The Novato City Council met on March 10, 2026, at 2:00 PM. The meeting featured presentations from the Youth Advocacy Committee on tobacco use prevention, the Marin County Free Library on facility improvements, and an update from Age and Disability Friendly Novato. The council also approved a lease amendment for Homeward Bound’s supportive housing parcel and received the 2025 annual housing progress report. Public comments addressed disaster loans, police accountability, and tobacco policy.
Let's do the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the fly of the United States. I don't know. Laura, can you please call the role? Councilmember Eklund. Present. Councilmember Carkle. Here. Councilmember O'Connor is absent. Mayor Proton Jacobs. Sure. And Mayor Farak. Present. Alright. And there was no closed session item this evening. Moving on to item C: ceremonial matters. I'm happy that we have a presentation from the Youth Advocacy Committee, Tobacco Use Prevention. So I'd like to invite Fraven Twilling and members of the Youth Advocacy Committee to give their presentation. Welcome. Thank you. Happy to have you guys. Nicotine Free Marin policy solutions for protecting our youth. I'm Say Gucci, I go to Terra Linda, and I'm a junior. I'm Danny and I'm a senior at Novato High School. I'm Isaac and I'm a freshman at San Marin. The youth advocacy is made up of high schoolers from Marin County who are committed to addressing our youth nicotine epidemic. Our goal is to engage with local organizations organizations, policymakers, and citizens to raise awareness for youth nicotine use and solutions to protect community health. Our slogan is not about us without us, and our belief is that our voices matter when it comes to addressing the very situations that we the youth face. One of the most prominent issues that young people face today is nicotine addiction. To better understand nicotine use in Marin, we will now look at the most recent county level data on teen nicotine consumption. The data we are showing today comes from California Healthy Kids Survey. As you can see, the rates for youth lifetime tobacco use are greatly on the rise. What may be more alarming or surprising is the large jump between the Novato average and the California average. As you can see on the graph, Novato is uh the red and California and blue. These rates for tobacco vaping among juniors in Novato versus California, as the graph demonstrates, while California's average is at a standstill, Novato experienced a major increase. Here California is the red in Novato's blue. So why do these numbers matter? Nicotine, regardless of how it's consumed, is toxic and has damaging effects on human health. Nicotine use impacts brain circuits that control learning, attention, memory, mood, and reward systems. The damage is even more pronounced in younger brains, where these brain circuits are still developing. It also causes damage to the lungs and cardiovascular system. So what? Even more, the health and financial burdens of smoking are huge. Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death. In California, it results in 40,000 deaths a year. Smoking costs California 18 billion dollars per year. However, for every dollar spent on tobacco control in California, healthcare costs fall by 231 dollars. The tobacco industry also targets specific communities such as the LGBTQ community, the people of color, and the low-income communities who have doubled exposure to second-hand smoke. Teen nicotine addiction is a serious issue in Marin. One way we can combat nicotine addiction is decreasing the availability of addictive tobacco products in Marin.