City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. Apologize, we're running a few minutes late. We had interviews prior to this meeting and it went a little bit over. So this is the regular meeting of the San Rafael City Council. Today is Tuesday, September 8th, and I'll request the city clerk to call the roll.

Council Member Bushey? Present. Council Member Hill is absent. Vice Mayor Kurtz? Present. Council Member Yadanz-Gilati? Present.

Mayor Kate? Present. So good evening, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining us tonight, whether you're listening online or you're here in the chambers. We appreciate your participation and engagement in our community. We always like to start our meeting by appreciating the staff and the hard work they do every single day on behalf of our community. Today, I want to do a quick highlight and appreciation for Jim Myers, who recently retired from the city of San Rafael. He worked for the city for 13 years. As our parking manager and trust me, we get a lot of emails about parking he leaves behind a legacy of modernizing and improving our parking operations. He led the installation of 800 new credit card enabled meters he expanded multiple payment options. and assisted enhanced enforcement accuracy through license plate reader program that assist in recovering stolen vehicles. Jim strengthened community partnerships by supporting community court and he advanced our environmental goals by adding EV chargers throughout the city. He also improved customer service by establishing a satellite parking services office in East San Rafael. Jim's leadership and innovation made a meaningful and enduring impact on our community. We will miss him and appreciate all that he did for our community and wish him all the best on the next chapter of his life. I'd like to briefly note that we now accept public comment in addition to in the chambers also by telephone as part of our public appreciation of public a public. participation and appreciation process, we welcome everyone's input and ask that whether participating remotely or in person, we maintain a respectful and welcoming environment even when we strongly disagree. And I'd like to further clarify that while what is commonly called hate speech is a protected right, speech that is threatening or intimidating will not be tolerated and speakers may be muted in those instances. And finally, we include a land acknowledgment as part of our opening. This reflects our ongoing collaboration and work 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 all for being here. I'll now turn it over to the city clerk so she can describe how the public can participate in tonight's meeting.

Thank you, Mayor Kate. Tonight's meeting is being recorded and streamed live on YouTube. For members of the public wishing to provide comments, 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 86344891398 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'll hear a prompt to press star six to unmute yourself. If you're joining through Zoom, you'll be able to use the raise hand feature when you wish to speak and the host will call joining through Zoom, you can use the raise hand feature when you wish to speak as well. Those will call on you and prompt you to unmute. If you're commenting in person, you can form a line at the podium once Mayor Kate invites public comment, and we'll have two minutes to provide your comments. Displayed on the podium and the projector is a timer to help you stay within the two minute time frame. At the conclusion of your two minutes, your microphone will be muted. So we may hear from the next speaker. You're invited, though you're not required to say what part of Centerfell you live in or if you're joining us from outside of Centerfell. If you're experiencing any technical difficulties during the meeting, you can email me at city.clerk at cityofcenterfell.org. Thank you.

Thank you. We have at the beginning of our meeting open time for public expression. This is anything not on tonight's agenda. You're welcome but not required to state your name and what part of Centerfell you live in. Yeah, come on down.

My name is Wayne Rayburn. I live in San Rafael Meadows. Hello, Mayor, City Council members. Just since August the 20th, meeting at 350 Affordable Housing Project Subcommittee, the city has received four development proposals for housing, all of which have some affordable housing and some will be almost exclusively affordable housing. So the city does not have to stack and pack 350 Merredale. Other affordable housing units will be developed throughout the city before 350 Merredale is developed. 350 should not be viewed as the only solution to affordable housing. The city can and should develop a project that meets the 80 units requirement and keep development compatible for the neighborhood. Four projects listed in the IJ was Centerville gets 200 apartments, eight-story building, on August 26th, San Rafael parcel 192 building on 828, San Rafael gets housing for bowling alley on 830. Please do not ruin our neighborhood. Thank you.

Anyone else in the chambers like to provide public comment? Okay, I don't see anyone in the chambers. Anyone online?

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

Okay. We'll close the open time for public expression and turn to the city manager for his report.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, members of the council. Just a couple of items to make council aware of. I think you're aware this week among the events that we have on the calendar, significance I would note is Friday September 11th being the 25th anniversary of 9-11 there will be a community remembrance event on Friday from 10 to 2 p.m. at Lawrence Place on 4th Street and Fire Department and others will be on hand for both some ceremonial events and kind of agenda through that time period, but we would invite members of the community who wish to participate to join the city in our remembrance of 9-11 this coming Friday. I'll also note potentially or not coincidentally related to one of your presentations this evening, but September is emergency preparedness month and We would encourage anyone who has not yet done so to sign up for alert Marin emergency alerts at the emergency Marin County gov and there's lots of helpful tips on there to stay abreast of information but also help folks and their families be prepared in the event of emergencies. Last thing maybe I'll note is We have a continuation of our summer movies in the park series. Also on Friday, September 11th at Sun Valley Park will be a showing of Zootopia 2. The festivities start I think around 6 o'clock and the film starts 10 minutes after sunset. And then we'll also be having another iteration of movies in the park. later on this month on September 25th in Terralinda, and we'll keep the community abreast of those. Thank you.

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

The only thing I have to report is after so many years focusing on emergency preparedness, I completed my CERT training. So, thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Llorens-Gulati.

Thank you, Mayor. I attended the Canal Promise Neighborhood Steering Committee meeting with Mayor Cade and Assistant City Manager Angela Romín Piñones, and it's always great to attend those meetings hosted by at Canal Alliance. I also that the same day I attended the MCE Clean Energy Board of Directors meeting. This morning I attended the MCE Executive Committee meeting and then I'm going back again to August 22nd. At Bahia Vista, I had the pleasure to help plant, do a community tree planting, and there were so many different organizations involved, the city, the school district, the Rotary, Sustainable San Rafael, and we were able to plant seven trees in there at Bahia Vista School, so it was really exciting. Also that Saturday I attended an informal grand opening for Goldferry. Goldferry is a new business in District 1. It's actually in the Shamrock Mall next to Starbucks around Sprouts and Staples. It's a great place if you like golf. It's a great new place. I really recommend you to visit them. also attended let's see mc clean energy has been hosting some community workshops so on august 25th there was the third one it was around community feedback and the path forward so that was also very informative for the community and then on august 26 i attended the nuestro canal nuestro futuro stakeholder meeting and it was really great to see a lot of different um industries there was like a government there was like a businesses lots of non-profits and education and uh so canal alliance is doing a great uh work with their with their plan for the canal and then last but not least i attended on august 27 the climate action forum in our quarterly meeting headed by our and we were able to meet our new Chief Climate Officer from Marin County. Her name is Nadia C. Terram. She did a great job explaining the priorities for the County of Marin. Also, we have Raíces del Canal. Maite Durán was presenting on her non-profit. where they find different spots that they don't have anything in there, and they seek and provide them with gardens or planting beds. So it's a great way to engage with the community on something really beautiful. And then we also have Transportation Authority of Marin giving us an update. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Boushey.

Karen Grove- Along along with the mayor, I attended the 350 Mary dale subcommittee meeting we heard presentations from three different perspective providers of the developers for the low permanent low income housing, so this would be for after the on. the small housing units are removed and the build out eventually. All three applicants were very well qualified and we provided our comments to staff to give them a chance to tailor the presentation that they will bring to the entire council when we choose from among those applicants. City Council Chambers, Next, and also with the mayor, I attended the San Rafael sanitation district board meeting we continue to work on our. City Council Chambers, move to see msa from from the city of San Rafael and we offered some input to our staff on the. City Council Chambers, Civil grand jury report on consolidation and using examples from our actual lived experience in consolidation and the importance of it, and finally. With Council Member Hill, the best and most fun presentation. This was from the initial conceptual drawings from our development team for the new joint community center and new library, affectionately known as the Measure P subcommittee. It was a joy to see actual drawings. They're all conceptual and we don't know what will happen in the future, but it was a wonderful presentation. From the design team and we they're offered Comments for the staff and the and the development team so fair.

Yes Fantastic. I have three additional meetings to report out on along with councilmember Hill We attended the economic development and housing subcommittee meeting It is on its recorded and online if you would like to go and watch it We had a great presentation from the Marin Small Business Development Center we had an overview of commercial real estate trends and We had an update and overview of the city housing inspection program we had our quarterly development pipeline and again as a reminder to the Community, you can always look at the. Where what projects are coming in and the major construction project page on the website and then, finally, we had a status update on the opportunity zone 2.0 nomination process so that was. Economic Development has housing subcommittee. In addition, I am your representative on a Sonoma Marin area rail transit, we had a smart meeting, I always like to share the ridership numbers. So the July ridership, there's always a little bit of a lag in terms of the county hit all time records from the when smart initial initiated service, it was 23% higher the ridership 23% higher than 2025. Approximating 3.2 million passenger miles the all time records were also hit for the path riders, we do have path counters on there, as well as marine connect, which is the shuttle that goes from where smart station lands in large for and takes you to the fairy. In addition, during that meeting, we had quite a few resolutions around the Healdsburg extension project that were all approved by the board. And then finally, we approved the hiring of a new CFO, Troy Bingham. So a lot going on at SMART, and that is also a recorded meeting if you were so interested. And then finally, I'll just share, some of you might have received an email from change.org. We have been working with this platform to determine if there's additional ways that we can help build civic engagement and civic muscle. So we had an initial phase one report out talking about what they're finding, and then that will start to open up with the folks that have been participating, kind of like a large focus group. So stay tuned. I think at some point when it's more fleshed out, we will have more to report out on it. But it could potentially be another great tool to promote community and civic conversation across the entire city and so getting into pockets of folks and voices that we might not normally hear so it was a good good couple months or a good month of meetings so thank you as always for what you all do before we go to the next item I will take public comment on this the city manager or council member reports. And as always, you're welcome but not required to state your name and what part of San Rafael you might live in. Go ahead.

Good evening, Mayor Collin and council members. My name's Ken Dickinson. I'm a resident of District 3. On December the 15th, I stood before all of you in your closed session and read a letter warning against a breakdown of public trust regarding 350 Mirrodale. I warned that changing the project description from 80 units to a minimum of 80 units unannounced and behind closed doors eroded our faith in this process. I spoke for four communities, Raphael Meadows, the Murraydale Road communities, Redwood Village and Pilgrim Park. We asked you to engage us early and often, yet we never received an acknowledgement or a response to that letter. For you, Council Member Bushy, this is particularly telling. You are our elected representative, yet you ignored us. Worse, at the August 20th subcommittee meeting, you forcefully declared that the numbers matter and density should be the correct first criterion. By championing unstaffed density, you are ignoring the safety, transitional scale, and established precedence of the very residents you were elected to protect. Furthermore, giving this community the bare legal minimum of 72 hours notice to review dozens of pages of complex, competing developer proposals while developers had months is an insult to public participation. It's a cynical maneuver that lays this council wide open to accusations of rubber stamping. We support viable housing, but we demand accountability. I urge you all to hold a dedicated open community public session before any final developer selection is brought to a vote. Prove to us that you hear your constituents. Thank you.

And for members of the public, I will also note that that subcommittee meeting is recorded and on our website. So if you are interested in seeing that conversation, uh, you can definitely go and watch that online. Go ahead.

Good evening. Um, council members, I'm here to speak on the August 20 meeting of the three 50 Merredale affordable housing project subcommittee attended by mayor Colin and council member Bushy. following developer's presentation and during the public comment period, you heard comments from seven people on the project and all both spoke in favor of the EAH proposal and gave a variety of reasons why EAH was the preferred developer to select for the project. One of those reasons was that EAH had proposed a three-story, 81-unit development that would be most compatible with the neighborhood. and still meet the city's requirement for housing at 350 Marydale. However, in response, Council Member Bushey completely ignored her constituents' comments and voiced her preference for the greatest number of units possible. signaled her preference for the Eden Housing proposal. It was obvious that Council Member Bushey had predetermined her vote in favor of Eden Housing and that public sentiment had placed for her favoritism towards Eden Housing. Then it became all the more obvious that a decision had already been made by the city when Community and Economic Development Director Micah Hinkle concluded the meeting by saying, staff is prepared to actually bring forward a recommendation to the council, quote. Given that staff had already ranked Eden Housing as the top proposal, it was obvious that Mr. Hinkle was saying there did not need to be any further consideration and that staff was ready to recommend Eden Housing as a preferred developer. The public participation was thrown out the window and had no bearing on the city's decision. We need to have the city change its approach and show us that the public input matters. So far, on just about everything to do with 350 Merredale, the public has shut out from the decision-making process.

And also to clarify, so the subcommittee provides direction, but it actually doesn't provide a vote. So in addition to the public comment that we receive in the chambers, we also receive information in emails. And that is appropriate that, or it is accurate that staff will come back at a future meeting with their recommendation where it will be deliberated by the entire body. If you want to know when that meeting is, be sure to subscribe to the snapshot. because that is when, once a meeting is agendized, it will be announced through there as well. Go ahead, sir. I just wanted to clarify, because some folks might not have the whole context.

Certainly. My name is Wayne Rayburn. I live in San Rafael Meadows. Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. On August the 20th, meeting at the 350 Merredale-Forever Housing Project Subcommittee at City Hall, John Hara, the former Billion CEO and current EDN House board member spoke in glowing terms about the Edens affordable housing and health, a healthy aging campus on Third Street. He openly encouraged the public to go over there, walk around and ask about the Eden experience. Tonight, I'm here to urge the city council and city staff to take Mr. O'Hara up on his invitation. I challenge you to do exactly what he suggests. But when you go, do not speak to the executive in the boardrooms. Drop in unannounced. Walk the hallways and speak directly to the frontline staff and residents who live there. If you do, I believe you will find a very different picture than the glossy public relations version presented to this council. Before you vote this fall to award the 50 Merredale site, I believe it is the city's and council's civic duty to conduct a site visit at the Eden House Facility at 999 3rd Street, interview the frontline workers, and report the findings back to the public. If Eden's track record is stellar, as they claim, let's verify it with people who live and work in that building. Thank you.

Any other comments before we move to the next agenda item?

Good evening, my name is Gregory Andrew and I live in San Rafael Meadows. Mayor Collin and Council Member Kurtz, you neglected to also mention that you attended the homeless subcommittee meeting on August 20th, so that is part of the report here. and I'll comment on that, which is that Marin IJ came out with an article that a point in time count was just recently completed and it shows an increase in number of homeless individuals in the county. I provided a letter, a comment letter to this item here that I'm gonna summarize, not go into detail. It's unfortunate to have that increase, and it does seem to indicate that the efforts by the county and the city to address homelessness are not achieving the results that you had hoped for or trying to do, but you are closing, you've got an increased number of homeless, and you're closing, you're gonna close Anderson and the Mahone and other locations, and some of those individuals go to the interim shelter at 350 Merredale, what's gonna happen to the rest. I suspect that some will wanna camp around 350 Merredale, and I ask that you ban camping again in that area. Moving on to the 350 Merredale affordable housing project on August 20th. I learned after the meeting that Mr. Joe O'Haron, who spoke at the meeting, is also on the board of Eden Housing, one of the proposals, proposed developers, and I learned that Council Member Bushy and Mr. O'Heron have a close relationship on the library, San Rafael Library Foundation, which to me presents an opportunity for contact and conflict of interest. So I'm asking Council Member Bush to recuse herself from the vote on the developer selection for 350 Merredale when that time comes to the City Council. Thank you.

Any other comments? Not seeing any in the chambers. Is there any online?

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

Thank you. We'll close the public comment and move on to the consent agenda. Are there any items to be held in the consent calendar? No. OK. I'll open public comment on the consent calendar. And I do want to note that after the vote, we will present the proclamation to Kara Connors. But we're going to go ahead and have public comment in the vote first. Any public comment on the consent agenda? I don't see any in the room. Any online? I see no hands raised. OK. So I'll go ahead and have a motion and a second, and then we'll read the proclamation.

Yeah. So I'll move to the consent agenda also recognizing the Hispanic Heritage Month that is going to start on September 15. Thank you. I'll second.

Moved and seconded. Roll call, please.

Council Member Bushy. Aye. Vice Mayor Kurtz. Aye. Council Member Yadon-Skaladi. Aye. Mayor Kate.

Aye. That motion carries 4-0. And as I just mentioned, I am going to read the proclamation. I shortened it a little bit because we have the pleasure of having Cara Connors here with the Suicide Prevention Network to say a few comments after I read the proclamation. Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. Whereas September is recognized nationally as Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, a time when mental health professionals, prevention organizations, survivors, allies, and communities unite to change the narrative about suicide in our community by promoting hope, fostering open dialogue, destigmatizing mental health, and celebrating the possibility of recovery. And whereas in Marin County, 26 friends, neighbors, and family members died by suicide in 2025, with an additional 973 self-harm injuries requiring visits to the emergency room during 2020 through 2024, underscoring the ongoing need for local prevention and support efforts. And whereas Marin County September campaign, ask, listen, connect, provides the language and tools for everyone to take critical steps to save lives and build a more understanding, connected and safe community. And whereas all residents and community members can utilize the National Alliance on Mental illness and the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline dial 988 it works to help some help individuals in crisis and provide resources for loved ones who want to support individuals. Therefore, be it resolved that the mayor and city council the city of San Rafael hereby proclaim the month of September 26 as suicide prevention awareness month in our city. Kara, thank you so much for being here. We would welcome your comments.

Good evening. Thank you very much for having me this evening. As you know, this month is the opportunity for us to raise awareness on a very important and often emotional topic. Thank you, Councilmen, for having me and for coming together around this month. This month, we acknowledge those who have died by suicide and the many bereaved families and loved ones in our community. This September, we also underscore the Marin County Suicide Prevention Collaborative's commitment to striving for zero suicide. While this may feel like an ambitious goal, we believe that suicide can be prevented through meaningful connection, evidence-based treatment, and supportive resources. Research shows that social connectedness is the primary protective factor to prevent suicide and foster mental health. This month's campaign used to be Ask, Listen, Connect, but this year our campaign is Connection Saves Lives, which promotes the belief that small caring actions shared through everyday interactions can ease someone's burden and suffering. Suicide prevention calls upon each one of us to take life-saving steps to create awareness, including learning about the signs of suicide, asking directly if a person is thinking about suicide, and acting on our best instincts by connecting them to resources like the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which can also create a pathway for recovery and healing. Never doubt the power of connection. Consider this, over the last six years, 90% of those individuals who stood at the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge and received an intervention with a bridge patrol officer have been led to safety. That is promising news. In addition, Together with Mayor Kate's leadership, we collaborate with Marine Gun Safety Collaborative to prevent firearm injury through strategies such as safely storing firearms and ammunition, as well as promoting gun violence restraining orders. Similarly, at the systems level, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention indicates suicide risk is highest in the weeks that follow a psychiatric discharge. While there are many factors involved in the discharge process, follow-up contact and connection by phone or a caring card after a suicide attempt can significantly reduce reattempts and hospital readmission. These types of connections that are very similar to follow-up that you might receive from a surgery or a procedure or even a dental office can go a long way in promoting greater continuity of care, outpatient referrals, and in turn, improved recovery time. So social connection creates meaningful bonds that can foster a sense of trust and purpose, belonging, and being seen and validated. While connection may not always solve our daily stressors or hardships, it can reduce depression, strengthen resilience, and provide a space where we feel safe and accepted. It is no surprise that seeking help becomes easier and more likely when we experience strong connection. Fortunately, we can create lifesaving connections so that healing takes place in community rather than in isolation. Over the last several years, the Marin County Suicide Prevention Collaborative has carried out the county's strategic plan by promoting connection and awareness through our community action teams. Our youth action team, for example, LEADS initiatives such as the Caring Cards Project to support those in mental health and substance use recovery, the Break the Stigma LGBTQ Plus Coalition promoting inclusive spaces and events for youth across the county, and the 988 Youth Awareness Campaigns including an awareness message debuting this year on the San Anselmo Marquee. The Men and Boys Action Team also is made up of men of all ages with lived experience. They foster community conversations and connection around men's mental health in our county, where men account for 75% of deaths by suicide and overdose, which is true nationally. These are tangible examples of community action across the county which can support hope. Suicide prevention takes each and every one of us. So this September, please join us for free trainings and events to learn about the signs of suicide, ways to talk to somebody in distress, and help save lives. together we can create a more connected and safe community for those in distress and i would just like to point out this flyer that i have left out in the lobby area for people to pick up thank you very much again for having me thank you for your comments and providing those resources to our community thank you we have a special presentation this evening

It is the County of Marin Office of Emergency Management City Council Brief. We'll go ahead and have the presentation, then we'll have questions from the council, and then we'll have public comments, and then council comments. But there's no action item, so I just want to clarify how it's going to happen.

Mayor Mrakas, Welcome hi Quinn hi mayor hi Council members happy national preparedness month we're pleased to be here and i'm very excited to have my partners with the county. Mayor Mrakas, Stephen and Alex here to brief you and update you on their new emergency operations plan updates with alert Marin and some El Nino prep and other updates so i'll turn it over to director torrence. Thank you, welcome there you go.

Good evening mayor and council members and executive staff for the city of San Rafael. My name is Stephen Torrance. I serve as the director of emergency management for the county of Marin. And joining me is emergency management coordinator Alex Marr, who also serves in our office and spearheads our emergency operations coordination for the county as well. Thank you very much for having us. Today we are going to brief out on a number of actions that are being taken in collaboration with our cities and towns. This is opportunity to describe how the cities and towns throughout the county of Marin are working together on a number of efforts as mentioned by a city manager this month is also disaster preparedness month and so we like to lean into that to not only highlight disaster preparedness month but also the work that is going on in collaboration with our partners As I mentioned, we'll talk a little bit about disaster preparedness month some highlights from this past year. We'll focus a little bit on our emergency operations plan, which is collaboration with all of the cities and towns as well. And then we'll highlight some improvements and El Nino as a high level brief. Every year, the Federal Administration puts together a disaster preparedness month theme this month, or this year we are taking a unique stance and we are developing something specific for marin to really highlight. A gap that we've recognized over the last couple of years and most of the time we look at our disaster preparedness figures, we see a lot of. older individuals and families, but we're missing that 18 to 40 year old. And so we specifically work with our public information officers to develop a hashtag to put disaster preparedness at the forefront of social media, which is get ready with Marin, which is a play on a trending social media hashtag, get ready with me, which really allows for us to use that hashtag, but put disaster preparedness at the forefront of the 18 to 40 year olds who are scrolling through their social media feeds. And so really this is our goal is to get in contact with our 18 to 40 year olds this year with a number of efforts. This year we are doing a number of things throughout the community. I'll focus primarily on the collaborations that we have here in the city of San Rafael. Excuse me. County wide, we are going to be doing our next alert Marin test, which is a test for those that are opted into the alert Marin system. We specifically will be sending those notifications on September 26 at 10am. Primarily at the senior fair, which is what I like to hear what I oftentimes hear is the biggest party in Marin. Is we're going to be there working with our seniors across the county to make sure that we can get them signed up for alert Marin ask any go back and forth with any questions. but also in collaboration, trying to drive home some of the new tips and tricks with a lot of the new cell phones that are happening. CANAL, THE CANAL PREP DAY THAT IS GOING TO BE COMING UP IN COLLABORATION WITH THE OFFICE OF EMERGENCY SERVICES HERE WITH THE CITY OF SAN RAFEL, WORKING WITH OUR PARTNERS DOWN IN THE CANAL TO ENHANCE A LOT OF THE STRATEGIC PREPAREDNESS MATERIALS THAT ARE GOING OUT AND ALSO ANSWERING ANY QUESTIONS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT ALERT MARIN AND THE NEW SPANISH FUNCTIONALITY THAT WE'VE MOST RECENTLY WORKED ON. specifically for the county's emergency operations plan, this was a large lift and I do want to give kudos to to Quinn Gardner here in the city of San Rafael as far as you know. City of San Rafael was a core partner in making sure that we have the opportunity to bring this forward. The county had not updated our emergency operations plan for a little over 12 years and when I first started with the county we started working with San Rafael to bring the city of San Rafael emergency operations plan. to be updated. And what we did was essentially took that and connected it to the county's plan. So the city of San Rafael's plan was pivotal in making sure that we understood how we as the county could could connect to city and town plans. But also what it allowed for us to do is learn from a lot of lessons learned over the last 12 years that included COVID number of fires, a number of smaller events that didn't that don't make national news such as The fires that we've had for a couple of apartment complexes, and we really want to be able to determine how the county and the cities can work jointly together to be able to move resources, information and staffing throughout the county in the event that resources are needed at the city and town level. We recently had the emergency operations plan adopted in June of this year, and so it has been officially approved. And with that, we are actually going to be sending out a number of supplemental documents, so a public information annex and then our family assistance annex, which all the cities and towns have the ability to adopt as well. Our goal is that all of the plans that we are developing are in joint collaboration with our city, town, and district partners with the intent for us to be able to work as one one agency during disasters, but also have plans that speak to each other ahead of time. So what is the up in short, the emergency operations plan can be used from everything from a structure fire to. a wildland fire to an earthquake or a cyber attack. This is a wide-ranging plan that the county has worked with a number of partners on. For us to be able to make sure that there's clear leadership, whether it is a uh cities towns city managers and our county exec working together but also making sure that we are not duplicating efforts when when resources may be limited and so with that it really focuses on how all the county and city and town partners work together and that's why we are out promoting this as a county-wide plan because we really want people to know that this is linking to our cities and towns as well As you know, we look at the city in town or the excuse me, the emergency operations plan as a document, but it is not just something that sits on the shelf. We are taking the next step with training executive leadership throughout the county. We will be developing elected officials briefing and training. So in the event that there's an operate a question on what is the role of the mayor, or what is the role of the City Council? We are going to work with the cities and towns to make sure everyone knows what those steps are. But we've also taken a number of steps to revamp staff training and employee training throughout the county. Most recently, as demonstrated in some of the photos, we work with directly with the Office of Emergency Services here to not only put together the shelter training. Fortunately, we Timed it well where we actually were able to do a training ahead of where we did some sheltering at Borough Park and that's really where we want to take the resources and the structure of their emergency operations plan to the cities because Truly that's where these resources are needed and the structure is needed to be able to allow for us to work directly with your partners and We're going to be doing some public outreach, as I mentioned, with the social media campaign. We recognize an emergency operations plan is a 200-plus page document, and of course, no one wants to read that. So we made a six-page document called Why is the EOP Important to You? And so we're going to be putting those in county libraries and sharing those with our partner agencies. Six pages telling people why is it important and letting people know that throughout the county of Marin, we do have a plan. With that also displays at pop-up locations. We're going to be aiming at a lot of coffee shops where people are getting their cup of coffee in the morning. Here's a little bit of information, and we're going to be giving the opportunity to take a little bit of a lead from our law enforcement partners and have some coffee with OEM. We know we see it works, and so we're going to just kind of lean into that as a way to have those conversations as well. specifically about the alert Marin piece we've heard a lot and I will give kudos to our partners with the canal alliance and then the canal we heard a lot about alert Marin not being done in specifically in Spanish and so with that feedback we took that people first kind of design with some intentional design removing a lot of barriers and also with that shameless plug but we were you know alert and warning was nominated or excuse me was voted the best emergency preparedness service in Marin County by Pacific Sun and I'd like to share with our team the reason that this has happened is due to a lot of the community feedback that has allowed us to take those large steps forward and so with that not only being able to have Spanish Spanish specific messages you don't have to wait any longer you get your message in your preferred language and we're looking to make sure Not only is it going out but it's going out based off of culturally competent reviews and our staff who are actually native speakers in those languages. Going through and reviewing them because we want to make sure that when people get an emergency message in no matter what language that they understand the actions and they can take action when they get those. JUST SOME QUICK BY THE NUMBERS, JUST IN THE PAST YEAR, ACTUALLY PROBABLY A LITTLE OVER A YEAR NOW, 3.4 MILLION MESSAGES HAVE BEEN SENT COUNTYWIDE OVER THE COURSE OF 70 ALERTS WITH 247,000 PHONE CALLS. WE HAVE DEFINITELY PUSHED THE SYSTEM THIS YEAR WITH A NUMBER OF INCIDENTS, PRIMARILY THE JANUARY FLOODS AND THE COUNTYWIDE internet slash 911 outage that happened shortly after in January. We did push a number of messages and so we have stressed the system but we also want to continue to drive people to opt in so we can see those numbers go a lot higher. Specifically for the city of San Rafael. We did release a dashboard based off of a lot of the feedback from our partner agencies. This dashboard is available on the marine county dot gov slash see latest alerts page where you can see in real time the number of people who are signed up by household. And so Unfortunately, you guys are not at the top, but you guys have the percentage percentage wise as far as the population significantly higher than many of our other partners and so right now the city of San Rafael is just at the I just lost it. 40 44 percent of people at least have one opt-in per household I will say the national average is about 20 and so you know looking at Marin County it's you know we are competing with ourselves but we are ahead of the national curve when it comes down to subscription opt-ins but we're using this as a way for us to target where our messaging goes where our public outreach goes and this can be utilized throughout the county Specifically, some of the additional updates we've highlighted today. We had a large prescribed burn on Angel Island. We have a prescribed burn group that we send out notifications to throughout the county. We also post the January flooding incidents created two new groups. Coastal flooding and king tides group and then also our reverie and Creek flooding those are for those pre predetermined messages We can send those out well in advance as we know a lot of people, you know They were they were familiar with some of the king tide flooding, but just outside of those areas They saw you know, I've never seen water get there. Here's a group that we can actually send out those pre preloaded messages ahead of these events and So people can know when maybe they need to move their cars, take action, or in the event that a forecast is coming below, we can also send out those updates as well. In addition, some of the new things without many without much going out as far as large publications, since we've launched the Spanish alerts, we have over 900 people signed up throughout the county. Of course, that number is not as high as we want it to, but it is actually without limited publication. And so we're actually going to be starting our alert marine campaign starting tomorrow, which is going to highlight all of these groups. We see 900 as a great starting point for us to start the publication, but this is also the work that we're going to be doing with a lot of our nonprofits who we are providing resources to to help push this message to members of the community. In addition, we have a number of other groups as well. In addition to some of the functionality there's a new website so in the event that you are outside the area of an alert marine, you can go to the marine county.gov slash see latest alerts page, and you can see where the alert went you can see what it said. And if you missed it, because your voicemail was probably full on your phone, you can call the alert number net back and you can hear it in English or Spanish. And so we are consistently making improvements to the system countywide. So this way, people can see what the message was who it went to. And it helps with some of the confusion of my neighbor got it, but I didn't get it, or they were across the way. This will help us determine if they were in the geographically targeted area. Post the January storms, we've also optimized the county-wide emergency portal. This is the emergency.marincounty.gov map. So it has been optimized for cell phone uses, which we heard that that was a major improvement that was needed. That has been done since about April of this year. But we've also integrated with a number of additional features such as earthquakes and fire perimeters. In addition to data from outside of our county, so we are now sharing data with a number of our partners as well Just kind of closing out Getting into the training we are working cool We're working a lot with our city in town and district partners over the next couple of months to make sure that we get We continue to have a number of people trained ahead of the El Nino This past year with a lot of the damage assessment training we were able to get our first US Small Business Administration loans into the county which is a form of individual assistance that comes from the federal administration We know that that is not exactly what every person might have needed if they lost a vehicle or lost a home During the January floods, but this is the step in the in the right direction of us being able to get federal support And so we look forward to being able to build on that in the coming years Of course, we hope that we don't have to go through a declaration process But we are putting the resources the training and expertise in place to make sure we can get services into the county And that's where a lot of the 500 500-plus county and city staff that are trained just this year are showing their benefits. Highlighting just some of the things that we're looking for for king tides or for the upcoming winter season is we are definitely looking at a convergence. We have a number of things that we are focusing on, primarily king tides. Many people see those winter storms. But we also have elevated sea level rise from the El Nino and the warmer seas. We are trying to get ahead of this by letting people know, unfortunately, a number of our king tides and storms are actually going to be showing up on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, Christmas Day. And so if there's people coming to your homes or you're leaving your home for the holidays. We encourage you to lean forward be prepared, especially if you have people that are coming from out of town have never heard what a king tide is. Making sure that they're aware of it as well as we want to make sure, make sure that people are on the roadways are aware of what they could expect but we're also working with our. county department of public works, our office of the county executive and more to make sure that we are pre positioning resources countywide and in collaboration with our partner agencies. There are a number of websites that are currently live. We have our sandbag map that is countywide, so that includes the City of San Rafael's locations. Right now, this is on the emergency.marincounty.gov page, with a number of checklists also to be prepared for El Nino. So what can people do with their personal, on their properties? Making sure we can get people to take those actions in advance, you know, clearing out the storm drains on your property, the culverts on your property, I know at least we at the county cannot always go on private property and do things, and so we're asking people to get ready with us to make sure that they can help us keep things clear. And then also we're going to be doing six planned town hall meetings with our county supervisors, one in each district, and also in collaboration with the cities and towns. Five of them will be in person, and we will be rolling those out, and then we'll be doing a six countywide presentation. And once we start Once we get the actual dates and times we will be sharing those with the the mayor's and council members throughout the county Just so we have that collaboration To really talk about what does El Nino mean to Marin? We know a lot of people have heard about the rain But what does it mean for us at the county city and town level? And so, in closing our way of really just celebrating this month is really to get ready with marine get ready with us get ready with San Rafael. That is really where we want to make sure we can get that 18 to four year old group on board would be prepared. And we really want to make sure that we are all collectively taking the steps to better prepare ourselves for El Nino and the upcoming summer. There were in the summer that we are currently in and so with that I just want to say thank you very much for your time and if there's any questions myself and Alex are here to address. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Director Torrance. That was a great presentation. And I know we've all been thinking about it. So you are very timely by being here. I'll see if there's additional questions. Vice Mayor, questions.

Thank you for the update. One thing, I'm not sure if you intentionally left it off, but you may have, but I'm going to out it, is the tours. that you provide have been hugely helpful. I think I'm going on my fourth tour, and I learn something new every single time. And maybe you could share a little bit about that opportunity. And then my second question is around my broken record item, which is, as you know, we have an increasing number of community members 60 and over, and older adults have unique needs. And I know this is a conversation you and I have had a couple of times around, what is the training, the level of service, the thoughts around serving an older adult community in the event of a disaster?

And just for clarification on the tours, the EOC tours? Yeah. Yes, so speaking to the EOC tours, we have definitely taken a different stance at the county as a lot of times people have said there is no plan. They've jumped to a few conclusions. And we said, let's open the doors and show people, you know, The plans the procedures the staffing and the training and so we've opened the doors to the county's emergency operations Center to really just talk about. How we actually respond to emergencies, what are we doing on a blue sky day and also how we collaborate and so we've. provided a number of tours to Community groups, I believe here we've done Rotary and another I believe the Chamber for San Rafael just letting know letting people know here's how we plan to work, whether it be. through the city of San Rafael or directly with nonprofit organizations. As we want people to recognize that the investment that's been made across the county by the mayors and council members and the Board of Supervisors is something that is tangible. And so we continue to open our doors to agencies and organizations, and we extend that to members of the city of San Rafael as well. Relating to the second question, as far as working with the cities, our aging community, that is actually one of the priorities that we've set forward with the Board of Supervisors. We've recognized that we have to do better with working with our senior community members, whether it is through technology, making sure we understand the caregivers. And so one of the board priorities is actually to develop a series of courses. We have a 90 minute course series And we've developed two, one for seniors and one for the senior caretakers, as we really want to have that be an opportunity for us to be able to work directly with our community members to hear what their needs are, and then from there continue to tailor the delivery of our services, as we know that there are some gaps that are currently there. whether it be transportation, getting messages, or the access and functional needs piece. We are working with a number of community groups, but a lot of that is making sure first that we have that training ready to go to better prepare our community.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Yaranj Gulati.

Yes, thank you so much for the presentation, I have a couple of questions. what's the process when you send an alarm because sometimes one of the complaints is that well they send it too late so i'm curious to see what it takes for you to decide Okay, this is really like an emergency.

So we actually have a couple of process. A lot of it is the timing that it takes to actually have an alert or alert request come to our duty officer. Alex is our lead for our emergency communications or emergency procedures. And so with that, generally during an emergency, we can say that the incident commander who can be law or fire or public works, they have a checklist that can actually calls directly our 24 hour duty officer. So we have staff that are on stand by 24 hours a day. For example, if there's a vegetation fire, which we had a couple over the weekend, we actually get those notifications at the same time that the fire department is. And so they are ready to go. What we do oftentimes do is actually hold those notifications until we have an agreement from the on-scene incident commander. So that can be law or fire, because we don't want to send out emergency notifications without their approval. And so sometimes those messages are strategically delayed in the event that we need to make sure that we have clarity on what the actual message should say. But we also have mechanisms for, for example, if there were a tsunami, we can send out emergency alerts. And so internally, we have a 10 minute window from detection to being able to send out those emergency alerts. And that is for phone calls, text messages, emails, and then 15 minutes for wireless emergency alerts. which are similar to your Amber Alerts.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. And what happens, I remember a while ago we had an emergency where our cell towers went down and the power. What do you do in that case? Are your messages going through or what will be the action in that case?

So that is actually a great question. So we We like to say it's a swiss cheese approach when it comes to emergency alerting. There are gaps in every modality of emergency alerts, whether it be the cell phone towers, the text messages, and more. And so this is why we specifically ask people to make sure that they are signed up for all various types. In the event that we have a specific incident where cell phone towers go down and Internet goes down, we work with our law enforcement partners to do high-low sirens and use outdoor speakers on vehicles as our worst-case scenario. In those situations, we have already exhausted a number of methods, but we still have access to emergency data through PG&E. to be able to call landlines. And so in addition to the opt-ins, we can still make those phone calls that don't go over your traditional internet lines or utilize cell phone towers. So we have various methods that we can send that do not include cell phone. However, as we continue to build our infrastructure on internet, we recognize that we do want people to have different methods for emergency alerting. Okay, so I need to get my phone back into my my wall in there, just in case it could work it still might be Internet, but you know, we want to make sure that people know that we do have a plan to work with our our vehicle or law enforcement and fire partners to get that message out as well.

okay great thank you so much a couple of other things um you mentioned sandbox available so something that we are talking about um one of my districts includes the canal and some people don't have cars so how can we have those available in the places where they live so they don't because you have to drive to go get it but you cannot get out of the area so that's one i guess comment and then i'm curious to see if you're working also with businesses

on emergency response and training in addition to residents yeah so on the sandbag piece uh at least the county we are working we're actually going to be working with our office of the county executive to go out and do coordination meetings with all executive leadership for the cities and towns uh really looking at the next phase of the the sandbags sandbag page so right now we have on our map the locations where sand does exist today we're also going to be going out into the community specifically to those areas that we We do know that are prone to flooding and seeing if we want to drop off additional sand in those locations. And so we're going to be working with our city and town partners to make sure that we're capturing all of those locations, and then identifying additional locations that we can be able to resource with sand. We do recognize that there is there is a gap at the moment with sandbags that are pre-filled, people being able to move them from that location to their homes, especially with our senior community. We are looking into different contracts that can be supporting the movement of those to be able to take them to private property. At least at the county, we're working with county council to figure out how legally we can do that in those situations, but we are looking to close that gap.

Okay, great. And with the businesses?

Yes. So on the businesses, we actually have a county county position our chief resilience officer Nick grubaker who's working primarily with all of our chambers to really build up a business emergency operations Center structure. Where our businesses through our chambers can coordinate directly with the county's emergency operations Center. For two reasons number one for information sharing but number two if we need resources we want to resource them from the county specifically. We don't want to go out to you know big box agencies throughout the throughout the state if we have that resource here, we want to be able to support our businesses primarily and so. As we are looking through that I know Nick has been working primarily with. City Council Chambers to get started on building these up, we are in the very early phases of building out this structure, but it isn't it is something that we're looking to build them into our emergency response structure okay.

Great. Thank you.

Oh yeah clarify the sandbag question if I can really quick. We do have four locations currently filled even in the city and we did add one last winter at Borough. So it doesn't solve the total transportation but there was a location at Borough. We did hear from the community a little bit of information around not knowing that the bags were in the box. So we've actually recently ordered decals to put on all the sandbag boxes. So the boxes will be more clearly labeled They're also at the mezzanine parking lot Peacock app in the Terra Linda Community Center, but if we need to look at more locations, we certainly could.

Okay.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you Councilmember Bush Thank you so much for the great presentation. I represent district 3 here in San Rafael which includes point San Pedro Road so one of the issues that is most clear in my constituent's mind has been the flooding from the king tide. And I'm wondering, my question is about your plan for training people about the nature of the ebb and flow of the tides. Because it's confusing. For example, you just said that the king tide is on Thanksgiving. you know two times on that twin that 24-hour period there will be a high tide and there will be flooding six hours later there will be a low tide there will be no flooding depending on when you drive through I have had neighbors say oh no there's no flooding I just driven is great and someone goes six hours later so you with the tidal based flooding you're in a unique situation as it comes to disaster preparation and that you know when it's going to happen. So I'm wondering what your plan is to get the message across that the flooding will peak at certain times of the day and it will ebb at others.

Absolutely, and this is really why we've started the messaging now is we want to be able to lean into the public education piece specifically what we heard from this past January. A number of neighbors were my house has never missed my house has never been hit by water or i've always parked my car here and it's not a problem. Um, you know, that is one of the questions that we've had to dive into and quasi become meteorologists. Uh, so we can make sure that we are providing accurate information through our Marin channels are ready Marin page to make sure that the public can clearly understand what, you know, what is a king tide and how will it impact our community? And so As far as the plan goes, we have a king tide protocol that we've set forth. The king tide protocol determines a couple of things. When we will send out messaging, what tides, what high tides, the high tide height will be. And then also we actually have a new map that actually informs all the way down to the parcel countywide when those thresholds can impact a property. And so our goal is to be able to make sure and that is on our ready marin.org slash El Nino page. So people can go through and see what their, you know, what the thresholds are at that property. So when we send out our public messaging, they can see what it means to their property specifically.

And so I want to make sure you understood my message. It's about the tides, not meteorology, the fact that the flooding will happen at a predictable time at that day and that other times at that day there will be no flooding. So, for example, your signs that you put up that say flooded and then there's no water on the road is very confusing to people. So I hope that you can incorporate in your training for people and your warning materials surrounding that particular type of flooding, that timing matters. And particularly when it's the holidays, it's like get your guests here, have them coming and going at different times. So just to capture that element for that particular type of a disaster.

Yes. And one of the things that we are putting forward in the county is going to be doing a budget proposal for us to be able to look at the different resources. And one of the things that we are putting forward is pre-printed messaging as far as A-frames that we can put out that help clarify those signs. And so being able to put those messages out with the times That way we can tell people when to move their cars, when the flooding is expected to peak. The last couple of weeks, I believe it was last month, we had some king tide flooding, and it was overnight. And so being able to make sure that people know the timing and then also what those peak tides are going to be, that is going to be a part of our messaging going forward. Very good. Thank you.

Thank you. I don't have any additional questions for you, but I do have it for city staff and I don't know if it's for Quinn or for the city manager, because I would love to have links to this information somewhere on our website. I know it might be on the fire department page, but to even have it in our main part of it, both how you sign up the sandbag map. I think that's amazing. It came up at a previous conversation that we had here to have it readily available through our main website. So I don't know. especially as people start to think about it. We like to think that people are thinking about it, but it's 95 degrees outside, so they're not thinking about it. But as soon as it starts to rain, and they're going to go to the city search bar and be like, how do I? And that's really the opportunity we want to capture people's attention.

Yeah, no, I think it's a great comment. We do have on the city's page a specific flood page that includes the sandbag locations, how to sandbag. You actually don't fill up a sandbag all the way. We have videos of filling up sandbags. We'll be demoing that at the September 26 event. And doing some other outreach around that but certainly with the new website launch and everything else I think making sure that's prominent and we're internally and working really closely closely with Kate and the sea level rise team on a lot of everything going on so. I'll just tease some things really quickly, but we have increased sandbag locations we're increasing physical signage you'll see tsunami signs going up. flood A-frames. One of Jim's parting gifts to me from parking was we're going to open the garages for free the weeks of the events. So if people need to move their vehicles those weeks to get them out of harm's way, we'll have the upper levels of the city garages available. So that'll doesn't solve everything but hopefully helps reduce that property damage looking at issues with local traffic impacts and then the exciting thing and maybe this gets to council member curse or vice mayor excuse me question around the seniors we also recently were accepted into the neighbor to neighbor americorps program so we'll have two americorps fellows starting next month that'll increase our bandwidth going into this big season really focused on social isolation getting communities involved engaged communicating again hopefully addressing some of those other really detailed questions. It is around the 11 to 12 timeframe for Thanksgiving and the Christmas king tide, so midday, right when we would expect people to be traveling. And I would just add that while the timing of the tides is reasonably predictable, the rainfall and the storm surge adds a whole other element. And that's where the convergence piece of what we're going into becomes really challenging is if it's blue sky on those king tides day will be reasonably okay The reality of what we're looking for this winter is we're gonna see some rain and some other impacts that are gonna be less Than ideal. So that's why we're doing all the work ahead of time.

Thank you. No, that's Additional great information. So thank you so much I'd like to open up this item to public comment if any members of the public would like to ask questions or have comments Now is your opportunity? I'm looking in the room I don't see anyone in the council chambers. Anyone online like to comment on this item?

I see no hands raised.

Thank you. I'll close the public comment and turn to the council for some brief comments. And we'd ask questions. Vice Mayor, go ahead. Do you have any comments on this item?

No, just thank you. It's great to see the evolution where the organization's going in the relationship with San Rafael. And thank you to Quinn and the whole team. There's been a lot more work in terms of A community training and speaking from my other role in quarter madera and I know this is happening, also in San Rafael is that. That importance of neighbor helping neighbor and letting your if you are familiar of a high tide letting people know what this means. And because there's only so many people around. And so the more neighbors can help each other, I think that's also helpful in the message. Like, don't ignore the signs. So I really appreciate it. Thank you. And thanks for all the work. And we hope we never have to use you. But yeah, it's good to know.

Thank you. Council Member Urens-Giletti.

Yes, I wanted to also echo the sentiment and thank you so much for everything. It is wonderful to see the collaboration between the city and the county and it's so necessary. And as we are looking at our sea level rise and everything else that's already happening in our community, sometimes you don't even have to have like a niño to be or like a king tide to be an emergency. So I look forward to continue the work and there's more than, I mean, a sandbag, It's great, but it goes so far. So what can we do when there are certain places that the water gets into the houses and people get displaced? So that's going to be the big question. What do we do then now? But let us know how we can support you with the campaign for the youth or anything else. Thank you so much.

Great to see the team working together and I love your theme of connecting with members in the Community it resonates and aligns beautifully with the presentation we had at suicide prevention awareness month, so thank you.

yeah and i'll just add my gratitude, thank you for coming down here Thank you Alex Thank you director torrance for sharing this with the Community we talked a lot about flooding, but we also know we have fires and we have earthquakes here. And so being prepared is really the best defense. And it just, I'm heartened by the collaboration that is happening and the leadership that is showing at the county level. You have more resources and capacity in the smaller cities and towns. So having that leadership that we can then dovetail into and connect with really force multiplies everything that we're trying to do. So thank you so much for being here. And there's no action on this item because it was a special presentation. So thank you both. Gentlemen, we will move into the next item. Thank you. Our next agenda item is the greenhouse gas inventory report. This is, well, just that. It's our emissions inventory and the greenhouse gas reduction strategy annual report for 2020, it says 2024. 2024? Okay. Okay. That's the data we have. All right. Hi, Corey. Go ahead. Hello.

Nice to see you. Let's see if I can just go in here. And present. There we go.

There we go.

Wonderful. Hi, nice to see you all. Thanks for your attention, and special thanks for all your support. It makes it a lot easier, the stuff when the council is really supportive of sustainability and climate action. Christine O'Rourke is here from Marin Climate and Energy Partnership with us tonight, and she always gives the presentation on the greenhouse gas inventory. Let's see here. So this is sort of the basic agenda. Give a little context on what's going on in the climate these days. Christine will go over the greenhouse gas inventory, and then I'll go over some of the things that we've done since last time we were here and gave the last report. Talk a little bit about how we're thinking about planning to try to get to 2030, and then we'll open it up for questions. opportunity for questions after the greenhouse gas inventory if you prefer if you'd like to dig in the numbers a little bit before we get to the end it's totally up to you so hard to pick and choose what to talk everybody's paying attention to different things I'm sure you've seen a lot and you're paying attention to it the main thing is we're talking about greenhouse gas emissions here locally you know worldwide they continue to go up and be at maximum levels which is resulting in the last 11 years being the hottest years on the planet, at least that we've recorded. And then particularly important for San Rafael coming out of that discussion and previous discussions is sea levels that continue to rise. We don't have the exact data for 2025 yet, but it looks like it's on par with 2024, which is the highest we've seen as well. We have trend lines going up statewide and around the nation as well. Maybe not quite as steeply, but, you know, in California, we've got a lot of renewable and clean energy on the grid. Interesting that just three years ago, we only had about 100% clean energy for about 145 hours, and then three years later, it's up to 1,800 hours. So that's a steep curve, and I know that's what people are hoping to have more and more of. But it's not just California. Nationally, in the last six months, more clean energy has come online than fossil fuels. 88% was either wind, solar, or battery. We know that's going to change with the investment in fossil fuels that's coming up, but it's still pretty good data to see. And the market is the market. Worldwide, even though EV sales are slowing, they still continue. The place where you're seeing most of the slowing is U.S. and in Europe, but they continue to grow, and we've got millions of new vehicles online. And Christine will dig a little bit more into our local data as well. So that's just a little smattering of the good news, the bad news, before jumping into the climate action plan. So just a little bit more context. You've seen this before. We have a council member at the time, Kate Collin, was the head of our Green Ribbon Committee. We had 20 people on the committee. We developed our newest climate action plan, which really elevated economy and social equity. when it was mostly environment at the time with the whole idea of reducing unintended consequences and bolstering potential co-benefits as well. So we're really trying to look at things from all aspects as we implement the 54 measures in the plan with a target of 40% greenhouse gas reduction by 2030. And Christine will clarify how that's a little different than the way that it used to be. The asterisk is really about the fact that the council passed a climate emergency declaration a few years ago committing us to carbon neutral by 2045. And then we committed to regular updates, which this is one the other piece that I haven't dug into as much in a while is really this greenhouse gas reduction strategy. Our climate action plan is basically the foundation for a qualified greenhouse gas reduction strategy. We're the only ones in the county that have it. There are only a handful in the Bay Area that I know of. But what it did was it allowed for planning really one of this many years ago to have some streamlined development project compliance for certain types that meet certain thresholds. But what it's really turned into for us is it allowed us to pass our local reach codes. There was a carve out in the AB 130 legislation last year that said that nobody can pass new local reach codes unless you have a qualified greenhouse gas reduction strategy. So it's been very valuable for us. So as council knows, you passed an updated reach code last year as well. And then the only thing to maintain it is that we need to keep tracking, reporting, and providing annual updates, which this does. The last thing I'll just mention is we do a lot of community engagement. Our council member, Jorn Scalati, is our current sustainability liaison and helps coordinate these quarterly climate action forums. This was the last one. We partner with Sustainable San Rafael to make sure that we're doing things that really match what community interest is. The other piece about it is it allows for some good engagement, especially because there's so much out there. It's impossible for us to have the subject matter expertise that we need to do all the things we need to do. So we rely on community partners and volunteers for that type of setting. We do an annual one that's a special one. We've done sea level rise, workforce development, and this last one was a youth climate action forum. I'll turn it over to Christine to give an update on the greenhouse gas inventory.

Thank you, Corey. And good evening, members of the Council. I am Christina O'Rourke. I'm the sustainability coordinator for the Marine Climate and Energy Partnership. And tonight we're going to do an overview of the 2024 greenhouse gas emissions inventory. This is for community-wide emissions. And yes, it is for 2024. We do have a lag in getting all of the data that we need in order to do these inventories. So this is the most recent inventory that's available. So first, let's look at the emissions by source. The largest source of emissions is transportation at almost 70% of emissions. And most of that comes from passenger vehicles. The second largest is the built environment. So it's specifically the use of natural gas in commercial and residential buildings. And that makes up about a quarter of emissions. The use of electricity in the built environment is just 2%. City Council Chambers, slice of this pie has been shrinking over the years, as our electricity has been getting cleaner and cleaner. City Council Chambers, Waste comes in at about 3% and then these other sectors water wastewater and off road emissions from landscape and and construction vehicles and equipment make up 1% or less. And so this is the emissions over time. We have data that goes back to 2005. And so emissions are down 36% since 2005. And that is equivalent to 24% reduction since 1990. And we use something that has been recommended by the California Air Resources Board to estimate emissions at the 1990 level. And we're using this 1990 baseline because that helps us to track how we're doing against the state target, which is the state target as well as the San Rafael target is 40% below the 1990 level. The other target we are looking at is for 2045, and the state goal and San Rafael's goal is net zero emissions in 2045. But 85% of that would happen by reducing emissions, and the other 15% would happen through carbon sequestration and carbon capture. So for the sector highlights, Since 2005, natural gas emissions are down 20%, and that is due primarily to the weather, although we are beginning to see some fuel switching and conversion of electric appliances and electric heating systems to conversion of natural gas heating systems and hot water heaters to ones that use electricity. There was an 11% decrease between 2023 and 2024, and that is pretty significant now that chart on the right hand side is showing you natural gas use and the emissions as the blue bars and then we're plotting that against a metric called heating degree days and that's that quantifies how much heat is needed to heat a building to 65 degrees and so if you have a warm year your heating degree days that red line is going to go down and also your natural gas use is going to go down because most of our natural gas is used to warm our buildings and primarily residential buildings so you can see it follows pretty closely it's not an exact fit but really it's just showing that most of the natural gas use is really driven by weather so 2024 must have been a much warmer year here and then 2023 was and so part of this is being driven by the weather the cap target is a 28% decrease by 2030 so We are getting there. The next sector I wanted to highlight is electricity emissions. They are down 93%. And that is due to the lower carbon intensity of electricity. The cap target is actually met. And then waste emissions are down 40%. And that's due to a couple of things. First of all, waste disposal is down 20% since 2005. And then waste emissions are down 40%. And so that additional reduction is due to the less organic content going into the landfill waste. And it is the decomposition of organic content that creates methane, which is a greenhouse gas emission. So the cap target is a 74 percent decrease in emissions from the waste sector by 2030. So we're a little bit more than halfway there. And then the last sector I want to highlight was the transportation sector. And here emissions are down 23%. And that really is due to better fuel efficiency and also some more zero emission vehicles on our roads. Vehicle miles traveled, which is shown here in the lighter colored bars, that's been flat since 2005. But emissions are trending down, and that's that red line of the top graph. Now here in Marin County, At the end of 2024, 11% of all passenger vehicles registered in Marin County were zero emission vehicles, and most of those are electric vehicles. And in San Rafael, it was a little bit lower at 9%. The cap target is to have 25% zero emission vehicles driving on San Rafael roads in 2030. The graph at the bottom there is projecting forward from what we have now at the end of 2025. Zero emission vehicles actually made up 13% of the vehicle fleet in Marin. So if we kind of continue on the growth rate that happened in 2024, we get to about 28% of zero emission vehicles. in 2030 in Marin. So it's not a crystal ball. We're just kind of extending a trend line. We did see that in 2024, the adoption rate of vehicles actually went down. And that could be due to a variety of reasons. I should say in 2025, it went down. We had the expiration of federal tax credits, and that probably made a big difference. And it'll be interesting to see what happens in 2026. We have a lot of things that are happening that really are kind of pointing to more greater EV sales. First of all, we have the price of gasoline, which has skyrocketed, so that's, you know, making a lot of people look at zero emission vehicles. We have kind of price parity for a lot of models. So EVs and the comparable internal combustion vehicle model are really kind of achieving the same price for a lot of models. We've got a lot of used zero emission vehicles coming on the market. And in general, just after the federal tax credits kind of expire, it just takes a while for the market to kind of find a new equilibrium. So we are hopeful that we will make this at least 28% or better in 2030. And then finally, I have this slide which is just showing an emissions projection with a trend line. So the dark blue line is the actual emissions, and then the dotted line is the emissions reduction that we need to meet the state and the local goal, which is, again, is 40 percent below the 1990 level. And then what I've done is I've taken a trend line, and I've taken the trend from 2005 to 2024 and extended that out. And what that's showing is that we're pretty much on target to meet the reduction if we continue that trend line. Now, the trend line is obviously what we call endpoint sensitive. It really matters what you're taking um you could if we did this between for the last five years we would be at a 39 below 1990 level if we took it the last six years you'd be at 37 below 1990 levels so again it really matters where um where you're you're centering that trend line on but i've done it from 2005 all the way to 2024 for this And I believe that is my last slide. So if you'd like to stop now and ask any questions related to the inventory, I'm happy to answer those questions. Why don't we just keep going? And that way then the council can hold their questions.

Thank you.

Good. Thank you so much. Thanks, Christine. Okay, we'll go over some of the things that we've done since we saw you last. And we'll start with transportation since that's such a big piece. lift up Public Works and all the great work that they've done. So much of what we've had our eggs in the basket of is electric vehicles, which is really we're going to get a lot of our emissions reductions there, but we've got to figure out how to get people out of their cars too. And so Public Works, as you know, has been doing a lot of bike and pedestrian infrastructure and safety improvements. People need to have safe places and inviting places to walk, pedal, if they're going to use them, if we're going to get them out of their car. So they're sort of laying the groundwork for that. This is the PG&E EV charger project we just completed at Public Works. And then it will help us transition our fleet. We are participating in helping lead a countywide electric vehicle charger working group to relate toward this idea of implementing the EV acceleration strategy and also to try to find ways to leverage our combined power to maybe get some other electric vehicle chargers in places that maybe wouldn't normally go in. And then we also have a county-wide vehicle miles traveled reduction working group we've been participating in as well. And TAM is helping us with that and is utilizing all the sustainability coordinators from around the county to try to help get people out of their vehicles. And that's our new EV chargers. We've also, as the council adopted the stronger reach code last year, which goes into effect January 1st, 2027. We promote electrification resources and rebates we joined the local climate local government climate alliance to help advocate at the state level for more legislation that can help us. switch to a cleaner fuel appliances and things like that, and then we also just completed exciting our first workforce development program with canal alliance. the Lime Foundation, and Good Green Work, and 16 participants, four were offered jobs afterwards. This is the graduation and job fair that's happening in July, and we're looking for funding to be able to replicate that. In terms of adaptation and climate justice, we have two amazing staff people. We have Kate Hagman, our sea level rise planner, and then Kerry Fugate, who's our climate justice and engagement manager. So the sea level rise feasibility study was completed. Kate secured some new grants for levy assessments. Kerry completed the collective plans and action report, and then has drafted an equitable climate action toolkit that we're socializing two different departments right now to make it as actionable as possible. And then I had the pleasure of seeing Cheryl Buss creating new leaders and new sea level rise planners through her classes in Laurel Dell Elementary. And they just had a presentation at Youth in Arts on Friday. We hosted that Youth Climate Action Showcase back in April. And then Kate Hagerman was actually just named Hidden Hero of the Green Belt and will be getting an award in September. So we're excited about that. And the plan right now is to return October 5th. with more information on our sea level rise planning and start to build a cadence with the council on understanding what the pros and cons and trade-offs are with all the different potentials that we could pursue to protect from sea level rise. Then we have this great new staff person too, Caitlin Turneel, who's our waste management coordinator, has been working on our illegal dumping program, compliance with SB 1383, rolling out composting to multifamily, dwellings helping with enforcement as well and then helping support local events such as repair fairs and you know projects like the porch fest and things like that to reduce their waste And then we've also selected one of three in the state to participate in this Climate Resilience District Incubator. And so it's California Forward and Resilient Cities Catalyst from the East Coast that are doing it. We partner with three areas in Connecticut as well. And it's a learning journey, really, beef up our capacity, our understanding of the legislation, and the types of finance tools and funding that you can do. So we're really looking at real projects here and trying to understand how we might be able to get at those since San Rafael could never fund these things alone. Um, plus everybody has this issue up and down the Bay. So how do we work together? So this is sort of building our chops. It's a really, um, uh, technical assistance learning journey program. That's pretty quick. Um, and then from there we can kind of assess whether there's enough over there, there to pursue something which would be multiple years to, to enact. Um, we secure some extra funding for our climate justice and engagement manager through the end of the fiscal year. And our staff's been participating in city and regional planning efforts around sea level rise and other things as well. So how do we get to our 2030 goals? This is the big question. We've just started discussing this at MCEP as well. We're in climate and energy partnership. We have data from 2024, but we're almost in 2027. And so really trying to understand where we put our limited energy is important here. Our work plan has a lot of the things that are dedicated to, again, transportation and energy. Those are two main areas. We also work with Zero Waste Marin. We're working countywide. We have enough sustainability coordinators now here across the county that it really can work countywide on these things. And if you think about transportation and energy and all that, especially in a small county like Marin, that's going to be essential is that we work together on these things. Oops, hit the wrong button. And then Transportation Authority of Marin is really, they gave a presentation as Councilmember Jorns-Gladi mentioned at our Climate Action Forum. They are really laying the groundwork for future greenhouse gas reductions. Most of the work they do, even though it's congestion management, is really greenhouse gas reduction as well. And so they gave us a great presentation, talked about You know mascots and all the work that Mary Kate has talked about in the last some of the meetings couple meetings ago with. If you have certainty that you're going to be able to make your connection you're much more likely to take transit and we've seen results for that already they've secured funding from mobility help plan accounting what active transportation plan they support us with our canal active transportation plan. They're developing this whole vehicle miles travel toolkit, which will be policy and implementation options for us to weigh in the coming year to help get at all the new development and encouraging people to not drive single occupancy vehicles. And then, of course, they have the marine commutes program, which we uplift as well. Just interesting to know that the vast majority of our trips are in county, so we often think about the, you know, commuting in from outside of county, which is true, but we really can get at this if we're working countywide potentially with all of our, sustainability coordinators and of course public works is laying the groundwork as well continuing with updating the bicycle pedestrian and bicycle pedestrian plan and implementation of that all the safety improvements and pedestrian crossings that they've done working on the canal bridge and the canal active transportation plan the Civic Center connector pathway and their fleet transition so they're all in and then this piece about natural gas again, we're hoping to start to see that trend line going down because of more than the weather. And part of that is by switching to electric appliances. Part of it also could be through renewable natural gas, which is actually a thing now. And so the Air District rules, which are going to their board in November, are going to be essential. Again, more of that sort of foundational groundwork We've sent in a letter of support for those rules. And so if they pass in November, then it won't be long that we'll be phasing out gas appliances, particularly for heating and for hot water. So that will lay the groundwork. And then Marin County had their appliance rebates for several years, which really sort of got the contractors and the appliance folks here up to speed. And so we have a lot of good trained contractors as well. Groundwork is laid, and we need to just sort of fill in and help promote, make it easy for people to do, and make the switch. And then I mentioned the Local Government Climate Alliance, which is our attempt at really working with state legislators to say, look, we need your help to pass good policy, but we also need to make sure that it works on the ground. And so this is a new program through Green Cities California, and we've had some good results at the state legislature so far. And so Christine mentioned that we are on course relatively. Now, anything could happen, right? The economy, elections, all kinds of things could change that course. But I think we're in a good place in terms of what's set up and these foundational things that can help us get at those major emissions areas. So with that, I'll open it up for questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you both for an excellent presentation.

just at the very top of it you can go very very deep so we'll see if any of the council members would like you to go deeper on any of their questions uh vice mayor any questions uh questions definitely not deep um thank you for being the experts in the room around this and thank you for council member lawrence galati for for really digging deep into the work that's needed here um there has been a huge amount of success which is fantastic and we talked a little bit about this last year of now we're getting down to like the hardest part um we got all that low hanging fruit that's great so i hate to ask this but how do we know if we're not going to meet it i mean see if christine wants to add anything it's really challenging because a year to your inventory is kind of

hard to really know. You have to look at it over several years to really understand how well you're doing. So a year-to-year inventory is not exactly that helpful. But looking at trends, like market trends, is really important. So Christine mentioned that with the loss of the federal tax credits and all that, we saw you know, AV sales dip. On the other hand, they're coming back and the state is starting to fill in those gaps with some of those incentives now as well. So California is all in. So looking at those trends is helpful. I was really heartened again to see TAM's presentation and see all the great work they're doing. And when we've been partnering with them, it was something that we didn't have the bandwidth to do for so many years and now we really do. So I don't know exactly how to answer that other than to say we'll watch other trends as well. There's a lot of data inputs, and we'll be looking at those. I'm grateful that we're in a state that really cares. Christine, did you want to add anything? No? OK.

And I just want to confirm, the 40% decrease, that's a self-inflicted, right? We imposed that. Or because that was our- That is a state goal as well. It's a state goal as well.

Yeah.

And so do we know if there's any implications from the state at this point for not reaching it?

There are no implications. No, not that I know of.

No, as Gray said, there are no implications. And so San Rafael adopted that 40% reduction because it was the state target. So we're trying to be in line with the state target. Cities are not even required to adopt a climate action plan. So there's really no repercussions to not meeting it.

And we just qualify i'm talking about like financial or whatever we know that there's where there's implications socially everything else environmentally by not doing it it's, it is the right thing to do. My other question is around, and this is if you had $1 and that $1 going to make the difference, we have a lot of projects and programs and bringing it very locally to San Rafael. And where is that $1 going to go to really make the difference?

To invest it and get $5? No. I know, I cheat sometimes. That's tough. I mean, if you were to say what bucket you put it in, you put it in the transportation bucket. But I don't know about one thing. I think that is kind of the lesson, right? It's all in. And then what Christine said was the net zero target by 2045 is going to require carbon sequestration, too. And we've been meeting with the folks at Marin Biomass Project. Fire departments met with them, too, trying to see if there's some sequestration project that we can pair with some of the wildfire fuel reduction and all that. trying to meeting with some new startups around that, trying to see is there, how do we actually get at that?

So, yeah. Okay. I mean, I think so, I'll save more of my comments, but it's in terms of thinking about specifically what we as decision makers around this in strategy, how do we make the best use of our funds? And that's something that you don't have to have an answer to tonight. We all need to figure that out. But we only have that $1.

Yeah, exactly. No, I would say that it's all these foundational things that are happening. Again, the air district rules, you know, around electric vehicles, around the TAM stuff that is setting the groundwork for us to get people out. Now we need to flow in there and support all that and encourage and control and force and all those things, right, for those types of things.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Bushey, do you have any questions?

Yes, I have a question. But first, and it's about what's in the report and then what's not in the report. I'm delighted to see the description of Central Marin Sanitation Agency that we're meeting our load completely and exporting renewable biogas generated electricity to the grid. Glad to see that. What I didn't see, though, was any discussion of MCE. and the recent civil grand jury report. Did you consider any of the information in that report?

Yes. Yes, two things. I'm going to let Christine answer a little bit about the emissions factor and how that's calculated. And then we do have Jenna Tenney here from MCE on Zoom if you have a specific question around the electricity and the power content.

So we do talk about MCE when we talk about electricity and there was something in the report about the renewable content and the greenhouse gas free content of MCE electricity as well as PG&E electricity. We use published and verified emission factors for PG&E and MCE electricity and they're published and they're calculated according to very detailed rules from the state and from the California Public Utilities Commission. And so those, so, and right now, I don't want to get too much into the weeds, but those are done on annual reporting. And that will be changing to, there will be a new metric for hourly reporting in the next few years, which we will also be reporting on. But right now, we're just using the emission factors that are available and that we are required to use when we do the inventories.

So in other words, you did not read the Civil Grand Jury report that talked about renewable energy credits that were being used to create the appearance of renewable energy.

So the renewable energy credits in the way that they're used, and I'm not an expert on that subject, are factored into the emissions, into the energy portfolio of a utility based upon certain rules. And so they're the same rules that apply to PG&E as well. It's not just MCE. So now I'm going to get too far out of my comfort zone here. So we, I think, maybe need to bring in Jenna.

So we did consult with MC about that a little bit. And so that's why we asked Jenna to be here again. We're not able to dive into the details of the power content as much as somebody that is more experienced with that, expert with that. So I don't have the deep knowledge of that. But we invited her to come to be able to answer any questions that you might have around the power content and about the use of the they're not rex exactly but. But would you like to have her answer the question.

Yes, tell us if your electricity includes any racks.

Thank you.

Hi, good evening. Jenna Tenney here from MCE. So RECs, as they are most often referred to, are unbundled renewable energy certificates. So anytime a megawatt of renewable energy is generated, a certificate is generated along with it. So there are a couple different types of those. And when people are talking most commonly about RECs, It's when you purchase the energy separately from the piece of paper. And essentially, you can buy like, let's say, one megawatt of clean energy, which could be solar. And then you have to buy some underlying power, which could be entirely natural gas. Now, in California, that is not a one for one. So if you did buy entirely natural gas and a one megawatt renewable energy certificate, you do not get to completely cover the emissions from that gas. There's a calculation that's done with that. But regardless, MCE does not purchase any unbundled renewable energy certificates. Our board set a policy for that, and we haven't done that in many years. The civil grand jury report was specifically referring to a tax type of contracting that um there is disagreement on in terms of the what's been referred to as additionality of it so the additional benefit to the grid um generally measured in terms of like literal new green electrons on the grid. So that type of contract is still bundled renewable energy certificates. It is counted for an emissions factors the same way that renewable energy coming from California would be. So calling a wreck, an unbundled wreck is not accurate. It's still considered high quality bundled renewable energy, but they are primarily short term contracts, which are from existing resources. So that is where the main point of concern is coming from, is that it's not new steel in the ground, new green electrons being generated, but it is not a renewable energy certificate.

So it's a different type of piece of paper.

I suppose you could look at it that way. I mean, all of the power accounting is a piece of paper, right? And so when you are accounting for power on the power content label, the way that that's done, the emissions associated with the piece of paper is based on how the state qualifies that piece of paper. So I'm starting to get really into the weeds on this, but it's called a power content category. So there's a power content category one, two, and three. Three is the quote unquote unbundled renewable energy certificates. One is the highest quality renewable energy that you can buy. It's renewable energy that is connected to the California energy grid where you buy the energy and the paper from the same provider. And then there's PCC2, which is kind of a couple different things in between where you're buying the power and the renewable energy certificate essentially together, but it can mean the power is not connected to the California grid, or it can mean something slightly different. But those those are all different types of renewable energy. And every single piece of paper is accounted for in the emissions factor. And as Christine mentioned, it's standardized across all providers in California. So MCE is not unique in how this is calculated. And we're not really doing anything different than anyone else is doing. I mean, I won't speak for other providers, but we're all using very similar methodologies to purchase an account for power, specifically accounting for power. The way that that's accounted for is mandated by the state. We cannot change anything about how we do that. when we're reporting out to customers and that power content label that goes out to customers, we can't change anything about that at all. So that's why that's the standard.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Jenna.

Any other questions? Nope. Okay. Council member, you're on Scalati.

Thank you so much for the presentation and for answering all the questions. I actually have one for Christina about the, do you keep in mind the population, the change in population, thinking about population growth where maybe you have suddenly family with little kids and now the kids are bigger and they all have a car. So I'm just curious to see if that's something that you keep in mind as population grows in San Rafael.

So when we prepare the greenhouse gas emissions inventory, we do use updated figures from the Department of Finance for populations. So as population changes, that is taken into account in the inventory. As far as projecting into the future, that was something that we did when we developed the Climate Action Plan. That was some time ago, so your climate action plan is not necessarily taking into account any additional population from all of the new development that is happening. I will say that with a lot of new development, because it's generally multifamily and it's near transit, and I'm not just speaking for San Rafael, but I'm speaking for communities across California, and sometimes there's little or no parking associated with those buildings, The studies have shown that people either in affordable units or smaller units or units that are close to transit all generate less vehicle miles traveled. They either rely on transit or they walk. And they also, because these buildings are newer, they're going to be more energy efficient. They're going to have to comply with the current building codes. And so, and those building codes are either requiring, if in effect, you know, heat pump heating systems or heat pump hot water. And just, and they're just going to be, also be more energy efficient as well as being electrifying also they should have you know the higher standards for electric vehicle charging so that also if they have the parking available encourages electric vehicles that's all to say that the emissions additions that happen from new new development is much lower than the emissions that are being generated from the people who have older homes and have been here a long time

Yeah, no, that's super helpful. I was just thinking, in addition to that, just how our neighborhoods are transforming as people age and new families come in. Anyway, well, that's very helpful. And I know the other question is around carbon sequestration. And I know, Corey, you are really working on carbon sequestration. Let's see what we can do. A lot of the carbon sequestration happens through farming. And we are not in farmland, although I want to say I have a little farm in my house. But I wonder, like, adding trees, you know, what things, what type of impact will that have besides, like, for example, cooling the environment, but in terms of carbon sequestration?

yeah you have to plan a lot of trees to get a lot of sequestration and in general, whenever we include those that kind of a measure in climate action plans, we also have to account for the tree loss that is happening and. You know, with new development if they're taking out trees that required to plant new trees, but there's still the net is a loss, because those trees are much smaller. We also have, you know, all of the fire prevention work that's going on and is reducing trees. So it's really kind of hard to get to a net positive in tree growth. You talked about farms. And even though there aren't farms necessarily in San Rafael, there are, you know, the county is working on doing the sequestration both in all different types of sequestration that can be done. that can happen on farms. And they're funding that, and they are actually taking credit for carbon sequestration in the counties in their greenhouse gas emissions inventory for the unincorporated area.

Great. Well, those are all my, oh, I have one more question. In the Air District Rules 9 to 4 and 9 to 6, is that the name of the rule, or is that the time that you're not supposed to use? Those are the name of the rules. Okay, because I know with MC, they always say, don't use your energy between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m., so I was thinking, hmm. So anyway, thank you.

Thank you. I don't have any additional questions because ones I had have already been asked. So I will open up the public comment on this item. If you'd like to comment, now would be your opportunity to do so.

Good evening. Bill Carney speaking tonight for Sustainable San Rafael. As you know from our letter, the bottom line of this greenhouse gas inventory is that San Rafael is continuing to reduce the carbon pollution that's driving climate change. But possibly, possibly not fast enough to reach the city and state goal of 40% reduction below 1990 levels by 2030. That is in the six years from the 24 report, this 24 report to the end of this decade. Why is meeting that goal important? First, the optics of failure would send completely the wrong message, that climate change somehow doesn't matter enough to solve, or worse yet, that it's somehow too difficult to solve. We in this room know that those conclusions would be false. But messaging and momentum are critical to getting to the right results in such a huge endeavor. Secondly, meeting the 2030 goal would keep us on track to meet the ultimate city and state goal of getting to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. Finally, the science is telling us more loudly every year, every day, really, and is amplified by storms and floods and heat waves and that is telling us more loudly each year that these timelines are not arbitrary, but absolutely essential to arrest the ever intensifying impacts of a warming world. At Sustainable San Rafael, we believe that educating and encouraging people to transition off fossil fuels is helpful but insufficient. So we've recommended a number of specific things in addition to the great summary of things going on already that might So we

We now mute in the chambers to reflect the folks that are calling in. So thank you for sending in your letter, and really thank you for all the work that Sustainable San Rafael does.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Anyone else in the chambers? I don't see anyone in the chambers. Anyone online like to comment on this item?

I do see one hand raised.

Hello. Go ahead. Yeah. I'm Belle Cole, and I'm here today to add my support to the positions taken in the sustainable sand refill letter that you've just been hearing about and that you have in your packet. I also had a look at the greenhouse gas inventory report, and it makes clear how much has to be done between now and 2030. But I really want to comment more on the waste sector, because as someone who has been involved with the Marin Biomass Project for five years, I have some thoughts about that. And even though that the sector is small, I think 5%, it looked to me like someone was saying 3%, but anyway, 5% of the total. The future looks like it's going to be moving aggressively and partly if they take into account some of the recommendations that are coming out of the Burren Biomass Study. So I just want to recommend to comment on those recommendations and also to say there are five others that are really good and that the Biomass Project is launching roundtables to implement these recommendations and And they will include the stakeholders and people who think hard about these issues and look deeply into them. And so this is something to look forward to. And I just wanted to finish by saying that I'm going to post a link in the chat to the biomass project because I'm not sure you've heard about it yet from us. And we'd like to make a presentation to you. And also that... So the recommendations that we have are very relevant to the climate change proposals that you've heard.

Thank you, Bill. And actually, you can't put links into chats, but Corey is here and he knows all about it. And I think having the CCAP would be an excellent place to talk about that as well. So thank you. Thank you, Bill. Anyone else online?

I see no other hands raised.

Thank you. I'll close the public comment and bring it back to the council for additional comments. Go ahead, Vice Mayor.

Great update. Yes I'm going to go back again to my one dollar analogy or or challenge similar to other areas that I'm working in the conversation. There's so much we could do, and if we try to do everything, we do nothing. And so I'm really trying, because of our dollars are so limited, and this is really expensive work, it's how do we get all those partners that are working on this to align on what that one thing is. Everyone has one dollar. can it all go to the right the one thing and and you as the experts have to figure out what that is because we could do everything and then we say we do we've done nothing because it's just not gonna move it so it's being ultra highly focused so intentional and got to prioritize thank you Thank You councilmember bushy for some comments

I agree with the Vice Mayor. We need your input on where to spend that next dollar. Where can we get the most climate change improvement for that dollar on behalf of our constituents? We embarked on this process many years ago. Was it 2005? Is that when we started this?

Yeah, the first climate action plan was adopted in 2009, so it was probably 2005 when we started all this.

So we've been at this two decades. But we need that level of, you know, how to prioritize and how to make the biggest difference with the next move that we make. So thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Uranj Gulati, and thank you for leading the CCAP.

Yes, well, my pleasure, especially serving with people like Corey bit of a man and and also with Kerry is a is the one thing that gives me hope about this whole climate change is how much talent, we have within our stuff and also in our Community Thank you so much for always been at all the meetings and really providing scientific data, which is always really great to see. um i when i when i think about this the number one is transportation and i think a lot of times what does that mean for our city and and to me i still i live in bretthart and i still i'm not comfortable getting on my bike and biking downtown so that's something that i think we can work on i know that um corey and his team and paul they are really working they are doing amazing job jobs like within the city, with like EV charges, getting into like electric fleets, things that we can do as an organization. But as a resident, what can we do like to get people out of the cars, not only for, you know, for the fumes that is generating, but also for safety, for traffic control, for quality of life. And this is something that now with the new developments, we are thinking, well, it's less than one mile from transit. But I'm coming from places where they have transit that looks very different than the transit here. And sometimes you cannot depend on the local transit. So maybe it's within the town. We can make it more walkable or more bike friendly. So that's the part in me that I'm like, well, that's what I want to put like the efforts on. It is happening. Public Works is working on making our streets safer. But I think we still need a lot more to do. And the funding is not just the funding that we have as a city. We need so much more money that needs to come from grants or from the state or from the federal government that I think we always have to be looking at that. The other thing that I'm really excited is about Corey working with the different departments that we have within the city of San Rafael. So anytime that we are doing new developments, whether it's public works, whether it's safety, police, fire, how can we make it more sustainable? kind of like process that so I'm I think we do have a great plan and we are just implementing it and I'm always very impatient where can we what else can we do and but I think for me personally the transportation within downtown within our cities where you can actually really Bike walk and really take public transportation that I will take you to the place that you need to be That would be very helpful. And if you haven't received like about 50 different emails from people during the week of October 1st through the 8th and the week without driving and they are encouraging all elected officials to try not to use your car so here we go we'll just try to you know walk in sometimes you think that it takes longer than it takes but it's actually a really nice way to move around if you can be locally so anyway lots of talking but and then I have to go back to the trees I think we need more trees in our city so I will always say that thank you thank you

Thank you, Christine for being here and providing the science and there's a little bit of art with that projection so we appreciate that. As you've got it as year after year, and of course corey and your team has been fantastic. I will say, as the Chair of tam transportation authority of marin I really appreciate the shout out that you gave to tam. Our countywide transportation plan, it does have sustainability embedded in it, let's put it that way. And these are multi-layered solutions that we have. And a lot of what was brought up is things that TAM can support, not just San Rafael, but all the communities here. And I really, if you haven't read the countywide transportation plan recently, do read it. It really gets at a lot of what we're talking about in terms of reducing that transportation number. And I'll mention things like the Redwood bike share. Thank you to our state legislators. We've got an additional earmark to continue that program, which is the last mile, first mile. And there hadn't been funding for that. So there are a lot of other agencies that are needed in order for us to have success here. I wanted to highlight one before we close this out, and I accept a motion on this item. In the staff report, it says very clearly, but I want to highlight it, that 99% of the city's greenhouse gas emissions come from the community. Just think about that 99% so we're doing the work we're having the conversation here, but we have the 1% and in the staff report you list incredible things that the city is doing to walk the walk. But that's why the conversation with the Community that's why the climate change action plan that's why the advocacy by sustainable summer fell is so critical that we can. do all pass all the policies we want, but at the end of the day, it really has our Community stepping up and make those different decisions when it comes to how they heat or cool their house or how they get from one location to another so. We will continue to be the soapbox here, because we want to hit those climate goals. And thank you for all that you're doing to help us guide those decisions. Councilmember Micah, how would you like to make a motion on this item?

I would love to. I move to accept the greenhouse gas emissions inventory and greenhouse gas reduction strategy annual report for 2024.

Second.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- Moved and seconded. Roll call, please.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- Council Member Bushey. Aye. CHRISTIE WOODARD- Vice Mayor Kurtz. Aye. CHRISTIE WOODARD- Council Member Yadam-Scolati. Aye. CHRISTIE WOODARD- Mayor Kate.

Aye. That motion carries 4-0. Thank you so much. Our next agenda item this evening is the fiscal year 2025-26 Unaudited Results and Budget Amendments. There are several action items on here, but we'll probably just have one staff report. And I see Sean Plate approaching, so welcome. We'll give you a moment to set up.

I'll do a quick introduction. Sean played our finance manager is going to present this item and I would just note that as was indicated and in the title this is still kind of unaudited results and we're going to touch on some of the highlights particularly to inform the two action recommendations that are before you this evening staff will be back Another month month or a month and a half with final audited results We'll have more in-depth kind of analysis along with the report from our independent auditor. But with that Let me turn it over to Sean

See, it's been a while. Again, I'm Sean Blade. I'm the finance manager here at the city. So here, I'm here to present to you guys the unaudited results and budget amendments. There are two action items in addition to the report, and that is the authorization of supplementary appropriations for some cleanup items at year end, which we always do come to you guys for, and to adopt a resolution authorizing amendments to the 26-27 budget for unencumbered carryovers of appropriations from the 25-26 budget so here at the bird's eye view we have our all funds results our unaudited results show total revenues 1.8 percent above budget total expenditures at about 86.3 percent And that difference is really with that $16 million makes up part of that difference in the unexpended expenditures appropriations in all funds. And now down into the general fund. Sorry, now my eyes are going. We ended the year about $1 million over budget, which was about 1%. 1.5 million below our projections. The result of that was because we had a $600,000 unrealized loss that we had to book at the end of the year. We had the war in Iran that drove bond prices higher, which depresses the value of our portfolio. So that's really what happened right there. And then we also had much higher sales tax and transaction and use tax receipts towards the beginning of the year that kind of seemed to wane off as the year went on. Our projections ended up being a little high based on those earlier results. aside from that down on the appropriation side we did see a savings of 1.26 million and to break that down a little further into personnel we were budgeting we did end up over budget in personnel and the general fund by 1.8 million on the plus side we were projecting about 2.7 million in January February and So some work was done there, and progress was made. But on the other end, we do budget a salary savings factor so that we're not coming to you year after year with $5 million in salary savings. And that amount was $2.7 million. So we landed in between there. Yes?

If I could just highlight or underscore, hopefully it doesn't come as a complete surprise that we were over on payroll. I would say that in our mid-year projection and in the projections that we updated when we presented the budget, we'd anticipated being over by about 2.7 million on payroll. So this result does reflect, I believe, some of the concerted efforts between selective hiring freeze, looking at some of the overtime trends. So this number is better than we had expected going into the year, end of year.

Thank you.

Then overall, on the non-personnel side, you see the savings of $3 million, which we are here tonight asking you to reappropriate $1.31 million of. Obviously, $1.31 million is greater than the $1.26 total available there. And that is because in this unaudited year end results section contains two transactions that we are coming now to ask to be added to the amended budget. And that is right here in the third column. These are these adjustments. First of all, we're asking for appropriations of $545,000 to resolve a deficit balance in the recreation fund. And what that means is that the current situation in the recreation fund is that they are funding current operations with future revenues. Their cash isn't negative, but their equity is. And with the fund largely moving over to the general fund for the fiscal 27 year, this needs to be resolved at the end of fiscal 26. And so this is essentially further subsidy to get them back to zero, to break even. It's been kind of leading here. They ended the last year with a $70,000 deficit balance, but we were seeing if that would resolve itself. But at this point, this is where we are. The other is, in better news, the Measure E transaction and use tax came in above budget, above expectations. And that means that we have to come to you for supplemental appropriations as one third of the total Measure E transaction and use tax, less debt service, does get transferred to the Essential Facilities Capital Projects Fund. And so that makes up that $630,000 that we are requesting the transfer out of the general fund. On the other side, it's one item. Similarly to the salary discussion, as a portion of salaries is allocated from fire to the emergency medical services fund, you have the same problem. They're over budget in personnel. So we're asking for an additional $340,000 there to shore that up. And in addition, There's $120,000 that is related to some back billing of training that was unexpected and an increase in supply costs that they've incurred since the war began. Obviously, petroleum got more expensive, and a lot of supplies are petroleum-based. So presented here, I have the $460,000 in revenue also adjusted. It doesn't need to be, but it's just there to illustrate that their revenues did come in a million dollars over their projections. And so these appropriations are completely supported by the revenues in the current year. And then the last item, we have our fiscal 27 unencumbered carryovers.

Is there a line that's in there?

So here we have a table that doesn't fit on one slide. And I'll try to get through it. This is our first close in our new accounting system. And one thing that happened that we realized at the end of this year is we were using a contract transaction and a purchase order transaction kind of interchangeably as they were both creating encumbrances and being liquidated and functioning properly throughout the year. Well, now we realized at the end of the year that only the purchase order transaction has the capacity to roll budget into the next fiscal year. So for these, a lot of these items contained here are contracts, transactions that just need to be formally put back on the books. Are you about to say something?

Well, I was just going to, yes, I was. But just to summarize, this is also exhibit one in your staff report. And I just want to point out that the formatting of this information breaks out the roughly $6.2 million in carryovers that come from various essentially operating funds, 1.3 of which, 1.3 million in the general fund, which is, I guess, 4.9 million across other funds. And for these unencumbered carryovers with the noting Sean's comment about what the system was going to carry over and what we had to come back and clean up, these are largely funds that were provided previous budget for specific purposes that either weren't encumbered or we still need them. And so we're requesting them that carried over, also largely in support of the continuing work on the work plan. The other column are the carryover specific to appropriations provided by the council through the capital budget. And so those are more CIP-related projects, CIP appropriations, again, for which there would in most cases, wasn't a contract yet in place. And that work is going to continue. And so on the second page of that, I think you get to the $16 million titles. We can get into this in any level of detail the council wishes, but I just want to give you the overview on the unencumbered carryover list. Back to Sean.

Well, how much more detail would you like me to provide? I guess I'll just run through the overview without ignoring the contract issue. There are some of these contracts, obviously, we're adding back the, we're asking to add back the ADA transition plan, the 550,000 left of the ERP implementation, which is currently implementing, we're working on implementing the payroll module scheduled for go live January 1st. And then the additional $400,000 left in the community well-being and inclusivity engagement initiatives. That was from a couple years ago. The largest number we see here is from the gas tax. And there seems to be four projects. The main project in here is $4 million. It's related to the 2nd and 4th Street at the Miracle Mile project. project. And my understanding is that that's delayed based on Caltrans and not us. But that represents a significant carryover of the gas tax budget. The developer fund in 207 just represents the balance of developer funds received in fiscal 26 that's going to be used in 27. The developers are giving us deposits. We're paying costs with it. And so this is just appropriating the money so we can spend it. Mayor Mrakas, Those contracts vegetation management is although that's 1.4 million, those are all contracts, they just have a large volume for work that they perform. Mayor Mrakas, The safe team and the grants fund that is just reappropriating the rest of the burn grant that we have to to fund the safe team there and, as with the encampment resolution fund three the 1.3 million. is the remaining funds on that grant to reappropriate those. And we have the capital fund to measure carry over the capital projects. And yes, even though in digital system support services looks large also, that is mainly because that is about $400,000 in Xantrion, our IT administrator contract, and about $200,000 in our ERP system costs, so all totaling $16.4 million.

I'll make one additional comment that Maybe you might anticipate a question, but I want to raise it in part because Councilmember Hill, who's not with us, he had submitted some questions on this report. And while Catherine Kufa is here to address any additional questions, the question is, what does the result at year end for the recreation revolving fund to the extent that we can address it with the recommendation. Does it have any implications as we roll into 26-27 for the current year budget? And we're hoping that this doesn't automatically mean that we have a significant shortfall or gap in the 26-27, both because of you know, how we approach the personnel budget, the revenue recovery. We were aware of these trends when we built the current budget. So fingers crossed, with a little help from Catherine and her team, keeping a close eye on the recreation program, revenue and expenditures, we at least are comfortable on this date

current year budget does should not necessarily automatically see the same Delta as we saw at year end for twenty five six all right and with that we will ask that you accept the report presenting preliminary fiscal year 26 audited financial results adopt a resolution adopting amendments to the city of San Rafael budget for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2026 for the purpose of confirming authorizing appropriations and transfers and adopt a resolution authorizing amendments to the City of San Rafael budget for fiscal year 26-27 to reflect carryover of available unencumbered 25-26 appropriations for specified purposes totaling $16,000. And with that, I will look back to seeing you again, taking any questions and then seeing you again in November, December.

Thanks. Okay. Hold on a second. Let's see if there are any questions. Vice Mayor, do you have any questions? Okay, I see Council Member Rishi's excited to ask a question. Okay, go ahead.

Just to put this all in context, it says unencumbered carryover, but they really are encumbered in that they belong to something, and we're just moving them from one year's budget to the next, right? Just to be clear. So it's not the unencumbered that's making a big pile of money that we get to spend again.

That is correct.

Okay, so with that understanding, And I haven't gone back and looked at the past budgets, but this number just seems larger than it usually is. Is that fair?

Here's how I would say that. This number is actually pretty similar. In fact, actually I believe a little less than last year's number. However, in prior years, the reason why this is a large number, in prior years, the practice had been during the budget process to estimate these numbers and build them into the budget that comes to council for adoption at the end of June. So it's already kind of baked in, if you will, to the adopted budget. That's one way to do it. But we also didn't always go back and reconcile what we thought was going to be available from what was available. And so starting two years ago or last year. So we're not going to estimate the 16 million plus or put it into the capital budget because then get really confusing about what's the real budget. So what we're doing is waiting until year end, getting all the bills paid, the books closed, looking at what's available, and not just, not necessarily carrying over money just because it's available, but only carrying over the funds that are available that are identified as critical to doing the work.

To that particular thing.

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

It's not another bite at the budget.

No, it's a good question. Can I come back? Yeah, of course. Go ahead.

Of course. She was so excited. Just in terms of looking future focus to this year in terms of recreation, are we anticipating, because we know that we provide a lot of services within recreation to make it very palatable for our community to be able to use the services, but it's also a highly intensive personnel because it requires are we anticipating so right now that 545 came from general fund so are we projecting now again using this trend that for next year this year we're also anticipating to have some deficit that will need to pull from general so the short answer is we're hoping not

And while I should note that, as you may recall, when we adopted the 26-27 budget, we've actually moved the vast majority of recreation within the general fund. There was a question, I think, at the time, which is, are we still going to have visibility to the cost recovery level and, conversely, the level of subsidy? And we will have that visibility. But as I mentioned a moment ago, we built the budget with an eye towards ensuring that we felt comfortable with the recreation program budget.

Great. Thank you.

Catherine, anything to add?

Thank you. Not seeing.

I have a really quick one. Yeah, go ahead. In the fire department, I know that you were working on the overtime and you have a new strategy. Is that now in place or have you seen, is this still part of the increase, overtime?

So two things I would say is as we reported, I think, and Sean, correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm wrong, but both at the mid-year and then also when we brought the updated kind of third quarter projections, we were showing significant unfavorable result for personnel. And a big part of that is fire overtime. So in answer to your question, we're still looking at the detail Actual data, but there was definitely improvement and tapering of the trend that would have got us much more than 1.8 million dollar over budget That doesn't mean that there aren't still areas that we're looking at Related to that as part of the budget Council approved the recommendation to add three additional additional sworn firefighter paramedic positions. It's a lower cost way of getting those hours, but we're also looking at managing the overall hours that we're budgeting for. So progress is being made. A little too early to say that we can put a bow on it.

Sounds great. Thank you. Thank you. I'll open up the public comment on this item. Anyone in the chambers like to comment, now is your opportunity. see anyone racing down to comment. Is there anyone online that would like to comment on this item?

I see no hands raised.

Okay, thank you. I will close the public comment and bring it back to council members for additional comments and then accept a motion. There's several motions on this one. Vice Mayor, any additional comments on this item?

No, just a final comment that unencumbered is such a finance geek term. No offense. But I think to Council Member Bush's comment, it's funding carried forward on approved and ongoing work that we've already done i mean and that's just normal course and and i think you know the the headline of 16.5 million is rolling over is not the story right that's that's really not that it's really that we're doing the work i mean it has to move over to this year because we're in a new year And that work is is happening, so I appreciate seeing it it's important to me have visibility to the areas. they're all clearly identified as to where those funds are, and I think that's really important, but it's for me it's it's a course of business in terms of. Rarely does everything happen in that year that it gets budgeted and we've seen that in the school districts, we see it in the city it's just consistent and it's you see it in life you hope it's done it's the House isn't done that you have to move it over to the next year, so thank you appreciate the update.

Thank you, council member. Yeah, you're in school.

Yes, I agree with Vice Mayor Kurtz, and I would just have very quickly that these are like the, it's all financials and numbers, but there are like stories after every number. And I know that rec department is doing such a good job with all the offerings that we have for our community. and really appreciate therefore with fire overtimes and all the strategies that you have in place not just because we are going to save money but also because it's the right thing to do for the health of the people working you know in that department so thank you so much this is a lot of work i appreciate it thank you councilmember bushing another detailed and thorough report thank you

Yes, and I'll just add my gratitude as we continue to have these granular updates, which are really important. I think back to where we were five or ten years ago, and this is important to keep us informed, to keep the community informed. Finance terms notwithstanding, but the underlying approaches and policies that ultimately get tied to it, and we appreciate especially the conversation around recreation fund and how that sound the general fund and if there were to be any additional conversations that counts would have it at the policy level and we would figure it out from the budget level at that point so let's start on some motions Councilman Bush you want to start with the first one I'll take the first one I move that we accept the report presenting preliminary fiscal year 2025-26 unaudited financial results for the fiscal year ended June 30th 2026 second Moved and seconded. Roll call, please. Council Member Bushy.

Aye. Vice Mayor Kurtz. Aye.

Council Member Idan-Scalotti.

Aye.

Mayor Kate.

Aye. That motion carries 4-0. Go ahead.

Adopt the resolution authorizing amendments to the fiscal year 25-26 budget for the purpose of confirming unauthorized appropriations and transfers.

Second. Moved and seconded. Roll call, please.

Council member Bushey. Aye. Vice Mayor Kurtz. Aye. Council Member Yadine Scalati.

Aye.

Mayor Kate.

Aye. That motion carries 4-0.

Council Member Riker, go ahead. And I move to adopt the resolution authorizing amendments to the fiscal year 2026-27 budget to reflect carryover of unencumbered fiscal year 2025-26 appropriations for specific purposes totaling $16,477,797. Second.

Moved and seconded. Roll call, please.

Council Member Bushy. Aye. Vice Mayor Kurtz. Aye. Council Member Yadanz-Gallati. Aye. Mayor Kate.

Aye. That motion carries 4-0. Thank you all for an excellent meeting. It is adjourned.