All right, welcome everyone to the City of Novato City Council meeting for June 23rd.

Today we're gonna start off things a little bit differently.

Um we have two variant special guests.

They're actually mayor for the day, and um the proceeds to this actually benefited uh Pleasant Valley School as well as Rancho Elementary School.

Um, so I'll they got a tour of the police department as well as uh the city administration building.

So really excited to have them kick off the meeting today.

Um this is Penny.

She's going into third grade, absolutely incredible and good friends with my friends.

And then we have Leo, who's going into fifth grade, and he actually skipped two grades, um, which is absolutely incredible, and he has a speech for us.

Hey, Leo.

All right, so they're gonna kick off the meeting.

So hit right here.

All right.

All right, now please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flat of the United States.

My nation under God is just draw.

Now I'm gonna turn it over to Leo for his note to us.

Dear Mayor for Dear Mayor Farrak, Council members and neighbors, my name is Leonard McDougal, and I am eight years old.

I am entering fifth grade at Rancho Elementary in the fall.

I first I wanted to thank you for your service to our community.

I love Novato and my school.

My parents have taught me that being an active and engaged member in my community is important.

So we spent some time talking about how we would like to see our community improved.

And so I made this list of five things to share with you.

Number one, better bike lanes everywhere.

My family loves to bike, but some streets feel scary because there are no bike lanes.

If there are good bike lanes all over the city, more families could ride downtown.

That would be safer for bikers, walkers, and cars.

And I bet the stores would get more customers too.

Number two, please fix the potholes.

The ones on Roland Boulevard near Cambridge are really bad.

Lots of kids bike there every day on the way to school, and the bumps are no fun and kind of dangerous.

Please put stop signs at Tyler Street and Arthur Street.

Kids cross there on the way to my school.

Cars go down the street very fast, and it's a dangerous place to cross.

Some stop signs would help, and a crossing guard would be even better.

The spot for the food trucks.

I love the food trucks on Roland Boulevard on weekends, but right now they crowd up the sidewalk and it met and it gets mezzy.

If the city gave them their own safe space, everyone could enjoy the yummy food, and the street would still look nice and tidy.

Five, fill the empty stores downtown.

The old copper fields corner shop has been empty for a while, and it makes downtown look sad.

My idea is a cafe where kids can run around and play while the grown-ups drink coffee and talk.

We hear it's hard to for new businesses to open in Novato.

So maybe the city could help make it easier.

Thank you for listening, and to Mayor Farrakh for inviting me to speak here today.

I look forward to working with you to make these happen for our community from Leonard McDougall.

That was wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, our mayor, for the day.

You guys can go back to your mom's movie.

Such amazing kids, right?

Alright.

Uh, moving on to item B, closed session announcement.

There was no closed session, so we'll move on to ceremonial matters and presentations, and we're gonna call up Mark Van Border from PGE to give our presentation.

Welcome, Mark.

Hello, good evening, council members.

We heard you say ceremonial.

I got excited, and then you said PGE.

I was like, oh, if they're talking about me.

All right, so uh I will do my best to make this quick for both the council and and for the community.

Um my name is Mark Van Gorder, and I am the local government affairs representative for the company here in Marin and Napa counties.

Um tonight I came to give a presentation about the wildfire mitigation efforts that we have ongoing, um, some of the updates, uh especially calling attention to the community, uh, if they want to download this information on the city's website.

There are a number, many, uh, and I'll I won't cover them all.

Uh customer resources for affordability, uh, for medical baseline support, um, for uh conservation of energy or new uh appliances that are more efficient.

So uh but before I get into all of this, um I do want to uh mention some uh updates on some gas work.

I met with a couple council members, um, Councilmember Jacobs and Carkle and and uh Farak and Pat Eklund, we've met many times.

Um, but a question was asked about the gas work on Novato Boulevard.

I just received an update.

Uh I had hoped it would come earlier to put in the presentation, but I just got it half an hour ago.

Uh so the gas work along the Novato Boulevard is complete.

We're now working on coordination for restoration of the road and sidewalks from Grant Avenue down to Boulevard Terrace.

We don't have a temperative tentative timeline for that, but expect it to be completed by the end of August.

So that's that's the update on that.

And then looking forward, um, this is something we maybe talk at a future council meeting, or we can talk with the city manager's office uh about future work.

But there are about 70 services and 5,000 feet of gas main um along Mackin Avenue.

Um that is probably coming up in in 2027.

Um, and uh let's see, that's Mackinab of Vallejo Avenue to DeLong, some sections of Redwood Boulevard, Rikert Avenue, and Scound Lane, um, a land around the Linwood Hill Park area, replacing roughly 6,000 feet of gas main and 161 services around uh homeowner association complexes, and the tentative start date for that is February of 20 uh 27 through October of 2027.

We always coordinate this with city staff and uh encroachment permits, traffic control, etc.

But uh thought I'd mention that as something that that we can cover.

I'm gonna go through this very quickly.

Uh we've talked about this for probably six or seven years.

So I assume most of you are aware of this, but I just called to the public's attention that we have a number of layers of wildfire uh protection.

Very often I'll hear people say what's PGE doing to make our system safer by undergrounding.

We have a lot of uh efforts going in and around Novato uh throughout Marin County and our entire service territory territory that is not just undergrounding.

A lot of it is overhead, a lot of it's new equipment, and uh so I'll just call your attention to this.

Um, we we have uh two cameras in and around or sorry, weather stations in and around the city of Novato.

Uh and we have high definition cameras, though you can see the yellow and the purple dots there.

But this helps us to monitor for weather, uh especially fire weather, dry conditions, um, very low humidity, dry fuels, etc.

that can that can cause ignitions.

Um the high definition cameras are terrific.

In many cases, the um, I'll call it the artificial intelligence, it's machine learning, um, can take a look at something, assess whether or not it's fog or smoke, and make a call in to dispatch to alert police officers or sorry, fire respondents, first responders, before anyone locally would call 911 normally.

We've had we've had uh people dispatched uh out to potential fire ignitions well before people have even called 911.

So the ability to get out there quickly is is improved tremendously.

This is a little in the weeds, no pun intended, but uh this is our safety infrastructure protection crews.

If and when there could be fires in areas, we will send people out in advance to coat our uh polls and equipment with the FOS check.

That's the stuff that the planes will spray.

Helicopters, the red, it's usually red.

We have blue.

Uh, and that helps them to determine what what is ours protecting the equipment.

This is great.

Um, if the unfortunate circumstance should happen that a fire runs through, the infrastructure very often can be left intact, and people can return home much more quickly than having to rebuild the entire distribution system.

Um public safety power shutoffs.

There haven't been any in Novato for many years now.

I don't truly expect there would be, and it would be significant wind events, very dry conditions if if we got to that point.

But uh we do tune the power off proactively, and there's a major difference between public safety power shutoff or what we call PSPS versus enhanced power safety settings.

Just for the community and for your awareness, this one is the one where we had advanced weather notice.

We're gonna know about 72 hours, notify you ahead of time, and work with our uh public safety partners and enhanced power safety settings.

The power in the high fire risk areas may go out very quickly if a branch or tree or an animal lands on the wires to quickly stop the sparks and arcing and potential ignition.

So, just again, for the community's awareness, the weather events will let you know.

The others uh may power may be off for an hour or two while we patrol the lines and make sure that they're safe.

But this just gives you an indication of uh how few uh public safety power shutoffs we've had to have in the Marin area.

City of Novato hasn't been affected since 2021.

Um again, I'll move through this fairly quickly, but we have operational improvements, more customer support, and better communications for people during these events.

Uh, all of this is available online for you.

Trying to go through this quickly because I know you may have questions.

Uh we do have um this PSPS portal uh for information that you may be able to look at.

The public wants to see where these events are coming.

This also helps your emergency operations center uh to work with us again in the unlikely event that we have one.

Again, the enhanced power safety settings.

Whoops.

So this is what happens.

If something falls on the line, like a branch here in this, it could be a full tree, it could be a car hitting the pole, mylar balloon, squirrel, something.

But if it does, we found a 69% reduction in potential ignitions.

When we turn the power off in less than a tenth of a second, um, we have to then go back and patrol the lines.

But if we don't turn the power off and it keeps trying to send power through, then that item very often burns, sparks and arcs, falls on the ground, and on a windy day, that can be a bad situation.

So this is where uh we don't tell people ahead of time, but this is the communication process that we have to let people know that there is an outage, when we think it'll be restored, what the updates are, and when the power has been restored.

And again, these are the reasons why low humidity high winds dry fuels.

Um, these are the communications that we provide.

They've gotten much much better for people who are experienced those enhanced power safety settings.

Back to strengthening the grid, over half of our uh service territory, which is about two-thirds of the square miles of the state, uh, is in high fire risk area.

The county of Marin, this is not um a factual statistic, but when I look at it, the county of Marin appears to be about 80% high fire risk area.

Um, so not immune to the potentials for fire risks here.

There's a great site for folks who ask and want to know what when is PGE undergrounding in our area.

Currently, we're working on uh undergrounding about 16 miles in the Mill Valley area, and we're um what we call scoping, additional potential work in Marin County.

As soon as I find out where those locations might be feasible, so the scoping part is like where is it just impossible or very, very challenging to underground.

In those cases, we'll rebuild the system overhead.

Um but where we can find undergrounding that looks potential uh potentially feasible, I will let you know.

But customers can check these system upgrades in Marin at this website here and see where what work we have planned where.

Um we manage and inspect 100,000 miles of power lines and about 1.5 million trees.

Uh we do this annually uh required by the California Public Utilities Commission.

I'm gonna try and move quickly here, but um uh this is a requirement.

So I know people get very frustrated that we come back and we kind of chop the trees away from the power lines.

Sometimes we have to go further because we have to consistently maintain at least four feet.

So if you have a fast growing tree, elms or otherwise, uh, it has to be six to eight feet because it'll start growing back throughout the course of the year.

And this is what we look at just in Marin County.

Um again, customer communication is the number, well, customer satisfaction is the number one goal of our uh CEO this this year and in perpetuity.

Uh she wants to ensure that our customers are getting a 10 out of 10 experience.

We know that that is not always happening, but we are hyper focused on it.

And so if anyone is not feeling that they're getting excellent service, not getting the communications, um, not getting the treatment that they expect to get in a very high level of customer service.

Please let me know.

I'm happy to engage and help out.

This is an excellent resource for customers to use to contact about tree work that they have questions about in their area.

Um I have called this number.

I've received a phone call back with just as a test within two or three hours.

They asked that you wait up to 24 hours, but they are fairly responsive.

Um, again, some financial assistance programs.

We have some fantastic programs.

This match my payment uh for a thousand dollars for low to moderate income customers.

Strongly encourage the community here watching online.

Um maybe you have newsletters or social media that you can send out.

It it is while the funds last, but you know, up to a thousand dollars for moderate to low-income customers to pay past due bills.

And I very often hear about the struggles that people have, and uh so just call your attention.

All of these programs can really help some folks save a thousand dollars, twelve hundred or more uh terrific help.

This is the uh billing that I talked about for home financing energy checkups, also helpful resources, medical baseline programs.

Uh folks can self-uh identify as vulnerable.

That's it's not new new, but when I first started with the company, you had to have a doctor's note and whatnot, but now you can go online and and let PGE know.

And again, that helps reduce your billing costs, increased your customer outreach for events like enhanced power safety settings or medical uh or uh public safety power shutoffs.

So really helpful.

I won't go through all of these, but these are the many resources that we have for people to take advantage of uh to prepare for power outages and to get through them should there be one.

Again, businesses information, the progress map.

It has a drop-down menu, so just call your attention to that.

If you go on to the PG.com progress map, you can look at where is the high fire risk area.

Am I in an enhanced power safety settings area?

Where is the undergrounding or overhead system hardening being rebuilt?

So that's in the progress map.

Last thing I will say, I think we're coming to the end here is we have a terrific app on the phone called Report It.

Uh, Marin County, I think has a similar app.

I don't know if the city has one, but take a photo of your concern, whether or not it is um electric overhead distribution lines, maybe there's a tree leaning towards a power pole, or there's a lifted plate or uh box that people are concerned about tripping.

Take a photo of it with the PGE report it app, it'll give us the coordinates, type in some notes about what your concerns are.

We will get back to you.

If you give us your phone number or your email, we'll get back to you and let you know what we've done to follow up on it.

Um, and what's interesting to me is that you can also take a look at what the past reports have been.

So you can spread out the thing and take a look at what's going on in Nevada that other people have reported.

So uh tried to clock that at about 10 minutes, went a little over.

Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much for the verb best presentation.

And uh for me, it's important that customers come first.

So I'm glad to hear uh that shift.

Um, do my council members have questions?

Mayor put them Jacobs?

Hi, thank you for the report.

On the notification, is it phone call notification, text notification, or email notification or all of them?

I believe that when I set mine up, I chose emails and text.

Okay.

So yes, it can be multiple choices.

It's ultimately the customers' choice when they go online.

And you can add, I think up to four or five different communications.

So I have my mother and my daughters all listed for and then on the trees, you talked about tree trimming.

But you talked about the um notice it or at the end.

Oh, yeah.

About how notifying people about the tree work?

Yes.

Yeah, can we, if we see something that isn't right, the tree hasn't been trimmed away from the lines, can we notify you about that?

So that's a great way to use the reported app.

Report it.

If you see the reported app would be perfect for that, or or you can also uh use the tree safety phone number or email that that's on that page, either will work.

Um I think the reported app is a great way to get the attention for somebody out there quickly.

Um, yeah, either one should work.

Okay, thanks.

And of course, you can always call me if you want if you have immediate concerns, but we urge people if they see something they consider to be emergency, a threat to uh life, limb, property, to just call 911.

Okay, and I have just uh a question.

As far as Novato, is there a more sensitive area that there's more outages, or um is it pretty the same, or you guys don't have data on that?

Novato, overall compared to the rest of the county, does fairly well as far as reliability is concerned.

Um, I can get you a breakdown to let you know how many outages we've had, I'll give you a reliability report on the circuit serving the city.

But um, because of its, you know, it's not in the highest fire risk areas.

Um, you know, you have the substation very close by on highway 37 and 101.

Um, when I take a look at overall outages for Marin County, Nevado probably ranks pretty high on the reliability.

Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you for the presentation.

We really appreciate you coming today and um sharing the good work you're doing and also being informative.

It was helpful.

So, Madam Mayor, I just wanted to um thank Mark for your tremendous service with PGE and always coming and addressing us.

Um, lastly, I just wanted to give you uh a uh a shout out because my mom who just turned 99 in January still lives in the house that I was raised in in Terra Linda, and we've called PGE on several different occasions, and they've come spot out really fast because obviously my mom's on oxygen, and so um they really do take care of the seniors and most of the people in Rank County now are seniors.

So I just want to thank you for the tremendous work that PGE is doing.

Well, thank you very much.

And you know, I'll I'll if I may, just with a closing comment.

Uh I've been with the company for 13 years.

Um, they've not been easy years.

We've had a lot of challenges.

So what I would say to Nevado community, the Marin community, and our customers in general, we appreciate your patience.

I have seen our CEO lead this company in a way that I don't think has been led for quite some time.

She is taking bold steps and demanding that everyone step up.

And uh so I just uh we we it's unfortunate, but very often I will hear about uh threats of guns, physical violence, people throwing rocks and stuff at our crews who are just out there trying to keep the electricity and the gas on.

Um we got one just the other day in Napa where uh somebody was approached with a firearm and threatened, and it's you know, if I I understand the frustration of people because it's been very challenging, but uh we just appreciate everyone's patience while we try and uh improve the system.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mark.

And um that kind of ties nicely, interesting enough, but we have um a proclamation for gun violence awareness month.

Um, and we don't have a recipient, but I'm gonna read some of it.

Uh, whereas every day more than 300 people are directly impacted by gun violence in the United States, and guns are the number one cause of death for children and teens in America, and whereas gun violence touches every segment of our society and impacts people of all ages.

Whereas in June, every year, people across the United States recognize National Gun Violence Awareness Day and wear orange weekend in tribute of victims of gun violence.

And now, therefore, be it resolved that the city council of the city of Novato on behalf of the city staff and the residents of Novato declares June 2026 to be National Gun Violence Awareness Month and encourages all residents to support their local communities' effort to prevent the tragic effect of gun violence.

Thank you.

All right, so moving on to approval of the final agenda.

Do I have a motion?

I'll move final approval.

I'll second.

Laura, can you call for the vote?

Councilmember Eklund.

Aye.

Councilmember Carkel.

Aye.

Councilmember O'Connor is absent.

Mayor Pro Tem Jacobs.

And Mayor Farak.

Aye.

All right, that passes.

So moving on to item E, reports from the City Council and City Manager.

We'll start with City Manager Cunningham.

Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council.

Um, thank you.

Just one quick announcement tonight, a fun one.

Summer season has kicked off, so Novato Parks and Recreation looks forward to seeing our community at this weekend's first Hot Amphitheater Nights concert at Hamilton Amphitheater.

It's a free concert held on Saturday, June 27th from 5 to 7, and features live music from the Maya Maya Latin tribute band.

For more information, you can go to our website and we hope to see you all there.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Councilmember Eklin.

Uh yes, thank you very much.

Um there's just a few things I wanted to talk about.

First of all, um I did participate in the 50th uh celebration or anniversary of the Novato Historical Guild.

That was on June 20th, and um they were uh first founded in 1976, and the really unique thing about the Historical Guild in Novato is that they uh maintain the Novato Historian, which comes out uh monthly uh with help of the city, and um they also manage two museums, so we have one which is across the street here on uh DeLong.

Uh but we also um have one out of Hamilton, and so um that is very unusual.

And I wanted to thank Susan Magnone, the current president, Jim Crumpler, Ray Dwelly, and many, many, many more of the um seniors that help with the historical guild.

Um I participated in the Marin County Council of Mayors and Council members legislative committee, and we're working on the bylaws, which are actually uh gonna be voted on tomorrow night.

Uh so I wanted to give a heads up to the council members.

Um we also um had the ABAG Association of Bay Area Government's General Assembly, where um all of the representatives from the 101 cities and the nine counties in the Bay Area met in San Francisco, and we did adopt the budget for 2627, and there is an increase in the dues, and um, we also conducted an election for the president and vice president of that organization for the next two years, and I want to congratulate publicly Susan Adams, who was elected in as president of ABAG, and she is from Roanoke, just to throw up on Highway 101.

And then also um Wanda Williams, who is was elected vice president, and she is a supervisor in Solano County.

Both women um I know and have been working with for a long time together.

Unfortunately, we're gonna be losing Fred Castro.

He's been with uh ABAG for almost 30 years and he's retiring.

And um I also wanted to congratulate publicly the city of Santa Fell because they did get a priority conservation area grant from ABAG to actually save some property.

So I wanted to shout out to City of Santa Fe.

BCDC, the Bay Conservation Development Commission.

We're working on a sea level rise document.

And we had a presentation on the roles of the California Coastal Commission versus the Bay Conservation Development Commission.

There is some joint work done there.

And we are working to continue to increase the beneficial use of reuse.

And I have to say Novato is so ahead of all the other cities around the bay.

And it's uh because we used a lot of dredge material for the Hamilton runway, that whole wetland uh construction.

Um, and I wanted to recognize again town of Tiburon, give them a shout out because they are one of the first cities to actually start their regional shoreline adaptation plan to address sea level rise.

Um last but not least, I did participate in the Novato Um Homeless Committee meeting where they selected their chair and vice chair and they discussed their work plan for 2627.

That's about it, and thank you very much, Mayor.

Thanks.

All right, uh Councilmember Carkle.

Uh, yes, thank you.

Um, just heard a couple of small announcements uh or votes.

I also attended the uh 50th celebration of the Novato Historical Good along at also with the council member Jacobs.

Uh so that was uh a fun and interesting event, learned a lot about uh Nevada, the things I didn't know about earlier.

Um also attended the um International Yoga Day celebration of the Anaguti Meditation Center over in Belmont and Keys.

Uh, had uh quite a few guests there, and uh there's an interesting uh interesting event.

So thank you.

That's all I have.

Thank you, Mayor.

All right, Mayor Pro Tim Jacobs.

Thank you.

Um I attended the Art and Wine Festival and actually worked both days on June 13th and 14th, selling tickets and pouring wine.

That was a lot of fun, and it was a great big event.

On June 16th, I was fortunate enough to be able to introduce Andre Theri, who performed for the crowd for the uh Juneteenth celebration, and on June 17th I had my smart train board meeting, and I also attended Rock the Block.

On June 20th, I was also at the Novato Historical Society for their 50th anniversary celebration, right in here in this room.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, and I just have a uh couple events I attended.

I attended the graduation at Hamilton Montessori, so I got to give out uh diplomas for uh fit little five-year-olds, uh so that was a lot of fun.

And then I attended the vegan chef challenge awards, and this program promotes restaurant that promote vegan dishes, so they create a whole new uh vegan dish and then they promote it.

And I attended the wards and handed those out.

I've attended the community community action marinala, and then also volunteered uh the day at the pleasant valley field day.

So, has been a busy uh month for for us on the council.

Uh so that concludes reports from the city council.

So now we're gonna move on to public comment.

Uh so this is general public comment for items that are not on the agenda or for items that are listed on the consent calendar.

There is a two-minute limit.

Um, so I'll call your name, and then also we have our two-minute clock, which is new, so you can look up right here and see where you are as far as time lies.

Um, I have quite a few cards, um, so I'll call kind of two up at a time, and then the other person can just wait.

Um, first we have Bambi K and then next, Jen M.

Welcome.

Hi, thank you.

Is this on?

Good evening, Mayor Frog.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Well Connell is not here this evening, I see.

I realize that it's unconventional, however, I'm also compelled compelled by compassion to acknowledge with gratitude city staff and Chief Noggle.

Speaking of unconventional, the unpopular and outdated subject of our outdoor neighbors is one that none of us want to have.

But the thing is, people aren't just gonna go away.

And the city choosing to not apply for the ERF grant is not condoning camps.

It's meant to help resolve them.

And we are close to that 100%, by the way.

Thank you.

Jen.

And then next is Sarah M.

Welcome.

Thank you.

It's been a while.

Nice to see everybody.

I'm too.

I wanted to talk about the ERF round five application.

I'm under the understanding that you guys have decided not to apply for that.

I wanted to clear up what that funding is actually meant for to resolve camps.

So you can use it for a variety of things, including temporary housing can be built with that.

You can provide outreach with those funds.

You can fund sanitation services and come up with new and inventive ways to solve this problem instead of repeating the same cycle again and again.

The bottom line is the people that live here, three-quarters of them are from here.

And statistically and due to research with UCSF and other big organizations that have actually done research, people when they're when they're left, no other alternative but to move from place to place to place.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sarah M.

and then Jason S.

Welcome.

Good evening, Council members.

I believe most of you received my email.

Um I heard back from some.

I am here also to speak on the application withdrawal for the ERF 5 grant.

Um I was told that the city plans to apply in the second round of the funding in September.

That round will only exist if the funds aren't utilized in the first round.

And with the way federal funding cuts are going right now to various programs, jurisdictions within California are going to capitalize on any opportunity they can to receive grant funding.

This is funding that won't take away from projects in Novato or schools or other services in Novato.

This is funding specifically for, like it was said, encampment resolution.

That it's not to sanction a camp indefinitely, it's to get the campment resolved so that people can continue on their pathway to housing and eventually move off the streets.

Um, one of the things that I want to bring up is we I'm I'm a member of the Marine County Lived Experience Advisory Board, and we met with a county official on June 11th and talked about ideas of that the funding could be used for, and less than a week later, we were then informed that Novato had withdrawn their application from this process.

That's completely ridiculous.

And from the sound of it, like Jen said, the application was near complete.

It was fine details that were gonna be um finalized before the submission.

In addition to that, uh it seems like the majority of the council members didn't know that city staff withdrew from this application process.

To me, as a member of the public, that's extremely concerning because it lacks transparency within the city of Novato.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Jason.

All right.

Welcome.

Welcome.

Good evening, council.

Um, speaking on behalf of myself, um, I want to bring your attention to the state and countment resolution funding uh round five grant opportunity, which could provide significant resources to support residents at Hamilton Marsh.

On June 11th, the Marine County Lived Experience Advisory Board, which I co-chair met with the county staff to discuss the ERF grant application and provide feedback ahead of the June 30th deadline.

Five days later on June 16th at the Nevado's farmers market.

Jen Mellow and I spoke with city management and learned that the city had withdrawn for the pursuing the grant in partnership with the county.

Uh county staff labor later verbally uh confirmed that decision.

The reason given was that the city intended to apply during a second funding round.

However, after reviewing the ERF round five guidelines, I learned that the second application window will only open if funding remains available after the first round of awards.

There is no guarantee a second round will occur.

Given the uncertainty surrounding federal homelessness funding and the strong statewide demand for resources, communities across California are likely to be to compete aggressively for round five funding before the June 30th deadline.

By not applying now, Novato risk missed missing an important opportunity to bring much needed funding into our community.

It is also important to clarify that receiving an ERF grant does not automatically sanction an encampment.

How you designate a camp is your choice.

ERF funds can support case management, homeless salary each, portable toilets, wash stations, trash mitigation, housing navigation, and temporary rental assistance.

The program is specifically designed to reduce encampment population through housing placements and successful transitions into permanent housing.

Temporary rental assistance can especially help when the grant is close to expiring by housing the remaining camp residents so the camp can be closed humanely without enforcement.

I strongly urge the city to reconsider its decision and submit application before the June 30th deadline the potential benefits for the Hamilton Marsh residents and the broader Nevado community.

Make this opportunity too important to pass up.

Thank you for allowing me to go over.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Jason.

Next we have Kim C.

I think she's gonna be speaking on the item I'm gonna.

This includes consent.

It does, okay.

Hi, thank you.

Welcome.

Um, yes, I am uh here to discuss the uh G12 Hillside Park Landscape Assessment District for this for this coming year.

Um the uh contract itself with the landscape contractor, um, is just unclear to me on what exactly um uh that they are to do on there is a schedule of services, but I'm I'm not sure exactly um when who is going to do the uh monthly and yearly um maintenance, and then the other thing I'm concerned is is this fiscal year that ends in a week.

Um we have the the monthly maintenance, and um, but the actual weed abatement has not been done to date in our um in our areas that's mapped out by the the engineer that has done the report.

Um, so we just want to um address you know when this is going to be done prior to next week.

Um so uh I'm asking that it be taken off of the consent calendar so we can have a better understanding of you know what is actually covered by the contractor and also in the um uh in the I'm sorry, in the uh engineer's report, it states that the fire district is to do the weed assessment.

And if that's the case, it has not been done to this date.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And next we have Peter Evans.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Welcome.

I'm a uh neighbor of Kim's, so I'm also here to talk about the Hillside Landscape.

You can speak into the microphone.

I'm also here to talk about the hillside Landscaping District, um, a couple of points.

I wanted to thank city staff for doing such a great job over the years of administering the funds that are collected.

We really appreciate that.

People have been very responsive when we've had an issue like Kim's.

The thing I've noticed, however, is about half the money that's being collected is being spent.

And I know me, Kim, and the rest of our neighbors are really concerned about the wildfire risk.

And so what we'd like to figure out a way is to work with city staff to help spend more of that money.

And last year's audit, 44% of the money that was collected just went to the bank, went to the county's investment pool.

We have almost $50,000 last year in reserve.

And it's a little little district.

You know, it's 72 homes.

The area that's covered is probably a quarter of an acre, half an acre, but 98% of the rest of the district is open space full of down trees, ready to burn if a fire storm comes through Nevada.

So again, we would just like to continue to work with city staff to figure out a way how we can address some of those needs.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

All right, that um concludes public comment.

Moving on to the consent calendar, do I have a motion?

I'll move the uh consent calendar, but I'd like to pull item number G12, please.

I'll second that.

Laura.

Councilmember Eklund.

Aye.

Councilmember Carkel.

Aye.

Councilmember O'Connor is absent.

Mayor Pro Tem Jacobs.

Aye.

And Mayor Farak.

Aye.

And since we have a couple guests, I'm gonna request, or I'm gonna have G the consent item uh be discussed first.

So G12, um we can talk about first.

Great.

Um thank you very much to our city manager and to the staff for answering my questions on this item.

Um, the one that isn't uh totally uh clear though, is that there is um a area um on the exhibit um where um uh it well first of all exhibit B wasn't in the document and I understand that um we're gonna make sure it is in the document when we we do send it to um the recipients um but that the specified areas that are not shown in the exhibit are gonna be now handled by the fire district, um and my concern is that um have we given the uh to the fire district the contact information to contact the um the folks that live out there um so they can start scheduling it and how are we handling the the pass off of the property because it's just not um uh this particular area but it's also other areas um like in front of my house.

So we're we're pushing it off to the fire district, or they've we have agreed to do it, but how are they gonna be commuting communicating with the homeowners and or the HOAs or the uh districts?

Uh the landscape districts, for an example, which don't have an HOA.

So how is that gonna work?

Because that's not in the document at all.

Um so if you could answer that question, I'll ask some of the others.

So I'll ask um staff to come up and address the very specific areas, and I would also ask staff to um connect with the two speakers so that they can get the information that they're seeking.

Um, generally speaking, we do coordinate at least weekly with the fire district on the different areas that are happening.

Uh they send out notices, we include those notices in the Friday memos, so I can I can speak specifically to the staff side.

I don't know exactly how the fire district connects with the community, but perhaps um public works staff can answer that part more specifically.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Cro Tem, Council members.

Uh, yes, the to reiterate what I think you need to speak closer to the microphone.

To reiterate what the city manager just said, the fire district is in regular contact with city staff.

They have a point person who does community outreach, and we are very willing and we would love to put them in touch with our attendees tonight and anybody else who might be interested across the community who's listening tonight.

The Nevada Fire District is great at communicating where they're going, what their immediate plans are, and uh we'd be happy to put them in touch with them.

Well, I I guess um I think it needs to be a little bit more formally done too, because frankly, we've been told a long time ago that um fire district was gonna be doing it at least in my HOA.

Um, but also they've never communicated with the homeowners out there, and it shouldn't take them coming to a council meeting to to be able to make that connection.

So, can we get a date certain from them on when they're gonna start sending out notices to the landscape districts or the CFDs in order to help make that connection?

We can certainly try.

Because my my concern is that it's not happening.

So, and it is fire season, and a lot of people are getting nervous because at least um in the area by Hillside Park over there, it hasn't been mowed in a long time, and so the grass is is pretty high.

Understood, and uh I'd like to introduce our administrative services manager uh in public works, uh Cindy Chong.

She has some general overview of the LAD, the landscape assessment district for Hillside.

And so she can kind of give a broad over broad overview of what's included in the packet and kind of describe what has been uh scheduled for the coming year in the scope of services.

So great, thank you.

I'm just a little bit shorter.

Thank you.

Um, yeah, over in Hillside and generally in our LEDs, we have regular routine services that happen for landscape maintenance.

And in Hillside in particular, you have two frontage areas coming into the neighborhood that are maintained, and then you branch off, and there's two parcels that open up into the open space area.

Um, and that provides access for us to get into the V ditches and kind of the water basins to provide maintenance.

In this contract in particular, you'll be providing hillside LED monthly landscape maintenance services.

So you won't see a crew there every week.

They'll be there more monthly.

Um the V ditches and the water basins get cleared out once a year.

Generally, that typically happens in the fall before the rainy season, so obviously it's cleared out so that water can flow through and not back up and flood.

Um, and any irrigation, all those things will get checked.

There's other annual things that happen like mulching this year in particular.

We're gonna be doing some plantings because things hadn't been done in those frontage areas.

I have been meeting with there is a um parcel owner homeowner there that had reached out to me last year and we had been talking because he had some concerns and also with uh high weed abateman with um what the fire was doing.

So I did also reach out to fire last year to find out what they were doing.

They said we do come through, we have a schedule.

Um, but those are kind of the routine things the irrigation, the plantings, the mulching, the general cleanup of the area.

So if you have other specific questions, feel free to ask, and I'm happy to answer.

So do you routinely send out notices to the homeowners that the work was is gonna be doing, or does the contractor do that?

Neither do it's not within the contract, and within the city, we don't we don't have a mechanism for all the parcel owners because we only have addresses, so we don't have emails or a general way, and it would go to whoever the parcel owner is.

So generally there's a monthly.

I will tell you this.

When I got here last year, we had a contractor, they were non-performing and they were non-responsive.

I did reach out to them multiple times to find out what was going on.

There was some issues in Hillside and Wildwood, both.

They had both.

We had to release them, that took some time.

So the contractor we have before we went out to RFP for this contract has only been on board since January.

So as soon as they got board in January, I had them do cleanups in both Hillside and Wildwood to bring them back to a better maintenance level.

RV ditches and our water basins that would normally get done, like I said in the fall, got done in January this year instead, which is later than normal.

The highweed mowing, I don't know.

You know, I don't know what fire districts doing.

I haven't had contact with them this year yet.

Um the mulching, I'll tell you like there was big piles of mulches.

If you went to Hillside and you drove in three months, I contacted the contractor.

They were, they said we're gonna get it done, and they never did.

So I finally had to get a new contractor, then I got the mulch spread.

So typically you should be having monthly routine services if you have the contractor adhering to their contract.

Okay, great.

Thanks.

That explains a lot.

Yeah.

Really appreciate that very much.

You're welcome.

I do have a question for the attorney.

Um, since I pulled this off the consent calendar, is it now subject to public comment?

There was already an opportunity for public comment um earlier, but if the chair would like to open it again, that's at your discretion.

Yeah, I'm fine with opening up.

Do you have any other public comment for this issue?

All right, I'm do you wanna.

I would just appreciate what she said.

And the microphone.

I'm sorry, Peter Evans again about the hillside issue.

I appreciate everything she said, and she's certainly correct that very little work was done.

Um, however, it's still only half of the money that gets collected from the 72 homeowners is being used for maintenance.

What we're doing is building a reserve for no identified purpose, and the homeowners would like the money spent.

We may be different than other Nevada residents.

We'd actually like your help in spending the money because we're scared to death of the fire damage.

And if it's not covered by the landscaping company, we don't care.

You're just building up a larger and larger and larger reserve, as far as we can tell, toward no purpose.

And what we'd like to help you do is dedicate that perhaps to wildfire improvements beyond just somebody coming through with a weed whacker.

I climb up the hills, drag fallen branches, trees all the way down, so the chipper people will come by and clip it.

But I I probably shouldn't be doing that.

I prune all the trees in one of the four areas that are included within the district.

I probably shouldn't be doing that.

I actually pull the weeds, nobody pulls weeds, people just weed whack and leave.

So we just would like to work with you to help spend the money to accomplish the things that I've identified.

So that would be my follow-up to her comments.

Thank you, Peter.

Uh City Council, City Manager here, Cunningham.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, so I would just ask public work staff to connect with the residents so that um you can kind of sort through the different financial situations, see if there are any pending capital program items that are outstanding that those uh reserves are being accumulated for, or if there are ways to step up improvements in that area.

So thank you very much.

Okay, all right.

With that, do I have a motion to approve that with the understanding that public works will take um a look at the financials and work with the um homeowners?

Um, do I have a motion?

Right to uh move approval.

Do you have a second?

I'll second.

Laura, can you take a vote?

Councilmember Eklund.

Aye.

Councilmember Carkle.

Aye, Councilmember O'Connor is absent.

Mayor Pro Tem Jacobs, and Mayor Farak.

Hi.

All right, so moving on to General Business, uh J one.

So we're gonna uh receive the community development department service improvement phase four and final report.

So I'd like to invite our community development director, Claire Hartman up for this presentation.

Welcome.

You got there fast.

Thank you.

All right.

I know you have several reports tonight, so I'll get to it.

So the purpose of today's presentation is to provide a wrap-up to our two-year service improvement effort.

And in addition to this presentation, we've put together our list of accomplishments in a three-page handout, which is attachment three in your staff report.

But I happen to know some of you like hard copies, so I'm gonna go ahead and pass hard copies around.

Great.

We are this report, if you had a chance to take a look at it, is a comprehensive summary or sort of suite of services, if you will, of what we offer now, and we're going to be making it into a brochure that's bilingual, so one is in English and one is in Spanish, and we'll have those available at our front counter.

So just to give some background about what kicked off this two-year effort, it started actually in 2020 with the Marine Builders assessment of our department and our services, our organizational plan, and then the city uh entered that assessment process again in the in 2022, and in 2024, I was here and I was had the privilege to finish that process up and present it to the city council.

So I came in at the tail end of that process, but as I'm looking at the themes here that you see, uh these are the same themes that kept continuing through from the 2020 assessment and into the um that current assessment.

And the good news here, the good news here is that it's very clear what we needed to do, because you had that continuity of themes.

The challenging part of it was some of these interests were heavy lifts, right?

Staffing, we had some uh quite a bit of vacancies, we had some deficiencies in what we could offer in terms of our technical expertise.

We relied heavily on outside consultants, which added time and cost and some unpredictability to for our customers.

Uh we had deficiencies in our technology platforms, uh, and we had paper records still that we were wrestling with.

Um, and then it's hard to build culture when you don't have a full team.

Um, and so those were some of the lifts that we were embarking on.

Uh, but when I came on board uh started right off, let's take a very good first step, simple approach, something that's free that you could do today immediately, and that's change your perspective.

So I set about uh coming up with our customer service approach with our team that really looks at our applicants and our residents, the people who come, contractors that come to us for information or permits, and treat them like customers, like they have a choice.

And I know you don't have really a choice when you need a permit from the city that you're in your properties in the jurisdiction of, but wouldn't it be nice if they felt like they had a choice and they felt like you were there to partner to solution with them?

And so that's essentially the approach that we that we take, and we stay consistent with that.

So, any time we do an improvement or we're trying to look at our services, we try to look at it in the perspective of our customers.

Um, and I think we've done a really good job on that.

So, this slide is a summary of sort of the flag, I would call them the our flagship improvement over the last two and a half years.

Um the approach that we took in this uh improvement plan period was to break it up into four six-month performance periods.

And the reason why we did that is one, we wanted this iterative return on investment conversation with the council because we were asking for resources, staffing resources, funding for technology, and we wanted that sort of routine feedback, and we also wanted time to be creative.

Because we didn't want to uh implement things that maybe someone had come up with or uh last year or two years ago, like what's happening now.

We wanted to be nimble and adaptive, so we wanted to have opportunities for creative development.

We wanted to be able to test, we wanted to be able to recruit and need people to help uh implement some of these ideas and build the ideas, frankly.

And we needed time to launch them and promote them in phases.

And so I appreciate the council's giving us the patience to break this improvement plan up into these four six month periods.

And some actions were short-term wins, you know, low-hanging fruit, if you will.

And then others were sustained in long term and actually took place across all four phases.

One of which was staffing.

So every time I came to the council to give a report out, this slide was always up there so you can see our progress.

We hired or promoted 14 out of the 25 individuals that make up our department.

That's phenomenal.

And we've hired really well.

We have a great talented team that put this these improvements together and it kept the momentum up all along.

We've had some additional positions that I would say were instrumental, and they were funded almost immediately by the council at the early first phase.

And then some of these took time to fill and also to adapt to make sure we had the right function.

I'll get to some of them in a minute.

The other thing that we were able to do when we were hiring the staff was add a additional bilingual capacity to the team.

So we look for technical expertise, earnestness to give good customer service, and an ability to be accessible to our customer base.

And I'm happy to say that we added we had one bilingual professional, we've added four additional.

And I hear Spanish at the counter all the time and on the phone.

So clearly we're meeting the needs of our customers and with that with that level.

Before I go on in this report, I do want to give an opportunity for my team to be recognized because I couldn't do any of what I'm about to tell you without the help of my team.

And so I want to give great big shout out to my community development team.

Please stand up and be recognized.

This plan is your plan that you put together.

And I want to thank those that there's a raise your hand if you were here before I even got here.

All right, Steve.

They are stellar, and we needed them because they provided the stability and the continuity, so we can actually make a seamless transition.

And then I want to thank all the newcomers because they add lots of energy, fresh ideas and perspectives, and they really made a great big difference.

So thank you so much.

And thanks for coming tonight and being a part of this presentation.

Alright, the next slides is just really a highlight of all the flagship services that we now offer.

One of the things out the gate is what we call permit connections.

This is an all-agency permit advice center.

One of the things that we saw as a missing link right away is not everyone understands that we're a limited city.

So in our department, we're just planning, building code enforcement, and the permit center, we also have public works, but we don't have sanitation and water and fire, and those are essential when you have a bigger project to get a permit on.

And so instead of going to the different agencies, especially if you are a homeowner or a business representative, you don't even know what questions to ask, maybe.

This is where you can go.

It's in person, so it makes it very accessible to everyone.

It's twice a month.

If it is a holiday, we adapt, so we always do it twice a month, and we'll advertise if it's an alternative date.

And it's been really popular, especially when people, I love it because it's right by my my office.

I hear a lot of the conversations, and you know, some people sit down and they're like, I don't even know what to ask.

And it's like, they'll help you, they'll figure out what questions you need to ask to get at least started or to finish that last piece of your puzzle.

Other things that we took off with right away, but I'll be frank, we we just work on this every day, um, is applicant support tools.

Why?

Because it makes everybody's life easier, right?

Um, and so we started off with just updating our website.

We took everything off and we put up current accurate checklists and application guides.

We started with that, um, and then we started building from there.

So we have a fee estimator that's coming out in this last uh phase of ours.

Um you can get appointments online through this uh portal.

You can uh you can check your permit status through this website.

Uh, if you don't know how to do it, uh there's handouts, there's little screenshot guides that we've put together to walk you through how what buttons to click.

Um, and if you can't do it on your own, come on down, you can get an appointment, and we can walk you through it.

It happens quite frequently in our in our lobby.

Um, other things I would say is uh we did a fee schedule update.

Um, that was early on in our first phases, and that was really to comb through the fee schedule and make sure it makes sense to just the regular person.

Can they read it?

Can they understand what uh what the fees are for and when to pay?

Um then we started to realize we're starting to offer some pretty cool services, but it's hard to get the word out.

And so one of our new positions that was added as part of this effort was a management analyst, and a big shout out to Miguel Um Perez, who couldn't be here tonight, but he's amazing.

Um that was a great ad to our department that position, but he really makes a lot of bright light to that.

Um, and he came up with uh the impetus to make videos.

We've never made videos in this department, and maybe we didn't even know how when we started, but we've made three videos.

One was just a welcome to the permit center.

Uh, and then the second two, we realized we wanted a specific one for homeowners and one for business owners because there's nuances to those populations.

And so I'm very proud of the team, and he included a lot of our staff members as part of those videos, and those help.

They're really short uh and easy to distribute.

And then moving on, um this is one of our big lifts that took quite a bit of investment by the by the city, not just funding, though it was a bit of funding, um, huge effort by the by the team, and not just our department, but multiple departments, not just the city, but our partner agencies, and frankly, also our community and applicants, because we all had to learn how to switch from what we were using, which was track it, which had a lot of blind spots to this cloud-based system through MainStars, our software program, but we call it Novato Permits, and it's a one-stop shop 24-7 permit center where you can check out records or look at statuses, you can apply, um, all from the convenience of where you are.

It took time to put this together.

There wasn't like it wasn't plug and play.

In fact, there was nothing to plug in and play.

So they spent 18 months building this ship, if you will, and they're still building it every day.

I know they have classes all the time for each other to like make it better, and not just for ourselves, but we also have trainings for our partner agencies so they can participate as efficiently as we do in this system.

But literally, it took uh up to 50 city staff members.

So we had members from public works and finance, of course, involved, because it really is an interdepartmental tool that we use.

Uh, and then we had about 20 to 25 champions really that spent quite a bit of their time dedicated to building really a great system, very intuitive system.

We launched on October 1st, and I have to say it was a success.

We were nervous about it.

There was that was a big change for everyone, but you know, this team really pulled it off, and that post-launch, we handled all those those issues.

We got people registered and we figured it out.

So, one of the first things out the gate that is a benefit of this new system is our ability to be fast.

So we offer express permits, which are same-day permits.

These are offered, they were initially offered to licensed professionals, but now homeowners are eligible to apply for these.

These are light-for-like replacements.

These are very common.

So we've done hundreds and hundreds of these, HVAC replacements, water users re-roof, windows, very common things.

Now there's very good guidance about what you submit.

You get that permit online, and the only time you're connecting with us is at an inspection.

So it's a very popular program with contractors and with homeowners.

We've more recently, since we've staffed up, we have three plan reviewers.

One's a plan check coordinator, but also can plan review.

We're building up our internal plan review team, which means we can keep more of these smaller permits in-house.

Uh, and we're starting to do what we call five-day quick permits.

Um, and so what that is, is it's harder than just doing online.

We have to take, we have to look at the plans, and we have to we might have to route it around across our desks or with other agencies, but we we're gonna get it done uh in that week.

Also, very uh very popular program.

So, one of the things that we started initially and we've kept up is our customer satisfaction survey.

Uh, and this is an anonymous survey.

Uh we kicked it off.

It had we have these little cards here.

I'll I'll pass these little digits around too.

We have palm cards for our permit connections, and then our little survey cards.

We actually keep these scan codes in our ID badge.

So if we're out inspecting or we're helping someone, or if you're just away from the permit center, these are all at the permit center.

Uh, they can just scan it and they can provide a survey.

One of the things that we get information on is we get real-time data.

So this isn't a survey that's collected, you know, a few months later.

We're looking at this all the time as they come in.

We might produce a report quarterly, but we're always looking at this, especially if it's related to something we've just launched.

We want that feedback, we want to adapt.

One of the things we learned is that we have a very diverse um group of customers.

Uh, you can see here is the pie chart of you know, all the different types.

Like I said, we have design professionals, business owners, residents, realtors, contractors, developers.

So, what that means is we have to also be diverse and know that they're coming from all these different angles.

So we have to remain nimble and and again shift and partner with who they are and how they come to us.

Um, one of the things I learned uh when we first kicked this off is there was a lot of pent-up frustration.

And we accepted that, we heard that loud and clear.

So when we first launched the survey, uh the category of more than six months ago for the last interaction, or what they wanted to survey about, was something that happened a year before, two years before, before we did these improvements, but they wanted us to know what was wrong with our system.

Well, we heard them, um, but what we get now is is more relevant to what we do, and so that you'll see you'll start to see that that part of the pie chart will start to shrink.

People are really wanting to they trust us now and they want to uh complete their survey in real time because we'll we are responsive.

Um, and then we did set a target of 90% to reach excellent, um, and we we were wondering if we were gonna meet that.

Well, we've been consistently meeting that because we just activated right away.

Um, and so we started hitting things that really mattered to our applicants in the priority that they they raised their hand.

Some things again, like the technology took time, but we would get updates like how we're doing to meet that, and so we consistently uh reach our goal there, and then one of my favorite parts of the survey, and I think of the staffs are the open comments because it just tells us really what's going on from their perspective.

Um, and these are some of the examples.

I won't read them here, but um uh there's shout outs here to Samantha and Elizabeth and Skye and George and Sean, but we get shout outs to all our staff, you know, and and uh we send them out to them, but really it's just a makes us feel really good that uh people take the time to make a commendation on one of our staff members.

But it's all across the board.

All of our staff members are getting these.

We have some high level comments here, happy with the new portal system, they like the new website.

Available, courteous, helpful, responsive, and better experiences than with other jurisdictions.

So I mean, I I set out to have the best permit center in Marin County, and I think I think we have one.

I think we have the best permit center in Marin County.

I really do.

I think these last two years have been phenomenal.

I've been in this industry for a long time, and I think this team is really extra special.

So I think you really should be proud of this team.

And with that, I want to thank the council, I want to thank our community that's participated in this, and definitely that staff that put this together.

So thank you.

Thank you.

When I saw this agenda item and the presentation, I just thought about how you all work so hard and you actually changed the narrative.

Now, like I feel like we were getting a lot of complaints on our permitting, and now it's I actually experienced it myself, and it was like the easiest thing ever, and um you all just did such an amazing job.

The system's easy, the feedback's incredible.

So thank you for your hard work, and thanks for making Novato residents feel confident now applying for a permit and just changing that narrative.

So thank you all on behalf of the council and myself.

So big props to you.

Alright, so we'll go to questions.

Uh Mayor Prince M.

Jacobs.

I want to thank you for all you've done, all of you.

Um I've pulled permits in probably 50 different cities.

And hearing that you guys refer to people as customers really makes a difference, and I think that was that was really great.

Um the software launch, I think, from what I heard went well.

I've used it a number of times to look things up, and it it's easy to use.

It really is.

Once you've used it once, you it's easy to work through.

Um the express permits program, I think is great.

Growing to five bilingual staff is wonderful, especially in this community.

We need that.

Um, the all-agency permit advice center.

I had compliments from a couple people who came in over the past couple months, and they were amazed at how easy it was to get all their answers right there.

So and McGill always has a smile on his face.

So congratulations.

Thank you, Councilmember Eklund.

Uh, thank you very much.

Uh, first of all, um, thank you for doing such a great job in getting this team together.

And to the team members, you're doing great.

And it's good to see that that feedback, especially when the people actually um say your name.

That means that they remember you and the service that you provided, and so um that's pretty outstanding.

So congratulations.

I did have a couple of questions though.

You the uh building um the vision organization assessment summary of recommendations.

Are there a couple of couple of these that you would like to do, either process improvements or whatever that may you may need a little help from us on?

Um, or are these pretty um pretty routine on some of the improvements?

Yeah, if you're referring to the attachment, that's the summary of recommendations.

We um so in all the progress reports, we were showing progress or completed.

Uh in summation, we have completed all of those recommendations.

So all of them have been completed.

All of them have been completed.

So this is the wrap up.

So uh some of the process improvements were certainly the permit streamlining has happened with the express permits, the uh the five-day quick permit, uh, the addition of the plan check coordinator position, uh, the iCloud-based interagency interdepartmental um Novato permit system allows for communication and and uh one platform for plan and review comments to go into, and it's all integrated as it gets to the applicants.

So, yeah, in summation, um, we've hit every single one of those recommendations.

That's that's pretty incredible.

And we did more.

So I didn't want to be limited to just that, so but we made sure that we hit those because that wasn't that's great.

I can remember when I applied for my first permit, um, it actually got lost in the system.

So um, but uh I can see the improvements over time, and I haven't had to do much permit work recently.

So I hope to do so in the future so just that I can experience it myself.

But thank you again for doing a great job and congratulations on your leadership that uh really forming a team that works together and really cares for each other, that really makes a difference.

Thank you.

And it shows council member Kirkle.

Yeah, I just uh wanted to echo all the wonderful things uh my fellow council members have been saying about the department, and for me, I've been here in this town for a long time, and this is you know, it's been quite a change, and it's it's a great change.

So I just wanted to add on to the uh compliments that uh my fellow council members have uh put forth.

Um that said, I just curious about the customer feedback and the the survey.

Um how often do you do that?

I mean, was this like uh recent thing?

But I mean, if I missed it, I'm sorry, but uh I was just curious about how often you pull your customers.

Uh well it's in real time.

So it is in real time, it's a it's a it's an ongoing real-time survey.

Uh part of Miguel's job, that management analyst function is to um pull them in and review them as they come in.

We do a quarterly report so we can look at statistical trends, um, and that's when we collect and batch.

But uh, because they come in in real time, if especially if it's very specific, or um, it's something we can be nimble and adapt to, like if they say, Oh, it would have been nice if da-da-da-da, and we can we can accomplish that, we're gonna go accomplish that, right?

So, this is why I think we've been so successful, is it is in real time, we are nimble about it.

Um, and it is anonymous.

I know I have heard like, oh, well, you know, if people aren't giving you the real information, or they are, it's anonymous.

I we can't see any identification on there.

They do say if they're a property owner or realtor, or you know, because we want to know what type of customer, so we do see that, but we don't see names unless, and some people do, many people do actually.

They say we would like uh just discuss my comments or ask further questions, and they'll write their name and an email, and then we call them, and they are always surprised.

They're like, we I don't really have anything, but I was just wondering if you'd call me back.

Oh, yeah, we do, we do.

You ask to call back and we will.

So yeah, that's how it works.

Okay, great, thank you.

All right, and I just have a couple questions.

Um, so today you guys hear what what's next?

And then I know we're working on doing a lot of work with our economic development strategic plan.

So I think permitting kind of fits nicely in, hey, we're open for business.

Do you have any plans to collaborate with economic development?

Okay, great question.

Um, yeah, I'm excited about um collaborating with economic development.

Uh one of the ideas I think I see emerging out of that is we we have a great permitting system, we have a good communication pool.

I think now we need to start looking at the zoning code and looking at making it business friendly, you know, because we haven't we haven't outdated zoning codes.

So we can be quick with our permits, but the fact that you need this type of permit versus something that's maybe a lower um authority, so you can streamline that permit, you know, we don't have that tool because we have an outdated zoning code.

So I think working with economic development, particularly for um uh our non-residential uses, because residential uses has been streamlined, right by the state, and so we're just codifying that in a lot of ways but but commercial uses don't have that same benefit and so we have to do that locally.

So I'm looking I'm looking forward to doing that type of work.

Great that's a good answer.

And then the Marin Builders Association have you introduced our new permitting system to them and kind of communicated with them the changes.

Yeah absolutely we actually check in from time to time they've been pleased with what we've been producing.

They like that we especially like our um the ability to survey and get real feedback they like that it's anonymous because they want us to get real feedback.

Yeah they've been excited about it.

We are starting to get a reputation for being the easiest place to get a permit so I like that.

Well amazing work.

All right now I'm gonna open it up for public comment if you have any public comment fill out a yellow card I'm not seeing one.

So any additional questions from the council all right thank you so much Claire and thank you staff it's really meaningful you guys showed up today.

All right now moving on to item J two we're gonna receive a presentation and consider adopting a resolution accepting the police department strategic plan.

Alright good evening mayor to the chief sorry I was I'm anxious.

You know I'm sitting here trying to wonder how I drew the short straw following Claire and all the amazing things they're doing in community development but we'll we'll see what we can do here.

But yeah so good evening Mayor Mayor Pro Tem and and members of the council I'm really excited to be here today to show you and kind of roll out our strategic plan that will be a three year strategic plan.

A little bit of background the the most recent one we can find that was done specifically for the police department was back in 2013.

I think we can all agree there's been a couple of changes since 2013 both in policing and in society so it seemed seemed the timing was right.

In fact we had our all department meeting just the other day and we learned that over the past two years we have replaced or promoted over half the department in just two years.

And so you know with all that new blood and the new excitement it really feels like now is the time to roll out a new strategic plan.

And so yes we're really excited about that and what that means for us.

I hope you had a chance to look through it or when we're done I hope you have time to because it really is a lot of information in there and tonight my goal is to just kind of give a high level overview of all these things because these are all the different pieces that went into the strategic plan that that led to the final build out of it.

And the first is always the mission vision and values you know I I the city manager actually put it the other day when she was talking about it and the first time that I heard somebody describe these things that made sense and that is that it it sets our direction sets our purpose and how we go about business and so through this process we actually spent a lot of time refining these and making sure they were right and I hope you can see through this the heart of it and that really was a heavy emphasis on working with our regional partners to make Novato safe.

And I would argue Novato is very safe one of the safer communities in the area but we can always be safer and you'll notice that in both the mission and the vision statement it talks about partnerships and this complex policing is getting we can't do our job without good solid partnerships and so that's really what we're striving to be and and you also notice with proactive like we're gonna go out and work you know not just sit around you know I feel like the post-COVID generation of cops really put us on our heels and kind of waited.

Now it's time, you know, long overdue to go out and actually, you know, be proactive, meet our community, address concerns that are coming up.

And so this is the process that we went through um we we hired a consulting firm, Jacob Green and associates, and they really did a good job putting all this together for us.

One of the things that I wanted to make sure we did in this was get real input, and not just from ourselves to tell ourselves how great we are in these things, but really from everybody.

And they took a great cross-section of community engagement surveys, and then city staff, city leadership, both uh sworn and professional staff within the department, and they did that through surveys and then one-on-one interviews, you know.

And here's a the breakdown of that.

They did interviews with um, I want to say 27 people, and there was different all these different topics and things that they talked about, and you'll see this is the breakdown of the responses on all the things.

And we had a really good turnout, and they were, you know, the firm was very impressed with the feedback and everything, and we're really excited where we're headed.

Now, there's a lot of information associated with this slide, not necessarily on it, but at the end of the day, this is the six goals that we came up with.

And I know six is a lot.

We when we went into this, we really wanted it to be enough that you know addressed everything we needed to, not overwhelming and very attainable.

And kind of one of the reasons we settled on six is I happen to have six people in my command staff.

So each person in my command staff owns one of these goals to make sure that we're moving forward on them.

Uh, we don't want it to be one of those documents that just sits on a shelf and collects dust.

You know, this our intent with this is really to build a foundational document for us moving forward over the next three years.

Um, like I said, we're very, very young, and so it it's really great to see so many things focused on our people for this these three years.

And a lot of it you'll see, so strengthening leadership alignment, consistent and accountability, and that's really to get us all on the same page, moving in the same direction.

You know, there's been a ton of turnover in this agency over the last few years.

You know, we spent the last couple years trying to stabilize that, and now it's really time to lock it in and and move forward.

You know, some of the typical stuff, your investment in facilities, technology, and safety.

We're already well on our way with some of that uh, really upgraded technology.

Um, the facility needs work, but that's obviously something that takes time.

Uh continually improving operational effectiveness, and that is right now we're going through all of our programs, all of our assignments, and really trying to find the best way to deploy our personnel to serve our public.

Uh as we mentioned, or I don't know if I mentioned it this time, but we've now maintained strong staffing for for a significant amount of time now.

And so we're really looking at beginning, you know, as we finish up this year, beginning next, rounding out all of our specialties that help the community, you know, and that's filling up our traffic unit, investigations, all those types of things.

Um, and also, you know, looking at other ways that we can improve effectiveness without spending money, right?

And and that's one of the things like we have a great partnership with the sheriff's office.

Uh we are now, after tonight uh partners in three different task forces with them, and it's hard to get people to understand what of value that is to us, because not only is it something that our people get to go and do and learn, it's an incredible retention tool because it's opportunities you don't always get, but it also builds the relationship between us and the sheriff's office, you know, because we're working together.

So when things happen, it's not a matter of okay, we'll help you because we have to.

It's like, well, yeah, we know you, we want to come help, and so you know, that relationship is paying off dividends, and it's great to get things moving again and locked in with them.

Um, communication.

I think every year I've ever been in law enforcement, communication is always difficult, and so one of the things we're really trying to do is standardize that and and talk to our people and find out how do you want to hear this information?

You know, me as a 50-something-year-old person hears it differently than these 20 somethings that we have working for us.

And so, in order for everybody to hear it and understand it, we got to figure out what that looks like.

And then developing leaders at every level, again, with such a young agency, we have to start getting ready to replace ourselves, and that doesn't start the day we're ready to leave.

And so, you know, the goal is now start developing people, empowering people to take charge of their own careers and figure out where they want to go.

And then the final one is supporting personal wellness, retention, and resilience.

Um what's great is we don't have recruitment on there, and hopefully we stay that way.

We're really focusing on the retention piece and with the wellness, right?

Taking care of the people we have, making sure that they're good, giving them opportunities and development and things like that, so they don't want to leave, you know, because it really is a great place to work.

And then with any strategic plan, you go through your SWOT analysis, and um I'd be lying if some of it doesn't sting a little bit, but I guess it has to if it's gonna be effective, you know.

But really, as it broke out, we're really proud of where we landed on this.

The strengths are very good strengths to work with, the weaknesses and threats are things that are things we can fix, and that's the great thing is we've got great people working there now and and are excited about this.

So I don't see any problem moving forward, and even on the threats, you know, it's it's not unique to us.

You know, every agency's dealing with these same things, and and so I I would argue that we're actually positioned very well to address a lot of these things moving forward, and and I'm excited about that.

Outcomes and next steps.

Well, now it's a process, right?

We have this thing document, we are vowing ourselves to stick to it and do it.

And um, one of the things that reasons we really like this particular consultant is it comes with a um a tracker, like a work tracker on the back end where each goal and each objective can go in and see where say where they're at.

So we can have regular regular check-ins and see okay, you're in charge of goal one, where you at?

What have you done?

Is it stagnant or is it moving along?

And really have some accountability to it, and um and moving forward, it really is heavily focused on our people, right?

And if we can have our people in good places, that's only gonna help serving the public, right?

And and really one of the things that we've been focusing on is empowering our people to get what they want or get who they want to be.

You know, there's so many different opportunities in law enforcement, it's encouraging them.

I tell them all the time, find out what you want to be great at.

There's so many different things, right?

And then once you figure out what you want to be great at, let us know so we can help you get there.

You know, and and so that's one of the things that that we've been working on, and really trying to figure out what it means to be Novato PD, you know, become an identity in who we are.

Um, and the the thing that I'm I'm most excited about is most of the changes.

I'm not gonna have to come to you for more money or anything like that.

They're all things that we're working on.

It's either relational or it's things that we can absorb or reorganize, and so we're excited about that.

Obviously, with like facilities and some of the major technology stuff, we'll have to figure out funding for that, but you know, there's a lot of things we're gonna do and not have to come back to this council, you know, asking for money and things like that.

So, you know, that's that's really exciting for us, and that is it.

So I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about anything.

Thank you so much.

It looks great.

Um, do my council members have questions?

Yeah, council member Eklin.

Uh, first of all, great presentation, great strategic plan.

Um, I it's really um interesting to see the evolution of the police department over a long period of time.

Um I was concerned a couple on a couple of the weaknesses slide, and um, one is this perceptions of inconsistent supervisory and management practices at times.

Are they happy to understand what that what that means for for the police department?

It what it is is it's about getting everybody on the same page.

And and I think one of the problems that we're still working through is the turnover rate at the top end of this department, and I think, you know, so everybody has exposure to different leaders along the way, and nobody's stuck around long enough to get everybody on the same page, and so what happens is there's just, you know, people drift a little bit in their own styles and everything, and and I think that's one of the things I'm excited about.

This is it's harder to drift when it's their in-writing and in process, you know.

And so what is the turnover then?

What's that?

What is the turnover rate?

For the police chief?

Or it's been like a bunch of police chief, but I think about the staff for the department.

I don't think we've had anybody leave in months.

Yeah, it's been a year.

It's been a while since recently.

And and I don't think we anticipate another retirement, Alan, for probably a couple years.

Um, you know, so that and that's what I mean.

Like, we're gonna are we're excited about really stabilizing things and moving forward, yeah.

And then the other one um about the facility conditions.

Um, so um I remember when that was like a new building, so um, have we started developing, you know, a plan of how we're gonna approach this because I I know that there was one thing on the agenda today that but that's um uh the leak that doesn't sound like it's too bad anyway.

Um, but so yeah, to answer your question, we we are working on a plan.

You know, I'll give you Spanini a ton of credit.

He's he's actually putting money to things in a plan forward.

Unfortunately, it's a building, right?

And those aren't cheap to fix, and it hasn't been touched in a long time, and so you know, we have to be patient and know that that takes time.

But no, I absolutely been working with public works and getting that plan together for the that's great.

So when you say it hasn't been touched in a long time, does that mean that there was some deferred maintenance that may have uh accelerated the um the degradation of the building itself?

I don't know if they accelerated it, it just over time.

Yeah, there's some deferred maintenance, it just needs to be.

There was some deferred maintenance.

Okay, I think that that's across the entire city with all of our city facilities.

We just haven't had funds available to um to stay on top of maintenance issues and big ticket repairs like we should be, but now that we're um stabilizing the organization, we are taking a big picture look at everything, which you'll hear about in the next presentation on budget, and uh starting to address a lot of those things across the entire city.

So it's very very exciting time.

I'm I'm glad to hear that because um it I don't think it was really pointed out that there was deferred maintenance.

Um it was I guess never brought up uh to the council, so but anyway, so thank you very much for a great presentation.

Really appreciate your leadership, and the way you've developed the team and our police department is uh really commendable.

Just want to thank you again for everything that you've done and everybody else and the police department.

I know we've got two other folks here, but um there's a lot of people back there that are working hard.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor Pepin Jacobs.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

It was wonderful to see, and it's nice to see a full department.

It's been a long time since we've had that.

Um, and I everybody I run into that works there seems very happy.

And I enjoy the fact that we're seeing some lateral transfers from other cities, which tells me that people want to work here, and they enjoy not just it's a job, they enjoy coming here and they're excited about it.

Thank you for all you've done.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

All right.

Uh I have questions.

Um is there any collaboration effort?

Like I know you mentioned public works, but like with um leveraging technology like the AI traffic lights to create safer intersections or stuff like that, like how does that fit into the plan?

You know, we haven't collaborated as far as traffic lights and stuff, we tend to leave that to the traffic engineers, but no, I haven't haven't talked about that.

Okay, you know, we do collaborate with technology through different things like the LPRs and stuff like that, but not specifically the intersections.

Okay, I was just thinking if you guys like identified a riskier area, um, I don't know, proactively flagging that for them, and then it could you know help you guys and help the residents too.

So that was just something I thought that proactive approach.

And then, as far as um grants and that sort of thing, where does that fit in?

Yeah, so that's one of the things we have been actively seeking.

Um and we did we were awarded two grants this year already.

It was the transportation grant that we always get, and then uh a cannabis uh impairment education and enforcement grant.

Uh the problem with a lot of these grants now is they come with a stipulation if it's a federal grant that says we have to sign an agreement to enforce immigration laws.

Well, I can't.

And so it's really digging through and finding ones we uh we qualify for every once in a while we'll get one we're excited about, and then page thirty two of thirty-five.

There it is.

You know.

And so no, we're actively seeking those all the time.

Um depending on what we can get, yeah.

Well, amazing work and thank you for the presentation and tell your whole entire staff um great job on the strategic plan and all the hard work on it.

Thanks.

All right, we're gonna take a five-minute break.

All right.

Welcome back to Novato City Council meeting.

Um we're on item G two still.

I'm gonna ask and open it up for public comment.

All right, I'm not seeing anyone.

Do I have a motion from the council?

I'll make a motion.

Oh, second.

Laura, can you take a vote?

Councilmember Eklund.

Aye.

Councilmember Carcole.

Councilmember O'Connor is absent.

Mayor Pro Tem Jacobs.

And Mayor Farak.

So now moving on to item J three.

This is consideration of approval for a resolution adopting the final city of Nevada operating and capital improvements budget.

I'm gonna welcome City Manager Cunningham to open up the item.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, good evening to you and the city council.

We're pleased to present the proposed fiscal year 2627 budget to you for final adoption tonight.

As you'll hear during the presentation, building the annual budget is an iterative process with considerable input from the public, city commissions, committees, and boards, and city council.

So during this year's process, we've checked in with you at least six times in public meetings to make sure your input and the Novato community's priorities are reflected in the annual funding allocations and associated work plan.

Funding priorities in both the operating and capital budgets continue to focus on public safety, streets, and park maintenance.

Overall, it's an ambitious work plan.

But staff are ready to tackle these challenges and continue delivering for the community.

Fiscal year 26-27 is generally a status quo budget with funding allocations representing an organization that's stabilizing after years of deficits, staffing reductions, sky-high employee vacancy rates, and mounting infrastructure needs.

You've heard about a couple of these things tonight and particularly about the staffing levels stabilizing and all the great things that everybody in all the different departments are doing.

Thanks to Measure M.

We have the staff and other resources needed to provide quality essential services to the community this next year.

And like our neighboring agencies, rising inflation and a suppressed national economy have negatively impacted our revenue outlook.

But before you is a plan that carefully balances available resources to continue making progress on your priorities.

In April, you saw the five-year financial forecast and provided budget direction that took into account both short and longer term funding needs, positioning continued financial stability at the forefront of your decision making.

We've also continued to leverage outside resources to make every dollar go further.

You actually asked about some of this just a few minutes ago.

While we weren't successful in receiving grant funding for year two of the SAFE team, you made it clear that these services are critical for our community and dedicated nearly half a million dollars in general fund monies to continue this valuable service, ensuring that some of the most vulnerable people in Novato can continue to receive mental health substance abuse and housing support that they so need.

And of course, we continue to look for grants that can relieve the general fund of this and other expenses.

This budget also continues to focus on other public safety efforts, including partnerships with neighboring jurisdictions in the state.

These are efforts that are directed by your priorities.

Some of those partners include the fire district for a fire ranger police officer, the state with an Office of Traffic Safety grant for DUI and traffic violation enforcement, and a cannabis tax fund grant for education and enforcement of DUI incidents.

The chief mentioned both of those just a few minutes ago.

I'm with TAM for an active transportation grant to address sidewalk gap closures on Redwood Boulevard, and as you approved tonight, another multi-jurisdictional agreement with the county sheriff for an officer assigned to the regional auto theft task force.

The budget also includes one-time monies that are earmarked to fund one-time projects the council and community consider vital, such as economic development initiatives, new technology to help drive customer service service improvements, a facility needs assessment to prioritize a huge list of backlog maintenance needs and added traffic safety improvements around schools in particular.

I'd like to thank staff for their thoughtful and detailed work in preparing their department budgets.

It really does take a village to put a budget together every year.

I'd like to thank the community for enthusiastically and honestly engaging with us through online surveys, budget pop-ups, and numerous public meetings, and you, City Council, for your willingness to take a deep dive into the city's finances and recommending a balanced budget that's intentionally shaped to deliver on the community's short and long-term priorities, ensuring fiscal sustainability for the next few years.

We don't want to go back to where we were a couple of years ago.

And before turning it over to Carla and Jen for the presentation, I'd like to recognize the both of them, along with our new public works director, Chris Benini, for their work preparing this year's budget.

I am all too familiar with the countless hours, exhaustive financial review and analysis.

Where did those where why won't this balance?

An intense focus, it's needed to pull together the annual budget and make it look effortless, understandable, and of course, balanced.

They succeeded on all counts, so a huge kudos to them for a job well done.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Carla and Jen.

Thank you, Amy.

I appreciate that.

And as you know, uh we've spent many hours in my office trying to get things balanced.

She's walked in on us a few times.

Mayor Farrakh, Mayor Pro Tent Jacobs, Council members, I'm pleased to be here with Jen Maldonano, our principal analyst to present the proposed 26-27 budget for a city council adoption.

This is a high-level overview of the full budget package.

And as Amy mentioned, we've been here several times since January.

This budget reflects the city's continued commitment to strategic planning and responsible financial management.

And as Amy mentioned, it is an organizational effort.

I'd like to thank the communications team who helps with the budget pop-ups, the budget video we did, the budget surveys.

They put in many hours doing those things in support of the budget of public works for their great partnership, especially the public works director, Chris Benini and the new deputy director who jumped right in to the CIP program budgeting, Mahesh Yad Luri, and then the rest of the departments for all the work they put in to submit the department budgets, and when I ask them to rework it, they do it.

So I think, you know, kudos to them for helping us get it done.

It's an organizational effort.

Tonight's agenda covers the full budget development picture, beginning with the overall timeline and process.

We will highlight the operating budget capital improvement program and the Marin Valley Mobile Country Club budget, and uh we'll conclude with the recommendation for the budget resolutions before council for consideration.

This is a responsible, forward-looking budget that maintains fiscal stability.

It aligns resources with both council and community priorities, recognizing that adjustments may need to be made once the council adopts its strategic plan.

Essential services remain fully supported, and organizational capacity is maintained.

The budget continues meaningful investments in infrastructure, safety, and long-term capital needs.

The proposed plan reflects transparency and months of cross-departmental collaboration, and it positions the city to navigate economic pressures effectively through the disciplined financial management.

We exhibit.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Jen to walk through the next part of the presentation.

Thank you, Carla.

Good evening, Council.

As Carla mentioned, this budget reflects months of engagement with our community, council, and of course, our commissions.

This slide highlights each point in the process where staff return to council to share updates and refine the budget at meaningful milestones.

Tonight we're pleased to present a balanced budget for fiscal year 27.

This budget is a result of collaboration across all city departments, as we've mentioned earlier.

Community or commissions and council.

Since the budget hearing, there have been no changes.

So tonight we'll go over a recap of the fiscal year 27 budget proposal before we consider adoption.

To start, the overall proposed general fund picture is balanced for fiscal year 27.

This slide summarizes revenue and expense by first identifying revenues and expenses directly generated or spent from the general fund, followed below by revenue transferred into the general fund to offset certain eligible costs.

And then transfers out of the general fund to pay for obligations that are paid from other funds.

On the next slide, we'll recap revenue projections for fiscal year 27.

Revenue projections show an overall increase for fiscal year 27 of 4.28%.

The biggest year increase year over year comes from transfers in of revenue from other funds to offset certain eligible costs.

As mentioned in previous budget development meetings, this budget cycle challenge has been managing inflationary costs with limited revenue growth.

However, after months of refining numbers, balancing community priorities with available resources, this is the second year in a row staff has been able to present a proposed balanced budget.

And now we will recap expense for fiscal year 27.

Overall expense in the general fund for fiscal year 27 is projected at 62.5 million dollars, a 4.28% increase overall from the prior year.

Some of the notable changes in expense for fiscal year 27 is an increase in personnel costs, mostly related to health benefits and the unfunded accrued liability.

Other notable changes include a decrease of 5.87% in professional services as recruitment efforts to hire permanent staff have made significant progress.

And now we will recap the city's personnel allocation history before moving on to the capital improvement program.

The proposed changes in FTE year over year is a decrease of point 0.75 full time equivalent employees.

However, tonight, item G6 approved earlier on consent, will immediately amend the proposed budget and take the FTE count from 202.75 FTE to 203.75, 203.75 FTE with the inclusion of the grant funded position.

And now I'm going to return the presentation back to Carla to wrap up.

Transitioning into the capital improvement program.

This portion of the budget outlines the major projects that support community infrastructure safety and long-term investment and city assets.9 million in planned expenditures.

Funding sources are primary primarily special revenue funds dedicated to infrastructure needs.

Projects span streets, pedestrian safety facilities, and parks.

And while challenges remain, the city is positioned to move forward with stability and confidence.

We appreciate council's guidance and the community's input as well as the involvement of all the departments within the city through the development of the budget.

Staff recommends the council adopt the resolutions for this 2627 operating capital and Marin Valley Mobile Country Club a budget, and then as the Navado Public Financing Authority, adopt the budget for the NPFA.

After adoption, our next steps include finalizing the complete uh budget document, uh, which we've been able to bring much further this year than we have in past years, thanks to Jen.

Uh, preparing future budget amendments as needed.

Um, and Jen mentioned the one grant-funded position that will result in an immediate budget amendment.

Uh, conduct quarterly budget monitoring, including reports to uh the finance commission and council, and then uh we're already thinking about mid-year processes, and this budget isn't even adopted, but that's part of the next uh part of the process.

And with that, I'll turn it back to you, Mayor, um, for questions.

Thank you so much.

All right, council members.

Do you have any questions?

Councilmember Eklund.

Yes, thank you.

Um, J.3.4, that attachment.

Um, it's the capital improvement program for it it's stated for 2627, uh, but I I'm not sure if is 2627.

Um it looks like it's a close, these are closeouts, but that's part of my question.

I'm not totally understanding this chart.

So I'm gonna wait till you get to it before we I ask some of the questions.

Uh yeah, this um particular chart um is not incorporated in um the budget document.

So part of what needs to be approved tonight, or part of the capital improvement program budget is that some of the projects are slated to be closed out, and then that money will be reallocated, and that's what this chart represents.

Right, and that that's what I had questions about is that it isn't these close out for 2526, not 2627.

Uh yes, however, the budget action would occur as part of the um within fiscal year 26-27.

So, yeah, Mike, I see I see the issue with the labeling.

Yeah, I just it was a little confusing to me because and then project closeout and reallocation.

What is the parentheses?

Is that a deficit or is that um the amount of money that's remaining?

So when it's um in parentheses, that's the amount that's the amount of money that's remaining that's being taken back from the project to make the project zero.

If it's in um uh positive, that project was in a deficit, and we need to um bring it to a zero balance.

So we'll have if I read this right, then the ones in parentheses is we're bringing it back to the general budget for 26-27, correct?

Uh it would be all various different funds that these monies are in, but yes, there would be uh in the first column, it's like 1.2 million that's coming back into the capital improvement program to um then be reallocated to other projects.

Yeah, gotcha.

And so, but these projects are being closed out.

Exactly.

Great.

And then what is this close out to consolidate San RIM projects?

Why was the San RIM project separated?

Um the way that partly it's for our tracking.

Um, public works director Benini uh, I think reviewed the projects along with the public works staff and did some consolidation of the San Marin project, which I think City Manager Cunningham may want to say something, or um the public works director can explain the consolidation, but we are taking the money out of the multiple projects that we have and then reallocating it in the appropriate years.

So, as you may recall, um, Marin Water recently came to us with a proposal to put a pipeline, a water pipeline up San Marin Drive, which has resulted in us pausing on our capital program and our pre-planned um projects and stepping back and taking a broader look at them because we don't want to go and do a project and then in a year have Marin Water come through and do their project and all of our stuff gets ripped up.

That's one of the things that government gets left out for.

Um so we are stepping back, we are consolidating all of our projects, realigning the timing, and um when we understand more from Rinwater what their timing is on their proposed project, then we'll come through and let you know which of these projects will be handled first or second, or if we need to um we have an opportunity to do something a little bit different.

So that these San RIM projects were not done then, correct?

These were proposed projects um on San Marin that we are pausing that we are delaying because of the proposed marin water project.

That's great, but the 1.2 million dollars, we're gonna leave that there for those projects, or are we gonna bring those that money back into this next fiscal year for reallocation?

So we're doing a study of the full corridor, and some of those funds will be used for that, and then we'll understand better how those money should be prioritized for use on Sam Marin.

Okay, great.

Yeah, thanks for explaining that.

Um slide number five.

Um help me to understand um so it looks like for 26.27 um it's looking like there is um uh more expenditures anticipated than funding initially, and so it looks like there's a 9.3 million dollar deficit, and then we're actually transferring in 11.8 million.

Where is that coming from?

The eleven point eight million, is that what you're asking?

Is where is that coming from?

Or yeah, you're gonna have to speak into the microphone because I'm having a hard time hearing you.

Sure, that's a combination of um all of multiple different funds, gas tax is one of them, um, measure M is one of them to backfill operating costs.

Um, it was in our budget hearing.

There's a really detailed slide of all of the transfers in.

Okay, is it uh possible for you to um uh make a copy of that slide and and just send it out on email to us?

Um Jen, isn't that in the budget document as well?

It is also in the budget document.

Yeah, it's in the budget document.

We can get that page number for you before we leave tonight.

Great.

Councilmember Erklin, um, I have another council member and then we'll come back.

Does that work?

Okay, but um so I'm not finished with this page.

Okay.

Councilmember Carkle.

Uh yeah, so I just have a quick question on slide seven.

Um my question uh relates to the second item on their uh employee benefits.

Uh there was a jump um from 10.2 to 11.4 million, eleven point oh five percent increase.

Would it be fair to say that a lot of it is attributable to um like uh pension liability or where's that increase coming from?

Yes, that's primarily driven by the unfunded accrued liability payment.

So how much of that um increase, I mean, in terms of dollar amounts uh, because there's a little bit of a disconnect, but I mean, track one-to-one on the 4.6 to 11.05, but yeah, about 8% of that is um health benefits.

But um, in the budget document, you can see on page um six, there's a UAL breakdown, and that cost is about six point nine million dollars.

Okay.

Uh was there um usually there's like a prepayment option on you know, did we utilize that option because that results in some savings, correct?

Yes, we we are going to be prepaying and we'll save about 223,000 by doing that.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Councilmember Eklund.

Okay, going back to slide number five.

Okay, so the transfer zoom transfers out page is um in the draft budget, it's read page 13, and that lists all of the transfers in and all the transfers out.

Can you go through it?

Okay, transfers in, transfer in from measure M, transfer in from emergency disaster response, transfer in from disasters and trust, uh deposits in trust, automation surcharge, San Pablo, CFD, gas tax, PD special projects, parks measure A, restricted revenue, NPFA, ARP, gas tax HUDA, and Hamilton Trust.

Transfers out include insurance reserve, um actually there's nothing on that one for this year, nothing on that one, uh facilit long-term facilities maintenance, and uh pension obligation bond debt.

So how much of measure M money are we using in this budget?

Are we using all of it?

What's coming in for the year, or are we putting some measure M money aside?

8.2 million is being transferred into the general fund to fund ongoing operations.

The remainder of Measure M is being trans allocated to uh other to other items, primarily um capital improvement uh program and the measure M table is on uh red page nine.

That shows the full measure M allocation.

And I'll just add it's broken out that uh measure M allocation is broken out by what's going into the general fund versus other funds.

So we have that breakdown there.

Great, thank you.

That's it.

All right, I'm gonna open it for public comment.

If you'd like to speak, please fill out a yellow card, not seeing any other comments or if someone wants to make a motion.

I'll make the motion.

Oh, second.

Laura, can you take a vote?

Councilmember Eklund.

Aye.

Councilmember Carkle?

Aye.

Councilmember O'Connor is absent.

Mayor Pro Tim Jacobs.

All right.

And Mayor Farak.

Aye.

All right, our budget passes.

Councilman, you may I clarify, was that a resolution or were you adopting only the resolution to both resolutions were adopted for the record?

Thank you.

Yes.

I'm not gonna go ahead and state the resolution.

Just say motion as present.

We move as presenting.

Um, thank you for your hard work on this.

Um moving on to item J 4.

Um, this is consider adopting a policy addressing how the city will respond to disruptions on the telephone or internet service that prevents members of the public from participating remotely in accordance to Senate Bill 707.

So, gonna invite our city clerk to present the item.

Thank you, Mayor Frack.

So recent legislation was passed under Senate Bill 707, which has made changes to the Brown Act, which apply to the Navado City Council.

The most notable change is the law in the law is that in is the requirement to offer remote public participation for city council meetings, which will begin on July 14th.

Also, as part of the law, the city council must adopt a policy by July 1st, which addresses how the city will handle any disruptions in internet or telephone service, which prevents the public from participating remotely.

So, in accordance with the law, the uh proposed policy states that in the event of a disruption in service, the city council will call for a recess for up to one hour or until the service is restored, and make an effort to restore the service, so telephone or internet service.

If after one hour service cannot be restored, the city council has the option to either adjourn the meeting, continue the recess to keep trying to restore the service, or make findings that a good faith effort to restore for service was made and to continue on with the meeting without remote participation, and that choice of how to handle that would be at the pleasure of the city council at that time.

The policy also addresses disruptive behavior from the public and outlines the steps that can be taken if a remote participant is disruptive, which includes the option to prohibit the person's audio, video, or removal from the meeting if needed.

And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Any questions from my council?

No, Pro Tem Jacobs.

Thank you.

Um, when we did do remote during COVID, did we have any disruption in the service at that time?

Oh disruption of the service, no.

Okay, good.

Yeah.

Knock on wood.

Okay.

Open it for public comment.

I'm not seeing any public comment.

I'm gonna ask the council for a motion.

I'll move to I'll move the approval of the budget.

Do you have a second?

Second.

Laura, can you call vote?

Councilmember Eklund?

Aye.

Councilmember Carpal?

Aye.

Councilmember O'Connor is absent.

Mayor Pro Tem Jacobs?

Aye.

And Mayor Farak.

Aye.

Alright, that passes.

So now moving on to adjournment, the next regular city council meeting will be held on July 14th, 2026.

Do I have any council member that has someone they'd like to adjourn in memory of?

All right, seeing none.

The meetings end.

Thank you