City Council - Regular Meeting

Oh great, whereas see i'm going to put on my glasses, because the font is really small. Whereas see William bill kershaw junior was elected to the Ross town Council in April 2020. During the start of the pandemic and has served the town with distinction for more than six years, including as mayor and mayor pro tem. of the town of Ross. And whereas Bill brought to the council a career of public service spanning the federal, state, and local levels, including as an assistant United States attorney, legislative work at the California State Senate, and more than three decades in complex civil litigation, along with his experience as a general partner in real estate acquisition and development, all of which informed his approach rooted in thorough analysis strategic thinking and the ability to communicate technical and intricate matters clearly to non specialists. And whereas throughout his tenure bill approach the complex issues facing the town with an evidence and fact based method examining significant matters from multiple perspectives prioritizing accuracy and deep research. maintaining credibility with all stakeholders and bringing creative problem solving to situations that did not fit standard templates and whereas as mayor bill encouraged thoughtful and respectful dialogue civility and professionalism among fellow council members members of the public staff and the town's many volunteers and stress collaboration with officials throughout the Ross Valley and Marin County, including as a member of the board of the Ross Valley Fire Department and as an alternate representative to the Ross Valley Paramedic Authority. And whereas during Bill's tenure to the council, carefully balanced competing interests on issues of lasting importance, including the expansion of the Branson School enrollment while minimizing traffic and other impacts, Flood control projects and protections for affected property owners, revision of the town's housing element to meet state requirements for affordable housing, a major restructuring of the Ross Valley Paramedic Authority, and modernization of the Ross Valley Fire Department. and whereas Bill served the town and region in numerous roles, including Ross representative to the MCCMC Legislative Committee, representative to the Association of Bay Area Governments, board member of the Marin Clean Energy, board member of the Ross Valley Fire Department, and alternative representative to the Ross Valley Paramedic Authority. And whereas throughout Bill's tenure, his dedicated wife, Valerie, attended every meeting of the town council, A steadfast and friendly presence whose support the town gratefully acknowledges. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Town Council of the Town of Ross does hereby recognize and express its deep gratitude to Councilmember C. William Kirscher, Jr. for his dedicated and distinguished service to the Town of Ross and its residents and extends its best wishes to him for the future. Thank you, Bill.

Thank you very much, Julie. I made some remarks outside, so I won't repeat what I said out there. I think most of you were out and probably, hopefully heard those. But just briefly, I was expressing my appreciation for the town's residents, the town's staff, my fellow council members, members of other councils and other jurisdictions, and the many volunteers and staff that I've worked with over those six years. It's been quite a journey. We've been through all kinds of things like in case you don't remember, COVID and George Floyd and so forth. I mean, lots of changes, lots of challenges. But I am gratified that it appears that we're now moving forward, hopefully successfully, with finally the one thing that I said was one of my goals back in 2020, which is modernizing these facilities. I think we're getting there. And I hope it'll keep moving ahead and that everybody can can work together in a thoughtful, deliberate way to to to finally bring this about. I think it's within reach. So, again, thanks, everybody.

This is for you. And now, if you would come up, these are for you. These are not for Bill. These are for you.

You should all know that Val takes notes. And when I get home, I hear about everything I did wrong. Raise your voice. Don't do this.

Number four is open time for public expression. This is limited to three minutes per speaker on items not on our agenda.

oh there we go how about now is that better okay so I'll just say it again I'm Cheryl White I'm from Cedars and this is Rose Gordon who's here with me from Cedars and for those of you who don't know we're a non-profit here in Ross we've been here since 1919 and we serve people with developmental differences and we're just so grateful to be in this town and we really appreciate the kindness and the inclusivity and the welcoming community that you guys all create here for all of us And we're excited about the possibility of a housing project here on the Civic Center property. I know that has some time to take shape, but we're just enthusiastic about that. But we're really here tonight to talk about and give you an update. We were here, some of our friends and Rose were here, I think maybe last year and talked about our Choose Kindness campaign. And we wanted to give you an update about what's been going on with that. So Rose is gonna take it away from here.

Okay, all right, all moves. Thank you. So first of all, thank you for having us here tonight. We're happy to be back in Ross. As Cheryl said, we have been, the Cedars has been around since 1919, not us, but. And this is also where we started the Choose Kindness campaign. As for who we are, myself, I am part of the client advisory board, the CAC, and CEDARS, as she said, is a place for people with intellectual and developmental differences. We live, work, learn, and spend time together all over the place, be it Novato, Ross, all over the place here. At CEDARS, we want everyone to feel welcome like you do with us. We want everyone to have a voice, learn from each other, and treat each other well, because kindness can make a big difference. Since we were last here, we have seen a lot of good things. People at Cedars have been kinder to each other. People are listening and helping each other more. At the last client advisory council meeting, we talked about the Choose Kindness campaign and why we think it's working. One of the reasons is because people care about Cedars. They think, pardon, they want Cedars to be a good place for everyone. And we also talked about how we listen to each other. We are thinking about what we want to say. And then there are other times we don't hear what someone else is saying. And when we don't hear what someone else is saying, that can cause miscommunications. When we listen, we understand each other better, and sometimes just listening to another person makes you feel good about it. You don't always have to have the answer right then and there. We're really happy that Choose Kindness started here in Ross, and now we're bringing it to schools and businesses in San Anselmo, and we hope to bring it to more places all over Marin. We don't know how far the choose kindness can go, but we do know how it started. It started with one person saying something is wrong and we need to change it. So I think that's pretty much everything. Yeah, we have a gift. Except for a gift that we have for you guys. Oops, upside down.

Upside down. Thank you, Rose. Yeah. We just thought we would share this with the town. You've probably seen it in San Anselmo. It's the image of a mural that's in San Anselmo, but we wanted to give this to the town so you could just always remember us and our choose kindness.

Yes.

Who should I give this to?

Thank you, that's wonderful. We will post it proudly. Good deal. Thank you. Yeah.

Thank you very much. Thank you for being here.

Do you want to say something?

I think that I want to thank you for coming. It was really so helpful. If we could maybe replace the little one that we've got up here, see that little small sign with a bigger one, so we can all remember to choose kindness. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Let's see if I can do this. I'm proud of myself. Diane Rudden, 39 Willow Avenue. I've only been around for a few years now. Yesterday, I was in front of the post office for the Age Friendly group. We gave away 10 of these community resource guides and talked about it to other people. But that was very encouraging. to have people actually pick it up. So hopefully they will take it home and look at it. We are going to be having our next breakfast at the Buck Center on Thursday, October 15th. This is the first of our posters. I'm not saying this is the last one, but this is the one that we have at the moment. I will leave it with you. And then I'm going to turn around. and talk about something else, sorry. What can I say? I was at the post office and I heard that our acting postmaster had had medical issues. So I talked to Abby today and she told me that Theodore, three weeks ago, had a ruptured aneurysm. He is at UCSF, which is good. And he is off the ventilator as of yesterday or today. They are setting up a GoFundMe account, but it has not been set up yet. It will be set up via the post office, is my understanding. So his wife, as well as being worried about Theodore, she is worried about Jingles, the dog. Because when she goes back to work, she's going to have to have somebody watch Jingles. and so it sounds really funny but what she would like is for if anybody has any information on some place that jingles can go during the day so i'm passing that along if i get any more information i will let you know thank you diane any other public expression in the chambers anyone online zach no one online mayor okay

Item five is the mayor's report. We had a special council meeting on August 26th. The council received a progress report on work to update the facility's master plan. Staff and the Gensler architects began validating the town's program and planning assumptions for police, paramedics, staff, and public works, along with determining spacing needs for the option of a fire station later. More refinement is needed, including considering recent remodels of Ross Valley Fire Department Station 20 in San Anselmo and Station 21 in Fairfax. There will be more discussion of these issues tonight. Groundbreaking ceremony at the Marin Art and Garden Center. After many years of planning, designing, engineering, and fundraising, Marin Art and Garden broke ground on the remodel of its Livermore Room. I was honored to help commemorate this milestone and thank Marin Art and Garden for its strong and rich partnership with the Town of Ross. Marin wildfire prevention authority work in town recently Marin wildfire may have inspected your home and garden, please take steps to be more prepared for wildfires. Since its 2020 inception Marin wildfire has provided more than $400,000 for local mitigation projects in Ross last month vegetation was trimmed and removed at kettle park across the street. We're in wildfire funding has also supported many other projects in town, including reducing vegetation along roads in windshield park Laurel grove avenue and upper road and in natalie coffin green park. The chipper day program is a free program that will remove and chip vegetation after you cut gather and pilot by the roadside the service runs through November and we will resume again next spring. and you can register online. And then I wanted to mention the Greater Ross Valley Shaded Fuel Break, which is a 38 mile continuous fuel break to help slow a wildfires spread across central Marin, including in Ross. Crews have completed 30 miles, thinning understory growth, removing invasive French broom and dead woody debris and pruning lower tree branches. Similar vegetation treatments helped slow the recent hillside fire in Mill Valley. And then I wanted to emphasize and encourage people to sign up for Alert Marin. It's still more than 40% of Ross households have not signed up for Alert Marin. And this is the primary emergency notification system for critical information and lifesaving instructions. So if you haven't signed up, please sign up. If you have signed up, you would have gotten notified last week that there was a prescribed burn on Angel Island. So if you got that notification, you are signed up. If you did not get that notification, you are not signed up. And we really need to get everyone 100% signed up. Okay. Number six, council committee and liaison reports.

Mayor, just to your comment, can we have on our website, I don't know if it is like sign up for Alert Marin right at like on the homepage, can we add that?

Yes, Council Member Salter, I'll add that as soon as I can.

Thank you, that's a good idea. I've also heard that a lot of schools have that as part of their registration packet. They make you sign up for Alert Moran, which is a great thing. So Council Committee and Liaison Reports, anybody? Do you want to talk about the fire board meeting last night?

Well, I think the, I'm trying to think we, yes, actually there were a couple of developments. One, the fire board authorized the purchase of what is known as a type three This is a smaller version of a firefighting truck that's very mobile. It's higher off the ground. It's a four-wheel drive vehicle. And it's able to go up in the hills and on very narrow roads where the larger Type 1 engines that we're all accustomed to really can't go or can't go effectively. And so the district already has one of these vehicles. So this is a backup because that vehicle may be out for maintenance. It may be off fighting some other fire in the county or even outside the county. The board agreed this would be a good thing to do, so they authorized the purchase of the vehicle from reserve funds. Probably we'll have it within a year, maybe in time for the next fire season. Not this one, this year, but next year. And then the other thing that fire board did is to ratify the Fourth Amendment, and this will be on our calendar tonight as far as ratifying it as a member of the Ross Valley Paramedic Authority.

Anybody else.

The West Valley paramedic authority met at had its quarterly meeting, but there weren't any remarkable actions taken.

Thank you. Staff and community reports Ross property owners association. Is there anyone here from our POA. Anyone online sack.

No one online there.

Okay.

Town Manager Johnson.

Thank you, Mayor. Ross Recreation is hosting a family-friendly movie night on Friday, September 18th. Join us at 6 p.m. To get settled, the movie will start promptly at 6.30. The event is free to attend and free popcorn will be available. Other concessions will be available for purchase. However, please note they will be cash only. So this is our first try at this event, which has been very popular in other communities, and hopefully it would really be a success here in Ross. So again, that's Friday, September 18th. The Ross Property Owners Association and Ross Auxiliary, their Live on the Common event that was originally planned for October 9th has been canceled. The next Live on the Common event will be held in April, in the spring. The September 15th Advisory Design Review Group meeting has been cancelled and the next meeting will be on October 20th. The Town is currently recruiting to fill a police officer position. Staff interviewed a candidate today and will hopefully have the position filled in the coming months. the recruitment for the public works director town engineer position also continues applications for that position are due on september 20th with interviews scheduled for mid-october so hopefully we'll have a good a good pool to interview from You might have read in, I think it was in today's IJ, that California Law Assembly Bill 1572 bans using treated drinking water to irrigate decorative non-functional grass on publicly owned properties, such as the grass in front of Town Hall. Noncompliance may incur fines of $1,000 a day. This goes into effect January 1st. So to comply, the town is working with its contracted landscape architect to design a replacement for the grass. We currently have $17,000 allocated in the budget that the council approved for this project, which is to convert our existing spray irrigation heads to a drip system and plant a mix of drought-tolerant shrubs and native perennials. So I just wanted to point this out for the council and the community. It is a requirement. We have to do it by January 1. And it's going to be a change. I'm sure it's going to be a great change, but change can be hard sometimes. I'm confident it's going to look really lovely. The Ross annual Creek cleanup day is scheduled for Saturday, September 26, from 9am to 1130am. For those interested in beautifying Ross and preparing for the upcoming storm season, please report to the Ross post office at 9am sharp, wearing old clothes, long sleeves and pants, Gardeners gloves and waterproof shoes, a lot of students from Ross school have participated in the past, as well as other Community members and their efforts have really been much appreciated, please call public works supervisor Anthony all closer at 415453. 1453 extension 163 if you have questions about this important volunteer activity we did send out a e-blast to the ross residence that has all that information on it the bolinas storm dane project is nearly complete with the sidewalk and asphalt work recently completed The remaining work scheduled for next week is the final striping on Sir Francis Drake. Staff is also working on obtaining proposals for the final task, which is to install fencing along the back of sidewalk. So that is just about done, which is great. and then finally public works staff is also preparing the town for storm season in addition to the creek cleanup and they recently attended additional training that's provided by the county office of emergency services to prepare for what is forecast to be a strong el nino storm season i've put together a joint meeting here on september 24th with staff from the marin county executive office the county office of emergency management of course Ross Valley Fire Department and our neighboring agencies, Fairfax, San Anselmo, to identify how we can jointly prepare for storm events, discuss best practices that may impact our section of Central Marin because we do share similar topography and similar challenges. So that's it for my report. Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you, Krista. Yes, Matt.

Town Manager Johnson, is there an update on the Public Works Director vacancy?

Yeah, in my report, that's okay. I said that it's currently underway. We did hire a professional recruitment firm, and so the recruitment started a few weeks ago, and applications are due September 20th. We already have interviews set up, an interview day set up for mid-October. And but thus far, we haven't I don't as of a couple days ago, we hadn't received many what's kind of a trend, at least in local government executive people wait to the last minute. So fingers crossed, we're going to get a good good pool of folks to choose from. I already have interview panelists. We've already got interview questions. So we're set up to get it just waiting to get those applications. have we ever looked at a recruiter or hiring a recruiter to find a candidate if if this this process struggles yes so that we are we we have used we we're using a company called peckham mckinney um it's my understanding that the town has never used a professional recruiting agency except for the town manager position multiple times so uh our first attempt to do the recruitment did not result in any viable candidates So it's a very important position. So we quickly turned to a professional firm that does this work and really gets the word out and beats the bushes and all that. So that contract, it was underway. It was a cost of $27,000. Okay. So it's a significant commitment, but it's such an important position.

No, agreed. That's why I was asking about it. Thank you.

Number eight is the consent agenda. Julie, I have a question. Oh, sorry.

Did you say that the fall live on the common was canceled? And were we going to combine that with the town dinner? So does that mean we were canceling the town dinner also? Yeah.

Mayor Mrakas, May answer so as part of your budget meeting last April, the feedback that we received from the Council was that because the live on the common events were so successful that to to. Mayor Mrakas, The Council to continue their support of that with the annual grant with our POA to not do the town dinner this year instead focus on some of the other ideas that the Ross recreation department had so. They had to immediately cancel their deposits, et cetera, on planning for a town dinner. So I'm not sure why the RPOA auxiliary had to cancel. We just received notification this week that they did. But as I mentioned in my report, we're doing this movie night. And we're pivoting. See how that works. See how that resonates with the community. Thank you. Uh-huh.

Item eight is the consent agenda. There are five items on the consent agenda. Does anyone...

I think someone's here from RPOA.

Is someone here from RPOA? Okay. Would you like to give a report, Janine? Sure, do you mind? Yes, please. Okay.

As you know, our light on the common is... Our Live on the Common is very popular and was very successful despite having some newcomer kids opened for the band and it was a little, we didn't get great feedback from them. They need to keep practicing. But our Live on the Common in October, I'm out of town, Elena's out of town, she has an illness in her family in Spain. And so it just wasn't going to get pulled off. But our other things are coming up. We have Candidate Night at Magic on October 9th. And the Turkey Trot has also changed dates, but we don't have a date for that yet. And Autumn Showcase is on for November 14th. It's Saturday. It was so successful last year that people asked us to do it for more hours, so we haven't decided yet. if what hours yet. It was three to six last time and I think we'll probably do like one to six or something like that. But I have to get feedback from the vendors. And the lights are going up on November 1st for the holiday lights. Or excuse me, yeah, November 1st till February 1st. So we're going to keep them up longer this year. And the lights are going up in the back of the post office. We're getting bids for that right now. It's quite dark back there. I don't know if you've ever been back there, but... It's hard on the folks that work there. And the RPOA just wants to reach out to the town, the townspeople. Oh, we want to get Alert Marin out, so we're doing a big marketing campaign for that. And join the RPOA if you're not already. Yay. OK. Do you guys have any questions for me?

I think candidates night might be Monday, October 12, because October 9 is a Friday night.

Oh.

I'm pretty sure it's the 12th.

I was given the wrong information. Yeah. Sorry about that. No, that's OK. OK. Yeah. Great. All right. Thanks. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Do you have questions for me? No.

Thank you. Now number eight, consent agenda. There's five items. Does any member of the Council wish to pull any of the items? Matt?

I'd like to pull item D. D, OK.

Does any member of the public wish to pull any of the items on the consent agenda? Anyone online want to pull something?

No one online, Mayor.

OK, so could we have a motion to approve the consent agenda items A, B, C, and E?

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Motion by Mayor Pro Tem Robbins, second by Council Member Salter. Mayor McMillan?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Robbins? Yes. Council Member Kirchherr? Yes. Council Member Dowling?

Yes.

Council Member Salter?

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. Okay, item 8D, the appointment of Ian Spatz to the ADR match. I well shouldn't he say why he's pulling it first yeah.

I was just hoping the governance committee could tell us a little bit about their process and why they selected Ian and just want to hear about it because it's obviously an important appointment.

I'll let you speak Terry.

I'll start, you can finish. It was a very good interview. We interviewed two very capable applicants. I think that we were, both of us, both Elizabeth and I, thought they were both very capable and competent, and each of us had a City Council Chambers, A sense that we liked one or the other, so Elizabeth favorite one I favorite another we could not come to a decision, so we really worked with Roberta. City Council Chambers, Who heads up planning and asked her to think about who would work best with her committee and team and would fit in and then she shared with us her ideas.

City Council Chambers, I don't have anything to add.

City Council Chambers, Any questions.

So I think it's great. I'm so glad you guys did that. I hope with these appointments, maybe we can all think about maybe it's a future item is how to incorporate the ADR members in sort of the interview process or having them be a part of it just to make sure that they can work with this colleague as well. So it's just something for the future.

Public comment on this item? Anybody in the chamber? Anybody online?

No one online, Mayor.

Great. So can we have a motion to approve item 8D? Make a motion to approve item 8D. Is there a second? Second.

Motion by Councilmember Dowling, second by Councilmember Salter. Mayor McMillan?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Robbins. Yes. Council Member Kircher. Yes. Council Member Dowling.

Yes.

Council Member Salter. Yes. Motion passes 5-0.

Thank you. Number nine, public hearing on planning projects. There are none. So we're moving on to number 10. Town Council to consider approving the proposed Fourth Amendment to the amended and restated joint powers agreement with the Ross Valley Fire Department and authorize the mayor to execute the amendments.

Mayor and Council Chief Dan Mahoney of the Ross Valley Fire Department will be presenting this item tonight. And also we have just Jeff Zuba, who's the director of finance for the city of San Anselmo and also provides finance director services to the Ross Valley Fire Department. So take it away, Chief. Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Council. I want to first call out there's a mistake in the staff report on page four. This section was inadvertently left in the staff report. It is under the voting section, and it does not pertain to the Council. This actually pertained to the Ross Valley Fire Department Board of Directors meeting last night, where They unanimously voted to approve the distribution of this Fourth Amendment, and that's why I'm here in front of you tonight. So I apologize for the confusion, but this portion of the staff report is not pertinent to tonight. The recommendation I bring to you tonight is that it's recommended that the Town Council consider approving the Fourth Amendment to the amended and restated Joint Powers Agreement with the Ross Valley Fire Department, otherwise known as the RVFD, and authorize the mayor to execute the amendment. A little bit of background, the Joint Powers Agreement was amended and restated back in July of 2010. This included the inclusion of the Sleepy Hollow Fire Protection District into the JPA. The first amendment to this JPA was in July of 2012. This is the amendment that brought your town, the town of Ross, into the Ross Valley Fire Department. The second amendment was February 14, or February of 2014. And this amendment established a made established a management committee in implemented a government code. And then the last amendment that we had was the third amendment implemented January one of 2022 in this provided for the closure of the Ross fire station. And it also called out the allocation of authority resources, savings, and costs attributed to the Ross Fire Station closure. So that's what brings me here today for my presentation of the Fourth Amendment. Section 24.5 of the Third Amendment outlines how the authority would credit savings to the town of Ross beginning on the date of the Ross Fire Station closure, which was July 1st of 2025. through the planned transition of three captain positions to three firefighter paramedic positions and three engineer positions to three firefighter paramedic positions for a total of six positions. You'll notice that savings from each position varies slightly. This is due to the differences in salaries and benefit costs of the employees who left the positions compared to the employee who replaced them so, for example. These differences may be driven by employees salary steps educational incentive cow purse retirement, whether they're a classic Member or their pepper Member. The savings calculation also included the elimination of one fire engine from the authority's vehicle replacement schedule. Fiscal year 25-26 is when the department first started recognizing savings. And as of July 16th of this year, 2026, the department completed the transition of the sixth and final position. bringing the full savings credit to the town of Ross at $357,222. The Third Amendment also addresses in Section 9.4 certain service levels. Effective last July of 2025, the department transitioned to a minimum staffing level of three firefighters on all three fire engines. This was accomplished through a combination of The closure of station 18 which allowed two of the department's fire engines to be staffed with three firefighters. And the Ross valley fire department board of directors decision on October of 2024 with their approval to hire three additional firefighters to increase the staffing on that one remaining fire engine that was a two person engine. So tonight, I bring to you a Fourth Amendment to the amended Restated Joint Powers Agreement. And it's being proposed as to reflect changes to Section 8.1, which is member percentage shares, and reflect the actualization of the proposed changes to service levels as outlined in Section 9.4 of the Third Amendment. So the updates that are being proposed for Section 8.1 are that now that the Department has realized the full savings as of July 16, 2024, by the firefighter transitions and the elimination of one fire engine from the authority's vehicle replacement schedule, we have now realized the full savings of these two items. And you'll see attachment three outlines how we came to the total cost of $357,222. The proposed edits for section one that are in excuse me, the proposed edits for Section 8.1 that are in the Fourth Amendment, you'll see are on page 3 in a redline version. The proposal is to move San Anselmo's cost allocation to 41.99%, Fairfax to 24.14%, Ross to 20.61%, and Sleepy Hollow to 13.26%. The update did section of 9.4. It states that there will not be not less than three sworn fire trained firefighters at two of the three fire stations. As I mentioned, we have moved to the third fire station as being staffed with three firefighters. And so you'll notice in section 9.4 at the bottom of page three, The red line version now reads, the authority's three fire stations will be routinely open, fully staffed, and equipped for 24-hour continuous operation by not less than three full-time sworn trained firefighters at all three fire stations. The Fourth Amendment has an effective date of July 16th. As of this was the first day that we realized our full savings. So to ensure that we captured the exact time and date of those savings, we backdated the Fourth Amendment to that day so that we were fair and equitable. And that's the end of my report, and I'm open up to any questions, except that is not the end of my report. I have one more thing. I just wanted to remind folks that it's important to understand that this Fourth Amendment is the final product of a decision that was made back in 2022, which is the Third Amendment. So what I'm bringing to you, what we didn't know in the Third Amendment is what those costs were actually going to be. And so now that we have realized those costs, this Fourth Amendment just reflects an agreement that was already made. and a report.

Thank you, Chief Mahoney. I assume you don't have anything to add, Jeff. OK. Great.

Questions? I have two questions. So one is, You know, there has been talk about Frost paying more than what some think it's fair share based on the number of parcels and the number of incidents. This reassessment doesn't address that. Is that correct?

That's correct.

And then the other question is, when the station was closed, in a typical closure, I would expect that the savings would be all of the employees salaries are saved because that station is no longer open, but in this case, all of the employees in the raw station were transitioned to another station is that correct that's correct so. Is it could you say that Ross is still paying for all of these employees, even though they're no longer ross's employees.

I was not part of those deliberations back in 2022 and part of that agreement. I believe you were. So I can't speak to that. I wasn't part of it, but I can tell you what the agreement states is that the six positions, the deltas between those six positions will be part of the Ross cost savings.

That's fine. Thank you. Yeah.

So in the JPA agreement we're supposed to sign. It says these cost allocations should be fair and equitable. And so I just have a couple questions about that in terms of for us to deliberate how to determine that fair and equitable allocation. So the first one was that According to this agreement, these allocations should be reviewed, it looks like, at least every three years. Do you know if these allocations and studies were done on populations or other parcels and structures and fires, these reviews have ever happened?

Yeah, I believe the JPA states that they can't be reviewed more than every three years. no i'm not aware that that there's ever been a um a discussion about um cost allocation i i do know that there was a discussion on what's fair and equitable during the discussions on the fourth amendment what was agreed upon back in 2022. yeah no i just mean like studies done any studies maybe that we haven't seen by maybe third parties of what these sort of what each town's service calls and whatnot would be in relation to the cost allocations

That would be done at the correction of the board to me it's okay to say what we don't we haven't seen anything there's nothing that I haven't seen essentially it doesn't exist okay. Second question is that there has been talk about Elvide or as a relevant comp for Ross because they also give up their fire station and I think 1982 are you aware that their ally cost allocation is based on parcels the relative parcels. a Belvedere to Tiburon?

To be honest with you, I don't have that much information on that.

Would it surprise you?

Nowadays, anything surprises me, Matthew. So, and to be honest with you, I'm here to present what was an already agreed upon agreement. I'm here to help answer any questions on the numbers, on the calculations, on the methodology that we have,

brought forward to your to your council based on the direction of the of the um 2022 third amendment which is gave me direction to come back to you all oh no no i i totally get the narrow focus of what you're telling us but i have to tell my community that i'm signing an agreement that says it's fair and equitable that's what the words are and that each town that signs is attesting to that fact Mayor Mrakas, And that's what I have to do so i'm trying to get information, so that maybe I can make the best decision there. Mayor Mrakas, The next question is just on our vp a since you serve on that board as well. Mayor Mrakas, How does our vp a set the cost allocations between the communities what's that formula.

Mayor Mrakas, i'm not sure of the of the formula it's it's a it's tax based based on the parcel.

Mayor Mrakas, On parts but. That that's how our vpa I believe that's what I brought forward to your board a couple months ago with yeah full report, I know it was so I just wanted it to be clear that it's based a parcel tax in every community so it's just the number of parcels in each community and then we're we all pay the same rate that rate is actually standardized cracked.

It depends, I mean i'm not. I talked about the rvp in the rate. When I was here to present the staff report, I'd be more than happy to send you the staff report and you can review the staff report, but I don't think it's necessarily relevant to what I'm bringing to your board tonight, which is questions about the Ross Valley Fire Department and the attrune of the six positions and the fire engine reduction from the authority's replacement schedule.

Okay, and then the last is for Krista. Do you think that these allocations are fair and equitable for Ross?

Yeah, I do. Yes.

And why?

Because they are, well, first of all, like Chief Mahoney has stated, they are coming out of the Third Amendment, which all the members agreed to. And actually, at that time, the estimate was $300,000. So when I see this and it's $357,000, I'm I'm pleased with that increase. I'm certainly very comfortable with the formula, the calculations, all that work that the chief and Mr. Zuba, I'm absolutely 100% confident in this is fair. They put a lot of work into this and explaining it. We've had so many meetings about it. um you know we are the the council uh back in 2012 made a decision and they made an agreement and there are a lot of it's not as just it's not as simple as number of parcels there's a there were a lot of other things that went into it if the council at some point um and the through their representation on the fire board that's something that the ross council can inquire about in the future Agreeing to this tonight does not prevent the council from continuing to ask questions or have an evaluation. That's something you can still do in the future. The item before you tonight is really clear. And as you said, it's narrow. And I'm comfortable with it and concur with Chief Mahoney's recommendation that the council authorize the mayor to execute the amendment.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions by council members? Public comment on this item? Any public comment in the chamber?

mayor council members bob herbst i'm speaking to you tonight as the president of the friends of ross firehouse on january 8th to 2026 you heard in public testimony from stew gary from city gate associates the town's public safety consultant and mike stanley from jensen hughes the friends public safety consultant that fire service Cost sharing is determined based on the cost to provide service. It's the demand. So let's look at what the demand has been in Ross versus Sleepy Hollow versus San Anselmo and Fairfax, the four partner towns. Ross has about 250 incident calls a year. Sleepy Hollow, about 550. Each of San Anselmo and Fairfax have about 1,100. If you do the math on that, Ross is paying about $10,000 per incident compared to $3,000 to $5,000 per incident for the other three partners. Friends of Ross Firehouse and I believe any Ross resident listening tonight would agree that is not a fair and equitable cost share arrangement. Council Member Salter has addressed, the other primary method of establishing that, other than just looking at pure incidence, is parcels or population. If you look at it from a population basis, I'm forgetting my numbers, excuse me. Ross, I forgot the numbers. But anyway, Ross is paying between three and one and a half times as much per resident as the three other partner towns. Sleepy Hollow is the most comparable partner town. We each have 2,400 residents, roughly. Right now, in what's being proposed to you in this Fourth Amendment, Ross will be paying $2.7 million, and Sleepy Hollow will be paying $1.7 million. Again, this is not fair and equitable. I think it's very important that our Ross residents understand these numbers as you, the town council, makes this decision tonight. Thank you.

Thank you, Bob. Anybody else in the chamber? Hi, Laura.

I'm actually so glad that this issue is on the agenda because it illustrates exactly why Julie McMillan should not be re-elected. Julie is president of the Ross Valley Fire Department Board and she has still let this happen. Why has this happened for 10 years under your watch that we have been paying, we have been grossly being overcharged by over $1 million per year? We should only be paying like the 10% that's based on population and incidence consistent with what is being charged for the paramedics and how like Belvedere pays Tiburon. We could afford to operate a fire station if we hadn't, for the last 10 years, been overpaying by over $1 million. We would have had the $14 million in the bank to build a fire station. This is a failure of leadership on your part. You have run around falsely telling people I can only assume to cover this lack of looking at these numbers earlier over the last decade, telling people we can't pay. This is a failure on your part over these 10 years from not addressing this gross inequity of a million dollars a year. But what you fail to tell our community when you are falsely telling people things is that you've allowed Ross to be grossly overcharged for 10 years while you've been on town council and mayor for the last two decades. And even now when with this gross inequity that has been pointed out to you in your mayor of Ross and on the president of the Ross Valley Fire Board, you still claim that the agreement is fair and haven't done anything to change it. So you're still supporting Ross being overcharged $1 million a year. It's time for you to go, Julie. It's time for new leadership. It's time for you to be replaced by Bob Herbst and Paul Russler. Residents deserve fiscal responsibility, accountability, and transparency from people who have Ross's best interest at heart.

Thank you. Thank you, Laura. Anybody else? Yes, you may.

Further to Laura's point. Oh, yes, absolutely. I'm Paul Russler. I'm a 27-year resident of Ross. I live right behind us here. Yeah. And I have children right here, two children at Ross School. I just came from the Ross School Foundation meeting where I'm Ross School Foundation president. So that's why I'm late. But in 2012, we joined the JPA and apparently we just handed over our financials. And they took those numbers, 2.7 million. Back then it was less, of course. I think it was 2.1 million. It's grown over time. And we haven't revisited an actual formula that should be applied to our contribution to this four-town JPA agreement. So currently, we're paying $2.7 million. We had an adjustment in there of $357,000, I believe it is. And all we're doing is memorializing that with this new agreement going forward. Julie has been the mayor and has been on the town council for nine years, approximately. She is the president of the Ross Valley Fire Department. And as far as I'm aware, this has not been challenged. As a matter of fact, Elizabeth Robbins, who did question this, who was on the fire board, was pulled off and replaced by you, Julie. don't understand why but it doesn't look good and there are competing interests at stake here not a conflict of interest but competing interests the other towns are getting a great deal at the expense of ross thank you anyone else in the chamber who would like to speak to this anyone online zach no one online mayor

Okay, so I'll bring it back to discussion. We could get into a big conversation about how the fee agreement was negotiated in 2012 and how it's been revised. I'm prepared to deal with that and address all those issues. I don't think any of that is relevant tonight. I think what we are here to do tonight is simply to confirm the amendment. So I would like a discussion, if it's needed, about the amendment, period. Not 2012, not failed leadership, not me being mayor for 20 years, et cetera. None of that is relevant. That is campaigning. So let's focus on this amendment and have a motion and move on. I'm ready to move.

Well, I feel like the council members should be able to have a discussion. Terry, that's sort of sort of I'm glad you're ready to move it.

Some of us are interrupting.

I'm going to say something. Julie's trying to take the high road. I'm sorry, folks. This is preposterous. These campaign speeches in our council chambers are totally inappropriate. And frankly, the level of ignorance here I mean, it's breathtaking. And folks, if you want to do this, do your homework, would you please? I mean, for heaven's sakes, you want to go to the fire board and renegotiate this without having any idea of how we got here in the first place. And to try to pin this all on Julie is just preposterous. The people who negotiated this, one of them's in the room right now. It's Beach Cool and Elizabeth Brekus. You know, Elizabeth Brekus is an attorney. She's a very aggressive attorney and a very smart attorney. And she and Beach negotiated what we're finalizing today. So before you start making these unfounded, preposterous charges, please do your homework. You can talk to Elizabeth. You can talk to Beach. You can talk to me. I was on the council then. You can talk to Elizabeth, who voted for it. And by the way, Elizabeth has been on the council this entire time. You know, we all agree we're paying a lot it's not uncommon for a wealthy community to support other communities, so they can have broader coverage that happens a lot. Do your homework understand what's going on, and please do not embarrass the town and impose upon these volunteers here with these kinds of attacks during a Council meeting I think it's completely inappropriate.

I don't know if you're, I don't want to interrupt you.

Thank you. I was going to move, but I see that a couple people want to speak, so go ahead.

So I think that the issue that I have is the JPA language says all costs shall be fairly and equitably allocated among all members the members here by acknowledge and agree that the percentage shares in this section 8.1 represent such a fair and equitable allocation as the 4th amendment effective date. So I understand what what that we are here to that they people on the council feel like our job is to sort of end this third amendment, take these savings and move on. But when we sign this agreement, we are attesting that this is a fair and equitable allocation. And to me, it is not. It just simply is not. And I have done my homework. And my homework is to look at what we pay the RVPA, which includes a lot of these similar towns. We're paying 4% of that. Mayor Mrakas, And it's based on our share of parcels I look at all the fire districts and all of the special districts that we have they're all based on parcels. Mayor Mrakas, Which just means that there are no town borders I couldn't agree with you more I think shared services should be shared and allocated based on. Mayor Mrakas, Your your parcels or your population it's it's really simple you all are part of it there's no borders. for our sanitary system. There's no borders for water. We just, we all pay based on our parcel for water. And that's the way these services should be shared. But this doesn't smell right. That a town loses its fire station and loses the firemen in town and somehow $300,000 is all we get for it. It looks like a really bad deal. And I understand that That was negotiated back then. There's different people on the Council today, and it doesn't feel fair or equitable, and I don't feel comfortable signing the agreement attesting that this is a fair and equitable shake for Ross. And I think that there's people running, and I know you're upset that they spoke and they're campaigning, and I can understand that, but they have every right to be upset because they've lost their fire station and they've lost their firemen under the pretenses that we can't afford them. We can't afford them because we're sending all of our money to these other towns. And the deal that we're getting for it, we're getting $300,000 for giving up local fire protection seems like a really bad deal for us. It's not fair. It's not equitable. I do not support this amendment.

I just want to say that I think that it's disappointing that this reallocation effort didn't take advantage of a total reallocation. the cost sharing hasn't been evaluated at all since 2012. And while the group that negotiated that contract in 2012 agreed that that initial agreement was fair, it doesn't seem fair based on parcels, based on population, based on service calls. And I think it's disappointing that this current reallocation didn't, wasn't a broader discussion into what each town should be paying.

So I have the, can I just make a comment?

Yeah, I want to make a comment too.

You know, I didn't want to make this comment, but I'm going to make this comment. In 2012, when the negotiation took place, this is the stuff that I said was not relevant, but given that everyone has brought it up, There were several factors that were considered to determine our cost allocation, including the number of parcels and population, the calls for service, the assessed valuation, which was 27.9%, and the fact that we were bringing 25% of the firefighters and 25% of the facilities to the JPA. In the negotiations, the two people who negotiated on behalf of the town of Ross were Scott Hunter and Rupert Russell, an attorney and a successful business person. They negotiated for over a year and a half. And the allocation that was agreed to for Ross was 23 point something percent based on a reduction from the 25% of the facilities and the 25% of the firefighters that we were bringing to the table. to reflect the call volume and our parcels. We all, I wasn't on the council then, but we all agreed that that was fair. Subsequent to that negotiation with the closure of our fire station, we agreed that we would only have to pay 27% of the cost to maintain station 19 in San Anselmo. This year in our budget, 27% of the maintenance for the San Anselmo Station 19 is $6,750. $6,750. San Anselmo, Sleepy Hollow, and Fairfax have just paid nearly $7 million to redo Station 20 and Station 21. so think about that we did not contribute one dime to those remodels nothing we're paying six thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars to maintain station 19. so we could we could bring this up with the ross valley fire board the other members do you realistically think that they're going to have any appetite in light of what they've just spent to renegotiate this deal And I really object matt when you say we don't have any fire services in Ross, we have fire services in Ross that's why we pay $2.7 million every year to Ross valley fire for fire services. The luxury the benefit of closing our station is we don't have to rebuild remodel a station or pay to maintain our station so it's not just you know parcels and. You know, we can throw around all these terms, population, call volume, parcels, et cetera. What really matters is what the other three parties are willing to do in the negotiation. And I talk to those people a lot. And in light of the expenditure that they just made for those two stations, there is no appetite. City Council Chambers, For them to continue to subsidize the town of Ross, especially in light of the fact that their three shares have gone up and our share has gone down. City Council Chambers, So I just want to make that clear that people need to understand the one other thing that I will say is Paul Elizabeth was removed from the Ross valley fireboard not because she raised this issue, but because she was. She was maligning the Marin County Fire Chief, Jason Weber, when we were trying to have productive negotiations with the Ross Valley Paramedic Authority Board to get a long-term lease. And Jason Weber is also the executive officer of the Ross Valley Paramedic Authority. And so it was a very bad look. It was not serving the town well to have that representation on the fire board. And that's why I asked her to be removed. It had nothing to do with this fee allocation, none of that. Okay, thank you.

Julie, I think I deserve a chance to comment after that. I certainly have never had any intention to malign Jason Weber. I simply pointed out that he had assured the Ross community on multiple occasions And in and in multiple PowerPoint presentations that if the raw station closed Ross would have essentially the same. Medical emergency response for 85% of the calls, because the ambulance would be present in Ross well the data, even before the station closed from a full year 2023 as written in the 2024 city gate ambulance study. showed that the ambulance response time was already 9.9 minutes, 52 seconds, considerably longer than the 7 minutes, 55 seconds that Jason Weber had said we could expect for 85% of our calls. And so there was never an intention to malign anyone. There was simply an intention to point out that we accepted the reassurance that our medical calls would be essentially unchanged after the fire station closed, but we found by data from 2023 and also by data from 2025 that in fact the ambulance can't make up the time lost by having a fire engine here that could respond in seven minutes, 55 seconds. So again, I respect Jason Weber. I think that he was mistaken when he told us that. We trusted that figure, and that was a key reason that we felt that it was okay to close the fire station when we voted to close it. We understood that we had almost no fire calls, but that most of our calls were medical. And again, we were assured that most of our medical calls would be answered just as quickly as even after the station closed. So, you know, again, I didn't step down. You told me you were removing me. And that was that.

Mayor Tory I would like to respond since you publicly attacked me um in this little session I didn't mention your name once and I would like to say that my job is to look at things with a fresh eye I wasn't here back when all these agreements were done so I always do my homework and I do my reading and this amendment does say we need to attest to a fair and equitable share And I can appreciate that people feel like we're saving money because we don't have to have a fire station anymore to pay for. So we're not paying for their fire stations. But the other three towns all have fire stations and they have staffing and we're subsidizing them. It's not the other way around. We're paying for their stations and the staffing for their stations because we've given up ours. And the question is why? Why did we do that? And why can't we afford that? Mayor Mrakas, And part of the reason is we're paying a very outsized share for this agreement, and I would have said. Mayor Mrakas, To to give up our station, we should have gotten a lot more money back because we gave up such an important resource that was here for our residents safety and $300,000 doesn't even come close to it. Mayor Mrakas, And it's not what belvedere did you Julie, you mentioned belvedere many, many times in here, they did it and they are totally well served and etc, etc, but they're paying only 20%. Mayor Mrakas, Because they only have 20% of the parcels here are parcels are 8% Julie 8% but we're paying over 20% of the budget. Mayor Mrakas, it's not fair it's not equitable and it's our job to fix it not to try to cover it up, not to say it's okay it's not Okay, you know it's not Okay, but we need to work together to change these things. because our residents are paying way too much for the service. It's not fair, and it's not what any other town does, and it's not what we do with Ross Valley Paramedic Authority. So I don't know why we keep trying to protect the past instead of coming forward with the future and doing what's best for our residents.

Can I just respond? I'm just trying to be pragmatic. And the agreement that the people in Belvedere negotiated with Tiburon Fire, that happened in 1982. You know, our agreement was negotiated in 2012. I think there's a risk of pushing and pushing and pushing these other three members that they're going to say, you guys are on your own. And then we're not going to have, you know, be a part of Ross Valley Fire. I'm very concerned about how, you know, Belle, I appreciate how you said that things are coming together and we're moving forward. But I'm really, really concerned. City Council Chambers, about whether or not we're going to be able to deliver a paramedic authority and facility for the paramedic authority by January of 2029. City Council Chambers, And, and so you know I think we need to refocus and i'm sorry that this conversation has gotten so far off the rails we're just here to approve the fourth amendment to the ross valley fire jpa that's all we're supposed to be doing tonight.

Okay. Yes. I was just going to move, but now I think I'm going to say something. I'm really sorry that the people in the room, in this room tonight, feel they can personally attack and disparage members of the Town Council. We care about this town as much as you do. I agree with what Bill said, and I think that we are just talking about the Fourth Amendment. There is no reason on this good earth that we can't have a Fifth Amendment, which may deal with some of the things that we're trying to talk about now, but are not on the agenda. So, with that, I move that the Ross Town Council approve the proposed Fourth Amendment.

Second.

Motion by Councilmember Dowling, second by Councilmember Kirchherr. Mayor McMillan?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Robbins?

No.

Councilmember Kirchherr?

Yes.

Councilmember Dowling?

Yes.

Councilmember Salter? No. Motion passes 3-2.

Item number 11, the Town Council to consider accepting the investment report for the 12 month period ending June 30, 2026. Krista.

Thank you, Mayor and Council members. I'm joined here this evening with our appointed treasurer, Jeffrey Kuhn, who's reviewed the report that was in your agenda packet. The item before you this evening is the investment report for the year ending June 30th, 2026. The Council is asked to accept the report. The Town of Ross investment policy is reviewed annually by the Town Council. It was last reviewed and approved just this past June 11, 2026, and it requires the provision of these quarterly investment reports to the Town Council. Current investments are consistent with that investment policy and are allowable under current California law. Investments are selected to meet the following objectives listed in priority order, safety, liquidity, and yield. Sufficient liquidity exists to fund operating and capital project requirements for the next 12 months. The town's investments are held in two main accounts. The first is with the Local Agency Investment Fund, as we know it, we call it LAIF, and it's operated by the California State Treasurer's Office. Leif investment income for all funds for the 12 month period ending June 30 was $540,271. The reported returns for the Leif funds are 3.92% for the last quarter that ended June 30. The town's investments are also held in a U.S. bank account managed by a company called Time Value Investments. An additional report from TVI requested by Councilmember Salter is included in the set of attachments to the staff report for this item. per town council direction last september 10th so exactly a year ago the town of ross transferred 10 million dollars from lafe to a u.s bank investment account the fair market value of this investment at june 30th 2026 is 10 million 064 which is 20 000 less than the balance at the end of the third quarter accrued interest that the town paid on its bond purchases will come back to the town when those bonds make their next interest payments unrealized gains and losses will remain on paper only and the securities will mature at par value on the maturity date as long as the town holds all the securities until their maturity date our treasurer is here this evening should there be questions for him regarding this investment report thank you before i take questions i would like you to

It is on. Oh, grab your paper or look it up in your computer. The first page I want to draw your attention to is the one that has the life pie. And they're really the only important statistic that's relevant to what I'm about to talk about is that life manages presently this under the office of the California treasurer. They've currently managed $193 billion. It's one giant mutual fund. They do, I don't know, dozens of in and outs every single day. So getting your money out of life is like going to a giant, I don't know, machine, stick in your card and out comes a bunch of money. It's almost that simple. Krista needs to get about a million bucks a month to pay for payroll and the usual. She just calls them up and the money is in Wells Fargo that day. Next day, excuse me. Okay, so page I wanna talk about is, it says page five, it's not page five But if you go and look through the document and see a page like this, I'm going to talk about this page. Next Tuesday, we get a million dollars cash. Somebody is just matured, or they will on Tuesday morning. The town is facing a large expenditure for that building over there over the next two years. So the question becomes, where do we get the money and how frequently and how easily can we get it? You guys may remember that 30 years ago, Orange County filed bankruptcy over a $1.9 billion error because they didn't have They had a complete mismatch between obligations they had to meet and liquidity that they didn't have. The worst thing I or somebody in my position could do is not pay attention to the liquidity. Yield is the very last thing you worry about. Liquidity is what you very much worry about. So let me take you to the middle. section of this hard to read page. It says maturity date. Then the total part value of the TVI portfolio right now is 10.23 million. 50% of the portfolio will mature in the next two years. In other words, by the time we finish building that building. The next I just told you about the next maturity data is by the end of 2028 6.2 million out of the 10 at TVI will have matured, and so the question is what do we do about the 6.2 million as it will roll over to us. My position and my strong recommendation is that, as each one matures. the proceeds from the maturity gets wired to LAIF immediately. Because we can always, this is our giant cash machine, we can always get the money from LAIF. We can't always do it if we're just sitting on raw securities. The present balance of our funds for the council at LAIF is today, pardon me, 12.8 million. So we're gonna throw another 6 million in change from TVI, assuming you'll go along with that. Plus we have money coming in. Taxes, property tax bills go out next week, I believe it is. And so pretty soon the town is gonna be getting a lot of cash. It gets cash from the assessor's office three times. So The difference in the yield between what LAFE is currently issuing, which is about 3.8 million, 3.8%, excuse me, and what is happening with the federal funds rate, which is going up based on, you all have read the papers, there's gonna be a difference in the yield between the two, and that difference is about $35,000. So in order to have liquidity, on let's call it $20 million, we're going to give up $35,000 in yield. To me, it's a complete no-brainer. Any questions? Matt?

Mayor Mrakas, So I can appreciate, thank you for that report Jeff I want to make a couple of things clear, we have our entire balances are $27 million, so we, we have close to $30 million and only 10 million is in this TVI portfolio. And when we set this up, it was for that reason we said, let's just take a third or a small portion to go into the longer portfolio that goes out five years because we have tons of liquidity. We have over two-thirds of the portfolios in life. And so yields have backed up tremendously right now. So right now for a three-year bond, a treasury is yielding 4.7%. which is far in excess of what LIFE is paying. So it is not, if we had all our money in this ladder, I would be concerned, but it's only a third of our money. And if we don't reinvest it in the ladder, we're giving up 4.7% over a three-year treasury. So we have ample liquidity. The point of this portfolio was just to be strategic and earn extra interest on money that we're sitting on. So I just want to make that really clear. That was the goal of this portfolio, and it's doing what it's supposed to. And then the second thing is treasuries are very liquid. They can be sold actually the same day. You can actually settle a treasury T plus zero. So there's no, they're actually, it's probably easier to get the treasury proceeds than actually lay fast to settle over a day. So at any point, the town can sell a treasury. It's the most liquid market in the entire world. So there is no risk to liquidity, but what we could lose is the principal value if interest rates continue to back up. So I just want to make those points very clear as it's a small portfolio relative to our liquidity and that the potential for it to earn enhanced yield, we'd be giving up that yield if we don't reinvest in the latter.

Mayor and Council it's just a reminder that the item before you this evening is actually an investment report for the year ending June 30 and you're asked to accept it. I if there is a. Not a disagreement, but if there is an interest in having a discussion between the town's appointed treasurer you do have your finance subcommittee. That has been established and that that could be an a way that we could have a meeting and you both we can all talk about it. about this issue of whether to reinvest or do as our treasurer had recommended and to get a council member Salter. So just a suggestion, but the item before you is to accept a report for the year ending June 30th.

Thank you, Krista. Any other questions about this? Any public comment on this item? Anyone online, Zach?

No one online, Mayor.

Okay, so do we need a motion to accept it? Is that what we're doing? We need a motion to accept the investment report.

Okay, I recommend that the Town Council accept the investment report. Second.

Motion by Councilmember Dowling, second by Mayor Pro Tem Robbins. Mayor McMillan?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Robbins? Yes. Councilmember Kirchherr?

Yes.

Councilmember Dowling?

Yes.

Councilmember Salter?

Yes.

Motion passes 5-0.

But I think it's a great idea to bring it to the Finance Committee, Chris.

City Council Chambers, Item 12 is town council to receive an update from staff regarding the status of the implementation of the town of Ross facilities master plan, including analysis of the San Anselmo fire station 20 renovation project and fairfax fire station 21 remodel project. Christa.

Thank you, Mayor and council members. Our project manager, David Kelly, who's also our interim public works director, is here this evening to give a update on the implementation of our project with a focus on the past quarter because your last official update was in June. So this will be on what's happened since June, with also an emphasis on what's happened in the last couple of weeks and on some information that David collected from the cities of San Anselmo and Fairfax on their projects that were recently completed and are still underway. David, are you ready to go? Or do you need a little more? Can we pull this back? Does that work? Or forward or back? Back, I think. Oh, oh. Yeah, you got it.

Thank you. When you're ready, Mayor. OK. Good evening, Mayor McMillan, Mayor Pro Tem Robbins, members of the Council. Good evening. I'm David Kelly. I'm your project manager. Tonight is an update on the facilities master plan. Specifically, it's update number five. Really, the focus tonight is on where the master plan process stands. What the regional station comparison tells us, and additional analysis that we would like to discuss with Council to to move the amendment process forward. I'll try to keep the kind of the past update brief and really focus on Gensler's work products, so we can get your key policy feedback to keep this process moving. Mayor Mrakas, So just a quick update Council knows that they've accepted the the CAC concept for for further technical operation and financial analysis. Mayor Mrakas, there's been a number of. Mayor Mrakas, completion elements met that included the 3D scanning of all the interior facilities, including the town hall and the. Public safety building, we are also advancing the topographic survey the survey team is going to be on site. Next week, conducting their survey work and that'll that'll help with the site planning effort. we're also continuing coordination with the town departments and our public safety partners in particular with respect to both the the paramedics square footage and the police in the in the police square footage, as well as the fire station. Likewise, staff is also actively working with both the Crown Castle on location for an updated telecommunication facility and Cedars on a potential partnership for affordable housing on the north end of the site. The intent of all this work is to convert this parallel work stream into a coherent and documented and financially understandable facilities master plan. One thing I just want to point out that staff has been very busy over the last quarter. Here's just a highlight in terms of the six meetings that I've attended and participated in, along with the town manager and staff as part of this master plan work, again, to advance this master plan as quickly and efficiently as possible. So with that i'm really going to jump now to where the against our work stands want to focus that their their work really is on program validation, they redo they reviewed the space program worksheets that. City Council Chambers, or updated from the original facilities master plan we've developed a decision log where changes have been made or updated there's particularly now a focus with council's direction at your last meeting to kind of focus in on the fire and paramedics based Program. City Council Chambers, As I mentioned, the. City Council Chambers, One of the critical elements is to adopt document existing conditions laser scans complete topographic surveys advancing and again that's going to help inform site planning. City Council Chambers, Some of the next steps, once the space programming is complete is to do this, the blocking and stacking analysis which will again help inform how the layout of the spaces on the civic Center site are going to be accomplished. City Council Chambers, Ultimately, that will come back to counsel for review additional next steps include you know cost estimating right now we're focusing in on benchmarking data for for fire stations in and we want to come back and. with a transparent cost estimate for that work. And last but not least, there's been initial review of that space program has been completed. And ultimately the goal is to present that to council. The key step here is to validate the space requirement for particularly the fire and paramedic. And there's gonna be a policy question that we raised tonight for council's input. Ultimately, the key discipline that's driving all this is to avoid fixing the building program until the operational needs are addressed. Shared spaces in particular are very important. How are those all going to function? And again, seeking opportunities for efficiencies with things like shared kitchens, shared restrooms, and other shared facilities. So again, trying to minimize where possible the square footage of the facility to save costs. but not do it at the detriment to the operations. So you may ask why the regional station memo was prepared. I think at the last council meeting, kind of a question was raised whether should Ross's fire station program be informed more directly by the recently renovated Ross Valley fire department stations in San and SOMO and Fairfax. I think the direction was clear to look at those facilities. So the analysis that was performed include reviewing the plans, the budgets, focus on the cost estimates, look at the renovation scope, the staffing context in those functional spaces. The intent was to, let's put this here. City Council Chambers, is to really identify how they can serve as regional benchmarks and identify additional analysis for ginsler so we can advance and move this forward. City Council Chambers, And that's really going to be a theme here is the the the memo that was included in in the packet providing the update was intended to help inform ginsler's work to develop a scope of work that would serve as amendment number. three or excuse me amendment number two to their their work as as part of addressing the council's direction and support for including a fire station as part of the city center project. Mayor Mrakas, A couple things to note here is that a sentence almost station 20 as well as fairfax station 21 are both staffed by Ross valley fire department, and I think they do serve as regional comparisons Council had some discussion about that earlier this evening. Mayor Mrakas, The memo does distinguish some of the renovation constraints from a new programming exercise. But that's why we want to call out what the work is that we'd like Gensler to perform as part of validating the space program for the fire station. So just to kind of jump into the regional benchmarking and talk about size and project scope, looking at and evaluating the plans for the San Anselmo Fire Station, it identified that that proposed project or renovation project involved expanding the square footage. The existing square footage was just about using round numbers, 3,500 square feet. The expansion project increased the square footage just slightly over 1,000 square feet, or by about 30%. Really, in terms of its scope, you can consider it a comprehensive renovation and expansion. I wanted to note that that project was really a full seismic retrofit. A lot of discussion around, you know, Essential Services Act and compliance. That entire building was raised above the base flood elevation, and I think that's that could be become relevant to to to our our station here, our civic center. City Council Chambers, Given the requirements of the central services act, but that'll be something that will be determined with further topographic survey work that will inform this process. City Council Chambers, With respect to fairfax station 21 it's it's 6000 square feet on, but this project is maybe can be better characterized as a remodel project involving 2532 square feet it's currently underway, by the way it's. City Council Chambers, In process there's there's no expansion, but about 42% of the station is affected. By this, this renovation. Again, just for comparison purposes, the proposed program provided the space program prepared by Gensler for this fire station for the Ross fire station. is 5,699 square feet, or if you want to round it up, 5,700. That is based in part on the work that was prepared by Mary McGrath, and I know there's some concerns about that, but it's important to note that The square footage as programmed currently by Gensler falls between these two regional fire stations in terms of in terms of sizes. So one Santa Soma 4550 Fairfax 6000 and we're looking at about 5700 based on current programming. So in terms of cost, the Fairfax Station, again, it's underway. So there could be change orders and this cost could change because it's in process. But for that renovation project, it's $1.6 million. So that nets out to about $632 an affected square foot. In comparison, the Santa Soma station was is 5.375,000,000, and and just to note that that funding is in its detailed in the memo is a combination of funding from both the San and Soma, as well as the city hollow fire district and City Council Chambers, The on a square foot basis it comes out at about $1,181 and again just to know the. City Council Chambers, The cost estimates that were provided by Mary graph indicated cost range from about $900 to $1,200 a square foot and this kind of shows you that the cost estimating data is pretty reflective of the current market conditions. City Council Chambers, And again, there was a range provided in the Mary mcgrath study, but this is. It kind of reflects again of the the work that went into that is being relevant to the work again major cost drivers for particularly the Santa Soma station included that seismic retrofit the whole building elevation above base flood and noting that you know number of those improvements were or Ada related because that was you know again a regulation driving those improvements. So what does this tell us about Ross? And again, just breaking it down and trying to give context to both the two station projects as well as the fourth concept and the current Gensler program and noting that the memo does also address and provide some analysis of the CAC concept. So kind of this gives you a picture of the again the square footage for the four different concepts as presented here, noting that the parametric square footage under the Gensler program, notes 2964. And what I want to emphasize with that is that one of the factors that Gensler is looking at is this concept of gross square footage versus net square footage. The facility master plan that the council previously adopted City Council Chambers L' It had net square footage numbers, and so what the work that gets learned took was to gross up those figures by 30% to address. City Council Chambers L' The additional square footage that is necessary to support things like walls internal accessibility and just general space beyond just the. Mayor Mrakas, The program space, so you have space in between offices, for example, in terms of hallways and other things so it's a typical factor used by architects to take that net square footage and gross it up and so. Mayor Mrakas, that's kind of where sometimes you see some inflation in the gross figures, but we're asking ginsburg to really take a look at that where we've made them in contact with the facilities master plan original architect. City Council Chambers L' And so that's something that we need to to rectify but, again, this this kind of shows you that the what they came up with in terms of the space program is you know, in comparison to both sentence almost station 21 fairfax station or sentence almost station 20 and fairfax station 21. So in terms of recommended follow up for Gensler, we're again focused on this validation effort. The recommendation is to benchmark the Ross station against both stations 20 and 21. Use the Mary McGrath study as appropriate to identify space needs for some of the critical life safety features that the current station does not have. as well as current guidance and other recent California stations. So when you think of current guidance, you think of what does the Americans with Disabilities Act require? What does the NFPA regulations require? And all those things drive program that ultimately drives square footage. We think it's valuable to do a room by room comparison so you can kind of see what's in station 2021 and what would be a part of a Ross fire station. And that could be very informative, especially when you look at things like the apparatus bay, the turnout gear room, which I don't think is present in our current station, the decontamination room, sleeping room, what's the standard along with what they call MEP or mechanical electrical and plumbing. And again, that circulation factor.

Thank you.

I think it's important to, as part of that, because we've heard it from the chief, both chiefs, Chief Mahoney and Chief Weber, is to take into account what's called shift change. Often there's an overlap between shifts when there's, you know, say three firefighters on duty, the next three firefighters are coming on duty. So there's a total of six present. And if you think about that, if you have paramedics doing that at the same time, you could have up to 12 shifts. life safety personnel present any time. Again, from a transparency perspective, we'd like Gensler to explain this net versus gross area and be very clear on that and the basis for you know that circulation walls building support identify why any additional space is or is not required or recommended. you know, identify where appropriate, shared space efficiencies across fire, our VPA and adjacent civics gunner functions. A good example of that is the fitness center, the fitness center, it, you know, each entity, whether it's police or fire paramedics all want a location to You know, perform you know fitness activities and and that's we consider that as an opportunity for for shared space that could also be used by you know town hall staff. But, but ultimately to reconcile fire only paramedic only and share space into one integrated program and that's kind of where we're going and we're going to talk with you about in a moment. City Council Chambers, So a little bit about I understand there's been some some concerns about the benchmark memo on it, I just want to mention that this this this memo again was was prepared in response to what we heard from counseling your direction. and it's solely based on factual information. It was all information derived from the website. It was derived and reviewed from the plans that were provided. It was reviewed by both the San and SOMO project managers as well as the Fairfax Town manager with the recommendation that you know anything that was inconsistent with their understanding be removed or be modified, and we wanted to ensure that the memo was as factual and fact-based as possible again with the intent of informing Gensler on how best to move forward to advance this discussion, because we know it's a it's a weighty conversation around. How do you program a fire station? What's the appropriate square footage? So I want to just emphasize, I did have a conversation with Fire Chief Dan Mahoney. It was informal, so I don't want to quote it, but I think he felt the analysis was fairly sound. You know, it does do a couple of things. I think when you look at data, there's some key takeaways. while we recommend that the project serve as key benchmarks, there are some limits on comparability. They were built at different times and now council is looking at a completely new redesigned civic center. We have to take into account you know the seismic work in the and the flood limits here at this site. Also, there's differences in what kind of temporary facilities are going to be necessary, and you know different different soft costs and and constraints. City Council Chambers, So the recommendation again that's provided for in the memo this was a memo from me as your project manager to the town manager, so that it would help again a form. City Council Chambers, Our discussions with guns are about how do we, how do we tackle this issue, now that Council has given us direction, specifically. to incorporate the fire station in this renovated facility. Do that room by room benchmarking, address operational assumptions, do the net to gross reconciliation, and obviously identify opportunities for shared space. Do you want to point out if there's any information available that sheds light that something in that memo is is inaccurate it you know we i'm happy to update that for the managers town managers consideration. So. The next steps is really to have BKF complete their topographic survey, so again underway next week. That's been a work in progress to get them under contract, very large engineering firm, to complete the space program decisions with town departments, particularly Ross Valley Fire and Paramedic Authority. City Council Chambers, In in you know that's going to ultimately inform the blocking and stacking massing site access utilities and Jason sees that against there's going to evaluate. like to really reconcile the fire and paramedic program against regional benchmarks and kind of our goal is to return to council for review at your 923 special meeting to give council kind of an informal update on some of that work and i think krista may touch on that later so one of the key kind of policy issues that I think is critical is whether council supports continued valuation of an integrated fire and paramedic facility with appropriate shared spaces. And I think we'd like to hear from council, because right now the space allocation work that was prepared by Gensler took the lease agreement, it's signed, it's executed, and it identifies that as a standalone building. Now going back to the CAC concept, we want to integrate those uses. Does council support integrating fire and paramedic into one shared facility, which is again, kind of what Mary McGrath's study did was integrate those two concepts into one space study. And if council does support that, the town manager would work with the council and the town attorney to determine how and whether an amendment to the current lease agreement should be explored and what that would look like. No guarantees that it would reduce the square footage necessarily, but I think if council would like that to be done, we wanna make sure we inform Gensler that that be part of their scope of work to do that analysis as part of this next amendment. I just want to touch on some of the items that were reference documents for this memo. It included the September 10 council staff report, the fire station documents, Mary Rath report, as well as the Jensen Hughes study that was presented by FORF, as well as the CAC concept. So at this point, City Council Chambers L' That really concludes my update in focus again was on the memo in your packet we're seeking your input and feedback again so that we can it can help inform this amendment to genzo's work because remember. City Council Chambers L' The the fire station was programming is a whole scope of work in itself that was not part of cancer scope of work, it was to validate the. the CAC concept, the only data that we had relative to a fire station planning effort was in fact the Mary McGrath study. There was no direction given by staff to Gensler that they had to direct them to use that, but they did ask for all existing documentation and that was provided to them. And the expectation is that they, that they would update that as you know, based on their professional background in fire station design. So Again, a pause there. We are asking Council's feedback on this critical policy question about integration of space programming, but happy to entertain any questions you may have either about the update in general, the memo that was provided to from me to Krista on the regional benchmarking analysis and or this policy question.

So let's Mayor Mrakas, Ask questions and then we'll do public comment and then we'll bring it back for discussion questions Council members.

Mayor Mrakas, So I feel like there's a big disconnect with what is what is being asked of staff and what's being asked of gensler. And so I actually went back to the video and looked. We asked Gensler to evaluate Sleepy Hollow and the Fairfax rebuild and incorporate their learnings into a smaller footprint because they were able to remodel their stations and bring them all up to code for far less money. So why are you doing this report? Why is Gensler not just working on this? I don't understand why you created this report.

Oh, great question, Councilmember. Ultimately, the direction from Council is is to the manager, and that is for her to negotiate an agreement with you know, an amendment to the contract with Gensler to address This issue of how do you incorporate review of those two stations and those improvements into their analysis, so this work was done to help inform what the amendment to their scope of work should look like and ultimately to get your input and feedback. on the proposed amendment as part of this update so that when the update is done.

David, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but you go on for a long time. This is a very long presentation. We asked Gensler to do this work because they're architects, and we want them to look at these different models. And honestly, the CAC and people who are experts, which is not you. And so what I'm saying is the direction was to Gensler to do this, and so I'm surprised this entire analysis was done by staff. I'm sorry you had to waste all your time doing this. because it's not relevant. We want people who are architects to look at how other cities and towns have tackled these issues to rebuild their stations.

With all due respect, Council Member, I have experience. I've worked on fire station design, and the intent of this work is, again, to work with architects is to help inform their work. By Council giving direction to architects, it doesn't It doesn't address the fact that we need to amend their agreement and we need to have a very specific work task and work program for their proposed scope of work amendment. And I think this work is intended to help inform that so that what they provide to us in terms of a scope of work amendment reflects council's direction. I understand your desire for them to ultimately do that work. And that's what this is intended to do is be clear on what their analysis is So that it gives you the answers that you're looking for.

Yeah, so I would say that it is not clear. I think the report was very confusing. And I thought the conclusions were very confusing. And so I would just like to tell you that I don't think it was helpful. And then the second thing is on, I don't know why you keep bringing up the Mary McGrath report that was done for the elections code. That was a standalone fire and paramedic facility, a 7,600 square foot facility that was costed out at 21.7 million just to build that standalone facility, which is totally irrelevant to the discussion here of us trying to put a lot of our functions into one building. And this is so important to point out to you because I don't know why it keeps coming back. Tiburon is redoing station number 10. Mayor Mrakas, And it's 5000 square feet and they're spending 5.7 million okay and sleepy hollow is obviously done there, you know 5000 or so square feet and. Mayor Mrakas, The costs it's hard to follow, because of this sentence almost sleepy hollow but let's just say it's $5 million. Mayor Mrakas, So we have two recent fire design stations that meet all the codes and are meeting all these towns needs that are let's say four to $6 million range. Mayor Mrakas, And when the Council decided to shut ours down, they said it was going to cost 14 million back in 2021 that in today's dollars is $25 million. Mayor Mrakas, So we have these great comps and the point of these comps is so that whoever's designing this takes into account these current. Mayor Mrakas, stations that are being done very reasonably a very reasonable square footage, so that is the point and we don't need staff, I think the staff direction is to go to the architects and say take a look at these. and incorporate them into our planning so we can solve this problem. That's really all the direction that was given, and it was given to Gensler to do, and that's not what came back.

Mayor, I'd like to respond. Can we just, this is supposed to be questions and answers, so let's try to keep it with questions and answers.

So I first would like to Point the council's direction to the minutes from the August 26 special Council meeting that you approved earlier this evening. At the bottom of page 15 town manager Johnson summarized this is when I summarize to the Council to make sure that we had your direction from that evening, so the CAC letter that was sent early earlier today. It does not correspond with your now adopted minutes. Town Manager Johnson summarized the no fire house option will not be pursued. Staff will review San and Samoa Station 20, which is Sleepy Hollow, and Fairfax Station 21 as comparable facilities. She and Mr. Kelly will work with Gensler to develop an amended scope of work addressing a more detailed review of departmental programming and square footage, as well as the two referenced stations. The proposed amendment will be presented to the council on October 8th. That's the amendment to the Gensler contract. The revised scope will not be ready for the next council meeting, that's tonight, but the current work will continue in the interim. So I think you, I would like the council to please remember that until the very end of the August 26th meeting, all we heard over and over again from the council is this must be done in 12 weeks, 12 weeks, 12 weeks. So at the end of that September 26th meeting, the council loosened it up a little bit. That's great. You asked for more information about stations 20 and 21. I knew that you had this meeting. You have Council members, including Mayor Pro Tem, who has said over and over again that you want updates and information at every single Council meeting, and you want opportunities for the members of the public to know what's going on and to provide input. So here we as staff power out because Gensler, by the way, has canceled our last two weekly meetings because they have a lot of, they're doing a lot of work. So here we do, we have great contacts with the city of San Anselmo and the city of Fairfax. We start to collect this information, but we are providing it to Gensler to help inform the work that they're doing. So this emphasis kind of on this power, it is so unproductive. We are providing information to the council. If you think that this information that we provided tonight is unclear, maybe there's more information. I'd like feedback. Is there something that we missed? Because we can pass that on to Gensler, who, by the way, couldn't make it tonight. We will provide that to them, and we will be bringing back their evaluation, which is what you were looking for. But you're not going to be able to have, you can't have it all. You can't say you want something done right away and then expect a company who has many different clients We're trying to assist this and provide information to the council. It's also a heck of a lot cheaper to have our part-time project manager do some of this legwork and then really utilize Gensler's expertise with their project principal as their expert on fire stations. So we do some of the legwork, we give the information to them, and then they put it together and they will be coming back to the council to provide more of an analysis. So please don't blame us for trying to do work and trying to bring it to the council to give you and the community information. It's really no winning. If I came up here tonight and didn't have anything, you think you guys would be happy? No. We're trying to provide you with information, and this information is accurate. Chief Mahoney reviewed the report, and Gensler reviewed this report.

Mayor, if I can just- We really need to move on. I have one last question. This slide showed 5,000 square feet for a fire station, 3,000 for a paramedic, 8,700 total square feet. Where on earth are you getting these numbers? This is not appropriate. This is the part that's difficult. Why would you come up with these numbers that we need a 9,000 square foot fire and paramedic station? Why are you bringing this to us?

Council member, if I can address that question so that is part of the preliminary space programming that has been performed by Gensler. Ultimately, the goal, and that's why we're seeking your policy direction tonight is whether to seek combining space amongst the, the paramedic and fire station so that the space can you can seek efficiencies and integrate that space where feasible. uh recognizing your concern in part that they're right now you have a life a lease agreement that says the paramedic facility should be standalone so you know based on that information that we've provided to ginsler they've developed their space program based on that but that's so but last meeting we all said let's consolidate let's economize like the goal was economize let's try to figure out a way to make things work like the cac original plan did

Mayor Mrakas, CAC created a spacing program and it has little pieces already in it and we veered so far now there's was not 9000 feet for these two two functions. Mayor Mrakas, But you're coming and saying Oh, we have a lease and we've got to do this that's not what was in the CAC plan that's not what we discussed we discussed trying to come and fit these pieces together. and i actually believe the cac letter said don't let the perfect get in the way of the good like where are we going with this project that you keep adding more and more square footage and needs after the direction was let's build this and come together to with a solution that works for the town that they actually need so i i again we all discuss this watch the video

and we said let's figure out a plan that would make this work but you're now coming up with 9 000 square feet this is absolutely inaccurate and i cannot this is absolutely inaccurate what council member salter what you're saying that is absolutely inaccurate we have been working with gensler this is simply moving our project forward we are not planning a grand taj mahal fire station um i just i i would like to be able to answer questions um and not be attacked and not to have town staff attacked for doing our work okay and i i can i can address the this question because i think part of the elephant that i hear in the room is regarding the mary mcgrath study and

Again, this is existing work that has helped informed Gensler, and we've asked them to look at it with their own eyes and determine where there are efficiencies, where shared space, where reductions can occur. And that's ultimately going to inform the space program that's going to come to Council for your review and input. And that can be a very detailed, you know, room by room analysis. So you can see where it may deviate and provide direction. And we can give that feedback on what's recommended and why in terms of NFP regulations, you know, separation of uses and, you know, etc. But to get back to the Mary McGrath study, absolutely. Councilmember, you're correct that that was for a standalone facility. But what it does provide, so this is not what we're at now, but what it does provide is it provides the programming analysis that was done between a professional architect who designs fire stations for a living or a whole entire career and the fire chief on what are the needs, the current needs and space needs for a fire station based on all those current standards. What they've come up with is roughly 5,600, 5,700 square feet. Now, again, there's opportunities. Now, again, in terms of regional comparison, that's kind of right in the middle. It's below Fairfax. It's above San Anselmo. And partly because San Anselmo, from what I've heard, is not ideal, even though it's a great project. It's because that work of doing that programming analysis informed that square footage in that report. And we can go back and we can ask Gensler to go back and redo that whole effort. But we were trying to be efficient with their time and not have to redress something that they couldn't just again, look at those spaces, identify where there might be some changes at, you know, on our on a say rather than 150 square foot bedroom, maybe it's 125. So you could you could pare down those spaces or there may be a very valid reason why that square footage is what it is. That wasn't part of their scope of work. But if we hear from you that you want them to do a full programing analysis, and meet with the chief, we would want that direction from you. You know, we need to get the chief's permission to get his buy in and support to be part of this process. And that could be part of your direction today. is to give us that direction to go work with the chief to identify what is the appropriate program. What we're not doing is working backwards and saying, the square foot is 2,500 square feet. Let's make it work. We're saying, what are the program uses for a critical life safety facility that's going to serve this community for 100 plus years? And what are those space needs to accommodate that? And here's what drives the space program. You're right, it's not, the study isn't a standalone facility, but the work that went into building the square footages for space program were absolutely based on a current life safety fire program for this community.

I have a question about the whole process. I mean, you're coming to us with your work and asking for council direction. I mean, I don't know that, I feel like we should be working more closely with Gensler asking the CAC for direction because I think that they're more expert and they can get better answers to some of these questions. So I wonder if there's a way to work more closely, you know, to have Gensler figure out, make their recommendations, have the CAC give their recommendations because I think those are our experts and I don't feel like I'm an expert.

So may I respond, because I think that was the question, is that the charge from the council for this work is to validate the CAC concept. Part of that was because the CAC does not have a fire operational person, a fire architect on the CAC. So we're looking to Gensler to provide that expertise to us. What we need tonight from you to move this forward, Gensler needs to know for sure that what they're working on, these concepts that they're working on to bring back to the council as an amendment to the facility master plan, they need to know that it's okay to have fire and paramedic functions in one building. Council Member Salter, I hear your frustration. You might be thinking that that's obvious, right? You might think that it's not. It's not obvious. I want to hear from each council member, please, this evening, because that you want Gensler to bring back a concept that has it together. And this is the implication. You have an executed lease agreement with a paramedic authority. In that lease agreement, they have many ways that they can get out of a lease agreement. One of them is if you have a six-month delay. So there is, we're going to need to amend that lease agreement, because right now the lease agreement says standalone facility, okay? So what I want to hear from you tonight is if you want Gensler to bring back a joint facility right and save space and all that good stuff that you're on board with that because that's what Gensler is going to bring back but you're going to need the town is going to need to have an amendment to the existing lease agreement and and how do we go about getting that you're going to need to direct me to work with the council and the town attorney to move that forward. So I understand you might be irritated that we're asking you these questions. But the fact of the matter is, you are elected by this community to make these decisions. And so we're asking, just like last time, we asked feedback on whether or not you want to have a concept brought forward that doesn't include a fire station. We heard you. You said no. Tonight is the next question. I told you we're going to have questions for you at every meeting, difficult decisions. So that is the decision of the day that we need. Of course, you can give us other direction. But I would like to walk out of here with that so that we can immediately transmit it to Gensler.

I thought we had already heard from Gensler that to incorporate everything and leave room for a fire station, that that was going to be the plan. So I thought we were basically already there, that we've already discussed that there would be shared spaces, because that's how Gensler could make the fire station and the paramedic and the administration space work. So are we not there?

No. In fact, this question was posed to us this afternoon at 1 PM. And we dutifully included it in here because we wanted to make good use of the council's time this evening and be able to get Gensler to go on it. So it's really not, you know, instead of arguing about what you've done in the past, can I just, I mean, can you please just tell us this evening after appropriate public comment, of course, tell us that and then give us other direction and we can move on.

Terry okay I want to thank David for the work that he put into this meeting with uh and talking to the people at the different towns meeting with the fires people there I want to thank you it was a good report I actually found it helpful and interesting so I appreciate the time and effort that went into it so And in terms of the issue about integration, I know that we've got, I think my worry is, can we... Terry, we're supposed to be doing questions.

Oh, sorry. Yeah. Are there any other questions, Bill? Do you have a question?

We don't have any questions.

Okay. Let's have a comment. Anyone in the chambers wishing to make public comment?

Mayor and council members, Bob Herbst speaking on behalf of the Citizens Advisory Committee. I'm also here with Jeff Kuhn, and he can answer any questions you guys might have about the CAC plan. We submitted an email to you all today. I believe you have it. I'll read a few components of it, but I want to be clear, the CAC plan that you guys voted 5-0 to have staff pursue includes combined fire and paramedics in shared space. That's integral to our CAC plan. So I don't know why we would have Gensler looking at stand-alones. The CAC continues to believe that the Sleepy Hollow Fire Station 20 renovation and expansion remains the best model for Ross. It was one of the ones, David, that you talked about. Sleepy Hollow is a similar sized community, about 2,400 residents. And like Ross, it's primary residential with little commercial space. Therefore, the firefighting needs and equipment should be similar. sleepy hollow station square footage is listed at 4 500 square feet in the staff report and that includes the existing two bay apparatus bay two bay apparatus bay which by the way is still situated in the fema 100-year floodplain they only raised the living quarters uh i have that in writing from sean condry the public works director of senate samuel and police chief mahoney so the existing apparatus bay at sleepy hollow station remains in the fema 100-year flood elevation Those raised living quarter spaces of approximately 2,400 square feet were essentially rebuilt from scratch. They tore down the old living quarters and rebuilt it from scratch. 2,400 square feet which included about a 400 square foot gym. The CAC plan retains our existing 1,500 square foot apparatus bay. That's ground floor space. That's a three-bay apparatus bay. That's one bay more than Sleepy Hollow. We believe that larger bay can replicate the facility provided in the renovated two-bay Sleepy Hollow apparatus bay. And then our plan, and David's master plan as well, includes a shared gym for all town employees. So that leaves about 2,000 square feet of living space needed to match Sleepy Hollow's living quarters program. Our Ross Firehouse Apparatus Bay was built in 1995. It's reported by the town to be in good condition, meaning the renovation and upgrade costs should be modest. Based on the above, the CAC believes that we can renovate our Ross Firehouse for a similar or even lower cost than the Sleepy Hollow renovation, which per the staff report costs $5.5 million. As Council Member Salter pointed out, Tiburon Fire District is completely redoing Station 10 right now for $5.7 million. So it's doable. And let's face facts, it's a far cry from the $14 million Mary McGrath Firehouse cost estimate that led to the closure of the Ross Firehouse. Thank you.

Anyone else in the chamber? Paul.

Paul Ressler.

Long time resident, Frost. Great. At the special meeting on August 26, I mentioned that we should not be reverting to the Mary McGrath report as a baseline, that we should be using the CAC report, which is a combined fire station and RVPA facility, which would save space, save money. We keep going back to separating these, and the only reason I can think that that's happening, we're wasting time, we're wasting money, we're paying Gensler for this additional time. What concerns me is that this process of continuing to pull out the fire station, and to Councilman Salter's point, we don't need 9,000 feet for these two facilities, what I want to say here is that you keep pulling out the fire station and looking at the cost of that. And I'm concerned that what's occurring here is trying to cost budget it out of the program. Let's just call a spade a spade. I find that unacceptable after the town unanimously voted in favor of the CAC plan, which calls for, which has Dan Winey on there, by the way, as part of the design, as one of the architects. And it calls for a shared space. If that means renegotiating with our VPA, then so be it. Because we will have fire station operations again with paramedics, fire paramedics.

Thank you. Is there anybody else in the chamber who wishes to speak? Anybody online, Zach? Oh, Laura.

I want to reemphasize the point that Paul raised, that the ballot measure was withdrawn because the town council agreed to go with CAC's plan, which was the integrated plan. That integrated plan was similar to the Friends integrated plan, which at the time Friends spoke with the public safety personnel who all agreed that the space that Friends planned had, which was the same footprint as the CAC's plan, It contained all the space and requisite elements that were needed for police, fire, paramedics, a gym, office space. So that is what the town should be working on is the integrated plan. That's what was the terms that the town council agreed to when the ballot measure was pulled, which was to go with the integrated plan that was presented by CAC. There should be no looking back at Mary McGrath. She's dead. That plan was dead. That is why the ballot measure was put forth and on the ballot. Why you're looking at that, it's totally irrelevant to what was approved by town council.

Anyone else in the chamber? Anybody online?

No one online, Mayor.

Okay, so now we will bring it back for discussion and to provide guidance to the staff and Gensler about shared services between the paramedics and fire. Who wants to go first?

Well, I'll very quickly. Oh, I agree. There should be shared space. Done. Okay. For the CAC plan.

um integrated i actually um i was one of the people that said yes to the concept the concept is beautiful um i want to make sure that our paramedics if it's going to be in an all one building i want to make sure they get everything they asked for i want to make sure that the fire chief agrees with the space that's actually needed for a renovation of our fire station, and that there would be room for the people that somehow will be funded, maybe. Yeah. I'm okay with the integration. I think it makes good sense. But if we can't give the fire people what they need, and we can't give the paramedics what they need, and we can't give the staff what they actually need, which is the police, the regular staff, then I think we have to, we love the concept. We may have to, I mean, I'm willing, we may have to give up some of that beautiful concept to make sure that we've got the space we need for the staff and leave room for the fire station.

Yeah, this really doesn't work. The whole idea doesn't work unless they are integrated. Hopefully, the RVPA will agree that that's a good plan. At least one of the fire chiefs had said he thought that the paramedics who are firefighters would want to be together with other firefighters. So hopefully, that is a selling point. I'm a little disturbed by this talk about, well, we don't need the paramedics because we have the firehouse. We've got to be careful about this, folks. You know, my fear all along has been we won't have a firehouse or the paramedics. So let's be careful about what we say, how we phrase this, and how we approach our partners in these other communities. Ross, you know, we just talk about Ross, Ross, Ross. They're not concerned about Ross. They're concerned about their own communities. We all have to live together. So let's be careful how we say this and what we do. This is a very delicate thing. We will have to go back to the RVPA at some point and say, okay, this is what we're going to do. And do you agree? We're going to have to sell it. And some of this talk I've heard here tonight, this is not going to sell anything to the fire board or the RVPA. We can't just be tone deaf and clueless about people on these other communities. I mean, I can't emphasize that enough. Ross could really go into the ditch on this and I hope that won't happen.

I'm 100% for the integration of these services. We are trying to solve a problem, okay? And we can do it. if we actually solve the problem instead of coming up with reasons why we can't and i think this is just a bit a pattern that has happened here like the last meeting fire chief won't talk to us unless we get approval from his board there have just been too many what i would say undermining roadblocks put in the way of of coming together to solve this problem and I honestly don't know why I don't know why we waste so much time and energy quite frankly and hearing the public get so upset there's no reason for it if we like the CAC plan and the CAC is telling us it's integrated let's continue down that path and we will see what the paramedics want to do with us we'll see what the fire service wants to do with us but let me be very clear about there is a feeling on this council we have to be very scared of the other towns we are if we say this oh my god well the other towns will do this it comes down to money people and we have as i just mentioned we have in the bank okay now it's all allocated different funds almost 30 million dollars okay and i want to say to all of you who are here for the long term including mayor mcmillan saving that money was very wise It's something that you should be very proud of doing. None of the other towns have money like that. None of them. And so, Mayor Mrakas, What I want Ross Council to start to think about is let's stop being the piggy bank for everybody else okay it's okay to have friendly disagreements with the other towns, but there is nobody who has money to build a fire station. Mayor Mrakas, Except for us there's nobody who has money to build a new paramedic facility, but us and none of the other towns have said they'll give us a dollar to do those things. They want us to pay for all of these things. So if we're paying for it, I think we should have a say in what we build. And we are building facilities for our community, but also for the Ross Valley, because it's better for the Ross Valley to have a fire station back, and it's better for the Ross Valley to have a beautiful paramedic facility. And I'm not scared of the other towns. because they come to us for money as you just heard earlier tonight we're paying 20 of the budget for the ross valley fire department even though we only have eight percent of the parcels nine percent of the service calls and ten percent of the population we're paying double we are paying double but somehow we should be scared of what they think so let's not be scared because until they can raise the money to actually pay their fair share, we need to say, hey, we're happy to share and we're happy to be a part of this community. But we have to have a say in what matters to our townspeople, too. We can't always be the piggy bank for everybody else.

Just one clarification. I said what I was going to say. Obviously, my point isn't caring. Please don't be so tone deaf, really. You know, I've dealt with these other communities. I've talked to them. I've served on these boards. I know what they're thinking. And Ross is very popular. And it's not about us being the piggy bank. It's about us being able to get along. If you want to negotiate with people, you have to have credibility. And you have to have a certain amount of trust. And I'm not really hearing that tonight. So my warning to you, I'm leaving. This is my last night. And it's a very sincere warning. Be careful what you say and what you do. Otherwise, we could end up without a firehouse and without the paramedics, which would be tragic after all this work. Those are my parting words. Let's not just keep going around trying to win this debate. This is very sincere from me. I think I know what I'm talking about.

There's just one clarification that each town for the fire JPA is expected to build and maintain its own fire station. So we wouldn't expect other towns to contribute to our fire station. The paramedic authority building is different. I think it's very generous and great that Ross is building a beautiful paramedic authority building for the eight entities that will be using it. um no one else has offered to do that so i think i hope that that will you know that in the integration will go over well with the paramedic authority it's going to be a beautiful building and as mentioned the paramedic paramedics will be uh who are also firefighters will be housed and will be in close proximity to the other to the firefighter paramedics if we get fire operations going

so i agree that we need to explore combined facilities per the cac plan that seems basic um you know i i see this letter from the cac saying that the station 20 was 5.5 million this is a far cry from the 14 million mary mcgrath firehouse cost estimate We have no idea what it's gonna cost to build a fire station in Ross. We have no idea what it's gonna cost to have the space for a fire station in Ross. So I think it's very disingenuous to be throwing numbers around like 5.5 million. We have no idea. And we also don't, what our goal is here is to have space. for a fire station, the optionality of having a fire station down the road if the, in my opinion, insurmountable operating costs can ever be addressed, right? So we're looking at space that can be used for other functions in the short term. To order a fire engine is gonna take 50 months That's more than four years to get a fire station. So we need to think about this in a pragmatic way. And I agree with Bill. And I'm really concerned about how, about our relationships with people on the Paramedic Authority Board and also on the Ross Valley Fire Board. And we need to be really careful i'm not saying we need to be scared i i you know that's not something that i don't think anyone has ever said um but we need to be good community citizens and good members of jpas and you know respect the history of how things have been negotiated the other thing is station 20 was built in 1959. Albet Station 10 in Tiburon was built a lot more recently than 1927, right? So we have no idea. People are running around saying, oh, we can remodel this building. Well, it's a 99-year-old building. This is not an apples to apples comparison. So I think we need to explore combining the functions to the extent it's palatable for the paramedic authority and potentially for fire if if we ever have fire um back in town so i'm i'm hopeful that that is the guidance that you all need

Thank you. I appreciate hearing that all from all five members. That's super helpful. So we will be transmitting that information to the Gensler project team. So when they eventually come back with their concept or concepts, it will include a combined station, combined two stations, right? and so then in the meantime i will follow up with the town attorney's office and with the council because you will need to discuss this in closed session because it will be real estate negotiations with the paramedic authority why do we have to do that because i think we're talking about getting a design why do we need to do a jpa why would we have to do that can you let her finish so you it People on those boards, they're watching these meetings. They're hearing what you have to say. And as I mentioned earlier, there is a provision in the executed lease agreement that says if there is a six-month delay, the RVPA can back out of a lease agreement. Okay? That's right there in the lease agreement. They're hearing what you have to say. They're hearing all this. It could be in the paper. You need to have a conversation. My strong recommendation, of course, I need to consult with the town attorney's office, but you need to start having a conversation with the paramedic authority saying, hey, this is what we're doing. You don't want it to be a surprise with them, going to what Councilmember Kirchherr's comments were. So I suggest that doesn't mean you have to, but my suggestion is that you have a discussion. You can do it in close. You should do it in close session. It is a real estate negotiations and you can amongst yourself with the guidance of the town attorney decide how you want to move forward. Maybe you decide that you don't want to move forward. if gensler comes back with this concept that includes it you don't want it to be a big shocker because the current lease agreement states that it is a standalone facility okay so that that would be my follow-up so thank you for this very helpful and one other thought that i forgot to make is station 20 did not raise its apparatus bays because butterfield road is also in the floodplain

City Council Chambers, Rich seminary went over that with us and Sir Francis Drake is not in the floodplain, and so we have a big question as to whether or not we need to raise those three bays out of the floodplain. City Council Chambers, So that the emergency vehicles can go directly out onto Sir Francis Drake and not be underwater or do we want to have our. City Council Chambers, Emergency Services people running around putting up floodgates and moving equipment, instead of helping people so that's something that is not an apples to apples comparison, in my opinion, with station 20 and this station here.

City Council Chambers, Okay, I would like to say one thing about this until we have the plan. I think we shouldn't start negotiating a new lease with the paramedics. And I just want to make it clear, when we did the paramedic lease negotiation, we had a facilities master plan done. And that was the basis of that negotiation. Right now, it's no surprise, everybody knows we're redoing the master plan. That's what all of this work is. But we don't have the plan yet. So there's really nothing to negotiate until we know what the plan is. So I really feel like this is, again, jumping the shark. We don't need to do this now. We need to let the plan develop and then go to the paramedics and say, here's what we're thinking of doing. Does this work for you? This is the ideas that have come back from the architects. So I don't know why, other than to, again, throw another roadblock up, it just doesn't make any sense. We don't have a plan. let's make the plan, then let's go to our partners and talk about here's the plan we've come up with.

I don't see that as a roadblock, actually. I mean, I think we've all agreed that we should be moving forward on this CAC plan, which integrates the fire and paramedic facilities. And I think Chris is just suggesting that we discuss in closed session what would it look like if we move ahead with that and we have some way of knowing what amendments to the lease might be needed. And I do agree that it would be nice to have that to know where we stand legally before we announce our plan because it isn't what the paramedics are expecting. Well, maybe they are because they've watched the meeting, but I think there's nothing wrong with talking about how would that look, an amended agreement, at any point. I don't see anything wrong with doing that.

So, yeah, I agree. I think we need to have a closed session to discuss strategy about this issue. We don't want to be in bad faith with the paramedic authority right so let's have a closed session and and and and discuss it okay so can we move on thank you item 13 town council to discuss and consider either moving to appoint a qualified individual to fill council member kirscher's remaining term or provide direction on the process for filling the town council vacancy that will become effective September 11, tomorrow, 2026.

Miriam. This is my report. Is this mic good? Am I? Yeah, great. So this item concerns the vacancy that will result from Councilmember Kirchherr's resignation, which is effective tomorrow, September 11. State law provides a framework for filling a vacancy on the Town Council, and the Town Council has basically two options, appoint someone Or call a special election so before I go into those options i'm just going to go through two timing points that are relevant to us. The first is that the vacancy doesn't start until tomorrow technically so any appointment or the statutory 60 day deadline to either a point or call a special election starts from that date from tomorrow. And the second thing is that Council Member Kirchherr's existing term extends through the November 2028 election cycle. So his seat was one of those seats that was excluded from when the town that was extended when the town changed its municipal election calendar and dates to coincide with the November general election. So that seat will extend until November 2028. Now turning to the first the option. So the first option is appointment. You have sort of two sub options within that. You can appoint someone tonight. Or you can provide direction with some kind of process, application process, and then come back at a meeting in September or October. So state law doesn't prescribe a specific method for appointing a council member. So you can make the appointment tonight if you're prepared to do so. Again, I would say that the motion would have to be effective starting tomorrow, not tonight. And then after that, if someone's appointed today, effective tomorrow, that person can come in and swear in as a council member any time tomorrow onwards. And then the next option would be if you want to direct staff to collect applications. If you want to call a special election, you would direct staff is it would be our office would come back with a. With a resolution to call a special election, and it would be the next available established election date is march 2 2027. So we would need to call the special election no later than November 8 2026 which is actually two days before the 60 days statutory deadline for acting on this vacancy. So that's, that's really it. I think practically, you have three sort of choices either appoint someone tonight, pursue an appointment process and direct staff to come back with to come back with potential applicants, and then you could direct us to proceed toward a special election. Council questions.

Mayor Mrakas, I just wanted to bring up the when I was researching this, I see the Council member cultures not recusing himself, but in school boards it's it's against the school board rule for somebody to pine on. Mayor Mrakas, To be a part of this, so I was worried about a conflict. with him being a part of this discussion. So I would love to hear. Obviously, you probably looked at it and yeah, he probably talked to you, but I think it's important that we bring this to light to make sure it's I'm I'm happy to start.

So school board and it's school board rules have really different rules on this. I actually have worked on school boards, so there are very specific rules on that and there aren't any here. So council member Kircher can participate and vote on on the replacement.

I did reach out to Ben. I did discuss it with him because I had the same concern. Was this OK? I mean, in fact, there are really two of us who are not going to be here within the next two months. One is Elizabeth and the other is me. I'll be here today. Elizabeth will be here two more months. So we're kind of in the same boat. But we are part of the council still. We're expected to act. And this is a council responsibility. So I'm here. And as usual, I hope I'm not the swing vote. I hope the council will come together on an appointment, but we'll have to see how the discussion goes.

I would say that there was a similar process in 2016 when Carla Small resigned and she was still on the council and the council appointed Rupert Russell on the consent calendar and she participated in that vote. Any other questions? Public comment? Does anyone like to make public comment? Yes.

Okay.

Before or after?

Right now?

Right now.

Good evening. Paul Ressler, Ross resident. Thank you to Councilmember Kircher for six years of service to Ross. I'm speaking on item 13 and my request is straightforward. Please do not directly move to a motion appointing Jeff Kuhn or anyone else tonight. First establish a fair and transparent appointment process. Council member Kirchherr has more than two years remaining on his term. According to the staff report, Whoever is appointed could serve until November, 2028. Ross is also approximately eight weeks away from an election in which four declared candidates are competing for two seats. Mr. Coon is already one of those candidates. An immediate appointment would determine more than two years of representation and change the circumstances of the November election before a single ballot is counted. Let me be direct. Doing that tonight is about as close to anti-democratic as local government goes. Whether Council Member Kirchherr votes or abstains does not resolve the central issue. If he participates, the outgoing council member would help select the person who occupies the seat created by his own resignation the day before that resignation becomes effective. Whatever the intent, the optics would be difficult for the community If he abstains, the remaining council could divide two to two. That possibility itself demonstrates the value of establishing a process before debating a particular person. The council can invite interest from the three eligible candidates and other qualified Ross residents, publish clear criteria, conduct interviews, under the same conditions, receive public comment and explain its final decision. That would give every qualified applicant a fair opportunity to be considered and allow residents to understand how the decision was made This is not about Mr. Coons personal qualifications. It is about policy, judgment, transparency, accountability, and public confidence. Transparency requires more than holding the final vote in public. It requires a process the public can see and understand. Accountability requires each council member and the mayor who leads the council to stand behind both the outcome and the process. The council's first motion tonight should be about the process, not about a person.

Your time is up.

Thank you.

Anyone else in the chamber which need to make public comment? Anyone online, Zach?

No one online, Mayor.

OK, so we'll bring it back for a discussion of how to proceed. One more. Oh, excuse me, Laura. Go ahead. Sorry, Julie.

The facts are distinguishable that you raised with Carla Small. That did not happen weeks before an election with one of the possible people being considered for appointment being somebody who's also being running for election. This is all about, I think, transparency and allowing the democratic process to take place to allow voters to select who should be on town council. Thank you.

Molly Gamble. So this is interesting because we are on a really serious time crunch. It's all I've been hearing tonight. We have to move fast to get this done. So I'm confused because I would love to see you two on the council as members of the cac i think you've done a lot of work on behalf of this town and that plan has got to happen as soon as possible so um we didn't i didn't know you were going to resign bill and i'm sorry that you are uh there's someone really qualified who's been working really hard to figure out a compromise for this town and he's put his name forward so i'm not sure i understand why we would consider anyone else who's going to bring real experience to the moment we need right now to move this forward as soon as possible anybody else in in the chamber anyone online zach no one online mayor okay so we'll bring it back um

City Council Chambers, I agree with the comments just made from molly I think there's no person more eminently qualified than Jeff as the town treasurer and also as the architect behind the compromise that was reached by the CAC. City Council Chambers, The staff report is very clear that it says, if the Council is prepared to make the appointment at its September 10 2026 meeting. it may move by motion to make the appointment and have any such appointment effective September 11, 2026. There is urgency in getting someone on the council immediately. Otherwise, I'm very concerned that we will be split with our vote two to two, and we will just stagnate further. So I would like to move forward with appointing Jeff and having him sworn in tomorrow. Is that a motion? It was a comment.

I think this is important that we discuss it.

We can discuss it. Yeah. Go ahead, Terri.

Okay. I agree. I think we just have to move on. I think Jeff is eminently qualified. We could debate this. We could wait another two weeks, three weeks. We could have a special election. Let's just, we've got enough to do on this council. Let's just move on and appoint Jeff.

So, you know, backing up a little bit, we can either call a special election or we can appoint someone. I think I think that we all agree that calling a special election is simply not feasible because that would be March, which means our council will have four people until April or May when the next person is sworn in. So that leaves us appointing someone. I really don't understand the timing of this. I think we'd heard way back in May Councilmember Kershaw was interested in resigning and had he resigned then there would have been time to put this seat. the two years remaining on the ballot, which would be the fair democratic way to do this, to have the community, to have voters decide who should fill the seat, especially when there are times of controversial issues, and indeed that's where we are. But that didn't happen, and so we are left now with a need to appoint within 60 days, which means it must be our group and not even the next elected council because they will not be seated within the 60-day window so we're left having to appoint someone uh and I'm disappointed because I don't think that's the right process um I'm surprised that that uh this even happened it didn't have to happen This could have been an election. This could have been a seat on the ballot, but it's not. So we will appoint. I think it's more fair to have a bit more of a process than just appointing tonight. How do all of us know who are we choosing from to appoint? There are people on the ballot. Do we know them equally? Do we know which one might be the best? There might be other people who would be interested now that there's a third seat. And so my preference would be that we open this up to applications. We take applications for a week. We have a special meeting either next week or keep the one on September 23rd. And we make the appointment at the latest, September 23rd, because I think the appointment must be made before the ballots come out in early October. And And it's it's certainly likely that someone who was on the ballot will get appointed, so I would recommend that we have a more transparent process. I think I mean I that I feel like we've been put in an untenable position, but I think. Applications with a with interviews with the discussion is a more transparent process.

Mayor Mrakas, So I just look at our town goals and the first one says provide transparency consistency and fairness and government. Mayor Mrakas, And I don't know anything that would be less transparent consistent or fair to appoint somebody who is on the ballot currently pluck them off the ballot and not let voters a pine on that candidate, I mean it just screams like a back room deal which it is. And it makes me sad for our government that we've kind of gotten to this point where we are doing backroom deals and trying to pluck somebody off the ballot. I respect Jeff Kuhn, and I was the one who fought so hard in the Finance Committee to get him to be our treasurer. This actually isn't about him. This is about being a transparent government and being accountable to the people and letting them opine and have a part in a process there's a contentious election before us and the contentious election is here because there has been a failure of government to get this facility built and to do it in a way and there's the sad part is we've lost our fire station in the process so this council matters you can't just take someone on one meeting and say you're on the council all of a sudden I actually I actually don't even know if it's fair to him because he publicly, this has all been private discussions with all of us. The public has never even had a chance to sort of meet him and he's running for council. So my view is we 100% have to have an open process. This was thrust upon me to make this decision, all of us, because he resigned. I asked Bill to stay through the election. I said, please just make it through the election so that a new council will be seated and then you can roll off and they can appoint somebody so we are put in this position not by us but by the circumstances that are thrust on us but that doesn't mean that we let go of our duty to provide transparency consistency and fairness in government no matter what happens to us we have to be responsible to the people and they haven't even had a chance to really vet these candidates what we need to do is open it up for applications Mayor Mrakas, Let somebody actually reached out to me said they were actually interested in being considered. Mayor Mrakas, We don't know who else would be considered we're not doing our job if we aren't letting people apply maybe miss gamble over there might apply for the seat, which I would love. Mayor Mrakas, So it's why would we rush to judge what we this was put on the agenda tonight. Mayor Mrakas, And you're already ready to a point like guns blazing we've got work to do, yes, we've got work to do, but the circumstances were thrust upon us that doesn't mean we. that we give up our duty transparent, consistent, and fair to the people who elected us. And by opening up a process does not mean that Jeff Koons will not win that seat. Or maybe it will be Bob Herbst, or maybe it'll be Paul Rose, or maybe Molly Gamble. We need to give people a shot. We need to interview them. And then if we pick Jeff Koons, and it's a public process, at least the public has seen it, and we've got debate on it. And we all say this is the best candidate for this moment. But please do not give up your duty for transparency, consistency, and fairness in government.

To be the swing vote again, does anybody really want to get on this council? Think about it, okay? I get to be the swing vote. So I can't think of anybody better qualified than Jeff. Jeff is the reason we're even here talking about this, moving this project forward. He's a consensus builder. And I don't think we would be in the position we're in without Jeff. I haven't seen anybody else come up. And I don't think this has just sprung on people. There was an article on the front page of the Mayor Mrakas, rent independent journal about my resignation, I think it's been well known that I was resigning it's true the agenda, you know this is on the agenda okay so that's five days notice i'm not sure any more notice is going to make a difference. Mayor Mrakas, However, I, while I think just qualified and I would be prepared to vote for him tonight. Mayor Mrakas, I think that enough concerns have been raised about transparency that probably. There should be a process where people can apply, and the council should interview them in open session and make a decision. I think the decision will be for Jeff because he's the leading candidate. The downside, you know, is that there may be a period of time when you don't have five council members, and questions could come up. I mean, there's another meeting soon with Gensler, and you wouldn't have five people. But there is an advantage to having a full council of five people. It's not just a matter of three to two or whatever. What happens when you have that fifth person, the swing vote, me, is that there's a fuller discussion. It's more likely to have a compromise. So I think it's much healthier to have a five-member council than a four-member council. In terms of the timing of my resignation, folks, I've hung on as long as I could. I have personal issues, business issues. I would love to have resigned earlier, but we kept always having some important vote coming up, and there was always that risk of a deadlock. So I did stay. I stayed until we retained the Gensler firm, and I thought, okay, we've done it. and then i wanted to give the council some notice and that's why i'm here today i don't want to be here today i have lots of other things to do i have a business that really needs my attention but i'm here trying to finish this up but you know if it has to go to a process i guess it has to go to a process for transparency i really had hoped we would the council could come together on this but i i don't think it's a good way to start off with people saying, well, it's not transparent, or it's not democratic, et cetera. But I do think Jeff is the right person, and I think he will be the person that is selected. So that's my view. If anybody disagrees or there's further discussion, I'm still open.

I'm surprised that you're saying that. City Council Chambers, You know that this that you're making a comment about the transparency or openness it, of course, having applications is transparent and open.

City Council Chambers, And I agree that having having applications is transparent and open, but the the staff report and the government code allow us to appoint someone tonight.

Mayor Mrakas, We have that ability it's not with you, you don't have us i'm sorry we five of us and we don't agree matt matt let me can I finish.

Mayor Mrakas, We we are, I mean I hate to say this, but I kind of feel like we are in a crisis, right now, and we've been in a crisis per probably a year, and I am not confident that if we drag this out. and have applications and interviews, I am not confident that we will have a majority of the council approving someone for an appointment. And so I think there's real urgency to do this tonight when there's five of us who can decide. I think that's paramount. And kicking the can down the road and having an application process and having Jeff bubble up to the top You two are going to say, oh, we want so-and-so. And Terry and I are going to say we want so-and-so. And we're just going to be dead in the water. And we have really critical decisions that we need to make. And time is of the essence with the paramedic lease, with building these facilities, and getting this work done. So I hear what you're saying in terms of transparency. City Council Chambers, i'm I am all about transparency and I know what's going to happen if we appoint someone tonight, I know what's going to happen, you two are going to run around and say. City Council Chambers, The Council was not transparent Julie McMillan has failed leadership Julie McMillan is not transparent, I know that's going to happen, even though what we're doing is in the best interest of the town right now so bill. You are the swing vote. I think it's really important that we turn this corner tonight and appoint Jeff.

So I'm going to say something. You can't just say these things about us. It's very rude, and I don't appreciate you saying you two are going to do this. I would tell you both Elizabeth and I respect Jeff. And you know, Julie, from the Finance Committee, you did not want Jeff Koons, and I did, and Thank you for choosing him because we both agree that he's a great treasurer. Okay, even though you and I are the finance committee and we don't agree, we do and we can come to conclusion. And I absolutely, I actually think Jeff will rise to the top and I think Elizabeth does too. But we have a duty to have an open process and someone has approached me. I'm not making this up. Someone approached me and said he's interested in being considered. and to not allow a transparent process because it stinks like a backroom deal that we that jeff lobbied the council and got appointed i'm sorry there's been this is the first item on the agenda you have to let the public weigh in we have to have a debate and say we all love jeff we all want to hear from jeff i feel so bad that he's sitting there and not being able to speak we we should have him be able to speak and have the candidates Mayor Mrakas, come forward with the why they want to serve, so I just I really think that we need to have the process. Mayor Mrakas, For the reason, and I do believe we'll get there I don't I wouldn't worry as much that oh it's going to be deadlocked and we're not going to agree, I think we all agree that Jeff is great. Mayor Mrakas, We need to have a process, it needs to be transparent, it needs to be fair that's our duty and we can't just let the circumstances. dictate what we do we have a duty to the public to perform our duty for fairness consistency and transparent and if you don't do this that is exactly what you're doing and you will be tainting Jeff you're actually going to hurt him if you appointed him tonight because you have two council members saying this is not transparent and you're foregoing the process and absolutely I think the public will be upset and I feel bad for Jeff because he'll be thrown into this situation And it won't be something where the council all came together and voted for him, which may very well happen in a week.

I did want to just reiterate that this same issue happened in 2016 when Carla Small resigned, the council appointed Rupert Russell without an application process. And that's what they did. And nobody ran around saying the council was not transparent.

Mayor Mrakas, Was that a five zero vote, because I mean right here you're you're putting this yeah I think it was okay so. Mayor Mrakas, So that is that's what's different now Julie there's a contentious election coming you're on the ballot there's this candidates on the ballot there's two others. It is terrible timing. That's why you're not getting 5-0 right now.

All we need is three.

Yes, and I feel bad you're putting him in this position. It's not fair to him. Let the public have a process, Julie. You rushing this is just showing you're too rigid. It's like, why not let there be a process? It will work out. I promise it will happen. We'll fill the seat. Don't put this pressure on him. It's not fair. And it's not fair to Jeff to be thrown into this mess knowing that two council members voted against him.

I don't think you would be voting against him. I think you'd just be voting against the process. But Terry.

I was going to say, we don't need to delay this. If you know that Jeff, I mean, we know he is eminently qualified. We know it. He's worked with the staff for the last year in his capacity, looking at investments. He comes to the council meetings. More than anybody else, he's more qualified than I've seen anybody else who might be interested being here. And he's been coming for a year. I think putting this off, when we can make the decision tonight, we have the right to make that decision tonight. And we can just then move on with all the other issues we've got to deal with. without adding this one more thing we're putting off and having to deal with. So I say, let's move on. Let's make the appointment tonight. Let's have Jeff sit in on this council with us so that we can all five of us move forward. And you know that he's been so good about working with people who have a variety of opinions and getting to consensus. What a good quality that will be on this council. Why put it off? Let's just move on it. We know what we want. And Jeff, Bill, I'm sorry you're a swing vote, but I'm hoping that you'll swing this way.

Again, we have Bob Herbst as well, who is eminently qualified, who sit in every meeting and came up with the fourth plan to stop the demolition. He stopped the plan and he helped form the fourth or the CAC with him. There are qualified people. And I'm not making this up. Molly Gamble is imminently qualified. So is Stephanie DeMarco. There are so many people that could, we haven't even had a process. You haven't even opened it up. I told you someone approached me from the ADR who's interested. You're shutting this process down. For what reason, Terry? Just for expediency, but not for the public. It's not for their interest.

Delay, delay. I'd like to make a motion that we appoint Jeff Kuhn. Are we done?

for transparency, I think you have to give them transparency.

I think that's the way this is going.

So if that is what we're asking for, that's what we do. Well, I'll put the motion out and then we can vote. So I would like to make a motion that we appoint Jeff Coon to be on the town council filling the slot that Bill leaves and he would be here for two years.

Is there a second?

Bill? I'm sorry. I'm not going to be able to vote. I love Jeff. I think he'd be great. But I agree. There has to be a process. You know, and if it's deadlocked, then I'll probably regret this. But I think there should be a process. But you won't find anybody more qualified, better qualified than Jeff, who's ready to get in action right away. No learning curve, already up to speed. But I'm sorry, there's a motion. I probably shouldn't be speaking, but I just want to indicate that I can't vote in favor of it.

OK, so what we're going to do is have an appointment process. That's what we're talking about. Krista? Can we make sure that we do it by September 23 in the special meeting?

Christa I think there might be a point of order issue or. clarify I think there is a motion on the table but I wasn't second it wasn't that I was going to confirm if there was a second okay perfect okay I just throw it out here just for suggestion let's just ask logistics Elizabeth and I always like to talk about logistics so um if you if your preference is to try to do this on September 23rd the town clerk can already has an application form prepared it was attached to your agenda report He can send it out via e-blast tomorrow, which is Friday the 11th. If it's all right with council, we could have applications due on Friday the 18th. And then that would allow us to get it into an agenda item if you would like to have those applications actually put in the agenda item and have that as part of our agenda packet. and then i would suggest that right now your special meeting that we had put on your calendar for wednesday september 23rd was starting at five my suggestion is you i know one council member has a conflict you start it an hour early and we just put that in the beginning of the agenda we'll work with the town attorney's office on that and you could have

a certain amount of time for uh the the applicant to make a statement something like that would that suit the council i think the timing can depend on how many applications we receive if we only receive one we wouldn't even need to have a meeting if we receive five we might need to start at 3 30. so can we set the time when we know how many applications we receive oh um

yeah I mean we like to get the agenda packet out to the Council, the Friday before the meeting, so if you'd like, we can make the application deadline Thursday. The 17th and then that way we'll know how much extra time is needed. Mayor Mrakas, That be that's perfect would that work.

Mayor Mrakas, Yes, it would we the 20th I think the times perfect 17th so people have a week. Mayor Mrakas, If we only get one application again we'll know exactly who we have, and then we select we do the interviews and selection on the 23rd because we've all already taken that meet that time for the meeting.

And just to confirm with our town attorney and we won't need to have we can just put the applications actually in the agenda packet we don't need to have the names on the on the agenda it'll just be kind of a similar a title that we have now a little bit more general yeah that's that's we can work on that and then it all it just has to happen, obviously, in a you know public open meeting but yes.

similar language yeah right may I ask a question about the process so the interviews occur in public and then is there is there do members of the public have the ability to comment on the applicants or is it just a council discussion about who we select it's a standard public comment that we would normally have for items so it would be an appointment item you get public comment So we'd have all the interviews and then public comment at the end of the interviews, if there is any, and then we discuss and choose?

I think, I mean, yeah, that's how I would think about it. You could do public comment before. It depends on, you could open the item and say, we're going to do appointments. Does anyone have a public comment? Or you could open the item, have the interviews. As long as public comment is taken somewhere in that process, I think.

You could also, I mean, you could ask, you could let each applicant know you have five minutes to give a statement to the council. And then the council could ask if you want to have an opportunity for the council to ask questions. of the candidates and then after that is done then you could open it up like you usually do for public comment on any of them and then close it bring it back to council for you to discuss and decide what you're going to do you could do something like that i mean i usually prefer i think it's better to public comment after the item but in this case maybe it's better to have public comment at the very beginning if somebody wants to say why don't you and and the mayor

hammer out these details. For now, since everyone's late, can we just move I would like to make a motion that we accept applications for this position. And the application deadline will be September 17, a week from now, and that the selection process will be at on the 23rd, which is our scheduled meeting special town council meeting.

Do we need any one second do we need a motion on this, it says make either move to a point or provide direction yeah you actually don't need a motion, though, but this is this is the direction is that it, you know okay if we don't need a motion, then I withdraw my most one one other thing we need to be sure to ask each applicant. The same questions so maybe Elizabeth you and I can come up with questions. Great. All right. OK. That is the end of the administrative agenda. No, number 14, no action items. Any council correspondence? Future council items. Does anyone have anything?

You know, at some point, I know, of course, you have a lot to do, but at some point, it would be nice to hear an update about the Branson traffic situation. You know, we haven't heard for well over a year how that's going. So I think it'd be nice just to hear what Branson says about how their traffic and, you know, crossing monitors are working out.

City Council Chambers, And we received an email from Michael rosenbaum today about the expenses incurred by the town to address the initiative and the total cost was 482,197 dollars, I would like to propose an agenda item to discuss whether the town has any ability to try to recover those costs.

I absolutely don't support that. And I think that you'd just be creating more of a hornet's nest, which I guess you enjoy doing.

Well, I'll second it because I think it's worth the discussion.

i i would wonder if you might withdraw your second in part because the the community is moving forward um with the cac plan which is similar to what friends had had started and it feels like this sort of is divisive it and moves us back to where we were whereas i feel like City Council Chambers with with Gensler working on the CAC plan where we have something that that works for most people in the Community, because it. It leaves room for a fire station, but doesn't require the operation. And we can come together on that, as if we're debating basically suing friends.

You want to sue your own people? You can put it on. It's going to inflame everybody. You're going to sue your own citizens for trying to save their fire station.

That's not what the agenda item is.

That is what you're agendizing, Julie.

Matt, no, it's not. Yes, it is. it's not really recourse for fees the town stop i want to explore whether we have any ability to recover those costs those costs are about the same as half of redoing the ross common they're significant costs and i think we owe it to our citizens and our taxpayers they were your citizens yeah they're a small minority of ours i don't think they're a small minority okay well it's on it's going to be on the a future agenda okay good for you

Excuse me, Mayor. I didn't catch which Councilmember kind of seconded the Mayor Pro Tem's request for the Branson. I second it. I just want to make sure I did that.

OK, great. Thank you. OK. Councilmember participation at the communication table at the Ross Post Office on October 8. Any volunteers?

I can be there.

Sorry? You can?

I can be there.

OK. Great. Thank you, Elizabeth.

Just one? Or who else is going to be there? I can join you for an hour and a half.

OK.

Thank you both. All right. And then last, number 15, meeting evaluation.

I just have one comment. I think it would be really helpful if the project updates were more concise. For example, Chris, it was really helpful towards the end when you said, here's the direction I need. But I felt like we were in the weeds for the longest time about all these project details. And we only heard at the end, specifically, here's where we are. So I just wonder if there's a way to have the updates more concise. That's all.

Any other comments about the meeting?

Yes. I thought it was unnecessarily contentious. I think that that that I think about Sue, who came from Cedars and talked about the importance of kindness that did not exist in this meeting tonight. And I think people can disagree with each other. This is not the place to do politics and be out there trying to get votes with your running for office. We're supposed to have civil conversations here. And that did not happen. And I don't want to see it continue. And it really looks, for people who view us on the video, It doesn't make those of us who are in this room who are disparaging of others on the council or in the audience look very good. I really do think that we can disagree and still work together. But when you are disparaging of somebody, when you call them out and you name them and you say something that they're a terrible person, that's not a way to win friends and influence people. And it's not a way to get a point across. So I would just say the council and our audience need to be reminded that you don't call out people. It's not going to get you anywhere.

Yeah. And I, you know, I read the start of the meeting was reading the great proclamation about Bill and all this wonderful work. And now here we are. ending on this note so i'm i'm very sorry that we're ending this way bill i really regret it we are adjourned