City Council Meeting 4/4/2022 at 7PM

Summary

Highlights

• The meeting opened by acknowledging the traditional lands of the Coastal Miwok people and recognizing Ramadan 🌙.
• In-person meetings will resume, with hybrid options for wider participation 🎥.
• Public comments included diverse community issues, from housing to civil rights 🚨.
• The council reviewed housing needs and embraced a comprehensive strategy for affordable housing development 🏘️.
• Exciting updates on housing projects like Vivilon were shared, highlighting ongoing community development 🏗️.

Key Takeaways

• The City Council meeting celebrated its final virtual session before transitioning back to in-person and hybrid formats 🎉.
• Multiple proclamations were honored, including Celebrate Diversity Month and National Library Week 📚.
• Public engagement and participation were highlighted, with community members expressing concerns about local issues 🗣️.
• There was a strong focus on housing needs, emphasizing the importance of fair and equitable housing opportunities 🏠.
• The meeting reiterated the city's commitment to supporting diverse and inclusive community values 🌍.

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 02:00: Introduction and Roll Call The chapter titled 'Introduction and Roll Call' is expected to include an introduction to the main themes and topics that will be covered in the subsequent sections. It is also likely to include a list of participants or key characters who are present, along with their roles or importance to the narrative. This initial overview sets the stage for the unfolding of the content, providing the necessary background to engage the reader or audience effectively.
• 02:00 - 10:00: Welcome and Recognitions The chapter titled 'Welcome and Recognitions' involves the opening of a regular meeting where attendees are welcomed.
• 10:00 - 20:00: Public Comment and City Manager's Report The chapter details the proceedings of a city council meeting that took place on a Monday in April. The focus is on the public comments and the City Manager's report. The transcript highlights various issues addressed during the meeting, including discussions on local policies, budget allocations, community concerns, and future city projects. The chapter provides insights into the city's governance and administrative processes through the lens of public engagement and managerial updates.
• 20:00 - 30:00: Council Member Reports This chapter includes the council members' reports given on April 4th, 2022. Details of the discussions, decisions, and actions taken by each council member during this meeting are highlighted.
• 30:00 - 50:00: Consent Calendar and Proclamations The chapter provides an overview of the procedural elements surrounding the consent calendar and proclamations in a municipal setting. It begins with a request for the city clerk to call for specific actions or items, indicating a formal process in place in city meetings. This would typically involve a streamlined process for handling routine legislative matters that do not require discussion, allowing for expedited approvals. Proclamations are likely discussed as a means for the municipal government to formally recognize individuals, events, or causes through official declarations. This process emphasizes efficiency and formal recognition within city operations.
• 50:00 - 65:00: Parademic Services Special Tax The chapter titled 'Parademic Services Special Tax' discusses the rules and regulations related to the implementation and administration of a special tax dedicated to funding parademic services.
• 65:00 - 93:00: Housing Element Update The chapter titled 'Housing Element Update' begins with Vice Mayor Kurtz addressing the house members.
• 93:00 - 97:30: Closing Remarks and Adjournment The chapter 'Closing Remarks and Adjournment' likely focuses on concluding thoughts and final activities of a meeting or session. However, the transcript provided is limited to the single word 'bushby,' making it difficult to derive a detailed summary. The chapter might include a summary of key points discussed, acknowledgments, and a formal closing statement by the chair or speaker, followed by the adjournment of the meeting.

City Council Meeting 4/4/2022 at 7PM Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30
• 00:30 - 01:00 welcome everyone to the regular meeting
• 01:00 - 01:30 of the city council for monday april
• 01:30 - 02:00 april 4th 2022
• 02:00 - 02:30 i'll request that the city clerk calls
• 02:30 - 03:00 the rule
• 03:00 - 03:30 vice mayor kurtz here house member
• 03:30 - 04:00 bushby
• 04:00 - 04:30 here council member hill
• 04:30 - 05:00 here councilmember you get unscalable
• 05:00 - 05:30 here
• 05:30 - 06:00 here all of us are
• 06:00 - 06:30 attending tonight so welcome if this is
• 06:30 - 07:00 your first city council meeting that
• 07:00 - 07:30 you've attended in the last two years you'll see that it is virtual and i'll speak to that more in a moment um i do
• 07:30 - 08:00 want to recognize that present day summer fell it's located in the traditional lands of the coastal minwa people and we recognize this history as well as those who still reside here and if again if you're new you see on in addition to the council you see on your screen uh the staff and we just thank you again every every meeting and hopefully in between the meetings for all the incredible work you've done to keep our city running during these past two years as well as the days to come it has been new challenges and you've met
• 08:00 - 08:30 them all so thank you and i am delighted keep underscoring after two years our next city council person city council meeting i'm already saying it will be in person at city hall and we look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in the chambers they will be in a hybrid format format so people can still call in and participate and a very very special thank you to the city clerk the deputy city clerk and all the staff in the i.t department who worked behind the scenes from day one to support the
• 08:30 - 09:00 virtual meetings for the past two years they wrote the playbook as they were as it was unfolding and it will be fantastic to be in the same room again so in addition to celebrating our last virtual meeting we want to recognize that ramadan started two days ago and we wish those happy ramadan to folks who are celebrating this holiday we have three special proclamations on tonight's agenda and i look forward to sharing those as well with our community you know as we go about our city
• 09:00 - 09:30 business tonight and enjoy the exercising of our fundamental freedom of living in our democracy we continue to recognize the direct and indirect impacts of the russian government's attack on ukraine somerfell continues to stand in solidarity with ukrainian people as they fight to keep their democracy so with that thank you for tuning in we're glad you are here and i'll invite the city clerk to address how public comment works for the evening thank you
• 09:30 - 10:00 thank you mayor kate at this time i'd like to ask staff to turn their cameras off thank you this meeting is being recorded and stream live to youtube and viewers can provide comments by telephone by calling 669-900-9128 and use the meeting id 817-369 [Music] pound or they could comment and watch directly through zoom using the link on the agenda if you're commenting over the telephone please press star 9 when mayor kate
• 10:00 - 10:30 opens the public comment period and once you've heard a notification that the host is inviting you to speak please press star six to unmute yourself if you're commenting through zoom please use the raise hand button to let us know that you would like to speak and wait until you've been unmuted if you experience any technical difficulties please email me at city.clerk at cityofsantafel.org thank you thank you madam city clerk we start our evening meetings with open time for public expression this is an opportunity
• 10:30 - 11:00 for the public to comment on any topics not on tonight's agenda starting right out in the top with our exercising our democracy rights so with that is there anyone that would like to speak with us this evening thank you and just a quick reminder each speaker will have two minutes to provide public comment and you will be muted once time has elapsed and i do see hand raised [Music] hello
• 11:00 - 11:30 hi go ahead kate and council members and lindsey my name is salamalaks and i am san rafael's commissioner to the commission on aging and i wanted to announce our thursday meeting the topics that are going to be held for april 7th from 10 a.m to 11 and we follow it with our business meeting following the um educational offering and so the offerings this thursday will be voters choice act in marin county
• 11:30 - 12:00 and housing element housing programs and policies alternative housing options for older adults the speakers will be linda robert marin county register of voters julian zager senior planner marin community development department and john mcleod mcloudly hope i said that right mayor of the city of no valley people attending will be able to learn and understand the new voters choice act
• 12:00 - 12:30 in marin county and how that will affect the upcoming election i'm looking forward to that uh learn about goals of the housing element discover how accessible dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units and home match program offer alternative housing options for older adults and understand the challenges of meeting the state mandated housing element requirement and that's it and i have 36 seconds left thank you thank you so much thank you
• 12:30 - 13:00 i can't wait till next month thank you and thank you for representing san rafael and the commission on aging thank you so much thank you thanks can you hear me hello yes yes yes yes this is eva croissant and i wanted to call in um i noticed uh that a a tro a suit was filed against the city of san rafael
• 13:00 - 13:30 um last week um regarding the dismal conditions at the police run internment camp under the 101 um i have to tell you i think the suit went really easy on you guys um even before you opened that awful sight on that cruel and inhumane sight um i had written to you multiple times about problems with lynn murphy and her lack of qualifications and
• 13:30 - 14:00 what had gone on um with various employees um of the city of stanford including andrew henning and a lot of that is encapsulated in a june 9 2021 pacific sun article um but i you know it got some media play kcbs i think it was on channel seven it was in the marine ij and i just wanted to point out that
• 14:00 - 14:30 you know there's a larger federal civil rights complaint against the city of san rafael um and i i want to give a lot of props to the person who brought the suit forward he's he's very brave to do this he's already being retaliated against um by by your staff and your contractors it's totally unacceptable um but i do want to point out that there is a much larger federal civil rights complaint and my correspondence to and from the city is available for
• 14:30 - 15:00 for anyone who does need to file suit against the city and i think everyone should um and you know i've been saying for the entire time you were going to be sued and in fact you are being sued so i wish i see no other hands raised but i'll give everyone a few seconds
• 15:00 - 15:30 i see no further public comment thank you and i do want to reiterate my opening comments that we are grateful to have the staff we have across the board and support the work that they do in our community so with that we will move on to the city manager's report and we have the assistant city manager joining us today there she is hello hi mary kay assistant city manager lillabitch that is a mouthful but i like it go ahead thanks so much nice to see you mayor and council members happy to be here tonight
• 15:30 - 16:00 to share a few uh upcoming events with you as jim's on a well-deserved vacation and break with his family first thing i wanted to mention is that wildfire season is always kind of with us but it's really gearing up and we've got some free curbside shipper services to help residents remove fire hazardous vegetation so we've got on on the city of sarafel fire department's website the neighborhoods the specific neighborhoods in weeks that that service is coming
• 16:00 - 16:30 available to you they start in late may and go through october so i'm sure we'll provide more reminders as we get closer but just as folks are preparing for what they're doing this spring there's some upfront work to do to get ready for that so i'm gonna i'm gonna include a couple of websites here for for folks um city of seraphel.org forward slash juniper dash bamboo dash chipping dash program and that's where you can get the specific neighborhoods when that there's two different weeks um
• 16:30 - 17:00 spring and fall that those services will be available one really important point is that you've got to register in advance there's a different website for that because marine wildfire prevention authority is it in collaboration with us so if you go to www.chipperday.com forward slash marin that's where you can actually register you put in your address and you're all kind of geared up and then all you have to do is put your vegetation curbside and the cruise will come pick it up and haul it away so just wanted to share
• 17:00 - 17:30 that information we also have defensible space and home hardening grants that are still available that's for any city of san rafael resident we can do things like juniper removal or replacing vents or adding gutter guards the grants range from 100 to two thousand dollars each so um you can get more information at srfd.org forward slash grants and then we've got four district community conversations coming up in april that are really worth mentioning
• 17:30 - 18:00 so i'm gonna go through the dates and locations for everyone we've got council member hill in district 2 coming up on the 21st of april from 5 30 to 6 30 at the center field community center we'll have lots of space for folks to still um physical distance there at that location um council member micah youransgelati is going to have a earth day cleanup um on saturday april 23rd for district one from 10 am to 1 30 pm which is going to start at pickleweed
• 18:00 - 18:30 park and at the alboro community center and then there'll be a lunch and community conversation at the community center after the cleanup vice mayor rachel kurtz in district 4 is having an event on sunday afternoon april 24th from four to six at the park in tara linda and uh council member mary beth bushy in district three will have an event on wednesday evening april 27th from 5 30 to 6 30 at peacock gap park so please um come to those and share those uh with your neighbors um and um
• 18:30 - 19:00 we're with the first round of these went really really well we had really great conversations and folks showed up so um just uh make sure to share that with your neighbors um the other thing that just as a reminder is we are in a park and recreation master plan process and there's a survey on the city website that's available both in english and in spanish at cityofsanrafel.org forward slash parks dash and dash recreation dash master
• 19:00 - 19:30 dash plan so please take a few minutes it's not a very long survey but it's a really important information for us to gather as we're developing our long-term planning and park and recreation and then lastly mayor kate mentioned that our next meeting is going to be our first in-person meeting but just as a reminder it will also be hybrid so you can choose whether to participate in person or over zoom and there will be cupcakes to celebrate our first in-person gathering together uh april 18th at 7 o'clock so thanks very much that's all
• 19:30 - 20:00 thank you so much and if people didn't get those full urls at addresses they can always just go to the cityofsammerfeld.org website and put it in the search bar if it doesn't come up you can always email any of us and we will get you in the right direction but hopefully it'll come up through the search bar thank you so much i will invite the city clerk to see if there's any public comment on the assistant city manager's report thank you to comment on zoom please use the raised hand feature and if
• 20:00 - 20:30 commenting by phone please press star nine once you've heard a notification that the host is inviting you to speak please press star six to unmute yourself and each speaker will have two minutes to provide public comment and will be muted once time has elapsed thanks i just wanted to point out that something the city manager didn't mention is that um the city appears to be out of compliance with new legislation um ab362 which
• 20:30 - 21:00 mandates that all shelters and even navigation centers which is what your quote ssa unquote falls under um they need to meet some basic residential habitability standards um so not having bathrooms not having hot and cold running water not having any refrigeration for food or for medicine that needs to be kept at a stable temperature no showers i understand that there's a
• 21:00 - 21:30 shower truck that's supposed to come once a week imagine getting a shower only once a week apparently according to marin county legal council you were trying to skirt around this by claiming that your quote ssa is an encampment i want to point out that that doesn't make a whole lot of sense because you destroyed an organically formed encampment literally across the street from the
• 21:30 - 22:00 current ssa in order to establish this new shiny better internment camp that still managed not to have any flush toilets so it's it's amazing to me that that this is going on in the year 2022 but i do want to point out that uh the question of of whether you're in compliance of ab362 hasn't been addressed it's now being addressed by county legal counsel
• 22:00 - 22:30 and i haven't been able to get a proper answer from the city attorney and i think that should be of concern to residents of san rafael and and people need to go and take a look at what's happening there and how people are being abused thank you i see no other hands raised i'll give everyone a couple seconds i see no further public comment
• 22:30 - 23:00 thank you madam city clerk and if we can ask the uh public to identify themselves prior to comment that would be great i know it's optional but it is has been something we do um okay next agenda item councilmember report i know you all have been busy i will start with the vice mayor wait wait yeah unmute the movie there you go last time we have to say that to each other so um i know a couple of you were able to make it through the jcrc which is jewish community relationship um council here i
• 23:00 - 23:30 am event um it was on uh recognizing a forum on anti-semitism and it was very very well attended appreciate council member hill and mayor kate being there mayor keith speaking um we had a lot of good support we also had representation from uh captain leon um and others from the police department so thank you all for being there um our mccmc homeless committee has been meeting we have a plan forward with
• 23:30 - 24:00 funding for support of services um and also we'll have uh the county who's also being gonna join into the community homeless fund so there'll be some additional updates on that soon attended the forecasting the future presentation about our economic situation as we for marin county um and sort of the opportunities and the challenges that we're all facing and i'd also like to um and let everyone
• 24:00 - 24:30 know about the tara linda wellness center was launched we had a grand opening around that and again captain leon and uh lynne murphy attended along with blue and so thank you for pending that and it's really important for the students in uh both san rafael high and tara linda high now have a wellness center uh to support the students and it's getting a lot of very very good positive feedback that's about it thank you
• 24:30 - 25:00 councilmember hill thank you mayor um yes i did attend the event that the vice mayor just referenced i also attended on let's make sure i get my dates right thursday march 24th the marin county council mayors and council members ad hoc water policy committee with council member bushy we continue to coordinate with other council members from municipalities across marin county to examine how policies funding and other mechanisms can improve
• 25:00 - 25:30 our collective position with respect to water availability hope to say more as we move from generating ideas into uh specific recommendations in action and uh last friday um uh actually not last friday but the previous friday march 25th conducted interviews of finalists to assist the city in conducting our first equity audit i would characterize it as a robust round of questions and answers and the city is
• 25:30 - 26:00 conducting further review before making final selection and moving forward with an official award uh but i found that experience really amazing and looking forward to what's ahead and that's my report thank you councilmember bushy my report is going to comprise one issue which has taken a great deal of time and that is the county's proposal to close in the an eastbound lane at point
• 26:00 - 26:30 san pedro road i've been i'm working with our uh team of experts in our department of public works as well as the county representatives on the the presentation by the county last week during a two and a half hour public comment session um elicited a great deal of um firmly held up position on beliefs from my neighbors out here in in in districts three
• 26:30 - 27:00 um in response to that lengthening meeting which our representatives attended i am pleased to report that the ace team at our dpw on bill ravat and lauren were able to come up with not one not two but three alternatives to address the requirements that have been imposed on the county by the bay conservation and development commission i had to look that one up bcdc meet their requirements for a bike lane
• 27:00 - 27:30 in front of the park but not require closing a lane of traffic just to review those parameters three different alternatives proposed that do not require closing a lane at point san pedro road we have presented these alternatives to the county and they are reviewing them it is our hope that the county will select one of them one of these options that again do not require closing the
• 27:30 - 28:00 lane and adopt that as their proposal going forward um the materials have been presented to the county and we await their decision that's my report thank you councilmember bushy there's been a lot of discussion both in the media and i know on next door so thank you for being a part of that council member your friends gulati yes good evening um so i um one of the
• 28:00 - 28:30 meetings that i attended um in last week march 23rd it was the um it was with both of the canal and dominican college and it was basically to analyze the the qualitative data from that that they collected surveying a lot of residents in the canal around lighting and i was actually very impressed the city was very well represented
• 28:30 - 29:00 our we had the police there public works um our deputy um christine uh ali sorry i'm i'm going to kill it so i'm not going to say but we were very well represented and um and what it came out it was that um we were asking about lighting or the study was asking about lighting but there were a lot of other needs that surface from that um so i'm very excited that they will be
• 29:00 - 29:30 presenting uh in may i get i guess at one of the first uh meetings in may and i really look forward to that and continuing um our work together so and again huge thank you to both hazel canal dominican university and also canada alliance for making this possible i think it's a great data that we are collecting and it was like an over four hour meeting so the dedication of the volunteers um is amazing so so really looking forward to continuing working together and then i attended the
• 29:30 - 30:00 i'm co-chairing the marine county of council members and mayors council for climate action committee and that was our first meeting where we are trying to see what other cities and towns are doing around climate change and how we can work together uh to establish some uh policy funding uh to really make a make an impact so that's um and just to finalize mentioning that i really look forward to seeing a lot of people on
• 30:00 - 30:30 april 23rd at our uh cleanup day so uh thank you so much thank you micah and i have a few that all share i wanted to build on what vice mayor kurtz was mentioning about the here i am communities united against anti-semitism was at the jcc and uh lieutenant todd behringer was there as well as captain roy leon so i just wanted to be sure to mention that we had a great turnout and i was honored to speak um after but with congressman huffman and assembly
• 30:30 - 31:00 member mark levine were there as well um my others as usual are on transit so marin transit we had a great meeting this morning and we talked about the yellow school bus program and the funding formula is having to do with that this is part of the congestion management that we have in marin county locally for us in san rafael both san rafael city schools and miller creek take advantage of the yellow bus program and we don't have enough time here but it's very it's very different every school district handles it differently
• 31:00 - 31:30 either internally or with marine transit and those two work with marine transit it's a three-year funding cycle and we are awaiting the final dollar amount from transport transportation authority of marin otherwise known as tam as they're finalizing the numbers officially from marin transit but in general the entire yellow bus school program for the marin county is around seven hundred thousand dollars so it's very much a big investment uh because it is both needed from a congestion and getting the kids to school so talked
• 31:30 - 32:00 about that at marin transit this morning uh two weeks ago at tam transportation authority moran we had a meeting where we talked about the two measures that fund uh quite a bit of projects locally and that's measure a a a the half cent sales tax as well as measure b the 10 vehicle fee revenue and we're looking both of the projections that are going to be coming given just the state of affairs uh everything from how the pandemics affected that and then
• 32:00 - 32:30 how does that impact the budget going forward um you can watch that meeting online by going to the tam website and click through and hear our discussion and then finally it hasn't happened yet but i but keeping in the transit theme smart the sonoma marin area rapid transit i am a representative on there if you happen to read the ij our new general manager eddie cummins had a recent editorial talking about the listening sessions that smart will be doing if you want to learn more go to the smart website sonomaran area rapid transit and you can
• 32:30 - 33:00 learn how to participate so really excited the general manager is reaching out to the community and getting input so with that again thank you to my colleagues and for what you have done as well as for your district community conversations that are upcoming that city manager assistant city manager lilovitch referred to so thank you for that and we will ask the city clerk to join us to see if there's any comments on the reports just given by the council members to comment on zoom please use the raised
• 33:00 - 33:30 hand feature and if commenting by phone please press star nine each speaker will have two minutes to provide public comments and they'll be muted once time has elapsed [Music] oh hi my name is ken king i'm want to address the yellow bus situation and that is this is for public schools only and if it is for public schools only
• 33:30 - 34:00 maybe it would be smart to try and integrate it with private schools as well to cut to have greater use of the buses in general but also to cut down on traffic and also maybe to increase revenue for the the overall cost of the buses and i don't know if that's been looked at at all but it's a i think an area that's worth investigating thank you ken i'll pass that along to marin transit staff
• 34:00 - 34:30 i see no other hands raised oh we do right here [Music] thank you logs uh point of clarification was the the budget 700 000 annually or for the three-year contract because you mentioned three year cycle so clarification please okay and usually yeah it is 700 000 uh annually so um
• 34:30 - 35:00 best is to go to the marine transit website and get all of the incredible presentation that they gave us so you can have the exact numbers i was definitely rounding i see no other hand raised thank you thank you we will close the public comment on the council member report and move on to our
• 35:00 - 35:30 next item the consent calendar my colleagues like to hold any items from the consent calendar for comment okay if not i will open the public comment on the items on our consent calendar which is a through f once again to comment on zoom please use the raise hand feature and of commenting by phone please press star nine [Music] hi there
• 35:30 - 36:00 this is lori schifrin um i have an issue with the southern height bridge being completed um there were four enormous eucalyptus trees at the southern part of that bridge one of them fell and started a fire and had a neighbor not seeing that that could have been a disaster here um so the remaining three we were told were going to be removed when they started when they actually finished the bridge that never happened they are much smaller than they used to be they'd cut down a ton of them
• 36:00 - 36:30 you know in height um but the three stumps are still there and i just went to look at them about two hours ago two of them you can't even see your trees they have that much overgrowth on them already one of them you can definitely tell was the eucalyptus tree um what happened actually i don't care what happened they need to go away i mean that's not fair to all the people here that were told that those trees would go away they're a fire hazard so i wanted to bring that to somebody's attention because this is not complete in a lot of our eyes for that particular reason the bridge itself is great
• 36:30 - 37:00 thank you thank you and i know that chief white is listening in so they'll make note of that because i think that falls into the wildfire prevention category and the city's doing a lot around that um the actual item f is around the bridge itself and i did appreciate that the bridge is great that was your last sentence and this really has to do with the actual construction of the bridge is the item i see no other hands raised i'll give
• 37:00 - 37:30 everyone a couple seconds i see no public comment thank you i will close the public comment and bring it back uh request a motion in a second on this item is there a motion i'll make a motion to approve the consent okay moved and seconded uh roll call please city clerk councilmember bushy aye councilmember hill aye vice mayor kurtz aye council member yaden scallotti aye mayor
• 37:30 - 38:00 kate hi that motion carries 5-0 thank you so i had alluded to proclamations in my opening comments and so we have the first of three of them again another reason why we're eating cupcakes we're gonna have so many cupcakes because when we do this in the chambers we often celebrate uh with cupcakes so the first one and i'm not sure who from staff will be receiving the comments but i can go ahead and start it's on supporting celebrate diversity month
• 38:00 - 38:30 so i will just start and i know okay there she is yes administration services director at tia haid thank you for joining us so i'll go ahead and read this it's entitled celebrate diversity month in april so whereas in 2004 diversity educators created a proclamation to declare april celebrate diversity month in celebration of the many backgrounds experiences and identities that enrich our world whereas this month april 2022 encompasses major celebrations and
• 38:30 - 39:00 commemorations worldwide for many different groups which include ramadan vaisakhi easter ridvan mahavir janti and the lgbtq plus day of silence and whereas the city of san rafael library and recreation department provides resources and programming specifically to educate the community on important topics such as anti-racism equity and diversity and the city of somerville takes great pleasure in recognizing celebrate
• 39:00 - 39:30 diversity month and urges all residents of summerfell to join in us in celebrating the ways that recognizes all of our differences and i would say recognizes and celebrates as well as the diverse contributions that makes us stronger in a more compassionate community now therefore ik colin mayor of san rafael on behalf of the city and my colleagues proclaimed the month of april as celeb celebrate diversity month and i will turn it over to director of the ta
• 39:30 - 40:00 thank you mayor kate it's an honor to accept this proclamation i'm proud to be working in an organization that focuses on diversity in the workplace and also in the community the city of san rebel is actively leading diversity and equity initiatives as you heard earlier through the council member reports inclusive of community and staff involvement of which will inform city policies programs and initiatives ahead i look forward to the great work that's going to be accomplished both in the
• 40:00 - 40:30 near future and for many decades beyond thank you thank you so much with that i'll invite the city clerk on to accept any public comment on this proclamation thank you to provide public comment please use the raise hand button or if you're dialing in by phone you can press star 9. [Music] thanks this is ava croissantsi i want to point out just how really surreal
• 40:30 - 41:00 it is listening to one of the many blonde women on san rafael city council and on san fell city staff announced diversity you know recognition of diversity month or whatever it is i mean it's absurd um you're a city that has created and administered an internment camp for a majority black and latino population of unhoused people and no matter how cute your blonde curls
• 41:00 - 41:30 and your straightened hair your blonde hair looks that is a crime it is a a violation of the constitutional rights of all of the people in the in that camp because you set abysmal cruel and inhumane standards you thought you could get away with doing it to a majority black and latino group and in that way you made everyone in the group also suffer
• 41:30 - 42:00 those same conditions which are abysmal there was a death in the camp of a woman in her 60s in december you tried to cover it up you made no announcement you took no responsibility that camp should have been shut down um especially given ab362 at the beginning of the year um and i want to really stress this um this kind of um you know buffoonery of saying that you're for diversity when you're literally abusing
• 42:00 - 42:30 a majority black and latino population and i don't know how i don't know how you get away with it there's a much larger federal civil rights case to be filed out of that camp i've been complaining since it went up and you've ignored every single opportunity to change and improve that camp may i say something just in a response
• 42:30 - 43:00 of the actual topic oh we can't respond to them no you can respond to this okay i'm just i'm very honored to be part of the city i'm a lebanese immigrant came here during the war not speaking english and i've lived in three different cities now sam a few others and the city of san rafael is definitely home i call it my little beirut and i just love walking around and feeling like i'm not the only person here that
• 43:00 - 43:30 isn't the same as everyone else i'm appreciated for it and celebrated for it and it just means so much to me so san rafael is definitely a great community and i'm proud to be a resident thank you thank you nadine and if you're just tuning in uh democracy in action while i don't like personal attacks on my appearance and the way that people look um part of being a public servant is we get to be on the receiving end of what our public says and thinks about us and unless we get direct threats
• 43:30 - 44:00 we just hear it so i think it's unfortunate when comments become personal but it goes with the territory and i'm proud to serve our city um and all the good work that we do all the other every day so with that we'll go on to the next episode we do have one more public comment okay salamalaks i am a person of color and i thank you i thank you for celebrating the diversity month as a proclamation
• 44:00 - 44:30 um when we are looking at diversity and uh equity and inclusion we have to start with small steps this may be to some people a very small step but i see that it is a progressive step and i appreciate it i also appreciate the appreciate the brunettes that are on the panel that includes mr hill and i appreciate the blondes that are here as well um [Music]
• 44:30 - 45:00 i thank you for the efforts that you're putting in although they have not been able to please everyone at least you're making the effort and that's what's important to me thank you thank you salama really appreciate your comments thank you i see no other hands raised i'll give everyone just a couple seconds [Music] i see no further public comment okay so the next proclamation is
• 45:00 - 45:30 supporting national library week as i said april is full of lots of good stuff the actual week is april 3rd through 9th and i'm sure we have there is jill thank you for joining us so i have to say this proclamation has 10 whereas is hi katie nice to see you so i'm gonna not read all the whereases because it gets it takes away from the really good content so i'm going to read just the content part of it but um let me get started so whereas libraries are accessible and
• 45:30 - 46:00 inclusive places that foster a sense of connection and build community and libraries connect people to technology they provide access to broadband internet computers and training that are critical for accessing education and employment opportunities and libraries offer opportunities for everyone to connect with new ideas through access to multimedia content programs and classes in addition to books i love that line it's so much more than just books
• 46:00 - 46:30 today's libraries and their services extend far beyond the four walls of a building and everyone is welcome to use our resources and their resources and in times of crisis libraries and library professionals playing a valuable role in supporting their communities both in person and virtually and this isn't in the proclamation but when the pandemic first hit it was our library staff that stepped up and started calling folks that were over the age of 70 or 80 and just checking in
• 46:30 - 47:00 and they did it on our time so can't think of a better example of them showing up for our community and whereas okay stuck one in there libraries strive to develop and maintain programs and collections that are as diverse as the populations they serve and ensure equity of access for all and libraries have long served as a trusted and treasured institution for all members of the community regardless of race ethnicity creed ability sexual orientation gender identity or
• 47:00 - 47:30 socio-economic status and whereas libraries are cornerstones of our democracy promoting the free exchange of information and ideas for all i kate colin on behalf of my colleagues in the city of san rafael join our library our librarians and our library workers in proclaiming april 2nd through 8th as national library week during this week i encourage all residents to connect with their library if they haven't recently and with that i'll turn it to jill and
• 47:30 - 48:00 katie welcome okay thank you mayor kate and city council um katie and i are here to accept uh tonight's proclamation on behalf of the library and we encourage all residents if they don't already have one to come by sometime this week either in person online to get your library card um i just wanted to talk about what mayor kate was saying about connection because the theme for this year's national library week is connect to your library um and libraries are spaces for
• 48:00 - 48:30 community connection human connection as well as connection to books media resources services and technology mayor kate mentioned that we offer free public computing as wi-fi and we also offer connection to new emerging technologies such as virtual reality 3d printing we have video games and chromebooks for checkout and we hope that you'll visit us at srpubliclibrary.org to learn more about our services and thank you very much
• 48:30 - 49:00 thank you katie do you want to say a few words i think jill said it all we encourage everyone to connect with the library this week um srpubliclibrary.org fantastic well thank you maybe actually katie you can talk just briefly where all the libraries are in summerfell for people that might not know sure we have three locations in your service the downtown library is open seven days a week and four evenings a week now the north
• 49:00 - 49:30 gate library is at the northgate mall and is open wednesday through saturday and the pickleweed pickleweed branch is at the alboro community center in pickleweed park and is open tuesday through saturday thank you i especially like the the north gate pop-up one meeting people where they are so so thank you to jill to katie and to everybody else that makes our libraries function so beautifully every day so thank you with that uh we will invite public
• 49:30 - 50:00 comment on national library week thank you to comments on zoom please use the raised hand feature and if by calling in by phone please press star 9. [Music] hello thank you lindsay this is amy lycover it's an apt moment to pause and appreciate our beautiful carnegie library downtown um that was dedicated in 1909 and on your website the city website
• 50:00 - 50:30 mentions that the building was designed by the reed brothers one of the best known and most well respected architectural firms in san francisco we're very fortunate in the city to have an historic library and as you know somerfield heritage urges the city as they plan forward to always keep that as some kind of a civic building hopefully a library with that i thank you and i congratulate you for this celebration of the libraries
• 50:30 - 51:00 thank you amy i see no other hands raised i'll give everyone a couple seconds i see no public comment thank you i'll close the public comment and bring it to the last proclamation but not the least this is the week of the young child april 2nd through 8th and i see assistant library recreation director catherine kufa naci kelly and gaby are all joining us and jackie wow we have yay full house hi trish
• 51:00 - 51:30 okay so let me go ahead and read this i am going to keep some of the whereas is because it didn't have the ten that the other one had so we'll start out whereas children's cognitive physical social and emotional and language and literacy development are built on a foundation of children's positive interactions with adults peers and their environment whereas quality early childhood education promotes intellectual emotional physical development of children which in turn lays the foundation for their success later in
• 51:30 - 52:00 life whereas young children need developmentally appropriate accessible and available early child care in education settings and whereas high quality childhood education depends on high quality early childhood educators and i see a bunch on the screen who ensure that children supported by families have the early experiences they need for a strong foundation those educators deserve our recognition recognition and gratitude and i'm glad that you are joining us virtually today
• 52:00 - 52:30 and whereas san rafael is a strong safe community which is supportive of families raising caring and capable children and appreciates the many organizations and individuals that support access to high quality child care programs for our young people now i take colin on behalf of the city of san rafael and my colleagues proclaim april 2nd through 8th week of the young child and i will turn it over i'm not sure who's going to speak so maybe assistant
• 52:30 - 53:00 library yes catherine kufa i'll turn it to you yeah thanks so much mayor kate and city council um we're excited to join agencies across the country and recognizing the critical role of early childhood education and the amazing contribution of child care educators to our community at the city of san rafael we have a robust child care program that includes two preschools and six school-age child care centers we have an amazing team of child care
• 53:00 - 53:30 staff a number of which you can see on the screen today and we really appreciate the opportunity to recognize them all for everything that they do for our community and for our san rafael families i know it's it's a huge benefit as someone who just had my first child i'm i can see i can see it in a whole new light how important this is for our community and i look forward to participating it in the in the years to come
• 53:30 - 54:00 thank you so much i don't know if anyone else wants to speak or not in their head or thumbs up from what catherine said um but i'm proud yeah we did the thumbs up proud that sommerfeld continues to offer high quality child care and that education component and i think child care when you hear that term it almost undervalues it because it's education it's just those daily interactions and and it you you all show up for our community and our communities kids every single day so thank you so much um it's a delight to give you this
• 54:00 - 54:30 proclamation and with that i'll invite the public to um share any comments about the week of the young child if you're commenting on zoom please use the raised hand feature and if commenting by phone please press star nine i do see a hand raised thanks it's ava croissant in the interest of continuing education and and and saying things that really should be obvious um i want to point out that
• 54:30 - 55:00 there's a really big distinction between the quote diversity that the san rafael city council is featuring and what equity is actually defined by so diversity becomes this kind of catchphrase this is a little educational thing um that that you know cities throw out when they're doing grossly um you know grossly criminal things to a majority black and latino unhoused population that they're um keeping under
• 55:00 - 55:30 a freeway um where there's an enormous amount of air pollution and noise and no hot and cold running water etc you know you've had a lot of complaints about this but you know instead of actually addressing equity issues which would involve uh you know making sure those people weren't a place that wasn't making them ever sicker what you do is you march a few you know people and i say this as someone who's biracial um but you know
• 55:30 - 56:00 it's very tiresome watching a parade of young and compliant um you know people who you know don't actually represent the people who are stuck in that internment camp and calling it diversity all the while um repeatedly ignoring um what's actually going on in that camp and it's extremely frustrating um watching this and further um to to suggest that pointing out that the san
• 56:00 - 56:30 rafael city council is nearly all blonde um is is not an insult is simply pointing out that there's a very severe racial disparity between the people who have the power in the city of san rafael and the people who are being abused in the city of san rafael so little educational moment for you you're welcome just a reminder accepting public comment on the week of the young child so if anyone wants to comment um i'll finish with the public comment
• 56:30 - 57:00 and trish and then i'll bring it back to you how about that because we do want to celebrate the educators and don't want to detract from the great work that you do do you see a hand raised okay go ahead linda hello this is linda rudy paniko and i'm just calling because i am so proud of all of you there my sister trisha i've seen her work for the city for 40 years with child care and i've spent a lot of
• 57:00 - 57:30 time and i know all of you ladies and you guys do an amazing job and i know parents really appreciate you and i appreciate all you and i just had to call in because i had to do that anyway thank you for all you do i appreciate you bye all right we're glad you called in thank you linda i see no other hands raised i'll give everyone just a moment i see no other public comment okay um trish did you have something you
• 57:30 - 58:00 wanted to share well i didn't know my sister was going to call but i'm very grateful i just wanted to say that my career started with lindsay martin many years ago who was the first one who started the tiny tots program and knew how important early childhood was to this community and because of her i think almost all of us directors who are there have had some life lessons and i consider her my mentor and i just want to say that i'm very proud to work for the city and
• 58:00 - 58:30 um the community is blessed to have all of us there supporting and many of you have had your children actually in our program so um it's not only a great place to work the city of san rafael but the team that i work with i'm super proud and i wouldn't choose anywhere else to be so go early childhood educators thank you trish and before we um close this item i am going to turn to council member bushie i know she has uh been on the council for a long time and has been
• 58:30 - 59:00 a big advocate of child care so fight councilmember bushy you're just oh words thank you always being uncharacteristically restrained and not jumping up no yes i can jump up and say this program is first of all it's unique it's a collaboration between the city and the schools um and it provides a a unique benefit to parents and that the schools let us be on site at at the school so children some young as five can walk out of their classrooms walk down the way
• 59:00 - 59:30 and walk into into child care it is such a peace of mind when my children were that age i'm not going to say how long ago that was um i was working in the city and it it meant the world to me to know that they were on site and and going from one place to the other and i know that that gives parents so much peace of mind on so i think this is just a fantastic collaboration of the schools and uh the and the city and it it means a lot to um our working families um in
• 59:30 - 60:00 san rafael um so thank you so much for everything that you that you do um and keep doing it and thank you mayor for recognizing my enthusiasm i think we all saw that yeah so thank you councilmember bush i appreciate those comments okay so with that um we've had a public comment um so i'm gonna close the agenda item and again thank you all and thank you for uh coming and joining us this evening we really appreciate you so thank you
• 60:00 - 60:30 okay the cupcake portion is over but we still have good stuff coming up we have two agenda items one is the that's the next one is the paramedic tax rate for fiscal year 2022 2022-23 where i have a public hearing on that and i see thomas wong has joined us i will turn it over to you welcome good evening mary kate those are three tough acts to follow great proclamations this evening let me go ahead and share my screen
• 60:30 - 61:00 great yeah we can see all right great thank you mayor kate and good evening mary kate and members of the city council my name is thomas wong and i am the senior management analyst at the fire department i'm joined this evening by chief white who will be available for questions following the presentation this evening we are presenting a public hearing to consider adoption of an
• 61:00 - 61:30 ordinance increasing within the voter approved limit the paramedic services special tax the paramedic services special tax or paramedic tax was first approved by voters in 1979 for residential properties only in 1988 voters approved an extension of the original tax along with a new per-square footage tax on non-residential properties the original ordinance establishes the authority of city council to set the tax rates within the voter approved limits
• 61:30 - 62:00 based on the recommendation by the city manager along with san rafael the paramedic tax is also applied to properties in county service areas 13 19 and the marinwood community service district the serenfall fire department also provides paramedic service to these three service areas the paramedic program is a 24 7 365 emergency medical service or ems provided by the san rafael fire department the program funds paramedics on every
• 62:00 - 62:30 fire engine at all six stations as well as ambulances at four of them station 52 and 57 have dedicated firefighter and paramedics that staff ambulances and station 55 and 56 are crosstalk meaning staff drive the ambulance when called upon all medical calls are responded to by an engine and ambulance the benefit of having a paramedic on every engine as mentioned earlier is that in some cases they can respond to a call faster than the ambulance due to the fact that all six stations have an engine while only
• 62:30 - 63:00 four of our stations have an ambulance by calling both an engine and an ambulance out on every medical call for service response time is reduced and additional personnel are available without delay in the event a patient or patients need additional service or care average response time for ems calls is under seven minutes from the time a caller dials 911 to the time our crews respond and the department currently responds to over 6 800 calls for medical service a year
• 63:00 - 63:30 here is the last three years worth of ems related call volumes of the 6800 calls nearly 5 000 of them had medical merit meaning our personnel at least conducted an evaluation these calls are represented by both the blue and red lines in the graph the blue line denotes transports and the red lines calls that do not require transports as you can see prior to the pandemic called volumes for transports were on the rise while it does not appear to be much from 2018 to 2019 on average there
• 63:30 - 64:00 were 50 more transports a month which was a 15 percent year-over-year increase the coven 19 pandemic and subsequent shelter-in-place order drastically reduced calls for service but since then we have now recovered and call volumes are back to pre-pandemic levels we expect calls to remain at pre-pandemic levels and increase in part due to the increased number of skilled nursing and assisted living facilities in the area the paramedic tax fund funds 60 of the
• 64:00 - 64:30 total expected revenue of 8.6 million dollars the remaining 40 of the revenue comes from third party billing typically insurance and grants from the state and federal government the paramedic tax provides ems services to all residents of santa fe regardless of income and insurance the city does not balance bill residents which means that the city does not send a bill to any resident within the paramedic tax area for any amount owed that is not covered by insurance this is in recognition of the paramedics tax paid by residents and provides a
• 64:30 - 65:00 great community by benefit the paramedic revenue also helps pay for 18 of the 62 full-time equivalent paramedics on staff as well as capital projects vehicles equipment and supplies here are the current and proposed rates by service area the only proposed increase is for residential properties within the city of san rafael the proposed increase is five dollars per property resulting in a new yearly tax rate of 104 per year
• 65:00 - 65:30 all other areas including non-residential properties in san rafael are already taxed at the maximum rate allowable allowable by law and are proposed to remain the same rejected revenue increases of about 114 000 are expected if approved which will result in an average rate increase of 1.2 percent per year since 2012. staff recommends counsel accept the report and pass the audience to print thank you for your time in allowing me the opportunity to present and we're now happy to answer any questions
• 65:30 - 66:00 thank you thomas uh questions vice mayor kurtz any questions no questions uh really appreciate all the the data thomas you sort of actually have a question you sort of alluded to the segment in terms of the calls um that's the calls you're anticipating the calls to continue because we have a number of um aging in place facilities and senior homes and do you have that actual
• 66:00 - 66:30 segment not that we need it now but i mean it would be interesting actually to see how many of those calls support those facilities uh yes vice mayor we can definitely get you that data um after this meeting on on those calls um but yes we do have a lot of frequent calls um at many of our um aging facilities and we'll definitely get to that to you after this meeting great thank you and then last another question um the increase that we're seeing the request right now we haven't
• 66:30 - 67:00 done an increase since it was first proposed is that correct is that there was an increase so from the very beginning from the first time chief yes good good evening mayor caden council members and thomas and uh city cleric lindsay lahren public i believe there was four four increases on average every two years has been an increase and so we've been incrementally approaching the increases up to this point okay all right great so this is just
• 67:00 - 67:30 consistent process that we've been doing makes sense great thank you thank you councilmember bushy i want to talk a little about the incremental approach i'm generally i'm uncomfortable when we have uneven assessments across on our different groups of constituents i understand historically how this came to be and uh that three out of four of
• 67:30 - 68:00 them have have topped out and we've got one the biggest one left that still has some um some some room to move uh move up my question is about the future um how can we put in place a um a plan to synchronize all of these amounts on the at the the taxing levels at the next time that we go out so that we make sure that everyone is paying the same similarly
• 68:00 - 68:30 situated people within the uh residences within the city are assessed the same rate that's a very good question i'm not sure i have the best answer for it right now i understand that there there has been some uh distinct differences in what different uh community service districts were are able to pay um but also understand that the the effort might need to be more of a county-wide effort to ensure that there's parity in a a consistent uh fee set for
• 68:30 - 69:00 multiple agencies not just those including san rafael and uh csd's 13 and 19 or marine wood and so that may be a more comprehensive approach to ensuring that there's alignment across uh different agencies well maybe what we need like a message in the bottle to the future saying uh no when we let's let let's make um uh synchronicity for for one of a better word with um at the other amongst our districts one of our um goals going forward
• 69:00 - 69:30 certainly understandable i agree thank you if i may also comment on this item uh because it's been in the works for quite some time now and we are aware of the disparity unfortunately we have talked to both uh the csas and also marinwood about it and the challenge that we have is it's not within the city of san rafael's control so we do end up subsidizing a little bit of this um you know service but the reason it's not within our control is because each district has to go to
• 69:30 - 70:00 its voters and get this approved and that has not been you know based on surveys and uh word of mouth and things that they've been doing it has not been favored and so what i will say is what really helps us is that the relationship between all of the district towns and cities in the county is very strong and we all provide aid for one another and so in ways that we may be subsidizing this amount there are
• 70:00 - 70:30 other things that are done on our behalf on the city's behalf by marinwood and the csas thank you thank you thank you now that additional information was helpful thank you um councilwoman you're in school lottie yeah so thank you so much um you know i have to tell you that um i when i came to this country and i um you know as an immigrant and i i live in san rafael i was so impressed with the service that the city provides
• 70:30 - 71:00 my father passed away when he was 38 years old from a heart attack and i believe that if he would have been instant raphael maybe that would have happened so i really believe that the service is incredible and we all you know might use it in the future or you know so i i really appreciate this and i i fully support um this tax thank you you thank you for sharing that micah
• 71:00 - 71:30 councilmember hill any questions uh thank you thomas and thank you chief white for being here um i had one question and um for the sake of transparency i was aware of this well before this had come uh before us which is that uh we had conducted a pilot uh called uh it's called direct connect uh and i know it had to be thomas had shared that it had had to be uh halted due to the pandemic um but i was curious one of the i think
• 71:30 - 72:00 hypothesized benefits was to potentially uh cut costs in addition to be able to help people who need uh services but not necessarily uh given a full um say ride to an emergency room um did we get any indications that that it was trending in the right direction as far as being able to help us out operationally with costs and services and i know that
• 72:00 - 72:30 thomas you had shared with me that it is under consideration to be continued again i wanted to see if there were indications that it was moving a direction of benefit oh councilman we're here i'll try to provide some basis for my response and then we'll certainly reach back out and try to get more data to support what i'm about to share right now but upon my rival uh just at the onset of the pandemic the understanding i had about the direct connect pilot program was that it was working fairly well and it looked promising and so while i don't
• 72:30 - 73:00 have the data to support that readily at hand the understanding was things were moving in the right direction and individuals who had specialized needs for example as you stated they may not be transported to an emergency room or to a health maintenance organization but maybe they were connected with other services that were going to provide long-term assistance and help reorient them and provide the actual services they could benefit from instead of the 911 response that was normally accustomed to being utilized and so given that along with the first responder referral program these were
• 73:00 - 73:30 definitely two programs that were connecting individuals with with helpful resources and social services that certainly could make a difference and so given the timing of the pandemic it was very unfortunate that you started to see promise but then suddenly everything halted and i'm really hopeful that things are going to gain momentum again once everything stabilizes as far as infection rates and as far as um staff's ability to get out and provide services once again in the same manner they did before the pandemic started
• 73:30 - 74:00 great thank you yeah i'm i'm prepared to support this i think i'm i'm looking maybe into the future how much uh we can innovate and continue to find ways to um deliver services more efficiently and in some ways create a diversionary mechanisms so i really would love to see this program come back and and see what works and what doesn't about it that's great we do have a couple of ideas for instance for potential partnering with hmos to provide post-op visits and or wellness checks so that
• 74:00 - 74:30 individuals aren't routed back to uh or utilizing the system and or services to go back to a hospital when they could actually be visited by some of our trained staff and then have that information community back communicate it back to a health maintenance organization so there are some some partnership opportunities we'd like to look into a bit more but again the pandemic kind of slowed some of our momentum on those things that we had ideas and and potential interest in and so as we come out of this hopefully uh that we'll we'll get new traction and
• 74:30 - 75:00 hopefully develop some cost recovery and our cost revenue generating opportunities as well great thank you absolutely thank you and i actually don't have any additional questions as always my colleagues had great ones um so i will invite the city clerk to join us to see if there's any public comment on the paramedic paramedic tax rate agenda item thank you if commenting on zoom please use the raised hand feature and if
• 75:00 - 75:30 commenting by phone please press star nine [Music] i see no hands ray oh here's one yeah ava croissant um if you're gonna raise the tax rate for the paramedics i'd like to know why um when uh you had a death at the camp um under the 101 um the police were getting the call to go to the camp uh because apparently the fire department was unable to send
• 75:30 - 76:00 anyone to that scene um and i also understand that there was no aed device um the dispatcher was asking for police if they had an aed device i don't understand how you could keep up to 60 people most of them medically vulnerable in such incredibly unhealthy conditions and not have um at least you know an emt on site 24 7 especially with the money you were given but certainly um at least a first aid
• 76:00 - 76:30 kit i hear routinely um from people within the camp that they they don't have if there is a first aid kit they do not have access to it obviously um you know having emergency medical equipment there um would be kind of a no-brainer um i don't know what role the lack of an aed device um you know a ready aed device on site played in the december 9th uh death
• 76:30 - 77:00 but given how redacted most of the coroner's reports um come back from the county i don't know that we would necessarily know but it it does seem to me that that you should be making sure that any time you're interning or if you want to call it congregating a large group of medically vulnerable people you need to have a little more communication between that internment camp and your fire department slash paramedics because
• 77:00 - 77:30 it's very possible that you that that death did not have to happen thank you i see no other hands raised i'll give everyone a couple seconds i see no further public comment i'll close the public comment and come back to the council for uh any comments before a motion and i'll start with the vice mayor any additional comments or questions uh no additional questions thomas it's
• 77:30 - 78:00 great to see you in your new role thank you for a fantastic report i'm happy to support this increase going forward and support all the work from the fire department and the paramedics that this you know supports um it doesn't support everything so it is a small incremental increase and i think it goes to a very very much needed service so appreciate it thank you thank you councilmember bushy i absolutely agree with all the vice mayor's comments particularly her accommodation of thomas and his in his
• 78:00 - 78:30 new role excellent report thank you thank you councilwoman micah yeah i echo uh the thing that my colleagues are mentioning especially thomas with a great report and as i i would repeat again i feel really really fortunate to be in san rafael with the services that they are provided because this is not the norm so um just mentioning that i'm really i feel really lucky so thank you so much for everything and i'm definitely supporting
• 78:30 - 79:00 this uh tax increase thank you councilmember hale gonna sound like a broken record but i agree with my colleagues yes um especially for thomas's report uh i would again highlight something that he eloquently articulated around the history of the paramedic tax and what it's meant for our community to me this is graduated uh in nature i agree also with council member bush's comments around
• 79:00 - 79:30 uneven uh taxation obviously we got into the situation through a matter of history and uh i don't think we're going to resolve that tonight but i am standing um with uh comments so far and i will be supporting uh the motion when it arrives thank you and thank you to my colleagues uh excellent comment and yes thomas great presentation seeing the calls for service crazy that big dip with the pandemic and then it's just shot right back up and really when you look at the trend if you just forecast it out it's just continuing to go up so i think the
• 79:30 - 80:00 need is absolutely there um and you made that uh very very clear to us and thank you chief white for your openness around connect and other diversionary tactics we're all on the same page we all want the same thing we don't want people having to call 9-1-1 if that's not the right approach if it is the right approach of course we do but if there's another way they can get high quality service we want to continue to explore that so so thank you um i would ask for a motion from the council on this item
• 80:00 - 80:30 i'm happy to make a motion okay you've got a long thing to read in there yeah that's kind of wonderful okay so like a makeup mention past ordinance to print consideration of an ordinance amending the paramedic service special tax rates within the voter approved limit commencing with fiscal year 2022-2023 for improved residential and non-residential properties in the city of san rafael county service area number 13 county service area number 19 and the
• 80:30 - 81:00 marinwood community services district thank you is there a second a second okay moved and seconded uh we'll call please city clerk councilmember bushy hi councilmember hill aye vice mayor kurtz aye councilmember eden scalati aye mayor kate aye that motion carries 5-0 again thank you thomas thank you chief white and for all that you do to serve our community thank you okay the last item on our agenda is the
• 81:00 - 81:30 sam rafael 2023 2031 housing element we've had a housing conversation all the last several meetings so keeping the momentum going i see director judicia has joined us as well as barry miller our project manager i will turn it to you thank you mayor kate and council members um i will have uh barry provide a presentation but before he gets started i wanted to share a few things um the housing element is a an eight-year plan it's focused on
• 81:30 - 82:00 establishing and evaluating community needs and then establishing goals around housing um but i do want to recognize one important thing and that is that we are in a housing crisis and updating our housing element to address the work that we need to do is only part of the puzzle there are many ways that we need to address this housing crisis we need to come at it at different angles and part of the work is going to involve supporting development for new housing and finding ways to streamline the review process part of
• 82:00 - 82:30 that work is going to involve finding funding for affordable housing projects and you know we did that recently with vivilan and homeward bound the work's also going to involve preservation of existing affordable housing and evaluating our zoning ordinance to determine where there's opportunities for improvement and re-evaluating our regulations and really thinking about where those regulations came from and what they do um in terms of um you know segregation and segregating
• 82:30 - 83:00 housing so we need to consider all these changes and how they might um how we the changes might occur to further accommodating fair housing in an equitable way and find housing opportunities um not only for now but for the future for the long term um and then we're going to i just also want to make sure that there's an understanding that we're going to continue to do this work as we also update the housing elements so there are parallel paths that were that are happening right now um and then as we continue to do work
• 83:00 - 83:30 for the on the housing elements we're going to look at opportunities for addressing our arena obligation which by the way arena obligation is only one way is only so we need to accommodate the arena obligation because the state is holding us accountable but we really need to address the arena obligation because there's we're in a housing crisis there is a need there's a housing need um our community needs housing and we need to find a way to address that
• 83:30 - 84:00 um so as barry provides his presentation i hope that i know council mayor and council members that you're aware that we're in this crisis and that we're addressing things at different angles but i want to make sure the community members understand that we are you know the housing element is one piece of the puzzle there's a bunch of other things that are happening in parallel and that we're going to do what we can to address the need for safe affordable housing within our community
• 84:00 - 84:30 i also wanted to mention i mentioned uh vivillon um we today we signed the loan documents that will allow the project to be funded and then the next step for vivillon is to start pulling permits so that's a super exciting uh stuff that we've taken today so i wanted to mention that so with that uh barry i'll go ahead and give you the bike great thank you hey barry before you go so thank you dr juicy so reena just for people um listening is a regional housing aid allocation number and i
• 84:30 - 85:00 think barry you'll probably get deeper into what reena is but just if you haven't heard that acronym um and welcome jacob i would just want to say that too now uh barry go ahead thank you mayor and good evening council members uh barry miller housing element project manager i'm going to share my screen and walk you through a progress report on where we are with the housing element and let me confirm that everyone can see the presentation first slide beautiful yep we can see it thanks so
• 85:00 - 85:30 much great i do want to also before i start point out we were made aware that there was a link in our staff report that wasn't working properly and we have corrected that so i believe it was there was a link to the previous period housing element and a link to the powerpoint presentation at our last working group meeting those are both now corrected in the online version of the staff report so i'm going to walk through um pretty quickly some information about
• 85:30 - 86:00 what the housing element is we've been before the council before and the planning commission a number of times to talk about the housing element but just for the benefit of those who may be less familiar who are watching this this is a mandatory document it's part of our city's general plan and it includes our policies and programs relating to housing the way that san rafael has formatted the document in the past and how we will be formatting it this time is as a policy document which
• 86:00 - 86:30 is relatively short and go straight into the policies and programs and a technical document which is where all of the various data and analyses that are required by the state government code are included it just makes it a little more user friendly when you don't have to dig through the 300 pages of data in order to find the policy that you're looking for this is also the part of the general plan that is the most prescriptive the contents are established by the state government code
• 86:30 - 87:00 the requirements keep growing as our housing crisis becomes more acute the document covers an eight-year planning period and you can see on the bottom of the slide we've been at this for over 40 years now we are now entering what's called the sixth cycle sixth of our eight year cycles we are currently in the fifth cycle which ends january 2023 the next plan will guide housing decisions from january 2023 through january 2031. and
• 87:00 - 87:30 like any other part of the general plan we can amend this document at any time during the planning period as conditions change but right now we are in a mandated update all cities all counties in the bay area are going through a similar process we when we're through with the draft element we'll be submitting it to the state housing and community development department for their review and ultimately for their certification and i want to emphasize that certification of this document is really
• 87:30 - 88:00 critical both for funding eligibility and also for legal protection this is a document that if we don't have a certified housing element we're subject to fines and penalties and the stakes become higher with every round uh with every cycle so uh i'm going to go quickly through the contents of the housing element and then focus on the three boxes where you see check marks um there are five
• 88:00 - 88:30 technical tasks that underpin the housing element first a review of how we're doing on implementing our current plan which was adopted in january 2015. second is an assessment of our housing needs this is based mostly on demographic data from the census but also on anecdotal data and data that we hear from our stakeholders and from our working group and for from folks in the community through surveys and other methods we have an evaluation of our resources and by that we're primarily talking
• 88:30 - 89:00 about sites where housing can be built in our city so where within san rafael can housing be constructed specifically housing that's affordable to low and very low income households and we'll talk more about that later on uh the three tasks that you see with the checks are primarily completed we're moving into the constraints analysis which is where we look at as as director judicia said how does our zoning support our housing goals are there changes that
• 89:00 - 89:30 we need to make to our development regulations to support housing are there factors that are out of our control like the cost of lumber or the high cost of land um and if how do we mitigate those factors if we can to the extent we can things like water and infrastructure there's a new requirement for affirmatively furthering fair housing and i do have a slide later on i'll wait till that comes up before going into what's involved with that but all of the technical analyses that
• 89:30 - 90:00 you see on the screen feed into a new set of goals objectives policies and actions this is essentially our roadmap for the next eight years for how we will be dealing with housing issues so the first of those tasks i mentioned is an evaluation of the current housing element the format that you see here is very similar to the format that we used in general plan 2040. uh we did what amounts to an audit of each element of
• 90:00 - 90:30 the general plan through that process this is really an audit of our housing element looking at each policy each program each goal and then providing a staff level assessment and i want to point out that the way we formatted this was really intended for members of our housing element working group again we'll talk more about them in a subsequent slide but it was to give them an opportunity to write their comments down and write their observations and provide those to
• 90:30 - 91:00 staff so we've assembled their comments and are taking that into consideration as we update the policies and programs uh part of this process is to look at what we have now and update it but also to look at where are the gaps where are there programs that we don't have that we that we need or that we want to add to this document so that's an important part of this okay i have five slides that are going to highlight some of the data in the needs assessment and there's a lot of
• 91:00 - 91:30 data for those who had an opportunity to look at that background report it's about 70 pages of analysis of data much of which is from the new 2020 census and i'm just going to walk through some of the highlights by a couple of categories so first population and you see on the slide that san rafael is growing the city grew by six percent between 2010 and 2020 adding 3 500 people that represents more than a third of the
• 91:30 - 92:00 growth in the county of marin during that time period but interestingly that growth was not a result of more housing being built it was primarily a result of larger households and lower vacancy rates so we saw the average number of persons per household increasing throughout the decade in part due to our housing shortage and the fact that people in some cases were doubling up because of the high housing high cost of housing but also because of demographic changes
• 92:00 - 92:30 in our community that led to larger household sizes you can see the age profile of the city is also changing we saw an increase in the number of school-age children of nearly 2 000 people between 10 between 2010 and 2020. uh not surprisingly the fastest growing age group was 65 to 74. we we saw an increase of more than 2 000 older adults during that 2010 to 2020
• 92:30 - 93:00 time period uh on the other hand the number of young adults in the city 25 to 44 dropped by nearly 1800 people during that time period and again if you look at the housing market you can see that part of that drop part of that decline was due to limited housing options for persons in that demographic particularly the cost of housing for young families for single people who are out of college and looking for a place to live and so forth
• 93:00 - 93:30 we're also becoming a more diverse city the white population in san rafael declined from 70.6 to about 55 percent over that decade uh interestingly the largest growing segments demographically were the multi-racial uh population and persons reporting their race as other and that would include a large uh percentage of the latino population in san rafael and the hispanic population did grow from 30 to 34 during that time period
• 93:30 - 94:00 uh about one in five residents in san rafael speaks english what the census calls less than very well that's a category used by the census that i think the percentage is 19.5 but half of the children in san rafael half of the school-aged children are bilingual and speak more than one language primarily english and spanish so moving on to households about half of
• 94:00 - 94:30 the households in san rebel are homeowners and half are renters the percentage of renters is increasing in the city it was 46 percent 20 years ago 48 10 years ago and we're now at even 50 50 and it literally is almost identical the number of owners and the number of renters based on the new 2020 census uh another interesting fact one in three san rafael households is a single person living alone that's a higher percentage
• 94:30 - 95:00 than most of the other cities in marin county and the bay area uh nearly a third of our households have children under 18 that are living at home and about 14 of all of our owners and 30 of our renters are spending more than half of their incomes on housing we often like to cite the 30 you know how many are spending more than 30 of their income but this is folks who are spending more than 50
• 95:00 - 95:30 percent of their incomes on housing and those numbers are are pretty big and in among latino households 39 are spending more than half of their incomes on their housing costs we also saw an increase in overcrowded households based on the census definition uh from six percent to nearly 11 all of that increase occurred in the rental market there was no increase in fact a slight decrease in overcrowding in owner-occupied units but the increase
• 95:30 - 96:00 in rental units was significant a few highlights on our local economy 35 percent of all of the jobs in marin county are located in san rafael we are a regional job center and interestingly only 27 percent of those jobs are filled by local san rafael residents we have a large number of residents of workers that are commuting in from other places in marin and an even larger percentage that are
• 96:00 - 96:30 commuting in from other counties in the bay area particularly from the north bay uh also from the east bay um and many of the jobs in san rafael don't provide enough income to rent the median price department in the city and you can see here this statistic that a household earning 63 000 a year would need to spend half of their income on rent in order to afford the median price inc the medium price department in the city
• 96:30 - 97:00 we have a higher percentage of lower income households than most of the other cities in marin county and we pointed out in the staff report that the income brackets when you see those income ranges for what is lower income in uh san rafael for that matter in marine county it's 146 000 a year for a household of four so that's a it's skewed by the fact that we are in a very affluent county in an affluent part of the country
• 97:00 - 97:30 uh there there's a large amount of need within the very low income that's really not even captured by some of the data that we see we have four thousand households in san rafael that are earning less than 30 percent of the county median income and are extremely low income looking at special needs in the city i mentioned earlier older adults are the fastest growing age cohort half of the older adult households in san rafael are low or very low income and 11
• 97:30 - 98:00 of all of the owner owner occupied homes in san rafael are persons over 75 who are living alone in their homes there's a large number of homeowners who could potentially benefit from accessory dwelling units from home sharing programs or for more options if they wish to relocate within the community but without there aren't that many options at this point in time about eight percent of the city's
• 98:00 - 98:30 residents have one or more disabilities these are things like hearing or sight impairments or mobility impairments we have more than 500 residents with developmental disabilities about half of those are children 12 of our renter households have five or more persons and the number of unhoused residents between 2015 and 2019 declined at the point in time survey we know that an updated survey took
• 98:30 - 99:00 place in february and are anxiously awaiting the new data for 2022 we expect to see that that number is higher now and we know from the count of people living in their cars that was done a year or so ago that there is an increase in unhoused the unhoused population uh in marin county and san rafael last demographic slide looks at our housing stock we are a primarily single family
• 99:00 - 99:30 community but the percentage of homes that is multifamily is increasing it's now about 44 of all units in the city about 60 percent of our housing stock was built more than 50 years ago that was a a big boom in the 50s and 60s uh when much of the city was developed just under six percent of our housing units are vacant and another interesting factoid 54 of all of the housing units in san rafael are two bedrooms or less
• 99:30 - 100:00 again looking at our large stock of multi-family housing and we saw a 123 percent increase in the price and the cost uh the median value i should say of a home between december 2011 and december 2021 the median in december 2021 was 1 million 370 thousand dollars requiring income of over three hundred thousand dollars to purchase housing in san rafael
• 100:00 - 100:30 median rents also increased not quite at the same rate as the homes uh that are for sale but we did see nearly 50 percent increase over the decade actually more than 50 percent increase between 2010 and 2021. so i'm moving on into the next uh category which is our housing opportunity site analysis mayor kate mentioned the arena is the regional housing needs allocation each city in the bay area is given a
• 100:30 - 101:00 number and that number is the number of housing units that we need to plan for during the next eight year period the arena is not we the cities are not responsible for constructing housing but we are responsible for creating the opportunity for the private sector and the nonprofit sector to build housing in our community and the association of bay area governments goes through a process every eight years where it assigns that number to each city and each county in the
• 101:00 - 101:30 region and you can see that that number is broken down by income category uh our number includes over 1300 units of low and very low income housing and that needs to be accommodated through land that's zoned for multi-family housing so we can't just provide single-family units and say we're meeting our arena we must show that we're also providing for higher density housing since that's where we get our affordability so there are a number of new rules for
• 101:30 - 102:00 housing sites that we uh are needing to take into consideration as we go through this exercise first of all 320 units is actually more like 4 000 units at the end of the day because the state has asked us to plan for roughly a 20 buffer in case some of the sites that we identify become unavailable during the eight year time period this actually is to the benefit of the city because it gives us the flexibility to allow other
• 102:00 - 102:30 types of development on some of those sites if there's a proposal for something that's going to generate jobs or generate revenue on one of our housing sites rather than declining that opportunity we need to maintain some flexibility so having the buffer of additional sites is helpful uh when we show when we include non-vacant sites which in our case most of our sites are non-vacant we need to demonstrate to the state that they're actually viable sites and that this
• 102:30 - 103:00 isn't just the city saying we think housing would be great over there we need to actually show that those sites are sensible and that there's some interest in logic to develop them the state's also asking us to identify sites that are larger than a half an acre and uh less than 10 acres because those that's sort of the sweet spot for where we see affordable housing development happening we have to streamline approvals for projects on sites that we're carrying
• 103:00 - 103:30 over from the last housing element if they include affordable units and we need to identify which sites in our inventory are most suitable for low and very low income so i'm going to walk through what we're calling tiers of different sites we begin with tier one which are sites that have developments that have already been approved so we are able to count toward our arena developments that are approved but not yet built you can see those here we're
• 103:30 - 104:00 14 of the way toward our low and very low and 30 percent of the way toward our moderate and above moderate presuming that these projects that are in what we call the development pipeline actually get built so there are a number of projects already approved and underway that will help us meet some of our obligation for the next eight years uh we're also counting accessory dwelling units toward our arena the state basically says you can project
• 104:00 - 104:30 forward a certain number of adus or accessory dwellings and based on your last three or four years track record you can assume a little bit more success a little bit higher rates of production but uh not a ton more so what i'm saying by that is there are some cities in the bay area who are saying well we don't need to re-zone anything for housing because we can just meet our entire arena with adus
• 104:30 - 105:00 the state isn't really buying that for most cities because they're saying look unless you've been producing an enormous number of adus for the last few years that are affordable uh we're not convinced that you're going to suddenly start producing a lot of adus in the future so we looked at you can see here adu production prior to 2017 when we adopted our new code uh over the last few years we've seen much more robust edu production and we're projecting 25
• 105:00 - 105:30 per year through 2031. and we've actually assigned those to the income categories abag was good enough to do a survey of accessory dwelling unit rents in the bay area and the state is allowing us to use the findings of that survey to allocate our projection of adus to the different income groups so it's mostly moderate income some low income and just a few very low income units that we think we can meet through our adus
• 105:30 - 106:00 the third tier are our 2015 housing sites so the city of san rafael actually did a great job of inventorying more sites than we needed in 2015. our arena was 1007 units but we identified capacity for 2415. so we were well on our way toward our 3220 even in 2015 but we have to go through this list of sites and revisit them to see are they still available and do
• 106:00 - 106:30 they still make sense so looking back on our 2015 sites there were 45 that were listed some of this is a little bit sobering because only four sites that we identified on the last housing element were actually developed with housing uh there are three of those sites that now have projects that are proposed and one is slated to become a hotel 37 of those 45 sites are still vacant and underutilized and i think it's important to point out the flip side of
• 106:30 - 107:00 that is that several of the projects that are now pending uh with developments that are that have been approved recently or that are in the pipeline were not identified as housing opportunity sites housing can go anywhere where resident where the land is zoned for residential uses so we are trying to do a better job of predicting uh where housing can go where housing will be built and why so many of these sites that we identified are still vacant so that's part of this process
• 107:00 - 107:30 so we've gone back and we've looked at our 2015 sites individually we've gone through really the the questions that you see here on the screen should any of the sites that we identified last time be eliminated there are a number of sites that may not make sense anymore and what steps can we take to make them more viable how can we better predict where land will be developed i'll tell you with our housing element working group we've gotten strong encouragement to not drop any sites from our inventory and to
• 107:30 - 108:00 really not back down and continue to encourage housing every place we've identified identified it as long as the site is still available the next year is looking at our downtown precise plan which was adopted last august and that plan included an opportunity sites map that identified land for 2200 units of housing there are some double counting some of these sites are in those previous previously inventoried sites but the
• 108:00 - 108:30 sites that you see here in kind of reddish and orange colors are either pending projects or projects that we thought when we did the downtown precise plan had some potential viability in the long term so we're looking closely at these sites and including them in our inventory as appropriate the downtown plan is a 20-year plan so not all of these sites are realistically going to be available in the next eight years so we're going through a process
• 108:30 - 109:00 of screening them and then there are other commercial and residential sites in the city there are some like north gate mall that are in the pre-application stage and we're looking at other sites that meet certain metrics we have identified certain metrics such as the value of the land relative to the value of the improvements from the assessor the square footage of what's been developed on a piece of property relative to what the zoning would allow
• 109:00 - 109:30 or what the land area is and coming up with quite an extensive list of new potential sites where zone rezoning is not required for most of these there's an opportunity that's there already under our current zoning that we can potentially take advantage of we're also looking at public and institutional land and this is the the final tier of our opportunity sites there are city-owned properties such as municipal parking lots there's property that's
• 109:30 - 110:00 owned by the county of marin there are school district properties land owned by the state and so forth you can see the various entities here we're looking at those properties as potential housing sites what we're moving into now the next phase of the project is looking at constraints and this is really important to the discussion of our sites which is why aren't those sites being developed and are there zoning constraints or are there constraints for particular types of housing that we can mitigate that we
• 110:00 - 110:30 can address through strategic changes to our regulations are there fees or development costs that are in the city's control or unique building code requirements and so forth that we can control so this really is two buckets the first are things we can control the second are things that are a little bit more difficult for us to control we're analyzing both of these so this work is currently underway we're organizing a number of stakeholder meetings to talk through what is holding
• 110:30 - 111:00 development up and so forth affirmatively furthering fair housing is another task that we're gearing up for there will be a report that comes out in may with the findings and this really looks at what steps the city can take to overcome past patterns of inequity and segregation we have a lot of data that shows how san rafael has developed over time and some of the inequities that are inherent in the way we've grown as a city and looking at how we can uh
• 111:00 - 111:30 correct that and reduce barriers for lower income housing and special needs housing some of this is also looking at our engagement processes and how we have more inclusive engagement and how we can change the way we do outreach we address that to some extent in the general plan as well and we do have the new equity diversity and inclusion element and as director judicia mentioned are taking a number of steps in tandem with the housing element to do more outreach and
• 111:30 - 112:00 more meaningful outreach uh the affh requirement also applies to where our housing sites are located so it's really important that we are distributing our housing opportunities around the city we can't cluster them or concentrate them all in one location all in one census tract so we're looking at ways we can distribute our particularly our higher density and more affordable housing units around the city
• 112:00 - 112:30 so i'm going to conclude with just a couple of final slides our schedule for the project uh we completed the initial phase of the project last fall and did our initial community engagement meeting and a couple of initial data collection and analysis tasks we've really been spending most of the spring on our site inventory and constraints analysis but we're going to be quickly moving into policy and program development you will see this document again
• 112:30 - 113:00 probably at the end of june or beginning of july when you get it it will be a working draft it's not going to be the finished product but it's a working draft that we need to submit to the state for their review and comments and they'll give us their comments uh in october and we need to then make revisions and bring it back to the planning commission and to the city council for adoption by january 31st uh 2031 i mentioned the housing element working
• 113:00 - 113:30 group this group was appointed by the city council last august there are 13 members we've had four meetings to date i think we've had some excellent conversations at those meetings and we have three more meetings that will be coming up those are generally on the third thursday of the month from 4 to 6 p.m and they're open to the public on zoom we have other outreach education and engagement measures that are underway there's a project website san
• 113:30 - 114:00 rafaelhousing.org uh we're currently organizing a workshop that's we will announce probably in the next couple of days that'll be the first week of may 2022 that will be a zoom workshop at this point there's a housing survey also at san rafaelhousing.org we are continuing to do outreach to civic groups we usually do a few a week and then we have a youth engagement program through youth and arts we're meeting in small groups to talk about some of the topic areas you've
• 114:00 - 114:30 heard me mention commission and council meetings like this one and a focused program reaching out to um in spanish primarily to non-english speaking residents this is the last slide and i don't mean to end on a downer but it's a cautionary note about what's going on in southern california so just a heads up that southern california is a year ahead of the bay area in their housing element cycle the state uh has basically their due date for their housing elements was december was
• 114:30 - 115:00 october 15 2021. so nearly six months ago all of the cities in southern california and l.a county and the other counties submitted their elements i'm wanting to point to this circle right here which shows you that seven of 197 jurisdictions have been found to be compliant with the new housing element requirements um 180 are are out of compliance so nearly six months in a cycle 180 out of 197 are
• 115:00 - 115:30 actually it's 190 because 10 haven't even submitted anything to the state yet um so just a kind of a cautionary note that the state is holding cities to a much much higher standard this time around in their review so we um you know i i put this out there just to say not to say well we're going to be the exception and nail it and get it right the first time but just to say we need to be prepared for some harsh commentary from the state and some major
• 115:30 - 116:00 revisions to our document as we move toward the end of this process next year so with that i'm happy to answer questions and thank you for having me this evening thank you barry that was fantastic and the staff report that went with it also had a lot of great information and links so i know i have a lot of questions though you kept answering many of them up and down but let me uh let me turn it over to the vice mayor and we'll just go through and each my colleagues will have an opportunity to ask questions so vice
• 116:00 - 116:30 mayor kurtz all right thank you for the report very very helpful um i guess i have a lot of questions and sort of uh oh just wondering how we're really going to get there um can we can you talk a little bit more about the affirmatively furthering fair housing i that's i mean that's just newly been introduced to me i don't know whether i've missed it in the past or now i've been paying more attention um there's a lot when i went in and i dug a little bit more into that
• 116:30 - 117:00 what that is i mean there's a lot of components to that and i'm wondering are we going to be doing their tool they have their check you know the evaluation all sorts of aspects to it or are we only doing the points where you had called out because it really is gets to the heart of what we are addressing based on our data and the the racial equity issues and the discrepancies we have within our community yeah i can take a a shot at this and if if uh jacob or ali want to chime in that
• 117:00 - 117:30 would be great too um so the afh requirement is new it was adopted in 2017 baby 686 and i would say in some respects we're lucky that we weren't the first to have to go through this because there's been a lot of guidance that's been provided by the state that wasn't there when all the southern california cities had to prepare their housing elements so they're playing catch up and one of the reasons that so many of them are out of compliance is the state is finding they didn't do what
• 117:30 - 118:00 what the ch what the checklist or the guidebook says so we are doing a lot of we were doing all of the analysis that's required and that kind of policy screen for all of our policies and programs are we affirmatively furthering fair housing in the way that we're you know the way that we're implementing our policies i do want to say this the county of marin is doing some of this work at the same time that we are and we're piggybacking on some work that they're doing there's a there's a
• 118:00 - 118:30 collaborative that is made up of all of the cities in marin county and we're all working together there are some economies of scale doing this at a larger level so a lot of the mapping for example is for san rafael a lot of that is being done by the county and we're benefiting and using that data so we're we're kind of building on that but yeah you're going to see policies and programs in this housing element that you haven't seen before that are focused on fair housing
• 118:30 - 119:00 great appreciate that and you did already answer the question because i was going to ask about the county and how we're engaging with what because i've been following along a bit on what's happening at the county side and we do have quite a bit of overlap in some of the areas and so especially these key areas um like east san rafael so absolutely i really appreciate that um i think i'll hold my other questions right now i'm feeling they're going to come up so thank you i really appreciate the report
• 119:00 - 119:30 oh wait i actually i'm gonna i'm gonna take that back for a second as we as as we focus on housing and the need in these different areas based on our arena and everything else and the policies how do the data is speaking really loud that we have work to do how do we ensure that we don't look back and further skew our our data numbers like we want to correct where we're at with the data and so and provide the housing correct you know do you understand what
• 119:30 - 120:00 i'm trying to say in terms of we if we did all the housing needs and just focus on the housing i think our data is going to be more skewed and so i think we what we have to look at is not only the the data discrepancies where we are so off on our data as well as the housing i want to see if what what or what do you see as the key factors to manage that funding is the biggest key i mean that's the that's the biggest challenge here is
• 120:00 - 120:30 just the availability of funding whether it's tax credits or state and federal money um but this is really critical to getting some i mean we can do whatever we can but at the end of the day it's what's the funding available for some of this stuff and and uh we're we're creating the opportunity and doing our part to put the zoning more equitable than it has at the end of the day for thing by more funding sources okay great thank you
• 120:30 - 121:00 i wanted to um just add to that uh i think a real powerful tool is to um take action with intent and a good example of that for instance is we know that there is a large representation of folks community members in the city that um uh don't speak uh good english or that are are challenged that have uh cultural
• 121:00 - 121:30 backgrounds uh that they uh that are from south america we wanna make sure that we're marketing our bmr program our affordable housing to people of all throughout the city in all languages that are spoken and that that housing is marketed in a receptive way that's culturally sensitive to folks that live in the city and so that we know that we're not creating any accidental barriers to accessing our
• 121:30 - 122:00 housing programs and that we're able to stand up folks that are living in the city and that folks know that we have programs available to help now i appreciate that it was actually a lesson learned early on in my school board experience that families did not know that they needed to advocate for their child some families did and other families didn't and so it was really important to actually teach how to advocate and so i think when we talk about some of the
• 122:00 - 122:30 housing programs and things that we have available we also have to educate and recognize that that might culturally not be a way that people work with cities the and what our expectation is so i appreciate that comment thank you thank you and if you have additional questions don't worry well if they're not um answered throughout the conversation you can add them at the end uh councilmember bushy hey barry good to see you again um
• 122:30 - 123:00 my question is about your analysis of why sites are still vacant i'm and i'm i'm wondering if as part will this feed into your constraints analysis and will the constraints analysis result in bringing forward recommendations to us as i'm sure you're aware we went through a big introspection on process on our inclusionary housing requirements and
• 123:00 - 123:30 made some significant changes when we looked back and decided it wasn't doing what what we wanted it to do so i'm saying that to encourage you if you're not thinking about bringing forward recommendations to do so so what what are your thoughts along those lines yeah it's a great question and and absolutely the intent of looking at the constraints is to come as to develop recommendations and bring those forward as part of this in fact we're required to do that uh
• 123:30 - 124:00 under state law if we identify a constraint we have to mitigate the constraint so we will we will definitely do that i think um you know one of the things would be uh what effect will the downtown precise plan have on the ability to do development downtown and you know we're still watching and monitoring that and this will be a good chance to report out you know after nine months uh what are we seeing and is it working and if it's not what do we need to do to make sure that it that it is so absolutely
• 124:00 - 124:30 that's that's great but my second topic is not a question but um a comment um having worked with you on on the general plan um and knowing that you are the project manager manager and putting together a housing element i have no fear uh give the statistics from the the state i am absolutely confident that our that our housing element will pass with flying colors so um uh keep up the good work barry thank you
• 124:30 - 125:00 thank you mary beth councilmember hill you mayor kate and thank you barry uh and jacob for being here i'm sorry and uh and ally um it's good to see you i i my question is um actually it's not a question it's it's a request if you could because you've done this before but i think for this um council meeting could you
• 125:00 - 125:30 describe for us the 13 member housing element working group a little bit i know that they represent different personas in our community but i wonder if you could describe a little bit about about them because i my sense is that they were selected so that you could collect potentially contrasting opinions from across the community some of you could describe that a little bit yeah i i mean i i think they were you're correct that they were uh selected to
• 125:30 - 126:00 showcase contrasting opinions but i think the idea that is we're all working toward a common goal uh which is housing so we we actually have not had some of the uh divisive conversations we had at the general plan committee meeting but um there are representatives of different stakeholder groups at the meeting we have a developer of a for-profit developer we have a non-profit developer we have an advocate for unhoused residents we have an
• 126:00 - 126:30 advocate for non-english speaking and immigrant residents we have a fair housing advocate we have a person who specializes in equity diversity and inclusion issues there is there are two representatives from neighborhoods one is a homeowner and one is a tenant we have a planning commissioner on board and then there is an uh environmental uh interest group that's represented and i'm probably missing a few but but it's it was intentionally
• 126:30 - 127:00 selected to be a a diverse group that represents multiple interests that's great thank you and then uh you you mentioned um recommendations and i and i don't want to jump the gun or maybe you can just tell me now's not the time to ask um but perhaps you can uh without maybe tipping hat on what we do exactly can you characterize some of the the knobs and dials we might be able to turn
• 127:00 - 127:30 um with respect to say encouraging development if that's where we want to go i'm not saying we necessarily do that but maybe can you can you talk about maybe some of the things we can do to incentivize maybe just focusing on development for now sure yes um and i think again the downtown precise plan is probably the best example and it's whether we want to replicate some of the things that we've done downtown and other parts of the city such as eliminating the density metric
• 127:30 - 128:00 and instead using floor area ratio or height as the the way we determine what the envelope is that can go on a site or looking at the um the use permit requirements for housing in certain zones or the again the height limits that we're applying in different parts of the city in different zoning districts so i think it's less about changing the designation of a property from one category to another or from one zoning district to another and more
• 128:00 - 128:30 about what are the standards what are the what are the the regulations that apply and are they working can i add a couple of things the so the housing element is going to look at kind of the bigger picture like what are the things that we can look at and there will be opportunity beyond that and even in parallel with that as i mentioned earlier to look at our existing regulations and find opportunities for
• 128:30 - 129:00 accommodating housing development so you know i think the question that you were asking and part of the question was is this too soon and it's not too soon but also there's a lot of there's work to be done before we get to that level of detail thank you and then my third question um i'll try to frame it as a question it might be more of a request actually which is there was a lot of data and
• 129:00 - 129:30 um in my mind i was formulating many stories about the different personas that showed up in our community and um it's probably not something that is mandated in the housing element but i am interested if there's a way that we can frame um an expression of talking about the different personas of people in our community and what is their path into housing um there's clearly challenges with
• 129:30 - 130:00 affordability for certain personas and there's others where people are say living single and single-family homes and uh you know there are probably suggestions of of where people might go in terms of where they are today and where they might be in five or ten years so i think what i'm describing is a journey map uh based on the personas that we're describing in the data i am curious about that in terms of how we can express that um maybe if not in the housing element maybe it's something that we can do to express what our
• 130:00 - 130:30 community members look like today and where they are going to live in the future great thank you thank you i haven't heard barry have you been familiar with you've called a journey map councilmember hill i i was just trying to set the term yeah i think it's it's um it's uh it's a it's a tool that uh is used to really describe um personas people of in our community of certain uh background
• 130:30 - 131:00 dispositions uh and what what their current state is and how we want them to move through our city uh in terms of their their how their their housing condition a lot of times it's used for system design it is the type of the type of users who are using your systems no i understand that so barry has that tool been used do you have other cities and i love the idea and i want to use best practices if there are other cities that are using some similar tool trying to get at what
• 131:00 - 131:30 councilmember hill's trying to capture yeah i i i think it's the closest i can think of to what we're doing and against um you know jacob rowley you can chime in on this too but we're asking folks to tell us their housing story as part of this i mean many of our meetings start off with that message tell us your story and we're kind of compiling what folks are telling us what their stories are so we do have those kind of i may be taking the journey apart too literally but we we are chronicling the housing journeys
• 131:30 - 132:00 of many of our community members through asking that question and getting the response and i think even at one of our working group meetings we we more or less presented that question and got some great feedback from our members from the lens of whoever they happen to be um representing what their what their story was or what the what what their what the concerns were of the group that they were uh representing and so i i i believe we're getting there i don't know if
• 132:00 - 132:30 we're doing literally a journey map but um we'll look into that some more thank you i just wanted to clarify on that thank you uh councilman yurin sculati any questions yeah thank you so much for the report um really appreciate that um so you know i've been thinking about um like councilmember hill um some of the people that we are describing in the statistics and uh you know when when i see like um the the large percentage of uh latinos
• 132:30 - 133:00 that they are all renters and where so many of them spend over 50 of their income in housing and i'm thinking even if we make the presentation of new very low income housing or low-income housing um that they can understand um i i can even imagine how they could actually apply to buy a house honestly
• 133:00 - 133:30 for most of our families so i i know that we are concentrating a lot um in how we can develop uh new housing which i think is extremely important but um i think um there is the you know i feel that we also have to um figure out how to implement the preservation uh measures to protect right now the tenants that they are low income in their housing so it's not just to develop new housing but
• 133:30 - 134:00 how can we um keep our current tenants housed in the market where we are right now so i understand i really appreciate um director gizes um talking about like that there are a lot of different puzzles of a lot of different pieces of the puzzle um but i feel that this is something extremely important when we are talking about um fair housing and especially based on race um so [Music]
• 134:00 - 134:30 i don't know yeah thank you i have a couple follow-up questions um i think on the working group i have the same question as councilmember hill i think the one group you might miss uh first representative of senior adults i know that that's thank you so i know we have someone speaking to that population um so in your presentation you had a slide around carry over sites do we have any carryover sites i didn't see those if they were presented if they were buried in staff report i missed it so those are
• 134:30 - 135:00 the ones that have streamlined approvals do we have any of those we do we have uh actually quite a large number of those so we will be looking at objective design standards that will apply to those sites uh as as we move this forward so in other words the way this works is that if a project comes in uh and 20 of the units in that project are affordable we basically have to provide for the streamlined approval a streamlined
• 135:00 - 135:30 approval process for those projects which which i believe we're doing anyway by by adopting the objective design standards and how he can add to that if i'm mistaken yes so we do have we have the sp 35 that was adopted by the state mandated by the state a number of years ago we have those objective standards that we've been working on and actively working on more recently and so that should be coming forward
• 135:30 - 136:00 sometime in the next few months and we would be applying those standards to some of these housing sites that are existing and then translating over to pyrite but as barry is looking at evaluating these sites we're also looking at whether there's these you know all of these sites seem like realistic sites and um you know part of the evaluation is why weren't they developed and maybe this is a the site that we really want and
• 136:00 - 136:30 you know adding two sites adding to the list of sites through um sites that we feel may be more realistic and really furthers fair housing um so that's something that we're still in the process of doing but aren't we required to have those carryover sites if they meet the objective design standards they can the developer can then go forward if they have the 20 of um affordable housing requirement correct
• 136:30 - 137:00 correct so um do you have it just when you said it's many units i'm just curious is it 50 100 just contextually not gonna well i yeah the way i would frame it is uh we had that slide earlier that showed there were 45 sites in the last housing element and only um eight were developed so it's the other thirty seven yeah the third seven or else yeah carry over okay that makes sense and does the objectives um the objective standards does that go through uh planning commission as well as the council or just the planning commission
• 137:00 - 137:30 it will go through the planning commission and city council it would be an adopted resolution by the city council so so there must be a time frame on that as well because these are all going to come together at the same time right because we're gonna yeah okay um thank you that's fascinating uh they like my colleagues that last slide the southern california slide i i share mary beth's um uh uh belief that we're gonna be in the very small seven group of that have it um not kicked back to them
• 137:30 - 138:00 are you able to reach out to folks in city in southern california figure out where they're falling short or have do you already know it's around them furthering fair housing like to me i'm like okay there's a great opportunity opportunity to learn here from them when we're still in the making phase so can you just speak to that how we're able to learn from our southern neighbors yes i can and uh and jacob and i compare the latest letters from hcd we read them like the day fresh off the press here's the latest one let's see what they you
• 138:00 - 138:30 know what what they came up with this time um it's a lot of the same uh criticism which is related to not enough affh your sites aren't realistic and you need to do more outreach particularly to lower income households and non-english speaking residents that's that's what i've seen um i mean many of these communities and this is true in many of the other marin county cities as well they they're not
• 138:30 - 139:00 used to doing this kind of stuff they've been able to kind of you know do a housing element and just get it approved with low low arena numbers some of these cities are looking at and as we are thousands and thousands of units and it's very hard for them to make the case to the state that they're realistic sites that they've put up put out there and that they have uh you know done what they need to do to make the housing happen that okay that's helpful and actually
• 139:00 - 139:30 just my next question so when is it your sense that when the state's reviewing it they're looking at all the jurisdictions in marin are we going to be i want to say dragged down are we going to be tainted that's right are we going to be impacted by our neighbors and and some of the challenges that they're having or is the state really just doing i'm only looking at san rafael i'm only looking at jurisdiction x or the county like they're looking at us really separate or is there an entity type of thing like oh wow county marine isn't doing what they need to do i'm just curious what your sense is on that yeah that's a good question i'm not sure
• 139:30 - 140:00 that i know the answer i believe well i know that each city is evaluated on its own merit so they're not going to look at all of the marine cities as a group um but to what extent that's either sub subconsciously uh a factor or i i really don't know terry uh um mayor one one thing i've noticed in the letters as i've read through them is that the state is looking to see how the city went out
• 140:00 - 140:30 and intently collected information from its community and when it and when that information re received from people in the community either people that live or work there or enjoy the community how did they integrate how was that information integrated into the plans and how is that reflective of the policies and the actions and many of the letters have asked cities to further explain how they went out and how that information has been integrated and how
• 140:30 - 141:00 has it resulted and one thing i did notice in the letters is that hcd um the state has said um oftentimes please go back out collect the information and then update your plan and then send it to us we don't want to look at we don't want to look at a plan that is only reflective of our comments we want to see a plan that's reflective of the community yeah well to barry's point it's changing
• 141:00 - 141:30 the way things have been done where before you send in your housing element it was i won't say rubber stamp but pretty much stamps so this is this is great and and i say great because it's building on the good work that san rafael already does in terms of outreach so this makes sense and then my last comment and actually vice mayor got to this as well the affirmative permanently further fair housing so i actually represented the city of san rafael on the county's task force when they did it it was pre-coveted must been 2017-2018 and there are a lot of steps to it and i think anything we can do to um
• 141:30 - 142:00 pool resources as it were they had a lot of data and i i know because i was part of the accounting process there was a lot of cell specific information already there so um anyway so so that would be great so we're not reinventing the wheel okay voicemail do you have any other questions before i open it back up okay you said i'm not sure if it's all gonna be answered okay let me uh invite the city clerk on to receive public either comment or questions on this agenda item this is the 2023 housing element that we are
• 142:00 - 142:30 accepting comment on thank you to comments go ahead and use the raise hand feature and if by dialing in you'll need to press star nine we're ready for you ray hi i'm ray lorber and as some of you know me i'm a
• 142:30 - 143:00 active member of catalyst for local control and we spend a lot of our energy battling legislature on the housing issue so i have some concerns uh first of all barry i really admire you always have admired you you're doing a great job an impossible task but he's doing a great job at it some of the things that i ask you to look at when you're doing your statistical analysis
• 143:00 - 143:30 you're looking at housing you talk about putting in buildings you're not looking at the fire hazard you're not calculating that the water demands the traffic there's not included they're not included in your plans uh what's going to happen to highway 101. right now it's really busy it's going to get a lot worse
• 143:30 - 144:00 why isn't the city of san rafael pushing back like the mayor of uh madonna beaches suing the sewing estate for their sb9 uh we moved into this town and we liked boeing lasalle and we made the investment uh found a way to pay the bills and moved into san rafael and loved it sandersfield is changing now it's not the city we moved into
• 144:00 - 144:30 we are very concerned about it we're concerned about the housing the homelessness issue in san diego is atrocious has to be resolved when you're looking at the housing you have to take into consideration more than just putting up buildings you have to consider the impact of the neighborhood it's a difficult task barry thank you erin what we'll do is note all the questions and we'll answer them at
• 144:30 - 145:00 the end any better questions versus comments at the end of the public comment hi my name is ken thank you very much barry you follow in the footsteps of some of the some of the people i studied with from abag which his first name was barry also um but the thing is we've been talking about this since the 70s and we've been trying to address this so we're going to infill first second units second using shopping centers for more than
• 145:00 - 145:30 just retail making those shopping centers into retail making them retail plus in other words making it more into a community because you've got all that land that's literally just being used as a parking lot and that uses that can give you a tremendous amount of space plus the issue of all the land that the city owns when city owned land we have a tremendous opportunity to build on it at a much lower cost
• 145:30 - 146:00 the city of hong kong actually makes money on their low income housing because the housing is built on city land and the money that goes towards the housing actually comes from different pockets of government like renters assistance and many other places so we're not exactly have to worry about making the low-income housing being paid for by the individual renter or tenant and the other issue is making the idea of multiple use
• 146:00 - 146:30 housing housing that can be not only used as renters but also as um condos in the same building or for instance i grew up in brooklyn the first floor was um mainly doctor's offices second floor is low income housing third floor was not as low income housing when you got to the top those are where the expensive apartments were but it was all on the same footprint so we're not using enough
• 146:30 - 147:00 of expanding our vision the other issue i want to bring out is senior housing i live in a three-bedroom house by myself thank you ken if you have additional comments do definitely email the city clerk but we did hear the last part about the importance of senior housing so thank you good evening this is bill carney with sustainable san rafael um we want
• 147:00 - 147:30 in particular to encourage the housing element to pay attention to the arena goals for affordable housing looking at this cycle even if everything now in the pipeline gets built in the next few months or gets building permits out in the next few months it looks like we'll be less than halfway to meeting the affordable units that the arena calls for so we would encourage the housing
• 147:30 - 148:00 element to include a specific road map for how the city can achieve those affordable units um and we would also like to see elements uh in the housing element sections uh that would uh encourage the housing on on infill sites uh not on green fields and also on sites that are are safe
• 148:00 - 148:30 from climate impacts and like sea level rise and and wildfire um the eight years that we're working with here coincide with the eight years that uh in which we need to bring down uh greenhouse gas emissions uh by half and that's a huge challenge so the final thing would be to include in the housing elements uh identifying funding sources that could [Music] uh support this new housing being all
• 148:30 - 149:00 electric being ev-ready being well insulated being all these good things that can serve that goal as well as or parallel with and at the same time as the goals for achieving the housing itself thanks very much thank you bill i see no other hands raised so i'll give everyone a couple seconds
• 149:00 - 149:30 i see no further public comment thank you we'll close the public comment um and i will go through the questions that i heard and and maybe barry and dr giudice and jacob might have heard different ones uh so the one was how is the reality of wildfire traffic water uh is it being incorporated into the arena or into this conversation and then the last part uh green buildings add that to the category are there requirements around rebuilding electrification things like that uh
• 149:30 - 150:00 second question is san rafael why aren't we pushing back i'm an answer for that one but i know staff can handle it um third the reality of utilizing city-owned land and i think you would talked a little bit but expand upon that as a feasibility and finally how much to bill's last comments how much can the city talk about a roadmap but how much can the city influence the type of housing low very low to be built when we're not builders or developers so those are the ones that i heard if i missed any do add but um why don't we start with those
• 150:00 - 150:30 great thanks yeah i'll start with the first one uh ray's question about um the the fire hazard uh and the traffic and water and other impacts i would point out that we will be updating the safety element at the same time we're updating the housing element we'll be working on that over the summer and that's specifically to look at information on evacuation and information on ingress and egress into neighborhoods is something that the fire
• 150:30 - 151:00 department's doing also as part of the local hazard mitigation plan update but we're required by state law to look at how at some of these fire hazard and safety issues also we did a complete environmental impact report program level is part of the general plan 2040 and there are a number of measures to mitigate some of the impacts in the general plan eir that we're implementing already we don't expect we're going to make a lot of changes to our land use map if
• 151:00 - 151:30 any as part of this project we think we have the capacity to produce most of this housing without doing a lot of the general plan amendment and rezoning that other cities in marin county need to do so i think that's a it's a it's still a valid question how are we going to provide these services but i think we've answered that question through the eir for the general plan already and there's already the analysis has been done um on the green building question
• 151:30 - 152:00 uh we definitely will be looking at that one of the things we have to do in the housing element is is look at energy efficiency and ways to reduce housing costs by affecting what people are spending on utilities and um you know promoting renewal ener renewable energy and green building is an important part of that but we also have to be mindful of the cost impacts on construction and if we're imposing requirements that other cities in our vicinity are not imposing i think
• 152:00 - 152:30 we need to you know we need to be careful how far we go but certainly making buildings greener and taking steps to reduce utility costs and make better use of renewable energy would all be part of this um city-owned land we we're definitely looking at opportunities on city and county owned land that's in the city and school district land we're working with our partner agencies to to make sure that we're considering those and those are the best opportunities
• 152:30 - 153:00 for uh for low and very low income housing since the land cost is underwritten by but you know it's public so we have an opportunity with those sites and something like a policy that would say any public land that's used for housing should be affordable housing that that's the kind of policy i think we'd be looking at coming out of this process um and then the last one trying to oh the why we didn't push back i'll i'll maybe let one of my colleagues
• 153:00 - 153:30 answer that one okay before they get to that the other one i had was how much can a city influence a type of housing low very low et cetera to be built when we're not developers i added the last part yeah no it's it's a that's a valid point and then you know i'll also see if if um ali or jake want to add on to that but i i would say we are identifying um you know part of this process is a road map for affordable housing so that's a that's really more than anything else that's what this is all about
• 153:30 - 154:00 um we know we can build market rate housing and so that's a lot of our focus is on that exact question is what are the steps we can take other than you know finding more funding sources to make uh you know to to produce affordable units but yeah part of this process is identifying which sites are earmarked for low and very low income and i'll i'll just i'll add um just rephrasing barry's comment that it
• 154:00 - 154:30 we find it easy to see opportunities for development for market rate housing because we don't do the building um but also there are you know we have policies in place that you know obligate developers to provide their their share of affordable housing as part of their development and then we have the in-lieu fee that goes into our affordable housing trust fund and with that money it allows us to fund housing that is lower and extremely low income and so
• 154:30 - 155:00 that that's where we are able to have some influence on the development of the you know below market rate units um and then we we can also uh we can also support different programs that are targeted uh one uh i i think i heard one comment the gentleman was being cut off when he mentioned um that some folks how are are living in over house situations they have more house than they need to
• 155:00 - 155:30 for their daily living and then mention seniors and it made me think of the senior home share program that the city council reviewed and provided some cdbg funding to at the last council meeting it's programs like this in addition to building housing that we're also able to provide other opportunities for housing so that we're providing a wide range of options in the community thank you and that really gets it how we started the comment or how director giudice started the comment which or
• 155:30 - 156:00 this item which was it's a whole it's a puzzle there are many programs going on and that's a great example jake of one that's not necessarily a new unit but it's getting people into housing um well i'm going to open up to my colleagues and i i think as you make your comments each of us can answer from their own personal experience as to um why they're not pushing back on housing and i'll start even though i like to end as well but i'm really proud of the fact that i live in a community that continues to recognize there is change and i did hear mr lorber he's he i quote
• 156:00 - 156:30 he said it's not the city we moved into and i recognize that i 100 get that i think he's been here probably for 40 or 50 years and there is change and i i really believe in managing the change so we continue to be an inclusive and diverse community and we already saw that in the statistics that you showed so we're not pushing back because uh folks are already here that is how we are changing and the best we can do is uh not the best but what we what i want to do is to have housing to have folks stay here and to continue to
• 156:30 - 157:00 contribute to the written richness of our community in all different shapes of the the word and i am very proud of the fact that we did not send a letter um threatening to be a part of the the pushback and um the previous council was pro housing and i'm not going to speak to my colleague for my colleagues they can speak for themselves but i continue to have been a housing advocate for the right type of housing which i think we have done we have done infill we have done by very thoughtful in the larger
• 157:00 - 157:30 scale projects so um that is the community we're coming and there's a change and that's just part of i think being able to live in a long time in a beautiful place like centerfield you're gonna see change but i'll let my colleagues speak to their own answers as to that because that is definitely representative of this entire council uh vice mayor kurtz thank you and for that sort of introduction because um i think i shared with some of you i recently attended the planning academy um that was put on and there were a couple sessions um i was just really
• 157:30 - 158:00 disappointed and there were a few of us who were very disappointed that the majority of the conversation was about how to get around the requirements for housing um as opposed to how we need to support our communities and and i can tell you probably you know as you're showing the southern california and there are some in northern california too that are spending more time about that about how to come up with ideas of how to get around the requirements uh
• 158:00 - 158:30 than actually supporting the people who live in their communities so i'm i too am very proud of the work that centerfell is doing to try to support the housing crisis that we're in um i know tonight was really about this housing element which is a requirement and about submitting a report but i think what it does is it opens up the you know pandora's bach or peels back the onion however you want to do it that really talks about our core problems and issues and um
• 158:30 - 159:00 and the fact that we you know creating affordable housing is critical but if those units appeared tomorrow many in our community could not afford the definition of affordable that's a problem so and what is that going to mean i'm concerned that for our growing low-income communities which the data is showing um in addre it suggests that we really need to do more with what's happening today as well as what we're going to need to do for the housing requirements and affordable housing so
• 159:00 - 159:30 we have this this housing element as i agreed through it there are so many projects and initiatives that are coming in we could the whole city staff could spend every minute of every day working on this and probably still not be done and i hope that you know for me i want to do what we can do to support ali and support barry and if we need to shift our
• 159:30 - 160:00 priorities and shift our resources to provide you the the support you need to manage these projects um there's a lot here and we're not going to make the progress we need we might reach our check our mark with the housing element in some of these but there's some other real underlying critical issues that need to be addressed here and i really do like the you know mary kate's suggestion of dealing digging in deeper with the affirmatively furthering fair housing i wish they
• 160:00 - 160:30 could come up with a different name because that's hard but um i think there is a lot there um that we hopefully can use because i think that really is where our priorities need to be which might means we might need to shift our priorities because we we do need to do this work and this is core to our community it's core to so much of what we stand for in san rafael so thank you thank you for the one act of yes this report and i get no doubt it's gonna just be accepted so it'll be fine
• 160:30 - 161:00 thank you account number bushy well i've been a part of these for longer than i care to admit um and i am very proud of san rafael's history with the uh the housing element um i don't think that we need to push back because um we're better than that on we have t we
• 161:00 - 161:30 take these abstract numbers that come from a bag and we have such an awesome staff that we can translate them into things that can be done in our community tailor the abstract numbers to the particular projects and the particular opportunities that our staff because they're out dealing with uh people in san rafael potential developers in center field sites in san rafael thinking about um
• 161:30 - 162:00 opportunities possibilities um that are out there and also being encouraging for when developers come in and and need a helping hand getting through are very long on our very long process so i i think over the years um san rafael has done just an amazing job of taking compliance with these regulations and turning them into as best we can in san rafael
• 162:00 - 162:30 real housing units um so i think we we've got a great track record there and we don't we don't need to push back we're going to push forward um that's what that's that's what we're about um and it's a pushing forward leads to the answer on the question about all the changes you know people that have lived here for decades say oh my goodness it's um it's changed well yes it's going to change you know there were horses and monkeys here at one time if we if we didn't change on us we would we would be
• 162:30 - 163:00 going backwards um so yes um san rafael moves forward on we change in a positive way for the best on as best we can open to feedback on if we need to adjust the trajectory of our change if it's if it's not going in the direction that um that we want to go i fully support on accepting this report and and look forward to the um subsequent reports that will be um coming forward thank you councilmember bushy
• 163:00 - 163:30 councilmember micah yeah thank you again for the report and um i mean it is a very hard topic because um there is so much land where you can build and um i i do appreciate the city looking into places um for example like um office buildings that um they are not maybe longer in use because of the changes that they are happening because of the pandemic and people working uh virtually and um
• 163:30 - 164:00 and and figure out ways that maybe um some office buildings can be turned into um housing like one of the developments that they are happening right now in the canal and and i will again mention that i think it's very important to look at where we can build new housing but also the people that they are currently in housing how we can make sure that they
• 164:00 - 164:30 stay where they are and they are not displaced um you know um [Music] with with other people that they can definitely afford it so um so yeah um and you know i know that in in some places you know they are very creative they have like a seniors living with uh college students which is good for the college students that they don't have money and good for the seniors that they keep active you know with uh um so so i encourage everybody to keep looking at um
• 164:30 - 165:00 kind of like thinking outside the box and um and and just trying to figure out how uh we can grow together but i yes saint raphael has definitely changed um some people think for the worse i think it is sometimes for the better as well and i really appreciate our diversity and is what it makes santa fe like a beautiful place to live so uh the more everybody can be in a house where not all the income is going towards that and the more where everybody is housed the better we are going to do as a
• 165:00 - 165:30 community so um so yeah with that uh thank you so much ready to uh um thank you that you're cutting out right at the end but we we got you um council member hill yes thank you um i i wanted to call out just a couple of observations first the staff report i thought was appropriately sober both in the data and in the narrative i really appreciated
• 165:30 - 166:00 how i'm going to use a word it was very stark it was i think we all had a sense of it but i thought that this particular staff report um was very sober so thank you for for making it that way um i i thought that was completely appropriate i wanted to build on council member bush's comments around moving from the concept of the abstract of the numbers to how do we manifest those and i really think that this housing element is
• 166:00 - 166:30 our opportunity to to make that real and to make that expressed well i think it would also be remiss to not mention all of the kind of root causes towards towards us and i think that's been mentioned throughout but affordability uh is very much related to economic enfranchisement there's only so much we as a city can do but i know that we are leaning in and doing what we can especially on education and access to digital um uh as well as the the interdependency
• 166:30 - 167:00 with transportation i thought it was something that that showed um in the report around the live work dynamic of where people are going towards coming into san rafael uh uh versus uh exporting folks so to speak so i do think we are doing ourselves a favor to make sure that um where people are living here is not is um i think eventually alleviating stress and strain on our transportation infrastructure
• 167:00 - 167:30 uh and then finally i would just say uh i am betting on barry um i won't say how much i'll just say the money in my pockets that we will get this through i'm putting pressure on you deliberately barry hopefully you take it in the right way uh but that um our housing element will be accepted the first time so maybe i'll just i'll bet a dollar and leave it at that thank you thank you now thank you for all my colleagues comments and and even though tonight is just a single lens of housing and bear
• 167:30 - 168:00 you did allude to this and i want to double down on it it's in the context of the general plan so we're talking about well what about sea level rise well of course we're worried about sea level rise or water availability or drought and the general plan provides that much broader lens so we've been talking very specifically about housing and it's 100 interrelated but the general plan is which we've already uh approved except for this piece of it and the safety part as you said is going forward that provides that roadmap that we're going forward and and i do want to underscore that development we have had
• 168:00 - 168:30 has been really thoughtful and represents what we need and what we need more of that's for sure and works with what's already here and for me when i talk about what the vice mayor was saying about her planning academy experience and that the trope is that oh you're going to have a 10 bill 10 story high rise plopped in some place that's entirely inappropriate that's just not going to happen it hasn't happened in seven feet that's not at all what we're talking about and it's really been thoughtful
• 168:30 - 169:00 about what is already here contextually architecturally neighborhood wise and then building on top of that so i know we'll continue forward i think this work as was presented tonight was amazing thank you barry thank you director judy thank you jacob and thank you for the working group um these meetings the process meetings are hard anyway and unzoom makes it that much harder so i'm really really grateful to the working group that's showing up and giving their input as well as those meetings are open to anybody so anyone who wants to come in and provide input
• 169:00 - 169:30 we'd love to have you and there is a housing survey that you would alluded to very on the site so we want to hear all voices even if you're not on the working group so with that i've heard general consensus or for approving i guess we're accepting a report so um councilmember bushy would you like to make a motion i would um let me see
• 169:30 - 170:00 i moved that we accept the progress report on the 2023 to 2031 housing element and vice mayor second thank you uh roll call please city clerk councilmember hi councilmember hill all right vice mayor kurtz hi councilmember adams golotti aye mayor kate all right that motion carries 5-0 thank you all for your hard work we look forward to future conversations you
• 170:00 - 170:30 don't get to wave goodbye jacob because we're at the end of our agenda but before we go anyone who's still on staff who's there we'd love to see you because this is a big moment i almost wanted to do like a screenshot i don't know how to do that thomas knows how to do that i don't know this is okay someone's getting out their phone yeah because this is a big deal you know it's it's an ending thank god of an era that has been really really challenging and grateful to all of you lindsay's taking a photo do we i can't we can't have reactions so everyone can just do a thumbs up or a wave or whatever okay you
• 170:30 - 171:00 tell us when to take your photo lindsey you can tell us okay one two three take a photo and i'm sure every city is finishing their last virtual meeting that way so with that thank you all it was a great meeting tonight this meeting is adjourned and we'll see you in person in two weeks
• 171:00 - 171:30 you