered by the council last October 6 and was formally received by the council on January 8. um staff recommends that the town council choose between one of the first two options listed above at their february at your meeting this evening um i have a lot of information here and i'm trying to figure out what exactly i should do it's in the report yes yes yes yes yes please do take it away so after certification you the 9215 actions are triggered and that's either adopt the ordinance

Or order it to an election and you have two options with ordering it to the election you either submit it to the general election that's the default under the elections code it just goes to the next regular election November. Or you have the option to order a special election and we spoke with the county and they recommended June 2 is the date for the special election to consolidate it with the state and there are it costs. Less to do it at the general election and those those numbers are in the staff report. And I'm sure Krista can speak to it. But a special election consolidated with the state on June 2nd is also cheaper than it would be if we just threw a date. And so we worked with the county to arrive at the special election date. And so if we move forward with ordering an election, it all has to happen at once. So if we order the special election or the regular election, we have to have the resolution asking the county to hold the election for us. including the ballot question the schedule for ballot impartial analysis and the city attorney's impartial analysis and Arguments for and against and that calendar because we're consolidating with the county that's established by the county So the resolutions essentially default to the county's rules on those things. So really you have three options Adopt the ordinance And as it's drafted now the resolution is intent to adopt the ordinance within 10 days so that's option one option two is you order it to the general election November option three is you order it to the special election in on June 2 and both will be consolidated with the county so it's.

little cheaper but krista can speak to the numbers on the budget um so the the county estimates and the county has a lot of they've got some wiggle room in there so we can't be super specific about the cost but they estimate that the cost to the town if you were to put this on the november 3rd general election including the initiative measure and There are two, since the council moved its election dates, there are two council seats that will be on that ballot. So the county estimates the cost would be $3,000 to $6,000. There is no, okay, so then the costs, The county estimates the cost for a special election between 11,000 or 27,000. And this depends on how many people are voting, what else is on the election, if the county has something else on that special election that might reduce our costs. So it is a wide range, but it appears to be three times more expensive than to have it on the general election.

So the ballot question is in the staff report. Thank you. Wow. Thank you. The ballot question is in the staff report. And I would just remind everyone that the ballot question has to be drafted in a impartial way that is not argumentative. The format has to be should the measure, blank, everything that's in there, be adopted, yes or no. So it has to be drafted as a yes or no question. It has to be impartial and can't be, I will read the law specifically, but it It has to be a true and impartial synopsis of the purpose of the proposed measure and shall be in a language that is neither argumentative nor likely to create prejudice for or against the measure. So all of that is before you of how the ballot question is drafted, but it should be a yes or no question, 75 words, and it has to say should the measure blank be adopted.

I think that covers it unless you have anything else to add.

You have three choices, adopt, order general or special, and to review the form of the question if you would like.

Great, thank you. Questions from council?

Are we expected to review the wording tonight?

I don't know if we're prepared to do that, are we? I have it right here. When you order an election and you want to consolidate it with the county, the order of the election and the documents requesting consolidation have to happen at once. And the Elections Code requires that where you're consolidating, that resolution asking for consolidation has to include the ballot question. It has to include everything as it will appear on the ballot. So all of that does have to happen. It's in Elections Code 10403. So it has to set forth the exact form of the question, proposition, or office to be voted on at the election as it is to appear on the ballot.

Did the town attorney, did your staff draft that?

Yes.

Thank you.

So if we had a comment on Exhibit A, is that appropriate to make a comment?

City Council Chambers, Exhibit eight of the resolutions resolution to 608 it's on page three yeah yeah.

City Council Chambers, Okay.

City Council Chambers, Any other questions. City Council Chambers, Public comment on this item.

Anyone in the chambers anyone online. There are no raised hands online there okay so we'll bring it back for discussion. So we have three options first is to adopt the ordinance without alteration. Does anyone want to do that. Hearing none, we will go to option two, which is I'm going to do the special election first, June 2nd, at a cost of $11,000 to $27,000. Does anyone want to do that? So option three is a general election in November at a cost of $3,000 to $6,000. I think there's consensus to go forward with that item. Do we need to take a vote?

Yes. Attachment 3 in your staff report, which is resolution 2609.

Can you call the roll, Cindy?

We need a motion and a second.

Oh, I'm sorry. Could we please have a motion and a second?

I move we adopt resolution 2609. Is that the right number? Right.

Is there a second?

Second. Mayor McMillan?

No.

Council Member Dowling?

No.

Council Member Kircher?

Aye.

Council Member Salter?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Robbins? Yes. With a vote of three to two, the motion passes.

Thank you. Thank you for all that work. City Council Chambers, Number 12 is town Council consideration to form an ad hoc advisory committee to evaluate the friends of Ross firehouse proposal presented to the town Council on January 820 26 and its potential fiscal technical and service level impacts to manager Johnson is that you.

City Council Chambers, Yes, thank you, thank you, Miriam. Okay. At the January 8th town council meeting, the town council received a presentation by FORF that proposes restoring the existing fire station building and establishing a fully staffed fire company within the rehabilitated station at the town of Ross Civic Center. The fourth proposal raises complex policy, financial, technical, and interagency issues, including coordination with the Ross Valley Fire Department, compliance with state and local regulatory requirements, and long-term fiscal sustainability. Given the scope and the implication of Forbes proposal, the town council provided direction to staff to bring back for discussion the idea of establishing a committee to evaluate the fourth proposal and other topics that were presented by town staff and consultants during the January 8th council meeting. In order to provide the town council with a framework for their discussion tonight, I prepared a staff report that is included in your agenda packet. The staff report describes my recommendations to the council, which is to consider forming an ad hoc advisory committee of limited duration consisting of two council members to evaluate the fourth proposal presented to the town council on January 8th and its potential fiscal, technical, and service level impacts. The ad hoc advisory committee would function in an advisory capacity only and in compliance with the town's municipal code and would not have authority to negotiate agreements, direct staff, nor commit town resources. I recommended in my staff report that the ad hoc advisory committee provide clear non binding findings options and recommendations to the out to the town council, no later than the may 14 2026 town council meeting. Since my staff report was published last Friday, FORF sent a letter to the Council describing their vision of the committee. And this morning, a letter was sent to the Town Council from Ross residents Jeffrey Kuhn and Robert Herbst advising the council that they have formed a seven-member citizens advisory committee to consider the topics I just described. The letter was sent to the council and posted to the town's website. I believe Mr. Coon and Mr. Herbst are present this evening and are planning to provide additional comments regarding their citizens committee when the mayor opens up this agenda item for public comment. Thank you.

Thank you and questions to tell manager Johnson on her staff report.

Would it be appropriate to have the. Treasurer and Mister her sit at the table so we can have them a part of this discussion instead of public comment given this item is about creating this committee.

I mean, it's at the mayor's discretion. So it's up to the mayor. Normally, when we have any members addressing the council as part of the public, they have their public comment, and the mayor can provide them more time, and they can be back and forth. But it's up to the mayor how she wants to structure it.

Yeah, I think public comment is is appropriate for this. So any other questions of town manager Johnson? Any public comment? I want you to please go to the podium and address any additions that you may have to your excellent letter.

Hi, folks. Is this on? It must be on. I don't have any comments. Do you have any questions?

In your letter it says,

Yes. Okay. In your letter, it says that the composition of the committee may change slightly during the course of our deliberations, which will remain confidential amongst the committee and not disclose to the public. Can you just tell me why?

Why we might change the composition?

Or why it would remain confidential amongst the committee and not to disclose to the public?

Because in my experience, and I think he agrees, is that when you're negotiating stuff like this, sometimes you want to say things that you don't want the public to know until we come to a conclusion. That's the basic reason. And I don't want people to feel ashamed or cornered while we have this discussion. Hence, it's none of the public's business. This is not an official committee, right? This is not part of the Brown Act. We've done this for You know legitimate reasons we're not trying to evade anything, but we do want the freedom of expression that isn't going to find its way onto the front page of something. And that includes maybe changing committee members, well, the composition might change because, frankly, I mean we put this together what two days ago. Already we're seeing conflicts of calendars, and so people may not be able to go through the entire process, and we don't know how long that process is going to be, other than we don't want it to go more than two, maybe three months max. So some people may have to drop out, and we'll have to replace them. Thank you.

And you said two to three months max. Do you have a time period, an end time in mind?

I'm not off the top my head no but other than ASAP yeah thank you yeah that was my question Bob did you want to add anything I sorry I'm sorry Matt has a question about for both of you both and I I have heard that Joey Buckingham expressed interest in joining this committee do you want to Joey Buckingham from the advisory design review talk to her but

It's important that we have an odd number of people. You can't hear me. It's important to be an odd number of people so we don't have a vote at a tie. So hence seven or five or nine, but it's not going to be six or eight. You follow?

I sort of understand that, but since it's just a committee offering recommendations, I don't know that that's an absolute requirement. It's not like a board voting.

No, it's not absolute, but I have done tons of these kind of things over the course of my career, and you don't want to find yourself at a stalemate because you can't find a majority someplace. It's that simple.

I'll say one thing.

Be careful.

Sorry. We're trying to reach a consensus here, right? I don't think either Jeff or I know where this group's going to go. We feel comfortable about the people that have been suggested. I'm 100% comfortable and would like to have Joey Buckingham involved too. I'm not on the same page necessarily that it's so important to have seven voting members. We don't even know yet what we would be voting on. I don't necessarily view this group as a voting committee. You guys are the voters. We're advisory. The more smart people within real estate that we can get involved and share viewpoints. We're trying to provide information to you guys. So I don't know Joey. Our group friends thinks she could be great. She's on ADR. She knows staff. Jeff's open to having Joey involved and others too, by the way. We've had this discussion. um these seven people that we've identified we know them and it's a start i don't think it's more than that necessarily we don't know where we're going to end up together we haven't had our first meeting jeff and i just met one time yeah i i remember when the school had a committee i think they had even numbers of people's positions were pretty well known ahead of time i think there were equal numbers of people who wanted to to

a passive bond of a certain amount and people who thought that was too expensive. And even though there were even numbers of people, they worked together and came up with something in the middle. And that worked well.

We're hoping for a similar process and a similar outcome. Great. But we won't know until we start.

And just as an FYI, I heard Joey has a big international trip coming up. So that may have presented a conflict. Terry.

I think it's very helpful that you've gotten things this far. And I think that this far, did you have a committee? Oh, I mean, before tonight, there was no committee.

And there wasn't a committee until you have a very good afternoon.

Right. And so there's, you know, there's a very, you know, positive approach to working together and seeing where we can go with this. And I think that's wonderful. Thank you.

we'll see i just had a question about um so there's two things that you're looking at the ross firehouse and restoration of a fire engine and crew and how best to refurbish restore and or construct the ross civic center are you going to be looking at financing uh yep okay and costs

and how those costs will be actually achieved okay i'm the finance guy i know you are i know you are i just want to make it clear yeah no it's crystal clear anybody else um any other public comment on this item there's no raised hands online mayor

so we'll bring it back for discussion and i want to echo what elizabeth said thank you both so much for stepping forward and working on solving this problem we really appreciate it well congratulate us when we're done thank you i'm sure it will be very successful knowing both of you thank you we'll do our best anyone else want to say anything we're moving on to item 13 which is town council to receive a presentation from staff and nbs consultant of the draft fee study report including evaluation of fees for services for administration and finance planning building public works police and general plan updates roberta

Good evening, Mayor McMillan and council members. So this has been almost a two-year effort collaborating with the various departments within the city, specifically public works, police, administration and finance, and then, of course, planning and building. We have Nicole Kissam with NBS. here to join us on Zoom. And I think, Nicole, you should be able to share your screen, and we can prompt the slides. Nicole's going to provide a background on the fee study report that's in draft form in front of you, and then I'll go through the discussion items, the cost recoveries for each department, what staff sort of recommendations, suggestion is, and some points for discussion for the council this evening. Go ahead, Nicole.

Thank you. Good evening. How's my, how's my volume and can you see my screen?

Volume's a little bit low, but we can see your screen.

Okay. Well then I'll speak louder. Is that better?

Yes.

Great. All right, so like Roberta said, I'm here to present the draft results of the fee study for your review this evening. I'm just going to go over what the goals of a fee study are and kind of what the scope of our review entails. I'll go over the project approach, I'll summarize the results, and then of course there's time for questions. So, A fee study, fee studies have been done in California and other states, but specifically California for decades. They follow an industry standard methodology that's been around for years and years. And really the goal of a fee study is to first understand what the cost of providing various town services are, and then using that information, which is contained in the report, decide what type of localized policy is driving how you're going to set the fees accordingly, either at or below the full cost of providing services. So the rest of this presentation, we'll talk about what fees are, how does the industry or the broader, what are the standards for thinking about full cost of service? What are policy decisions that are kind of in front of you in terms of reviewing this report? So fees in general, we're talking about fees for services. These are cost recovery opportunities. And these revenues are able to be adopted solely by the town council. So there's no protest ballot or voter requirement there. These are authorized by the town council. And I think it's good to clarify that what NBS did not look at which is sometimes confused with a fee for service, is any type of tax, fine or penalty for violations of the law, or impact fees as a condition of new development. So the types of fees that we're looking at here are governed first and foremost by the legal framework in Article 13 , which you may or may not have heard of Proposition 26. It was a voter initiative that amended the California Constitution. And basically what that does there in Article 13c is defines the difference between a fee and a tax. And to just kind of summarize what the definition of a fee is coming out of that is that a fee is limited to the local government's reasonable costs. And so that reasonable cost limitation for fees is established by the Constitution. And then if you go lower than that into the statutes, the government code, the evidence code, the education code, on and on and on, you'll see that reasonable cost language repeated over and over again. And a very common one that applies to development review fees is this government code 66014A. So you can see there that fees for permits and so forth may not exceed the estimated reasonable cost of providing the service for which the fee is charged. That's a little bit about the legal framework that we're working with. Here's kind of an overview of what types of fees for which departments or what types of fee programs the town currently has and what it is that we looked at. So the town has A very small handful of miscellaneous administrative and finance processing fees planning building public works and police are going to be the bulk of the fee program. And then it's good to understand that we're here in 2026 and the last time that the town did a deep dive of this nature, where we're really looking at. All the underlying assumptions and looking at everything that goes into calculating the cost of providing services was done in 2016. So it's been about 10 years. So what is our approach? This is the approach that most consultants like myself use. It's been around for a long time in California. We collect certain types of data. I'll go through that. Then we perform a fee structure review. So before we even get into our current amounts high, are they low? We really look at what services is the town providing and does the fee schedule reflect those? Does anything need to be added, deleted, modified, restructured to be more fair? That's kind of that step. And then we compile all the cost information that we collect and we express that in our fee model through our analysis in three different ways. We look at it annually, we look at it on a per hour basis, and we look at it on a per unit basis, and per unit would be per fee item. So those are the three ways that we kind of look at costs and cost recovery, and we do that for each fee program that was shown on the prior slide. So, you know, all of those steps there are that step one, understanding the cost of providing services, And then we get to step two, which is where we're embarking upon this evening with presenting the cost recovery outcomes and starting to turn our attention towards what is the town's fee setting policy for these different types of fees. So the type of data we use, we use the most recently adopted budget and staffing figures. Most of these fees that we're looking at here are driven by labor effort. So we're looking at fully burdened costs there. Labor is a major component. We do use one year of permit or fee collection activity in order to reconcile certain factors in the fee models and make sure we're not structuring fee programs that significantly over or under recover costs. We're also using that information to provide some of the annual cost recovery projections that I'll get into towards the end of the presentation. Um, for each fee for service, because labor effort, this is a, these are processing fees, fees that require time from town staff. We are using estimates of time for each fee for service. And then of course, you know, again, to have a baseline, we need to start with a current fee list. So we would say those are the main data points that, that go into this. There's a, there's a few more along the way, but these are the four main ones. Um, Just kind of a note about fees for services. If you're thumbing through the pages in the back or if you're familiar with the current master fee schedule, there's a couple different kinds of fees. So there's flat fees. Sometimes they're called fixed fees. That's where it's kind of a one and done. You come in, you request a permit, you pay a fee, that's it. Approved, denied, you've paid your fee and that's it. There are some other fees where The amount of the fee will vary based on the project characteristics. A very good example of that is a building permit fee where the valuation, the construction valuation of the project will run through a table, a scaled table, and then out comes the fees. And the idea is that the higher the valuation of the project, the progressively higher level of effort for town staff, although we are doing that on a curve basis, not on a linear basis in correlation to project value. And then, finally, there are some services on fee structures very typical where it's just so variable you don't know how long it's going to take you don't know what the complexity of the project will be it may require you know other special studies and so forth, so for those cases. there's a deposit related system where an initial amount is collected up front and then it's kind of drawn down. using hourly rates and time tracked against the deposit. So I've used the term, you know, reasonable cost and full cost and total cost a couple times already. This is what that means when we do fee studies. So there are different kinds of costs. There are direct costs. Those are probably the most obvious kinds of costs in a processing fee where it's somebody from the town that needs to spend a certain amount of time doing a field inspection or doing research or responding to a request related to the fee being charged. And then there can be services and supplies such as postage and mailing and all the operating supplies that are in a budget. And there are also indirect costs and indirect costs are definitely eligible for recovery and they are part of the total cost structure. So that would be multiple layers of indirect costs there are some at the program level such as for example within the police department itself or within the planning and building department itself then there are departmental if there's you know a community development administration sitting over multiple development departments and then there are talent what we call town-wide costs or agency-wide overhead costs and those are above the department level typically an allocated share of attorney time and human resources time and town manager time, HR, finance, all of those administrative functions that are just needed to run the town. There are support functions between the different departments. For example, Public Works might review a planning application for certain conditions, set certain conditions of approval. Planning might look at a building plan when it comes in to make sure that the conditions of approval that did get set are met. So we do also calculate either individual fees by department for those support related costs or they're included in the fee that we calculate. And then for the town, there's one additional component of cost that we've included here, which is called a general plan fee. And so that's where we've looked at kind of the cyclical costs of updating the general plan and decided how much to incorporate into a full fee for service. So as I mentioned, you know, we look at costs on an annual level and I'll display those kind of towards the end of the presentation. We also look at them on an hourly level. So this is, you know, again, that same full cost structure, direct costs, indirect costs, support services where applicable, divided by number of hours available to work in the fee program. So sometimes we exclude certain costs from recovery in a fee program. So this is only for the fee program itself. And that's how we come up with a fully burdened cost per hour. To get to the per unit cost, it's pretty simple. It's the fully burdened rate multiplied by the time estimates. And that is your maximum fee amount. We have plenty of checks and balances to make sure that we don't just provide whatever time and whatever rate and come up with whatever fee. We're really checking this to make sure that We're reconciling to budget, we're using permit activity, we're checking reasonableness against available staffing. But in essence, it's very simple math. How long does it take and what's the rate? That'll produce the maximum fee amount. So once we know the maximum fee amount, and there's many fees that we do this for, You know, we know the blue bubble now. So we've completed the work to, and we've iterated enough to know what the full cost of service is for each fee, for the program in total, on an hourly basis. We know how much revenue is currently coming in from the last fiscal year for different fee programs and for individual fees. So then we have this, we typically have a gap, this red arrow here. We're typically almost, I would say 90 plus percentage of the time, there's this gap where there's a full cost of service and the revenue doesn't quite recover that. And that's where the policy side comes in, in terms of how much of that gap does the council want to close. And any part of that gap that we do not close then just needs another funding source other than fee for service revenue. So typically that'll come from the general fund. So you can see how if you're charging 100% cost of providing services for every single fee in the fee list, you're probably alleviating some of the pressure on the general fund. That's not always possible. So here are the results. I hope this is not too teeny tiny there in front of you. But across all the fee programs that we studied, we found that the town is collecting about 1.3 million per year in fees as they are now before any action is taken. When we did our cost analysis and went all the way through that, we discovered that the potential recovery, the blue bubble from the previous slide, is $1.6 million. So that's a pretty good cost recovery rate. You can see how it breaks out across different fee programs, planning at 60%, building at almost 100%, public works around 70%. Police at 7%, and that makes sense because police does a lot of things other than fees for services. These are just a small handful of administrative fees. And then your general plan fee, which is recovering about 72% of the eligible costs. So overall, an 84% recovery rate is pretty good. We must have done a good job in 2016, and the town has been keeping up with charging for their services and so forth. And I think it's also important to note, so if the town was to adopt when this comes back for hearing, everything at 100%, pushing everything to 100%, which isn't feasible because you've got some fees in here that are limited by the state and some reasons why you wouldn't go to 100%, you would obtain an additional $250,000 or so in recovered costs. So the two columns on the right over there is where staff has kind of gone through the fee lists and all of the detail in the report and said, hey, okay, these should go 100, these should be less for various reasons. And they've kind of discussed that in the staff report. And in a minute, I think Roberto will take over and kind of talk about areas where we haven't recommended 100% cost recovery. But if you have any questions about, you know, are these typical rates and how do rates vary by department, you know, I can definitely... come back to this slide and answer any questions. So the objective here is to move from 84 to 90 so far. Roberta, did you want to take these or did you want me to keep going?

You can keep going and then we can do the discussion.

Okay. So there are some fees in the fee list. If you go to the appendices of the report, you know, there might be 50 fees in there and this is the handful of fees that the town staff preliminarily is recommending below 100% cost recovery. So fees for ADUs, design reviews that affect smaller, probably smaller projects and use permits. So Roberta, did you wanna say anything about the reasoning behind planning or just keep going?

Yes, let me just add to that. So for the fee reductions, this would lead to the 69% cost recovery. And what staff is asking is for the town to consider how that reduction would help the town and meeting the housing element right producing the 111 arena units by 2030. Also consistency with existing fees and also comparison fees within the county we didn't want to increase the fees so high that they were so much more than other. cities and towns and then also for the use permit fee that would help the small businesses in the ross common in the local service commercial zoning districts and so those are some of the policies to consider of why you would want to set these fees lower than a hundred percent perfect and perfect example of you know local localized consideration of

fee amounts and so forth that as your consultant, you know, I'm working really broadly across the state, but it's the people in the room there that really know what's right for the town of Ross. Okay, so for building, very typical to have all building plan check and permit services recover 100%, but there are a couple like solar fees that are regulated by the government code. So that's where you're seeing you know, not 100% cost recovery recommended because they're capped. Resale inspections, we, I think, had initially recommended at 100%, but then decided to adjust that in the final report. Roberta, did you want to add anything there?

Yes, so for the resale inspections, it's really just for consistency again. If we did do the 100%, some of the fees would double or triple. And so staff's recommendation is to keep them where they are. And we do believe we're recovering enough for that service.

Great. Moving into Public Works, here the recommendation was to implement all fees at 100% of the costs. So nothing to discuss there in terms of where we're recommending any subsidies. And then with police, these fees are also recommended here at below 100% cost recovery, which is a typical direction that police might take. These are miscellaneous administrative fees. And Roberta, did you want to add anything or did the chief want to add anything about why these are lower than 100%?

It was the same here. So Chief Potter did do his research and compared the fees for the Ross Police Department with the various police departments in the county. Again, it is a small line item, and it's going from 2% to 43. And so we believe that's adequate.

Thank you. And that is the end of this presentation. So hopefully, That was a sufficient amount of information, not too much, not too little, and definitely here for questions as needed.

Thank you. Questions by council members? OK.

So just in terms of the comments and feedback that staff was requesting from the Council this evening, there are a couple questions to consider. As a general method of selecting an appropriate cost recovery target, you'd want to consider the public and private benefits. So a couple of the questions were, Are to what degree does the public at large benefit from the service versus to what degree does the individual or entity requesting requiring or causing the service benefit right so you're thinking about private. Property values increasing versus is this a benefit to the town, are you adding. residential units towards arena and our housing element So those are sort of some of the considerations you want to.

Think about when deciding to set the fees lower than 100% and the information you're seeking from us tonight is just feedback and then this report will be brought back for approval in March.

it'll come back in April, but correct, do you agree with the cost recovery proposed by staff, you know, do you want to see 100% are you okay with the 69% for planning. If you're looking at the summary there, it's the planning and building fees that the town mostly collects, right? So for building that is related mostly to an increase in property value, that kind of thing, that is the feedback we're looking for.

Thank you Mayor and one of the reasons we wanted to make sure that we had a good review of this for the Council this evening is we do have two Council members that weren't here and in fact I think maybe only one Council member was here when you did it in 2016 so we thought it was important to give you an opportunity to review all the material with our consultant and our staff. And then so when we will come back at the April meeting, it will be a resolution and it will actually list the exact fees. I was enjoying being so loud.

Thank you, Roberta. Should we take public comment on this then? Anybody in the chambers? Anybody online?

There are no raised hands online.

OK. So we'll bring it back for discussion. Thoughts? Comments? Terry?

Just a thought, quick thought. I can see why it took two years. This is a very thorough report. It's very impressive. I appreciate the staff trying to recoup some of the costs, but being realistic about not being able to go to 100%. That makes perfect sense. So thank you.

So I don't think I realized until this that the town subsidizes some things, some of the planning and some of the use permits. I know that everyone feels that the fees are high. It might be helpful if a town shared that we do sub, you know, that we do absorb some of the cost for some of the ADUs and for, you know, for the use permits, because it's, I mean, it's good on our part to do that. I mean, it encourages what we want, but we should get a little credit for it too, that we are subsidizing some of these areas.

And the fees are kind of, uh compared to other jurisdictions it was atherton tiburon belvedere so that's another point that we could make is that our fees are generally equivalent to similar jurisdictions yeah that would be a good ross review article in april any other comments no

So we spoke so save a lot of time tonight. The 2 things I totally agree that we should have very clear communication about what the fees are going up and why and that we are only collecting you know 90% essentially of what we could so that we are the town is subsidizing where we can but where those fees are sort of going up we just need to you know really have some clear explanation. The other thing, I don't know if that's for this forum, but I think there should be some discretion about when you can waive fees or if you can lower fees depending on circumstances that occur. So if somebody has to come back to design review or something like that and there's miscommunication or some discretion about, hey, maybe you don't have to pay yet another fee. Because I know from what I hear from people who go through the building process, sometimes they do feel like they are paying too much or they have to come back or they have to resubmit and then they have to pay again and they just feel like they're getting feed out feed and I actually don't think it's a sort of Ross issue I think we see these what they call junk fees all over the place and so we just want to make sure we're as transparent and clear about why and then if we can allow for some discretion I'm fully in support of staff having some discretion if you feel like some of the fees should be waived or some other circumstances that were beyond the control of

situation to manager johnson so i certainly would like roberta and and um nicole to weigh in on this but i i guess i it might just be terminology council member salter because the council you know we We can't waive the fee. Some fee, something needs to pay for it. And so as Nicole was describing, when there is a subsidy that occurs, the money is not, the cost is not just being distributed to the other people that are paying the fees. The general fund actually has to kick in the money. That's what makes our fees defensible. So I just wanted to maybe try not to use the word waive. And then having been in the position throughout the years of waiving is really difficult for staff and especially for the city manager because we have to be fair. The reason why we went through this process is we need to make sure Our fees are accurate. They are the cost of doing business. And so waiving, I appreciate, that you want staff to have flexibility. I just want to bring to your attention that it makes it really difficult because then we get a lot of pressure to waive fees and our reduced fees. And that is not something I want our staff to be in the position of doing. I would like to turn it over to Roberta because there might be some cases where she can take the hourly. Maybe you could expand on that.

Sure. So there are times when maybe there's an amendment or something simple. And in that case, we wouldn't do the whole thing, or we wouldn't apply the whole fee, we would say, well, we spent this much time, or we need to re notice it, or you're going to a third meeting, right? There are other instances where obviously, we wouldn't charge the design review over. But if we're going to ADR three times, then you know, there's times we would need to recoup, even just the meeting time. So we do have ways of doing that. I would say though, there's very rare instances where that's happening. might happen maybe not even once a year, once every other year, for the most part, you know, we're moving to this flat fee. And that'll be easier, because we wouldn't actually do that. In that case, it might take you one meeting, it might take you three, but it's going to be a flat fee. And we've averaged that service to take care of that.

Mayor Mrakas, yeah I just the reason i'm bringing this up is that a lot of cities and towns have a lot of over the counter, you know easy pay a permit pay a fee for. Mayor Mrakas, You know, over the counter service, but Ross has so many requirements and requires so much variances that it requires a lot of work and it requires a lot of staff time and everything has to be researched. Mayor Mrakas, And I just think that would be a goal it's not you it's this is the way the town has been run for so long. is to try to streamline things so that there can be less staff time having to be taken to do these you know look tonight i mean everything required some sort of variance and so that requires more time more work and more going through these processes so i hope i mean it's one of my goals that you know with the master plan or the general plan update is thinking through how we can sort of streamline so that these processes can go quicker and the fees will come down because it requires less time.

And you'll be seeing one of those streamlining efforts as directed by the Council for pools that are requiring variances all the time. We've done some study sessions or just some discussions with ADR. And we've drafted some language for an ordinance that will come to the Council within the next few months. So I think that's something that would help alleviate the amount of variances for things like pools and landscape features. So that is something we're definitely working on.

I'd like to add something that I've observed since I've been here and I've worked in cities of different sizes is there is a lot of staff time because some applicants are new to the process, maybe a little less sophisticated with it or maybe they're doing it more on their own. Some applicants certainly have architects and a lot more assistance, but the amount of time that Roberta and Alex in particular and Rich Simenich and our building inspector put into just talking with applicants about what can you do. And so just an example is last week, Magic is looking at making some improvements to their studio facility. And their executive director asked if we would, you know, she wants to kind of bounce some things off us. And so Roberta and I went over and met her on the site and with Alex and walked around and Roberta had some great insight. And so that's neat about this town, I think. That's a really, that's a neat thing that sometimes there's a little bit more handholding that can occur and a more personal experience that I think is special about here. Yeah.

Any other comments? Okay, so we'll look forward to seeing you in April. Thank you for all this terrific work.

Thank you. Thanks, Nicole.

Thank you, Roberta.

Mayor, may we take a break? I don't know if anyone else I need a break.

Okay, take a five minute break.

Just take a stand.

I'm so sorry, yeah.

That was a success. Yeah, it was really great. Julie, I have a suggestion about .

I just have an answer .

Oh, yeah.

Great.

Thank you for coming. I was always trying to pull out .

I told him .

I'm a senior in each school. Okay.

Because they don't share.

What they're arguing is that it's on the master plan. You know, not expanding, it's just that building. Exactly. Ordinary maintenance that's on the master floor. Firebird.

Yeah, I can do this. She's the mayor right now.

That would be great. The wine bar isn't closed in town, though. By this time, it's closed. Yeah, it's just, it's not that many people.

You going back? No.

It's a little too, I don't know.

I came before.

But I didn't get a very long feeling from the guy. No, I know. I'd rather just know Jason.

I don't know. I always worry about them because they close pretty early. They open pretty late in the day, 4 o'clock. And they're usually closed before 8. I do. I know. I went there when it first opened. That was it. I went with Diane Duda and her husband.

Is your microphone on?

Is your microphone on?

I'm wearing your alma mater clothes. Yeah, where is it? Sorry, I can't remember her shirt. No red in there.

Okay, we are reconvening item number 14, town council consideration to authorize the town manager to release a request for qualifications, RFQ, to solicit proposals from qualified and experienced developers and community-based organizations, including nonprofit entities, schools, and philanthropic institutions for the design, entitlement, financing, and construction of nine affordable,

housing units at the town-owned civic center site located at 33 sir francis drake boulevard thank you very much mayor um i'd like to reintroduce everybody to david kelly our project manager for the implementation of our of our facilities master plan and he'll be presenting this item and the next item to you this evening

Thank you, Town Manager Johnson. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members. The item before you this evening is a RFQ for affordable housing. Included in your packet is an agenda report as well as a draft copy of the RFQ. What I'm going to do tonight is to walk through just a brief presentation and let me know if I move too quickly, and we can certainly have questions at the end. The goal tonight is to give you a background, go over the RFQ purpose and scope, talk a little bit about the housing element and the program 3A, along with the alignment of the facilities master plan, some of the key elements of the RFQ, as well as process and timeline, and then next steps. And just for reference, when I say RFQ, RFQ stands for request for qualifications. And that's really separate from a request for proposals. It's really about seeking qualifications of the entity that has experience with affordable housing. So a little bit of background. The council adopted the Civic Center Facilities Master Plan in 2023. It the master plan that a council adopted does identify a affordable housing location, and i'll show a graphic that in the moment. In addition, your your housing element which provided for a total of a 111 units under the regional housing needs assessment includes Of that, nine units are proposed to be met by development of affordable housing here at the Civic Center site, a total of nine. Again, that's in accordance with Program 3A. Program 3A is referenced again in the general plan. Happy to talk more about that if so desired. So why an RFQ? You may ask, why not an RFP? Or why not some other process? Really the purpose of a request for qualifications is to identify development partners that are qualified to develop an affordable housing site under the parameters of your general plan as well as your facility master plan. ultimately when you find a developer that has the necessary qualifications usually the next step is to solicit a specific proposal to identify how you want them to carry out the project so again it's kind of that first step you of course want to ensure alignment with your general plan as well as your housing element when you select a developer to build affordable housing In RFQ, what it also helps do is just ensure that there is a transparent and open and competitive process for development opportunities. I think we mentioned it during the update to Council on the Facilities Master Plan. that we've had preliminary discussions with both the Branson School as well as Cedars, and those are two potential partners. But there are certainly others. I think Mayor Pro Tem, you mentioned the last update. What about other maybe private developers out there? And the RFQ would kind of give an opportunity to identify those. So just for reference, the map exhibit before you does identify the location of, again, What Council decided was nine affordable units that would target again low or very low income residents. The goal can, as stated, is to look for workforce housing in particular. The location is, you know, in the northern portion of the civic center. There's not currently a driveway there. So it's kind of accessed via the existing driveway. It's certainly a transit adjacent location next being adjacent to and frontage on Sir Francis Drake. And of course, proximity to within walking distance, civic services, your downtown as well as area parks and your civic center. So some of the development parameters again reflective of your general plan housing element include nine affordable units. The targeted affordability is less than or equal to 80% of the area median income. And those figures are provided for in the RFQ. a reference for any proposers. Again, the intent is to integrate with the civic district vision, which is the zoning designation for the property and obviously meld with the architectural character of the civic center. In terms of eligible proposers, we certainly think there could be private housing developers, affordable housing developers out there. We want to solicit if there's any nonprofit housing organizations or other educational philanthropic partners. Again, CEDARS comes to mind when I mentioned that, along with workforce educator special needs housing models that could be implemented. The RFQ does include some evaluation criteria. Certainly, we want to see what a proposer's firm that has the necessary qualifications, what their concept and site understanding is for development of nine units. It's a relatively small project, and not all private developers are willing to engage in a project of that size. They're looking for something that can often be much larger, like 40 plus units. That's typically what you see. So what you might find with the RFQ is some unique development interests. Certainly, again, experience with the small scale affordable housing, as I mentioned, but also that they have the requisite financial capacity to be able to carry out a project. I want to understand what their engagement approach is both with Council and and the community, and that there are you know intended public benefits associated with with the project by meeting again the goals set forth in your housing element general plan. The timeline provided in the RFQ, assuming council approves it, we would release the RFQ next week. We identified its release on February 19th, followed by the statement of qualifications would be due by April 3rd, upon which staff would conduct a review of the packages or the SOQ packages that are submitted and shortlist and or conduct interviews the firms that submit SOQs and ultimately bring that back to council for consideration. Ideally, if that was to happen quickly, that could be maybe as soon as May or June. But in my experience, it sometimes takes time really to suss out some of the details. One of the things I did want to mention is that your housing element does call for entering into an exclusive negotiating agreement. And that's when the Council ultimately determines who they want to move forward with. That would come back to Council for your review and approval. once a developer is selected and obviously there would be I know town manager would want to communicate openly with council and it could get your feedback on that so that's what we would do evaluate those proposals bring back maybe even a ranking with some some preliminary ideas and and ultimately as your housing element calls for enter into and exclusive negotiating agreement, and or we could ask for a more detailed proposal that really provides more detailed financial information, what types of funding are they seeking, what are their constraints for development of a project of this type. The action tonight that staff is asking is to authorize the town manager to release the the rfq that's included in the agenda packet. Alternatively, you could certainly provide direction to modify the rfq as it's provided, or less about at least take take no action did want to note if Council does not take action, you know it could. could impair compliance with with your housing element. As I mentioned, program three a the the timeline currently provided for in in that policy, and in your housing element is that the town would issue permits by I believe it's two thousand and twenty seven. So time and time is of the essence. We also want to note that your planning director will be bringing forward, I think, Typically comes in March or even April is your annual planning report or housing report and and that's a time to identify progress that's been made on implementation of your housing element. So again, just for reference, this graphic does identify the location is kind of the brown rectangles on the kind of the right hand side of the graphic. You can see it. Mayor Mrakas, In the preliminary design that was shown in the master plan it, you know it's it had the kind of the unit split but but that that's again just a preliminary design concept ultimately developer will have to come back with a design that works for that property. Mayor Mrakas, So with that that concludes presentation Mayor council members happy to entertain any questions or discussion, you have relative to that died before you Thank you questions.

Bill. I have a question as to the process.

So at some point we enter into an exclusive negotiating agreement.

At what point do we start seeing a proposal from the developer? I mean, you know, site plan, their site plan on our site and get down to the actual basics of how they propose to do it because we are developing the rest of our project too. And we may be making some adjustments to our site plan as well. I think we want to make sure we can dovetail with whatever a developer is doing.

Absolutely great great question Councilmember Kirchherr and in my experience in working on exclusive negotiating agreements you'd like to have a concept proposal that can be referenced in the exclusive negotiating agreement, so that there's a tie to what's being proposed for construction. And so those can be done concurrently. But you can move forward with an exclusive negotiating agreement, absent a very detailed site proposal, because it's not required, but it is ideal. And that's part of the process of getting the RFQ would be to have that conversation with the proposed developer about Timing and and next steps. And so the you know, again, this is kind of look at this as a sequence of process. We want to we want to kind of really find out who's interested, have a conversation, and and to be able to ask those details about what kind of development proposal looks like. What's your timing and get council support before they invest a lot of money into an investment into a very detailed site plan. But we want to have something at the concept level that really is going to say, yes, we like this. And that's why we want to use the council. We like this. And this is why we want to enter into an agreement with you for next steps. Negotiate with you exclusively on moving forward towards construction.

I agree. I mean, I think definitely a concept. proposal would be really essential to the council acting on this. So we'll know what we're aiming towards or what the possibilities are at least and then go forward from there. As I understand it, exclusive negotiating agreement means you go forward just with them.

That's correct.

Do you still have an off ramp or where can you exit if you don't like the way it's going?

Yeah, I think, I mean, I would want to defer to our town attorney on, you know, the language in the exclusive negotiating agreement. Usually there's, you want to protect the town's interests, so you have those off-ramps kind of built into the... Again, we're driving the process, so we can build in as many off-ramps as we need in that ENA.

Usually, I mean, the first obvious off-ramp is a time component. If things don't gel at a certain amount of time, both parties can walk away. But there's other off-ramps, too, that, you know... City Council Chambers, As we've had another negotiations when we don't have leverage this in this one, we have leverage and we can build our own off ramps.

City Council Chambers, This sort of similar to what. City Council Chambers, bill was saying. City Council Chambers, You know we've just established this committee to try to help figure out, you know what is our master plan, and these are accused refer to the. the approved master plan, which may well have modifications. So wouldn't it make better sense to postpone this maybe two months to hear what the committee is proposing?

I'd like to answer that one, if you don't mind. Sure. Again, this is also about fulfilling our housing element. And it's a long process. We're already behind. So no matter what, we need to have housing on the site, unless we are intending to amend our housing element, which is a whole other process. forest proposal had housing on the site so I think doing this one step of seeing who's interested is not going to tie us to a certain location on the site but seeing who's available and who's interested which is a big hurdle for a lot of these projects just the very beginning part finding who's interested okay thank you anyone else Matt

Mayor Mrakas, So I can appreciate that we have. Mayor Mrakas, You know, we have commitments to the housing element, but I find this very premature because if we you put this request out there for qualifications. Mayor Mrakas, Anybody who's going to put time and energy into responding wants to know that hey the you know you guys are actually going to do something here, and right now, everything seems up in the air number one. And number two, we got cost estimates back from KPA where the Facilities plan master plan concept B is over 25 million as a minimum. And so we don't have that kind of money. So my question to you is, how can we go forward and ask people to propose their qualifications for a project that seems like it's dead? And it just seems like it will fail because if people realize we don't really have a plan and we don't have the money to build it, why would they come forward and say they're interested?

Yeah, great question, Council Member. And I mean, maybe I would separate out the conversation on cost from the timeline. And maybe I'll talk about those both. But the cost estimate prepared by KPA does not include or reflect the costs of constructing affordable housing. So you look at it as this is a chunk of land that's going to be developed by private interests. And the costs that they're going to incur are really separate from what's included in the master plan. Now there's opportunities for Council was to move forward with that to meld those two and to ensure that the The the you know, for instance, the the town of the Council wanted. They say i'm gonna we're gonna build the sewer capacity and the sewer improvements in the sidewalks to support that affordable housing. But but Council hasn't discussed the deal points those for the affordable housing, so that will come at a later date. So the the costs really that were reflected for the master plan are really separate and irrespective of the cost for affordable housing. Though there's there's clearly some some connection because of the the site, but but they're but they're difference. So you know that that's going to be determined on the costs are going to be determined by the in large part by the proposed development type that and the the concept that's proposed, and that'll that'll give you more information. But but but but backing that up, I think, as as the town attorney alluded, this is really the first step in the process. And, you know, looking at it, the possibility of bringing back an ENA later this year, it doesn't seem to differ all that much from the timeline from when FORF is going to return with their proposed recommendations. And so there's there's opportunities again to look at the development concept in light of maybe what recommendations you might get from from this independent body that was discussed discussed tonight David can you just go to your slide that shows the site plan I just want to make sure I'm understanding it was your 3D model you got out of 3D model page it was the last page I believe yeah so are those gray shaded areas is that the existing public works building what's that the gray in the parking that the existing gray area reflected on the screen is the public safety building is the existing public safety building there is uh of the the two rectangular shapes identifying the the the affordable housing on the north, the... Yeah, so sorry.

I just was... So see how the road... If we're really going to do this, you have to demolish the public works building. So we have to have money to do that. We have to lay this new road. Then we have to destroy the public works building that's currently... where those affordable units are and the site work in the kpa plan is something like seven million dollars and then there's other costs like that we just might not have the money to do any of this so what i'm asking you is it's not just oh yes we know we we want to obviously build this affordable housing but to go out right now and say to people we've got this plan and we can do this seems disingenuous because in order to do it it's not the cost for the developer i'm talking about the cost just to basically demolish the site demolish the public works building or sorry and the public safety building and then you haven't mentioned the sequa process and the environmental impact review process that could take over a year so i i just feel like this is so premature

City Council Chambers, I can certainly understand your perspective, I you know, I just want to say that the the graphic that depicts the affordable housing nothing. City Council Chambers, shown there obligates this the town to construct those improvements in fact that would be part of the negotiation that we enter into. with the developer on what improvements they are responsible for. And it certainly doesn't mean, you know, if you kind of think of it as you isolate that portion of the Civic Center, that, and you could even make the developer, or negotiate with the developer is a better term, to demo the public works building to facilitate future construction, where City Council Chambers, You know, again at their cost to do so, so in that case again depending on what's negotiated that that could be all a developers burden on now With that said, obviously. City Council Chambers, You have to decide where to locate relocate the public works building. City Council Chambers, If that was the case.

City Council Chambers, i'd just like to add so. The council directed me to move forward with the phased implementation of concept B. And that was, I understand that was before you and council member Dowling got on the council. But that was the direction that was provided to me. And that has not changed. your actions earlier this evening definitely there's collaboration there's time there's time to do that but two things are very very important you have made an obligation of the town to the state hcd to build nine units to facilitate the building of nine units on the site there are grave implications if we do not follow through with that there are and um the second thing is you all of you contractually obligated this town to building the paramedic facility by january of 2027 and we have to be moving forward Waiting until I mean when is it that you think would postponing it when would you if we if you think this is dead in the water, we are not making any progress on anything it's it's. The Council has to think about what are you going to do with those two obligations very important obligation, so we think we've come up with a way of moving forward. in a slow, comprehensive manner to show the state of California that the town of Ross is intending on facilitating the building of nine units. And so this action that we're asking the council to make tonight, we're not asking you to enter into a contract right now. But we need to give these housing organizations or nonprofit organizations time to submit materials to us. And any development, right, is a risk. They have a risk that something could happen. And something could happen in the site when we're looking at the soil studies. I mean, there's something that can happen there. We don't know. But this is a way of moving forward with that obligation. And then the item on the next agenda, I mean, you might have the same concerns about that, but we need to be able to move forward with our architectural planning to just phase the project.

Sorry, what is the, how do you phase this?

just curious what the phases are because you have to demolish the site so what are the phases i'm talking about phasing of concept b of the concept b plan and so i'm particularly concerned about the paramedic facility and i'm concerned about meeting our obligations to the state of california regarding our housing element this is a way of moving forward with those of meeting those obligations

City Council Chambers, Just a question, are you concerned about the quality of the people expressing interest because of the potential uncertainty about our. City Council Chambers, facilities and the advisory committee that's going to be working on this, or is it conceptual enough that people can get in the queue and know that there's going to be nine affordable housing units there at some point in time. and that's more the type of person that's gonna apply.

Well, I think kind of broadly, the purpose of the RFQ is really to assess the interest of development groups or nonprofit organizations to move forward with some type of development on the site. You know, the later item, the next item on your agenda is to talk about the architectural and engineering services. We'll talk a little bit about sequencing and phasing with that agenda item. But I don't think there's a whole lot precluding an affordable housing developer from moving forward because Again, we want to see what the qualifications are, what their interest is. And from our experience, and I know I've worked with Krista on affordable housing projects, Mayor Mrakas, They almost always take longer than you think they take a fair amount of time and. Mayor Mrakas, Particularly to get all the funding sources aligned to build the project, so you know I think that's part of why we're here tonight and want to advance this is is really out of out of. Mayor Mrakas, The timing constraint just kind of. complete this first process, identify who's interested, who has the necessary qualifications, be able to have those conversations and discussions and be realistic. Obviously, what's going on with the rest of the site? You know, some developers might say, you know, I don't want I don't want to be I don't want to be involved in that risk. And but, you know, they're like, for instance, the Branson School or even Cedars is an example. I think they fully understand that and you know it's going to be about if if Council said, Hey, we really like what they're doing. We're going to move forward with that concept with them, and you know, try to align that with all these moving parts. So it does get complicated. Understand that I wouldn't necessarily. I think this is a necessary first step, but look at it very much. That is is the first step, and it's not committing the town to anything in the future. You could not get any proposals, but I mean the hope is to get really some qualified developers that are interested in moving forward.

And I just might add for locally, in regards to Branson School, I mean, they are, I think they're on the verge of finalizing their facilities master plan. But they've told me that they, you know, their focus is their athletic facilities. And then they also have in their facilities master plan housing on the Branson site. But they have expressed interest all along in this project. They're thinking ahead. And this is, as David was describing, this is a multi-year process. And we've had some conversation with CEDARS, who they've been here for 100 years. They're going to be here for a while. And so hopefully this is something they want to keep looking at. And then we have no idea about, because we haven't put anything out there to non-local more regional organizations and so we really are interested to see is this something is this this is too small should we just focus locally or is there more interest on on from our regional agencies thank you any other questions public comment on this item anybody on zoom no raised hands online mayor okay so we'll bring it back for discussion

I really think we should get going. We're going to have the HCD on our back if we don't. And we can, we're now in a position to say we are doing our best to move ahead. But my own personal experience is this is a long process. And I say that because my company has sold two properties to affordable housing developers. One was raw land. And the other was an office complex with two buildings where they were going to tear down one building. They liked our parking lot particularly. And we negotiated them for quite a while. We finally entered into an agreement, but we had to keep extending and extending because they had to get their funding together. So this isn't something that can happen quickly. And I think it really does help us move forward to at least get started now. I mean, I think in the three months that it may take the committee to even come back to us with its advice, you know, we may just be getting started on this process. But I think we should start down that road. Otherwise, we'll have to start later, maybe in June or July or something. And I don't think waiting will really help that process at this point. When we get down to specifics, well, then hopefully by then we will have a plan.

I'm worried about waiting too. And I'm worried about jeopardizing our housing element and being in bad standing with HCD. And I think we need to show HCD that we're making some affirmative steps. And this is a way to do that and to keep them happy.

I'm actually thrilled that there's some movement moving forward. And I think this is just step one. It's an RFQ. We've been very clear about what an RFQ is. It doesn't commit us at this point to any one developer, but it's for us to look and see who's out there and who's available and who would be available to help us move forward when the time is right.

So I totally appreciate that we're trying to show good faith and move forward. And I know it doesn't commit us to anything. What I'm more fearful of is doing this prematurely than having potentially, you know, great developers come in and getting excited and saying, oh, yeah, no, I want to work with you guys. But then when they look at the concept B and they realize we're in no position to move forward on the project for multiple reasons, Mayor Mrakas, It just scares them away and I just don't I worked in housing to you know I worked with a developer of affordable housing as it as it as it goes. Mayor Mrakas, And you know they they will people, I agree, the local people for sure they get us and they know what's going on in our town. Mayor Mrakas, But you know you're asking about regional people or maybe we want affordable housing that's doing you know median income to below am I and. That sort of those sort of affordable housing developers, you know they're you say well what's what they're going to ask you right away what's what's the facilities master plan and where does that stand and it's like well. nowhere, and we don't have the money. And then it's like, well, are you guys doing a CEQA? You know, does it require CEQA? Yes. Well, what's the status of your EIR? Like, they are going to ask us questions about where we are in our process. And if we're nowhere, I think we're scaring them away prematurely. I would much rather go out to the market once we say we have a credible plan, we know how we're going to finance it, we have the backing and support of our town and we're gonna do this and we really wanna invite you in because we think you're really credible and we want you to be a part of this process. And if we do this, launch this RFQ and you get all this interest and they all fall away, we're only hurting ourselves. Because we came out too soon before we had all our ducks in a row. And it is so clear right now that this is not credible. I mean, this is not feasible. We know it's not feasible. So why would we go solicit interest from the outside? It makes no sense.

i i too understand the importance of moving forward but i i would prefer if we could postpone this you know even just two months we may have a much better sense from the committee where where we might stand with a master plan because i don't think it it doesn't quite make sense to share with the people who are asking our about the rfqs a master plan that we probably i don't think we're going to be keeping

So I'd like to make a motion that we authorize the town manager to release a request for qualifications to solicit proposals from qualified and experienced developers and community-based organizations.

Is there a second? I'll second.

Great. Thank you, ma'am. I second.

Thank you. Mayor McMillan? Yes. Councilmember Dowling? Yes. Councilmember Kercher?

Yes.

Councilmember Salter?

No.

Mayor Pro Tem Robbins know with a vote of three to the motion passes.

Thank you moving on to item 15 town council consideration to authorize the town manager to release a our F Q to solicit statements of qualifications from qualified and experienced architectural and engineering firms for implementation of the town of Ross facilities master plan with a focus on the Ross civic center.

The whole program is option.

Just one moment, Mayor and Council. Thank you for your patience.

Thank you, Roberta.

Ready, Mayor? All right.

Yes, thank you.

Okay.

All right. Similar to the last item, we're also talking about an RFQ. In this case, we're talking about requests for qualifications from an architect and an engineer, or as I'll refer to as A&E services. So again, referencing the facilities master plan, which was adopted by the council in June of 2023, it does guide redevelopment, long-term redevelopment of the Civic Center, as well as identifies a number of improvements and modernization needs for the Civic Center complex. So kind of a germane question is why release the RFQ now? I think it's critical because, again, I want to express time is of the essence and kind of it's City Council Chambers, Why, why say time is of essence in a saying it's really important because the fact is that, as time goes on the impact of the cost of improvements continue to increase, and you see this cost increases. City Council Chambers, reflected in the. City Council Chambers, Recent work that was performed by by kpa. But really, it's time to move from traditional planning concepts of a master plan to implementation. What we've developed is an RFQ to really assist the town with refining the program elements, as well as conducting additional site analysis of the city center. Your master plan is just that. It's a concept for future redevelopment. I know there's under discussion about maybe redeveloping in that. But there's a lot of work that goes into the underlying engineering and the underlying design to inform the next steps. So hiring an architect can provide that documentation in the way of a site analysis. For instance, currently conducting underground utility work, that is going to be particularly important no matter what happens with the Civic Centre to coordinate that future undergrounding with the Civic Centre. And that's one of the reasons why this scope of work is not just for an architect, it's also for engineering services because you really want to integrate both design services but also the engineering services to go along with that. kind of a critical question uh is sequencing and timing and you know council i know is very interested in that detail but that's ultimately i think something that is critical to have an architect on board that can assist with really evaluating how to move forward and what can be phased what can't what improvements are necessary to be taken first you know again based on more information that site survey work that's going to be done that is going to inform you know other other improvements the rfq that is included in your packet is again just that it's a request for qualifications from firms that are going to put together a package they're going to identify that they have the capabilities in the way of project management and design services and engineering services to be able to assist the town with development of the next stage of documents, both bringing forward the master plan into concept drawings as well as schematic design drawings. The professional practice is for A&E firms to develop them at 30, 60, and 90% design drawings so that you can adjust as you go through that process. And it usually starts with verifying those program elements that have been identified in the master plan. So it's part of engaging the architect and engineer. You can look at that phased implementation approach that you gave the town manager direction to do, kind of really help understand what can be constructed now versus later and what those costs are, and assist with the operational continuity piece. Because again, what elements of the Civic Center can continue to operate with the construction and what can't. Obviously, if you redesign a police station, police are going to have to be relocated. And so that can help with that discussion. Obviously, we know that this site has a number of constraints, one in the way of access, but also in the way of flooding. And Having that mapped and have that be overlaid with proposed design and engineering really again helps inform council decision making around future development of the Civic Center. I think from a strategic perspective too, I know the discussion around the Friends of the Ross Valley Fire is very germane and on top of mind. Chris and I had this discussion with council, you know, what about timing? And I think having a architect on board can assist council with You know the necessary technical analysis that will again help could help inform your decision making by providing. You know some of that the technical analysis that could be really helpful as as the town manager mentioned, you have a timeline with respect to the paramedic lease agreement. And so that that's, you know, the timeline is a driving factor in moving this effort forward is how do we, how do we address the need to provide paramedic facilities in the context of development of the Civic Center and so that that's very important. Again, the background here is that costs literally escalate. In my experience, when I've worked with cost estimators, they look at it on a month by month basis because costs just even at 5% per year, you can break that down on a month. What happens to materials? What happens to labor? And so having that information in a cost escalating environment just I think increases the the timeline needed to do this work again. We are proposing a bet what I consider a best practice. I think it's the best practice is to use a qualifications based selection process. It's not a proposal it's to have teams. provide their statement of qualifications that in case that they have the necessary background and experience to carry out a project of this type and magnitude. They include with that their billing rates as well as who their project manager is and whether they have experience with these types of projects. ultimately the goal would be to interview those firms make sure that they have you know who kind of rank them hopefully get a good selection of proposals and bring back to council a recommendation for a contract and so that's again a point for council to decide Is this something you want to move forward with? The timeline for this is very similar to the RFQ with the housing element. Release the RFQ next week. SOQs are due the first week in April and potentially award in May with a potential start date thereafter. In my experience, there's often a lot of negotiation because you have to refine the scope of work. You actually need a proposal and you want to be concrete on what that work entails. That's an opportunity for council to kind of weigh in on that scope. But that also gives you a number of what it looks like in terms of cost to the town to undertake that work. Again, there's really no fiscal implications at this point to releasing an RFQ. Ultimately, the intent, again, as I mentioned, to bring back a professional service agreement that PSA, if you will, would have attached to it a detailed scope of work and a cost proposal so you could see exactly what is it going to cost to start doing this design work. I know one of the questions that comes up is, you know, I think Council Member Salter is, how does this relate to environmental? Well, you know, I think often the there's kind of this question about chicken and egg what do you do first you do the environmental or do the design work and usually you like to do some of the preliminary design it helps inform the environmental work that uh and whether you know you can avoid maybe certain impacts up front by by the design process and and end up with a you know maybe a a less detailed environmental document because you've designed in or you pre-mitigated through the design So that that's an opportunity to do that with the design process as well, and and it allows for the town manager to really kind of set and negotiate the rates with the with the firm that's ultimately selected. So With that, the recommendation of staff is to authorize the town manager to again release the RFQ and return with a recommended firm for contract approval. The ideal date would be May 14th, but that would be dependent on the number of proposals received, reviewing those proposals, and being timely with a recommendation to be able to bring back to council. With that, I'll open up with any questions. Thank you.

I have a question about the paramedic facility. And I assume the priority would be on the paramedic facility given our January 1, 2029 date. But I just want to make sure that's right.

City Council Chambers, I think, from staff perspective, and I know that my conversations with town manager that is absolutely a priority, because the Council has has executed that at least that that agreement with with the paramedic.

City Council Chambers, And this architect slash engineer would be available for the citizens advisory committee as well for their work.

Yes, I mean, I, yes. If we can get, well, except I think they are planning on completing their work before May 14th. Yes, or he said as soon as possible. So that might not exactly mesh. We might have to, if that group decides that they need some architectural support, we might turn to KPA, who is the firm that did our facilities master plan as a way of providing some support. If it's under my signature authority, my purchasing authority, I could do a small agreement with them. That might be the more timely way of providing them with information.

Any other questions?

I have a question as to the process. Because, yes, we have already authorized concept B, but what's under consideration is modification of that or changing more to the fourth proposal, which is we remodel an existing building. Is this going to be made clear to this architectural firm that they're not just being retained for concept B, they're being retained for whatever we decide to do? And they can start out consulting, and then when we get to something where we could enter into a more complete contract, like, okay, give us a detailed architectural building plans for this. Can that be phased? And because I don't want to start down the road with them and then say, you know what, we changed our minds.

if may i just add that um so i think that that it's a it's i think that's an important part of this and we probably should add some language to the rfq document to talk about what happened because when we put this together we didn't know what was happening with you know what the council had decided um earlier this evening so that is information we can add on again we're not asking them for a proposal We're asking for their qualifications. And if they're interested, how much public safety work have they done? How much civic center work have they done?

Well, and have they done something similar to what's being proposed by FORTH? We take out the interior and rebuild it from the inside. Do they have experience with that and expertise with that?

Yeah, absolutely. And remember, the plan is more than the fire station. I mean, the area is much more than the fire station.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, for the for the housing, I understand this. That really is a pressing timeline, though I still think it was premature to do the RFQs. But for this, you know, as Bill mentions, I mean, don't think we have a clear sense of what's going where and are we renovating or are we building new so to me this one is especially premature and so my question is why can't this just wait two months and let's see what the committee comes up with and then we have rfqs for something that's much more uh well defined what goes where and is it a renovation project or is it a build new project for some of the buildings so the art we're asking for

Authorization to release a request for qualifications. So their qualifications and we've described generally speaking what I mean there it covers the RFQ covers everything that's really in our civic site. We've asked for their experience in public safety buildings. And so one of the examples And if you recall on the timeline, we need to give them, we're giving them six weeks, more than six weeks. They have to put together their teams. So we wouldn't be anticipating, the deadline isn't even until April. And so then it would take us time to review and conduct interviews and et cetera, et cetera. It's not, I don't even envision that this would even come back to council before I hope the committee's work has been completed if they're able to do it as soon as possible. But another example of why having an architect is so important is depending on what happens with the council, we are going to need to figure out what to do, for example, with our public works department. And I've had some initial conversations with maybe MAGIC is an area, maybe there are parts of MAGIC which we might be able to have temporary facilities there, help them, you know, they're not able to at this point in time fund their facilities master plan. Maybe we can find a way to put our, or some of our public works function over at MAGIC. We need an architect to help us do that, just to figure out temporary facilities. We need an architect to figure out, well, OK, where are we going to put the police department? Where are we going to put the paramedics? These are all things that we need an architect. The council, every one of you has asked me questions about, how can this project be phased? Remember, the council's direction to me was, phased implementation of the facilities master plan. I'm not an architect. I'm not able to tell you it can be phased. Can we move the paramedic facility over a little bit so that it's not that we can still do the paramedic facility and leave If the council ends up wanting to leave the fire station site, can we phase it? Maybe we feel like the council feels like you're not going to be able to go to the voters and we're going to have to do more of a pay as you go. Can we use the existing money the council has saved up over time and get your priority parts of the project done? All that we need an architect to help us do. it's not a it's not going to be a traditional sounds like a traditional where we asked an architect to come in and do the whole project but we're going to need the the services of an architect to help inform the council to inform staff to perhaps inform if if the committee is still working we need to have somebody on board can you can you put up the slide again of the

this concept B, because I'm feeling like we're just sort of in Groundhog's Day or something. This plan, there's no phasing because it's a demolition of the site. And then where the paramedic, it's sort of like shocking, we keep talking about building this paramedic facility when you need to demolish the entire public safety building to build it. Because that's where it is in the map. So let's put that back up because this is so important to this discussion. You can't phase something if you have to demolish the building. And that's what's in that picture. so the phases are demolish the building see it's right there that that gray there's a big arm of the building in the middle of of a street that we want to build and a parking lot and then there's this paramedic building that we're somehow going to build that in a phase so the phases are when you do build you have to demolish and then you have to lay the utilities and you have to put in all the cement and concrete and the engineering and the leveling and then you start to build. So right now we have a ballot measure that just got approved tonight for November that literally is asking the residents to vote on that building right there to try to maintain it and rehab it. That's the language in that ballot measure. So everything in your RFQs keep referring to this facilities master plan from 2023. And yet there is a ballot measure in November that's going to ask the voters to opine on what this site should look like. So what I don't want to happen is us wasting, we hired David Kelly to sort of do this project that is now completely not feasible and we don't know what this project is. Hiring an architect, explain like what this architect's going to be doing if we were to hire them when we have a ballot measure in November all up to that point because we don't have a plan.

Well, I think the answer is the architect's going to help develop the plan. I mean, that's the simple answer. Now, how that goes about is we get proposals back or a statement of qualifications. We have to ultimately negotiate with who the selected firm is on a proposal that proposal It is going to take time, but it may identify refining the master plan as it as it is. Now there's obviously some uncertainty in terms of outcomes here with respect to your ballot measure. But there's a lot of preliminary work that needs to be done to help facilitate future conversation around development of site, because what we have now is is is really a simple master plan graphic. And there's a lot more detail in terms of engineering and survey work that you need to kind of start on that process. Usually they hire soils engineers, they hire the appropriate levels of professionals that is part of their team to answer questions that are gonna come up, I'm pretty certain relative to the fourth proposal. And so it's gonna be, And if you do need to amend the master plan well you're going to have we can that could be part of the scope of work is to update the master plan if if that's ultimately your your decision or the voters decision to do that. Because we'll have to reflect how the site layout is now going to be if the ballot measure is approved.

So why not write the RFQ to say that? We're seeking an architect to help us redo our concept based on work we're doing with our town committee to rethink this, reimagine the site. And we need an architect to help this group or help the town redo its master plan, essentially, as opposed to referring to this June 2023 master plan as if that's what they're working on. I think the RFQ should be about we're hiring you to work with the citizens group and the council on redoing our master plan.

City Council Chambers, Well, that I think that's the direction of the Council, but the intent again is to this is an rfq to select the firm with the appropriate experience to assist us in that effort, I mean we could we could include language in there that. City Council Chambers, is part of your team, you have the expertise in master planning to assist the town with this process.

Yeah, and then just as I said on the previous agenda item, you know, we can, you know, we put this together before you had your other agenda item. So that moved very, very quickly. So we can add language into this that says that that is going to be a part of the process. I mean, we're not going to have a, we're no longer having a traditional, it would be faster and less expensive to just clear the site, And do everything that you described, and that was the council's intent in 2023. We don't have that anymore. And so we are trying I'm trying as town manager to do what the council direct me to, which is to move forward with the phased implementation and to. help the council and our our organization meet those two contractual obligations that we have and there are you know i can see i can see that there is a opportunity to move the paramedic facility in the housing a little bit to the north and see if we can still get the paramedic, the ambulance in. But I don't know that. I'm not an architect. And so we need to have some technical, architectural, and engineering, as David has described at length. Also, the facilities master plan, so this graphic could, right, it could be changed. And the council could amend the facility's master plan. But a big part of the facility master planning process was the needs assessment. Is what do each of these functions that we need to have here in order to serve our community, how much square footage do they need? That does not need to be redone. It was a lengthy, comprehensive process. The police department needs this amount of square footage. And it was very conservative because we knew how constrained our site. It was not a pie in the sky process. It was we have a constrained site. How much do you need to be a modern operate operational police department so.

My addition yeah so i'm just saying that in the rfp right now the language says we're looking for an architectural engineering services necessary for the implementation. of the town's adopted facilities master plan. So what I'm saying is this is problematic because I believe we adopted this plan, but it sure doesn't sound like this is going to be the plan they're going to work on. So again, I don't want to scare away potential architects and people who might come forward thinking, oh, I'm going to click this link and they've got a plan and I'm just implementing. They're not implementing because our plan is completely not feasible at the moment. So that's the part I'm troubled. I want to support us moving forward, but we need a plan and we need to be able to be credible with any vendors that come forward that this is what we're trying to do. So why not, again, we can talk about it in discussion. It just seems more better for us to ask an architect to help us redo the plan based on whatever comes out of the committee, as opposed to having them say directed to the town's adopted facilities master plan. That just seems disingenuous.

That is one of the options that's the feedback that we're looking from the Council that's what David went through and he actually had an entire slide that was devoted to that is that the Council can provide if the consensus of the Council is we can change. the this draft it says draft it's a draft rfq document and so if the council would like us to take out the reference to just doing facilities the the concept b and have it be a little bit more general then we can take that feedback if that's the consensus of the council and update it you meet once a month and There are so many times I get so many questions from the council about that we need an architect on board. And so I am very interested in trying to have the technical expertise to be able to answer the questions that the council and members of the community are asking me. So that's what we're looking for. It's not a proposal. It's qualifications. And I think architectural firms are, I mean, this is a longer process. They're probably going to make more money. But we need to have that technical expertise.

So what you're saying, Krista, is you could add language about helping us with the site plan, including modifications or changes to our site plan. Because it may well come down to that.

Yeah, I mean, they're going to give us an hourly. They're going to give us their hourly. We'd like to be interested. Are they making $100 an hour or $1,000 an hour? That's fine. And what their experience is, and we would keep the scope of work to include of that and providing us with some support perhaps for the community and for the council. Do you have anything to add about that, David?

Oh, I think I entirely agree with the town manager and my experience in working with architectural firms is they often will say, have you thought of this? And that's, you know, may not be reflected in the master plan. And that's, you know, it comes with this expertise that lends itself to giving great feedback on how you may be able to move forward you know, under scenarios that maybe have not been considered yet, but meet all the objectives that you want to meet with respect to, you know, the force initiative or the master plan as currently provided.

All right.

So Jeff Kuhn wants to say something, which I will allow him to do.

Comment now? We still have questions. Yeah. We're at questions.

Okay. So you have to wait. Sorry. You have to wait until public comment. I'm sorry. We're still asking questions. We're asking questions. Elizabeth.

So my question is if we are including in this RFQ the possibility that the master plan might change, would we also then besides, I mean, clearly the master plan, Is part of the of the information being sent out so would we also then include force master plan as part of the as what's being sent out because we're thinking that our architect is going to be working on some hybrid so why wouldn't we just send out both of those.

We can include it as a reference document that we have received this from a group of residents who've hired an architect. They did not submit a complete concept for us. It doesn't include a corp yard. And I'm planning on sending out tomorrow or Monday our staff's analysis of FOREF's proposal to give the council some and our consultant team that were assisting us. Absolutely. We can include that as a reference. Sure, they'd be interested in knowing what the community is interested, what the background is. I'd be willing to do that. Do you think there's something wrong with that?

No, I don't think that's going to preclude getting a proposal from qualified firms. It actually might look for them an opportunity to be creative with what they come forward with, knowing that there's these other interests. And we can certainly in the language I think that comes from something you mentioned review the adopted facilities master plan and other we could say and other appropriate documentation, including you know recent information submitted by the friends of the Ross Valley. Fire in you know, to help inform your your proposal, so what I mean why wouldn't the you know.

Matt read the first line that said it's to work on implementing the Facilities Master Plan. So would that line be changed to something like implementing the Facilities Master Plan, or FORFS plan, or some hybrid plan? I mean, just to make it clear, we have these three plans, and we're hiring someone. If we're hiring someone now, it's for something, one or the other, or something in between. So why wouldn't we make that clear in that very first sentence? Or would we?

I think that's fair, Mayor Partem. Without wordsmithing at the dais tonight, we certainly could, with the council's direction, expand the language in the RFQ to be more comprehensive of the fourth proposal so that it's known information that there's a ballot initiative out there.

But is that something is for discussion that yeah, it's for the others and others would be in favor of any more questions we're doing questions yeah, that's any or okay now we'll take public comment.

So at the risk of being a little gratuitous. If the committee is successful in coming to an agreement it's not going to look like that not even remotely I can't believe that would be. So that's part one to elsewhere or towards the bottom of the letter to you folks I said it's highly likely we're going to need architectural services and we can't finish our work if we don't have some consultant architect. forgot about the fact that then why he's part of this agreement, I mean part of this committee. I think well. Good. Questions?

Thank you.

Comments? Go away. Okay.

So are you saying we should go ahead to hire an architect now?

I'm not. I think it's almost inevitable that we will have to.

It's almost what? I'm sorry? I see. It's almost inevitable that we'll need an architect now.

Yeah, but not somebody to design something, somebody to comment on what may come up on a scratch pad of paper, right? I mean i'm not an architect i've never done that kind of stuff so I can't tell you, but the request is likely to come to krista. doesn't have to be the same process here but we're going to have anything that's going to be worth a damn to be able to give to an architect, who is going to do the major work somebody's going to have to come up with a draft.

Yeah, I guess I'm confused if we just are, if the committee will be needing its own consultants and architects like right now in real time, and that's different from this RFQ proposal that won't get fulfilled until May. The timing's not good for the committee. This process timing's not good for the committee.

Don't forget that we just conceived this two days ago. Yes. So I know we're kind of, pardon me, colliding with the process, but that's the way it is. Okay. Yeah.

Thanks.

Any other public comment? Okay, so we'll bring it back for discussion.

So I totally support getting this committee that's up off the ground the resources they need. But I totally agree this timeline and what The basically both of these are of cues were envisioning hey we've got this facilities master plan let's find you know qualified vendors to help implement it, but the reality is we don't have a master plan anymore and that's what this group is working on. So I'd rather us sort of let this group get off the ground, and then when they request, I mean, like, for example, the friends have BRW's architects who they're already working with. Maybe they would want to tap them, and we could support that, or they might ask for another architect. But why not let this group of experts who sort of we are excited about what they're trying to do come to us and with the request as opposed to running this separate you know rfq to find an architect for a plan that doesn't exist yet so i get why they're on the agenda i know you didn't know all of this before but it doesn't it's just we're so premature right now given we've just sort of created this new working group let's let the working group come to us with requests and help them put together the best plan and then hire the the the people actually i'd like their recommendation from the group of who we should hire now that this group is formed so i think just all these things were put on this agenda i get why they were put on it's just they're premature given where we're trying to move

Bill, if you're going to say something, go ahead because I'm going to do a motion.

I was just going to say that I do think we should get going on this because I think that having architects on hand could be really helpful in going ahead with what the committee is doing. As Jeff said, the committee may specifically request assistance. If not, we'll be getting a committee report that will be back to us. And then we'll need to figure out what to do next. And I'd love to have some architects on board to help us, if nothing else, just help us prioritize this. Help us with what are the issues? What do we need to decide? And also, you know, just a third party. Is this realistic, what the committee is recommending? And if not, specifically, why not? I mean, I hope that the experts can handle most of this and it won't come back to the council to decide things that we're not experts in. We very much, I think, need expert input for something like this. But I definitely think having architects already on board would help. And I think this is something that's going to take some time to put the request out and get responses and do the interviews and so on. It may be that that whole process will The committee will already have been ongoing for quite a while before we finally have that resource. So I'm not in favor of waiting.

I agree with you, Bill. So I would like to make a motion that we authorize the TAO manager to release a request for qualifications to solicit statements of qualifications from qualified and experienced architects and engineering firms.

Second.

Can I have more discussion now? We've been discussing.

So I don't understand why we would be doing this RFQ to have an architect that we'll be hiring in like three months when it sounds like the committee is going to be needing consultants hopefully in a week or two. So we will want to support them in their request for consultants. And this is, these consultants won't be available for months. So I don't know why we would hire them. I don't know why we would go through that process and hire them now. The committee will need its own consultants, but it's premature to ask for RFQs, especially because we don't know what the project is going to look like. So I think it's premature. I don't agree with doing this.

I've heard a couple of things. I just want to correct the record. One, we didn't create a committee tonight. I think you misspoke on that. The committee was created by a group of citizens. It's not a town committee. Therefore, it's not subject to the Brown Act. Number two, there's two different issues. There's the long-term acquiring a architect to help the town out with whatever how we want to define what that help is. And that's what staff has brought before you tonight. As this town manager made very clear in her staff report, there's also the short-term needs of the committee that might come forward. Those can't be addressed at the RFQ. And I don't think anyone's suggesting that RFQ's going to help with that. Those requests, per the committee's letter, are gonna come directly to the town manager, for the town manager, with her signature authority, to hire someone she thinks is necessary. If it's without her signature authority, and time is of the essence, we'll have a special meeting. But that's how the process goes with public entities. The committee's not hiring consultants. It goes through the town manager and to the town council.

Thank you. Sorry, Ben, but my question would be, I'm sorry, I get what you're saying, there's these two separate things, but if we did hire, the committee asked for somebody and we approved it and they hire a consultant and it ends up being an architect, and they like the architect and think it's a great resource but that architect didn't know about this other process going on and then we're interviewing different architects for this long term even though the architect the committee's chosen to work with might end up being the best architect for the project but they missed this little window of rfqs so i again that's not a little window it's not a little window there's a you know it's being advertised for how many weeks

6 weeks the rfq before responses are even due so it's not a win it's not a little window we hope i mean if there's someone interested out there they should apply to this and they can approach the town for short-term assistance under the signature authority of the town manager so i don't think it's an either or you're right someone might get involved now who's interested in the larger project and they can do that

It would seem to me to be more efficient to use the same architects for both, because otherwise somebody's having to redo all this. But based on Ben's comments, I don't know. We're looking at at least six weeks. Another reason, I think, to get going on this, just in case we can line this all up.

Through the Mayor, may I just add also, you know, the architectural and engineering firm for this project, whatever it morphs into, it's going to be a big number. City Council Chambers, you're going to want, and you are required to have input from members of the public on contracts that are over $50,000 and so. City Council Chambers, Yes, as the town attorney said, you know if if the committee or the Council or me or just staff if we need an architect. Maybe we need architect and engineering to assist the public works department. As I said, I'm very interested in already starting to plan on where we're going to put these essential functions while this project is being planned and starting on construction. that firm might like this project so much, or maybe we like them so much, that we would like them to participate in the project. Or may we decide in a request for qualifications that eventually goes to request for proposals. I mean, oftentimes with these kinds of large architectural contracts, you will have a panel that is more than just staff, because it's going to be such a big amount of money. So you know that I don't, I don't think we I don't think we should be we should tie ourselves to thinking that whoever assists me, or the council or a committee now is gonna not that they won't be able to be the real and in fact, fourths architect is more than welcome to submit their qualifications.

i just thank you i had a question for you i know we're sort of in this weird zone of process but why not just use your authority then to hire an architect and have somebody to work with you guys in the committee without having to do this rfq

So first of all, I don't know what the committee is going to be seeking. So they need to meet and tell me what their needs are. Maybe they have a need that I already have. We might be able to help them on staff. I need to know what they need before I can come up with a solution. it will be let and i and i don't um i want to get the best architect right now i know i've we i already know mary mcgrath is part of us not interested in working with the town and so um and we have kpa who's done work for us on this project but i'm not sure who's out there and that is part of this is getting qualifications we want to know who's interested what kind of work that they have done yeah sorry i just think the committee might

it's a it's a lot of real estate experts and they all want to solve this problem they might have suggestions maybe it is the fourth brw maybe it's some other ones dan winey they might have some ideas and present them to you and it seems like something you you could author you know authorize working with them to hire somebody and then we don't have to go through this big process yet until we've formulated that so you put someone on staff and works with you and the committee and And then once we get further along, then we do this big RFQ because we know what the project's going to be. I have no problem. I want you to have an architect. I want everyone to have an architect, and I want the town to pay for it. I just don't want to do this big RFQ for a big project we don't know what it is yet, and then somebody misses it. Like you said, it's a big process, and I just don't know why we're kicking it off right now.

This is not a public bidding kind of thing. kind of situation we're asking for qualifications and we will be evaluating them and then we have to bring any contract proposed contract back to council whatever this committee or the council or and perhaps another group there needs to be a public input into this um so i'm not sure that we're not saying We're not saying the same thing. I'm hearing there's agreement here that we need to have technical expertise. We need to know, I mean, we want to be fair and we want to put this out there so we know who's interested, not just the people that are on Jeff's committee and not just the couple of architects that we've had experience just on this project. We want to know who's out there, what their qualifications are. And it's not committing the council to entering into an agreement with them. It's simply getting information. And these firms get these requests all the time. They're used to this. So I just don't see that we're not, I think we're talking about the same thing. I just want, this process is so long and we need, I want to get it going. I want the council to have the information that they need. I'm trying to look ahead. When this committee is done, I don't want to have to have a two to three month long process to do an RFQ. I would like it to have it be already started.

City Council Chambers, yeah that was going to be my comment is the urgency of the police department, as well as the paramedic building is so great that we can't I don't want to keep phasing stuff and extending stuff and we can kind of do it in parallel with this committee. City Council Chambers, With get them the technical help that they need and do the rf cues in parallel and then we'll see where we are in six weeks. City Council Chambers, that's my view.

I agree, Tom, Cynthia, since prices are going up, but we do have a need. For public safety. So you made a motion. I think let's move along as quickly as we can.

Mayor, council members, if I may, just there is a motion on the floor. Yeah. There was discussion about whether to accept the RFQ as is or to incorporate additional language in council. I don't know if that's part of the motion to be more flexible to address, I think, the feedback that Council Member Salter has offered.

want me to read it again with the expansion okay so making a motion to authorize the town manager to release a request for qualifications to solicit statements of qualifications from qualified and experienced architect and engineering firms and to expand the language in the RFQ to include not only the I don't know the plan B or the other options. I'm not sure that's the right word, but other.

Can I offer a friendly amendment?

Yeah, go ahead.

So the language would be to help the town evaluate its master plan, taking into account the committee that has been formed and what might come out of that process. I think that's part of this committee.

You've got the fourth plan, you've got our plan, you've got the new plan.

It's like, yeah. Thank you. Second.

Second.

All right. So did you accept the friendly amendment or no?

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah, it's fine.

Yeah. Okay. So basically, I'm sorry, just to make sure we're all clear, what we're trying to say is to help us with our master plan and taking into consideration what may come out of this committee. The reason I'm asking for the committee, I just want everyone to know, is that If you were doing this and we hired the person that hopefully they can help the committee so that the goals to help put give a resource to the town to do all these things and I'm sure that the staff can wordsmith it enough so that it yeah me to talk about is that it is not clear to staff to is that makes sense.

And then just to see a minute include that there's a reference to the friends plan now.

I guess we did talk about that, but I didn't put that in.

So then the RFQ.

I don't think we have to be so prescriptive of every little thing. It's because they're going to say the RFQ is going to say we're looking at this master plan. We have this committee. You know, here's what's going on. Kind of set the stage. And then they can get the resources from our website of what. It's very clear it's not just this current plan, essentially. I think that's what we're all agreeing to. And that we just need the resource to help us get to a better plan.

Just so it's clear that that what we're seeking help with may include a major rehabilitation project as opposed to a demolition and rebuild project. Because that requires different kinds of experience. They probably all have had experience with both. Not that uncommon. But just so we know that we're getting the type of feedback that we want. in terms of their qualifications. So is that part of the amendment to the motion?

No, I mean, it is clear to say that it's it could include.

How about this? Can we have what we all vote and to do this? Can you maybe when you redo the RFQ language, share it with us like how you're sort of trying to outline this so that we all are clear i think what bill said is really important because some of the qualifications oh i'm really good at demo demolition and building but i don't do rehabs so it's important we say that this is open-ended at this point well we could include both alternatives in the proposal right keep it keep it vague and open-ended we're not asking for proposal we're asking for

qualifications, we're looking for firms that have experience with extensive renovation of public safety of fire stations, not just any rehabilitation. We're looking for somebody to help, you know, redo a master plan. I mean, it's it's we're looking for a unicorn.

But we are we are looking for qualifications.

Yeah, well, this is qualifications, who what kind of an experience they have.

And i'm sorry to add one more thing is historic preservation, because that's obviously the buildings a historical on. So it just listing out I know it's you're right it's gonna be hard, but that's if we're doing this right now, this is sort of what we're dealing with so just making sure that the people we get sort of have this. we're not going to find the perfect unicorn but maybe we'll find someone that can fit two of the three you know. We just want to make sure they understand the situation.

Yeah. And ultimately, it's the council that is going to be approving any contract over $50,000, which this will be eventually when it comes forward. The council will make a recommendation, and it's always the council. You're the one that has to prove it. You might say, nope, we don't like that recommendation. We want something else.

And the other way of looking at that, a lot of those details you're talking about are going to be in that contract. So if those details aren't in that contract at that point, you can suggest it. I think it's hard to put it all in an RFQ right now because it's very general, the RFQ. And I think your language kind of is the first step. And then you get in the contract negotiations. You don't get much more specific about what type of renovation or in the interview process. There's going to be a lot of different steps of getting that more and more information. That's my legal advice.

Do we hire and start paying this group as soon as May? Is that how this works?

All we have in the are the draft RFQ is that we are giving them six weeks the the deadline is April 3. And I believe we have to be determined as to on the actual RFQ on when we're going to be bringing something to the council because there's a lot, there's a lot can come forward. So what might happen after this is maybe we end up having to do an RF, eventually we'll do an RFP because we want them to tell us how much, because they're going to have to have they're going to have to have members of their team and then they would have a member of their team that has more expertise in renovation if that's what the council ends up wanting to do. Maybe they're going to have to have a member of the team that specializes in historic preservation. They're going to have to have a member of their team that specializes in administrative buildings and being next to Creek. I mean, there's all that, but that would be more of a request for proposal. Just looking for qualifications right now. Who's interested? What's out there? What kind of work? I want to be inspired by what work they've done in other cities in California. I want to be able to call those cities and we can get this information. It's like free information for us.

Yeah. So could we take a vote? We're ready. Cindy.

Mayor McMillan?

Yes.

Council Member Dowling? Yes. Council Member Kirchherr?

Yes.

Council Member Salter?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Robbins? Yes. With a vote of five, the motion passes.

Thank you. Number 16 town council consideration to adopt a one time modification to extend the terms of the mayor and mayor pro tem through November 2026 aligning the town council's annual reorganization with the certification of the November 2026 election following the town's transition to November elections. Mr.

Yes, thank you mayor and council members. So over the past 11 years, the terms of the mayor and the mayor pro tem in Ross have ranged from 9.5 months to 14 months in length. This range is due to the fact that the town elections were held in March or June. And therefore, the actual length of the terms vary depending on the election timing and certification dates. The staff report our town clerk did provide went back into history and came up with a chart that gives the names of the mayor and the mayor pro tems and their length of their terms. The town of Ross was the last town in Marin County to transition to its municipal elections to November. If you recall, you did this this past fall. and then so we did look at the most recent examples which were corda madera they moved to november elections in 2022 and the council approved extending the terms of the mayor and the mayor pro tem in their to so that the annual reorganization occurred at the first regular council meeting follows certification of election results by the marin county elections department Belvedere also did something similar in about the same time frame. And so under the current schedule, the town's annual reorganization is set to occur in July, this July, several months prior to the November 2026 election and the subsequent certification of results. The county has, I believe, 30 days in which to certify the results. So usually the results are done by your next council meeting. So to avoid a misalignment between the election certification and the town council leadership reorganization, staff recommends just a one-time adjustment, extending the terms of the mayor and the mayor pro tem through November of 2026. this recommendation conforms with the council adopted procedures manual that you adopted just this past april 3rd which states on page 4 that the mayor and the mayor pro tem are selected annually by the town council serve a one-year time at the beginning of the term the underlying phrase in my staff report means that the selection of the mayor and the mayor pro tem should happen at the beginning of the election cycle which is after the november 2026 general election um so this is uh this recommended approach ensures that the future reorganizations occur following the certification of the november election so we would expect it to be in december and then after that one time adjustment then the mayor and the mayor pro tem will have the standard one year duration and remain synchronized with the November elections going forward. So in our staff report, we did come up with some alternatives that you could maintain the current 12 months or 15-month terms and then continue holding the annual reorganization or June or March. But then that would result in a continued misalignment with those November elections. Another option is you can implement a one-time shortened term of approximately seven months for the incoming mayor and the mayor pro tem beginning in April 2026. You can also implement a one-time extended term of approximately one year and seven months for the incoming mayor and mayor pro tem beginning in April 2026. We provided you with some alternatives and then recent history and then the last 10 years in ROS. And that is my report. Thank you.

Thank you, Krista. Questions? Any public comment?

No raised hands online.

Okay. So we'll bring it back for a discussion.

Why don't you start? Because you're interested in continuing as mayor. So why don't you start and share your thoughts?

I just want to be consistent with how other jurisdictions have handled this. And Corte Madera and Belvedere have both done it this way. I think it's better for the leadership of the council to have a little bit longer term then have the next mayor elizabeth i'm assuming that would be you start in december with the mayor pro tem which would be terry um i think that makes much more sense than you know selfishly um than me just going for a year um which that would be easier but i think it makes more sense for this current term to go until the election um OSBT, Karen Hollweg, And then. OSBT, Karen Hollweg, Then you can start Elizabeth in December and with Terry rather than disrupt the cycle that's already happening and and we already set it based on the change of the election.

So here are my thoughts. We did talk about the term of mayor and mayor pro tem last year when the council voted to move the council elections from spring to November. And we agreed we would discuss it again when it came around. So the first year of the change to a November election, that's now, it leaves a 20 month period from when you, Julie, the current mayor, began serving and when the newly elected council members are sworn in. Our practice and tradition which is spelled out in the policy manuals that the mayor serves for one year and the council members rotate through the position. It's an ideal system. It keeps personalities and politics out of the role of mayor. In my opinion, the question isn't, should we rotate the mayor position this April? Why wouldn't we rotate the position? I don't think that anyone intended a mayor to serve a term of 20 months from April 2025 until December 2026. That's not our policy, it's not our practice. And since it was the current mayor, who instigated the move to postpone the council elections until November, I think it's actually inappropriate for that person to personally benefit by being mayor for 20 months instead of 12 months. And it is a benefit. Council members have always considered it a real honor and a privilege to serve as mayor. I don't think anyone has ever declined to serve their year as mayor when their term came around. So I would hope that this council continues the town's tradition and policy of rotating the mayor position after one year. We rotated the position last April. Julie, as current mayor, would finish her one-year term this April. I would then serve as mayor for eight months and would step down in December, regardless of whether or not I was reelected. I wouldn't make any changes to committee or board positions. So I don't really see any reason to deviate from our practice and written policy of a one-year term for the mayor. I think it would be wrong to deviate from this longstanding policy that has served the town so well.

i totally agree with council member robbins um i think that it's it's too long and i think that uh council member robbins who would be the next mayor has served in that capacity i believe twice before and is very competent and capable of being mayor again and provides sort of the change and continuity of that change that has been part of the town's culture since the beginning of when it was established I think rotating around I think it's very honorable that she's willing to serve a shortened term to sort of then get us back in line, but I definitely think the one year practice is is very good and it provides a lot of chances for everyone to be. to be put in that leadership i think it's um you know council member dowling is new and i'm new and for her to you know be able to be vice mayor sooner is a is a good thing because then she can observe the practice earlier in her term and i you know i just think that we all need that that that education and i think those mayor meetings with the town manager and setting the agenda and there's there's a lot that comes with being mayor and vice mayor And I think we just need to rotate through so everyone has that experience. And I'm actually very excited for Council Member Dowling to work with with what would be Mayor Robbins and maybe help our council to work better with each other where we haven't necessarily worked with each other before. So I think it's a really, it will be a sort of fresh air and a chance for people to work with other people they haven't worked with before and maybe help this council find a way to work better together.

Well, I'm personally comfortable with the 20 months of being mayor. I also supported the elections being in November. It wasn't just Elizabeth, but I also supported it. I thought it was a good thing to be in sync with the rest of the county. And I think it makes sense that we just continue through the end of November with the team we've got and then make those changes.

I mean, the reason for making the change to November is so we could align with the other councils. And the reason for doing that is you have an election and then you have new people coming on the council. And so you have potentially a change. Maybe there will be, maybe there won't be. But there's at least the potential for a change and then you start off with a new term and then you make appointments and so forth. And I just think chopping this up just We're just kind of retreating from what we have already done. We're chopping it up again in a way that's not aligned with what we're trying to do and with what the other communities would do. I mean, I appreciate Elizabeth's willingness to do this, but Elizabeth has already been the mayor three times and will probably be the mayor fourth time if she's re-elected. You sure you haven't been three times? Well, I beg your pardon then. Excuse me. My mistake.

Mayor Mrakas, Anyway, that's why I just want to add one more thing I think Elizabeth it's better for you not to be mayor for an abbreviated time I think it's better for you to be mayor for a full year. Mayor Mrakas, Because with Terry I think that's more continuity and will prepare Terry better because she'll have a whole year of being there pro tem.

with you so i don't i don't agree but you can have that opinion well no i have a question is that maybe it's and i don't know this is a question maybe for the town manager if let's say i don't know maybe maybe maybe elizabeth robbins might not want to run maybe she's done her term and she doesn't want to run what happens if the the new person comes in who becomes So that would be a really bad outcome because you wouldn't have had any chance to really, you just would be thrown into mayor without having a chance to be mayor pro tem. So that's why this is so important is we don't know what's going to happen in that election. We don't know if She will win. We don't know if she wants to run.

And so she's going to run.

Well, you know, a lot can change, OK, and and health changes and life changes. And so I'm just saying we for what we know now, there is an opportunity to create this mayor position with her and having Terry become vice mayor and learning the ropes and getting involved and honestly getting to work with someone maybe you don't work as closely with. and i think that's a good thing and we don't know what's going to happen in the election so but we do know right now we can start this process and i don't know why we wouldn't because it's really just helpful at the end of the day it really is helpful for you and i would hate the situation where you got thrown into mayor and you never had that chance matt you and i are smart enough to be able to pick up the pieces and run with it You know I love that about you, but I actually watch they do a lot of work it's weekly meetings it's setting the agenda it's. it's a lot I would I know we can do it, but I would rather have that chance to be an apprentice so all i'm saying is, we have that opportunity, I think Elizabeth willing to have a shortened term. Mayor Mrakas, And then, and then honestly Terry you will become mayor very soon you'll be there sooner, so I just don't know why we would do this, I don't I think we have a very we're lucky, we have two very senior people on this Council.

Mayor Mrakas, That both can be mayor's right now, and I think we should take advantage of that, and I think I think it's inappropriate for someone to have a 20 month term, especially when they sort of set it up that way, you know I just want to say that I did not.

change the election time or propose changing the election time so I could be mayor longer. That was not my intent at all. I wanted us as the last jurisdiction in Marin who had a spring election to be consistent with every other jurisdiction so that onboarding to all these advisory and JPAs and et cetera could occur at the same time.

That makes sense. But with it, you've taken on 20 months.

I didn't do it so that I could be the mayor for 20 months. That was not my intent at all. So I'm really sorry that you're suggesting that that was my intent. So maybe we should have that. Could I go ahead and make a motion?

I didn't say that was your intent. I just think the optics don't look right.

Oh, I don't care about the optics.

I'm going to make a motion. That we adopt resolution number 2606, approving and authorizing the award of performance and retention pay. Oh, no. That's a completely different one. I'm sorry. That was so much more fun. I don't know. It went so well.

Okay.

Oh, I agree that we make a motion that we adopt a one-time modification to extend the terms of the mayor and the mayor pro tem through November 2026, aligning the town council's annual reorganization with the certification of the November 2026 election following the town's transition to November elections.

Second.

Mary McMillan yes Councilmember Dowling yes Councilmember Kircher yes Councilmember Salter no Mayor Pro Tem Robbins no with a vote of three the motion passes

Maybe Councilor Dowling wants to handle this item, I don't know.

Sorry, I'll repeat it. Town Council consideration to adopt resolution number 2606 to approve and authorize the award of performance and retention pay to Town Manager Johnson relating to her annual review.

Good evening. THE TOWN MANAGER'S EMPLOYMENT AGREEMENT PROVIDES FOR AN ANNUAL PERFORMANCE REVIEW. TOWN COUNCIL RECENTLY COMPLETED THAT REVIEW AND INDICATED A DESIRE TO CONSIDER A ONE-TIME 5% RETENTION BONUS FOR HER PERFORMANCE RELATING TO THE ANNUAL PERFORMANCE PERIOD. THE AWARD OF THIS RETENTION PAY WOULD IMPACT THE TOWN'S BUDGET BY APPROXIMATELY $14,327. City Council Chambers, matter before you is consideration of adoption read adopting resolution number 2606 which would allow for that performance pay.

City Council Chambers, Any questions for attorneys stock. City Council Chambers, Public comment on this item. City Council Chambers, No raised hands online mayor great so bring it back for discussion or emotion.

Okay, I will make a motion to adopt resolution number 2606, approving and authorizing the award of performance and retention pay to the town manager, Krista Johnson, related to her annual review.

Second.

Mayor McMillan? Yes. Councilmember Dowling?

Yes.

Councilmember Kircher? Yes. Councilmember Salter? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Robbins? Yes. With a vote of five, the motion passes.

Thank you, Council.

Thank you, Krista. Thank you very much, Krista, for all you've done for the town. Thank you.

Yeah. 18, no action items. Any council correspondence? Future council items? Matt? Oh.

I have one. This has to do with the Ross Review, which I believe staff writes and then the mayor proof reviews. I'd like to put on the council agenda that we include others in that initial review period before it's published, in part to try to have a better representation of council events in the Ross Review. So in December, there wasn't any mention of response times which was a big agenda item in january there was no mention of the committee possibility which was a big outcome to that meeting and i think that it can be helpful to have more eyes on the ross review before it goes out and we could discuss does the whole council look at it does one other council member besides the mayor look at it but that's the item i agree with that i just want to clarify elizabeth that i do not review that in advance I used to.

I don't do that. And I haven't since the new publication started.

So Ross Review is written by staff only?

Yes.

Yeah. Since I've been here, and we're here, but Cindy is the one that writes most of it. And the only thing that the mayor and mayors before her have written has been the mayor's column.

Okay, well, either way, I think it's helpful because, I mean, I've had people say, gee, why wasn't this in the Ross review? And it doesn't hurt to have, to make sure it represents the important items of the council meeting. That's why we have it sent out on Tuesday now instead of the day after, so that we can include that.

So might I suggest that you agendize this for future discussion because it's a lot more involved and there's a lot of stuff you know if I'm going to have to make sure that we have the staff resources and of course the timing.

Yes, that's what this is the future. I support this. I just was wondering if you might, we might amend it just a little bit, which is more broad to just how we how the council communications or the towns communications are released, because I think that was, that was that we added that provide effective and timely communications with residents. And I fully support that. But I think we all should be reviewing these communications. And trying to be to add input if we can if we don't we don't but we should have the opportunity to so whether that's the Ross review or any other. The faqs all the things that we're putting out, we should all be reviewing them, so I think the agenda item is how do we basically look at those communications and have a process for the council's input before they go out.

With you yeah okay.

Well, certainly we can take the Ross Review. That's easy.

We have emails that go out and say, hey, there's a flood possibility. I'm with you.

The narrow would be, OK, I would say flood, basic alerts and things like that, no one, or communications about events. We're talking about, I guess, the Ross Review is the more meaty item.

The main one.

But if there are other ones where we're trying to have a long, let's say long form, it would be long form content that we're trying to say. Like the FAQs. I know we had created that process, but some of us weren't happy with it, and I never had a chance to look at it before it went out. So I'd say long-form content, we should have a process to allow for us, and that's the agenda item.

And including that Ross review, because that will be the simple one to decide, you know, who puts eyes on. That'll be an easy discussion. The rest will be harder.

And I'll be happy to include the resources that will be required to do what sounds like a couple of you are going down the road. And the council can consider that in the budget process.

Mayor Mrakas, Any any other future of Terry I think this would be future. Mayor Mrakas, it's on it's on. Mayor Mrakas, And i've got the right document this time. Mayor Mrakas, Recently, I saw at the written Commission on aging meeting respectful dialogue statement. Mayor Mrakas, At the top of their agenda and I asked where did that come from, and I was told that the board of supervisors always has at the top of their agenda. a respectful dialogue statement. I would like us to consider that. A respectful dialogue statement.

What does that mean?

It could mean something like the town The Town Council of Ross encourages a respectful dialogue that supports freedom of speech and values diversity of opinion. It's a statement that says that we value thoughtful discourse, freedom of speech, but that we request that people do not use threatening or profane or abusive language and so forth. The Board of Supervisors does this as a matter of course. All of the commissions in this county have it as part of their agenda. it's just a way to remind people they actually had the board of supervisors said no clapping no booing no hissing no cheering at meetings that that's actually disrespectful so if there's nobody i'm just saying let's consider i will support terry i will support you this you know look at look at adding this sure yep any other future matt i do

So from the last meeting, it became clear from the consultant reports that came out that the Ross contribution to the Ross Valley Fire JPA seems out of whack. I would like to agendize hiring a consultant to study what Ross should be paying with a fire station or without a fire station and having our you know having I would hope it would be stew from city gate but give us a report that could help us think about how to renegotiate this contract because it seems very unfair.

That's sort of part of the whole committee discussions I would support that. I mean, we want to know building and we want to know finance, so that is part of finance.

isn't that one of the things that the committee is going to be looking at finance money costs so we you know i don't know what the committee to me a lot of those people on it are real estate people and the decision of how we work in this jpa and how much we pay is very much our job our job as a council we need to determine what is appropriate to be paying in this jpa and we are paying over 20 right now with no fire station and no firemen and we don't know what's going to happen i mean i i hope you know we don't oh okay so you i got this word but that's the point is that we need to do this ourselves it's our job so we would bring back an item for future discussion on an agenda about whether or not we would hire a consultant to look at the fees that we pay to ross valley fire that's what you're proposing

And I supported that.

Okay.

One more item. I'm sorry, I don't know if I can amend that a little bit. If we do, adding to it is, Krista, I know that I had those follow-up questions for Stu. You know, if we end up hiring him as being able to ask some questions of this consultant, I guess. I don't know, I was trying to, if we end up engaging them, be able to, it's all related to his reports. I'm hoping we hire Stu back with that.

you know i'm pretty sure that he doesn't want to work for the town of ross but um if he would certainly be happy to ask him um and then the time to ask questions is before and it comes to you and during the council meeting yeah that's the issue is to that's that's the time so absolutely be as as every agenda item the council is welcome and encouraged to ask questions before and during the item while we still have them under contract. Yeah.

Any other future items? The last item is council member participation at the communication table. Elizabeth, thanks for being there today. I can be there on March 12th if anyone else wants to join me. Great. Thank you, Bill. OK. If it's raining, we cancel. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right.

Sorry, can I add one more thing? I'm so sorry. I would love to bring back that we talked about this before, and I don't know whatever happened. Krista, sorry, my memory just got jogged. Was the council doing like a retreat thing? Do you remember we talked about this? Where it was like we were going to try to do some team building activities and like get along better type of thing?

I was so inspired yesterday at the city manager's conference. I went to it one day and I have some names and some ideas and yeah, I think it would be great.

And I actually think it was already seconded. I actually think maybe, yeah, we just never have done it. It never has been agendized, but I think we need it. So can we bring it back?

Yeah. Great. Meeting evaluation number 19. It went okay. It's only 935. Yeah.

I want to say like I, this is hard work. And we're all volunteers. And I think I hate the Brown Act a lot. I really do. Because this is our only chance really to talk to each other. I mean, it's just awful. And I know that the fire station has brought up a lot in all of us. And I just want to say to all of you, I know that your heart is in the right place. And everybody has a lot of ideas and fears. And it wasn't like I think the council, you know, made this horrible mistake and was misguided and all of these things. It's all I all I came was with new eyes. And I don't want any of you to think that this is some personal attack against your character and who you are. I think everyone's coming here with different ideas and thoughts on what's best for this community. And I hope that this committee i'm so glad it's got informed and it's away from us because i i was like my number one thing i'm like i want no council members on this thing because we it's so hard and we never have the chance to sort of hug each other and say i'm sorry and i just want to say to all of you i am sorry for hurting your feelings for making you feel bad or making you think that Bad things about you. I just want to say that for the record and for you all to know that. And I think that those of you that were on this council before and worked really hard on that plan for Concept B and Beach Cool, who I love, by the way, and he totally disagrees with me, is that I believe you guys really tried very, very hard to come up with a good plan. And I'm sorry we're in the state that we're in, but it's not because I don't believe that you're smart and talented and we're trying to do the right thing. And I hope with this committee and us working that we can try to work together to bridge the community and try to really work with one another to know that our intentions are all good. We just might not agree, but it doesn't mean that we're coming here to hate on each other. That's all I want to say.

Thank you for saying that, Matt. I think it's really important how we talk to each other. And we are all volunteers and we all really truly care about this town and same with the new committee that's being formed and so we need to be respectful and treat each other with kindness and dignity and you know just maybe the preamble in our agenda will jog people's mind maybe our governance workshop will help build build a better team um You know, I remember when I was on the council with Elizabeth Brekus and we would disagree badly. And then the next day she would call me up and she would say, do you want to walk your dog? And I would be like, yeah, let's go for a walk. So we would agree to disagree and it would be professional and we would move on. And so I think if we adopt more of those characteristics, that would be really helpful and it would make it much more enjoyable, I think, for all of us to be on this Council, because personally I dread these meetings. They're really difficult and it's torture. And it has never been like this until recently. And I would like to get that warm feeling that I had with Elizabeth Brekus and others with whom I disagreed back. So we can work toward that.

I welcome a walk with you anytime.

i have a naughty dog okay anything else i think with ben were you going to say something oh you're done okay so with that at 9 40 we are adjourned thank you

Hey, I'm lucky to get that.