City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, welcome everyone. Is that okay? Okay, great. I am calling the regular meeting of the Ross Town Council Wednesday, April 29th, 2026 to order. Hosting of the agenda and any changes to the agenda, Town Manager Johnson.

Yes, good evening mayor and Council members, there is one change i'm requesting to pull agenda item 10 C, to remove it from the agenda this evening and we'll be bringing it back to you at your meeting on June 11 this is the contract with Marin it for information technology services.

Thank you. Item number three, disclosure of ex parte communications on items where the town council acts in an adjudicatory or quasi-judicial capacity. Any disclosures? Number four, open time for public expression. This is limited to three minutes per speaker for items that are not on our agenda tonight. Is there anyone in the chamber with public comments? Yes. Step forward and use the microphone and introduce yourself, please.

Hi, I'm Diane Rudden. I just wanted to say, more. Okay. Sorry. Um, that today I went down and went in balloon delights and was once again, delighted. Um, I didn't realize they started here in 1981 and then moved to their other location for 40 years. So I had heard some negative things about them, but I think it's wonderful to have a little something in downtown Ross.

So thank you.

Good evening. My name is Randy Devoto. I'm a longtime Kent Field resident and member of St. Anselm's Parish at 97 Shady Lane in Ross. And I was asked to come down tonight to simply inform the council that our restoration of our bell tower project construction has started. Cahill is our contractor. It will run through the middle of November. It involves replacement of the foundation, the siding, the weatherproofing, the flashing, and the roofing, as well as repairing leaking windows. And we've made provisions for alternate parking, noise compliance, and participation with all of the requirements for construction.

Thank you for sharing that.

You're welcome.

Anybody else in the chamber. Anyone online for public comment.

No hands on line there.

Number 5 presentation of proclamation for retiring police chief Raffaello Potter where are you chief Potter there you are. I want you up here. Yes. Sid, if you want to come up too, you may. Okay. So I am going to read a proclamation honoring Chief Raffaello Pata upon his retirement from the town of Ross, California. Whereas Chief Raffaello Pata has dedicated more than 42 years to public safety, beginning his career as a fire dispatcher and EMT in Marin County before attending the Police Academy and joining the Sam Raffel Police Department. And whereas Chief Pata distinguished himself over a remarkable career at the Sam Raffel Police Department, rising from patrol officer to lieutenant and serving in roles including major crimes task force detective, forensic artist, hostage negotiation team commander, and graduate of the FBI National Academy. And whereas Chief Pata contributed to landmark cases in Marin County, including the first Marin County DNA prosecution, and assisted on the investigation of Xiana Fairchild and Polly Klass as a forensic artist. And whereas following his retirement from the San Rafael Police Department in 2018, Chief Pata continued serving the public, as an investigator for the Marin County District Attorney's Office before being appointed Chief of the Town of Ross Police Department in 2021. Whereas as Chief of Police, Chief Pata provided strong leadership to his team, overseeing training and equipment upgrades and hiring four officers to ensure the long-term strength of the department. And whereas Chief Pata built meaningful connections with Ross residents and the Ross School, and was a familiar and beloved presence at community events including the Fourth of July celebration, Halloween, Spring Fling, and Live on the Common. And whereas it is most fitting that the Town of Ross recognize Chief Pata's extraordinary contributions and wish him well in retirement. Now, therefore, on behalf of the Town of Ross and the Ross Town Council, I do hereby honor Chief Raffaello Pata for his lifetime of dedicated public service, his steadfast leadership of the Ross Police Department, and his genuine commitment to making Ross a safe and welcoming community for all who live here and visit. Thank you. Thank you.

if you'd like to say a few words i know we're having a party tomorrow from 9 to 10 30 at marin art and garden but if you'd like to say a few just just a couple things first of all none of it possible without my wife sid none of it possible without the team here at the ross police department the officers in the back of the room here and of course absolutely none of it possible without the town manager's support and your support I didn't do any of this stuff by myself. You guys made it possible for me. So thank you so much. And then we'll talk some more tomorrow.

Next is number six, the swearing in and badge pinning of our new town of Ross police chief Raul Aguilar. Chief Aguilar, where are you? There you are. Come up, please.

Oh, but we get our phone.

I, Raul Aguilar, do solemnly affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the state of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith in allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California, that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.

Thank you very much.

Welcome, Chief. We're so happy to have you. If you want to say a few words, you can.

Thank you very much. I will keep it brief. First of all, I want to thank the town manager for giving me the trust to take on this endeavor. And I also want to thank the members of the council who have allowed me to take this endeavor and follow in the footsteps of Chief Pata, who I'll be honest, I think I'm definitely um you know it's a big task but i think i'm ready to do it and also i want to thank especially chief pata for um you know training me and getting me along the way and there's also some other mentors in the room that i definitely want to mention harry barbier who was one of my original training officers back in 1999 and chief spieler who was one of my mentors on my final years in San Rafael. So thank you very much for being here. There's so many of you here that I can't really thank everybody. But if I may, just a couple more minutes, I'm happy to introduce excuse me. I just want to recognize a couple of people that are here in the room with me. My son, Captain Aguilar from the US Army. He had two deployments to the Middle East a few years back, and also my mom and my dad, Jovita and Raul, And I also like to, you know, finally, last but not least, my partner, the person that I dream about all the time. And I, you know, I'm getting a little choked up, but Olivia, who is my best friend.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Item number seven is the mayor's report. May is wildfire preparedness month. Fire experts are concerned about March's record-breaking heat that dried out fuel months ahead of schedule in Marin and across the western U.S. On March 20th, San Rafael's temperature reached 92 degrees Fahrenheit, shattering the previous 82 degree record in 1960. Thankfully, we have received more rain in April, but our extremely early and severe heat wave means we need to continue to be prepared for wildfires. Here are four easy steps. Number one, Alert Marin. Is your household signed up? Alert Marin notifies residents during emergencies like wildfires, flooding, or evacuations with timely, clear, and accurate information on what to do and where to go. But more than 40% of Ross households are not signed up for Alert Marin. It only takes a couple of minutes, and in my mayor's report, I have the website to sign up. Number two, the Chipper Day program for Marin wildfire is now open through November with free curbside pickup and disposal of your yard's excess vegetation. Take advantage of this popular service by registering online. Number three, Marin community's wildfire protection plan Community Wildfire Protection Plan, CWPP, will be presented to the public at a free wildfire preparedness forum this coming Saturday, May 2nd, 9.30 a.m. to noon at the Embassy Suites in Sam Raffel. Please join Marin Wildfire, wildfire safety leaders, local fire agencies, and community partners to learn how Marin is safer. And there's an online address that you can go and learn more about. Defensible space home inspections free from Marin wildfire are done every other year in Ross. This year, the inspections will be done in the Winship Park neighborhood. Dates will be coming soon. Please walk with your inspector to learn more and then open your report and follow the recommended steps to prepare your home and garden. If your home was inspected last year, please continue to address the issues that are identified in your report. Marin Master Gardener resources shared with age-friendly Ross. I became a Marin Master Gardener in 2016 after 50 hours of training over a five-month period and passing a final exam. This year, Marin Master Gardener celebrates its 40th anniversary, growing from eight Marin Master Gardeners in 1986 to more than 350 today. Each year, Marin Master Gardeners provides more than $1.6 million in economic value to Marin County through our voluntary services. Earlier this month, I got to speak at the Age Friendly Ross meeting, sharing many of the free resources Marin Master Gardeners offers to Marin Home Gardeners. Please take advantage of these by accessing them on the Age Friendly Ross website. We've already heard about the St. Anselm rebuild of its bell tower. So finally, the Citizens Advisory Committee presents recommendations on town facilities. Tonight, the council will receive the committee's recommendations on our nearly 100-year-old town facilities. We thank the eight dedicated and talented members for working nearly nonstop since mid-February to help address these complex issues. Jeff Kuhn, Dan Winey, Bob Herbst, Ed Dong, Bill Poland, Jeff Koblik, Tom Gaffney, and Joey Buckingham. And they're all here tonight. And thank you so much for all your work. I am hopeful that the committee's close collaboration and stunning vision will allow the town to turn the corner on these issues and bring residents together in support of our community, town staff, Ross police, and the Ross Valley paramedics. Thank you.

next is council committee and liaison reports any reports so the um the ross valley paramedic board met and um as you know the board has been looking into um making writing up guidelines with the help of their lawyer um ben's wife uh to um establish procedures for how the JPA works. The current guidelines date from 40 years ago and consist of only two pages and are very sketchy. The proposed guidelines will be brought to each council for consideration and approval. One, since there are a number of different elements, I suppose the most important are the process of amending the agreement and the process of terminating the agreement, because this is a contract between eight entities, agencies, Those have to be unanimous decisions, but the board itself can decide whether a vote to discuss an amendment with the agencies can be a three-quarters vote or a two-thirds vote of the board or a unanimous vote. And when it comes to our council to discuss, that's one of the things that I'll suggest we take a look at. For example, if a majority of the board wants to consider an amendment, is that enough for it to go out to the agencies so that each agency discusses it? So that will be probably our next meeting because they're hoping to have this done fairly soon. One thing that was not discussed was the lease. And just an hour ago, there was information in our packet online that said that the Ross Valley Paramedic Authority president is either opposed or concerned about the the plan that we are about to hear from the Citizens Advisory Committee and in his email to Julie he cited a number of reasons why he thinks that plan does not fit with the lease that was agreed to again this was not has not been discussed at the paramedic authority and this letter is from a single board member who may or may not have discussed it with his agency, Sleepy Hollow, but it hasn't been discussed with the board or with the board's agency. So I just wanted to mention that though there's that letter in that was just added to the packet, that was not a topic at the most recent paramedic authority meeting.

Anybody else? Matt.

So I serve as an alternate for Marin Clean Energy MCE. And I don't know if Bill has any comments, but I wanted to share that there's been serious problems at MCE that have been covered in the Marin IJ, thankfully. And the latest is a misappropriation of $60,000 of mce's funds into the ceo's personal salary from 2024 that was discovered so i just wanted to make sure that the council is aware of that the problems continue at mce they they have not been abated and um i think we should all be you know we're part of this jpa and all of our townspeople are opted in automatically so we should just keep apprised of the issues there and hopefully obviously Bill's representing us but the reforms hopefully will be coming and if he has anything to add as well I this is an issue that um is one that um

I'm sorry, I can't really go into it because I can't divulge certain information that at this point is confidential, but will probably become public. But I think we can verify that this amount of money went into It was for a pension contribution, wasn't it? No, I'm sorry. It wasn't the pension contribution. It was something else. And something was not correctly calculated. Exactly who was responsible for that, I think remains to be determined.

I just wanted to share that on Sunday at the Marin Civic Center, I attended the Youth Town Hall and participated as a panel with the 10 other mayors from Marin County. And it was very enlightening, partly because the students asked us lots of detailed, thoughtful, forward-looking questions. And it was also really, illuminating to hear from each of the other mayors, their background and their passion and why they are serving their towns. So I'm gonna pass around a little thank you note that they gave me. I also got a brownie, but I ate it. All right, staff and community reports. Anyone here from RPOA? Mr. Koblik?

Yes, I'm Jeff Koblik. I'm the president of the Ross Property Owners Association. And first of all, I would like to thank the town council and our town manager, Krista, and all of you who are members who have contributed to the RPOA. Without your funding and support, we wouldn't be able to do the activities that we do. A quick recap, we had a terrific spring fling at the Ross School just a few weeks ago. About 300 people attended. We had an Easter egg hunt, and they had lots of jumpy toys, and the kids all had a lot of fun. So we were happy to help sponsor that through the Ross Auxiliary. Some of you may have attended the Live on the Commons, which was – Very well attended, almost 2000 people. And we wanna thank the town for your support on that project. It was a little bit more than we expected. We're gonna try and tone it down in the future in terms of our promotion. So we don't have quite as many people. So it's not a issue for the town. Our biggest project right now is we're replacing the 50 year old fluorescent lights in the post office. with some beautiful hanging antique pendant lights to try and match some of the other historic town properties. And I think you'll see a huge improvement in that. We have the pendant lights in, they cost $1,200 each. They're really beautiful. And we've got the electricians lined up with Richard's help and Anthony's help. And we were just waiting for some other parts and you should see some activity there in the next, certainly next few weeks. next month so that's about the update for now thank you jeff to manager johnson yes

thank you mayor we are starting to see the impact of the of the war with higher oil prices are negatively impacting bids on recent paving projects we're also spending more on gas for police patrol cars and the ross valley fire department is spending more to fuel its engines um but in more positive news um staff learned that after a few days related to birds that the new pedestrian bridges in natalie coffin green park should be installed by summertime so that'll be i'm sure well received by folks that use them and a lot of our our um recreation programs that utilize that area. The Sir Francis Drake paving project between Bolinas Avenue and El Camino Bueno is scheduled to start after Ross School gets out for the summer. And it will require one lane traffic control for approximately two weeks. So please mark your calendars and plan accordingly. maybe to be out of town. I'm happy to report that our new building inspector to Matt Taia starts on May 18th. It's taken a full year to recruit for that position. So we're really excited to welcome him onto the team. the marin county flood control district is holding two upcoming community meetings to discuss the future of flood control efforts in ross valley along the court of madera creek the first will be held on thursday may 7th 6 30 pm to 8 30 pm at marin catholic and on wednesday may 20th same time 6 30 pm to 8 30 pm it will be held here at magic And finally, I'd like to say that it has been a pleasure to work with our talented Chief Pata over these past four and a half years. On behalf of the entire town staff team, you will be missed, and we wish you the very best in your well-deserved retirement.

Thank you. Number 10, consent agenda, which is we have removed item C from the consent agenda. So it's A, B, D, E, F, G. Does any member of the public wish to remove an item from the consent agenda? Anybody online?

No one online, Mayor.

Any council member, Matt?

I'd like to remove 10G.

10G, which is the fiscal year 25-26 third quarter nine-month financial summary report. OK. Could I please have a motion to approve consent agenda items A, B, D, E, and F? So moved.

Second.

Council Member Dowling?

Yes.

Council Member Kircher?

Aye.

Council Member Salter?

Aye.

Mayor Pro Tem Robbins? Aye. Mayor McKellen?

Yes, thank you.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. Matt, you polled item 10G.

So I don't know if you want to present anything from the quarter. For me, I just want to point out that we have yet again almost a million dollar positive variance. So I believe last year we ended the year with 1.4 million surplus. Right now, as of nine months into this next fiscal year, it's almost a million dollar surplus. So I read the caveats, I know that those variances are moved from time to time, but I think it's important we let the town know, number one, that you're doing an excellent job managing the budget and that we consistently are in surplus since I've been on this council and I'm sure the longer tenured council members can. BUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT COSTS AND BUDGETS, ET CETERA, IT'S NICE TO SEE THAT THE ACTUAL PERFORMANCE AS WE REVIEW IT IS SHOWING VERY POSITIVE SURPLUSES OF SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNTS.

» CHRIST, DO YOU WANT TO MAKE ANY COMMENTS OR NO?

» THANK YOU FOR YOUR KIND WORDS. » ANY DISCUSSION?

ANY PUBLIC COMMENT ON THIS ITEM?

Just one from the discussion point of view for us. I think we should try to, I know we're trying to meet as a finance committee, but review this and the audit just as a normal part of before it has to get to the council. And I see a lot of times we put these items on consent, but they're very important. I think they're one of the most important things we review is the financials. I think we're so fortunate because we're always in surplus and doing so well, but we should try to, for me, I think it'd be nice not to be on consent and spend a little time talking about the financial picture outside of just the budget workshop.

Thanks. Any online public comment?

No raised hands, Mayor.

Okay, so we'll bring it back and any further discussion? Could we please have a motion to approve item 10G?

So moved.

I'll second.

Council Member Dowling?

Yes.

Council Member Kircher? Aye. Council Member Salter? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Robbins? Aye. Mayor McKellen?

Yes.

Passes 5-0.

Thank you. That's the end of the consent agenda. So now we're moving on to public hearing on planning projects. Part one, a is the town council to consider 12 garden road demolition permit and adoption of resolution number 2621 approving the project subject to conditions. Roberta.

Good evening, mayor and council members. So this item,

Oh, are you gonna, I have to recuse myself from this item, because I'm within the 500 feet of the project.

Thank you, Councilmember Salter. Okay, good evening mayor and council members. This item is a request for approval of an after the fact demolition permit at 12 Garden. On February 10th, 2026, town staff issued a stop work order upon discovery that the existing single family residence had been demolished. This did happen because the contractor found extensive wood rot on the structure. On April 4th, 2024, so about two years ago, the council did approve a project for this residence. It was a remodel and expansion of the existing single family residence, including a second story addition and an attached rent restricted ADU. There are no changes to the previously approved project. And this is before you tonight because the demolition permit wasn't requested or approved in 2024. And based on the zoning code, a demolition permit is required to be approved by the Ross Town Council for the demolition of any dwelling. in the town so tonight the action before the council is to consider approval of the demolition permit subject to findings and conditions as outlined in your resolution staff is available to answer any questions and the applicant is also present as well for any questions thank you question

I move we approve Resolution 2621. Second.

Councilmember Dally?

Yes.

Councilmember Kircher? Aye. Councilmember Robbins?

Yes.

Mayor McKellen? Yes. Motion passes 4-0-1. Mayor, should we wait for Council Member Salter to return?

You're welcome. Thank you.

okay matt we almost started without you but our new town clerk reminded me that we needed to get you so We're going on to item 11B, Town Council to consider 230 Wellington Avenue design review, demolition permit, hillside lot permit, nonconformity permit, variance and adoption of resolution number 2622, approving the project subject to conditions, Roberta.

Good evening, mayor and council members. The item before you this evening is the application for 230 Wellington Avenue, which requests town council approval of several discretionary planning entitlements associated with a residential development project. The applicant proposes to demolish the existing single family residence and construct a new two-story single family home with an ADU. the application includes requests for design review a demolition permit a non-conformity permit a hillside lot permit and a variance each of these approvals requires specific findings which are included in detail in your resolution the proposed residence features materials including a standing seam metal roof light beige hardy lap siding, vertical cedar accents, black aluminum windows and exterior doors, and a bronze metal fascia along the roofline. The project also includes a detached two-car garage and a parking pad at the front of the lot, as well as a trash enclosure located adjacent to the garage. The outside living space consists of a patio, trellis, and then a swimming pool and landscaping. There's also a second story deck off the primary bedroom that wraps around the north and west sides of the room and has glass guardrails. so the project was reviewed by planning staff for zoning consistency and then the advisory design review group reviewed the project three times last year and during their last meeting last month in march for consistency with the town's design review guidelines they considered um Key considerations included neighborhood compatibility, building mass and scale, and then privacy for adjacent properties. And based on this, staff drafted the required findings for all requested entitlements subject to conditional approval. The project qualifies for CEQA exemption as identified in the staff report, the demolition and reconstruction of a single family residence would not result in any significant environmental impacts. And so in conclusion, staff recommends that the council consider the approval of design review the demolition permit non-conformity permit hillside lot permit and variance adopt the resolution making the required findings and approve the project subject to conditions that concludes my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions and the applicant is also here for any questions the council might have questions yes Elizabeth

um there was a similar um elevated or you know parking pad built on a hillside on upper toyon did that one uh also uh request a variance for additional far um that one i don't think requested far variance they ex they requested a variance for the location because the parking pad was within the setbacks

In this case, the variance is for the two-car garage and then the setbacks.

And the parking that's elevated, that's the pad or that's the garage?

so the way the topography of the lot sits it would actually meet the front of the road on wellington but the lot slopes down so you will see um see it elevated i suppose from the home not necessarily from the street and is the garage being rebuilt in the same location or is that being is that what's being built on the stilts It will be elevated. It's roughly in the same location, but what's there now is a carport, and this would be a two-car closed garage.

Okay.

No, no, no, not yet. Is there precedent to allow 520 extra square feet per the Hillside Lot Ordinance on a project like this? Could you help us defend that?

I'm trying to think of when FAR has been granted. I know there was one, I believe on Allen and they had an entry that required going upstairs. And so they were allowed FAR so that their entryway could be made safer, I suppose. In this case, they're looking for that variance because the parking on Wellington is so constrained. Also the way the topography of the lot is sitting, they're really wanting to absorb the parking that they would need and not have it on the street.

so the the garage in essence which is the extra square feet is helping to move cars off the private road and making the access safer for emergency vehicles that's correct and the adr did discuss this and reviewed it and came to the conclusion that they would support the garage for those reasons okay thank you um any public comment on this item oh sorry bill

Just so I understand, there is a carport there now, correct? And the garage will replace, essentially replace the carport. Is the garage larger than the carport was?

Yes. By how much? The carport is a one-car garage, so it might be maybe about 200 square feet, and the garage would be for two cars and some storage, so it's 520 square feet.

public comment on this item anybody online no one online there thank you does the applicant wish to make a statement or the applicant's architect thank you all right we'll bring it back for a discussion any discussion or emotion matt i i just wanted to say we we looked at the hillside lot organ ordinance is very tricky for us but i think the other ones we looked at whenever we were trying to take parking

off the street and leave the access for cars, we seem to all agree that's a really worthy goal. And I support that for this reason. And as we keep seeing like even emails that we're getting about when there's rain and the stuff that falls on the roads, like trying to keep the roads clear should be a goal. and if this continues to come up i hope i know you've been keeping a list of like reforms but it might be one we think about in terms of like trying to add something to the hillside lot that if it's a parking situation that we sort of want to try to keep the roads as clear as possible and there's some exception for that as opposed to it always having to be a variance if that's if we all agree on that i just wanted to throw that out there

Any other discussion, Bill?

Just following up on what Matt said, I have the same inclination. If it's a parking issue and keeping cars off the street, which is a safety measure, really, and particularly for a very difficult street like Wellington, I mean, that is challenging just to drive up. let alone, well, walk up or find a place to park. So I think this is okay. Most of the increase is a garage that's in place of a structure that's there but doesn't count, as I understand it, towards the square footage, a carport. And I think there are a few other things, a deck and so forth, but it's not as if the resident is building some huge mansion that we're concerned about in the hills. That is not happening here. So I would support this project.

Mayor, I'm so sorry. We have a couple of hands up, but I could wait until after your comments.

Yes. I think we already closed the public comment period. I think I did, but I'll be nice. Go ahead.

Charlie, you could go ahead. Charlie, you're on mute.

Leo, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

So my only comment would be that I would want to make sure that it is used as a garage and that it's not at some point converted to an exercise room or anything. So if you could put that stipulation in.

Charlie, can we get your first and last name, please?

Charles Goodman.

Thank you, Charlie. Anybody else online?

That's Carla Buchanan.

Hi there. Can you hear me? Yeah. Hi, Carla. Hi. So I'm a neighbor at 210 Wellington, and I just wanted to add that The other two neighbors, three actually, are all very much in favor of the garage that's planned and the demolition of the garage that's there that is quite rickety and pretty much an eyesore that blocks the view. And as you're all pointing out, the parking situation, and especially for emergency vehicles, is really, really difficult on this cul-de-sac. So the garage that the Barry's are proposing would be a huge improvement and, frankly, a relief as well.

Thank you, Carla. All right. I assume the applicant still has nothing that they want to add. OK, thank you. Any further discussion?

Is it possible to add a restriction or provision that the garage be used for storing car vehicles?

Um, there would be no way to check up on that or enforce that if someone say wanted to use storage or maybe they just use it for one car. Um, what I will say is included in what they're proposing is a two car garage and a parking pad. So there is always going to be a space for a driveway for them to park there. And, um, hopefully they'll use the two car garage. I think they will. there's no reason why they wouldn't, but we wouldn't be able to, you know, limit that use for parking only. We can't make them park there.

We could have it as a provision, even though we can't realistically enforce it. Is that correct?

Ben, what would the provision say?

Oh,

I think right now we have a condition of approval that incorporates their design, which says it's a garage. So the condition of approval already requires it to be a garage. So if they violate that condition, you can already bring an enforcement action if they're not using it for a garage purpose. The reason why you can't have a direct condition of approval saying, you know, you have to park there all the time, there might be instances where you, you know, different, if in the future they want to build an ADU or something similar to that, there's certain state laws that would not, you would be unable to enforce that condition of approval.

I'd like to make a motion that we adopt resolution number 2622, approving the project.

Second.

Councilmember Dowling?

Yes.

Councilmember Kircher? Aye. Councilmember Salter? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Robbins?

Aye.

Mayor McKillen? Yes. Motion passes 5-0.

Thank you. We're moving to the administrative agenda now. Item number 12. town council to receive a presentation from the citizens advisory committee regarding revising the facility master plan and provide direction to staff regarding information council needs to proceed with considering any amendments to the facility master plan. Krista, are you kicking this off?

This is not coming from staff. This is from our Citizens Advisory Group.

Okay. We're going to take a five-minute break then, and we'll resume at five minutes to seven. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. It's amazing how long it's been. Yes. Yes.

okay we are ready to resume with item number 12 on our administrative agenda jeff and dan

So I will read it out loud, and then you can ask questions. I think all of you have hard copies up there.

Good.

So since we got approval to form this committee in early February, I think it was, so call it two plus months ago, we've met at least a dozen times. and have worked on all kinds of stuff here, everything from finance to architecture to, I mean, you name it. And this group has been great. There are eight names here you should know. And they meet all kinds of, I don't know, backgrounds and skills. So there are eight of us in this committee who have a combined 300 years of professional experience in finance and real estate design, construction, and development. Our project design is prepared for us by Dan Winey of world-renowned architecture firm Gensler Associates. This is Mr. Winey. The committee has been meeting twice weekly for over two months to develop and refine a plan And this has included a deep dive into the town's existing town center master plan in order to ensure our plan meets all the programmatic needs identified by the town. Additional areas of research and analysis have included bond issuance, ESA compliance, historic preservation, emergency services, and procedures. Should the town vote to accept our plan, the ad hoc committee is prepared to assist town council and staff in a full implementation of the plan all the way from public advocacy of a bond finance measure to final completion of project construction. The committee was purposely comprised of community members, both for and against the closure of the Ross firehouse. We have unanimously coalesced around the Gensler plan, which preserves our historic town architecture in a cost-effective and environmentally sensitive manner while providing sufficient space to house all town administrative and public safety needs, including police, paramedic, and fire. excuse me, the ad hoc committee strongly recommends that the town council adopt our plan as a new town center facilities master plan and hires an architectural slash engineering firm ASAP to start implementing this plan with a goal of placing the project finance bond measure on a November 26 ballot. We don't have much time. So I'm going to turn it over now to Mr.

So Joey and I are going to present some ideas to you today, but just maybe a couple of opening comments. When I was first asked to be on this committee, I was a little bit reticent. There were passions were flying in the last meeting, and I thought, boy, what am I going to get into here? All I can tell you is that this team has really been extraordinary. I've worked with a lot of people in my life, a lot of really smart, talented people, and this team is one of the best that I've been part of. I'm proud to be a Ross resident, and it is not a Gensler plan. I know it says Gensler on there. It's our plan. This is something that we worked on together. So with that said, I think the last comment is that You know, the buildings that we have here have been with us for over 100 years, close to 100 years, and they've served us well. And I think that what we've got to keep in mind moving forward, regardless of what we do, is that, you know, these buildings, whatever we do, it has to stand the test of time. It's got to be something that, yes, it meets all the needs that we have right now, all the requirements, but it also has the ability to change.

and and that's a big task and that's a big order but you know i believe firmly that's where you know we need to take it thank you first of all for your time tonight and for all of the time that you've poured into this subject and this issue We're all here for the same reason. We all love this town. And as Dan said, we worked very well together to come up with this design that meets a lot of needs and it preserves optionality for us going forward. Our goal was to design and construct a facility that is agile, adaptable, and will serve changing needs over time. I think it's really important to consider this a legacy that we leave behind for the next generation. We've certainly used these facilities quite well over many decades and it's time to renew and create something for the next generation. And now I will hand it over to Dan because obviously he did all the design.

Oh, no, that's not true.

He's the brains behind this.

All a good architect does is take great ideas and put them together and conceptualize them, and that's really what this is all about. So everybody on this committee had really unique perspectives. We were all passionate about what it was that we were trying to advocate, but we really built consensus around those ideas and ultimately really developed a shared vision for this project, and that's what you're going to see today. The vision really needs to express the current, you know, the expression of the current civic buildings, the history of the town, town hall, the police station, the fire station, and the post office. They're really a composition of buildings. And they can't, even though they are not necessarily seen as one, they all relate to one another in a very significant way. So this is really going to be about building something that does become a landmark that is historic in nature, but ultimately serves the needs and residents of the town and the staff. And that I think is one of the most important things that we want a place that people want to come to work, want to be with us. And the kind of facilities that we provide for them is critically important. And then the last thing is it's gotta be a timelessness that is associated with what we're doing.

So the guiding principles that led us through this journey, what came out of our discussions were principles that we all agreed upon and would be used as a roadmap for any of the ideas we developed as a group. Our desire was to design a facility that would serve the different constituencies in our town and become the primary community building around which the town is organized. We wanted a building that expressed our history, was environmentally sustainable, met the current operational requirements of the town and was adaptable to future needs. We wanted a building that remained operational if there was a major emergency event, such as fire, earthquake, flood, wind, et cetera. Most importantly, we were seeking a building that would utilize the town's resources in a trustworthy manner.

So I'm going to let you drive, Joey, okay? So I want to emphasize before we look at this that this is a conceptual idea. This has not been developed in detail. We believe that based on the analysis that we've all done that it will work. But it's not meant to be something that is to be approved right now. It's not meant to be a pretty picture. It's meant to be something that I think we can all rally around. But there's a lot of work that needs to be done. So I think that keep that in mind. We didn't do detailed planning. We didn't sit down with the department heads. We didn't sit down with staff and go through. And that needs to be done. That's a really important part of the process moving forward. But with that said, we did look at a number of variables in terms of trying to figure out exactly what we needed to do. One was the nature of these structures. This structure and the other building is a registered historic building. That's critically important. The sensitivity of the site, the proximity to Corte Madera Creek, the amount of activity that these buildings get is going to be critically important. The programmatic and operational requirements of the staff is number one consideration. And I think sometimes it may be a little bit lost in conversation, but the housing next door is an important part of this, right? So let's say that the housing becomes a two-story buildings and our building is a one-story building, then you have a situation in terms of the composition of the structures along Sir Francis Drake, where the housing could actually become a more prominent structure over the town. So I think it's really important to think about over the long run, how do we pull all of this together? And it's also important to understand that the variables sometimes are at odds with one another. You think you check the box over here and you think this is gonna work and then you realize something over here doesn't work. So there inevitably are gonna be compromises involved. And what we're showing you does involve compromises. And I think any good design does because to be able to solve every single problem is in many cases virtually impossible. So what we came up with was what we're calling an adaptive reuse strategy. And the building, we actually came up with a name, and we're not sure you guys like it, but you can come up with something else. It's a Ross Community and Town Center, which will become, this has always been our primary civic building. This building will become our primary civic building. The design would respect and enhance the original Spanish colonial revival style, which was a very symmetrical design that was done by John White in 1927. It will retain as much of the building as we can. It's going to retain the original fire truck bays, the small ones in the front that housed the fire trucks many years ago, which will become a new entry. And the existing fire and EMS bays in the back of the building will also be retained. And then we looked at how would you expand the building? So we're looking at if you actually look at the building has gone through a number of expansions over the years, most of them in the back of the building. When you look at go around the building and you can actually see how those additions occurred. And then we also looked at probably the most significant change would be adding a second floor to the building. So the new building is going to preserve the integrity and the original composition of the existing town hall and the post office, meaning that architecturally is going to be in a similar style. The town hall building is going to be renovated and would continue to play an important role as a community meeting place. A single two-story building has significant advantages. One is it greatly reduces site coverage, so we have a lot less construction. It minimizes disruption to environmentally sensitive areas, because we have less work on the site. It provides more open space in public access. It allows for changes over time versus a single. When you do single use, single story building that are specific to a function, you automatically in many ways constrain what those buildings can do over the long run. And that's an important consideration. And I think the last thing is that we all know, based on all the residential work that we do in town, that going up is a lot less expensive than going out. Adding additional space above a garage or a second floor to a home is a lot less expensive than doing multiple buildings because you're using essentially the same structural systems, some of the same mechanical electrical systems, so it's much more efficient overall. So the intent is that the building becomes more open to the community and a meeting place. The main facade and the original truck bays, this is the very original truck bays, will be retained and renovated to become a main entry. The floor level of the old bays, as you know, it's a lower floor level because it's that grade, would have to be raised to the same level as the existing police station. handicap access would be accommodated within landscape design with sloped walks, ramps as required. The landscaping would be sensitive, low maintenance, natural landscaping in keeping with the original architectural intent. it's interesting if you look at john white's um original concept probably i don't think a lot of us necessarily paid attention to it but he actually does both in the vertical plane and the horizontal plane he has a beauty to his buildings and that from a horizontal standpoint they you they step back but they also step back but they also have different roof planes as well so this play between massing and height is a very important part of what john has done so what we're trying to do is to actually tie into that original design and that original intent the entire project Oh, we're out of sync here. We got another one?

Let's see.

Okay, that's okay. I think the one thing, we can go back, Joey, that's fine. The interesting thing about doing the project in this manner is that we can do it all at once. Instead of phasing it and the cost associated with phasing it, and all the disruption of all the town um you know all the facilities and functions and everything else we could potentially move everybody off site and do this all at one time So it's envisioned that the existing building would be enhanced to reflect details similar to town hall. Potentially you see here adding arch windows with the same details. The town center would become a much more prominent structure. I think it's important to know that this is just, these are conceptual ideas. and it's not meant to be a final design you know when we're looking at window openings or locations and such when we actually get into the interior planning the interior planning is going to have an impact ultimately on the exterior of the building oh now you got it we did it again that's okay no you're good that's okay go to the next one okay so uh you may or may not be aware of this but white's original design had two courtyards There was one for the police station. There was one on the right and one on the left. And the offices actually surrounded the courtyards. And I'm sure what happened was, you know, this was done in 1927 and the town's needs changed. And over time, the staff got bigger and the town got larger. And so those courtyards were filled in. So our intent is actually to take those courtyards, their exact same location where White originally had them, move them to the second floor, so that we have outdoor garden space and courtyard so that you can see on the right hand side we have the office space the offices would actually open out onto the garden courtyard as well as a creek on the other side so you would have incredible natural light for all of the uh all of the staff and anybody who's actually working in the building The EMS and fire bays in the back of the building would be retained and renovated to accommodate a fire truck. We still have one more bay left over. So maybe we could use it for emergency vehicles. We might be able to use it for shop. We might be able to use it for additional parking.

There's no doubt that we'll be able to use that space overall.

So there is an option that we've been looking at, and I think it's actually included in the estimate right now. We could actually raise the grade in those buildings. We could actually raise it up about a foot. It wouldn't bring it above the floodplain, but it would help mitigate to some extent the flood issue. what we would be and again still the building is still in the floodplain there's no question about that but we believe that there are other flood mitigation efforts that we could take that would actually solve that problem similar to what other fire departments have done uh in marin so i also think the other thing and this is sort of a side comment i i've been here for almost i've been here 40 years so i've seen 40 plus here i've seen a lot of floods and what's been interesting to me is that with all the work that we did downstream and the bridge work that we did, actually the flooding situation, even though from a weather standpoint may be more severe, seems to be a lot better than it ever was. So I think a lot of the mitigation work has really helped in a big way. What's interesting about the building is that the original truck bays are two story. And so we need a two story space to get to the second floor. So we can use the original truck bay areas as a lobby, as potentially a meeting space, but also as a way to put the elevators and the stair to the second floor. One option that I think we should look at would be to potentially frame the building as a mass timber structure, which means that the second floor office space could be very cool. We could actually do exposed beams. We could do slanted ceiling, the amount of daylight. It would be a wonderful place to work. And from a sustainability standpoint, would be a terrific way to go. uh we also this is again sort of a a general thought we should seriously look at lead certification lead platinum possibly uh joey sent me a you guys should look at it atherton did their town hall uh town center it's quite a bit bigger than ours but it's similar actually in spanish style they did a net zero building You know, so we maybe we set the bar high for ourselves and we do a net zero building. But nonetheless, I think from a sustainability standpoint, you know, looking at these kinds of ideas would be terrific. So this is, we did not have a detailed site plan. That's one of the things we're gonna ask you for. So a lot of what we did was based on drawings that we had, information that we had, the original building plans, but we've retained both of the main entry and exit points on the site. uh given the reduced site coverage we have the ability to actually so one of the questions i think is going to come up and joey's going to talk a little bit about it is going to be the program right does this meet the program or not and we have to keep in mind that this is not a final again a final idea it's an idea it's not a final plan we do have the ability to add more space to the building We can go the back bays that you can see the roof line could be extended. We could actually make this building extended on the side if we needed to. I don't think we will. I think we have more than enough space. But we also have enough room on the site now that if we wanted to add an ancillary building, small building, we could. And one of the things that we discussed, because we don't have a real deep understanding of the programmatic requirements, But one area public works is asked for a shop, for instance. Well, you know, shop probably shouldn't be in the main building. So why not do a small ancillary building that has a shop and some of the other support facilities. And that's actually what we've shown on the right hand side is the ability, not necessarily in that location, but we can add additional structures if we need to, to the to the site overall.

So we are emphasizing again that this is a conceptual plan. We did not have a lot of existing information to go on. to help us with detailed planning. We didn't have a survey of the site and we didn't have drawings of the existing buildings. We basically took the square footage requirements from concept B and added what would be needed for a fire capacity and put those together and came up with the allotments for our block plan. So just again, emphasizing that this is conceptual, but that we have determined that all of this square footage can fit into the plan.

okay so you you've seen in the pot and the package what we showed is our initial um oh sorry there you go okay this yeah here i can actually i probably should use this laser pointers when i've been sitting here on it um this actually shows you where we have added space so there's some infill areas in the front but you can see the back of the building how jagged it is so this has gone through a number of additions so by actually expanding the building in the back And these two areas, we pick up area on the first floor. And then this entire area right here is second floor space. And as I mentioned, we have the ability to push this roof line back if we need to. And we could even potentially push these little wings out if we need to, but I don't think we will. I think the bottom line is that from programmatic standpoint, what we have blocked out right now, it's about 2000 square feet more than what we need. So the question is, well, can this accommodate a fire operation? And the answer is, Yes, we believe that it can. Part of what we have to really refine is when you look at the program, there are spaces that have been defined in various departments that are somewhat redundant. So whether we're talking about toilet facilities or lockers, or we're talking about potentially a kitchen area or a fitness facility and such. Yeah, there you go.

No, no, no, keep going.

Okay. that these areas um so a lot of these things potentially could be combined so rather than doing you know toilet areas here and here why not do one space right why not do one space for fitness and one space for a kitchen and one space for a living room that can be shared across the staff and potentially the police and the and the fire departments so

We were kind of sharing this part of the presentation. If we decide that a fire station can happen, we definitely have room for it. If we decide later on that that's not going to work, we have space available for other community needs or desires. It has been discussed in our group that it could be a wonderful gathering space with or without a fire station. It could be a senior center. I think what's really important for us going forward is to use our imagination and think of all that this could just to envision everything that this could bring to town people. They would have a place to gather. You know, Dan mentioned the Atherton Town Center. I got an email from my son saying that he lives right near that and they redeveloped it beautifully. He said, you should tell them about that tonight, that I go study there. There's a cafe and it's a place where people gather. And you think if we had the affordable housing right there, maybe that's a place where those folks would come and hang out and It would bring more of the town together than just the high and by at the post office. So I think we should sort of look at this as this grand gesture in our town of making a community space that has a lot of options.

think that's enough of that yep okay so you you guys um have actually this is in your package and there are a lot of of different advantages that we have to this plan whether we're talking about satisfying the master plan requirements or talking about the historic aspect of it or the environmental aspect of it there's some real significant advantages of doing one building an important building, a building that basically becomes our town center. Again, it's been 100 years. The buildings have served us well, but I think ultimately we all have a responsibility of doing something for the town. This is going to be part of what we leave, right? There's been a lot of generations that have been here, and when we're gone, there are going to be other families here. And I think it's really important that we ultimately leave something that we're proud of.

And on that same point, one of my friends brought up the word stewardship as a real key word to think about with this move that we might make. And to imagine that many of us have been fortunate to raise our children here and have these amenities that we all took for granted. The beautiful school, the post office, the Roscommon, the town hall, the fire station, it might be time to pay that forward and to create something beautiful for the next generation.

Okay. So now we have, I think you guys have actually seen the video, but I think we're going to, Jeff, do you want to play that? Yeah.

Why don't we go ahead and play it?

Maybe while Jeff's getting that ready, I maybe have another personal comment.

You guys, we looked at this building 25 years ago.

And when we did that study, the criteria was different, the program was different. One of the things that we looked at was to get the entire building out of the floodplain, which meant either demolishing or lifting the entire building up. And when we did the analysis of that building, we recognized then, way back then, that it needed to be gutted, right? It needed new electrical, it needed new mechanical, it didn't need new seismic. that there was a complete redo of that building that was required. My position then was that we should do a rehab and a renovation of that building. That was our recommendation at the time. This was 2000. And I still feel strongly in that, that that is the right way to go. It's essentially what we're gonna end up here with is a new building. we're gonna have a new building. We're gonna have a facade that respects what John White did. We're gonna have a building that ultimately is one that I believe could become a center for the entire town, but it will in every way be a new building. And I think we have to keep that in mind that it's not just a renovation of an existing structure and that a lot of things are gonna remain as it, that's not the case. This is gonna require a lot of work And ultimately, we're going to end up with a building that, in fact, will last another 100 years. I'm going to need that. You need this? I will. Oh, there you go. Okay.

This is a...

This is a YouTube video that the Gensler team put together. We've seen almost 100 views of this thing since we published it two days ago, I think it was.

Hello. Hello.

I like it.

Okay. Mute this. One sec. So our agenda tonight is introduce you to the conceptual plan. Want to do a preliminary cost analysis, pardon me, and review a timeline and schedule. We'll get to that shortly. Review permanent financing for this. We've done a lot of homework on that. Next steps, an RFP for an architectural engineering and consulting services, all of which are necessary. Funding for a site survey as built in selective investigations. Appoint a public-private working group. And if you all agree that this is something you want to do, the Friends of the Ross Firehouse will immediately withdraw their ballot and issue for this June. Now I'm going to introduce Mr. Ed Dong. Take it away.

Thank you, Jeff. My name is Ed Dong. I'd like to talk to you about costs. What we have here is a summary of our work in comparison with the KPA concept B budget. The slide is first project cost estimate. We call it first project or first cost estimate because it is a concept budget. And as we move through, we'll have progressive budgets to keep real time updates on where we are in design and cost. So right now, this is the concept first project cost. First line is the KPA budget presented in 2023. We've added an adjustment factor and we see their 2026 cost at $24.7 million. At that time, they were proposing to build 11,700 square feet with a budget of 2,115 per square foot with no fire station programmed in that plan. The proposed civic and community concept, we believe we can deliver at $22.7 million, $2 million less than the KPA's concept B budget. Interestingly, we believe we can deliver almost 2000 feet extra of program space for our budget of $1,680 per square foot, including a firehouse. Now, the drilled down budget is very detailed and very, very tiny. You have it in your package. We didn't see fit to have it on the screen because no one would be able to read it. But let me emphasize and point out how and why we think that this is the favored direction to move with. The $2 million savings we believe we can generate is, first of all, this is an adaptive reuse property we see this using the the beauty of the design using the existing building using the same footprint and building as dan indicated building up so you know we save costs on on a new building uh we're saving the roof we're saving the facade so we believe this is a very economic uh way to go in doing so we are maintaining the site so the kpa planned envisioned demolishing raising the entire building and all the site on around environs and including trees we will have everything maintained so there should be minimal site uh renovation improvements to to to deliver this also we are keeping the uh, apparatus bays at the back so that if the event, the town moves for a fire station, we do not have to rebuild those apparatus bays. Those are funk. They were functional previously. They'll be functional in the future. in pricing i'm sorry in pricing this we went to two uh local general contractors uh both very very well established uh regional builders both building upwards of a million to do to one to two billion dollars volume a year their sweet spots in building are anywhere from 10 million to 75 million so this 23 24 million dollar project is right in their sweet spot uh both these companies swinnerton builders and build group they specialize in historic restoration civic redevelopment adaptive reuse and uh again this is right down the strike zone We have selected build group to highlight here, and it's in your package. Build group toward the building. They understood the crawl space under the floorboards. They looked at the potential foundation requirement. They looked at the envelope framing. They looked at the roof framing. And they formed the basis of their renovation rebuilding cost on that inspection. The pricing that you see in little tiny print in your package, it is a prevailing wage union pricing for a risk category for ESA design. That is for an essential building design that this building will be. And therefore the price includes the enhanced structural seismic and functional durability that's required for essential buildings. Build Group looked at every component of this build. They broke it down to 24, 25 cost categories. They estimated this will take 15 months to deliver. So their price includes the personnel, the management, the site requirements to sustain that building and delivery period. They looked at the amount of concrete that would be required for the new foundations to build up. They looked at all the framing, not only the wall and ceiling framing, but also the enhanced seismic and structural framing needed for this ESA requirement. drywall, walls, ceilings, the windows that you saw in Dan and Joey's presentation, we've got that covered in scope. Elevator, two-stop elevator, this building is ADA accessible. All the finishes, all, as Dan said, a new building, yes, all the mechanical, electrical, plumbing systems will be all new up to leading edge standards. full communication security low voltage all taken into account you know we have we have funds in there also as dan indicated to to raise the apparatus bay floor if we decide to do that in consideration of some flood mitigation we have included uh design contingency construction contingency We have soft costs included, architect, mechanical, electrical, plumbing engineer, structural engineer, historic preservation consultants, construction management permits fees, testing and inspections. So again, too tiny to present on the board, but in summary, we believe we can deliver this building and the maintained site for $22.7 million. Again, adaptive reuse building. retaining the site work apparatus bays. We're going to reuse, tie into the existing facilities and infrastructure. And a lot of the programming of the different departments will come out during the schematic design. At that point, we can take a look at the requirements for police yard, any public works yards, and we'll take that into account. So I'll be available for questions. Any questions, Bob?

Yeah, I should have said this at the outset. I think we wanted you to finish your presentation and then we'll have council questions and then we'll ask staff questions. Then we can take public comment and then we can bring it back for discussion and further further steps.

Are we up to project timeline? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Bob Herbst, uh, ad hoc committee member, president friends of Ross firehouse. Welcome guys. Thank you. Uh, project timeline. So the primary purpose of this is to demonstrate that we can get this building done in time to move the paramedics in, in January, 2029, pursuant to our existing RVPA paramedic lease. Um, There's really three components in this timeline. Ed mentioned the construction component, that's 15 months. That's at the bottom of the chart. Currently, if we hit all these timelines, which will require you guys to make a pretty prompt decision that you like this plan, but if we get started promptly, we'll have several months extra time to move our BPA paramedics in. The other two primary components other than the construction timeline are the CEQA review and permitting timeline and the architecture and engineering timeline. In this chart, we've got the architecture and engineering broken into two components. The first is schematic design and costing, and that's basically a three month time period. And then the final component is four months, which is working drawings. So that's the... you know the 50 pages of drawings of exactly what the contractor needs to do to execute the project what we're recommending to town council if they decide to pursue this plan is to bring on that schematic architectural designer as soon as possible go to rfp in may if you can get them on board to complete that three-month process the design component is going to be two months then we'll cost it with contractors three months That could potentially give you guys the opportunity to go to the voters in November with a fully costed plan. If you're not comfortable with that and can't get there in time for November, it can move to June. That doesn't affect this timeline. We'll still be working on the full design. We'll still be working on the CEQA permitting. That will be done, as you can see on the plan, in time for a June ballot measure as well. So that's really for you guys to decide and If you like this plan and want to proceed with it, it is important to get moving on hiring that schematic designer. Thank you.

Okay. Financing a project. Turns out it's complicated. The only realistic and feasible source of financing is a general obligation bond. The only permitted use of funds from a general obligation bond are brick and mortar construction. You cannot use it for operations salaries and so on. And it requires a two thirds vote by the voters. And it's important to understand this is I'm sure familiar to you, but I want to make sure everybody understands. the GO tax, the general obligation, the GO tax is based on a parcel's assessed value, not a parcel. A parcel tax, like the public safety parcel tax we have in Ross, it's the same amount for everybody. Your next door neighbor has the same tax that you have. Assessed value is what you paid for your house and what you've done to improve it. And therefore, everybody's assessed value is unique. Now, a $10 million bond, and I use the number 10 partly because it's an easy number to get in your head and do math with, but a $10 million bond at 4% interest over 30 years would require annual payments of about $580,000 a year. And by the way, you had a presentation last month, was it, with the field? Field. How do I pronounce it in fields? Yeah. Fieldman. So I've gone through all of my arithmetic with the fieldman guy, just to make sure that I wasn't doing it wrong. And I wasn't, and we'll get into this more in the next slide in Ross. You, when you get, do all the math, The assessed value tax for the general obligation bond is about $20 per $100,000 of assessed value. The town's assessed value increases about 2% to 4% annually, and that happens everywhere. And it is limited to that by Prop 13. And the people who make that decision to increase it, of course, the Marin County assessor. But when you do that, the effective tax goes down because the, the assessed value of the whole town is going up. So for example, for a home that has 2 million of assessed value, that tax works out to about $400 a year declining with such value increases. I want to spend some time talking about this, but it's this button, right? Yep. Oh, there it is. The assessed value of all the homes in Ross as of November last comes to $2.95 billion. That is a stunning number. But that's just the assessed value. The market value is probably three times that. A median home of assessed value in Ross is $2.5 million. And this pie divides it in all of the homes in Ross into 10 segments. Each segment is 83 homes. And when you look at the top of the pie, there it is, that little teeny sliver of red at the 12 o'clock point in the pie has as many homes as the big blue pie just to its left. That red slice has a $23 million assessed value. The same number of homes across to the left has $978 million of assessed value. 20% of the homes in Ross account for $1.5 billion of assessed value. And if you go clockwise, starting at 12 o'clock, each of the pie slices gets a little bit bigger. It's a ton of money that's out there. So I think unless there's something right away, I'm going to move on. So that is you.

So this one's mine, right? Okay.

So just a number of requests that we have to get this moving forward. Yep. One would be to develop an amended master plan based on this idea, working with Chris and staff and actually amending what it is that we've been working on. We need, um, we couldn't find one. It may exist somewhere, but we need a site survey done quickly. Identifying the buildings where they're located, the structures, the topography, um, major landscaping trees, that kind of thing that needs to be done. That could be moved forward right away. We're going to need it no matter what. So that should be done. as-built drawings of Town Hall. It's not an expensive process to get as-built drawings of this building and the other building. Laser technology allows us to do it very quickly. As far as the other building is concerned, we'd also want to make sure that we identify any structural walls in the building and such to make sure that we're planning properly moving forward. We would like to do a limited amount of exploration in the existing building, maybe opening up ceiling here and there. We have to be careful about it because the building's occupied. It would be very minimal amount of work, but it would give us a better understanding of maybe some of the work that potentially needs to be done. As we talked about it, the question would be, why would we do schematic design and break it into pieces? I think that it would be ideal if we selected one architect to do the whole thing. However, any architect, just like any general contractor giving us prices right now, is going to put a big contingency in their number because they don't know exactly what it is that they're going to do. So there's a couple of advantage of doing schematic design. Schematic design are gonna include floor plans, elevations, working with the department heads and coming up with detailed plans for the police station, offices, public works, everything. It'll also include outline specifications and enough information to be able to develop a budget that we can hang our hat on. Right now, everything that everybody's been done is a conceptual budget. And I guarantee you that there is a lot of contingency across the board, contingency on top of contingency. And this is a pretty typical process. Get it to the point. And what it allows us to do, we have plans, we have specifications, we can get pricing. And if you want to try to move forward with the bond this year, we can do this in three months. So having nothing from, but it's, I'm not sure we meaning the process that we need to go through with selecting architects can be done that quickly, but the schematic design work could actually be done in three months. So, and then, You could ask an architect, for instance, and other consultants, give us money to do schematic design. This is what it looks like. They can do an estimate for the entire project. But once they have clarification on what it is that they're doing, contract documents, contract administration, everything else is much more manageable to them. And their numbers are going to ultimately be a lot tighter. So I think we can simplify the process, move it forward quickly. It does mean spending money. The schematic design normally is going to be somewhere around 15% of the overall fees. So there's an investment that would be made that you know, hopefully we'd be able to use downstream. I think that the one other thing would be getting a historic consultant on board. We have registered historic structures. So the question is, and I think we all believe that these buildings would be given special consideration in terms of environmental impact and CEQA and such. Not necessarily that we would get a negative declaration, but we potentially could work with historic consultant, work with environmental consultant, and greatly reduce the amount of time, effort, and money that would go into some of the environmental remediation work that would need to be done. um yeah this one i'll just summarize in sort of one comment and it was said at the very beginning and that is that it's i think we all believe that it would be really helpful and important to have a public private working group to work with krista to move the project forward uh quickly i think having i mean what we've all seen is having the kind of resources that we all can draw on to be able to to help in a significant way, I think is really valuable to the town. The fact that everybody here and there are others around that are willing to put their time and their money and the talent of their people and their staffs and themselves into an effort like this is a big deal. And not to take advantage of it, I think would be unfortunate. And I think quite frankly, given the time we have and all the other constraints that if we can do this, It means doing it more like a project would be in the private sector, but at least accelerate, you know, a typical process that we would have to go through.

And I think, is that it? That's it.

That's it. Mr. Poland, you're up.

Oh.

Bill.

Your audience. Well, really, I'm going to have to. Well, I'll talk to Michael. You can talk to Michael.

We want to talk about the financing of the project in here. Jeff and really Tom, if you don't mind, I really need to ask you to step in here. I'll do the pantomime. And we can talk about the financing of this, but you're going to be skilled at talking about the geo bond and all that. This is out of my league. So there.

Thanks, Bill.

All right. So as we have up here on the slide, in terms of the next stops, for the bond approval. I know some of you on the town council have a lot of experience in getting approval of parcel tax and school bonds and everything else. And I think we as a group feel that we can help generate support and get this bond passed. And anybody who's taken a look at the plan seems to be supportive so far. We all came together in 30 minutes over Dan's first iteration of this plan. And we think we can bring the whole town together. And we appreciate all the efforts you guys have put and time you've put into all of this. And we're here to help. And the Ross property owners, the Friends of the Firehouse, the Ross Auxiliary, even the Age Friendly, I think everybody can unify as one town, as one community, and get this thing passed.

Don't forget the Ross Historical Society is going to be on this. Madam Mayor and Council Members, I'm happy to be here tonight. We all know it's difficult to pass a two-thirds bond election, but I think there's two key elements to it. One is to avoid controversy as much as you can, and two is to have an active, proactive bond process. uh, outreach committee. And with those, I think you can do it. Now I'll give you an example of how easy something can go. Whoops, can go south. And about 20 years ago, the raw school went out with a bond issue, somewhat under $20 million. And two of our council members tonight know a lot about that because they were on the school board at the time. Um, everything was cruising along very well with the election and all of a sudden one landowner sent out a letter to all the homeowner, well, to all the residents in the town and, um, questioned the need for remodeling the school. And that started, uh, people asking questions and raw school had never really had any problems authorizing, uh, like the parcel taxes. So out of the blue came this person challenging everything. And I think that the Bond Election Committee wasn't ready to answer the questions. And so sure enough, let's figure out a citizen's advisory committee. And they formed one of 24 people, which is way too many, 12 on each side. And that committee, unlike our committee that I've worked with on this one, that committee, there was acrimony. uh contentious behavior in the first three or four meetings and we met over about a four month i just can't remember period but about every other week and um after a while we kept talking about the questions and it was a committee of people that you find in ross everybody loves the town they were just questioning you know they wanted information and so um After we met, we eventually wound up with a 23 to nothing vote. One person quit the committee and we brought that back to the town council, I mean the school board, and of course they approved it and we went ahead and the citizens committee, one of the advantages of a citizen committee is they study the issue beforehand so they know all about it. uh the bond measure passed i believe it got a 75 yes vote that you might you one of you might remember i think it went from 62 or three to 75 and i hold that was the bond what just gonna say i think the first time was 59 was what 59 right elizabeth

Yeah, I don't remember it. It didn't pass. It didn't get 66.

Anyway, it passed. And so the two, the two things to take from this is it can last three, there's it can happen in Ross, but try to avoid controversy and have a good citizens committee program of educated people and proactive and that's what we've proposed by the way meetings uh table at uh the town council i mean at the uh ross post office um printed information uh the the property owners are going to hold a public meeting if we need maybe at the so uh and no matter what project we choose i think you need to proceed on that method so um sure enough now the situation is it's difficult to decide on the project and it's because there are big groups on both sides then nobody's going to get a two-thirds vote the way it works now so our eight-person committee which was is comprised of people that were both on both leaning both ways on this issue and a lot of strong support from the friends of the fire station but um we were formed to come up with a viable plan. And we can argue elements of the plan, but what we need is a plan acceptable to these diverse groups. No matter what, we need to get that two-thirds threshold. And so you've heard about our plan tonight and all the things that we're recommending. It's a beautiful structure. It attracts us. Whatever problems can, I think the architects that you select can work out all of those But what we need, what we really need is, or what the town needs to move forward is a unanimous vote by the council on our plan. and i believe that with unanimous and vote and approval by the town council with the exceptional design and i think popular appeal of the civic center design and a very active bond outreach committee, we have an excellent chance to pass the bond issue. And I've done 14 bond issues on voted bond measures in Marin, and that's kind of what I found is the key. And if we do that and pass the bond issue, then we will build an excellent civic center building just like Ross School did and built their fabulous school building. So that's it.

Okay, so last slide to summarize. The project minimizes operational disruption and construction time by allowing the whole project to move forward at once as opposed to multiple phases. Vertical space is less expensive than single story space and adding a second story to the building is much less expensive than additional ground area. Allows for two means of financing, one for the town center and optionality for future firehouse operations should we desire it. Requires less site coverage and environmental disruption, minimizing hardscape and prompting other mitigation risk. uh, work, excuse me, and allows planning building and public works to remain in place until the new facilities are ready for occupancy, which will minimize both costs and operational disruptions. And that is the end of our presentation.

Wonderful. Thank you all. It was really terrific. We, and we really appreciate all the time and effort and collaboration and creativity. And I think now we'll have questions from the council to the committee, and then we will have questions to staff. If people have questions to staff, then we'll take public comment and then we will bring it back and figure out what our next steps are. Questions, Elizabeth.

um thank you very much i i think the plan looks beautiful um i have a couple of quick questions one is you'd mentioned if we can't make the bond measure if we can't make it for our november bond that it could go on a june ballot is is is that possible to have a general obligation bond in a year that doesn't have a general election it's 2027. or do we need a special election for that uh

But go ahead. No, go ahead.

I checked with our attorney's office on that that question today. And yes, we can the town council can place a measure on the ballot a geo bond in 2027. I would love like to clarify the Marin County Office of Elections. They don't there's not a June date next year. Let me tell you what the dates are. I did get those. So the dates are in 2027, the special election dates, because they would all be called a special election, March 2nd, May 4th, August 31st, and November 2nd. The May meeting and the August meeting are only vote by mail. And just to give you an idea of the deadline, so if the council was going to target the March 2nd, 2027 date, you would have to have all the information to the County elections office by December 4th. So it's a good four months. Um, you have to get the information, take your action as a council and get your information to the County elections office.

Thank you. I'm hoping that it's possible for November, but it's helpful to know that it's not a whole other year to wait. And then for the bays and where the paramedic ambulance or fire engines, if we have any, exit is this driveway being kept you know this driveway between town hall and the uh the town building i couldn't tell from the drawing if there's a little park there or if it's if there's still an exit right here okay okay so the folks at home can hear

I thought I was speaking loud enough that everybody was here.

I think the site needs to be developed, but there clearly needs to be an entrance and exit on both sides like there is right now. And that was the intent. And actually, I think the original plans that were sent out to all of you did not show that. And then we were modified to actually pick that up and included the redwood trees that we would want to save here as well. So yes, the answer is yes.

Okay, thank you. And then my only other question is on slide 28, you talk about how we move forward, appoint public private working group led by the town manager and duties determined by the town manager. And one question is, is that the right process? And the reason I ask is because we have a committee right now that seems to be doing an amazing job. And I'm not sure if, you know, I know Jeff, you're leading it. If David Kelly is also part of it and you're accessing the town manager when you need her, I'm not sure, but it seems like, you know, this committee has, transcended politics and personalities and has come up with a plan and i'd kind of hate to rock the boat i mean i'm happy to keep whatever committee or leadership you have right now because it's working so my question is why would we change that why couldn't we just keep going right now with what we have accessing our staff as we need them the town manager and the um project manager

Well, I can tell you that this group is very cohesive. Pardon me. We would be delighted to do that.

I mean, this group works. Yeah, and I think ideally it's working together here, right? Because there are things that we can do, resources, people that we can bring to the table. We were looking at, say, scope of work or evaluating consultant agreements or whatever it might be to assist Krista and the staff in terms of being able to bring more people to the table when it's needed. And I think that all of us All of us are willing to do that. I mean, I wouldn't have said that necessarily think that going in, but I think after working together for almost three months that, you know, we have a lot of value that we could bring to the table.

Thank you.

With respect to the timeline, I appreciate that timeline. I have to tell you, my impression is that's, I wonder how realistic that is, just based on my experience, both in the private real estate development area, but also as a homeowner in Ross, we were once told for a survey, we're looking at six months to a year, just because there were so few surveyors. So I mean, I wonder if anyone could comment on this, particularly Dan, you know, as an architect. I mean, do you really think we could have a site plan within this period of time and that these other things could come together?

You want to comment? Well, I'll maybe take a little bit of this. You're right in terms of, you know, resources and availability. But we all have large firms and we all have large operations and we have a lot of clout and we can push people pretty hard to get things done. And it's true. I mean, look, we got two really great, really great construction estimates. Really good. People took their time to do this because they're partners of ours across many different projects and such. It is a really aggressive, it is an aggressive timeline. I think that if you were to look for a June bond, for instance, I think the question becomes, how do we break up the work? Because what I would hate, and it's something we'd have to talk about, but if you hire an architect that does all the drawings, and you pay for all the engineers and all the architects, and you get everything done, and you can even send out the bid and get numbers for the bond potentially, what if it doesn't pass and then all of a sudden we've got a lot of thunk costs that potentially i think it will pass and i'm certainly optimistic about that and we would throw our weight and everybody in the town behind it but it may not and so maybe it still might force us to break it up into pieces i also think that the other issue is is ems in the contract and They sort of run concurrently here and you're trying to get some things done because in a way you're going to want to renegotiate some other things potentially, but you could tell a story where you're going to provide them a facility that's a wonderful facility and access to things that they wouldn't have if they did this separately. So there's a lot of moving parts, but it is a pretty aggressive schedule overall. It is.

And then one other question in terms of the list of things that we were told we should get going on. Has any thought been given to whether we should have some sort of geotechnical study or analysis given that this is near a creek, that it's in a known liquefaction zone?

yeah i think it's a good question we probably would do a limited number of soil borings however and i think it would be if we were doing more work that was closer to the creek i'd be much more concerned about it But I think if we open up those buildings and look at some of the foundations underneath and see if there's been any settling over 100 years, that's going to give us a pretty good idea what this substrate looks like. But I would still say, yes, we're going to have to get a geotech in here and do some investigative work just to see if there's something that we're not aware of.

Is that something the town should be handling or would the architects?

No matter what, we'll have to do it. I think the only question is, depending upon the route that we go, the location of the buildings are going to have an impact on where we do the borings. You're not going to want to do a soil boring in a place where we're not going to have a building. And so I think we, you know, again, let's get some planning done, get something, and then decide to go in and start doing some of the, we could do some preliminary soils testing, but not necessarily spend the money on doing complete borings.

I really love the conceptual design and plan. It's beautiful. A couple questions. I think you may have addressed it, but I just want to be sure. Parking and circulation within the space, is it adequate? Parking, is it adequate?

Well, I guess my answer to that question would be based on the plan that has been approved, assuming that was adequate, the plan that we're bringing forward would have the ability to have more parking. because there's less site work, right? It's more open. We're basically condensing the building and going up. And so consequently there's less site coverage, which would allow us to do. And if we would have had a survey would have been a lot, I could start doing layouts and stuff, but it just didn't make a lot of sense without having really adequate information, but it also potentially could take areas like this area right now, which is sort of a dead area of this building. because the question is in terms of access, people coming in, they're gonna have to go up Sir Francis Drake and to come in the center. We could actually develop it so that there's a double entry that comes into the site and potentially look at some of the areas over here for open areas and patio areas and other community kinds of small group activities. And so I think that site development piece of it

i i think again based on the you know master plan that's proven i would say yes i would say we probably can get more but i think we still have to go through the process of detailed planning i was thinking if those back bays if that area is for community events or you've got a community center there may be more people coming in than just the staff that are working here the police and the and the paramedics yeah yeah Another question. I know you didn't talk to the police or the public works staff about the space that they need. And I think about public works, they have a new, is it a, a new lawnmower or something that's coming, a new tractor. It's like, where are we gonna put these things? Have you thought about that? And what's in the design?

The answer is yes and no, right? So the yes side of it is certainly, we saw a number of things in the program that in all likelihood should not be in that larger structure and a lot of it had to do with public works the shop area equipment sword and some other things i think that the fact that again we're condensing it into one building we have the ability to do a separate small public works maintenance and shop area Because in all likelihood, just based on the function of those particular areas, you probably wouldn't want it in the building. But we didn't have the time, and we really need to sit down with everybody. And Krista and the staff have done that. The program looks really good. There's a lot of clarification work that needs to be done. But detailed layouts are the next step to make sure that everything works. And this building, as nice as it is conceptually, it'll change from this. It's got to change from this. This is an idea that we need to start building on potentially.

And if I could address the police station issue, I've had multiple conversations with Chief Ara, or ex-chief. He knows it solid right now. The new chief doesn't know the building nearly as much as he does, right? So I asked our just departed chief if he'd be willing to consult over the phone or in meeting with us starting next week. And he said, anytime you want.

Right? Yes. If there was any time you want while I was employed by the city itself.

It might come with the cost, but we'll tell you do. I know you do. And what's the book you said you were going to give us? Is this the proper time to speak?

So there's rules for police departments. I haven't heard any of that in this conversation tonight. The International Association for Chiefs of Police has a guideline of what your police department needs to look like and have. The Peace Officer Standards of Training in California tells you what you need to have for a police station. So when I hear about the site and things like that, Be prepared for this number to go up because there are some very expensive things. Police departments aren't cheap. Fire departments aren't cheap. Paramedic buildings aren't cheap. But we have some really specific stuff and we can't share some of those things. The Department of Justice regulates who comes and goes and where they come and where they go. We've got computers with people's personal information. I mean, I'm kind of preaching to the choir, I know. It's a beautiful looking building. I just worry that it's not gonna function for the stuff that we need to do our job. And most importantly, especially if you're gonna have a housing element here, You can't have an escaped prisoner running through your housing element. You need a secure area to get them in and out of your building. Same with the police officers. You need a secure way to get them in and out, and you need a secure and a discreet place for victims of crimes to come in and out of the lobby. Believe it or not, we get that here in Ross. We don't advertise, but we do get that here in Ross. So these are all things that I'm happy to share with you guys. And there's guys that are bigger experts than I am, but I've lived in your building for five years. I've been here when we, it's like a fire drill for us to get the one police officer and me that comes in on my day off to move cars from your parking lot and try to find parking either at Marin Arden Garden Center or up on Laurel Grove just so that we can get to our cars because we're worried about flooding. You know, being lucky hasn't really happened a lot. It happened once when I was here. But still, the idea of doing that, that takes us away from the things that we really should be doing, like maybe evacuating residents or doing traffic control. These are all considerations. While I've worked in this building for five, I've lived through a rehab at the San Rafael Police Station. Chief Aguilar has lived through the rehab at the San Rafael Police Station. It's a lot of work and you guys just should be prepared for your numbers to go up and for the size to change a little bit at least. so anyway there's pros that do this i'm i'm just i'm an expert only because i use the property so i'm happy to help you with whatever else you might need we'll fix it yeah yeah i think that um first of all i think probably

Many of you know my wife was in law enforcement for 45 years, so the last thing I would ever want to do is to shortchange the police department, right? But I think right now what we did is we blocked out 3,000 square feet, and the 3,000 square feet in terms of functional needs is defined in the program. And it is a secure 3,000 square foot area. It doesn't mean that we have all the answers yet. We certainly don't. But that block of space is based on the program. And that's a very clean square block of space. So consequently, I would think that we can meet all your needs.

And ultimately, I think that pertains to everybody. It pertains to Public Works and the office space and staff.

sitting down and working through these things and trying to understand compromises that could be made or should be made or other kinds of things, opportunities we can look at.

I think you guys are on the right track. I don't think it's impossible. Size-wise, I think just making all the pieces fit. I've lived through, I've said this before, I've lived through architectural Tetris. It didn't really work out. So I like that you're considering more space. I think that's good. But I really do think the access is going to be huge for us. And thank you for everything. I appreciate it.

Tom, Andrea, is there anything you need from me or anybody else?

Well, thank you, Chief. Well, the council could very well have questions for you. I'll stick around.

Is it? I don't want to take everybody's time. Okay. So when would we really have an idea of what the pretty true costs would be for a geobond? I'm sorry. When would we really have a good idea of what the cost? I mean, she thought of saying is going to cost going to cost a lot more than you think. And when you take a look at it closer to the structure, we may find that there's things that we didn't under under, we didn't know or understand that would be a problem. When are we going to know what the real cost is going to be? Because that affects how much we're asking for in the geo bond.

No, I get that. But if your question is, is it more difficult to go above 10 million than 20 million? No, it's not difficult at all.

I'm just thinking if we say, okay, it's going to be 10 million and the geo bond, we issued the geo bond, but it ends up being, it's going to cost us more than that. It's going to end up. So people vote, they say, yes, two thirds. And then we said, well, it wasn't quite enough. We need another 3 million.

okay so the town has 12 point something million squirrel away right and we're talking about a project that is a 22 23 maybe 25 million and so we need another 12 5. if you start with 10 an additional 12 5 is no big deal it really isn't

maybe I could answer that potentially too from a different perspective. So, and I'll look at all my developer friends in the, including Bill back there. You know, we do projects and they're going for financing. They got a budget, we got to stick to the budget and you got to figure out how to do that. But in order to do that, you have to have enough information developed so that you can get a number that you can really hang your hat on. And so the answer to the question, I think, is multifaceted in the sense that if you were to get an architect on board, a good architect could do the schematic design and run concurrently with a cost estimator within three months and have a number That would include, I think, pretty much every aspect of the project that we'd be concerned about, everything from AV equipment, furniture, fit out, everything, right? But that would mean if you're trying for a bond in the fall, that means that you'd have to have an architect on board by June, June, July, August, three months, which means that you have a month. Kristen's staff has a month to... They got to conduct interviews. They got RFQs and RFPs. And so I think realistically, I think we could do it. But realistically, probably June. But then the question is, how much work do we do between now and June? And how much money do we spend? that to get us to, because we could do this in three months, and maybe that's the first step, get the architects on board, whatever that three-month time frame is, get a number then, and then really take a look at the bond situation that we're developing in June. And then if we're comfortable that we believe that we can get a pass, then continue with the drawings at that point in time. but don't commit to doing everything until we have a much better understanding of what the overall scope looks like.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I noticed that in the project timeline that I think Bob was presenting, it looks like in that diagram, the costing isn't done until September of 2026. And we would need to file that information in early August for the general obligation bond to give the amount that we're seeking from the voters. So it seems like maybe March of 2027 might be more realistic to do a thorough job. We had to go back and ask the voters for a supplement when we did the school bond, and that's not something that we want to do. So Matt, do you want to ask questions or should I go ahead? I know you've said that if the council endorses this plan, that the Friends of the Ross Firehouse will withdraw their initiative. But it seems like there's a lot of moving parts. There's a lot of stuff that still needs to get done. We're figuring out where there's gonna be secured parking for the police, the public works yard, the detailed programmatic issues, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm wondering how firmly do we need to endorse this plan? It seems like it's going to be iterative. I think we're all very much in favor of the concept, the conceptual design. I think the building is beautiful, but I'm wondering, you know, what is that sweet spot where you're going to get endorsement and commitment from us and you're going to feel like, okay, we're going to withdraw the initiative because we have confidence that this is the direction that the council's going.

i could take it uh august august 8th is the deadline to withdraw the ballot initiative so really town council just needs to adopt our plan as a new master plan by august 8th so that gives you what is that three months may june july gives you three months get your schematics get your costing You need to adopt the plan before August 8th or we won't withdraw our ballot initiative, that's for certain. So you guys gotta come together and make that decision by then.

Okay, I'm gonna have a question for the staff then about how realistic that is. And I'm wondering in your plan, um there's space for fire but i'm wondering are you intending for us to spend money to build out facilities for fire or is this just space that could be used later if funding to operate the fire station is somehow secured down the road the latter so we would not be spending money to build out a fire station. It's not build it and they will come.

No, we wouldn't have to. I think when we go back and take a look at the program, what we need to understand is how can we bring together certain elements and is it possible that some of those elements could be shared? fitness facility, men and women's locker rooms, toilet areas, other kinds of things that show up in different aspects of the program. So I think that, and quite frankly, everything that we've been looking at in terms of the fire side of it, it's really primarily residential. It's really primarily the bunks. There's not a lot of other things that will really push a very large square footage. So I think that um we would be doing the planning for it but we wouldn't be spending i don't think we should be spending any money until we know exactly where we're going with it but from a planning standpoint certainly you could do it and you could do it design it in a way that if it didn't pass then it could become something else so i think where it's located and how it's organized makes a big difference in terms of giving us the ability to move forward in a reasonable way so that we have the flexibility using it for one thing versus another

Matt, do you have questions?

First of all, I want to say thank you to this committee for putting forth a really just beautiful plan and really showing that the impossible actually is possible. So my first question is really for you, Dan. I, you know, being on this council and going through this whole, what I would say Misha Goss as a Jew, is that I was told that, you know, you got to trust the experts. You really, you're not listening. You know, I got to trust the experts. you were one of those experts who said that this building could not was not a candidate for adaptive reuse and so i i'm just curious if you could share your own um experience kind of from the letter you sent the council in july to this plan today how you got to this conclusion that it could be uh an adaptive reuse project yeah i think it i think it's

part of what you know because i wrote that letter and and i understood i went back and read it and i could see how the some of the misunderstanding might occur when when we did that study back in 2000 we were going to move the whole building out of the floodplain which meant the whole, including the front of the building, the criteria was to raise that up even higher at the time. When you were looking at that, the cost associated with putting a new building up was cheaper than doing a renovation at that point. So I think that whenever you're getting into a renovation project and it's, and I, I think I was misunderstood because any building can be renovated. Um, I'm in the middle of, I just did one personally on the national historic register up in Oregon. It took us four, my wife and I four and a half years should have been torn down and rebuilt. I could have torn it down and rebuilt it for less money than it costs to do the renovation work. But,

It's on the national historic register.

It was really important building in town. There are a lot of compelling reasons to do it anyways. And I, and as I said, I think that this building is probably going to cost same as a new building, but there's a lot of other compelling reasons to keep aspects of it, portions of it. And I think that that, so it wasn't, it can't be renovated. Of course it can be renovated, but I think ultimately, as I said before, what we're going to end up with essentially is a new building.

Yeah, no, no, I understand. I just want to be very clear because part of the letter said structural framing is completely inadequate to meet seismic codes. So there had been some criticism that this building, the foundations, it could not support the Essential Services Act. This is so important because we were told repeatedly repeatedly over and over through this process, this area, this envelope had to be completely raised because there was no capability under any circumstance that it structurally could support a modern firehouse police, et cetera.

Well, I'm not sure that's true. I don't think that it is. That's what I was doing. Well, it isn't true. And there are two things that are. One is true, is that seismically it's not anywhere near up to code. So sheer walls, all sorts of potentially foundation reinforcement work. There's a lot of mitigation work that we might have to do. We won't know until we actually get into the project. But there's also ways to circumvent that. We don't necessarily have to do grade you know foundation walls we could do columns and beams so there's always a workaround right and i think that you know again going back to you know when we look at it originally it was pro bono kind of thing. We went in there, we did it almost exactly what we're doing now, but a much shorter timeframe. And, and the question at that point, is it cheaper to build a new one and take this one down or not? And our answer was, it's probably cheaper to build a new one, but our position was at that time, reuse portion of this building in a way that if you do something new, it still has the integrity of what was there before.

Okay, so just to clarify, there's nothing structurally wrong with what this plan in terms of supporting an essential services act, police, fire, paramedic, in your view, based on what you have seen?

I'll clarify that because it's not that. The existing structural system no doubt does not meet code. but we can reinforce that structural system to meet code. Shearwall, steel, whatever we need to do, we can certainly make it work.

Okay, so question two has to do with the programming for a working modern fire and paramedic facility. So I know we just heard some questions about the ballot initiative. Your plan here says that you can completely build a modern working fire and paramedic facility here and that you have the right square footage to do that. That's all we know.

Yeah, at this point, yes. The answer is yes. And if we don't have enough area, there are possibilities in adding additional area to the building if we need to. But based on our outlook, we have 2,000 square feet more. It doesn't mean that it's going to plan as efficiently as the original master plan, the approved master plan. But I believe that, yes, we can accommodate it. And this next step, this next three-month effort of schematic design will tell us that. will have much sorry and that schematic design is basically to design a working modern fire paramedic police facility and and working modern staff offices and police department and because this to me is is the the fire piece of it is a critically important piece but this is a really important building for everybody, right? So we gotta talk about all the operations and really bring all of it together, but the answer is yes.

Yeah, so, because there's been a lot of critical commentary that it cannot support that. So that's why there was no fire because it could not do everything that you're saying it can do, which is there's not enough room and the building is too small and the envelope was too small. to support all of these functions that you've now said that we can. So I just, again, would love for you to confirm the goal is to program this to support all those functions and you believe that it can do that.

Yes.

Okay, thank you. There you go. So the last thing is I brought my favorite flyer of all time, which is the 2020 Town of Ross flyer that went out to all residents about why we could not have a fire station. And when it says, what are the choices on the back? It says for 14.6 million, we can relocate our fire staff to a neighboring station and not rebuild the fire station. For 28.4 million, we can rebuild the fire station. So almost like double the cost. The plan that you have brought forward today is 23 million. It's even this 14.6 million, according to the latest estimate, is now 25 million for this original concept. And you're saying you can build a fire station and do all of this for 23, which is even less than the town flyer from 2020 said.

is that possible well i don't first of all i'm i don't know because i have no idea what you're referring to i think that in all the conversations that we've had that i think maybe and i think possibly bob can speak to this that the criteria that we were looking at in terms of a fire station the number of people that we were going to have how it was going to be staffed how it was going to be functioned, how it was going to function is different than what I think we've been talking about over the last two or three months. It is a fire operation, but it isn't a full-blown fire station.

That's, Bob, I don't know whether... Yeah, it'd be helpful because this was the crux in the matter in 2020. They said, well, for $14 million versus doubling the price, we can't afford that. But your plan you're coming forward with today is even less than this original, even with all the inflation. And this is just to build it. This is not operate it. This is just to build it, which it said at the time was going to be double. So I just I want to make sure because so many people are I've heard. we can't afford to build it we cannot afford to build a fire station we can't afford to build it but this plan you're showing is actually very reasonable it's even less than that estimate back then so i just want you know sometimes people say things are too good to to be true but

so i would love for you to just say explain that because some people will just be skeptical because they've been told over yeah i don't i mean i i'm not sure i can answer your questions but i think a lot of people take a lot of things out of context right and so i think the answer to the question is let's do the next stage of planning spend you know it's not a lot of money let's do all the layouts and everything that needs to be done to ensure that we meet the goals that you've outlined Right now, it's space. It's blocks of space. It isn't a detailed analysis of equipment requirements and everything else, and that does need to happen.

But the bids that you talked about, that Ed Dong talked about, are those like bonafide? I mean, you got these bids. How confident are you in those bids? Because we hear all the time that these bids are irrelevant.

Well, the only answer I can give you is that I'm confident based on the information that we were given.

right that's yeah i just just embellish that the again the two contracts we work with are two of the most renowned uh regionally and you know billion dollar plus plus uh annual volume uh you know this is in their sweet spot you know build group just finished a historic restoration uh What was that, Huntington Hotel? I mean, the list goes on. I mean, we did not include for you the resume of all the projects, the civic centers that each of these companies have done. But we have great confidence, first of all, in the selection of contractors we talked to and the drill down that they did in 24, 25 different components of construction and the fact that they walked through that building. So we're confident with that conceptual number. Absolutely.

thank you yeah terry go ahead um so if the town were to choose to vote for an operating fire station the staffing of it um is flooding going to be an issue flooding uh the answer is potentially yeah um because the lower portion those bays would still be in the flood zone

If we raise the elevation of those pads in the bays by a foot, it helps to some extent, but it needs to go up by about two feet. So I think in a, and I would say certainly in a severe situation, it would make sense to move that equipment, that truck and the EMS vehicle to higher ground. But with that said, there are other mitigation that we're looking at, flood mitigation techniques that would get us that extra foot, but there's no guarantees. Yeah, there's no guarantees. And I think that I mean, look at that's part of the compromise that we're talking about here is that are we willing to compromise that or not? Are we willing to compromise the fact that one of the driveways doesn't hit Laurel Grove head on or not? Right. I do think there are.

risk mitigation efforts that we can undertake to solve those situations but it isn't perfect okay it isn't perfect right i noticed that uh chief mahoney is here chief would to be part of the ross valley fire district and we're talking about flood control how important is that for a fire station especially one that is going to go through a renovation

Yeah, I think if you looked at the addendum that Manager Johnson sent out earlier this afternoon, all of our fire station engine rooms are in the flood zone. Yes, we do have a plan to move the fire engines, and we have specific areas to move them. However, you know, it It is less than ideal. We deal with it because that's what we were kind of given through the many, many years. I think it's also important to recognize that we've probably moved equipment and personal vehicles, I would say, maybe three to four times over the last five years because we move them also. When it when there's anticipated flooding, not just we take a proactive approach to it and we don't move them obviously when the when the water is coming up to the to the engine room doors. But we have, you know, there is a significant amount like the gentleman spoke here. There is a significant amount of rehab that needs to be done even even when an engine room is flooded but it's so it's it's something that's going to need to kind of you know be at the hands of the council to decide is is that what you know is that what you're willing to compromise with so sorry just because you're up there um Sleepy Hollow is just completing its uh redo right the remodel yes and those bays were not raised no why why not They weren't raised, I think, because it functionally wasn't possible. The fire station is built over the creek. So there was a decision made by the town that those engine bays would stay in the flood zone and that the remainder of the building would be raised.

And so none of the other, our sister stations,

during their i know fairfax is doing a small remodel of their housing essentially part and the headquarters in san anzamo all all of them their bays are within the flood zone all of them are within the flood zone the fairfax remodel isn't really comparable to be honest with you it's an it's an upstairs remodel of of the second floor so it's in an existing footprint um there's no work being done downstairs or in the engine room and then for the fire station and fire station 19, which is the one in San Anselmo. That one was a remodel and that was mainly funded through FEMA to recuperate from the flooding that that station actually incurred. So, you know, unless we had other funds, we weren't going to be able to raise the entire fire station.

So while not ideal, basically we're similar to all the other stations that would be in the flood zone.

Yes, yeah, you're correct. It is definitely not ideal, but all of the other fire stations are within the flood zone.

Thank you.

Rich, do you want to elaborate on the flood issue?

Yes, Mayor and Council, Rich Semenich, Public Works Director.

elaborate on the flood issue. So just to correct Dan's last statement that they're all the same, all four stations are the same with regards to a flood zone. That's not entirely correct. Sleepy Hollow, Butterfield Road in front of Sleepy Hollow is in a 100-year floodplain. San Anselmo Avenue in front of the downtown San Anselmo. It's actually in the regulatory floodway. It's actually a high velocity river during a flood. And the fire station in Fairfax, I think it's Park Road, is also a 100-year floodplain. The difference with Ross is Sir Francis Drake Boulevard is out of the floodplain. you would be compelled to design your, if you're going to be designing a fire station in this site, Why wouldn't you have your equipment bays raised out of the floodplain to access a roadway that's out of the floodplain? That's the major difference between Ross and the other Ross Valley fire stations. um to evaluate the flood situation here in ross with our equipment bays there's uh three things three entities you need to consider there's fema there's our own building code and floodplain ordinance and then there's the essential services requirements for building a fire station fema is more concerned with public safety and building integrity during a flood. They don't want damaged structures, whether it's a equipment bay or a residence or a garage. They want living spaces built one foot above the floodplain to minimize insurance claims. The NFIP is all about insurance claims. the billing code and the floodplain ordinance, they would require that the equipment bays be raised out of the floodplain, the two feet above the 100-year or at the 500-year, if there's no other alternative available. That's the consideration. Sleepy Hollow. They didn't have to raise the base because there's no other option. You could raise them out of the floodplain mode. Butterfield road is in a hundred year floodplain. What's the point here in Ross? That's what staff will be looking at during the permit process. We'll be looking for findings as to why it's not feasible to build a new fire station or renovated fire station where you have the equipment bays out of the floodplain accessing a major roadway that's also out of the floodplain. So we wanna, staff would wanna see reasons why that's not feasible and we wanna leave the equipment bays where they are. So that's kind of the considerations.

Thank you. I have a question for Rich, just while he's up there. So when these bays were built in 1995 and they were seeing three and a half million, why was this not done back then? Because we obviously knew that they were in the floodplain.

Yeah, that's a great question. 1995 is what, 13 years after the New Year's Eve flood. Why we did that, I don't know. I've asked myself several times. We had an opportunity back then to do it right. We didn't. We have an opportunity now to do it right. What are we gonna do?

And I have a question about when that decision gets made, when the staff would make the decision about whether we would have to raise it two feet or not.

So again, it comes back to evaluating the findings from the floodplain administrator, the building official. It remains to some point a ministerial decision. I think it would need to be, and I'm not fully familiar with a design review process, ADR and all of that, but I think that the findings need to be evaluated at some point, like during the planning process. So that's where council would hear, well, we can't do it because X, Y, Z. Yeah, we could do this, but it doesn't make sense or it's too expensive because of ABC. Then you evaluate that for the planning permit, which comes before the building permit process. I think that's the process we would go through.

I have one more follow-up and I think, Dan, it sounded like you said that if there were to be fire services down the road, it wouldn't be a full fire like the other three stations. And maybe I may have misheard you. You were referring to Bob.

I'm not sure exactly what the question is.

Well, I'm wondering if it's three people to an engine, if that's what's being contemplated.

Yes, that's it.

Great, thank you.

And I think what we had before was something much more substantial than that, I think. I don't know. Meaning planned before then or no? I don't think so.

OK, thank you.

I mean, it's possible. I mean, it would be a cost issue. I still think, no matter what we do, that a single building makes the most sense over the long run. We could build it back end. We could raise that roof. We could raise the whole structure up if we have to. Those things are feasible. It's a light frame construction. It's not heavy, not steel. I don't think it's concrete, is it? I think it's all light. It's all light frame. So it's all light frame. So it would be a cost consideration. But if we all said we want to be able to fly a plane, we've got to raise that elevation by two feet, I think the biggest question would be more on the environmental side of the equation and bringing the fill in and then how do we handle landscaping and some of the other hardscape and that kind of thing because it would create potentially a situation where You've got to get the trucks out, and they've got to be at elevation coming out of the drives, but then you really have to raise the whole parking lot potentially. I think you've really got to play with it and try to figure out maybe there's ways to even ramp the site so that parking areas might be lower than some of the ramping, meaning just simply sloping the driveways and such. But you could do it. We could build it out of the floodplain. I think it's essentially a cost issue more than anything else. Just one more question on that.

As lead agency, don't we have the ultimate decision authority on these matters? And maybe it's for Roberta, but we're the lead agency of this project, and we grant variances all the time.

So that's... Right, but you... Again, it comes back to feasibility. If it's if it's determined to be not feasible, then there's, there's not so much of an issue, um, as far as, uh, needing to raise it out of the floodplain or do the wet flood proofing and that sort of thing. So, um, and again, that's, that is going to come. I see that as being part of the planning process, the, uh, the planning permitting, um, so yeah maybe it is a question for planning but um it's really kind of unknown I think at at this point I it depends on what well I mean it's a town project so we would have to come up with the findings ourselves to convince the council that this is something we want to do it's at some point the project is handed over to the town it's a town project it's a town-owned um building Town's also lead agency in the CEQA process. How much do we want to be exposed during the CEQA process? Do we want it really tight? Do we want an EIR? Do we need an EIR? I think we would at least need a mitigated negative deck because you have cultural resources, you have, I mean, look what happened with the spotted owls just to get our bridges done that delayed the project six months. Winship Bridge, cultural resources, three years. Those things need to be all addressed by the town. We're the agency and it's our project.

You know, when you mentioned town, I mean, it is the council's, I mean, we are the town, the council, right? I mean, so we delegate those decisions, but it's the council ultimately that makes the decisions. That's correct.

Bill, did you have something?

I do. Let's see if I can figure out a way to say this. So I think education for the bond measure is important. Education of the community for the bond measure is important. And one of the issues is that we're going to keep the bays in the back for potentially a fire station. Okay. So there may or may not be a fire station, right? And how do we make sure that people understand that when they are voting on this bond measure, it's for the building, not the staffing, it's just the building. And that space could be used for many things. how do we do that how do we make sure that we're transparent about that and that there's no sort of miscommunication that you built you know i i so anyway that's my question you know i find just telling the truth usually works it does so you you bet there's going to have to be an aggressive persuasive serious education um strategy

for the town and we're going to have to do it multiple times in multiple places. There's no elegant answer to that. It's just hard work. You got to do it.

Yes, but I'm saying we have to be honest that if you build this facility, which is going to be beautiful, there is room for staff and trucks but that's a completely separate financial issue you bet it is okay and I would want to make sure that when people vote on the geobond that they're voting on the building and not they don't think that they're going to be getting in a working fire station because that's a whole separate issue separate issue in all kinds of ways not the least of which is financial And can we say to people at the time, if they say, oh, a fire station is great, what's it going to cost us to staff it? Do we have that information?

Sure.

And can we give that to people?

I'm sorry?

And can we give that to people when they ask? If they say, what's it going to cost me to have the staff? I think it would be important for people to know what it would cost.

If you think back to the January council meeting, the fire consultants for both sides came up with almost identical numbers. Exactly. It was $1.5 million for a used truck plus equipment. And then there were going to be three guys per shift. So that's nine plus a chief plus part-time clerical, if I remember that correctly. And that would start at around $3.5 million a year. And it would, and I specifically remember somebody, in fact, I think both of them saying that the cost of living increase on that particular segment is twice what it is for consumer products. So it's going to be an expensive process on year one, it would be five plus million, and then three and a half million from that point going forward. So it's not trivial. And this is not like a building. This goes on for, what, a decade, two decades? I don't know how many, right? So it's a ton of money.

It is a ton of money. And I think people will want to know, how does it affect them personally? Like, what is it going to cost me in my job?

Well, it depends on how we raise the money to do that. If there's a giant sugar daddy that comes in and writes a huge check, no problem.

Perfect.

right there's a different kind of bond issue called a mellow roofs bond which can be used for services namely salaries and the truck right but there's no end in sight to that and it's expensive and of course we could always raise the public safety parcel tax we would have to raise it we'd have to quintuple that And so now you're telling people, by the way, your parcel tax for the public safety is now going to be approaching $6,000 a year. You think they're going to like that? No. So it is a real puzzle about how to finance this thing. I've thought about it a lot. There's no easy way.

Thank you. So I have one more question. It sounds like we need to hire bond counsel too to help us draft the legal documents and the description. And where would that be on the timeline?

Well, at some point before the bond vote, or maybe even slightly after, the actual timing that I got from Friedman was once the vote has been taken and the two-thirds threshold has been achieved, it's going to take three months before the bonds get issued. There has to be bond counsel. There has to be an underwriter. There has to, in my term, an investment bank to do it. It has to be rated by S&P, Standard & Poor's. And by the way, Friedman thinks that the town of Ross would get to AA plus, possibly a AAA rating. And I also asked, by the way, Uh, this was, um, uh, to one of the Friedman people, I said, how often is it that, uh, the wealthy town, so Ross, uh, Piedmont, uh, Atherton, et cetera. How often is it that the wealthy members of the town gobble up the, the bond offering frequently is the answer. So.

I was actually thinking, who's going to draft all this language that we have to submit to the registrar of voters to get this on the ballot?

That's what Friedman is all about.

That's something Ben's office would do. Okay, Ben, good. Well, we already have you.

Well, it isn't going to be us.

No, I know. I just wondered if we needed separate bond councils. So that's good news. Elizabeth, did you want to say something?

Just one thing. How quickly, if the council approves this plan, how quickly can we hire an architect? I know Krista set things in motion already with the RFQs. Anyway, how quickly do you think we can get an architect hired?

I have many things to say and when appropriate, I'd be happy to respond to that and some other things.

Yeah, I think we should maybe wrap the questions up for this esteemed committee and maybe take a five minute break and then come back and staff can be asked questions or make statements, whatever, and we can have public comment and then we'll bring it back for discussion and future actions.

Mayor, may I just ask a quick clarifying question of the team? When in your cost estimates, this is about the fire station, so I understand that the cost estimates include in this very conceptual design include space for a fire station. and building is it correct to say it includes costs related to the you know the building out of the shell does it include all the tenant requirements that fire stations need such as you know diesel exhaust systems etc etc is that included in the cost estimate

Yes, it is. Exhaust system, FF&E, all IT communications. So, yes, it included the whole appliances, the whole fit-out.

Thank you. Okay, so let's take a five-minute break and resume at 9.08. Thank you. Let's get started. Um, okay. We're gonna, we're gonna start with, um, questions and or comments that, um, staff has. Do people have questions for staff? Yeah.

You know, I just want to make a comment. Obviously, Krista, we saw you sent an email at 4 o'clock with a lot of meaty staff report. And unfortunately, it's not enough time, I think, for me at least, to digest so much of information. And I appreciate very much that you were trying to get to us some of your thoughts. i i don't know how you guys feel but i almost feel like this we all know this this is a concept and there's a lot of details to be worked out still and it might be helpful to sort of get to that next stage where they're working with staff and then come back to us when because there's so many things that you pointed out in your your assessment that are just on any unanswered yet because it sounds like staff and the committee haven't really worked together yet So I don't know how helpful it is really to go through all the, I mean, welcome to hear it. I'm just saying it seems so premature right now that I would prefer that we sort of move forward and see if we will want this and then let you guys work it out and then come back to us with staff's comments because there's just so much unknown right now. And none of us have really had a chance to go through your detailed staff report.

Maybe you could hit the high notes of what you sent us. And my main question is what would be your recommended next steps going forward to try to continue to advance the ball, maybe try to appease the fourth people with dropping the initiative. I don't know if that's possible given when we're going to get actual cost information. which seems like after the deadline for filing a general obligation bond for a November election. But maybe Krista, you can give us some concrete steps that we can take.

Sure. Thank you, Mayor and Council, and thank you to the committee for all the substantial amount of work that you've done. And I'm super excited about what I saw tonight and the idea of, as Ms. Buckingham had described to me last week, tightening up the site and building up and I just want to bring it to the council's attention that you know three to four years ago when the council was working on this facilities master plan that was actually one of the options that the architectural firm KPA that was working on this brought to the council along with a cost estimate and the council's feedback and the community feedback at the time was that it was it was too expensive so I just wanted to remind you and a couple of you were not on the council then that this idea was brought forward and absolutely let's evaluate it again if that's what the council wants to do. And I'm overjoyed at the interest and the passion the committee has on being able to help to advocate for any measure that goes to the community, because I know Ben's going to like it when I say this, is that we cannot advocate. Once this goes on a ballot, the town cannot advocate for this. We can educate, but we cannot advocate. So the importance of having a community group that has already proven how skilled they are at engaging the community it to be behind this is just you know i'm super super excited about that um i wanted us to make a couple of um uh clarifications for the council um this is just a little thing but as you're looking at timelines the date by which we have to have the council would have to take action on ballot measures for November. And that's going to include the RVPA ballot measure that will be coming forward, too, for you to discuss in June. The deadline is actually August 7, not August 8. So I just want to make sure you are aware of that. And I just wanted to also clarify and remind the council when Jeff was stating about answering Councilmember Dowling's questions about the cost of staffing. this information was provided to the council last january as part of the election code report and that three and a half figure million figure that jeff commented on that is in addition to what we already pay so on an ongoing basis we would have to pay that plus what we have are we've already committed to pay to ross valley fire department now i understand certain people believe that we could perhaps negotiate that down but it's still in addition to what we already pay to have fire service provided to our community um so we you know we didn't we as staff did not we didn't have much time to um provide our um just initial evaluations and kind of similar to what happened last year when the fourth group provided us with information to put into the agenda packet. They provided it at 4 p.m. on New Year's Eve, and we had to get out the agenda packet on January 2nd. This was for your January 8th meeting. So especially over the holidays, and because we don't have many staff, we really depend on the consultants that we had hired to do that report. we didn't have much time to put together information for the council in advance we did put together information to provide at the council meeting in a powerpoint but we were the council and our town attorney did not allow me to provide that information so i provided that information after the meeting a couple weeks after the meeting if you recall and that information is available on the website so this time i thought Even though we just got the information last week and there were differences between what's in the packet, what went into your agenda packet that you received on Friday and what was shown today, I did the best I can to just try to get some information to the council, some initial observations. send it to you as council member Salter stated. It was sent very late this afternoon, did the best I can to get it out. It's available on the website. And what I did was just identify a series of issues or concerns that the council needs to take a look at before you consider amending your facilities master plan. And so this item is not before you as an action item tonight. So absolutely take a look at that. Feel free to call me with any questions you have. The other clarification I wanted to say, so I'm again super excited about what's been put together, super excited about the passion of this group. very willing as we go through this design process to work with this committee. I've been speaking with my colleagues around the state who have gone through these processes for major civic public buildings. is sometimes councils set up a subcommittee of their own members to help work on the selection of an architect and working on a design and working on during the construction process because there's always going to be changes made, all that kind of stuff. So sometimes councils choose to do that. Sometimes councils choose to establish committee groups such as the one that they established themselves. This was not put together by the council. Sometimes that community group would be established for a specific purpose. I was speaking with somebody today where a city in Southern California used a committee group to help them choose an architect and then that community group once that architect was was chosen and a contract was put into place then that community group ended and it went back to a staff working with those consultants and and the council um and then of course the architectural firms usually have extensive public outreach components of their contracts so um the other clarification so so there are those different kinds of options that that council could use to still draw on the expertise of the the citizens committee and expertise of other people in the community that you you might wish to be uh involved in this process as we go forward But another one of the clarifications I wanted to make is that Mayor Pro Tem Robbins asked of the committee members is, she asked earlier in the meeting tonight, why would this need to go to staff? The committee's doing a great job. Why wouldn't they just go forward? And there are quite a few reasons why. you operate under as 95 of the cities in the in this nation operate under a council town manager form of government that is explicitly stated in your municipal code and your council adopted guidelines so you cannot hand this off to a community group to do and have them just and have me and my team right town staff report to me consultants report to me and just have us serve as resources. That's not allowed under your council manager form of government. Certain aspects of this, that also is not allowed under state law. There are procurement processes, especially when it comes to major public works projects such as this, that our town attorney and our public works director would be more articulate to describe if the council needs that. so and then in addition i want to remind you you also have an i have an employment agreement with the town you set policy you i have to bring forward i implement policy i bring forward contracts i bring forward contracts and i that are reviewed and oftentimes um written by the town attorney but that that's how this works and so i don't want you to be under i want you to understand and remind you that absolutely this group welcome their their expertise in any way that the council wants that to happen but this is a town project that would be run by staff and we have to go to the council in many ways any contract over fifty thousand dollars has to go to the town council um so to answer your question mayor about what i see the next steps being So the council approved our request for qualifications for architectural and engineering firms and an affordable housing partner to work with. Those submittals were due on April 3rd. We received 10 for the architectural engineering and we received two for the affordable housing partners. And I sent the names to the council a few weeks ago. we staff has been evaluating them as best we can keeping in mind that we had your annual budget meeting last week we had to put together this meeting in two weeks before we originally thought this meeting was going to be and so What I have done, so we received the 10 submittals to the request for qualifications. We've begun our evaluation. I'm in the process of hiring a firm that will serve as an owner's representative for this project. This is something that just about every city, large or small, ends up doing because we don't have the staff that We don't have the staff expertise to do what is needed to be done. So I'm going to start off, because remember, I have to take, we do have a budget in the current fiscal year to do some work. But I'm going to need anything over $50,000, I need to come to you. But I do have some money in the budget. to hire this firm that is very experienced, that I can hire them on a time and materials basis with the priority being to help us evaluate these submittals. And one of the submittals was Gensler. Gensler was one of the submittals. so to be able to evaluate this they work with cities up and down the state that can help us come up with some options so i could bring forward to the council we could an option an evaluation option because as i mentioned some cities might want to have a couple of other people from either maybe a subcommittee of the council or a few people from the community or perhaps Ms. Buckingham, she's on your ADR. Kind of look at these architectural, these submittals and help us narrow it down to two or three or some manageable number to bring forward to the council for you to view. I want to remind you this contract For an architectural engineering firm is going to be one and a half to $2 million and I look to Mr whiny for confirmation that that's kind of in the. yeah Thank you.

I think it's one of the reasons that it might be beneficial to.

potentially break it up and at least get into schematics and then get some clarification.

Because I think that number, both from an architectural and engineering standpoint, could be tightened up, right? The more information, the better.

Yeah. So I will... so i'm you know the council meets once a month um i know that there are there are several uh time constraints in the month of may i know of a council member who has a constraint and i know that a couple members of this committee have constraints in may but um so this gives us time through the month of may to work on this evaluation your next meeting is june 11th come forward at that meeting with i don't know a short list or recommendation or a couple of options on how to how to conduct this evaluation, then we're going to need to spend quite a bit of time coming up with the scope of work, because a $2 million scope of work, we don't we don't want to have a lot of these infamous change orders, which don't just apply to contractors, they apply to architects, and I'm going to look to Mr. whiny.

Yes. Yes. The answer is, do we need a detailed scope of work? Yes. And the more detailed, the better, right? And the more information, the better, because then we're going to get good numbers and we're going to have close any gaps or any holes because many architects will not ask questions because they know that there's missing aspects of the scope. which allows them and an engineer and other consultants to come back later and say, oh, well, that's an additional service. Oh, you didn't tell us that. So I think spending the time to really go through and hammer out a very detailed scope is going to be really beneficial. It's good for the consultants as well, right? Okay.

thank you so um so that process is going to take time and then absolutely a two million dollar contract this needs to come to the council and one of the things that i haven't heard much of this evening Public input. You had a lot of public input. You had a year's worth of public input. When you put together your facilities master plan, you need to have public input on amending your master plan. And of course, this group has, you guys have been meeting. You have not had public input at your meetings. You, I'm sure, have a good feel for what a lot of members of the public, but you have to ask. You have to give people the opportunity to come and speak to the council and provide input. So we need to get an architect on board. We get an architect on board. And one of the first things the architect could do, OK, schematic designs, but the council needs, you're going to need to amend your facilities master plan. And I identified in my memo this afternoon some things that need to be worked out. I'm very confident that we can spend time working those things out. And then to get to, and we absolutely agree that, you know, in order to get to kind of that 30% schematic design drawings, that's what we need in order to be able to get that cost estimate that will then help us, you know, a more specific cost instead of a range, a more specific cost estimate that then we can turn over to our town attorney's office and to come up with that language for a ballot measure. And at the same time, concurrently, we need to be working on getting an environmental consultant on board And we need to be working with political consultants with bond council, with our town attorney's office, our town treasurer working on coming up with crafting a measure that ultimately the council needs to, you need to take action to put this on the ballot. So that is not gonna happen in time for you to make the November ballot. i was really happy to learn today that you can do it i know there's some i know that count some council members have talked about you know it's probably better to do it a general election but you can do it a special election there's four special elections next year um and i think that there's a lot there's a lot of work to be done in this coming in this coming summer and fall fall and i know we can all roll up our sleeves and get it done and i'm excited about this idea i just want to make sure that this plan as mr winey said in the beginning of his comments of his presentation is this plan needs to meet the operational objectives of our town departments because you are going to be using i mean whether it's 22 to 26 to you're going to be using a ton of public funds to build this project it has to be done well and it has to meet the needs of our organization and we provide services to the community so i think that was was that giving you and i that's kind of what i'm looking at as being a timeline um that's helpful okay thank you um does anyone have any questions other questions for krista or should we move on to public comment

Let's move on to public comments. Anybody in the chamber who would like to make public comment?

Good evening. Michael Rosenbaum, 14 Madrona Avenue, Ross. Madam Mayor and fellow council members, first of all, thank you to the Citizens Advisory Committee I'm here to express my profound concern over the path FORF has forced upon our town, especially now that the Citizens Advisory Committee report makes it clear that the end result was inevitable. This ad hoc report serves as a formal acknowledgement of FORF's own admission, staffing and maintaining a fully functional fire department at the Ross civics complex is no longer a realistic objective. For almost a year, FORTH has disseminated misinformation that has fractured our community and compromised the town of Ross' standing with various Marin County agencies. As a result, significant taxpayer resources and administrative efforts have been squandered on evaluated proposal and a ballot initiative that were proven untenable from the start. In my view as a Ross resident, accountability is essential and to start with a formal written apology from FORTH. Furthermore, considering their status as a 501 , I strongly encourage the town of Ross to demand a full restitution of all municipal expenses from forced financial reserves. The people of Ross are entitled to a swift resolution to this matter, beginning with a public apology and complete financial reimbursement. While it is my hope that Forth can persuade their supporters to endorse the town's bond financing, such an outcome may prove elusive. Once their community realizes they have been misled and realizes there's no new fire engine is forthcoming, nor will the response time lessen in the foreseeable future, Forth may find their support increasingly untenable. Although council members are restricted from responding during public comments, I believe that council members Salter and Robbins should take this opportunity to officially express regret for enabling actions that disregarded prior council mandates and for their association with the dissemination of unreliable information that needlessly drew out this process.

Thank you. Anyone else in the chamber for public comment? Sorry. Two things. I think we should, we don't have a resolution or a vote, but I think we should each opine about whether we like this concept or we want to go with a different concept. And then two, and we can break this up if we want, two, does the next steps that Krista has outlined, do those make sense? So I can go first. I love the concept. I think it's beautiful. I think it, you know, the building is gorgeous. It's a legacy building. I think you, the committee, nailed what needed to happen. And I'm confident that a lot of the issues that are unresolved can be resolved by staff working collectively, collaboratively. In terms of next steps, I would like to get an architect hired as soon as possible. Maybe we could have a special meeting if we're prepared to have a special meeting in early June to get going. I don't see how Unfortunately, we can make the November ballot. And I don't want to have missteps. I don't want to have to ask the voters later for more money. I don't want to have this blown in an election. I think we want to do this once, and we want to do it really well. So I think that's, yeah, next steps. OK.

Can I just say ditto? No. Okay. I actually love the conceptual design. I love the one building. I think that's, I love it being double story. I think it's going to be beautiful in relationship to the housing that's going to be close by. There's so many advantages to the design that's been set out. And I too agree that we can, I think by having the staff work with some of the citizens to come up to work through some of the problems, we'll get through them. I'm confident we can do that. um and i think we most likely i also think that the steps that krista outlined are important i think one of the other steps might be that we need to have a chat with paramedics yeah so that we can bring them along so that they're part of this and see the value and the beauty of this one building so yeah

Yes, agree with these comments. Great, great job. Thank you so much, everyone. Makes a lot of sense. I'm fully supportive of the concept. And like Julie and Terry, I think that we have issues that can be worked out. Skeptical about the timeframe. I hope we can have it on the November ballot. That would be more desirable for a couple of reasons. I think it has a better chance, actually, of passing on the November ballot. But if we can't, we can't. We'll shoot for as soon as we can next year. But otherwise, no, I'm fully in favor of moving it ahead and getting architects on board and getting a consultant to help us get the right architects and the right proposal and whatever else we need to do in the meantime.

So it's baseball season, everybody. And my two boys play a lot of baseball. And this whole situation reminds me of the Kirk Gibson home run in 1988, where Vince Scully said, in a year that was so improbable, the impossible has happened. So first, I want to thank this committee for coming together and making the impossible possible. There's been a lot of discussion about the fire station and that there's all these issues that get conflated. But the first and foremost issue that had to be solved piece by piece was, is it possible to rebuild? If you can't rebuild it, there's really no point in anything else. And the answer before us today is 100% we can rebuild a fire station here. It can fit and it's cost effective to build it. And that was not really answered up until before your committee formed. It was told that this was absolutely impossible. So first of all, thank you for coming together and explaining that. I also want to thank the Friends of the Ross Firehouse and the members on this committee, Bob Herbst and Ed Dong, for bringing forth to this community this notion that this is possible. okay, that it's possible, that you can build this fire station and you can afford it because again, this community was ready to demolish everything around us and move forward. And that perseverance is so important in a community that cares so deeply about this issue. And so I really wanna thank the members of that group for fighting all the way here. The last point I wanna make is, It's very nice because we said there's a shell of a building, but maybe it will have a fire station, maybe it won't, I don't know. And so everybody loves the shell. Well, there's talk about this ballot initiative. I actually think it's great we have it because you guys keep working your way through it We can have the town vote and decide which plan they want. Do they want the fire station or not? In November, it's not that far away to really make that decision and put this to bed. And it will be a democratic vote. Everybody will have their say. Everybody would say, look, I can't afford it. We can't afford the operations. Whatever your opinion may be, let the people vote. And then it will be done because we will have said, instead of us five trying to read and understand what everyone says, they get to vote and inform us. And then we move forward and say the democratic process happened and nobody wanted it. So we built a senior center. But if they do want a fire station, then I think we need to accept that. and use the programming and the time to come together to make that a reality. So I view the ballot initiative, again, thank you friends of Ross Firehouse, and thank you to all the people that signed that petition, because I think it's a useful tool in this process going forward to get what the people really, really want out of this. So again, just to summarize, thank you. As a citizen, thank you so much. We are so lucky to have the resources in this room and on this committee. It's unbelievable. And it's something I've said for a long time. We need to stop just staying using our staff. And staff is so small on this town. But the resources of the townspeople is so big. Let's tap those resources. Let's continue to use them. And you see the magic that can happen in two months. I know it's a long way to go, but if they can do this much in two months, I can see this really coming together in a very short time. So thank you and I appreciate all the work and I hope you continue to be a part of this process moving forward.

So for the first question about the proposal, I think it's wonderful. I think it's hard to not see that it has something for everyone. It really meets everyone's needs. It addresses the interest in having the paramedics stay here. It addresses the possibility of a fire station. It addresses the desperate need for new town offices and police facilities. uh and it's beautiful so i i i think that it will be very i'm hopeful that that there will be widespread support i i it's hard to see that there wouldn't be because the town needs this and it's very beautiful and it leaves room for um different programs that people are interested in um i think that um you know there was a comment about you know that that it's hasty to just approve this instead of our current plan. Again, our current plan hasn't gone anywhere. I don't think we should be hasty, but I think that this is so much better than concept B that I think we should move forward fairly quickly. we can have some some very good outreach so for example next week there should be a very thorough article about what this entails what this proposal is and the article can be taken almost directly from the slide deck that the committee gave us And I think that that would be a very useful way of sharing with the community what this is. RPOA could also have a meeting focused on the new proposal or could have as one of its agenda items this proposal and or by way of education, not advocating, but send out an email about this proposal. the town could also send out an email so i think that the outreach doesn't have to take months of public meetings i think it can be done very quickly um online and by email and with some uh and by that with the ross review As far as the next steps, I think we should move very quickly to make this happen. I think we should try for the November ballot, but it's comforting to me to know that March is an option because that doesn't delay us that much. And I think that would keep the building program pretty much on schedule to keep the paramedic station on track. I think as far as how we do it, I'm gonna recognize we're a council town manager structure, but I would hope that this committee can remain front and center with all of the decisions because they're just so experienced and also they're very willing to work on this. And based on what's happened in the first two months, their work is phenomenally successful and as i said before they've transcended politics and personalities and come up with a very beautiful plan um and i would hope that if our next step if our first step is to hire an architect i would hope that the committee can um be part of that group that's that's evaluating the proposals because i think that the committee has more experience than almost any single person we might hire and certainly any other group. We have just an amazing committee of experienced, talented people. So I think it's really important to keep them front and center with all decisions. And the team manager, of course, implements the decisions and runs things. but the council is ultimately responsible. So my next steps would be hire an architect and then keep the committee front and center for all of these steps moving forward.

Matt, I have a follow-up question. Are you proposing that there be on the November ballot a parcel tax asking residents to tax themselves to have fire services in Ross? Is that what you're saying?

no no the ballot initiative sorry it's already the ballot initiative that the fourth has that has been approved it's on the november ballot and all it says is should there be should the town have basically facilities to support a fire station Yeah, a working fire station. So what I'm saying is it's already on the ballot. So in terms of this moving forward, then we would have an answer of what we should be building in this box because the people will have answered that.

But didn't Forth say, if we commit to this, they would remove it? I mean, isn't that a decision for Forth to make?

Of course it's a decision, but I think the Forth people all are under the impression that committing to this is committing to a fire station, but that doesn't sound like what we heard today. everyone who signed the petition wants to be able to vote for a fire station. So there, I don't think anyone's pulling that back if we're just committing to a concept that's a box, but we don't know what's inside it.

Yeah. I, I agree that they signed the petition. It just seems like they don't really know what it means to have a fire station and pay for the operations of a fire station. So to me, the initiative is kind of a hypothetical because the town doesn't have the money to pay for fire services. Maybe we need to have an offline conversation with Bob to see how committed he feels like we are. I think there's still an opportunity to talk about BORF pulling its initiative. I don't think that's ended. That would be something that I would prefer because otherwise it's i mean who would vote no if you have no concept of how much it's going to cost you why would you vote no it's kind of like why wouldn't you sign the petition if you don't know how much it's going to cost right it's kind of just a feel-good moment so i'm optimistic that maybe we can have some offline conversations with the four people and um explore that um

I really hope that that's not on the ballot because that is going to be completely at cross purposes to what we're trying to do. We're trying to get everybody to come together, but that ballot initiative is, it's mandatory. We have to do it. And we know we don't have the money to do it. So there would have to be some opposition pointing that out. And that's just going to cut against trying to all come together and get this passed. I can't imagine why that should be on the ballot. I think the best way to keep it.

This is on the ballot. So it's not a hypothetical. It was voted on by the people. They put this petition forward and it has the support of the community. All the initiative asks is for the community to vote yes or no. And so I will say this in a campaign, all these issues that you're bringing up that it's too expensive, no one can pay for it, then people will vote no. So I don't know why everyone's so worried about this initiative. I actually think it's going to help us make our decision because all the things you're pointing out, you're going to say, we don't have the money, we can't afford to operate it. So the point is it's on the ballot. You're asking people to pull it, but it's on the ballot.

The agenda item tonight is not about... pulling or not pulling or trying to get the proponents to pull or not pull the initiative. It's next steps as far as moving forward with the concept that's been brought before you. So obviously it's implicated and you're hoping, some council members are hoping that it would be pulled. We can't get it back and forth about the merits of the initiative.

And I think the best next step to bring people together is to move as quickly as we can with this plan, which I think is going to be very well received. And we have a wonderful committee working on it for us.

Can I just make a comment? Elizabeth, I agree with you. The committee has been phenomenal. In two months, they've come up with just a beautiful conceptual design. I think if we're moving forward, I think the, um, it's the town manager working with some of the citizens to come up with, to deal with some of the issues, but it really is in the hands of our staff now to move forward with the help of the citizens.

I mean, with the help of the citizens committee.

Oh, the help of the citizens committee or other people that you may want to pull in.

I just wouldn't want to, I mean, you just have this amazing group. I mean, I think the key is to keep, I mean, I think they will help sell this more than any change in a committee unless they need to bring in some people.

I think Krista would, I would trust Krista to work with people to make it happen.

What I like about working especially with the committee is that they've really gone beyond all of the politics of it, all the personalities. And I think that, of course, they'll be working with Krista. Of course, they'll be working with the project manager. We hired a project manager. That's the whole point. But I don't think we can pull this off without these guys. I think we need them.

I think it's the staff and citizens working together.

OK, I think we have exhausted this topic. Thank you, committee. You guys are tremendous. And we really owe you a huge debt of gratitude, especially for doing this so quickly and so beautifully. So thank you.

Can I make one more comment? It's just that if we want to move this forward, it should not be seen as difficult to have a special meeting from time to time. It only takes a 24-hour notice. Council members, at least one or two, can zoom in. It's very easy to arrange, especially if we have things to approve. Not a lot to discuss, but things to approve that we want to move forward on. We should all be available for special meetings.

I think I mentioned that in my remarks, too, special meeting. Okay. Now we're moving on to number 13 town council to consider approval of the town of Ross annual financial report for the year ended June 30, 2025 with no findings. Town Manager Johnson.

Yes, thank you, Mayor and Council Members. The item before you tonight is just as the Mayor just described it. You know, each year the Town engages the services of an independent auditor to prepare an audit of the Town's financial statements. Mr. Nathan Edelman was the partner in charge of this audit, and he will provide a brief presentation via Zoom. Hopefully he's still there. It's a little bit later than we thought it was going to be. Do you see, Mr. Edelman?

I'm here if you can hear me.

Oh, thank you. Thank you for hanging out with us this evening, Nathan. I'm still here. Okay. I'm going to hand it over to you if that's okay, Mayor and Council. Yes. Okay. Take it away.

All right. Thank you. Let me share my screen. Oh, okay. I hope that is up. Take a... Excuse me, we'll take a quick turn and talk about accounting for a few minutes. My presentation is brief, but good afternoon, or I should say, good evening. My name is Nathan Edelman with Eid Bailey. I am the independent external auditor, and I'm gonna just really give you an overview of the audit. It is intended to be concise and really just a 10,000 foot executive overview of results of the audit and the scope of the audit. The bottom line results, so this slide is really the end result of the audit and it's, I'll call it good news, but the bottom line is that the town received an unmodified, what we call a clean opinion on the financial statements. On an internal controls over financial reporting, we identified no significant deficiencies or material weaknesses. For the GAN appropriations limit, we noted no exceptions. And really what all that means in practical terms is that really the financial statements that were previously presented, I'll talk about the scope in a second, but it means that the financial statements previously presented are accurate, that they are complete. Really, we identified no reportable issues in the areas that we tested, which is the stuff here. What is it that we, when I actually say audit, what is it that we did? The audit covers, the scope covers the town's fiscal year 2025 financial statements and related disclosures. And really that means the auditor goes in and verifies cash and payables, receivables, how much money is sitting in the bank as of that cutoff period. That's what the auditor is looking to verify. We look at internal controls relevant to financial reporting as part of planning the audit and where procedures are performed over that. The GAN appropriations calculation focuses not so much on the debits and credits, not about the accounting, but really about the accuracy of the calculation. And I always just say, our role as auditors is to ask the questions. We look at source documents, but really the auditor is simply a reporter, just reporting back the results of the audit. You know, management of the town which I guess is Krista in this case, and really the folks in the accounting department, which I realize for you is one person, but they are responsible for supporting the audit. They have to compile the accounting records. They have to send out confirmations. They need to answer our questions. All we do is report back, but the people or the person in the accounting department is really the one that has to do what i'll call is is is the hard work and then other other required communications audit audit standards say that we are required to communicate you know several items to those charged with governance and really in in short there were no matters arising from the audit that required additional communications or additional attention from the from the town council I'll just close it with the audit is an after the fact affirmation that the financial information previously presented to town council is complete and accurate. Like I said, we rely on the accounting team to send those confirmations. And one of the bullets on here, audit difficulties, and I'm pleased to report there were no difficulties in conducting the audit. Everybody that we worked with is, supportive excuse me it's very late everybody that we work with is supportive of the audit and and they get us what we need so that we can we can get in and and and move on so with that i will stop sharing my screen um that is my my presentation and i'm happy to take any questions from the from the council thank you and council members any questions matt

So, thank you. Did you look at any of the internal controls? Was that a part of this audit?

Yeah, so internal controls are looked at as part of the audit. And if there are what we call control deficiencies, significant deficiencies, material weaknesses, those are things that would be required to be reported as part of the results of the audit.

And sorry, so were any of those identified?

And yes, there were no internal control deficiencies that we reported.

Great. Thank you.

There's no one in the chamber. Anybody online for public comment?

No one online, Mayor.

Do we need to have a motion?

Yes, please. Just a comment. I mean, it's great to have a clean audit, especially as we're moving ahead, building asking for money, you know, to have to have a clean audit is fabulous. So thank you to the staff.

Yeah, and I have I have one comment. I know it's late. And these financial things, we should definitely bring them to the Finance Committee. But again, this is such a gold star for our staff. especially when we just hired a new accountant and we're moving from the consultant to just have a flawless audit come through and no internal controls. These are really things to be proud of. and they don't get all the adulation, but it's really impressive. And I wish we gave it the airtime it deserves. So that's why I hope we sort of meet as a finance committee a little more because these are really, really impressive. And I'm very thankful that I know my town has a clean audit, no internal controls issues and continues to show surpluses. And these should be the high, I mean, every other town is struggling They can't, you know, Fairfax can't pave its roads. Like, it's really, really, really impressive.

Really.

And it's not touted enough. I mean, of course, the fire station and all the fighting gets the news, but this is really, really impressive.

Maybe that should be a Ross Review article. I mean, it's, people should know.

Yes.

Absolutely. Yes, please.

So I just want to say thank you to Krista and your team. Really good job. And I know it's ongoing day in and day out throughout the year. So thanks.

I'll make sure to pass on your comments, your kind words to our senior accountant, Alana Kurakina, because she just started this past late June. And we do appreciate the... the ability also to be able to call on Nathan, our auditor, to ask some questions from time to time. So thank you.

We need a motion to approve this? Yes, please. So moved.

Second.

Council Member Dowling?

Yes.

Council Member Kircher?

Aye.

Council Member Salter?

Aye.

Mayor Pro Tem Robbins? Aye. Mayor McMillan?

Yes.

Motion passes 5-0.

Thank you. The last item on our administrative agenda, item 14, is a discussion regarding the wording of the respectful dialogue section on town council agendas.

Thank you, Mayor and council members. I'd like to turn it over to our new town clerk, Zach Koblik, who prepared this agenda item. And this is going to give you a brief presentation. So thank you.

Thank you, Krista. And good morning, Mayor McMillan, or good evening, rather. Mayor McMillan and members of the council, my name is Zach Kobach-DeLeon, the town clerk and senior management analyst. Before the council tonight is a discussion item regarding the language in the respectful dialogue section of the town council meeting agenda template. Mayor Pro Tem Robbins has suggested that the section be revisited and the council ask that it be brought back as a discussion item. The purpose of these disclaimers, generally speaking, is not punitive. They're not meant to shame anyone or to respond to any specific past behavior. Rather, they serve as a proactive statement of expectations for everyone participating in the meeting, the council, staff, and the public. The goal is to encourage meaningful civic participation, protect the inclusion of diverse perspectives, and minimize the kind of disruption that can derail proceedings or cause community members to hold back from speaking. The town's current language, which has been omitted from tonight's agenda, but has been on the past four or so agendas, is the same language used by the Marin County Board of Supervisors, and I'll read it in full now. The town council of the town of Ross encourages a respectful dialogue that supports freedom of speech and values diversity of opinion. The town council, staff, and members of the public are expected to be civil and courteous and to refrain from questioning character or motives of others participating in the meeting. The town expects that speakers will not use threatening, profane, or abusive language which disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the town council meeting. Members of the public may comment on any item on the agenda during town council consideration of the item. The mayor will invite public comments following the staff presentation and prior to final council deliberations. Each speaker will be allotted time for comment as set by the mayor, generally three minutes. For reference, in tonight's discussion, I reviewed how other jurisdictions in Marin County approach this. The Town of Fairfax has a more detailed version that addresses specific behaviors, applies standards explicitly to all viewpoints, and outlines a graduated response from a warning to removal for disruptive conduct. The city of Nevada similarly has language establishing the mayor's authority to remove disruptive speakers and emphasizes that comments should be directed to the council and address issues rather than individuals. Several other Marin cities and towns, including San Rafael, San Anselmo, Larkspur, Corte Madera, and Sausalito, do not include a section like this in their agendas at all. All those comparisons are included in the staff report for your reference. The recommendation this evening is simply for the council to discuss the current language and provide direction to the town manager on whether it should be retained as is, revised or eliminated from the agenda template. There are no financial impacts associated with this item. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions and we'll turn it over to council for discussion.

Thank you, Zach. Elizabeth, why don't you go first? Okay, I don't have any questions. No questions. Anybody have any questions? That was just my comments. Let me get public comment. Any public comment?

No public comment online.

Okay, great. So now, Elizabeth, why don't you?

So I thought we should talk about this because I thought it seemed kind of insulting to members of the public, you know, using words like, please don't be threatening and don't use profanity. And I have to say they're certainly, you know, and be respectful. I think that for the most part, members of the public who come to Ross Council meetings are very respectful. I think there are times when we as a council aren't respectful and we should probably address that amongst ourselves, but I don't think that putting in a notice like this into our agendas fixes that. And I think it kind of insults our members of the public because they'll read it and they'll think, oh, we must be a bad group. Belvedere, as you mentioned, Zach, you know, Belvedere, Tiburon, Corta Madera, Larkspur, San Anselmo, San Rafael, none of those towns have anything about respectful you know anything like this it's fairfax and they're known to have kind of wild meetings and then the county and i don't really know about their meetings but i don't i think it's not even i think it's not necessary and i think it's kind of insulting so that was why it kind of feels like we don't trust our members of the public so i would just leave it this very help those very helpful lines about um how you you know when when uh You can speak to an item. It mentions that there will be comment after each item, and you get three minutes or something. But the mayor will invite public comments following the staff presentation. I think that's very helpful, but I wouldn't put this in at all, and for those reasons.

I feel very different. I don't see it as disrespectful. I know it's for a lot of commissions in the county, as well as for the Board of Supervisors. This is in the agenda, always at the top. And it really is, it's just a reminder. People most likely don't read it after a while. It's a reminder that when you're in a public meeting, to have respectful dialogue.

Well, maybe if people think there should be something, maybe it could be pared down so that it's just the town council and town of Ross encourage respectful dialogue in comments at council meetings and leave it at that and not go into, you know, be civil, be courteous, don't question the character, don't use profanity, don't use abusive language, don't threaten. I just feel like really that's what we're telling our town about. I mean, I don't feel like we need it. So I would do nothing or I would, or I would make it, you know, please be respectful. That would be my position.

I have a suggestion since the two of you have strong feelings about this and the two of you are our procedures governance gurus. Maybe the two of you can come up with something that you both accept and we can discuss it.

Except right now, we clearly have totally opposite views. So wouldn't it be helpful to hear what the other three of you think? I'll give you an opinion. I mean, to direct us, because we're here, and we already know what we each think and why.

So my opinion is I think these things got put on because of outbursts at the meetings where people, you know, they had to deal with it, like Fairfax. And like Elizabeth said, I don't, since I've been on the council, I actually think it's been very courteous and we haven't had outbursts. We did have that one guy, I remember, on the call who was anti-Semitic, I believe, and we just shut it down really quickly. So sometimes, sometimes... It's like the government that governs least is best. Sometimes there's that philosophy of like, are we searching for a problem by putting it on? But I supported you in putting this here because what I would say is I actually agree with Willis. Why don't we pare it down a little bit? We could do that. We encourage respectful dialogue. And you know what? If it gets bad and we really have to sort of be more pedantic and say like, you know, or prescriptive, yeah, no profanity and no this, and you'll have three minutes, you know, because we have to, we have a problem. But just saying we support, I actually think it'd be very elegant, like a mission statement kind of, because actually it's so long, I actually don't know if anyone's going to read it, Terry, because I wanted people to read it and actually be like, oh, you know, this town respects respectful dialogue. I like that. You know, something easy that they'll just see every time.

So... I agree. I think we could pair it down. I think it's important to have in respectful dialogue because I think that sort of fits into our TEL goals. So, yes, I'll do it. I'll work with Elizabeth. I'll take a draft. I'll share it with you. You take the draft and share it with me. I agree.

Just tone it down a bit. I agree with it. Just the first part of it is fine. We really haven't had that kind of problem, thank goodness. And if we do, we can be more specific. But it's just nice. We're all here to have a rational conversation. Let's remember to be respectful. I'm fine with that.

i think phil we've had some issues on the council we've had some disrespectful issues on the council and there have been a couple of meetings where people have uh spoken the public has spoken and not always been respectful so i think it's not that we've never had any problems we have i think maybe they're in the past

Let's hope they're in the past, and we'll look forward to your revised shorter language. All right. Number 15. Yes.

Are you expecting to ?

with conclusions or come up with a statement that they both agree on and give it to the town manager yeah and not brings back on the agenda i think that would be preferable we trust you to come up with something that's great and so we don't have to discuss it at the council again thank you ben does everyone agree with that and if the council doesn't like it it can come back on the agenda number 15 no action items council correspondence anything Future council items?

I have a proposal that we adopt a rule that's similar to MCE's rule, that we're going to adjourn by 10 o'clock unless the majority of the council agrees to go beyond 10 o'clock. We're not that far beyond 10 o'clock, but I think we ought to have a goal and out of respect for the people who come before us, but also out of respect for ourselves.

We already have a rule on the books on that, but it's a different hour. It's midnight and we have to take a vote at 11. So I think your proposal is to bring it to 10 o'clock. and take a vote at 9 o'clock, would that be the proposal?

Well, the way it works at MCE is the vote is there is either a vote at 10 o'clock or we're adjourned. And the last time, we simply adjourned it. We didn't finish the calendar. Now, of course, MCE with 34 people, it can go quite late. But still, I think we ought to have a goal, try to get out of here at least by 10. And often we are, you know, sometimes quite a bit earlier.

I mean, if there's a lot going on, we're all going to vote to carry on another, you know. I mean, it could be a discussion and vote at 10. You know, I don't think you can decide at 9 if you're going to close at 10. It's got to be at the time if we do it. The school had 11, remember? We used to have to take a vote at 11 if we wanted to go past.

Yeah, and council meetings that I was attending in the, you know, mid-

2010s they would go until or maybe it was 2008 they would go until 1 30 in the morning that was before adr so they did all those planning projects at the meeting yep well just i support bill i support in bringing this forward and and discussing it and talking about a 10 o'clock uh meeting time and at that 10 o'clock should we continue or should we stop

Is that basically it? Yes, I mean, if witnesses are here and we're working on it. Yeah, we would just continue. We'll continue it.

So he's saying move it to change the rule to 10 and to make the, not 9, but at 10 discuss continuing or adjourning. Right. And so we bring it back for discussion. Or could we refer to the procedures manual group, or sorry, to that government committee? Either way, however you want to handle it. Since you're meeting anyway, you might as well do it.

But I don't think, let's just put it on the calendar as my proposal.

Yeah, I think the agenda is better than Terry and me, because it's got to be a consensus.

OK. And see the post office table, the next meeting is Thursday, June 11. Does anyone want to do that? I could. I'm sorry, who could? Elizabeth? I could. Terry? OK. Thank you. So it's Terry and Elizabeth, is that? Sure. OK, great. Thank you. Meeting evaluation. Comments?

You know, I just have one suggestion. Krista, you know, you said that was as soon as you could get that information out. And my suggestion would be if you know that there's going to be some last minute stuff that you don't have ready yet, just send it, you know, a few days ahead, say, you know, expect new information you know day of the meeting so we'll know to look and leave time just to read it that would have you know just that was that one little thing would have helped the meeting for me just if i'd known that there was something coming i could have blocked off the time and it's okay if it's late if i if we knew or if i knew that i would have been in better shape to read it yeah

i will um attempt to have my brilliant ideas earlier than 9 00 a.m on the morning of the agenda meeting which is when i had my brilliant idea so but no i i hear you and yeah i will absolutely do my best the i would like to note that the committee was not going to put anything in your packet I had to talk with them extensively so that because I know that the council it's beneficial for the council to have information before the weekend to be able to start looking at it and thinking about it. And so thank you.

I just want to say to keep this meeting going on even a little longer. I'm only teasing is that I thought that the flow of the meeting went really well. I thought

the flow of the meeting went really well today i i thought um the presentation was good the questions were thoughtful the comments were good um it felt like a very thoughtful meeting and julie called breaks that was really helpful you called breaks we had a couple that that really helped kind of focus people otherwise i think people just would have been tired and wouldn't have been as focused that was really helpful

i mean my my comment is um i thought it was really respectful and everyone went through it it's these the fire station is the most controversial topic we deal with and i thought everyone asked really good questions and wanted answers and i i thought it was handled really really well and sometimes like this is what progress looks like we are making progress i know it doesn't feel that way because we're always looking ahead in the next battle but honestly the fact that we all liked the concept and sort of really this group coming together and really doing a lot of hard work it's progress and i just want to acknowledge that because sometimes it doesn't feel that way and we all sort of leave and feel bad about something i think we should feel good that we've we've made progress and i appreciated the questions i i thought everybody i know i actually i look at bill a lot and i wonder he's like matt stop talking stop i see it in your face stop talking stop asking questions Yeah, yeah. But I actually felt like everyone didn't like dominate or ask too many questions, or I thought everyone was very fair in what they asked and tried to move things along. And I appreciate Ben, you sort of saying like, let's not veer totally off on, you know, on this issue of the ballot initiative or we always get into like what maybes and sometimes I think it's really good to focus on what's right in front of us right now. Let's just try to solve that piece and we'll deal with the next piece in the next issue. The last thing I want to say is I think we all should be very open to Zooming for like a special meeting or things as we start thinking through how to process what's going to happen coming up is these meetings end up being so much because I think Chris is like, you only meet once a month and I've got to get a lot covered. But if we're all willing to say, hey, let's just Zoom. If you need our guidance on something to try to keep things moving quicker, if that's helpful, we can. We can do Zoom. Oh. Or just what I say is being open to meeting more than the once a month, sort of just to help process things through. I'm totally willing to do it. I'm just saying I want us to be able to be responsive to the committee and to Krista and try to process. So our willingness to say, hey, we'll be there, we'll meet is very helpful. I'm totally committed to doing that because I want us to move it. I don't want us to be the roadblock.

I mean, if two can zoom in, that makes it pretty easy for us as a group to have a special meeting, you know, for administrative things to approve, not if we're trying to discuss something.

Yeah. I mean, I'm sorry, you're talking about having a special council meeting and have to zoom in and the other three be here. Was that what you just said?

If there's something that needs to be moved on quickly to approve something.

Yes, but you can't do that on a regular basis. You have certain reasons why you could participate remotely. You can only do it for certain reasons.

Well, no, you can, under the old Brown Act rules, which still apply, if you publish the agenda with their location and they post the agenda at that location, you don't need to go for the just cause reasons. The just cause kicks in only if you want to do remote after the agenda has been published. So you still can have two council members zoom in if we know that ahead of time and we publish the agenda at their locations.

And so could a council member do that unlimitedly? So could a council member do that all the time?

Yes. You can follow that process.

Does that make their location part of the public meeting? And then the public would be eligible to go to wherever that address is posted, even if it's their homes?

Correct. You have to open up that location to the public should the public want to be there.

Because I've zoomed a lot actually for these meetings and done that. I know you did one time. So I'm just saying because the summer everyone's going to be traveling and I know how it is. So I just want, and I don't know if you guys agree, just to be available. Yeah, so let's all be open to that. And Julie, you meet all the time and say like, let's call a special meeting to get this processed.

although i must say trying to set those meetings sometimes can be tedious for staff so good luck we done with any evaluation