City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the regular meeting of the San Rafael City Council. Today is Monday, July 20th, 2026. I'll request the city clerk to call the roll.

Council Member Bushey. Present. Council Member Hill.

Present.

Vice Mayor Kurtz. Present. Council Member Yaren Scalati is absent. Mayor Cate.

Present. Thank you. So good evening, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining us tonight, whether you're here in the chambers or watching online or later commenting online. We appreciate your engagement in our community. At the end of tonight's meeting, I will be adjourning it in honor and memory of Esther Byrne, who's a former city clerk for the city of San Rafael. I don't know if you'll all still be here at the end of the meeting, but I did want to note that. We'd like to start our meeting by thanking all of our city employees. Every day, across every department, they work hard to serve our community. I want to highlight that San Rafael Fire Department recently received the American Heart Association Missions Lifeline, EMS, Emergency Medical Service, Gold Achievement Award for its commitment to offering rapid and research-based care to people experiencing the most severe form of heart attacks and strokes, ultimately saving lives. As a majority of the calls that we know that are received by our fire department do involve a medical issue, thank you to the fire department for receiving this as it clearly demonstrates your commitment, ongoing commitment, to providing a high level of service to all of our residents. So this evening, as many of you may know, there's been a recent change in state law regarding public participation at local government meetings. Beginning tonight, we'll once again accept public comment from individuals participating by telephone. Public comment is one of the most important parts of local government, and it gives residents and community members the opportunity to share their experiences, perspectives, and ideas directly with the council and with the community. I also want to acknowledge something important. The First Amendment provides broad protections for speech, including speech that many people may find offensive or hurtful. While there are legal limits on certain types of speech, there's generally no lawful basis for the city to prohibit protected speech simply because it's offensive. That said, my hope and my expectation is that everyone who chooses to participate will help foster a respectful and welcoming environment. We can disagree passionately on issues before the council while still treating each other with dignity and respect. Productive public dialogue strengthens our community, and while harmful or hateful comments discourage participation and undermine the civic engagement we all value. So thank you in advance for making our public comment process one that reflects the very best of our community. We also include a land acknowledgement as part of our opening. This statement compliments the ongoing collaboration and work we do with the tribe. We thank the original caretakers of this land. San Rafael is traditionally home to the Coast Miwok people, many of whom today are tribal citizens of the Federated Indians of Great Rancheria. And we honor their continuing involvement in stewardship practices that benefit us all. Thank you for being here. I'll now turn it over to the city clerk to share how the public can participate in tonight's meeting.

Thank you, Mayor Kate. And before I start, I'm actually going to pass it over to City Attorney Robert Epstein to report on unclosed session from June 29th.

Thank you, Madam Clerk, Mayor Kate. The council met in a special closed session on June 29th, and we haven't met since then because we did not have a first meeting in July, and so this is the first opportunity to report out of that closed session, and my report is as follows. No reportable action was taken in the closed session on June 29th.

Thank you. I'll now turn to the City Clerk. Thank you, Mayor Kate. Tonight's meeting is being recorded and streamed live on YouTube. For members of the public wishing to provide public comment, you can participate in person through Zoom webinar or by telephone. If you're joining by phone, you can call 669-444 9171 and enter the webinar ID 860-6190-5675 pound. When you wish to provide public comment, you can press star nine to raise your hand. When it's your turn to speak, you will hear a prompt that's asking you to press star six to unmute yourself. And if you're joining through Zoom, you can use the raise hand feature when you wish to speak. The host will call on you and prompt you to unmute as well. If you're commenting in person, you can form a line at the podium once Mary Kate invites public comment, and you'll have two minutes to provide comments. Displayed on the podium and the projector is a timer to help you stay within your two-minute time frame. At the conclusion of two minutes, your microphone will be muted so we may hear from the next speaker. You're invited, though not required, to introduce yourself and say what part of San Rafael you live in or if you're joining us from outside of San Rafael. And if you experience any technical difficulties during the meeting, you can contact me at city.clerk at cityofsanrafel.org. Thank you.

Thank you. So we have public open time for public expression at both the beginning of the meeting and at the end of the meeting. At the beginning, we take two to three people that are in the chambers and we'll check and see if folks are online. So I'm going to open up this portion of the public comment. You're welcome but not required to state your name and what part of San Rafael you live in. And as I just stated, we welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful disagreement. Help us maintain a welcoming environment by refraining from hateful or discriminatory remarks. Go ahead.

testing there we go good evening council mayor my name is jared mum i am a local electrician and um i'm here tonight to just highlight the uh the amount of housing that centerfell is looking at building here in the next few years it's exciting right i'm when i look around at your website i'm seeing thousands of units And when we talk about that, when we show that to people, they're really excited for the opportunity to have more places to live, more projects to build here in the area. Housing is obviously a major issue throughout all of California, Marin County, and also here in Centerfell. If these projects go union, it'll mean opportunities for local workers, right, folks that live here and nearby in the area. it'll mean more opportunities for young folks that are looking to get into an apprenticeship program and start a future for themselves, right? Can't tell you how many people we meet from all over the North Bay that are just looking for an opportunity, people that have plenty of experience working for a living, showing up, putting on a pair of boots, going someplace every single day, and working really, really hard, and not really having much to show for it at the end of the day. We like to say that you're supposed to be working for a living, not just working for the heck of it. If these projects go union, it's going to mean that there's opportunities for people to get into a training program, learn a trade, learn how to feed themselves, feed their families, hopefully own one of these homes that they're building. So again, just exciting times and looking forward for the future. Thank you.

That was awesome, huh? John McIntyre, and I am lucky enough to serve the women and men of IBEW Local 551 as their business manager. And that's the electrical union in this area. We like to say from the Golden Gate to the Oregon State. And what does that mean to be in the union at all? You know, people wonder, is that in San Francisco? No, no, we actually have the unions here, too. And if you're lucky enough to make it into one of the union construction programs, then You're going to have health care. You're going to have a pension. And the health care is going to take care of you and your family, not just yourself. It's not going to cost you anymore if you have one kid or six kids. The pension will be there at the end of your work days when you're done. And not at an age that you're too old to enjoy your pension. No, it will be there at an age that you can still swing a golf club and lift up your grandkids or go see them and enjoy yourself. But that's the whole intent, right? Work for a while, and then the last third of your life then, Hopefully you're living that kind of life, a grandparent life. And I'm kind of looking forward to that myself. So how does somebody get into the program? How does somebody get into the billing trades? And why would they? And who are these folks? Right now, we're at all of your job fairs. We go to Centerfell High. We go to Terralinda High. We show up there. We have people on staff that that's their job, to show up and speak to any young individual that wants to be in the building trades. These are the folks that don't want to go to college. And when college is being pushed down a lot of kids' throats these days, they're saying, well, what about me? What's your option for me? And if we don't have an answer for that, then you're dealing with the psyche of the young folks. Then what am I supposed to do? So when we show up there, we say, no, no, no. You're special, too. You're brilliant at something. We're going to find out what that something is. Are you mechanically minded? Let's try and get you into the building trades. Let's get you into an apprenticeship that you just heard about. And let's give you the opportunity to also to have the life that you hope for yourself, that we all hope for our kids, right? We want them to be successful. They can be. And in the building trades, we're waiting for them. So thank you very much.

Good evening. My name is Kevin Collins. I moved to San Rafael five years ago from Santa Cruz County. And ironically, I'm a retired general contractor. And in Santa Cruz County, I was involved in zoning law issues related to land use and building height, parking availability, and so forth. And I've been increasingly alarmed by the proposals in San Rafael for 17 story high rises jammed into freeway exits and clogged situations. And I'm here to urge your city and the community Marin County Council of Mayors and council members to confront this situation. I was doing some web research today. I found a YIMBA law. They have eight active lawsuits, one against Sausalito, two San Francisco, one against the governor for daring to limit development in the Los Angeles burn areas. Cupertino, Los Angeles, Redondo Beach, and Santa Clara. There has to be a commensurate response to this. The chaos in Sacramento is not going to sort out this in any reasonable way. People are poking at circumstances like the builder's remedy, for example, which completely undermines local zoning authority, as do several other laws passed. Everyone cannot live in California. It is difficult to move here. It took me three attempts to move to San Francisco because it's expensive and it always has been and it always will be because it's desirable until it isn't. Thank you.

Thank you. And I'll take one more public comment in the chambers. Go ahead and then we'll go online. Hello, I'm hold on microphone to hear you.

My name is Patricia Reese Patty Reese and I've lived in Grissel Park since 2009. I'm here today because I'm concerned about the possible loss of the B Street Safeway due to the Mill Creek project and I I realize of course that it is still in its pre submission state. I'm not here to talk about parking or traffic. I am here to talk about the importance of a local grocery store that people can actually walk to and ride their bikes to without having to get in their car all the time and drive. would ask I have two asks one of them is that this topic get added to the next month's agenda because I know that you can't really speak to open comments the second question would be that I would ask that Mr. Hill specifically since I understand that you are specifically responsible for district 2 that includes Gersel Park I believe that's my understanding I would like you to get specifically involved with this and actually engage and represent the the residents of Gersel Park and West End and picnic area which are also affected and that's all I have to say

Thank you, and I'll just clarify that all of us, including Council Member Micah, who's not here, we represent all of San Rafael, each of us, so we might be elected by district, but I just wanted to clarify, we always think of the city holistically. That's great, thank you for that, and I would love to have a point person. Thank you. Is there anyone online that would like to provide public comment on anything not on tonight's agenda?

Thank you. Just again, if you wish to provide comments online, you can use the raise hand feature or you can press star nine to raise your hand. I see one hand raised.

Hello mayor and council members. My name is Josie Quimby and I'm an intern from 350 Marin, but I've also been a resident of San Rafael for the past 19 years. I'm speaking today to thank the council in making our city more sustainable, but also encouraging the city to continue working towards climate action. As someone who is born and raised in San Rafael, I can assure you that the environment in our local community is very valuable to us, especially the youth. Young people in center fell are highly concerned about the fast approaching climate crisis from sea level rise to increase chances of forest fires and extreme temperatures. As a coastal community, San Rafael faces real risks from rising sea levels and extreme weather events. Investing in nature-based and resilient infrastructure today saves lives, protects habitats, and prevents costly repairs down the road. I hope you all continue to think about our climate and the environment down the road for our city. Thank you for your continued efforts in creating a sustainable future for all San Rafael residents.

I see no other hands raised, but I'll give everyone a moment to use star nine to raise their hand or use the raise hand feature. I see no more public comment.

Thank you. I will close the open time for public expression. Again, there'll be some more at the end of the meeting. We'll go to the next item, which is city manager and council member reports. I will return to interim city manager, Paul Navasio.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, members of the council. Just a couple of items to share. A couple of events that are coming up in the next week or so, starting with later this week, July 25th, is the amazingly popular Touch a Truck event that is going to be happening at San Rafael High School at the 3rd Street parking lot. That will be on July 25th from 10 a.m. to noon. Also, In the first week of August again, we won't be having our council meeting first Monday, but August 4th is the national night out event, which is Again an opportunity to help promote our police community relationships really at a neighborhood level there'll be a host of neighborhoods that will be hosting special events and we'll be providing additional information to the council and there's information on our website regarding that event again it's August 4th from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. if anyone is interested in holding an event there is a registration form on the city's website and again police fire personnel elected officials and number of city staff will be visiting those events throughout the evening. We announce this periodically, and there was an event two Fridays ago at the San Rafael Theater, but the city continues to be very excited about the ongoing development and growth of our public art program, and specifically there was an event to celebrate the for the murals that have been part of that public art event specifically on the c street garage on third street again with the statue at the b street community center murals at the city plaza fountain as well as on second street and we will soon be announcing i think the date for art installation here at City Hall, and so we like to promote that, the really wonderful events and the artists that are behind them, very interesting stories. I think the last thing I'll add is that we did get a notification from State Department of Transportation, aka Caltrans, regarding Preventative maintenance work that is being done on Highway 101 through San Rafael both the freeway itself some lane work as well as several on ramps on and off ramps and so This work is going to be done starting this evening Monday July 20th going through Saturday July 25th and The areas that are being worked on that are in the northbound 101 direction those will those areas will be closed from 10 p.m. To 6 a.m. So it's overnight work and there'll be signage, but we're urging folks to just be aware of impacts of lane closures, southbound closures will occur same date period from 8 p.m., I'm sorry, yeah, 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. More detail on the schedule for the different ramps, but I won't go into that at this time, but thank you.

Thank you. I'll turn to my colleagues for their reports. Vice Mayor.

Sure. Wait, you're not on. Oh, sorry. Out of practice. I just want to add on to the comment about the public art event. Huge shout out to San Rafael Chamber downtown program and Stacey Lawman who worked on it for a really, really long time for San Rafael. It was great. And I'd also like to highlight the new branding and the tagline is look around, which I thought was a really nice nice addition to the whole program. HPSC, Homeless Policy Steering Committee, recently passed a new resolution as part of our older adult committee. And that resolution gives direction to the broader HPSC group to do a needs assessment specifically for older adults around homelessness and a study we're going to be using community solutions group to help with that and use their toolkit, which is what was originally done for homeless. And so we're going to be focusing on older adults and then do a report back by May 2027. So more to come on that one just to follow it. I attended San Rafael's Age Friendly Advocate program and they really are shifting their attention to advocating for older adults. The Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority board meeting was last week. I attended with Council Member Hill the Juneteenth celebration which now seems like eons ago but in June and I believe that's it, thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Hill.

Thank you, Mayor. I am going way back because we did not give Councilman reports at the meeting on June 15th. This goes really far back. I attended a meeting on June 2nd, the Measure P subcommittee, also known as the New Library and Community Center at Albert Park. The survey is still open, folks, so please consider going online and going to the survey. It's at cityofsanrafel.org slash albertparklcc. On Tuesday, June 9th, I attended the finance subcommittee meeting, which covered budget and master fee schedule, which was ultimately considered at the agenda on June 15th. On Saturday, June 13th, I attended the 47th annual Fairfax Festival Parade. I got to walk in the front with the town council of Fairfax. It was a wonderful event. And the final meeting of the year for Marin County Council of Mayors and Councilmembers was held on June 24th during which the incoming President Gabe Paulson of Larkspur was at least nominated and will be voted in potentially at the next meeting and Vice President Chantelle Walker of San Anselmo is being considered for Vice President. That's my report.

Thank you. Councilmember Bushe.

On July 17th, along with Mayor Mayer, I attended the San Rafael Sanitation Board meeting. That was interesting in that there are not one, but two different consolidation steps on the agenda. One was for the operational consolidation well underway with the CMSA, and the other was for a broader consolidation study to be funded jointly by all members of the JPA. That would include the San Rafael Sanitation Agency, the Ross Valley Sanitation Agency, the city of Corte Madera, which is Sanitary District 2, all of the members together to working on a major consolidation proposal and hiring a consultant to work with LAFCO on that effort. So big news in the consolidation front at San Rafael Sanitation. On July 13th, I attended a meeting of Marin Transit. Big news there too. The good news first, the rollout of the mascot study that is being implemented is going well. and some of the first data points are starting to come back. And one is that transfers are up 45%. So very excited about the implementation of that phase of mascot. Some of us are secretly hoping that this will lay the groundwork for a mascot too for even more efficiencies and integration of the transportation organizations. Also, importantly, at Marin Transit, they are fully implementing the clipper card only transfer. That means that people who pay cash will no longer be getting the little paper transfers that allows them to get on other other transportation providers. We've set the public hearing for September 14th on this measure. The purpose is to help our customers get on Clipper where the cost is lower and they will qualify for transfers for $2.85, which gets you on Smart and gets you a long ways. September 14th, a hearing on that, big change coming in January of next year for transfers on Marin Transit. And finally, last Saturday, I attended the Memorial Mass for Esther Byrne, along with her successor, a city clerk and a city attorney, and a very sizable contingent of current and former employees of the city of San Rafael. We met her sister, Esther's four sons, and we heard a poem read by her grief-stricken husband. He read it in Irish, and it was a poem about the anguish of grief. It was a very moving service and reception.

Thank you, Councilmember. I just have three meetings to report out on. I recently met, along with Assistant City Manager Angela Robinson-Pignon, we met with the Federated Indians of Great Rancheria. You heard the land acknowledgement at the beginning, and we do connect with them periodically, so we went up there and had a good meeting and discussing various issues that are important to both our agency as well as theirs. As you know, I'm your representative on SMART, the Sonoma-Marin Area Rapid Rail Transit. We had our meeting. We had some updates to the budget. We also received the same mascots that Councilmember Bushy just referred to, update. And in addition, I'd like to share some of the ridership numbers. So in June, there were 150,000 riders. There's now been three monthly records in a row in terms of riderships. Fiscal year 26, which of course is now concluded, there was 1.47 million riders. We were hoping to get to 1.5, but we were happy to be well over 1 million. And that equals over 29 million passenger miles. The average weekday ridership saw a 21 increase over the prior year. And the Marin County Fair, as many of you took advantage of, there was free transit on Marin Transit and Smart. And it provided nearly, SMART specifically, provided nearly 12,000 free rides during the fair days. So that took a lot of cars off. And when you go to the fair, if you've had to deal with the parking, you know how fantastic it is to have the train and to be able to walk. And then finally, TAM, the Transportation Authority of Marin, or last month's meeting. First, we celebrated the completion of the Freitas roundabout, so hopefully you've been through it, and I know we say that Americans can't handle roundabouts, but we can, and they're great, and they're safer, so we've gotten great feedback from that. In addition, a reminder that Marin Transit still is offering free summer rides for youth under 18, that was a part of the general manager's report. During the meeting, in addition, we talked about the Marin Transit allocation. Marin Transit is funded through dollars that flow through TAM, so we heard a presentation from Marin Transit, And I'll end on a high note, which is sharing that there is a grant that TAM has received and is utilizing for $544,000, which is to study school access safety action plans. So that is how do we look at a more granular level around pedestrian, bike, car interactions that are close to schools. So when we're looking at improving infrastructure throughout the community, especially prioritizing those ones closer to schools. So we just had an update when that report is finalized. I will be sure to let the community know so they'll be able to look at it. So as always, thank you, city manager. Thank you to my colleagues for what they do between the meetings that we have. But before we move on to the consent agenda, we do provide the opportunity for the community to comment on any of the reports that they just heard. So if you have a comment on what you just heard, now is your opportunity to do so. I don't see anyone in the room. Is there anyone online that would like to comment on these reports?

I see one hand raised.

Thank you. And as always, you're welcome but not required to state your name and what part of San Rafael you live in. And we welcome a diversity of viewpoints and help us maintain a welcoming environment.

Go right ahead, Susan. Hi, Mayor Kate. It's Susan Gilbert. I am a resident of downtown San Rafael. I deeply appreciate your advocacy on behalf of SMART, which makes it easier for all of us who appreciate public transit to be able to get from here to there safely and conveniently. And now in my 65th year, freely. So I have deep appreciation for that. I have had a discussion with the police department and they have agreed to provide more oversight. for the safety of the passengers who are on the paid platform of the smart train. There is a group of men ranging in age from 20 to 60 years old who frequent that area, drinking, drugging, perhaps selling drugs, though I cannot confirm that. And it creates a feeling of lack of safety. I've also spoken to the smart train because it's their jurisdiction primarily and San Rafael's secondarily. Unfortunately, smart only has one security officer on the entire line who's on duty at any given time. I spent two years teaching English and working there in Japan, and you can set your watch to the Shinkansen, the bullet train. They were always perfectly clean and quiet, and you could expect decorum and safety on the platform. I'd love to talk with you at a time in the future about how we can achieve that for the safety and comfort of us all. Thank you so much.

I see no other hands raised. We'll give everyone a moment to press star nine or use the raise hand feature. I see another hand. Thank you. I'll close a public comment. Oh, there's one more. Sorry. There is one more hand. And as a reminder, I will mute you at two minutes.

Hello. My name is Brenda Gaydon and I'm a resident of San Rafael in the Gerstle Park neighborhood. I'm commenting tonight on the proposed redevelopment of the Safeway in Gerstle Park. While I understand that the project is in very early stages of planning, I wanted to plea with the council and city staff to seriously work with the developer to maintain the Safeway or other valuable market for this Gerstle Park and surrounding downtown area. This is an area where we have a number of low income people, a number of elderly people that walk daily to and from Safeway Market. And to take away the market in favor of simple residential development with no lower story market would be a devastating impact to this community. we are not against housing we think it should definitely be in scale with the neighborhood surrounding but we also think that having that very very important resource for the neighborhood is extremely important it will also be important as the recreation department is developed at the park adjacent at alberts park Lastly, we would like to work with the city council to ensure that there's more parking provided for that residential development because the Gerstle Park neighborhood and many neighborhoods surrounding that Safeway are already at capacity with parking daily. We have trouble parking individual cars for homeowners and renters because this is an extremely dense neighborhood with historic homes that do not have, in many cases, driveways or even garages. And so the residential parking actually ends up a lot of times on the street. And so having a limited number of parking for a very dense development that's proposed would be devastating to the neighborhood and make life much more difficult.

And just a reminder, I'm taking public comment on the council member and city manager reports. We appreciate all comments, but anything not on the agenda, if you could save those comments till the end of the meeting, that would be most appropriate. Is there anyone else I'd like to comment on the reports? I see no other hands raised. okay thank you i'll close the public comment we'll move to the consent agenda are there any items that the council would like to hold okay the agenda uh consent calendar items a through r i will open up the public comment on the consent calendar as you've heard us say you're welcome but not required to say your name and what part of san rafael you live in And we welcome diversity of viewpoints and thank you for helping us to maintain a welcoming environment by refraining from hateful or discriminatory remarks.

Good evening, Daniel Alm. Through the Western Neighborhood Association, I rise before you in regards to consent to G. I want to thank you for your continued support and the city staff and council for us to continue our Western Neighborhood picnic. This year will be our 23rd annual year. I really want to put a pin and community events are really important to the fabric of our community and your continued support of us helps our community feel a sense of belonging. Thank you.

Thank you.

Well mayor and council members and staff. My name is Wayne Rayburn live in San Rafael Meadows. I'd like to speak on item to I the service of 3.50 Mirabelle for my house and development project subcommittee regarding the formation of the subcommittee for 3.50 Mirabelle portal housing project we view this step is positive. You know like the positive light of providing greater opportunity public engagement. This should allow for greater transparency about the development proposals that were submitted in response to the city request for the proposals. We hope that through this subcommittee, the city will fully engage the public in the development selection process, allowing us to be informed and comment on the developer aspects that are in the table for consideration, such as the number of units, number of stories, building heights, and the amount of parking that each development has proposed. along with the planned sequel review for the project. These are all elements that the public has the right to be engaged in, and we expect to be able to have a say on how this development project unfolds and progresses. We also request that the city create a citizen the buys he recommitted for this project with reps in from center of the Meadows married a road and surrounding neighborhoods participating in the virus and committee. Well, this idea is not on the tonight's agenda request that the city form a city advisor committee for the mayor to pick mirrored a project in very near future to coincide with the city's selection the development team for this project. Thank you.

GOOD EVENING MAYOR, CITY COUNCIL AND STAFF. WITH THE PLAN INTERIM SHELTER SITE PREPARATION. WITH THE PLAN INTERIM SHELTER AT 350 MERRIDALE ON THE AGENDA I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO SPEAK TO THE CITY COUNCIL AND STAFF ABOUT THE INCREASE IN HOMELESS ENCAMPMENT ACTIVITY THAT WE HAVE ALREADY BEGUN TO EXPERIENCE IN OUR COMMUNITY. OVER THE PAST FEW WEEKS WE HAVE OBSERVED THE EMERGENCE OF A GREATER NUMBER OF HOMELESS INDIVIDUALS AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THREE ENCAMPMENTS. ONE BEHIND THE PUBLIC STORAGE FACILITY NEXT DOOR TO 350 MERRIDALE ALONG THE FREEWAY. TWO AT THE CHEVRON GAS STATION ON MERRIDALE ROAD AND THREE AN INDIVIDUAL CAR CAMPER ON MERRIDALE ROAD ADJACENT TO MOUNT OLIVET CEMETERY. THESE ARE INSTANCES OF HOMELESS ENCAMPMENT THAT WERE NOT THERE THIS WINTER OR SPRING. The San Rafael Police Department is aware of these encampments, and they have been quick to respond to do what they can, and we do appreciate their quick and thoughtful response to our concerns. But their hands are tied, and all three encampments have remained in place, for now at least. We welcome the police and fire department continuing action to address these issues. These problems have begun before the interim shelter at 350 Marydale has even opened, and they're likely to only get worse. We requested that the city council adopt a camping band throughout the area around 350 Marydale, just as has been adopted around Mahone Creek, Anderson Drive, and City Hall. In addition, the interim shelter at 350 Merredale should not be open unless and until agreements with Caltrans and SMART are finalized. That will prevent ancillary encampment from becoming established around 350 Merredale. Please move forward on these actions immediately. Thank you. Anyone else?

Good evening, my name is Gregory Andrew and I live in Seraphim Meadows. I'm here to speak on item 2J, the authorization of a construction contract with Gelati Brothers in the amount of $1.1 million for the 350 Merredale interim shelter site preparation. Thank you. FOR THE 350 MERRIDALE SITE PREPARATION IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THE CITY COUNCIL'S ALL TOO REGULAR PRACTICE OF AWARDING CONTRACTS AS CONSENT CALENDAR ITEMS WITHOUT ANY PRIOR PUBLIC OR EVEN CITY COUNCIL REVIEW. THIS IS JUST ONE OF SIX CONTRACTS BEING AWARDED TONIGHT THROUGH THE CONSENT CALENDAR TOTALING A WAPPING $5.7 MILLION. SO YOU'RE STARTING OFF THE CALENDAR YEAR WITH A BANG. This contract and most of the other contracts, or at least some of the other contracts, were not publicly bid and none of them went through any public meeting prior to tonight's consent calendar. While it is stated that the Gelati contract was priced at cost, there is no way to know if perhaps another company might have also performed the work at cost and for a lower price. It is poor public policy and not in our best interest to prevent the public from being able to first review and comment on how expenditures of taxpayer dollars are being spent. THE AUTHORIZATION OF THIS CONSTRUCTION WORK IS BEING APPROVED PRIOR TO SEQUA REVIEW ISSUES AT 350 MERRIDALE BEING RESOLVED BY THE COUNTY COURT. SO IN APPROVING THIS CONTRACT, THE CITY IS PROCEEDING AT RISK OF HAVING THE CITY SEQUA CLAIMS BEING OVERTURNED. THE CITY HAS CLAIMED THAT THERE IS ZERO POSSIBILITY OF ANY ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT FROM THIS PROJECT ON A SITE THAT HAS A TRIBUTARY TO GALENAS CREEK AND A SECONDARY DRAINAGE, BOTH OF WHICH ARE WATERS OF THE UNITED STATES AND WHICH PROVIDE AT LEAST SOME HABITAT OR MAY PROVIDE SOME HABITAT FOR SPECIAL STATUS SPECIES. TO CLAIM ZERO POSSIBILITY OF ANY POTENTIAL IMPACT TO THESE HABITATS IS A DUBIOUS CLAIM INDEED. THE CITY SHOULD NOT, SHOULD WITHHOLD ACTION ON THIS CONSTRUCTION CONTRACT UNTIL THE CEQA ISSUES ARE FIRST FULLY RESOLVED. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other public comment on the consent calendar? I don't see anyone in the chambers. Is there anyone online that would like to comment on this?

I do see a few hands raised. Just as a reminder, you can use the star 9 to raise your hand or use the raise hand feature, and you'll be prompted to press star 6 to unmute yourself.

And just a reminder, so it's on the consent calendar, because I know we are now adding in folks phoning in. So if you could just alert the council as to which item that you're referring to on the consent calendar, that would be helpful. Thank you.

Hello, Mayor and Council. This is Craig Murray with North San Rafael. I WANT TO THANK YOU FOR HAVING THIS OPEN SESSION FOR ZOOMERS AND FOLKS THAT CALL IN. I'M CALLING IN ON ITEM 2F, COOPERATIONAL AGREEMENT OF THE COUNTY OF MARINNE FOR GRANT PROGRAMS. MARINNE COUNTY'S 2024.4 ACTION PLAN PAGE 34 AP 50 STATES THAT MARINNE COUNTY HAS TWO AREAS OF LOW INCOME AND MINORITY CONSERVATION. ONE THE CANAL, TWO ON CORPORATE MARINNE CITY. and states or county could only invest in rehabilitation or affordable housing with federal dollars in these communities. This is a result of work undertaken to comply with the 2010 and 2019 voluntary compliance agreements with HUD. I request that the city council consider that the city, as an entitlement city, manage its own CDBG and home funds with staff under its goals of the housing element and the action and consolidated plan retain approximately 20% of its administration, and apply these funds to all areas of San Rafael in need. Many charter and county cities manage their own entitlements. As the city continues with the county management, then I request that San Rafael members of the Priority Setting Committee, PSC, considers other areas that are known to have qualifying low income and minority qualifying areas, such as San Rafael's California Hill and 94901, and Marydale Rd in 94903. Marydale Rd supports a large population of qualifying minority and low income households as well as seniors and children and it has been over 50 years since the city has annexed area and yet there are large sections without sidewalks, safe crossings and improvements that can increase accessibility for these persons with disabilities and usability for seniors and children. Thanks again.

Hi, Mayor Kate and City Council, Susan Gilbert again. I'm speaking to the 2-0 on the consent calendar, the resolution to purchase the fire boat. I think this is a very important piece of safety equipment, which I'm very enthusiastic about San Rafael acquiring. I could see its usefulness, particularly considering the terrible tragedy we suffered a couple of years back during the canal fire. And also, of course, the tragedy that happened last week on the bay. These types of boats can be crucial in preventing injuries or deaths. So thank you so much for considering that resolution.

I LIVE IN RAFEL HIGHLANDS NEAR SUN VALLEY. I AM CHIMING IN TO TALK ABOUT ITEM 3A REGARDING THE INCREASE IN TRANSFER TAXES. I'M GOING TO INTERRUPT YOU.

WE'RE HAPPY TO TAKE YOUR TESTIMONY NOW BUT WE'RE NOT ON THAT ITEM. WE'RE ACTUALLY ON THE CONSENT CALENDAR ITEM WHICH IS THE ONE PRIOR. IF YOU WOULDN'T MIND WAITING AND CALLING IN DURING THAT ITEM, THAT WOULD BE REALLY HELPFUL.

Could you kindly tell me about how long, roughly? Sorry, I'm new here. Don't show up to as many city council meetings as I'd like to.

No, we normally don't have back and forth like this, but this is a new transition. We will be hearing a presentation by staff on item 3A, and then the council member will ask questions, and then we'll open up the public comments. So it depends on how many questions and the presentation, probably in another half hour or so. Thank you very much. Thank you.

I'm seeing no other hands raised.

Okay. Thank you. I'll close the public comment. Again, I'm trying to be flexible because we really do appreciate people calling in and it's most helpful to have them calling in under the appropriate agenda item. Thank you for all the testimony that we heard on the consent calendar. I don't know if there are any additional questions from the council and if there aren't any, then I would request a motion on this item, please.

I move the consent calendar.

Second. Moved and seconded. Roll call, please.

Council Member Bushey. Aye.

Council Member Hill.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Kurtz. Aye. Mayor Kate. Aye. That motion carries 4-0. Thank you. We're moving on to our first public hearing, which is the proposed November 2026 ballot measure revenue enhancement real property transfer tax rate. I'll turn it over to our interim city manager.

Okay. Thank you, Madam Mayor and members of the Council. As noted, this public hearing is to consider an action recommended by staff for the City Council to adopt a resolution that would, among other things, place on the November 2026 ballot. an ordinance that would amend the city's existing real estate property transfer tax. I'm gonna give a brief presentation and then quickly get to council question comments and the public comment for this item. Again, just a summary of the staff recommendation is the adoption of a resolution calling the municipal election for the purpose of submitting to the electors a measure to modify San Rafael Municipal Code section related to the real property transfer tax, which would, if approved, if placed on the ballot by the council and approved by the voters, would increase the real property transfer tax rate. We would also be adding an oversight provision consistent with most all of our other voter approved tax measures. And then the technical part about requesting the county of Marin to consolidate and conduct the election, direction of the city attorney to prepare an impartial analysis and authorizing Mayor and Council Member Bushey to file a ballot argument and or rebuttals for the measure. So the background on this piece is part of an ongoing discussion that we've had in this chamber with the council and at council subcommittees regarding sort of some strategic planning around long-term fiscal stability and long-term fiscal sustainability. We won't rehash the lengthy meeting we had at the end of June where the council adopted the annual budget. 200 plus million dollar all fund budget. We did some balancing measures, some belt tightening, did some budget flexibility to address some emerging needs. But one of the things that we've been attempting to highlight throughout our discussions with the council on the city budget and fiscal is really the large and growing list, I would say, of unfunded and unmet needs that we don't currently have adequate funding to address. uh the slide that we're sharing here actually was included in our last budget presentation really to give examples and within various categories within our baseline funding which is costs that we are going to incur regardless of whether or not we have additional funding some that still remain outstanding is kind of a shortfall in our Kind of equipment replacement and a lot of our assets when they come up for at the end of their useful life increasing costs related to Liabilities and claims in that whole area which we will hopefully have some time for some more detailed discussions in the coming months and at or near the top of the list continually, and it's highlighted by the council, is our infrastructure funding needs. We are continuing to advance in our capital program with limited available funding, A, for maintenance and preventative maintenance, Most of the projects that end up funded in the capital plan are as a result of one-time funding and grants that we're able to secure. But there was an item actually approved, I believe, on the consent calendar a few minutes ago, our annual payment maintenance program. About a million three, million five a year goes into that. We are between two and a half and three million dollars a year short of being able to fund our ongoing street pavement maintenance program at a level required to actually maintain current conditions, let alone improve them. arguably absent either additional funding or reprioritization of funding in that area, we will continue likely to see a decline in our roadway conditions. Also on that list is sidewalks, storm drain improvements. We have a park. capital plan, park maintenance plan. We've identified about $10 million worth of funding needs over the next 10 years separate and distinct from the demands on our park infrastructure related to new development, which was somewhat addressed by council's recent actions related to the park impact fee. But in terms of just baseline maintenance and replacement costs for our current service levels, that's an area unfunded need. Public safety, kind of, well, not top of the list, but among the top of the list is ongoing funding to be able to sustain, if not expand, our safe team, alternative response to some of the calls for service related to our unhoused population or any individuals in crisis that need a response that doesn't necessarily require sworn law enforcement or our fire and paramedic staff. We can have a long conversation and we will eventually on sort of public staffing going forward as we continue to see increased calls for service, changing demographics and just continued pursuit of best practices in the area of fire and EMS. And then we've added some other areas on this list. Again, this was also included in the budget document. And in the staff report, there's a little more extensive discussion of all of these I want to bring this slide back to the council which is another I guess piece of information that speaks I believe to the context for the need to at least look at other revenue sources and this is looking at of the property tax that is paid by all property owners who own property in the city of San Rafael. And this is the 1% constitutional state property tax rate of 1%. The city of San Rafael, near the center right of this chart, we retain 12.2%. of every dollar that is collected. And this chart basically shows our allocation in comparison to the amount of property tax that's retained by other Marin County cities and towns. And also on the blue bars, how much of that property tax paid in each jurisdiction actually goes to Marin County. So just to be clear, for San Rafael, we retain 12.2%. The county of Marin retains 19.2%. We are... I would say well below the average, if you do a straight numerical average would be in excess of 16%. But this is just, it's just a fact of how our dollars are allocated and without arguing good, bad, or indifferent, being on the lower end of the scale while at the same time being a full service city where we run our own police department, our own fire department, have our own library that not all the cities on this chart have responsibility for. While on the one hand we can compare our financial situation, our taxes to other cities and towns in Marin County, we all are dealing with a different deck of cards, if you will, that we've been dealt with. So we're trying to do the best we can with the resources we have, but this is one of the reasons why The city has relied on and continues to rely on additional funding sources such as voter approved sales tax measures, library tax measure, the paramedic tax measure. It's to bridge the gap between the service level and service level demands, the cost to deliver those services and the revenues that we would be receiving kind of on the natural to support those. And we can talk more about that. So this is just lays a little bit of the context. This is not our first discussion in these chambers regarding ballot measures in general and specifically options for November ballot. We included this discussion both in an agenda item we did last February regarding long-term fiscal sustainability and strategies. We also discussed it in the context of both the proposed and the adopted budget when it was presented, as well as at the subcommittee. And this just summarizes that, you know, Going into tonight's recommendation, staff continued to look at the options potentially available to the city, kind of narrowed our analysis down to two potential, I would say, viable options for the November ballot. The first one being what we're coming back to and recommending which is looking at increasing the property transfer tax current tax rate is $2 per thousand or effective tax rate of 0.2% and an increase to a 1% which is $10 per thousand or 1% would generate an additional six million dollars per year which is not the be all and end all but would make arguably a significant contribution towards addressing at least some of the highest priority needs on our unfunded need list and significantly as a general purpose tax in order for this to be enacted it would require a majority vote 50% plus one of the that would be participating in that election. We've also had been looking at and continue to explore an alternative which would be a public safety parcel tax which would be as proposed or contemplated a tax on a square footage of building improvements for all properties within the city. the what we were looking at was a rate that would generate about three million dollars per year this is about half of what the measure p uh parcel tax that was approved in november 2024 via citizens initiative and so this has a different obviously effective net tax, depending on the size of the property and the size of the structure, with some property owners having some significant tax bills as a result. But also, as a special tax for this to be enacted, it would require a two-thirds vote of the electors participating in the November election. We shared also with the council last month sort of some scenarios of how either a revenue from a property transfer tax, as suggested, that would generate $6 million, how that could be allocated, essentially between infrastructure improvement needs and public safety needs and how we might potentially propose a public safety parcel tax were we to proceed with that albeit at a reduced overall dollar amount but potentially a little bit more funding for public safety because of its dedicated nature so from that I wanna move forward to, since this was presented to the council and we signaled this at the time, the city did conduct a survey, a poll of likely voters in the November 2026 election. I will note as I go through these slides that Curtis Bellow from the polling firm of FM3 is joining us online this evening and is available to answer any questions that may come up on either the information presented here or anything else related to the survey, but went through the methodology for their survey. I'm not a survey expert, but this was effectively a split poll where everybody received certain questions, and then the poll was split to test these two alternatives in the sample. And just gonna share highlights of those results. both a public safety parcel tax and a property transfer tax received initial support. Just when asked, sort of cold, the question would you be likely to support either of these measures, and how these slides show is the definitely yes and the probably yes, right around 50, 51 percent for both measures, and similarly, probably no, definitely no, about a little over a third of the respondents. THAT DEFINITELY KNOWS ARE IMPORTANT BECAUSE THOSE ARE UNLIKELY TO SORT OF CHANGE THEIR OPINION OVER THE COURSE OF BETWEEN NOW AND NOVEMBER. SO THAT'S AN IMPORTANT NUMBER. BUT ALSO IS THE LEVEL OF UNDECIDED OPINIONS IN THE SAMPLE. SO IT DEPENDS ON MORE INFORMATION AND HOW THINGS ARE GOING AT THE TIME, ET CETERA. For the public safety tax, we're showing the initial sort of voter sentiment. And then as the surveys do to help really dig a little deeper, the respondents are presented with likely arguments in favor of the measure to see how their opinion might be or how it moves, and in this case, for the public safety tax, up to about 60%, and then when presented with sample arguments or statements opposed or critical of the measure, reasons not to support the measure, What's important here to take away is that while there was a majority support beginning, middle, and end for this measure, it didn't come close to hitting the two-thirds vote requirement that would be required for a special tax. When looking at the general purpose real estate property transfer tax, again, given the margin of error in these samples that Curtis can speak to better than I can, right around the required threshold out the gate, with hearing arguments in support of the measure and the reason why we would be advancing it, it went up into the mid 50% range, so it did get some bump there. But it's noteworthy that arguments that were presented in opposition to the measure also had the effect of reducing some of that. So the takeaway here is that between the two measures, The public safety tax doesn't really look like it has a path towards getting a two-thirds support, regardless of the effort that may go into that. And the recommendation that's before the council tonight for a real estate transfer tax has a potential path to passage and support, but I wanna be clear that it by no means falls under the slam dunk, these rarely do, but it's based in part based on these results that we're advancing the recommendation that's before you this evening. I'll just end this part of the presentation by highlighting that within the survey, There were also a number of questions aimed at both what are the areas that the prospective voter and the community more broadly defined feel are important to support in a tax measure or revenue measure. And this, the far right column here adds the extremely important and very important, those two numbers. And at the top of the list, number one, not surprisingly, is maintaining our 911 emergency medical police and fire response times, which is a key component of why we would be putting this before the voters, preventing the deterioration of streets and roads, check, addressing impacts of homelessness, including litter and illegal dumping. So some of the What's interesting here is among the highest priority needs that we've identified, they seem to also be the ones that resonate most strongly with at least the respondents from the survey. There's a long, long list below this, but I just wanted to highlight those areas among others. So again, the recommendation before the council this evening is essentially to pursue asking the voters if they would be supportive of increasing the real estate property transfer tax as a general purpose tax. Again, with an increase to a rate of 1% that would generate $6 million per year. I should note that in the staff report and in the resolution is the actual ballot language that is being proposed. I'm probably remiss that I didn't cut and copy that into this, but we can highlight that for sure before we get to any council decision on this. I wanted to end with just a few more kind of background and context pieces in terms of not so much why we're contemplating bringing a property tax measure to the voters, But why specifically a property transfer tax? And we did look at other tax measures, including other general purpose taxes, which include the transient occupancy hotel tax. Many cities have utility users tax on the books that the city of San Rafael does not have. The business license tax I would just say that the hotel tax and the business license tax Would not be generating anything near this amount of revenue even with You know bringing them to arguably the maximum rate that would even contemplate bringing forward. So the property transfer tax we believe is at least Interested in a couple of respects number one. It's a tax that we already have on the books. So it's just increasing existing tax number two the tax rate is arguably You know depending on the cities that we're comparing to and I'm looking at all of the cities in California that have property transfer tax which by the way is by state law only the purview of charter cities so general law cities do not have the ability under state law to enact a property transfer tax but we shared before and we'll see on here our current tax rate on the low end and significantly for cities that do have property transfer tax it generally provides a significantly would argue significantly higher share of overall general fund revenues than the 1.5 million that we collect out of 110 million dollar general fund budget and so this chart does sort of compare existing property transfer tax and I drew the line right at the San Rafael so you can see clearly the cities whose have these taxes on the books that generate whose general fund is more reliant on property transfer tax, which from a finance director's perspective is also appealing relative in the sense of diversifying our tax base as opposed to going back for another sales tax increase or some of the other taxes. Also, on a per capita basis, there are charts about gross property tax revenues, but those are very skewed by sizes of city. So to normalize that, this is the property transfer tax revenue on a per capita Basis and again San Rafael there is on the green line in the middle of the chart And it shows you of all the cities that have the property transfer tax on the books The vast majority of them are generating significantly more revenue per capita. So And then the last chart which I I'm gonna attempt to explain, just shows really the property transfer tax rates that cities that have property transfer tax on the books charge. I will note of interest that while I have a number of cities, I think 25, 26 cities in the state with property transfer taxes, this is actually sorted by county. So you'll have sort of your Alameda County, East Bay cities off to the right. um and then when you get into el cerrito in richmond you're in contra casa county and then you get into some of the southern california counties until you get to san rafael which is next to santa monica that has one of the highest rates and then sitting county well sacramento city and county san francisco and then san mateo santa clara's and at the far end you have uh sonoma county which is the petaluma and santa rosa's um on that And this chart tries to display two things. One is the comparative real estate transfer tax. And if it shows on the video, sort of the purple are the cities that just basically have a flat property transfer tax applied across all transactions at that rate. There are several cities, maybe about six or eight of them, that have the so-called tier structure, so they'll have a certain tax you'll see at the bottom, some of them anything up to 300,000 and then up to a million, one and a half, two million, two and a half, so some of these cities that may go up into the three, four, five, and six percent only do that for their higher value, but it just shows that there's a tiering of them And I would just note that with our recommendation to consider without a tiering structure, increasing our rate to 1%, the San Rafael bar would be up at that first line, which is the 1%, the horizontal line. And while I didn't put the proposal on here, You could see how it then compares sort of with the other cities that have the existing taxes on the books. We have not done a lot of research on to what extent some of these cities might also be contemplating bringing forward additional taxes on it. But I thought that would be somewhat illustrative. So just to wrap up our staff recommendation this evening is for the council to consider and Adoption of a resolution to call the general municipal election To place the measure on the November 2026 ballot increasing the real estate property transfer tax And then requesting that the county consolidate and conduct the election have the city attorney authority to prepare impartial analysis and then mayor and Council Member Bushey to file arguments. So with that, I will conclude the presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions you have. As I said, Curtis Bellow is joining us remotely. If there's any questions on sort of the needs component, we have also staff available here at the meeting to help answer any questions Council might have.

Thank you. Thank you for that staff report. And as you mentioned, we have talked about it in the finance subcommittee as well, but we haven't had a chance to talk about it up here on the diet. So I'll start with questions first. Vice Mayor, do you have any questions?

I just have a couple of questions. And thank you for we had followed up earlier in the day with some additional questions. I want to share a couple of those because I think the responses are really helpful for people to understand. Right now, it's being proposed that the It's a general, it'll be a general fund revenue stream. And I was wondering what the thought was in terms of not doing a percentage of infrastructure versus public service. Like we have with Marin Wildfire, we have a lot of percentages and earmarked and why it's considered not to do that for this one.

I think the short answer of that question is while, as we shared in the presentation, there's definitely some thought as to how the city would most likely allocate the funding and under general purpose, it's important to note that ultimately that decision is to the city council. They are by law and by definition discretionary dollars to be spent on whatever the council deems appropriate. It is important, though, when we're going to the voters seeking a tax increase to be as transparent as we can be as to the needs that are driving it and how this fund could assist. Once we start building into the actual ordinance or ballot measure those carve-outs or allocations, then it starts to move into the special tax category. So for instance, NWPA by its nature is a special tax, and then there's allocations and how you're using it within that, but that's the main distinction.

I appreciate that. Thank you. Is there any thought in our analysis at this point in terms of how much the tax would generate from commercial sale versus residential?

I will say, Vice Mayor Kurtz, that we have that data. I don't have it at my fingertips, but we did look at the last, I believe, eight to 10 years of actual real estate property transfer tax paid in terms of the number of transactions. the value of the transactions and i want to say that there's um residential versus commercial is somewhere in that in the distinctions in that database okay thank you um i will say the vast majority will be on residential just because of the volume yeah um

Can you share a little bit about how this, I mean, it was talked about the Finance Committee, but other groups or areas that you've started to review the possibility of going down this path, just so this isn't, I mean, we know that this is not the first time, as you had mentioned, we've discussed this in different forums publicly, but have you had an opportunity to share at this point with others?

A little bit, but I would say other than the work we've done with the staff that we brought to the finance subcommittee and the pieces that are brought to this committee, I would say that most of the engagement with select members of the community has been in response to questions or inquiries that we have received as they've been following this item going through less so frankly in terms of you know proactive outreach And as you know, and as the city attorney will want me to say, should the council put this on the ballot, we are precluded from using staff resources and city resources in a campaign advocacy area, but we will absolutely be ensuring that we're available to share information and put out information that might be helpful to the community in deciding.

Thank you. And the last question I have is why was a flat 1% rate recommended instead of a graduated structure that places more of the burden on higher value transactions?

Yeah, that is a good question because it was something that was looked at and also informed by looking at some of the other agencies that do have those structures in place. And I would say three kind of main reasons. The first one is that because of the concentration of the transaction really in the lower end of that that as soon as we were to say for instance we're recommending an increase for properties over even say two million dollars let alone three million the amount of incremental revenue is diluted significantly I think I don't have it in front of me but I think you know almost half of the real estate property transfer tax comes from sales under one and a half million and if you go up to two million it's it's over half if not two-thirds of the revenue so in our situation it gets diluted very quickly that is naturally reason not to do it however we also did include in our survey some questions about whether or not doing a tiering would um impact voter sentiment, at least as represented by the survey, and that did not move the needle. In fact, when we posed questions about tiering, it actually lowered the support. I don't pretend to know why. Others might have opinions on it, but there wasn't really a compelling reason, both from a financial standpoint. And the last one, which I'll I shouldn't even mention, but given that we are limited in law to the 75 words in the ballot question, trying to explain a tiered tax structure takes up most of the ballot question to begin with, and the pros and cons of doing that didn't pan out for us.

Great. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Bushey, questions?

Thank you. My questions revolve around comparison of San Rafael to our neighbors. I want to start with early in your presentation, you showed that San Rafael retains about 12% of property tax revenue, and our neighbors in the fine city of Mill Valley, though, retain twice that. Why is that?

I don't know that there's an easy answer to that question other than what I may have tried to explain before, that the property, the allocation of the baseline Prop 13 property transfer tax was put in place following the passage of Prop 13 back in 1979. which is when Prop 13 was approved by the voters in the state of California. And then the enabling legislation was, I believe, AB8, which is the legislature. To try to make it very simple, the legislature came up with a property tax allocation formula that was developed with the purpose of ensuring that any city's share of property tax post Prop 13 was in proportion to their proportionate share of property tax pre Prop 13. So on a statewide basis. And so what this suggests is for cities before that could set their own property tax rates. So cities that had a quote unquote high property tax rate Going into Prop 13, who would have been much more negatively impacted by a statewide 1% figure, they keep more of the local property tax than a city that would have had a lower property tax rate at the time. So all other things equal, it's the formula that implemented Prop 13.

In 1979.

In 1979.

Okay, so this happened a long time ago. This was set, and we cannot change it.

That's the important point. We cannot change that. The other area or two that impacts this number over time is obviously new cities, new incorporations, but for instance, when cities will annex areas into the city then there's a tax sharing agreement that takes place that they're negotiating with the county and so if we were to annex another area of unincorporated and negotiated a higher share than 12.2 for that annexation our average goes up so that's another area where that number changes over time as cities grow and annex And the second one you mentioned earlier in the context of utilities, but consolidations, because all the special districts that allocate, so some of these cities, for instance, that are served by fire districts, the fire districts get a portion of that property tax. You would think that they'd have a lower property tax share, but it doesn't always pan out that way. But if going forward we were to, and we're discussing some consolidations ourselves with Mervyn Wood, there's the potential that we would receive some of their property tax, and this number could change through that process.

But setting aside those like literally adjustments around the edges, focusing on what happened in 1979 and where it leaves the city of San Rafael, it leaves us disadvantaged by a factor of 100% compared to Mill Valley of property taxes. And that disadvantage is part of the justification for turning our attention to other sources of revenue. Because if I'm correct, San Rafael is the only charter city in Marin County, correct?

I believe so.

So we're the only city that could have a real estate transfer fee?

Yeah.

Okay. So we're on our own.

Can I underscore that? Because on that chart, we just showed the average allocation of property tax for marine cities and towns is I think was 16.2, which is 4% more than our 12.2. If we had that level, we would be receiving about $9.6 million a year in incremental property tax, and I would submit that we might not be having this conversation if we were in that.

But we'd be even happier if we had Mill Valley's 25%, so just putting that out there. But comparison, and what's driving this. Now, turning our attention to the newly proposed tax, real estate transfer tax. We have no comparators in Marin County because we're the only one that can do this. So that leaves us with looking sort of across the North Bay. In your other chart showing all of the different counties, other than Southern California, when we look across the North Bay, we see that they were below 1%. We would be jumping from one of the lowest real estate transfer taxes to one of the highest in the North Bay. Is that right?

That would be correct.

Okay, and this is driven by the fact that we're taking our 0.2% tax and turning it into 1% tax. It's 5x of the tax rate. And how did you select that number, just for ease of mathematics?

Well, two things. It was the, you know, do you... proposed an increase in the property transfer tax for a $2 million incremental revenue, and how does that move the needle on the needs? So it's a combination of the needs that are well in excess of it. What would, represent a meaningful increment. Hey, we could put another couple million in the streets and roads, we can put a couple million into public safety, we could deal with some of our parks and facilities, that would make a significant, and within that larger cohort of comparisons still be within the range of what cities that have these taxes on the books are able to generate.

So in short, to make it worth our while, we needed to make it a significant increase to get a meaningful increase in funding for our needed priorities because of this anomalous thing that happened back in 1979.

And the other thing I would note that is in the staff report and implied in the ballot question is unlike a parcel tax unlike a sales tax unlike a business license tax this is paid one time at the time of the transaction of the sale so it's not a tax that those who are paying the tax, are paying on an ongoing annual basis. So there's a distinction between how a property transfer tax functions and most other taxes that we are able to enact.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Council Member Hill.

Thank you, Mayor Kate. I have a few questions. When I look at the draft ballot statement at the very bottom, it indicates with annual audits and public spending disclosure. Can you elaborate on what that would mean? I presume it meant that at least it involves the Voter Approved Tax Oversight Committee, including this as part of its but I just wanted to hear if there's any more or if you could elaborate a little bit on how that would go to that committee.

Yeah, I'll speak to that and then maybe ask Curtis if he has other, Curtis Bello, other comments on it. So the part of the ballot question that references the ordinance change, so right now, I would say that the, our existing property transfer tax was enacted prior to Prop 218, so it was enacted by a council, not by, the voters and so if this is placed before the voters and passes we're essentially adding the same language that we have on most all of our existing voter approved tax measures. And yes, it would also fall under the purview of oversight of the Voter Approved Tax Oversight Committee as currently constituted in their charter with a bit of a caveat because as we have shared prior with the Finance Committee and we took action at the Council, Voter Approved Tax Oversight Committee appropriately flagged that for a general purpose tax, oversight is a little bit of a tricky wicket because we don't necessarily track those, we track the revenue separate, we know what we're collecting because it goes into the general fund. They're generally not set up so that we can account for all the dollars that are being spent from a general purpose tax. but that said it is important to include an oversight component the other part is obviously you know all of our financials are subject to our you know regular annual independent audit we do reporting to the council on all of this and what Curtis might add if missing something is that Irrespective of the tax, the tax rate and the mechanism of the tax, what is consistently important to note when we're doing poll and what we're doing survey is to reassure the voters that these are locally controlled dollars that the state can't come and take from us at some future date and that We are serious about transparency in terms of oversight and audits and reporting and whatever, how we allocate the dollars in the budget and how we do this will be an important piece of it.

Thank you. My next question is regarding impacts. So I think everyone in the room can do this kind of math, which is if you sell a property and the sale price is $1 million, then the tax rate for this particular tax would be $10,000. Aside from the math, can you contemplate what the impacts would be to real estate industry?

I'm not sure if I can speak to the impacts on the real estate industry, if that's the question. How about locally? Yeah, no, I guess what I would say, and this question does come up and others will have their opinion and we'll see, but I would just say that it's not uncommon for the real estate property transfer tax, and we have one on the books currently, is oftentimes The real question is, is it borne by the buyer or the seller on the property? An argument is that it increases the cost if it's largely on the buyer and may eat into the equity that a seller might be otherwise getting from it. I remind you, we're talking about 1% of the sales price. There are scenarios out there where a property transfer tax, like many of the other fees that are associated, like a real estate commission, can be on both sides of the ledger, like split between the property owner, I'm sorry, yeah, the seller and the buyer. That's not uncommon. And then what comes into play, at least from some personal experience, although it's been a while, is that depending on the housing market, right, when you're in a, a buyer's market, then some of these costs through the negotiation between individual buyer and seller can be negotiated to be picked up by one side or the other. The other extreme is in a quote unquote seller's market when properties, particularly residential properties, are going over asking price, cash only, and they're flying off the market. It's not uncommon for the property transfer tax to then be kind of swooped up into the transaction costs. And that's all I'm gonna say about that.

Well, thank you for addressing a very broad question on the real estate industry. So my final questions are not to go through every unfunded need that you articulated, but I do want to, for the sake of emphasis, understand what is meant by our payment program will We need to increase it by two million a year just to maintain PCI, which is our payment. If you can elaborate on the initialism and then just make certain that is it do we degrade by a half a percent a year, a percent a year? I just want to understand just so that a community member can understand how this translates into road quality.

So I'm going to ask our public works director, April Miller, to assist on this. But one thing I'll say at a very, very high level, and she can speak more to it, is we talked about about $2 million. I think in the staff report, we actually bumped that up to between two and a half, three, because I think in like 2022 or $23, we were in that $2 million range. And let's just say that pavement condition index has numbers associated, but they're in excellent condition, good condition, fair condition, and we're at the very bottom of the fair category. And at our current funding level, it will continue to deteriorate the question of how much funding is needed per our most recent reports to maintain it at the current level let alone bring it up is going to be probably in excess of the two million dollars april that sounds accurate uh yeah so just to weigh in a little bit more so since we've been

we've had such a limited budget on pavement over. I mean, I've been here six years, six years on, you know, we've been using the money to just focus on maintenance. We've been doing slurry seals. We've been sealing cracks on roads that typically you would grind an overlay. We're just been stretching every dollar we can to try to keep these roads just alive as long as possible. So to your question on how fast it will go down, like we're trying to put as many band-aids as we can to keep the roads going, but it's hard to determine at what point they'll just drop. I mean, we have been losing like a point a year consistently for the last five years but it's sort of unknown since we are doing preventative maintenance on roads so you can't really tell how bad the underlying condition is on the road we know what it is because we knew what it was before we did the pavement maintenance but we are stretching our dollars to the maximum right now and it's it has been successful over the last few years

Got it, and not to try to create fair uncertainty doubt, but what I'm hearing you say is that there could actually be underlying, literally underlying problems with the substructure and things that may not be seen that patching may be able to alleviate for a season, but that there could be major problems where a road could fail and have to do emergency repaving.

Potentially, yes. Usually it just gets, it starts to deteriorate more and more yeah quicker so typically like if a road was more in the good condition we would slurry seal it every seven to ten years these roads that we're slurring are in the poor condition we should probably be sorry if we're gonna slurry them to keep them alive we do it like every three years we don't have the money to do that so we're still trying to do in that seven to ten year mark but yeah the roads are continuing to get worse and worse in the underlying condition

Thank you, Director Miller.

And can I add one more thing to that that I think we shared in one of the CIP is that the goal is to do all the maintenance you can do to avoid the reconstruction of the road, which happens eventually at a much more significant cost. So there's how aggressively can we maintain? What you're trying to avoid is having to get into the major reconstruction, which this funding would not be enough to support.

Thank you. And as I said, I would not inventory all of our unfunded needs, but there is one other, which is the safe team, $750,000 a year that we don't have a plan for beyond this year. Can you just confirm what the safe team does and what could happen if we can't fund it?

Again, I will ask Police Chief Spiller to assist with this, but yes, as the Council is aware, we have been able to maintain what was initially a pilot program through some one-time funding credit to the department and Chief Spiller's staff for identifying some grant funding that we were able to Receive that as you noted we have secure funding for the current level of service through the current fiscal year Maybe a couple of months through the current contract and then we're going to continue to be looking for how to keep this together and The reason why this is on this list is not only a candidate for stable recurring annual funding, but potentially also funding source to meet the demands and potentially increasing the days and hours of operation of the Safe Team.

THAT WAS PERFECT. I COULDN'T HAVE SAID ANYTHING BETTER. SO AS THE COUNCIL IS AWARE, WE HAD A VERY SUCCESSFUL THREE-YEAR PILOT OF THE SAFE TEAM. AND AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE THREE-YEAR PILOT, WE EXTENDED THAT CONTRACT TO COINCIDE WITH THE FISCAL YEAR AND THEN DID A ONE-YEAR EXTENSION. SO AT THE COMPLETION OF THIS FISCAL YEAR, THE SAFE TEAM WON'T BE FUNDED. THERE WAS NO PERMANENT FUNDING SOLUTION FOR THE SAFE TEAM. So absent this, the manager and I will be scouring opportunities and additional grant opportunities and other philanthropic opportunities to offset the expenditure. And that's based on the current deployment of a two-person team, 12 hours a day, or excuse me, yes, 12 hours a day, every day of the calendar year. There has been question from the community, from community groups, and even council members what are the opportunities to expand the program. So that will be a part of what we could potentially leverage this additional revenue for.

Thank you, Chief.

Those are my questions. Thank you.

Thank you. I just have one hopefully easy question. So this is already on the books. And you mentioned in answering Councilmember Hill's question about why it is going to the voters. So that original 0.2% was done by the council, but not this council. And I don't see anywhere in the staff report when this was originally We've already agreed to do this in this community. This is not a brand new tax. It's an increasing one that already exists. So I don't recall, I don't know if Council Member Bush you recall, so it wasn't in the last 20 years when we've been here. But I'm curious. And I'm, oh. I see a city attorney, deputy city attorney arriving. And then you mentioned 218. Why is it that the council can't make the decision from the dais and why do we need to go to the voters?

I believe that the original ordinance was adopted in 1990, 1991.

OK. Sometime around that. By the council at that point.

By the council prop, it's like a municipal history lesson. Prop 218 came in 1997, 98.

Okay, which said that for these specific types of taxes, they need to go to the voters and cannot be done through council resolution?

It didn't specify real estate transfer tax, but the type of... revenue generation now requires a voter approval.

Can I add that Prop 218 did two things. It required that any and all taxes require voter approval. And it also stipulated that special taxes require a two-thirds vote. OK.

Yeah, everybody's going to try to get a little bit of history background research on this. So ordinance 1303 was adopted by the city council in 1978 and then subsequently in 1990 ordinance 1595 was adopted by the city council and then about a week later there was an urgency ordinance that amended that slightly in 1990.

Okay, so if they had done a 1% then, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. Right, because there was no retro of reducing it to another number. So that chart that you showed, those were all cities and towns that back before Prop 218 increased it to those numbers? Okay. just again it's a lots of context and and to understand why um we have an opportunity that other cities and towns might not have okay i don't see any questions right now we've asked a bunch and i know that the public would like to weigh in um so i'm going to go ahead and open up the public comment for this item if you are in the room and would like to comment we'd love to hear from you and just a reminder we'd like to know what part of san rafael if you do live in sarah what part You live in, you're not required to say your name, but we would welcome hearing it, and we are maintaining a welcoming environment by refraining from hateful or discriminatory remarks. Welcome.

Hi.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Jen Pfeiffer. I grew up in San Rafael, own a home in this community, and I've spent more than 25 years in Marin real estate. Tonight, I'm speaking on behalf of all homeowners. I wanna be fair, the city has real needs, aging streets, storm drains, and the pressure of emergency response. It's not imaginary, and I respect the work you do to manage it all. I appreciate you reaching out to us, the community, before you place the revenue measure before the voters, but I'm here to say no to this idea that you've proposed. Today, when a resident sells a home, the city transfer tax is $2 per thousand. This measure makes it $10, which is five times higher. On a typical San Rafael home, that's about $10,000 more taken at the closing table, and it's permanent with no sunset. I have a listing now closing this Friday. for $3.3 million, and the trustees are paying $6,000 in city transfer taxes. If this were to pass, they would pay $30,000 just for the city transfer tax. That doesn't include the county. So you want to come to my listing appointments with me and try to explain this? condense this, but I'll email it to you. I think all residents should pay for 911 response times and storm drainage systems and flooding and addressing the impacts of the homelessness and street and road maintenance and maintaining safe places for kids to play. I agree with all that. But I think everybody should pay for it. you're proposing that one household at one very hard moment in time should pay the senior who's finally right sizing or downsizing or moving to assisted living where they're going to have to pay tens of thousands of dollars sorry you got muted at the two minutes so no so so thank you for your comments and yes thank you i will email you thank you

Good evening. Hi, my name is Sandra Del Regno and I live in Rafael Meadows in San Rafael. And I am against this tax for a couple of reasons. Number one, because to sell a house, it will have to increase the value. Because you want to get so much money for your house, you spent money, you fixed your house up, you're going to add it to the cost. Over the last couple of years, everyone's talking about the high cost of housing. This will just increase the cost of housing. And what no one's addressing is all the new construction. There's 1,900 units going into Northgate. There's high rises going into San Rafael. All of those units are going to bring revenue into the coffers of San Rafael. that's significant money you're going to get you're not addressing all the extra money that you're going to be getting from all the new construction and all the new housing i'm against this specific tax thank you anyone else like to comment on this item in the chambers

Hi, my name is Noah Bugbee. I'm a rising senior at Archie Williams. I was not planning on speaking, but something I've heard a lot through my time living in San Rafael is that we have an increasingly aging population, most of whom are the people that own the homes. And basic economics says that this will de-incentivize selling your home or jack up the price, making it harder for the younger residents that we desperately need to come in. So I'm just curious if the effects of that have been studied. when we need a younger population. Thank you.

Any other comments in the chambers? Okay. I don't see anyone in the room. Is there anyone online that would like to provide comments?

There are some hands raised. Just as a reminder, you can raise your hand using star nine if you're calling in, or you can use the raise hand feature on Zoom, and I will be muting you at two minutes. I do see a few hands raised.

Hi, my name's Phoebe Reyes. I live in San Rafael in the Sun Valley neighborhood. I'm going to keep it brief, but I also work as a realtor and I highlight everything that Jen was saying, Jen Pfeiffer, who was the first to speak at the podium. It is incredibly difficult to buy a house in Marin County. And I hear everything that you're saying in terms of, oh yes, all these fees are negotiable, but with the years of experience I've had selling houses, I can promise you that these costs are going to be the sellers will bear these transfer tax costs 99% of the time. It is already so expensive for sellers to even consider selling the house. Yes, they're going to make some money, but I have a client who's selling right now. And the only reason he's selling in San Rafael is because he has to pay for $18,000 worth of care for, you know, he's got $8,000 for his wife for memory care, plus the thousands of dollars he has to go into for assisted living. And so when you look at these transfer taxes, San Rafael is the only city in Marin County that offers these. And I could see how you think it's a benefit in certain financial aspects. I appreciate everything that you put together, but really the city council is approving so many new housing units, it's ridiculous. And then to add the cost of like, To add this extra transfer tax is, I think you can raise taxes or see these costs borne over people who are not just the sellers. You know, everyone's going to benefit from these who live in San Rafael. And, you know, from the community perspective, getting buyers into San Rafael, they want Southern Marin. So we need to have incentives there. to benefit San Rafael. And I don't think the transfer taxes is the right answer. I think if we allow more businesses in downtown, make it easier for things to open, we have lots of vacancies downtown. Let's make it easier for small businesses. I do not agree with this transfer tax increase, especially not.

Good evening. Mayor Kate, good evening and city council. Chief Spiller, City General Manager. I very much appreciate the aspect of this resolution that would pay for the maintenance for the safe team. I deeply appreciate the San Rafael Police Department and the work that they do in the downtown neighborhood in which I live. And the SAFE team, which provides a different type of support, in particular for those who have mental health issues, that can compromise the safety of those who live in the neighborhood. Also, I was a little surprised by the survey results, which said that many of the respondents didn't think that safety in patrolling was an issue. But then again, the main issues happen in downtown San Rafael and only two to 3,000 of us live here. The other 57,000 do live in the outskirts. So that probably makes sense. So I just wanted to say thank you very much for those of you who are in support of this resolution. I feel deeply grateful for both the SAFE team the San Rafael PD for the hard work they're doing. And I appreciate the city council and the mayor's work as well.

Hi, this is Victoria Dewitt and I'm opposed to this increase in tax. It might be worth noting that the UCLA Center for Regional Policy Studies has cited unintended consequences resulting from high property transfer tax, including reduced turnover of higher priced property, which reduces property tax. It impedes building new housing or improving struggling commercial property where property tax revenue could be increased. It can slow revitalization efforts, and it reduces housing affordability. Another note is that there's my understanding it's a state law that cities and counties can charge $1.10 per $1,000 for a property transfer tax, which is what every other city and the county does in Marin. It's only because San Marcel is a charter city that they can adopt an additional amount on top of the $1.10. So the 1%, it's not just 1%, it's 1% plus $1.10 per thousand. I think the increase is excessive and ill-advised, and I suggest the city do a more thorough assessment of other sources of revenue, even if it means that you get it from several sources rather than just going for the big bang of, oh, let's just hit the property transfer tax. We get $6 million. Let's go for that. I suggest doing an overall assessment of all revenue. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Grace Geraghty. I live in Terra Linda, and I am very much opposed to this text. sent an email a little bit late today, but you'll see it in the record. I think the city needs to do a lot more statistical analysis and research regarding what other cities are doing. As Victoria DeWitt just mentioned, We have an already excessive charge in San Rafael. And all the alternatives just seem to be increased taxes, increased taxes. What about savings? And what about joining with other cities? I mean, why do we have to have all our own services and everything? it's just mind-boggling to me. The IJ had a very good opinion article recently about that and the consolidation of services and how much savings that would lead. But then, of course, cities lose, city employees lose very well-paid jobs and everyone else loses power and their fiefdoms. So, I urge you to look at other savings opportunities or even other incremental opportunities that are not always about taxing and taxing the residents. And you may want to think about increasing taxes on all these housing developments that are going up and having them take care of the roads much more. Thank you.

Hi there. My name is Chris Backer, and I'm a resident in downtown San Rafael. Councilmember Eli Hill is my member, and I also am a realtor. I've been practicing here for 13 years. And I just wanted to comment that a couple of things that I've noticed. When the commentary relates to this money going to the general fund and not having an active way of tracking where the money goes, that's concerning to me on multiple levels. because we often look at San Rafael being a place that already has a tax on the books. And when we've talked to the city in various instances about maybe talking about a transfer tax, the response is not really, you haven't been able to track the money a lot, so now you're coming back for a 5X on that number and the tracking isn't really there is pretty concerning, even with citizen oversight. i also want to echo some of the other comments about maybe we should all bear this together because if you're just relying on a couple of transfers of real property it's just we're not really in it together and i i really applaud all the council here for asking really great questions and being intelligent on this so i don't really want to belabor that point because i think you are looking at this very holistically and just going at a small group of people just doesn't seem like a very intelligent way to try to fund the services. And then lastly, it was brought up earlier about the elderly population. A lot of people who are selling, I'm working with someone right now, I have to sit there and talk to them about what the current rate is and how much money that is. And then I explain to them that there's a city resale report and they say, what's that? And I say, well, you pay the city $363 to come in and look at what you've done to your house. And then that adds up to more permit fees. And now I have to talk to them about quintupling their transfer tax, it starts to add up and that's why people actually aren't moving when those are the population we need to get out of their homes. Thank you for your consideration.

I see no more hands raised, but I'll give everyone just a moment. Okay. I do see another hand. Okay. I see two names on here. If there are two people in the same space and you both want to provide comment, please let us know so I don't mute you. You can press star six to unmute. Brian.

Sorry, I was muted. Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Hi, Brian Walsh, West End. I agree with all the comments made and I would appreciate it if you do put this to a vote so you can hear what the rest of the community has to say on this and I oppose it. Thank you very much.

I see no other hands raised. This is the last call.

I see no hands raised. Okay. Thank you. We'll close the public comment on this item. We received some great input, but I heard two questions that I think are worth commenting or providing information on. One is, and it kind of goes to the industry conversation, but the effect on any new homeowners. And then the second one was housing units are coming online, and there was Inference or an implication that there'll be lots of money coming with those units as well.

So maybe you could speak to that Okay, so I'll try to address the questions related to that second question which is I sense that we're not taking into account all the new housing and the revenue that's going to come from that. So this actually gets to that conversation we were talking about, which is how much revenue does the city actually receive from any new development? Now, granted, there's property tax and if there's commercial industrial, there's sales tax multipliers. But in general, um for most cities in california and for our quote-unquote low property tax cities in that 12 range generally speaking the cost to provide the services that the new development brings in terms of population and folks to the city Generally does not actually cover the incremental costs. So I would just say simply that for the most part When we're looking at new development and we're looking at impact fees so that they're paying their fair share We're looking at potentially establishing Financing districts so that new developments generate additional Revenue it's not to cover the deficiencies and the gaps that we have in our current budget math to deal with the cost and the service demands of our existing population. We're challenged to just try to help make sure that new development doesn't make that problem worse by covering their cost. and happy to have, we'll probably have more conversations about it. The exception to that is, you know, retail, at least back in the day. But retail generally generates more revenue than the cost. But for housing unless you're looking at three four five million dollar housing units that revenue isn't going to cover the cost of services affordable housing significant funding gaps and so i would just submit that looking to development and revenue from new development to help address some of these core areas of underfunding is not realistic or even even possible

I don't know if you want to take a stab at the effect on new homeowners, but I will say that we did receive a letter from the Marin Association of Realtors that also made a similar assertion. So I definitely think industry philosophy or approach does say that there can be a negative impact. So I'll just leave it at that.

And I wouldn't dispute that. And there are folks that understand that better. I would just say that there are lots of costs associated with the purchase and the sale of the property, just like there's a lot of costs on developers. And so I'm not surprised by developers that are saying our fees are making projects infeasible and that any tax on the real estate makes the transaction more challenging. There's a lot that goes into that. I would say, and I'm gonna probably get in trouble for saying this, but I'm gonna say that because folks who live here love living here, and there are folks that are, you know, would love to be able to relocate to San Rafael. Part of the reason why our property values are where they're at and what the market demands for properties is because of the quality of life and the level of service that we can provide in this community and so there is a at least a connection between our ability to maintain that actually supports ongoing value in ownership in the community.

Thank you for that. Any additional questions? Do you have a question, Vice Mayor?

No, but I also heard the question around other options for revenue generation.

Yes, I heard that too. So a comment that I would make on that is kind of yes, yes, and yes, which is by no stretch would any semblance of revenue that would be generated by this solve the city's financial problems. I will say that we're not looking at this to deal with our short-term budget structural issues. operating deficits because that we have to address. This is really where are there areas that we need to be putting more dollars in. So it's going to be a combination of revenue measures and I would submit that a property transfer tax increase would be one of the potential revenue areas. We've been discussing and looking at others including maybe trying to get back a little bit more of the hotel assessment that is being levied on visitors into the city so that the city could retain some of that. But I'm glad you reminded me. What's really important is that not only is one revenue measure not the be all end all solution, because we have to look at all of them, but I would submit that just revenue enhancements isn't, the answer, it can't be because we're never gonna be out of trying to keep up with the costs and the demands for services by just natural revenue growth or always going back to the voters. It's a combination of being strategic about the appropriate revenues to generate. It's about what services and what service levels we can and can't afford, and there's some trade-offs there. And in some jurisdictions, knock on wood, there's actually a discussion about what services we can and can't provide. And so managing costs, ensuring that the money we have is spent on the most important things, and then trying to maximize and diversify the revenue that we do bring to that conversation is just one part of the long-term sustainable financial picture for any city.

Any additional questions from the council? So I'll open up to comment and just to have you clarify that the action before the city council is whether or not to put it before the voters so they can weigh in on this issue. So that's the action.

That is correct.

OK. I just want to clarify.

Merely to place the question before the electorate at the November 26 election.

I just wanted to clarify because I know in all of this and we might have started to lose that it's like thinking that we are actually taking the action to increase it or not but it would be before the voters if it were to pass this evening to put on the ballot. I will start with the Vice Mayor. Your comments.

Thank you. So I have been doing my notes and listening and we did get quite a few letters so I appreciate that. So a bit of a rhetorical question is how quickly can we spend six million dollars? And having gone through the budget process for a number of years that six million dollars goes by very very quickly. Local control is meaningful only when it's exact exercise transparently and with public consent. And that is exactly what we're trying. You know we are doing here. is with this process to bring it forward. I definitely support bringing it forward to the public for the ballot. The measure's expected to generate approximately six million in new annual revenue, and that really only represents a very, very small percentage of our entire budget. and of our general fund. The way we're looking at it right now, we have so many critical services between public service, the police, fire, streets, parks, and other daily operations. We want to keep those going as strong as possible, and we need to keep those going for our community. It's definitely not a slush fund. It's about really keeping that on as well as we know we have looming infrastructure needs. I do want to mention that we have, I want to make sure that everyone understands we have our San Rafael property tax transfer and we also have a county transfer tax. But the county transfer tax funds does not directly come to San Rafael within our spending being able to manage directly. So those go for county services as well as support of the entire community. So this is an opportunity for us within our toolbox of an opportunity to raise additional revenue, consider it sort of our bake sale. But much more important than that because It is something that we do need the support of the voters to support us on that. The staff report, thank you, really framed the need and it's been an ongoing discussion over many, many years basically of their rising service demands and infrastructure needs and costs that are actually outpacing traditional revenue growth. Revenue growth these days is not the mortar, the stores, the retail, what we're seeing. It's really changed. And so I think that using this tool at this time and putting it to the voters is super important. And that's a local authority that we have. And it's a gift that we have to address these local needs. We're asking the voters, not the council alone, to decide whether this is the right approach. Being a charter city gives us the ability to consider this option. It does not eliminate accountability. There was a question around accountability, and that is built into the proposed measure to ensure that that accountability is there. It still requires voter approval, public disclosure, annual audits, and independent oversight. Every city has to evaluate the revenue tools legally available. and San Rafael's charter gives us this option. And it's our responsibility to determine whether it is fair, necessary, and accountable, and then let the voters decide. And I hope that we're able to move that forward and look to the voters to get their support. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Bushee.

Well, raising taxes is never popular. It's not something we like to do. However, as we discussed at Great Lake, the unique and complicated history of what has happened with property taxes, distinguished from this real estate transfer tax, have put us in a position where much of the funds, the check that each of us write twice a year, very little of it stays in San Rafael and instead goes to the county, putting us at a disadvantage and requiring that the city of San Rafael find other ways to fund necessary services that everyone depends on. This real estate transfer tax is uniquely available to San Rafael amongst the cities, although, as the Vice Mayor points out, the county has one as well that actually is more than ours. And we... we will become closely aligned with the county, but it will give us another avenue to bring some equalization, that's probably a bad word to use when talking about taxes, but to another source of revenue for our needed services in the context of the relatively low amount of actual property taxes that stay. So for that reason, and for the many, many hearings and public meetings that we've been through on all of the topics in the list, the things that our constituents want, this is one way that we can increase the funding available for those needed projects and services. And so therefore, I support bringing this measure to the voters.

Thank you. Council Member Hill.

Thank you, Mayor Kate. Building on my colleagues' existing comments, I would underscore a couple of things. First, just that every letter that constituents wrote in about the impacts and people's opposition to this, this does create impact. to people's livelihoods and does have an impact on how people buy and sell. And that said, weighed against our unfunded needs, as well as what I would characterize as sufficient analysis by staff looking at other municipalities, noting that The city of San Rafael is a charter city and can uniquely take, be able to integrate this tax. It's something that other municipalities have examined as well, more sufficiently Sausalito. This is why municipalities contemplate converting from general law over to a charter city. The property tax allocation has already been elaborated upon. Prop 13, I will just say from this dais, could use for some reform beyond just this moment. Prop 13 has a lot of impacts on the state of California. I know it's difficult for anybody in the Assembly or Senate to consider it, but from this dais, I hope that folks will contemplate that. This is one of the impacts of Prop 13. I do support that this would go to the voter for consideration based on the survey and the likely revenue that it would generate. I also would like to, to the degree possible, and I appreciated your testimony, city manager, that the voter approved tax oversight committee can't readily and very easily say, well, this exact dollar went to this exact allocation. To the degree possible, I hope that there's a way that we can at least start to create the ability for that committee to assess that. Thank you.

Thank you. Great comments. Appreciate staff for all the work that you've done. And Curtis, I know you're listening online for doing the voter polling. I appreciated seeing that slide that shows what are the key issues and the key services that our community wants. And they've pretty much been similar over the last decade of what we want and more. And the reality is we have the world that we want to live in and the world that we do live in. And the pragmatic reality is we have many unfunded needs. We talked about pavement. We talked about the safe team. So no one disputes that the need is there. And we even heard that from the comments from the public. And thank you for the letters as well as folks that called and participated today. And so what is the tool, what is the mechanism to look at revenue enhancements? If you've been coming to our meetings, you know that for all the financial discussions we've been having, we've been looking at revenue enhancements, which include tax measures. And I can assure you we are continuing to go after all the grants that are out there for the SAFE Team or for matching grants for infrastructure improvements. None of that's going to stop. That's all a given. and in order to have the type of community we want with the type of love and care that we wanted to see, I want to put that trade-off before our voters because it is a trade-off. The impact of this fee, Councilmember Hill said that very well, there is an impact and we understand it, and the trade-off is the benefit that it brings the community. I want to see what the voters have to say about that, and I hope that they support it, but again, that will be a conversation that we'll have in the community.

thank you all i will now entertain a motion on this item please i'll make the motion recommended action adopt the resolution calling for a general municipal election on november 3rd 2026 for the purpose of submitting to the qualified electors of the city and measure to modify chapter 3.2 322 of the san rafael municipal code to increase the real property transfer tax rate and add an oversight provision, authorizing and requesting that the county and Marin consolidate and conduct the election, directing the city attorney to prepare an impartial analysis and authorizing Mayor Kate and Council Member Bushy to file a valid argument and rebuttal for the measure.

Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Moved and seconded. Roll call, please. Councilmember Bushey? Aye. Councilmember Hill? Aye.

Vice Mayor Kurtz? Aye. Mayor Kate?

Aye. That motion carries 4-0. Thank you. The next item on our agenda this evening, switching gears literally, is a change in speed limit on 18 Sam Raffel roadway segments. I will turn this over to staff.

Good evening City Council members, Mayor Kate and City staff and members of the public. My name is Kelly and I'm a Traffic Engineering Technician with the City of Centerfield Department of Public Works. I'm joined today with our consultant for this project, Jimmy. He is a transportation engineer and planner with Parametrics. We're here tonight to present on the change in speed limit on 18 San Rafael roadway segments. So to provide a little bit of context on how we've gotten here. So one of the objectives in the city's work plan is to implement new traffic safety laws. And as a part of this effort, we're continuing to implement California Assembly Bill 43, or AB 43 for short, which gives cities the ability to reduce speed limits on roadways as they meet the criteria set forth in AB 43. So we have presented previously about a year and a half ago on this effort. And as a part of that effort, we call it phase one now. We reduced the speed limit in downtown San Rafael on certain roadways such as 4th, 5th, Mission, and the north-south crossroads between those. So those all saw a reduction in speed limit from 25 miles per hour to 20 miles an hour. And this was to create a more continuous 20 mile per hour downtown San Rafael. We were going through this phase one effort. We saw a lot of community input and feedback on interest in expanding this reduction in speed limits to roadways outside of downtown San Rafael. So through city staff evaluation and then consideration of community input, we have put together a list of phase two locations that would all see a five mile per hour reduction in their existing speed limits. So I'm gonna pass it over to Jimmy who will provide a little more information on the AB43 criteria and then also the phase two locations. Thank you.

Good evening. Council members, Mayor Kate. Thank you, it's an honor to present again on speed limits in San Rafael. I know we've heard this presentation before. I do want to do just a little bit of review of speed limits and how they come to be. We'll talk about, as Kelly mentions, what we're now calling phase one and phase two of this project and what some of the next steps are coming forward. If we'll remember some of what we talked about a year and a half ago, most people are surprised to find out that speed limits aren't necessarily set by cities. We can't prescribe what we think is the best speed for vehicles to travel and then set a speed limit. The California Vehicle Code describes two situations of how speed limits can come to be. On the left, you'll see prima facie speed limits, which means at face, Bespoke speed limits are presumed as 25 miles an hour on most residential local streets. So you'll see a picture on the left here of San Rafael. On all other roadways, speed limits are set by an engineering and traffic survey. This is a study of speeds and other roadway characteristics that must be performed by a traffic engineer. And the way that speed limits are determined is based on the 85th percentile speed. And another way that we think of 85th percentile is the speed at which 15% of vehicles travel at or above. So in essence, as per the California Vehicle Code, speed limits have always been set by the fastest portion of drivers traveling the roadway. This leads us to AB 43. As of 2024, all provisions of AB 43 went into effect. And for the first time in California, now jurisdictions have to do two additional things. They have to take into account the presence of vulnerable roadway users, that is children, seniors, persons with disabilities, the unhoused, when establishing speed limits and the proximity of those users to these roadways. And importantly, AB 43 now permits jurisdictions to reduce speed limits by an additional five miles an hour in certain areas if these roadways meet a number of characteristics. So cities still cannot set their own speed limits, but what AB 43 provides is, in some situations, an additional five miles an hour reduction from what would have otherwise been the recommended speed limit. Also in 2024, San Rafael adopted its local road safety plan. One of the recommendations from the LRSP was to consider lowering speed limits in compliance with AB43. The LRSP sets forth what we now call the High Collision Network. And as you'll see, this network in San Rafael, where the most crashes occur, is centered on downtown. And the primary collision factor of the greatest number of crashes in San Rafael is due to high speed. One other reason why we always take speed limits seriously and the speed at which vehicles are traveling on the roadway is because this span between 20 and 40 miles an hour really greatly drives the outcome of people that are involved in collisions. This graph shows out of pedestrians that are hit With a vehicle traveling 20 miles an hour, there's a 10% chance that that results in a fatality. But if that vehicle is traveling at 40 miles an hour, the chance of fatality increases greatly to 80%. And so we take great care in thinking about the traveled speeds within this band. as you may remember we established a 20 mile an hour zone largely throughout downtown about a year and a half ago adopted by council in february 2025 this came in conjunction with another requirement in the california vehicle code to update an ents and update speed limit validation every seven years And now, as a result of broadly supportive feedback, we are evaluating and presenting the results of this further evaluation of roadways on other areas outside of downtown. A quick overview on the top band here is the timeline that phase one was enacted in the ordinance for downtown speed limits in the spring of 2025 and phase two is coming alongside just afterwards. After the adoption of an ordinance and installation of signage, there's a required 30-day warning period where citations are not given yet, and then after that warning period, citations can be valid. The full implementation of both phase one and two signage striping education and evaluation phases is yet to come in the coming months. Previously I presented a slide showing some other Bay Area newsworthy moments, installation of reduced speed limits from neighboring jurisdictions and now proudly we have a picture here of San Rafael here on Mission Avenue just adjacent to where we are tonight, but other 20 mile an hour signs have gone up in downtown. And then to remind ourselves of what we have taken into account both in phase one and in phase two of this evaluation, we've looked at the proximity of roadways to businesses. We've looked at previously adopted speed limits over the years, not just the current established speed limit. For each roadway evaluated, we've done a crash history analysis. We've looked also at the presence of vulnerable roadway users in proximity to these roadways. And we've also taken into account future infrastructure projects, existing infrastructure projects, as well as C-Click Fix, other public input, and then done this in consultation with city staff and the police department. So here on this map, we're here to display the draft results of phase two, of course, roadways outside of downtown. We've identified 18 roadway segments that are eligible for an additional five mile an hour reduction from their current established speed limit. And again, I want to emphasize this isn't us going out and just choosing roadways and saying that we can set speed limits. There is a very fixed set of criteria that roadways have to meet and match existing measured travel speeds in order for them to be eligible for this additional five mile an hour reduction. but you'll see that they are scattered on all sides of downtown, less roadways meet the criteria for qualification north of downtown, but each one of these recommended speed limits does represent a five mile an hour reduction from the existing speed limit. A full list of the speed limits are included here on this slide and the extents from those roadway segments upon which we're recommending them for adoption. And then finally, we'd also like to mention we have, the city has hosted a public website since October of 2024. It does have an online input form. This phase two of public engagement has been presented to the bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee, as well as the police advisory and accountability committee. These draft results have been adjusted and updated to reflect input from both of those bodies. So to talk about next steps, this presentation is being brought tonight. Roadways can be reduced by five mile an hour as per AB43 with the adoption of an ordinance or resolution. So that is also being brought to council. And then going forward, the city looks to undertake, in addition to installing signage and striping, and a 30-day warning period prior to issuing citations, steps to inform and educate the public on speed limit reductions, as well as putting a plan in place for evaluating effectiveness of reducing speed limits themselves. With that, we'll conclude and open it up for questions.

Thank you, Kelly. Thank you, Jimmy. I'm sure we have some questions. I'll start with the Vice Mayor. Go ahead.

Thank you. Just one quick question. I remember years ago when I was on the school board, there was a situation where, I believe it was on Point San Pedro, we actually, between the school district and the city, increased the speed limit. And I remember there was a lot of conversation that it just did not seem like a reasonable or rational approach. And I was wondering if you could describe when that would happen and if you anticipate there would ever be a situation these days that we would actually increase the speed limit.

Yeah, happy to address that question and thank you for bringing this up. There is a phenomenon that is known in traffic engineering circles called speed creep and It's actually quite rational of a conclusion when speed limits are set based on the fastest tranche of traveling motorists and when speed limits are required to be updated every seven years, when you raise the speed limits, people then have leeway to travel faster. The next cycle comes around and you measure speeds again and people are traveling faster and so hence the recommended speed limit has to be increased. And that phenomenon of speed creep has been recognized and was also addressed in AB43. One of the provisions also allows in situations where you would recommend raising the speed limit to retain the existing speed limit. And so in the future, this difficult conversation would have another avenue, pun intended, for resolution.

Great, thank you. Thank you. Council Member Hill, questions?

Thank you, Mayor Kate.

Yes, thank you, Jimmy, for coming back to us. This is about a year and a half ago that we had you before us, and I appreciate you being here again to bring in Phase 2. Since we're talking about AB 43, and you did a great job, I think, explaining how we got here, but I can't tell you the number of times I go in front of the community, and they're like, why can't you just lower the speed limit? So I appreciate your explanation of it. My question is... on the number of times that we have, periodically we have to do this ENTS study just to hold these speeds. So it sounds like because we did phase one and phase two staggered, would we conduct two ENTS studies in about seven years or would we do it all at one shot maybe so we don't have to keep redoing them over and over again, staggered?

Yeah, that's a great question. It is easiest for cities to perform an ENTS for all roadways within their jurisdiction all at the same time and with the same cadence. Not every city does it that way. But one of the other advantages of AB 43 is The seven-year requirement for recycling your ENTSs now has a provision where that can be lengthened to 14 years. And so kind of arresting the very quick cadence was another rationale of AB43. If a speed limit is rational, then it can stand for a longer period of time, as long as there are no other triggers for reevaluating speed limits, new developments, or different land uses that have changed, other roadway characteristics. If it all remains the same, that validity can be extended longer than in the past.

Thank you, Jimmy. My other question is on enforcement. This is a question I get from the community a lot. I would appreciate, and maybe it's not, it's probably not for you, Jimmy. It's probably for, oh, thank you, Chief. I see Chief Spiller coming down from the gallery. My question as you come down, Chief, is as we contemplate not just this, but just generally, could you share where we are with our traffic pool and how traffic enforcement might be rolled out and how it operates generally?

Absolutely. So we, our traffic officers, our designated traffic officers are assigned to respond to community complaints as well as documented areas of injury collisions. That's the primary driver of the designated traffic officers. All of the police officers that work a beat or have patrol responsibilities are also able and responsible for traffic enforcement in their geographic area. So, when we respond to community complaints, the traffic sergeant just assigns those complaints to the traffic team, and that team, those resources ebb and flow depending on our staffing reality. And then, As you all know, our work plan is very specifically directed toward changing driving behavior and increasing traffic safety through enforcement engineering, partnering with engineering and education to the community. So it's a multi-pronged approach, but enforcement happens both at the beat officer level, the directed traffic officer level, throughout all of the shifts 24-7, 365. Super helpful.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Bushey, any questions? No questions. Okay. I just had one, and actually the chief already answered the question that I had because enforcement's really critical, so thank you, Councilmember Hill, for asking that. Jimmy, you'd said in your presentation about the last phase or in that project timeline, around effectiveness and that you would be looking at what are the metrics to show that whether these are effective or not. We're doing this because we need to reduce our KSI, which is the acronym for people that are fatalities or seriously injured in our community. So I'm wondering or hoping that that metric would actually look at those, that data. And I didn't hear you say that, but we know that that data is what drives. I know we look at it at TAM, and we're, the county of Marin, San Rafael's like number one in terms of those numbers. And that's not a good thing to be number one in, because it shows that we have a high incidence. So could you speak to how you would be looking at utilizing that data with this information? I don't know what that looks like, but I think that is our ultimate goal here.

yeah certainly the lrsp does a great job of describing let's say a prior condition to speed limit reductions and one of the nice things about having so many roadway segments where speed limits are recommended for reduction is that you'll have a suite of streets where nothing was changed except for speed limits and you can do a before and after of crash results. You can also do a before and after of measured speeds, because the next time we come around and do an ENTS, we would take the same speed survey with the same methodology. And you can do that for roads that receive no treatment but speed limit reduction. You could also compare that to the effectiveness of roads that reduce their speed limits in addition to other infrastructure improvements or traffic calming measures. And so I don't mean to lay out exactly what that evaluation

should include or how it will be conducted or when but there will be plenty of data to be able to utilize I see director Miller coming down because the other part about that is when we could actually start to when will this have been in place long enough to start to look at some behavior change

Yeah, something not directly involved with AB 43, but we actually just applied for a grant for Safe Streets for All with the Transportation Authority of Marin in order to update the local road safety plan. So if we get that grant, we would actually do more studies to analyze the collision history in the next couple years. So we would have an updated data point from the local road safety plan. So we'd have to be strategic on how we want to do it. as the city like because if we're doing with local road safety plan with tam then maybe we wait a few more years to do on our own with our updated ents okay no that's helpful because we want the data we're going to get data and we want to make sure that um well that we're looking at and analyzing it see what the effect is in the real world okay

I don't see any other questions at this point, so I will open up public comment on this item. If you're in the chambers and would like to comment, now is your opportunity. And you're welcome, but not required to say your name and what part of San Rafael you live in.

GOOD EVENING AGAIN, DANIEL ALM SPEAKING THROUGH WESTERN NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION BOARD. WE ARE EXCITED THAT THE MIRACLE MILE AND WESTERN AVENUE AND GREENFIELD AVENUE HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED. THESE ARE KEY AREAS WITHIN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD THAT OUR COMMUNITY MEMBERS HAVE DESPERATELY WANTED SLOWER SPEEDS ON. PIVOTING AND SPEAKING THROUGH MYSELF AS A COMMUNITY MANAGER ON THE PAC, POLICE ADVISORY, I WOULD LIKE TO SHARE MY OWN COMMENTS THAT IT IS A DISAPPOINTMENT FOR ME THAT second and third street meet all of the qualifications for this all but four speed creep and the average speed and based on the data, second and third street desperately need slowing and it's unfortunate that because of our mean average speed, we cannot get a reduction on those two streets.

Thank you. Other comments in the chambers?

Hello, Kate.

Mayor Kate and city council members, my name is David Seltzer and I live on Lincoln Avenue. I just wanted to voice my strong support for the proposed reduced speed limits here in parts of San Rafael. As a side note, a few weeks back I actually had a stroke, so I'm not currently able to drive until I get some follow-up evaluations. So this injury is making me especially think about children or people with disabilities that can't drive and their safety getting around the city. So if I stumble with my words, I'm still recovering, hence why I'm reading this rather than speaking off the cuff. So I live on Lincoln Avenue, and I've long felt the speed limit on the north end of the street is too fast for such a dense residential area. We have so many families and children living in this neighborhood. So this change in speed limit better represents this reality. And paired with those new improved pedestrian signals, I think this is a great improvement for pedestrian safety. As we've just seen in the presentation, we have tons of data that shows that the severity of injuries and likelihood of death of pedestrians or cyclists is directly related to car speed. Also, most of that data was accumulated before the increased popularity of trucks and SUVs, which are more dangerous to pedestrians, and the increase of distracted driving. SO REDUCING SPEED LIMITS TO OFFSET THE INCREASED DANGER FROM DRIVERS IS SO IMPORTANT TO IMPROVE PEDESTRIAN AND CYCLIST SAFETY. IN ADDITIONAL NOTE, I SEE AN ITEM ABOUT IMPROVED TRAFFIC CALMING MEASURES SO I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO THAT AS WELL. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR CONTINUED ATTENTION TO PEDESTRIAN AND BICYCLE SAFETY.

Thank you, David. We wish you a speedy recovery. Anyone else in the chambers? I don't see anyone approaching the diocese. Is there anyone online that would like to comment on this item?

I do see a hand raised, a couple hand raised.

Good evening, Mayor Kate and council members. My name is Kevin Haggerty. I'm a board member of the Point San Pedro Road Coalition. The coalition supports the consistent speed limits on Point San Pedro Road. Specifically, we support the proposed reduced speed limits on the section of Point San Pedro Road between Marina Boulevard and Portobello Drive. We hope that this action will result in the city considering in the future speed reductions of the rest of Point San Pedro Road. Finally, the coalition appreciates and supports improvements the city have made to safety on Point San Pedro Road. Thank you. Thank you.

Any other questions?

Hi Brian Walsh here from the West End. Thank you very much for meeting with all of us tonight. Thank you Jimmy for his brilliant presentation. I actually took photos of your slides. Thank you so much. And Eli for your questions about enforcement, which historically has been a problem getting the police to come out when we call them about speeding a red light runner. So I would suggest that the board speak to Sergeant Graham and the traffic committee, the traffic enforcement team to monitor these 18 streets with the new speed limits and after the 30-day warning start issuing violations and secondly if april miller could see us her staff readjust the radar boards these are the signs that display in real time the speed limit they need to be changed for the new threshold that's it thanks so much i think this is a wonderful idea for our community

I'm seeing no other hands raised, but I'll give everyone a moment.

I see no further public comment. Thank you. I will close the public comment. We got great input, but we also got a question, also comment around second and third, and maybe you could just speak to that, why a segment might not meet the qualifications, or that specific segment, actually.

As the commenter had noted and as we had presented to the PAC, the traveled speeds as measured in the traffic survey as part of the ENTS were too high to qualify for a reduction from the existing 25 mile an hour speed limit to 20 mile an hour.

So people are already speeding too much that we can't reduce the speed limit?

Yes, that is the logical conclusion of how the CBC is currently set up to establish speed limits, correct?

Yeah, I didn't want to phrase it that way, but it is a way that we all think about it. Okay, so we will continue to look at infrastructure or other ways that we can continue to reduce speeding in those areas if we can't have the tool of the speed limits. Okay, any additional questions? I don't see any, so, oh yeah, go ahead, Council Member Hill.

Thank you so much. Related to second and third, what discretion does the City of San Rafael and our traffic engineering folk have over the timing of lights to land exactly at the speed limit? Do we have discretion to assert the posted speed limit through the timing of the lights?

Said Fakhri, city traffic engineer. So we have a consultant currently which has been updating the signal timing coordination and the speed limit is part of it. So the progression is the posted speed limit. You also know that there's a lot of concern with Second and third, it's the main arterial, so that moving people is also a concern, but within that speed limit. So when the coordination happens, that's what. So I've already informed them. Also on 4th Street, we changed it because it was 25 miles per hour. So now progression is based on 20 miles per hour. So if you speed, theoretically, it won't help you at the red light. But if you continue with 20 miles per hour, then you hit the green.

Thank you, Said.

Thank you. I don't see any other questions. So I'll thank you, Said. We'll come back for comments. Vice Mayor, go ahead.

Thank you, I mean, rarely do we have, and this is great news, and we know that there'll be more interest in wanting to do more streets. Appreciate the objectivity around the process, even though we don't necessarily agree with the process all the time. And it's great to see this coming forward, so thank you, and I'm looking forward to the next round of updates.

Thank you, Council Member Hill.

Thank you, Mayor Kate. Thank you team Jimmy and Kelly and Said for presenting and answering all of our questions. It's clear, well, it's clear to me when I joined the council in 2021, one of the things that really vexed me was the fact that we did not have discretion over our own speed limits. There was a lot of speeding going on in our community during the pandemic. And I don't think that's unique to this community. So I appreciate that we've built upon the passage of AB 43 went into effect in 2022 and it's taken us this long to be able to do it. Of note in the staff report for this was almost 400 pages long and it was that long because the ENTS is very thorough. So I appreciate not only Jimmy you and parametrics came in, but the staff in the city has, I think appropriately invested in our community safety to ensure that we can arrive at this moment. I would also, as an opportunity in this comment, look forward to a point when AB645, which allows for six pilot cities to have automated speed enforcement in their communities, not the least of which is the city and county of San Francisco, has seen, I think, initial signs that that is working very well there. I hope that that can come to our community so that motorists will be able obey our laws and not have to wait for an officer or to hopefully learn not to do so, but obey the speed limits. These speed limits are there for the safety of our community. Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Bushy.

I just want to contrast this to what it was like on Point San Pedro Road 10, 15, 20 years ago. The chamber was full. It was massive controversy on changing the speed limit. Could be done, must be done, couldn't be done. We went in circles. People complained. And then we did the study. And then we had to raise it. And we had to sell that. It created so much controversy and took so much time from this body and from our staff. In contrast, we now have new laws, a rigorous analysis, all 400 pages of it, and I think community outreach as well, and a joining of the enforcement and the public works approach to this, the visual friction, and some of the safety improvements that have been done, particularly on Point San Pedro Road, to give it more of sort of an urban feel and not, you know, a road along the ocean that you can speed on like they do in the car commercials. So it's great to have this low-contourcy approach to adjusting speed limits. So I'm delighted to be here to see this day. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Kelly. Thank you, Jimmy. Thank you, Saeed and all of DPW for bringing this forward to the council. We have committed as a body and as a community to Vision Zero, which is an approach of how do we, using all the tools across the board that are available to the city, take action to reduce fatalities and serious injury in our community to bicyclists and pedestrians. We have already made that commitment. This is 100% following that commitment and that policy that this body has already approved. So thank you for taking the philosophy and putting it into action. It's fantastic and as was mentioned by the Vice Mayor, I think there'll be more streets that we'll be wanting to add as we start to see how much safer it makes for everybody to utilize our streets, so thank you. I would entertain a motion on this item, please.

I'd like to make the motion. I move to introduce the ordinance, waive further reading, and refer to it by title only.

Second.

Moved and seconded. Roll call, please. Council Member Bushey.

Aye. Council Member Hill.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Kurtz. Aye. Mayor Kate.

Aye. That motion carries 4-0. The City Clerk could read the title of the ordinance, please.

An ordinance of the City Council of the City of Centerfell regarding speed limit changes on 18 Centerfell roadway segments outside of downtown pursuant to sections 22357 and 22358 of the California Vehicle Code.

Thank you. Thank you all. And in a related traffic venue, our next agenda item is the City of San Rafael Traffic Calming Program Policy. Welcome, Saeed.

Good evening, Mayor and council members and member of public. My name is said factory city traffic engineer, I started working for the city on February in February 2025. So tonight agenda is for a traffic calming program policy, which is really how to manage speed and volume on residential streets. So the goal and intent of this policy is to address excessive speed and volume on residential streets and to create objective standards, definitions and thresholds for excessive speed and volume. And also to create an objective process easy to follow by staff and by residents. Other Bay Area cities with similar policy, most cities in the Bay Area have similar traffic calming policies. To name a few, in Marin County, City of Larkspur, they adopted their policy in 2025, last year. City of San Bruno, which I worked as a consultant. City of Berkeley, City of Mountain View, which I was a city traffic engineer. and city of Palo Alto. So our policy is very similar to those in many other cities. So basically the process starts with concern that currently comes through cyclic fix by individuals, which can be addressed by installing signage, striping, channelizer, etc. These are what we call Tier 1 traffic calming tools, which will be discussed later in the slides. So if the resident is not satisfied by tier one approach, then tier two and three starts, which need community support. And basically because this requires cost of survey and measuring the speed and volume, at least for a week. So we are asking for tier two and tier three that the community submit a petition of support, which is signed by majority of the household of the street block or blocks if they're applying for more than one block. Petition of supports must be signed by simple majority, which is 50% plus one. uh so the next step once we receive the petition of support we will do a street and volume survey these are a little bit different than what jimmy was doing the survey those are by lidar or laser which the police enforce it this is for 24 hour two counting speed and volume And if the 85% of speed meets the threshold, which is in the report, then the street will be considered for traffic calming. The 85 percentile is just the threshold, which means obviously 15% drive above certain threshold and 85% drive below it. For example, if you look at the residential street with say 20 cars per hour. We are looking at three cars. If the three cars drive, which is 15%, above that threshold, then the street qualifies. So residents, after the survey, will be informed of the street survey and result, meeting the threshold and qualifying for traffic calming, or if they did not, they will be informed too. So our system is we are using the tier system, and as I mentioned, Tier 1 is what we are doing currently with individual requests. Basically, it's a warning sign, speed limit warning sign, curve sign, pedestrian ahead sign, and also some striping in channelizers that we could do as part of the cyclic fix or tier one option. So this doesn't require really submitting a petition or anything because it doesn't really impact at least physically anybody. So it's really informational and it's safety. The tier two, which we call it passive traffic calming, it does require petition of support because it has to be surveyed, it's costly. The tier two has limited impact or no impact emergency response time. Some of the examples of what we discussed tonight, it's reducing speed limit AB43, It could be applied to some of our other streets. We have to look and see preliminary how many of them qualify, just like we did for what Jimmy presented. We did a survey of C-ClickFix. We looked at... do they qualify, kind of pre-qualification, and then we selected all those roads. The other one is electronic speed radar signs, bulb out, narrow, median island, chokers. As I mentioned, these measures are really not impacting, for example, fire response times to that limit. And then tier three, which we can call it active transportation calming. Obviously, this requires support, petition of support, and that may impact emergency response time, so it will not be applicable to all street. It includes speed humps and traffic circles and turn restrictions and other measures. The way our policy structure, traffic engineers select the tool after the street qualifies. Petition signed and the survey proved that it's qualifying for traffic calming. So the traffic engineers select the tool and design and present it to traffic advisory committee for input, which include police department and fire department planning and our street maintenance crew. After the Advisory Committee inputs, we'll be having a public presentation of the design and outreach at Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee. And then we will receive feedback from public and from BPAC. And then the final design notification and installation. After installation study, staff may monitor results after a year of installation. may perform speed and volume survey to compare the before and after installation data and examine the effectiveness of specific tool. Mostly in literature, there are studies that compare before for different tools, but it always varies with the driving population, the characteristic of roads. It will be good to have that in San Rafael, which may be different slightly from other cities. Also, this traffic calming tool that's in the policy, it's not inclusive of everything. Our toolbox, we can change it due to change in technology or research or studies. For people who, for communities or street that they do not qualify the first time for after the survey, then they can submit, resubmit petition of support two years after the notice we sent for them not meeting the threshold or qualification. so they cannot immediately because we will have probably other applications so we have that two years and also two years give time that the condition might change due to development or other effects so they we can look at it again and then there's a process for removing and the city traffic engineer may remove or modify any installed traffic calming measures for public safety reason without Any additional action in those public safety could come from our safety staff, fire, police, emergency services. For the recommendation, staff is recommending that the council adopt the resolution approving the city of San Rafael traffic calming program policy. And then I have questions and comments.

Thank you Saeed for that. I will see if there are questions. Uh, vice mayor, do you have any questions? I do.

Um, can you share a little bit more about the petition process and how that has worked in other jurisdictions?

Petition process is very similar, although it's not very defined in some cities. For example, city of Larkspur, they have a petition after the survey kind of, They call it voting, but their approval rate is 69% of the resident agreeing. So the variation is between simple majority to even 75% community support. So, for us, if the street, for example, through and we do some minor stuff and it's not satisfying for residents, then a champion or somebody from residents, they can We give him a petition because the petition has to be designed, for example, that the people who sign this petition, the residents, households, and they agree to the process, the policy. If they get approved or meet the criteria, then the policy starts. So once we receive the petition and we can check, also the petition is designed by us so they don't have to put the language with the addresses and everything. One property needs or one household needs one signature. Also, the policy goes into detail. For example, if you live on a cul-de-sac that you have to take that section of the street, then you have to sign the petition because you don't have any other option. The reason for that is we have to be careful who can sign it. If you extend the block or signature, this kind of dilute the support, because if you live on a street, you see the problem, the issue, and you see the speeding. And petition of support comes from people who live on that street. But if you live five block away or ten block away, you probably take that section and probably you're one of the speeders, so you can't dilute the petition support. So once we receive the petition and we check that it's 50% plus one, and this includes multi-family units, renters and owners, and then we can see if it meets at least majority support. And then we can start the survey. We have to hire somebody to do the survey for us, a vendor for a week. It's not very costly, but say if we do it on a two segment or three segmented cost, a thousand per two per location. And then once we determine that, then we proceed with the rest of the policy.

So just to follow on with that, so do you define the universe of the petition signers? And I'll just ask if you could use, Director Mill is very familiar with this stretch of street, which is the northern part of Canyon Oak that has no residents on it, but it's used probably by hundreds every day. So what would be the, I'm having a hard time trying to understand In that type of scenario, what would be the universe of signatures?

So those are all the people who, that segment which doesn't have any resident, but the following segment has people who take that street every day. So the definition of that street probably falls into residential street. So all the people who live on that segment all the way probably, if they want to do it to the cul-de-sac at the end, they can submit a petition and we can stop.

So the universe is sort of subjective in terms of defining who needs to sign the petition.

Yeah, depending on the context. In this case, I mean, if you live somewhere, if you have another route to take except that route, then you probably... I have to check to see exactly who has to take that route every day because that's the only route they can take and then those people can vote. Also that stretch of a road is included in our bicycle and pedestrian plan update which will come later to the council. It's one of the stretches that bike improvement.

So still working, I mean I absolutely love having an objective process. I'm stuck on the petition piece of it and how that's gonna work in practicality and I'm wondering if there's other, if you can look at other options aside from that petition process to get to that same goal.

So that's one way of doing it and our policy is also when we do Safe Route to School as a capital improvement project We also consider that also, if we tackle some of the stretches that's in our local roadway safety plan, which is a segment, and it's a residential street, we can always implement public work, take the initiative, and we will send the petition for signatures and the staff will send if it comes from community. It's probably most agencies like the community also to work a little bit for it. So go to the neighborhood and collect signatures. Otherwise, if it's a safe route to school or local roadway safety plan that we do, then we will take the initiative.

And again, sorry, I'm going to keep going on this petition thing because it's not sitting right with me on this. You're asking for a physical signature. It can't be an online email response or... I just think in practicality, I am really concerned that there's going to be very few... Again, I understand the goal of it, but the practicality of getting those signatures from people and if they're going door to door and asking and knocking... I think it's limiting in terms of our community being able to participate in that.

So far I have seen that's the heart, the part of it, and also the signature collecting, but I mean, we certainly can look at technology, but how can we make it easier? But to gather all those emails is also, or maybe we can send a notice where they can send all their emails and then we gather signature through email with the address and everything. So there must be a way to do, with technology.

Thank you. I'll leave it to others to ask some questions at this point. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Hill, questions?

Thank you, Mayor Kate. Thank you, Sayyid, for the presentation. My question would continue with the petition. I actually think the policy reads well. I think the implementation with the petition still presents as I want to be optimistic that it will produce it. So I have a couple questions. My questions are, and I think the vice mayor used the word the universe, but I'm thinking of it more in terms of a fraction of how do we establish, or do you establish the denominator by saying you would draw a circle that you believe is the area of influence maybe to determine what the boundaries of it, and then based on that you determine the denominator of the fraction? Does that sound accurate?

That's accurate.

Okay. And maybe building on one of the, I'm trying to imagine, there are certainly scenarios in our community where there are multifamily units where there are one, two, maybe three, four families that might live inside of a large unit and they would get one vote. I'm just trying to imagine is there a way to, how do we allow for a more equitable approach to those types of scenarios?

In single families, probably easier, and if they have one renter, unit A and B, so they both can vote. On the number of units in the policy, it's per household unit per vote, or per signature of support. If there are units officially A and B, yes, that should be counted. Okay. Thank you.

I just had an additional question, also trying to get my head around who, the universe, the denominator, however you want to look at it, who are the people that are weighing in on the petition? And I want to be clear that I share the goal of this because it has been very haphazard and sometimes it's the folks that know how to advocate for themselves that want speeding and they come in, sorry, they don't want speeding, but they want traffic calming and then other neighbors don't want it. So I do really appreciate having it come from the community And I do think there is the mechanism. We need to have some sort of mechanism. But when I'm looking at, again, you had your example of the street, but I'm thinking of Spinnaker Point Drive, where is a street that we put traffic calming in and we were very excited. And then there were a group of people that didn't want to drive slower. So they were not excited about it. So I'm looking at that street. And is that when you would have all the cul-de-sacs, everyone that's on Spinnaker Point Drive up to Catalina? Is that what you're saying? We're saying people that are required to drive there because of where they live, that would be the universe that would need to write the petition and be a part of it.

Yeah, that is the most tricky part of the area in my experience. So I have excluded people and they have really passionately why I cannot sign the petition because if you extend it to include every possible people that there is no limit of who can sign the petition. And then it usually dilutes the vote because they want to speed, they want to go fast to work. I agree. So you have to be very careful in the guide. I have is usually when the petition comes, if it's for one block, you always encourage them how about block upstream and downstream to make it say three blocks, three to five blocks is best because always you don't want to put, say speed time, you don't want to put one, you want to put two or three because if you put one, people slow and then speed up. And also the people who signed the petition, so if they are taking another route, they can take, and that's another scenario where the next street might qualify, so if they change their route. But people who are concerned is people who live on that street. You don't want to dilute.

Right, that makes sense. So you stated in the beginning of your presentation, so thank you for looking at other cities and towns. You mentioned Larkspur, Berkeley, there were some other ones on there, I can't remember them now. So what you are presenting to the city, to the community this evening, based on what has been successful in other communities because I think because it's new to us we're trying to imagine how it will manifest so I want to say these are best practices but you you have taken recommendations or existing programs that have been had the outcome and that's what you're suggesting here.

Exactly. Okay. And the studies, there are traffic calming studies in Institute of Transportation Engineers and these other cities that I mentioned, some of them like Larkspur is very brief like us, even less than us, a policy, but some of them like City of Mountain View has a thick manual. So every chapter, for example, who can sign?

Okay, we don't want to do the thick manual approach. Correct, correct.

This is a beginning, and I think for this city, this is the first one. Right. And could we study them for five years? When we have experience, how many we install?

Yeah, no, I appreciate that, that we would want to revisit if it needs to be tweaked. And I do appreciate we haven't talked about the traffic calming measures that you talked about, the different tiers. 100%, I agree with all of that. But I was, like the Vice Mayor, a little bit stuck on who gets to sign the petition. If there's a technology aspect of it, great. But I do think we need to do something. I just know how much staff time this takes. And there's been an inconsistency in applying who gets the benefit of traffic calming. and we're really working as a city to not have that inconsistency. Do you have another question? Yeah, Council Member Hill, go ahead. I don't have any others.

Thank you, Mayor Kate. One more question. I was thinking through a scenario, and again, I appreciate the order of the policy of the request submission, initial review. I was thinking of a scenario, I'll make up a, maybe it's a counterfactual. So tonight we adopted the change speed limit on 18 roadways. Now Fifth Avenue in Sun Valley is now recommended to be 20 miles an hour. Let's say the community gets together and they come to you and say, we want it to be, you get a 50 plus one, they ask for a 10 mile an hour speed limit. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't happen, but let's say they do that.

would you be able to confer with them to say hey don't submit that petition that's not going to pass an ents there's nothing we could do to legally support that before they're not excluded so for example fifth avenue if it qualify other stuff like it's it's a i know it's a route or d street it's a route for fire it's the only route so considering all those they're 20 mile per hour And if they want to submit for traffic, call me because people drive fast. So the thing applies to them and the criteria.

Can I clarify, though? People aren't requesting the type of traffic calming measure, just that they want traffic calming measures.

Thank you.

So it wouldn't go down by 10 miles an hour. But if there was five speed humps on the road, it might go down by 10 miles an hour just because people have to slow down by that much. But we would do an analysis that determined what the appropriate traffic calming measure would be.

That is super helpful to set that expectation. So in other words, the petition would not say we want speed bumps, it would say we need traffic calming and you would determine what the best mechanism would be.

Exactly. Just for your information that we have a grant to install traffic calming on Fifth Avenue, so changing the speed limit wouldn't change and we are installing near California, and fifth, two radar speed signs, and we're improving that corner of California in the market for pedestrian and bicycles. So we have that grant. It doesn't exclude, because now they're 20 miles per hour.

That is welcome and wonderful news for the Sun Valley residents. Thank you.

Thank you. So I'm not seeing any further questions at this time. I would like to open up public comment. If you would like to comment, now is your opportunity. You're welcome, but not required to say your name and what part of San Rafael.

Daniel Almagen. Through the Western Neighborhood Association Board, we've always welcomed more to the toolkit. I think this is a great idea. I appreciate the tiered system. I think for us we would want to understand the lift on doing a petition because it would sound like it would probably likely fall to a neighborhood association. And I know from our own experience on trying to do the street closure we have to get 100 percent sign off. It's an act of herding cats and it's not easy and it's not fun. I'm a little bit concerned about the petition process and how that would work.

Thank you. Any other comments on this item? I don't see anyone in the chambers. Anyone online?

I do see a hand raised, a couple hand raised.

Hi there. Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Dave Rhodes. I'm the co-chair of Walk Back Centerfell and a West End neighborhood resident. And first of all, I just want to thank the staff for bringing forward Centerfell's first traffic calming program. It's a significant step forward. Having a transparent process with clear criteria is definitely much better than handling requests on an ad hoc basis. But my primary concern is the neighborhood voting requirement, like many of you on the council have expressed and others in the chambers there. The traffic calming is fundamentally a public safety issue. And while neighbors should absolutely have a strong voice in identifying the problems and shaping solutions, The decisions should ultimately be guided by engineering analysis, speed data, crash history, and the city's adoption policies, not by a referendum. The streets not only belong to the people who live on them, but they're used every day by children walking to school, people riding bikes, transit riders, visitors, and everybody traveling through our community. We don't vote on whether or not to install a stop sign or a crosswalk. We rely on objective criteria and professional judgment. and traffic calming should be treated the same way. So I adopt you tonight to adopt, I encourage you to adopt this program tonight, but please do direct staff to revisit the neighborhood voting requirement. And so that the community input informs the decisions without becoming a barrier to warranted safety improvements. I definitely think that staff and neighborhood time is a major barrier to making these things happen. So let's try to do as much as we can to get as much as out of our staff and neighborhood time to improve our streets. Thank you all very much. Thanks for considering this policy.

Hi, Susan Gilbert again, downtown San Rafael. I'd like to share my gratitude for the traffic calming measures you've implemented and intend to implement here in the future. I can appreciate that the city traffic engineers have a complex task of balancing the needs of drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians, all of whom want to get across town as fast as humanly possible. As you know, we've had at least four pedestrian fatalities and two cyclist fatalities in the last four years here, and it's important to recognize that these deaths are multifactorial. Mostly, they have to do with distracted or impaired driving and or speeding on the part of the driver. I'm asking drivers to have more regard for the lives of the pedestrians and cycling neighbors. While it's wonderful that you've lowered the speed limits around the downtown area, I'd like to see more enforcement of the limits by the police. Some of the cars going west on third and east on second reach speeds of up to 50 miles an hour. In our residential neighborhood, which is a 25 mile per hour zone, Please consider your pedestrian neighbors, some of whom are old, may have poor mobility or poor eyesight and need more time to ambulate through a crosswalk. I'd also like to ask police for more enforcement of scooters and e-bikes who are on the sidewalks, making it precarious for us pedestrians. Finally, I'd like to mention 25 years ago, I was responsible for circulating a petition in my Oakland neighborhood to get a speed bump to prevent drug dealers from traversing our block. I succeeded in getting the 160 signatures and it's still there today. Thank you.

I see no other hands raised, but I'll give everyone a moment. Okay.

I see no more public comment. OK, thank you. I will close the public comment and bring it back. Any other questions by the council? Yeah, go ahead, Vice Mayor.

I have a question in terms of amending the resolution. It's the seventh whereas that established the request and petition process. if that can be, because I support everything within the resolution aside from that petition. I don't feel like we've really defined that the right, I think we need to think about that a little bit more of what that would look like and I don't know if we're really saying there has to be community engagement or there has to be input or there has to be some consensus of a defined area. But a petition, to me, means actually getting those signatures. And unless we're going to give flexibility on what that petition is, I'd like to redefine that whereas.

Well, let's maybe ask City Manager or Director Miller to see if there's flexibility in this wording, because to change a resolution, you would have to make a motion that would change that, and that may or may not be supported. But maybe there's another way. What I hear is having flexibility, given the input that you've heard from the council tonight, as well as the community.

Yes, thank you. I just want to clarify, I think there's a piece was missed from Said's presentation. And the first step is for residents to submit on C-Click Fix. And so the location is evaluated, there could be striping, there could be signage that's added. This policy is in place for people who just want more. And they're really passionate about wanting more. Maybe it's just one person, but maybe it is the entire neighborhood. And I think that's the petition we're trying to get is the people who disagree with our initial analysis on what we think would be done without the data. And that's where the petition comes in. So just to clarify that piece, I wasn't sure if everybody caught that from the commenters from the public.

No, I understood that. I still think that puts the... there's an advantage for somebody to be able to collect that versus, I don't think it's balanced across the community to be able to do that.

Okay. Talking to, may I add? Yes, go ahead. Talking to our legal team, city attorney office, we are working on the design of petition because we want to put some language that they can review. For example, if I receive a cyclic fix for a stretch of a road, we can include that in the petition, the map of the area that they need to sign the petition. But we haven't really finalized the design of petition. We thought we will leave it to staff to design it and with city attorney review. So that also might help your concern.

Right, and that's what I was asking. Is there flexibility in terms of this whereas to evaluate that petition process and really

I'm not sure I'm conveying my concern. We hear that you have a concern about that and I think really is there flexibility to have staff incorporate the feedback that they've heard and then maybe that may or may not be sufficient enough. So.

Yeah, we haven't designed the petition yet, so we would definitely take the feedback we've received today and from some of the letters that we received when we're designing the petition. I don't think that changes the whereas, but we could always ask. Okay.

Did you have any other? No, that's fine. And if that has the flexibility and maybe it goes back to BPAC or it goes back to some others to be able to review and evaluate that petition process, that'd be great.

Okay.

Additional comments? Yeah, Council Member Hill.

Thank you, Mayor Kate. Just to affirm, this doesn't replace, this is in addition to the city conducting, it's already the existing process, which is that there is a continued examination of data, there is cyclic fix, this is just one more mechanism on top of the existing process, is that right?

And in addition to that, this policy will help us when we implement in our projects because we want feedback from community. If we do a safe route to school and we implement traffic calming, which we can according to the policy, then we can also use this process to get petition of support from the residents so we have that outreach or if we do something on a street where it is part of the local roadway safety plan high collision segment and it's on a residential street we can use the same process it will be initiated by ASTHO

Thank you. Any other comments? Council Member Bushey.

Quick comment. I think this is a very solid version one. It's an improvement over what we have, sets out some standards, and to the extent that the rollout brings things that are unanticipated, this policy can be revised. I think the policies brought forward is an improvement and we should adopt it and we look forward to your feedback and the community's feedback on how it can be improved.

Thank you and I'll just close by saying it was in the staff report but it wasn't in your presentation that this is a direct response to one of the goals and objectives in our three year strategic plan. So this body has already stated that we want to launch and evaluate pilot projects for traffic calming measures to improve neighborhood safety. We do the policy up here and you guys come back with the operations and the how to and this is what we have before us this evening and we look forward to seeing how it manifests. with the input that you've heard and any modifications that might be needed after it has been underway. But we appreciate having an action item to our goals and objectives.

Mayor Kate. Please. We were just discussing a potential change you might wish to consider that I was discussing with the city manager because of the concern expressed about the request and petition process. Again, the whereas's aren't really operational, but we could substitute the word contemplates for establishes on the eighth whereas. Whereas the policy establishes a requested petition process, we could say, whereas the policy contemplates. Just a suggestion in line with the Vice Mayor's concerns stated.

If the city attorney's office believes that's necessary in order to have the flexibility that we want to have inherent as the program gets designed, then I think we'd be welcome. I worry about wordsmithing. I mean, the five of us wordsmith, but so that's, if you believe that change needs to happen to have this type of flexibility.

It does not need to happen. Okay. So it's just a suggestion to try to ameliorate the concern, but I don't believe it's required. Okay.

Are you ready for a motion?

Yes, I will go ahead with the motion, please.

I move that we adopt the resolution approving the City of San Rafael's traffic calming program policy.

Second. Moved and seconded. Roll call, please.

Council Member Bushey. Aye. Council Member Hill. Aye. Vice Mayor Kurtz. Aye. Mayor Kate.

Aye. That motion carries 4-0. Thank you for taking our input. Thank you, Sayu, for all your work. Our last in our regular agenda is a nomination of eligible census tracts for Opportunity Zone 2.0. I see Greg Miner has joined us, welcome.

Good evening, Greg Miner with the Community Economic Development Department. I'm going to try to pull up a PowerPoint here. All right. I'm going to walk us through the staff report, which is going to provide an overview of what an Opportunity Zone is, the Opportunity Zone or OZ 2.0 process that Congress recently established, as well as California's portion of that process and how the city of Samarville fits in. And I'm joined by Alexis Kaptanian, our housing manager. So what's an Opportunity Zone? It's a federal tax incentive program. Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot to share.

We were listening to what you were saying. We didn't know that we'd get slides, too, so great. Thank you.

I had similar problems back in preschool, but I'm working on it. So Opportunity Zones were a federal tax program created under the first Trump administration. It allows for investors to repurpose capital gains into Qualified Opportunity Funds, which are an investment vehicle that are used to support economically distressed areas, and depending on how long the investment is in place, it minimizes or eliminates the tax burden. And this slide lists a couple of eligible investments, such as real estate construction, rehabilitation of vacant or underutilized properties, infrastructure, or energy-related projects or investments in operating businesses. So the first Opportunity Zone 1.0, the initial program established in 2017, was scheduled to sunset, I think, at the end of 2028. However, Congress made the program permanent last year as part of that one big, beautiful bill. And it also established this Opportunity Zone 2.0 process where IRS in the spring released the eligible census tracts nationwide. And then governors across the country have until the end of September to nominate up to 25% of their eligible census tracts. And then the... Treasury later this year will certify those nominations and then the new Opportunity Zone map will be in effect for the next decade. So it's a once a decade process moving forward. And then within that, California has created its own process that's being overseen by GO-Biz, or the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development. So back in middle of June, they opened up an application process for local jurisdictions to make recommendations of which census tracts the governor should nominate. It's not required that a local jurisdiction's elected body adopt a resolution. However, it's something that we can add during the public comment period to show support or direction. And then again, then there'll be a public comment period, August 1st, and a deadline for the governor at the end of September. The state has indicated that, and just for context in terms of the number of census tracts in California, there's over 2,600 eligible census tracts, so the governor can only nominate a little over 600. In terms of how the state will go about selecting that 600 or so census tracts, they've identified a number of priorities. Some of those are outside of our control, just demographic factors such as poverty, medium family income, renter occupancy. and unemployment, but other factors are statewide and regional economic development objectives such as those outlined on the slide here, alignment with the state jobs first regional plans and programs, alignment with affordable housing objectives and regional housing needs allocation, the presence of business ready sites, and any active or planned public investment. So when it comes to San Rafael, the initial Opportunity Zone, or OZ 1.0, the two small census tracts, 1122.04 and .03, were the designated tracts. In this second round, the IRS has identified five potential census tracts, including much larger census tracts such as 11 22.02 which includes um the remainder of east samarifel and all of our our ardo dealerships which are prime tax generating uses for the city as well as areas west of 580 and a portion of the downtown These areas align with many of the state priorities that I referenced a moment ago. There's currently various forms of public investment in these different areas. Just as an example, MTC is funding the East Summerfell specific plan that is underway at the moment. that will help shape opportunities and development pathways going forward. There are multiple housing sites as well as business ready sites and there's ongoing workforce training programs as well in these areas. One issue that the Economic Development and Housing Subcommittee raised during discussion of this item was the potential for displacement of tenants as a result of Opportunity Zone related investments. Back in 2021 and 2024, the city took measures to adopt anti-displacement strategies specific to those Opportunity 1.0 census tracts. However, there isn't a lot of data in terms of the actual impact of OZ 1.0 investments, and partly that's a reflection on the lack of data reporting requirements during OZ 1.0. OZ 2.0 will have more reporting requirements. It will have a better sense of the impact of Opportunity Zone investments. regardless of opportunity zones the city council through the housing element and the three-year strategic plan has adopted goals directing staff to explore anti-displacement strategies as our our housing manager knows well and staff is already exploring anti-displacement strategies for presentation to the city council starting with the economic development housing subcommittee this fall that so that will include an analysis of the opportunity zones but more examine anti-displacement strategies citywide. So in terms of staff's recommendation, since there is no limit on how many census tracts we could recommend, we're recommending all five census tracts for the state's consideration with the prioritization. The number one census tract that we recommend is the largest census tract, the 1122.02, followed with the downtown census tract, as these two census tracts provide the strongest opportunity for investment that aligns with the city's economic development, housing, resilience, and revenue objectives. The next two census tracts staff recommends for the state's consideration would be 1122.04 and 1122.03. The remaining census tracts in East Samarifel or the existing 1.0 census tracts is that would provide for a kind of a comprehensive economic development tool for East Samarifel and help support the policies developed in the East Samarifel specific plan. And the last census tract recommended would be the furthest west, 1121, as there are opportunities for industrial and commercial land modernization there as well. So that's staff's recommendation, and we're here to answer any questions.

Thank you, Greg. Questions? Vice Mayor, any questions on this item?

So we can recommend all five and the state can come back and select one, right?

Correct.

Yeah. For all these census tracts, are they all within the city or does it cross into county at all?

My wise colleague to my right has confirmed that they're all within the city of San Rafael.

Okay, great. All right, that's, yeah, now it makes sense.

Great, thank you. Questions, Council Member Boushey.

I want to ask some questions about the anti-displacement because I was here when we did those and it was an emergency. We thought there was going to be widespread displacement because of the very lucrative incentives created by the Opportunity Zones. So if I understand your presentation correctly, there hasn't been a lot of use of those anti-displacement programs and requirements.

As Greg mentioned, we don't have great local data because of the lack of reporting requirements. But what we do know is nationally, a little under three quarters of tracks, OZ designated tracks saw activity, and about a quarter didn't. We have not, We are not aware of a lot of activity in our opportunity zone. I think what we're thinking about for 1.0 versus 2.0 is that we do have some other economic development strategies coming down the line. For instance, the Southeast San Rafael specific plan and other plans that could catalyze investment together with the opportunity zone. One of the things that a lot of the research and commentary on the opportunity zones are saying is that often the tracks that had more activity had multiple, had an opportunity zone designation and some other tools. And so that is why, even though we're not aware of a proliferation of activity in the OZ 1.0 in the canal census tract, we didn't want to assume that there would necessarily be no activity in 2.0 if there were another designation with different other local tools in place.

Wait, that doesn't make any sense. So years ago in 2017, it was an emergency. Bad things were going to happen to tenants. We had to act right away. We adopted extremely strenuous tenant protections. I'm now hearing you tell me that as far as you know, they haven't been used, and they haven't created any, and there wasn't a real need for them. And that was just in the two small ones. So now we're zooming out to a much bigger area, and you're coming forward and making no recommendations for those. for the new areas. So my question goes back to what are we gonna do about the ones, are we gonna leave, so we're gonna have two with these strenuous requirements and the others not? What's the logic behind that?

Sorry, let me just clarify. I apologize, I didn't understand the question. The two emergency policies, one of them will expire December 31st, 2026. So the 2024 urgency ordinance, no matter what happens with the Opportunity Zone 2.0 designation, whether all of them get us designated, none of them, it will expire December 31st. the 2021 policy which is the one that increased relocation assistance payment amounts that is tied specifically to the canal opportunity zone designation that currently exists so if those two were to get redesignated that would survive into 2.0 unless the council took action but if if those only for those exactly okay

So logically, if they're necessary for those two, are they necessary for the others? And it sounds to me like they haven't been used in those two. So why, so what are we doing here?

So it's not that those policies haven't been used. I think it's that we're saying there hasn't been a proliferation of Qualified Opportunity Fund activity in the current zone that we're aware of. Those policies have been utilized in certain circumstances, but I think part of what we're saying is it makes sense to look at this in a citywide approach rather than only look at it in isolation with a couple of census tracts to your point.

So your proposal then is to look at it across the city. And what are you gonna do about those two?

So council member, if I may, Michael Hinkle, community and economic development director. Some of these items were covered in the subcommittee meeting we had on this one. I'll try to bring up to speed on the general thoughts and approach. We did adopt tenant protection components tied to the opportunity zone, which is those two little census tracts. But the initial data in the analysis, we're looking from a citywide perspective of our issues on protections really need to be citywide. They can't be tied to a singular opportunity zone provision or the changes in that. So really the staff recommendation is really to separate tenant protections and opportunity zone designations separately. OPPORTUNITY ZONE DESIGNATIONS WERE HOW WE APPROACHED THE PARTICULAR PROBLEM AT THE TIME TO SAY HERE'S A POTENTIAL SOLUTION THAT DEFINED A GEOGRAPHIC AREA. AS WE DUG MORE INTO THE ISSUE ABOUT DISPLACEMENT OR CONCERNS ABOUT DISPLACEMENT WITHIN THE CITY OF SANTERFEL, IT REALLY IS IN MULTIPLE COMPONENTS OF THE CITY. THAT'S NOT SPECIFICALLY NOZ, AN OPPORTUNITY ZONE LOCATION. SO WE REALLY ARE LOOKING AT THEM AS TWO DIFFERENT APPROACHES. ONE IS TENANT PROTECTION APPROACHES FOR THE ENTIRE CITY WIDE AND WE'RE PREPARED AND WE'VE BEEN RESEARCHING RECOMMENDATIONS TO BRING BACK TO THE SUBCOMMITTEE ALONG AND ULTIMATELY TO THE COUNCIL PER THE WORK PROGRAM. THERE IS A SECONDARY PIECE RELATED TO THE STATE'S MOVEMENT ON OPPORTUNITY ZONE 2.0. WE DO SEE THIS OPPORTUNITY ZONE 2.0 AS AN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT TOOL. IT IS TAX BENEFITS FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. IT IS AN IMPORTANT INVESTMENT TOOL AND WE WANT TO UTILIZE IT AS SUCH. WE ARE FOCUSED ON THE ELIGIBLE TRACK ZONES THAT WE HAVE. WE HAVE ACTUALLY ENGAGED THE MULTIPLE COMMUNITY MEMBERS. WE'VE DONE A COUPLE WORKSHOP SESSIONS ON THIS AND ACTUALLY RECEIVED GENERAL SUPPORT OF LIKE, YEAH, ONE QUESTION I THINK WE RECEIVED, I THINK WE RECEIVED LETTERS ON THIS WAS, OKAY, WHAT'S THE PRIORITIZATION? WHICH ONE? IS IT DOWNTOWN OR IS IT EAST SANTERFEL? A LOT OF APPROACH WAS MAKE SURE IT'S EAST SANTERFEL FIRST WITH DOWNTOWN AND THE OTHER ZONES IN THAT ORDER OF PREFERENCE. But ultimately, this will become a state tool that we may get zero in terms of the eligibility tracks. I'm hoping that we'll get something, but who knows? But that's really the approach we're taking, really trying to isolate the two type of questions being opposed here. But opportunity zones is just a toolbox into the economic development tools, whereas the tenant protections, I think, is actually something that needs to be taken on by the city as a whole. And it expands beyond the two little census tracks located in the canal.

I agree with you 100%. Economic development sounds great, let's do all that. But we put them together years ago and we either need to decide that they belong together or they don't. Maybe that's an issue that you take up in the broader looking across the city and saying in this particular area we have them based on this rationale that is now outdated.

I believe that's the approach on this and really just bringing forward recommendations on where the tenant protection should lie across the entire city and actually define potentially a different geographic basis. There are other opportunities for us to do that. That's not an OZ map.

Anymore.

That's correct. And that's really the concern of this. We needed to come to terms with this no matter what because they were going to expire at the end of the year. So we've already been working on, okay, where is our approach for tenant protections? But then the opportunity zones period, time period, ramped up really kind of we need to take action if we want to preserve the ability even to obtain the economic development tools represented by OZ 2.0.

Right, so capture the benefits of OZ 2.0 and resolve the tenant protection issue somewhere else, but separate them. That's correct. Actually, cleave them apart, because that was how it was done before. All right, thank you.

Certainly.

Thank you. Council Member Hill.

Thank you Mayor Kate. Thank you Greg and Alexis for being here to present this item. This is very important to our community. My question is because we can't tell investors, invest in this. They're gonna come in and they're gonna invest in what they want to. However, what I'd love to hear is, does staff have any opinions on tools that we have that would, might encourage or steer towards projects that would lead to more community benefit and or towards our general plan.

Sure, I mean one opportunity that comes to mind is the East San Rafael specific plan. That's a process where the community and the council ultimately can incentivize certain activity through our planning regulations. So that seems like an opportunity on the horizon. Alexis, did you wanna add anything? One thing I omitted earlier in the presentation to mention that staff's recommendation is consistent with the recommendation of the Chamber of Commerce and East Amarillo working group and Canal Alliance and they included a letter in our packet.

The other question around displacement, because I know that in the packet note, in the presentation, too, that staff will come back to the subcommittee first and then the council to contemplate what those proposals might be for mitigation. I think that might go, I would suggest it might answer a lot of what Councilmember Bushee's concerns are, which is how do we disentangle Citywide policy from OZ specific policy for displacement. Are there any other risks other than displacement that you would contemplate? Or is that the main one?

Not that comes to mind. I don't know if Director Hinkle, if you have any thoughts. But ultimately, I think what we've discussed at the subcommittee level and Director Hinkle mentioned is it's just an additional economic development tool. So if an investor is considering investing in San Rafael, rather, this is something that might encourage them to invest here rather than not. So it's an additional tool.

You know, kind of to add on to that, I agree, and I don't think there's a lot of risk outside of the displacement concerns that we're living called out for. It is a federal tax benefit that's actually applied by Congress. I think for us, when we look at these items, it's overall investment actions. It's almost like a checkbox for investors, right? You know, are you in the flood zone? Maybe, yes, no. Are you in opportunity zone? Yes, so they go through the box of items, and then also the reality is for investors to take advantage of the tax benefits applied by Opportunity Zones, you have to have groups understand qualified investments, and there's a big fund pool that ties into it, but they do exist, and they've actually been successful in some areas for bringing that capital to play. The one area that, and I mentioned this in the subcommittee, one area that I was surprised with is the ability that downtown, downtown was not originally on any of the initial projected maps or locations. I actually think that's a great benefit for us because we already have adopted plans and information. This is an area we've targeted for many years for investment, where this brings another checkbox to say why Santa Fe makes sense for investment. If that brings in that housing and that office or development pieces we're looking for, the benefits. Also too, opportunity zones also, they're always layered for like tools for investments. Being qualified in an opportunity zone may also bring some of the infrastructure dollars and pieces we're after based on the projects that are being presented. So whatever we can do to add to the ability for investment to PULL FULL BENEFIT I THINK IT'S A VALUE TO US BUT I DO DO AGREE THE BIGGEST CONCERN OF THE BIGGEST SETBACKS OPPORTUNITY ZONES AND HAS BEEN ALWAYS BEEN THE DISPLACEMENT CONCERNS THAT'S WHY I THINK WE'RE TRYING TO ADDRESS THIS THE DISPLACEMENT CONCERNS WE'RE ON A CITYWIDE PIECES WHERE IT'S NOT JUST A PROTECTION TO ADD IT ONLY IF YOU'RE IN THE OPPORTUNITY ZONES BECAUSE THOSE SAME CONCERNS ARE THROUGHOUT OUR COMMUNITY ONE CONCERN THAT I HAVE THAT

I imagine, and I can't prove it, but I'd love if staff could indulge walking into this risk area that I think about, which is that the happy path is that we get investments that are completely aligned with community benefit, completely aligned with the general plan. However, I can also imagine that what might be more important to an investor is that they get a return. and that may not be consistent with community benefit and general plan. So I guess it doesn't have to be an answer that says here's what we're going to do. I'm hoping that maybe if staff can contemplate as part of the displacement the next time we revisit this at the subcommittee level. what are ways that we can help, you know, how do we create more encouragement? I appreciate, you know, the specific plan is obviously one way. If there's any other lessons that are learned, even if it's not data driven, I heard opportunities in 1.0 did not have data and reporting requirements in a way that might inform, but even if it's anecdotal, what did other communities do to try to make it less extractive and more aligned with community benefit?

I think that one thing that really helps in the process, particularly for the community engagement portions for both the downtown and for Southeast Santa Fe, is the community engagement about what we're looking for. I think that's the most critical piece because a lot of times that is the question for investors. What's the overall vision of this community? Where is it going to go? What do I need to be successful here? And I think those plans and that investment of our time and effort REALLY WILL PAY OFF IN THAT TOTAL INVESTMENT PACKAGE, PARTICULARLY WHAT'S NEEDED TO BE SUCCESSFUL. SO AND THAT'S WHEN WE LOOK AT KIND OF THE DISPLACEMENT POLICIES OR CONCERNS RELATED TO THAT. WE'RE GETTING THAT LEVEL OF INVESTMENT AND LOOKS IN SANTERFEL ALTOGETHER IN ALL PORTS OF SANTERFEL. SO I THINK THAT'S WHY WE REALLY DO NEED TO LOOK AT REALLY WHAT'S HAPPENED TO OUR COMMUNITY IN RESPECTS OF DISPLACEMENT OUTSIDE OF OPPORTUNITY ZONES. AND THAT'S REALLY WHERE WE LANDED AS STAFF AND REALLY KIND OF PURSUING THAT APPROACH.

Thank you.

Thank you. I don't have any additional questions, so I'm going to open up public comment on this item. If you'd like to comment, now is your opportunity to do so. I don't see anyone in the room. Anyone online like to comment?

I see no hands raised. I'll give everyone a second.

OK.

I see no public comment.

Okay, I'll close the public comment and bring it back. We've had, in addition to those questions, there was some commentary in there as well. But I will offer the opportunity for additional comments. Vice Mayor.

I'm supportive of moving forward with the recommendation and the prioritization of the five additional, or actually three additional plus the two census tracts. I think we have to keep an eye on what happens to the Opportunity Zones. It will be interesting to see if having them in more commercial areas will generate something I don't feel that we saw what we were hoping to see with the Opportunity Zone so But I think we'll need to watch it carefully and I hope the state supports the work that we're trying to do Because if it works the way it's supposed to work for the better of the community, that would be great if it leads to more you know, gentrification, displacement, other things that the negative aspects that come along with an opportunity zone potentially, then we need to, you know, address that as they come forward. But right now we're not seeing that. And it would be to it. We would be remiss not moving forward, at least to see if we can get some support from the state to be able to work with these with these levels and these census tracts.

Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Bushee, go ahead.

I support the staff recommendation and be happy to move the motion at the appropriate time.

Thank you. Council Member Howell.

I will echo my council member's comments and not belabor the point. I support this adopting the nomination of these five census tracts. I look forward to the next engagement with staff on recommendations for displacement and ways that we can guide investment using whatever tools we have. Thank you.

Yeah, and thank you, Alexis and Greg, for all the work. I know there's a lot of work that went into bringing this to the city and even having us consider it. We hope that we get selected, as we already talked about, as the Vice Mayor mentioned, there's a lot of opportunity zones that can be elected or suggested, and it's really up to the Governor's office, so I'm glad we're taking a step. Council Member Bushy, you said you would make the motion on this item.

You are up. I move that we adopt the resolution in support of an application to the California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development, GO-Biz, recommending the nomination of census tracts 06041111001, 060411112100, 060-4111-2202, 0604-111-1203, and 0604-111-22042, the Opportunity Zone 2.0 program.

Well read. Is there a second?

Second.

Moved and seconded. Roll call, please.

Council Member Bushy. Aye. Council Member Hill. Aye. Vice Mayor Kurtz. Aye. Mayor Kate.

Aye. That motion carries 4-0. Thank you so much. As I mentioned at the beginning of the meeting, we also have open time for public expression at the end of the meeting if someone hasn't already had the opportunity to say something during the meeting. Now is your opportunity. Is there anything that was not on tonight's agenda? I'll see if there's anyone in the room. Chambers who would like to comment, now is your opportunity and you're welcome but not required to say your name and what part of San Rafael you're in. Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor Kate, Vice Mayor Kurtz, and members of the council. My name's Saj Dakar. I'm a 14-year-old rising ninth grader living in Fairfield, Solano County. I'm a member of the Fairfield Youth Commission and am the founder of the National Association of Youth Commissions. This nonprofit organization works to establish youth commissions in cities where they're not already present, push for legislation beneficial to youth, increase youth access to government, and provide a space for youth commissions around the nation to collaborate. I'm speaking to you this evening on a proposal that I've seen work firsthand and it's one of the best things that a city could do for its young people. I'm asking you to create a youth commission in San Rafael. For some context, a youth commission is a group of young people, typically aged 14 to 25, who work to advise the city council and mayor on topics relating to the youth. This can range from a small issue that affects a few young people to city-wide youth issues. Youth commissions are created with the purpose of bridging the gap between the youth of a city and a city's government. Right now, San Rafael does allow for youth to have a seat on specific existing committees and commissions. But what San Rafael needs is a standalone body that can tackle youth issues independently of other commissions. A youth commission would be different from just another program in that this isn't the city giving to the youth, it's also the youth giving to the city. All the city needs to do is give them the chance. This would not even be difficult to implement. All that is needed is a resolution that would establish the commission. There would also be minimal cost to the city since there would be no need to hire new individuals. The only adults involved with the commission would be an adult advisor and optionally one city council member acting as a liaison. There'd be very little administrative costs since the only real cost would be holding a meeting. Furthermore, through the National Association of Youth Commissions, I would be happy to offer the City with free research on how things like costs, appointments, and scope of work would play out. I'm requesting the City Council to direct staff to report back on potential routes the City could take in starting a commission. I would be happy to serve as a resource for the City during this time. I have here some QR codes that redirect to the National Association of Youth Commissions contact page. If any member of the Council is interested, please contact me and I would be happy to help out in this process. Thank you.

Thank you. So if you can be sure to give your information to the city clerk, that would be fantastic. Thank you so much, and thank you for the work that you've been doing. Any other public comment in the room? I don't see anyone else in the room. Anyone online?

I see no hands raised, but I'll give everyone a moment.

No public comment. Okay. I'm going to close the second public expression time. And we have on our agenda this evening the San Rafael Successor Agency. We have a consent calendar. Are there any items to be held from the consent calendar? I'm looking up. I see no head shaking notes. So I'm going to open the public comment on the consent agenda. This is for the San Rafael Successor Agency. Anyone in the room like to comment on the consent calendar for the San Rafael Successor Agency? I don't see anyone in the room. Is there anyone online?

I see no hands raised, but I'll give everyone a moment. I see no public comment.

I'll close the public comment. I request a motion on this item, please.

I move the consent calendar.

Second.

Moved and seconded. Roll call, please. Member Bushy? Aye. Member Hill? Aye. Vice Chair Kurtz? Aye. Chairperson Kate? Aye. That motion carries 4-0. As I mentioned at the top of the meeting, we are adjourning tonight in honor of Esther Byrne. She faithfully served the city of San Rafael for many years as our city clerk. Esther dedicated her career to ensuring our local government operated with integrity, transparency, and professionalism. She served under two mayors, four city managers, and multiple city councils, providing the steady institutional knowledge and commitment that helped our city navigate change while always keeping the public at the center of her work. Esther began her service to San Rafael in August 2000 as deputy city clerk under the then city clerk, Jean Lanchini. She was first elected city clerk in 2007 and was subsequently reelected twice without any opposition, a reflection of the confidence that our community placed in her and the respect she earned from colleagues and residents alike. Those of us who had the privilege of working with Esther remember her not only for her exceptional competence, but also for her kindness. She treated everyone with warmth, patience, and respect, whether they were first time in City Hall and didn't know how to navigate something or a long time community leader. She had an incredible ability to make people feel heard and welcomed. And she also ensured at that same time that the public's business was conducted openly and with care. Esther leaves behind a lasting legacy of public service and a standard of excellence that continues to inspire all of us and I know inspires our city clerk today. So on behalf of the San Rafael City Council, we extend our heartfelt condolences to Esther's family and her friends and all who had the pleasure of knowing and working with her. San Rafael is a better place because she spent time with us. This meeting is now adjourned in memory of Esther Byrne.