All
right. So, we will begin this meeting as we begin every meeting with open time for public expression. This is the part of the agenda where people
We'll want to talk about items that are not on our agenda tonight, may do so.
Every speaker gets three minutes, and yeah, we'll start with the chamber, then we'll move to Zoom.
Welcome.
Thank you, good evening.
Michael Ardito, lifelong resident of Fairfax.
I'm here tonight to announce that this last week in of August, the community will be celebrating the 75th anniversary.
Diamond Jubilee of our public high school since 1951, Sir Francis Drake, now Archie Williams.
As a proud, great graduate when Archie Williams was my
ultimate teacher and track coach, and now he's such a teacher at the high school since 2017,
this year I'm one of the people working diligently to help bring our community together
to celebrate the school's milestone anniversary.
This Friday will be a golf tournament.
That night's school alumni, music performers with friends will be at various venues in the
Ross Valley and San John Moe Valley, including a band playing here at Live on the Avenue.
On Sunday afternoon, on August 30th, there will be a day on the green picnic on campus
with music.
There will be historical displays in the student center, speaker presentations, and celebration
cupcakes and ice cream while supplies last.
Vintage Drake, pirate athletic wear, we rescued from the school's athletic field house
before demolition will be available on campus this weekend.
The hundreds and hundreds of athletic clothing are worth thousands and thousands of dollars.
Athletic wear will be available for a donation or free by participating in the passport puzzle.
Large green capillators are in some storefront or restaurant windows and
fairfax in San Isomal, like the annual hunt during the Fairfax art walk.
Please look for the green diamond emblem.
The weekend will culminate on Monday night, August 31st with a sold out second annual
Drake Archie Williams athletic hall of fame dinner at Jepard Pillow.
Everyone can participate this last weekend of August by wearing the school colors of green with white or black as
Clues for the puzzle on Thursday, August 13th the California Historical Landmark plaque for Drake and the Golden Hines landing in 1579
Was dedicated in West Marin Sunday, August 9th marked the 90th anniversary of Arche Williams winning the only bit gold medal for track in
1936. Thank you. Thanks Mike. May I just ask if there's a digital
All notice of all of those events, which sound great, if you could just provide them to our town clerk so that perfect that would be great.
Thank you so much.
Welcome, Kelsey.
Good evening, good evening mayor and councilmembers, Kelsey Fernandez, San Enselmo resident.
And I'm here tonight because I know that you're going to decide soon whether to end tobacco and nicotine sales in our town.
As a resident and a parent, I want to share what I don't want those products hold here.
My kids are now in their 20s but they both grew up here and tobacco and nicotine use was
a problem among their peers.
We knew it then and despite all the education, the parent monitoring, and the regulations
and enforcement, youth use is still a problem today.
Personally, I wouldn't want a gun retailer in San Insombo, and tobacco kills far more people than guns do.
More than 10 times as many.
Removing tobacco and nicotine cells isn't infringing on anybody's rights.
No town is obligated to sell tobacco or nicotine products, or guns for that matter.
residents can still possess and use these items.
They can still buy them elsewhere.
This is a matter of what's best for our town.
I hope you'll see that these products aren't good for our community, our kids, or our environment.
Thank you.
Thanks, Kelsey.
Who's next?
Jeremiah, come on up.
I'm Jeremiah Mock.
I live in Court of Adair.
I get a evening vice mayor and council members.
Can you hear me?
Yes, you're fine.
Great.
Thanks.
So I've been watching with interest your deliberations
with regard to this issue about potentially banning
the sale of tobacco and nicotine products.
We in Coronamidera are very close to doing that.
And so as you can see, this is a county wide movement
that is rapidly spreading.
I know that some of you have been grappling with the issue
of concern about banning the sale of products, both with regard to the impacts on retailers
and the impact on consumers. I want to share with you that there is no constitutional
right to sell tobacco and nicotine products that's settled case law and federal court, and
And there is no right to purchase tobacco and nicotine products.
The courts have been very clear about that as well.
There is a in our Bill of Rights, the ninth amendment which covers the liberties and
freedoms of individuals that are not explicitly described in our constitution.
And there is no fundamental right to sell or purchase these products,
particularly because they're dangerous and deadly.
90% of smokers start smoking when they're below the age of 18.
And we know that individuals don't have the ability to consent to start using dangerous and deadly products.
We know that adults often find themselves addicted to these products and
give up a tremendous amount of their personal liberty to the tobacco industry,
which designs the products explicitly to addick their customers.
So I want to just urge you to think about your position here in this historical moment.
The retailers who sell these products are connected to the tobacco industry.
The tobacco industry could never sell their products if it weren't for the cooperation of retailers.
And in particular, the retailers who take payments from distributors to promote their products in key positions within their stores and to put up advertising that often targets children.
So we have a long tradition of banning consumer products in the United States.
When we recognize that there's a public health imperative and urgency,
just recently California banned the sale of carpet that is treated with chemicals that are known to harm children.
The federal government has banned the sale of nicotine as a pesticide because it's so harmful to the environment.
No farmer had the right to purchase nicotine as a pesticide, no chemical company had a right to sell those products.
So I urge you to think about the decision in that frame.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jeremiah.
Bridget, come on up.
Welcome.
Thank you.
Good evening.
I'm Bridget Clark, and I live in San Ensemble.
I wanted to mention a couple things.
First of all, if you didn't know, the first week in October
is a week without driving.
And I would love to see more people participate.
I know I've talked to a few of you about this already.
And I heard in a meeting last night that Terrell
all is signed up to at least participate in some capacity.
It doesn't have to be the entire week, and the idea is that you can see what it's like
to take public transportation or bike or you choose how you want to do it, but an international
walk-in roll day is October 7th, so it's the same week you could do it with the kids.
The other thing I wanted to mention in working with Kelsey and Jeremiah on substance use,
I was looking at some of the remarks that the American Cancer Society has put out, and I just wanted to share this with you.
They clearly state that nicotine, carcinogens, and other toxins are absorbed through the lining of the mouth.
So smoking, including cigars, can cause many of the same health problems as smoking cigarettes, no matter the size cigars are tobacco.
The smoke from them has the same cancer-causing chemicals and other toxins found in cigarette smoke.
All cigars are dangerous to your health, contributing to thousands of premature deaths per year, specifically attributed to cigar smoking, because I know there's some question about whether cigars are dangerous I've heard people questioning.
The easier the access, the more chance of using, I heard even when I was at live on the
avenue of someone saying hey does Ludwig sell cigarettes and I was thinking oh no, I'm
going to have to smell more secondhand smoke which I do smell a fair amount of during live
on the avenue sadly but so the easier there is access, the more likely we're going to have
to be exposed to second hand smoke is my point and I personally would think that you're
doing a lot of us a favor if you would eliminate all tobacco sales, so I appreciate you considering
this. Thank you. Thank you Bridget. Anyone else in the chamber? Sir,
anybody online? Mayor, we do have one hand raised and Julia, you have been unmuted.
Welcome,
I actually sue Saunders under my dollar account.
Good evening, Council members and members of the public.
I just wanted to make people aware that there is a new program from the state that has rebates for electric vehicles.
30, $750 for a new and $1750 for a used.
You can google my first rebate. I mean my first EV. I'm sorry.
We'll take you to a website that explains how to apply and get the rebate. It comes off at the dealership, so it comes off the price of the EV. There is also still a $1,000 rebate for a used vehicle from PG&E and 4,000 for people who are income qualified, which in Marin is actually quite high. A one person making up to $117,000 a year
will qualify for the $4,000 rebate from PG&E for a used EV.
I also want to let people know that MCE, the clean energy provider we have, is giving $2,000 rebates
to install a heat pump and a $2,500 rebate to install a heat pump water heater.
And there are no income limits for that.
Anyone can apply for those.
You just have to be an MCE customer.
There are also MCE programs for upgrading your home's energy efficiency.
And there is a program also from the state for low income customers that will do your whole
home efficiency upgrade.
So they're really good rebates right now.
For building electrification rebates or home energy efficiency, you can go to the switch
is on, switch is on.org.
And for the other ones, my first EV, just Google that for the state rebates.
And then PG&E's website for the PG&E used EV rebates.
Thank you very much.
Thanks so much, Sue, informative, as always.
Anybody else online?
Mayor, they're going all their hands raised.
All right, then we will close public comment and we'll move on with our agenda now is the time for council member updates liaison reports updates from staff and requests for future agenda items is there anybody who'd like to start go ahead you off quick tonight.
Because August is kind of quiet just one meeting really the report on which was the meeting of the central marine police advisory council on August 13th
The biggest thing coming out of that, and this is, I think, great news for those of us
who care about privacy and the safety of our communities, is that when the CMPA contract
with flock cameras ends in October, we will not be renewing that contract.
Flock cameras is automated, license plate readers, which are installed on traffic signals
and elsewhere in our communities.
There has been a large upswell in recent days and months against flock because it has been.
Their data have been accessed by third parties in the federal government with whom that information may not or should not be shared according to California statute.
and so you have seen it already been in San Mateo County moved toward
that in Los Angeles County and elsewhere now we in Marin are also in
central Marin not renewing our contract with flock that said automated
license plate readers have been very valuable to our police force in solving
crimes so it is not the intention to not have a provider of automated license
plate readers in central Marin the chief is actively looking and having
conversations with other providers whose data practices and data governance is better
than flock, frankly, but I'm very pleased that we have moved in this direction.
And I think anybody in our community who has similarly had concerns about the way that
this data might be used for immigration enforcement or other actions can also be equally pleased.
So that's the news coming out of CMPA.
Like I said, there was really only one thing to report on for me other than the fact that
today is August 25th, which makes it National Park Service
Founders Day.
It was this day in 1916 that would grow Wilson
created the National Park Service.
And we have three national parks in Marin County.
Point Ray is Golden Gate and Muir Woods.
So we're really lucky to have an embarrassment of riches
so we can celebrate National Park Service Day today.
Excellent.
Thank you, you have anyone else?
Go ahead, Vice Mayor Walker.
Good afternoon.
I say the most fun thing this month is I actually
got to go to three live on the avenues. The energy there is amazing and it continues
to grow. It's been such a good year. The time intensive, though less exciting thing
that a lot of time has been spent on, on behalf of the town is MCE. I participated in
the grand jury response for the entire agency. And we spent about 20 hours crafting a response
that was detailed, accepted quite a bit of accountability
around the things that did not go well for MCE.
We've already put a few things in place
and when I say, I was appointed to the board in June.
So most of what happened before my tenure,
but the 20 hours of work on the grand jury response
and we're in happened after.
So San and San went was quite active.
But what I can say because I believe most of us use MCE
As rate payers, we are absolutely being defended and thought about in these processes.
And the organization itself, and you heard a little bit from Sue, the staff inside the
organization are rate payer focused.
How can they help us better connect with our communities, come to our Climate Action Committee?
So while there's quite a bit happening around governance and quite a few things that we're
doing at the senior staff level, including changing reporting structures and things like
that.
I want you to know that there is balance inside the organization, good work being done
and we'll talk in great detail about the grand jury report, but rate payers are being
thought of and changes are already happening and there's an excellent article in the IJ today
with additional information for folks who are interested.
Thank you, Vice Mayor.
I'll go. So the fire board cancelled the meeting this month. It's kind of slow in the summer
because it's the time for staff to take vacations. So we do only usually have one meeting in July
and one in August for that purpose. And so what I have to report, though, is that this Saturday is
our Baldy Dash. That's a benefit for live on the avenue. It starts at Robson at 430. We hike, run,
walk up to the top of Aldi and back and then we end up at Imagination Park and
crown the champion which is the person who comes in dead average. The average
here is the winner. I was one away from that last year and then we give out
cool merchandise like this patch here from last year. It all is a benefit for
live on the avenue so you can walk it which I did and chatted the whole way and
still came very close to winning but please sign up if you haven't you know
almost everybody's been to the top of Baldi at some point but if you haven't
in a while as always it's a spectacular hike and view so I would encourage
that you can just go to type in Baldi Dash Google that and it'll go right to the
site you can sign up later it doesn't matter or just show up at 4.30 and pay
later and it's a good time.
And there's 332 people already signed up, so be the next, impressive.
Nothing from Council Member Callaway, and I'll just briefly echo a couple of things
that were said here, live on the avenue, continues to be great.
The vibe downtown is, you know, everything we always envision sin and someone could be, and
so that's pretty cool.
And I was also at the Central Merin Police Board meeting and a couple of things I want
to point out about that because I'm very happy we are discontinuing our contract with
flock.
And as you have said, there's been a lot of concern about third-party entities getting
access to those records.
And I think if you, there have been a number of news segments that have really highlighted
the misuse of flock and internally in that platform.
You know, last week tonight had a really poignant one on it that I encourage everybody to watch.
But I think one of the things that I want to highlight here is that this was something that staff became hyper aware of and was brought to us by the chief.
I've always been proud that we have a pretty proactive administration at our police department.
They don't wait for, you know, the stuff to hit the fan, they try and be ahead of the
curb.
And in this case, we were supportive of their recommendations, certainly.
And as you all have said, this doesn't mean that we're not going to utilize that technology.
We're just going to utilize a more reputable vendor.
You know, back when this was first approved, Council Member Callaway and I were on the police
board.
we both had concerns and questions, we'd ask that instead of just moving forward with it at the time,
we had a chance to bring it back and have a discussion at the local councils, which we did at the time.
Again, everybody's starting to use this technology. It made sense, but we didn't know what we know now,
and so this was a good prudent and proactive decision brought forth by our police chief and the staff
there and was really pleased to get that recommendation from our command staff. So yeah, and that's
So that's the only other update I have.
Dave, do you have anything from staff?
Do you have several things?
I'll be quick.
First one I wanted to make sure everybody was aware
that we have two ash trees on the town hall lawn
that are completely dead and we're gonna be taking them out.
And we're looking to get mature shade trees replacing them.
Those are very expensive,
but we are talking to a couple potential donors
to put trees that will work long-term there.
It's always shocking to see a tree come down, but if you go outside tonight you'll see they're completely gone.
And then secondly I wanted to point out two things and I think they're coming up on the screen right now.
Let's go backwards here.
There we go.
So many of you know, I know the council all knows that we have been working on creating oops.
Working on creating a pocket park or first pocket park.
And it's it's in a spot that sort of is between Forbes and Hildill and it
was an area that used to be a pass-through. And I think when I leaned over
growing up and then the traffic was so heavy that the town decided to block it
out with the chain and it became sort of a parking lot for rundown vehicles and
it you know kind of was a bit of a challenging area for us to sort of enforce.
And so working with some neighbors we came together to look at what could be
There and we put together a plan for a very modest small park although that even that you know getting everybody
Everybody's consensus was you know a bit of a challenge. We did it over a number of years
We had both
Mayor Burdo and councilmember
Burke helping with that effort along with some great staff in the rec department and public works and I'm happy to say that at this
Right now we have a park
So this is a rubberized play surface, climbing trees, like you see in a lot of spots right now.
Some sort of natural benches.
We're very proud to say that it's accessible.
If you see the sidewalk to the park, to the logs is wheelchair accessible.
And it's getting a lot of use.
And you can't see as there's a picnic table.
You see the very end of it there.
So, like I say, it's a very modest park, but it's the first park we've sort of produced in a long, long time, so we're proud of that.
We will be having a ribbon cutting ceremony on the 19th of September at 1030, and we invite everybody to come on out.
Mayor Burdo and myself and public work director Schneider will be there to make some brief comments.
And then, last thing is on the 17th of October, we'll have our annual fall town cleanup.
We'll meet at the Town Hall Plaza.
We have a number of projects and slated and what we normally do is everybody that shows up.
We kind of put teams together and send them off to do the different work.
And then we come back and Creekside has been traditionally very generous to provide a lunch for everybody.
So this annual tradition continues and we hope to see everybody down on the 17th and that is it.
Dave, just one thing on the first couple of things on one item, on the Hilldale Pocket Park.
I first want to recognize Council Member Burke's leadership on that.
Absolutely.
You know, this was something that community members had brought up.
She took the ball and ran with it and is a big part of why we have this park.
So I would like her to be able to say a few words of that a little bit and join me in the
ribbon.
Thank you.
Awesome.
Thank you.
That's it.
All right.
Any other questions of staff from Council members?
No.
Okay.
All right.
All right, then let's move on.
This will be our consent agenda.
These are items that are fairly non-controversial.
They could all be achieved in one vote.
However, my colleagues and I have the opportunity to pull any items if we so choose for a separate discussion.
First, I would like to open a public comment on the consent calendar.
Anybody wishing to comment on any item on the consent calendar may do so at this time.
Every speaker gets three minutes.
So I'll open up the floor.
I see former council member Doug Kelly coming to the mic.
Good evening, Mr. Mayor and council members.
As you know, I serve on the Rossada sanitary board of directors.
And was serving for a long time on the central marine sanitary board of directors.
We now have two alternates serving there, Kathleen Schaeffer from San Samo.
And Adam Andrew poster from, he's the no valley public work structure is also serving there.
The rates we're getting are unfair to San Isomo, to Fairfax, to Larkspur, to Sleepy Hollow, to Greenbray, and to Russ.
It's almost intentional.
There's other things going on there.
I would love to see at some point if maybe a member of the town council would be a liaison.
We have one from Larkspur.
There's a lot of things going on. This is not a one off.
We are working on resolving these in the most friendly way we can,
but we're going to have to resolve some of these issues that have been going on.
And this is just...
Just one of them. Thank you, Doug. Thank you. Kathy, welcome. Hi, my name is Kathleen Schaeffer. I'm a resident of San Enzomo, and I first want to take two seconds to thank you for the pocket park. I go past it every day, and it's wonderful. And it can also be a rally point. Should we have a fire? We have one way in and out, so I encourage you to think about that. I want to echo the comments of my colleagues.
on the importance of resolving these issues with the Ross Valley and the Central Marin Sanitary.
A month ago, the board received a report from Corolo Engineers on the need to upgrade the facility to meet new nutrient loading requirements.
And Corolo Engineers presented a number of options.
there are going to be presenting more options or more discussion in the future.
But the bottom line is that their construction estimate for the upgrades is around $80 million.
That's just the construction estimate, that's not all the other ancillary issues.
So those costs will have to be passed on to the ratepayers.
And if we don't get this issue resolved, it's going to be extra costs to our San
and Selmo Ray payers. Thank you.
Thank you, Kathy. Anyone else in the chamber?
Anybody online, sir?
Can there?
We have no hands raised.
All right, then we'll close the public comment.
I'll ask if any of my colleagues would like to pull any items.
Yes.
1.2, please.
1.2 being pulled. Anyone else?
I would like to pull item 1-8 and so at this time I will take a motion for items 1-1-1-3-3-1-7-1-9.
So moved.
Second.
All right. Move the second. All in favor?
Yes.
All right. Let's start with 1-2.
I just wanted to pull this out as a way to say thank you to the community development team for the report.
But very importantly, in our town, some two years ago, we were talking about challenges
around permitting.
We were talking about how slow things went.
This fourth quarter report from the community development agency has real numbers.
Accountable progress.
Economic vibrancy is at the center of it, really environmentally sustainable, affordable housing
with a nod to my committee, the climate committee.
But I wanted to highlight just a couple of numbers, 8 new housing unit permits, 15 commercial
business licenses, and over 12 million in valuations for those permits.
As a town, we're moving forward, we're having fun on live on the avenue, but the real work
is getting done to move forward economic vibrancy to really work on the permit process.
And I want to thank our community development director and all the team that she works with.
that, and I saw DPW was mentioned in there, there's some really good work here, and if
we wonder in addition to the joy, what's happening in San Enselmo, I don't know that these
are all joyous, but they're effective and important, so thank you for that, and I also
want to mention that, you know, real construction, access to affordable housing will happen in
the best numbers that we can produce. We'll keep pushing it, but in the best numbers that
that we can produce.
That is my reason.
Anyone else on one two?
That's one.
Both of them.
All right.
I'll take a motion on one two.
I'll make a motion on one two.
Motion in second.
All in favor?
Aye.
Any opposed?
Hearing none.
All right.
We'll actually get the word yes out of my mouth.
We're going tempo to night.
Okay.
So item one eight.
Glad that we had some speakers on this tonight.
I made, as I mentioned at our last meeting, I had joined an effort with a couple other mayors in the Ross Valley to sign on to a letter kind of protesting the flow strength method allocation switch that happened at the CMSA.
I think the real impact here is the cost increases to San Enselmo residents, that's how it connects to what we do on this body.
and I thought it would be prudent to submit a letter both to CMSA and the Ross Valley Sanitary District
affirming our position as opposed to that recent switch.
So I am obviously in favor of this and would seek my colleague's support.
All right, then I'll take a motion.
Motion to move item one eight.
Second, I'm one eight.
All right, all in favor.
Yes.
Aye.
Aye. Any opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you.
All right. We will move on to our business agenda.
The first item of the night is item 21 receiving a filing report on our town's cybersecurity and IT resilience.
Geoff, you're kicking us off. Yes, thank you so much.
Before we jump in, I just want to talk about that cybersecurity is becoming more and more free.
In the news with our recent neighbors, the City of Pittsburgh had an a fishing scam and the city of Susanne City with a malware attack.
So that's why this report is important, why it's being brought forward with you tonight.
Sorry, thank
you, search.
And then before we kick it off, I just want to introduce members of our town's team here tonight.
To my farthest to the left, Jason Kuzmono, the Executive Director of Basities Joint Powers Authority.
In the middle, David Cooper, Principal and Chief Engineer of Marine IT.
And then to my left, Stefana Allieto, sorry, excuse me, customer success manager with Marine IT.
So this report was requested by Council Member Slesinger in the full council and
how the town would respond to a cyber incident.
We'll walk through the town's cyber security environment, our response protocols, and lastly our cyber insurance coverage.
Again, Marin IT is with us here tonight, and has been a contractor for the town for over 20 years, and
also a contractor for other Marin agencies, town of Ross, town of Fairfax, City of Saasoledo, City of Mill Valley, to name a few.
And then we'll, we just have a short slide presentation.
We're going to volley between who talks on what slide so I will turn it over to the marine IT team to talk about our current defenses.
Good evening everybody. Thank you.
There are a lot of facets that come with having a very well protected town such as yours and none of them work in isolation.
We have a pretty broad set of tools that we utilize in order to protect the town from
a lot of the threats that come in, including perimeter defense.
So that's any emails or otherwise that come into the city or town from the outside.
We have identity and access processes that make it necessary for users within the town
to multi-factor authenticate, to get access to everything, which ideally means that no
one can pretend to be them. We have other tools like Endpoint Protection tools that allow
us at Marin IT to remote into your devices for protection, as well as a tool called Crowdstrike,
to find, identify, and isolate threats that are known to the world at large.
They are often referred to as CDSS's, which is vulnerabilities that are monitored.
In place, we also have network tools to allow us to see how everything is connected, and
And we scan often using tools that we buy and things that are free to us from SISSA and
other government agencies.
We have 24-7 security operations center utilizing the CrowdStrike tools and also allows us to
see any activity within the network that might be untoward.
One of the most important things would be if you were affected by a breach, despite
all the tools that we do have.
We have a very aggressive, we align with Sissa and Nist policy to have what's called the
321 backups.
So three different types of backups, one on prem, one in cloud, one immutable.
So that should your information be cryptolocked, for example, we could restore that data back to the town for moving forward in your daily operations within a set period of time.
Is there anything you'd like to add to that?
Okay, excellent.
which is a specific level and familiar with the term immutable backups and
about works. Okay. Wonderful. So speaking of data backups, we do have, again,
several versions of this. You have a virtual machine that is doing a backup
here on-prem. From there, there is a backup that takes that information to the
cloud and then a third version that makes that exact data unchangeable to anybody so that
if we had to we could resort from a point in time where we know that there had been no breach.
So all of those are very important to keep you guys safe. That's on the Microsoft and data file side
and then as far as finance goes and any of the local files you also have Tyler which does have its own
back up. We do back up those files as well. And we have used this particular vendor for quite
a long time to do these backups in their very well respected in the industry. So next,
we talk about recovery time. So again, should you have a breach? We like to evaluate how much
you have in terms of exposure, and you use 365, and it's tools for the majority of the day-to-day business of the town.
Because those are backed up much more often, we can generally restore those files and access back within 24 hours.
The fact that you are utilizing a cloud tool, it also helps with that.
Any other cloud apps that you're utilizing, I'm not 100% sure what you're using for permitting off the top of my head.
Track it.
Yeah.
Anything else like that here in Council, how you're doing your agendas, that is a 48 hour turnaround time to restore any local file folders are also on that same 48 hour timeline.
And then and so in the staff report we mentioned Tyler being on premise
Through a server here, but we are we've signed the agreement with Tyler to move that system to the cloud
So we in the meantime between now when it's on prem to when we get it to the cloud
Myself and the Marin IT team have talked about where we could boot up Tyler in the event that the town system is down
So hopefully that's 72 hours is only for a short period of time until we get it to the cloud version
No, that was perfect, perfect segue.
So one thing that is important in your cyber security plan is the human layer and
we have for the last three fiscal years, I believe, utilized a cyber security training
system to expose everybody to different concepts that they would be understanding if they see
be something unusual, what they should do.
And in the last training, we had 73 users
and approximately 80% of those did complete
the cybersecurity training.
We fish, which means purposely send messages
to town users every month in order to test their vulnerability.
And on average, only one user per month failed those tests.
I believe there was a question about failures, and we do do remedial training for anyone that does experience a failure and keep track of those people in case it becomes a common problem.
And then a approximately 50% of town, I know specifically at the library there are a lot of more part-time people, so we understand that.
But everyone is aware that there is the ability to report suspicious messages through what's called the Fish Alert button.
Those messages come to Marin IT, and we evaluate the messages for content, as well as it's not only threats, but also it's simply spam.
Or if those are clean messages, and we respond back to every report of a Fish Alert report.
And keep track of all of the users, I believe we said a gross 50% of people are using that.
All right, so now I'm going to talk on our incident response readiness.
So we have a cyber incident response plan and a technology recovery plan and
a business continuity plan that last October, the positions on your screen in front of you,
and then our cyber risk manager from Sedgwick flew in
and we did a tabletop exercise walking through three
different scenarios of and how we would respond
to those scenarios.
The overall results from that from the cyber risk manager
that we had pretty good communication within that team.
So we are ready for something
The word to hit are one weakness. Due to the size is if there was an individual user within the, within marine IT that wanted to affect our systems, we don't necessarily have someone on staff that is an expert in IT. So that's why you see management analyst on the right that's mirror by tango as part of the finance team. She has an IT background and I've brought her into the biweekly management calls with marine IT just because she has that experience.
So, that was the one result of a weakness that came up that if somebody wanted to be a bad actor from the inside, would we have someone that knows what is going on on the town staff.
So, I think we have addressed that by bringing in Maribai to those calls and having her background.
So, then the detection systems we have, as Stephanie mentioned, is CrowdStrike, which is always watching our system,
learning us if anything unusual or suspicious is going on.
As Stephanie mentioned, our scans with qualis, which is an internal scan, and
then MS Isaac is an external scan, and so far no incidence of the data.
I think it's been 112 weeks without a vulnerability on our latest scan or
something in that nature.
In the event of an incident, how would we continue to communicate with the public?
We are working, we're in the beginning stages of working on acquiring Star Lake account for
internet, so if the network was down here, we would have a backup internet to turn things on and
hope that would run our computers and then our Microsoft team's phones.
In the event that didn't, our team's phones are provisioned to the individual, so
those phones could be taken to my home plugged in and it would still recognize that is Jeff from San
And we could call out or the team's app can go on your cell phone and you can make work calls through this.
So in terms of work numbers, I think we could have a backup plan there.
In the event, everything is down.
It is budgeted to acquire a couple of satellite phones to keep them in the finance safe downstairs.
And have two numbers posted or send it out and manage their newsletter or
something well ahead of any event so people could post it on their fridge.
that people could call those numbers and get information from the town if truly everything was down.
Granted, I understand I just said everything is down, so people probably couldn't call us, but we'll have them in the event.
We did get calls.
We need to call out.
Some people have left.
Yes.
Keith Steph context, so we all have each other, cell phone numbers and could reach each other.
And then our channel between police and fire is the mirror emergency radio network.
So if we need to communications with those organizations, we would be able to be in contact with them.
And again, what would a cyber incident mean for residents?
Well, as Stephanie mentioned, a bunch of our applications are now cloud-based,
recreation, permits, hopefully finance soon.
So we should be able to keep business moving in the event that they would not be able to reach those services from their computer.
We would have counter-hours for anybody to come in to complete a registration by paper and enter it later if needed.
As I mentioned, town hall would remain open, and we would hopefully still have connections based on our backup internet.
And then I will turn it over to Jason to talk about our current coverages.
So currently the town participates in the Bay City's joint powers insurance authority
on the executive director. They participate for a number of different
coverages, but that is where they obtain their cyber liability coverage.
So cyber coverage used to be what we called a bolt-on coverage to our property coverage.
So 15 years ago, it was thrown in to the property coverage.
It was very inexpensive, I think, for the entire pool of 21 agencies.
it cost $14,000 and then we started to see exponentially more cyber events and certainly
more complicated cyber events. So the cyber coverage has certainly evolved over the
last 15 years. Currently, Bay City's participates in what's called the Alliance Property Insurance
Program. We still obtain our first 2 million of coverage through that program. We call it
PIP core coverage, and then beyond that, we purchase an additional 3 million
and excess coverage just for our pool, so we don't share that with any other
pools. It's just for our 21 participating agencies and base cities. There's an
additional layer called the BBR endorsement. This endorsement essentially buys
down some deductibles. It takes some of your limits outside of your primary A PIP
core and excess limits and sets them outside of those so you get additional
limits for things like notification costs, so in the event of a breach you are required
to notify individuals, provide credit monitoring services, and so this endorsement provides
that additional coverage on top of the first and second layer.
Additionally, the BBR endorsement eliminates some of the sublimits that are in the first
layer of coverage, and that is because the town is following specific security protocols
that the carriers have designated as required to obtain this additional coverage.
And so the town is doing that and there are additional sublimits through
the excess cyber insurance that extend the sublimits in the first layer.
So it's a very complicated coverage.
It used to not be complicated and as you can imagine over the years,
there seems to be a new term every year of something that we are covering
or trying to cover or trying to address, but the town has certainly done a great job in maintaining
the highest of security protocols to maintain excellent coverage.
When an incident occurs
through the claims process, so Beasley, which is the BBR stands for Beasley Breach Response,
months. So they provide pre-vetted vendors. They have a hotline that is monitored 24-7. So in
the event of a cyber event, your town staff and the team that was outlined a few slides
earlier would reach out to Beasley also to me and to alliance the broker that we use to place
within APIP. And so you have three different kind of prongs that would be working on this
in the event if there was to be an event. Immediately your team would work with MIR and IT
easily if there is a ransomware demand typically responds within one hour. They are very quick
to respond, and then typically within 24 hours for any other related event.
The coverage does, if you are down for eight hours or more, is when your coverage would
start, so that they're not trying, if your system goes down for two hours, they can't cover
each of those events, but eight hours which is relatively low in the number of hours to
trigger coverage.
And so we would work with the town and with more NIT and also with Beasley to assign appropriate vendors to assist you through the process, higher consultants if needed, and they have a whole list of approved vendors, and if you use their vendors that are previously vetted, there is additional coverage there as well.
So starting three years ago, Bay City started the cyber liability program, and within that
program, the board felt it was important to have every member conduct an annual risk
assessment.
And so we have a member on our team Lee Kane, not to Jeff was referencing earlier, who has
met with each individual participating agency in the cyber liability program to identify
areas of weakness within their systems, areas where they can improve, and the board
determined that those annual assessments were mandatory to participate in the cyber liability
coverage.
Access coverage is purchased as a group, so you are only as strong as your weakest link,
And so they determine that that should be a mandatory process in all 21 members participate in the cyber program and they all have these annual audits conducted.
The second piece of that is receiving your report and a lot of times there's not a town that is perfect or a city that is perfect.
Everybody has areas to look at, to improve, to update a policy or review policy.
And so our cyber risk manager will create a report with top recommendations.
And then each member is required to submit a plan back to base cities that essentially says we've received our report.
We acknowledge the top five deficiencies.
Here's how we plan to address those.
It doesn't set a timeline because some IT initiatives can be very costly and
we know that they can take time to implement.
but they wanted the board wanted acknowledgement of we received our plan, we see our weaknesses and we are going to work on these.
So that process started three years ago and has been conducted every year since and is going very well.
The cyber carriers in the last, you know, five years ago in those applications were 11 pages long and then they got longer.
And they are very focused on all of the things that Marin IT has made sure that the town has prioritized, as far as security protocols, which has allowed everyone to keep our access coverage, which is great.
Thank you, Jason. I just want to add to that, we think of insurance as being their reactionary to an incident, but in this case the board is thinking ahead to these incidents.
and I was on a call with Stephanie and David Cooper a couple weeks ago to talk about this report and the reason why cities and towns around are in the Bay City's pool are starting to do things is because of the direction the board of directors for Bay City's took so it's really helping us understand what we need to do to not only continue to have coverage going forward, but to have the right software processes in place to protect us against these incidents as well.
And then just if there was truly a cyber incident that hit the town, our reports that we have, as I mentioned earlier,
the business continuity, the technology recovery in the cyber incident response.
Have us writing a report to a council within 30 days of the Restoration Plan.
Will Gbeary, not only the members at this table, but the Alliance, Beasley, anybody to see where the town could improve what things we need to do.
we would update those plans accordingly, and then depending on the type of events provide
staff training to hopefully prevent any other future incidents occurring.
And that's the end of our slideshow, and we'll take any questions you may have.
Thank you.
All right.
I actually have a couple of questions, maybe a few.
One of the things that stood out to me, Jeff, was the fact that cyber security training
for our town staff isn't mandatory.
For 100% of the employees, we have a good number of employees who have taken it.
I think it was 80% or so, but why isn't it mandatory?
I feel like even if we make it, we send reminders almost every other day,
and we can't get certain individuals to take it.
I mean, we can certainly make it mandatory and see if I don't know what
the punishment, not the right word, but what it would be if we don't, if people don't
take it.
Well, like I work in a government job and we are required to take it and it's a target
solutions kind of one page primer, it's not even one of those like slide deck ones.
It's pretty easy to take, but we are required to take it every year and reaffirm that.
I don't think it's much, but I think making sure that just all staff are aware of this would be a good thing.
Secondly, the town, we rely very heavily on Marin IT, and if Marin IT itself were compromised, what would prevent say an attacker from utilizing Marin IT's administrative credentials or
or remote management tools to gain access
to certain platforms in our town.
Do you want me to start?
You can start.
So just like you, we also use tools like one password,
which is a way to store our passwords.
We can hide those passwords from any technician
so that while they can gain access to a site,
they don't necessarily have to see the password.
We have to do multi-factor authentication ourselves in order to gain access to our own network.
So we follow the same exact processes and procedures because that makes the most sense
to protect ourselves so that we can protect you.
So I would say that's kind of the couple key ones.
Yeah, and I think one of the biggest things to point out is that we're currently internally
going through a process of removing any of our employees' abilities to see any of your
passwords when they log in to your equipment, everything is kept in an encrypted vault.
And it requires two factor on our side of the network to access where the passwords live,
but there's no ability or there will be no ability shortly, so like export a list or take a
list away.
You go. Okay, so two at least two questions on this front. What is your own
compliance with your own train internal training for resilience against
phishing attacks for marine IT staff? We also use no before for ourselves. And we
do require it for everybody. Yes. And then what's your and what's your own
pass rate. That would be a question for you.
That is a question for me, but I don't know our own stats at this moment. We have two newer staff members that I believe have been assigned, but I think it you, that is. Yeah, I mean, it seems like our greatest vulnerability is actually through you right now. Frankly, yeah, right? Like access to your credentials, access to your systems gives access to everything in ours. So it would be very important to know what you're going to find looks like. Correct. Yeah.
And we do go through the same audits with our insurance company, and our cyber carrier as well, annually, I believe we have to fill everything out.
And I had questions about the schedule assessment.
You know, there were five deficiencies identified there, and of the five deficiencies identified, three are still in progress.
So what is the cart target completion date for each?
We said by the end of this year for those three, so the outstanding ones are a portable media policy, a shared account policy, and a social media policy, which I think we have.
We just need to tweak it a little bit, so it's just those three policies is the three outstanding from this last fiscal year.
Am I right to assume that the shared, what did you say the shared account, shared account policy is probably the most important of those three.
Yes. Okay, so I assume that's taking priority. Okay. And if you, to the whole team, if you had to identify one cyber security vulnerability that you would most like our counsel to address over the next 12 months,
what would that be into the degree you know, what would be the cost associated with that?
There
are a couple other CrowdStrike products that I think would be interesting to talk about.
One will scan all your share point and your mail so it's got hooks into your office environment.
It will also talk to proofpoint which is the spam filter.
So I think more eyes on that stuff would probably be a really good idea.
I think the password thing we were just talking about is huge, quite honestly.
So I don't know what the adoption rate within the city of one password is. That's the tool we use, but if everybody's using that, I think that would be great.
I can confirm everyone is enrolled.
I cannot speak to how often people are using their passwords into the system.
Yeah, and I guess, for Jeff, what would you consider to, like, constitute a significant
cyber incident for the purposes of notifying this council, like, for example, today we
had to reset my password because there was a shady log in for somewhere.
I don't expect that.
I don't know.
Maybe they may be the other council members were notified, but, like, what rises to that
level?
Yeah,
I don't we don't think we currently we don't have anything that would today was our first incident of
Crowdstrike in action
Someone's computer had some malware Crowdstrike found it deleted it removed everything
So I guess it's up to the council direct staff
What level would you like to when would you like to hear about something something like that? Okay?
I'm
It's you tell me and I'll we'll be communicative with whatever happens sure and
This may be a question for Jaysa if we did suffer
catastrophic cyber attack what portion of the financial consequences would not be covered by our insurance
Without having specific seven event. It's really hard to put a dollar amount to that
But the details of the policy, there are various sublimates to certain types of costs associated
with the claims.
So without knowing a specific event and the details around it, it's hard to put a dollar
amount to that.
Okay.
That's reasonable.
And I promised this to my final question.
And the reason I asked these questions is because in working for government agency a few years
ago we had one of our departments that had a huge ransomware attack that required a
full-on tear-down rebuild of the networking system and it was you know this was a library
and so they provide a lot of public services and it was truly catastrophic but as the kind
of security and detection improves and involves I notice we're relying a lot more on AI for
detection. What is, I guess, what is the human oversight on that and what happens if AI
incorrectly identifies something safe as malicious or identifies something malicious
that is actually safe?
It's just a bigger risk.
Yeah.
Well, we have what's called child can complete, which is the CrowdStrike product that is doing
that, so it does go through an AI layer, but there is a security operation center also
watching and checking everything.
So it gets a human sanity check, I guess, would be the way to see that.
Okay, that's good to know.
There, you have to define a layer of what you're going to allow them to do without, without
if they can't get a hold of us.
We set up a call list with them and if there's an event they call I think we're an IT first, Jeff second
They go through the call list so they can't get a hold of everyone
We've told them that they're authorized to isolate any machine that has a problem with the assumption that if we create a
We'll deal with the fallout from them isolating something
After we look into it as opposed the only customer that that we don't do that with is the hospital
With that's the hospital we're afraid it might be a machine running up
a pump or a medical equipment but other than that our standing orders to everyone that's
on this program to crowd strike is isolate anything the creates a problem will deal with
if we upset somebody by accident so that's sort of the kind of a more careful approach
than call 10 people on a phone while a virus is running around the network so that's sort
of how we're approaching that.
Great.
Thank you and thank you all for asking my answer in my questions.
Yeah, and then the other thing I just want to church when you asked about the security stuff
We're finding more and more a good AI policy and some some guardrails around that
When it came to my mind when you said AI sure and then your previous question
So we've got a couple customers that are working on AI policies. We're working on one for ourselves
We're working on one for ourselves. We can all kind of share
But it's it's an interesting topic for sure
Okay, so there are really, I think it would be helpful to distinguish, we have two different
attack scenarios, right?
We have the human-centered attack, and then we have the system-centered attack.
You know, in 2024, the human-system attack, that was like marine housing authority, where,
you know, got into email accounts, redirected a million dollars, right?
That's as likely a scenario as ransomware, which requires insurance coverage or whatever
other kinds of things, right? And then you have the security vulnerability. So, okay,
let's take the, like, person-centered attack first, right? So, you get a phishing email
or text, you know, the employee who has failed the note before or failed to take it, enters
their credentials into a fake Microsoft login, the attacker gets into their email, they're
watching the conversations, now they impersonate an employee or vendor, they change the payment
instructions redirect funds. I didn't hear in this report what our actual like
processes or procedures are for resilience to that type of attack
exactly right because it's one point of insertion which is I put my
credentials into a fake Microsoft login but then I have access to all these
other systems which would go outside of detection it seems from what you've just
described, and what's the sort of process and procedure that would prevent them once
they have access to your credentials, Jeff, from redirecting payments from one account
to another.
What's our actual, right, sort of, you know, posture against that?
All the systems do require two factors, so even if they got my username and password but
but then wanted to log onto my computer,
it does still require do a log on.
I'm not sure that covers what you're asking or not.
Well, it does and it doesn't,
because the multi-factor authentication may or may not
be on for the system to which that person is also looking
for access, right?
The bank account, the payment account, et cetera, et cetera,
right?
Unless I misunderstood all those two FA laws.
We can talk about, like, principle of least privilege.
you know, nobody has the keys to the capsule.
Well, Jeff does.
No, he does, right?
I mean, if somebody gained access to Jeff's credentials,
he has all the financials.
So for the bank accounts to do anything with that,
I do get it.
There is a code, six digit code from Wells Fargo
that we need to enter.
And not one user here can initiate and approve a wire
or an ACH or any sort of payment.
It's great, the except box is great out.
it needs to be approved by Dave, so it requires two people to do this.
Also added that is the number one thing I get phone calls about related to this type
of coverage is oh I got an instruction to change this and we sent it over here and the
carriers 10 times out of 10 there should be a policy within your policy that is that happens
you're picking up the phone and you're calling that individual they're looking for policies
in place that create that secondary check, not for people?
That's really what I'm keeping in on here is what are the policies that we have in place
from an operational standpoint to prevent once someone gains that access to that insertion
point that prevents them from taking the undesired actions within our systems, right, of record
financially or otherwise?
Yes, so currently we are only form of payment for most vendors is checks.
The only ones we pay wire is our JPAs for police and fire, and that's in payroll.
But even after we have myself at an initiated day of approval, Wells Fargo still sends an
email saying, are you sure you want to send this money out and you have to respond with, yes,
what's the dollar amount?
Where's it going?
So, that's the final check from Wells Fargo.
The last day had access to your email, that's easy.
But yes.
Yes.
Sure.
No, but that makes sense.
At least that there's required two people to approve.
That's helpful.
Okay.
So, Marin IT, I'm going to TN on you again.
Sorry.
Okay.
But you serve multiple jurisdictions across IT, across Marin, excuse me.
So what isolation or segmentation do you have between your clients that ensures a breach
Right in one wouldn't affect us all of our clients passwords are kept in separate one password vaults
So all of the credentials not they're not mixed together
Our remote access system is a cloud system
If I was to think of one thing that is shared they would probably be that it's our ticketing system
And it's how we track everything, but again, no passwords or credentials are kept in it. They're completely separate
from a network perspective, a number of the entities are on what's called
Midas, which is a county-provided network. There are firewalls and logging
sim between all of the different entities and there isn't really any direct
network to network communication between, except for the law enforcement.
And some were doing like packets sniffing or something on Midas, like that would
be detected? Because I can go to the, you know, county and log on to Midas
really easily. Like I don't need a password for referring to Midas the
wireless network. That's completely isolated. That hasn't, I have that cannot
talk into any of the cities or the towns or it's completely. Okay, and it's tunneled
as well. So when you get on that SSID, it tunnels your traffic back to the
core of the network. It doesn't drop it locally. It actually puts it in a tunnel,
sends it to the other side and drops it off and its own firewall zone that can then go to the internet only.
Got it. Okay. That's the way that's configured. Great.
Okay. Jeff, I already talked to you a little bit about the remedial training for your failure points on the staff.
But it seems like you can identify the people who fail the fishing events.
And it seems like an optional additional training may not be sufficient for those people.
I would recommend that staff follow up personally and individually with people who fail those
attempts, because as we've just described, that's probably the most likely point of failure
here.
Normally, it's a human error, you know, peb-cac, as they say.
The problem exists between the chair and keyboard.
That's where, right, the point of failure is, so that's really helpful, and then, I guess,
sorry, I had one other question.
Sorry, I'm looking at all my notes here that I had about this.
Okay, so last question. When we are migrating to Tyler,
Do we have any interim safeguards protecting things in the interim from unauthorized access in the current cloud environment for the financial system?
We're going to Tyler, but we're not there yet.
So what's current protection in place until we get there?
So currently only four people in finance have access to the application.
Those users' rights are determined by their rights are determined by users what they
doing their data to activity in terms of...
As of if something were to happen that shut it down for a while, we, David and Stephanie and I talked, we could boot it up on our last known backup which would have been the night before. Boot that back up either at Marine IT or some other locations so we could pay vendors, do payroll, whatever we need to before it getting booted back up on the town server. So we've talked about it but hopefully we don't have to find a place to boot it back up. Okay.
Yeah, you know, I think this is all very important.
Obviously, I think, what was it?
Like last year, Sausalito got brute force attacked
with like 200,000 years ago, yes.
There was, right?
Like our neighbors were targeted with 200,000
attempt stacks as their systems, right?
So our resilience, all of this, again,
both through people and systems is really important.
So I'm glad we're spending all the time
to both address it and to talk about it.
So thank you.
It's also a little things, they were trying to get in through a VPN.
And so you guys are sampled for your authentication, and it's two factors.
So it should be safe from them.
Anyone else? Questions?
Logs were fun.
My questions were covered around the human vulnerability.
You all did that one.
All right, then let's open a public comment on this item.
Anybody wish to provide public comment in the chamber?
And now is your time.
You get three minutes seeing no takers, sir. Should we have anybody online? Mayor, we do have one hand-raised?
All right, let's go to the wash. You have been unmuted.
This is Josh bleaker cider. Sorry. I couldn't make it there in person. Hey Josh, welcome.
Thank you. This is all adjacent to stuff. I work on some. I have a lot of thoughts.
So I'm going to speak sort of quickly to jam it into three minutes. I apologize and bear with me.
First of all like this was super heartening to read like it's much much better condition than I anticipated.
being in, like, solid work, grads all around.
I was delighted to see that we're getting, like,
sat phones and backup communication systems
and I have connectivity to a fire and place.
So, well done.
There were few places where I was certainly
have loved a lot more detail.
Like, I sure hope that the immutable things
are going to S3 or someplace like that.
I wanted to add that 30 days retention
is probably not enough for that.
You can imagine somebody in the town
being frustrated with the property process
and asking their AI agent to figure out
how to make their application go through and the agent deciding that the way to solve that
is to hack into the system and make their application go through, and that getting discovered
much later. So right of boom, you really want to have lots of history. I also didn't see much
about audit trails or logging there. Like S3 is a dead sheep. There's no reason we shouldn't have
like these immutable backups basically forever. I was partnered here in the conversation here
in the chamber that it takes two people to cut checks and that very few payments are done online,
but in the report you said that we are trying to move more payments to be online and so there's
a bit of a disconnect there. On the rebuild side, I'm curious, are those estimates the 24 and 48 hours
or if you ever actually done the rebuild? Because if you haven't, I don't think we actually know.
Also, I was curious about how long we take to do a full rebuild from scratch,
of individual systems. I was hoping to see some details of what the tabletop exercise looked like
because depending on exactly what threat model you're planning for, those can be incredibly useful
or they can turn out not to match reality. I was curious in the complete down case,
is it established what the sort of chain it commanded, who is the point for making decisions,
because that chooses the hardest part is establishing who is actually running the show.
Ideally, there'll be somebody who knows a little bit about being an incident commander
and otherwise how you handle a cyber security incident because these are
there are standard roles and it can work really smoothly if you know what you're doing and can be
very chaotic, particularly communications-wise if you don't. It would be nice as we communicate
with our residents about this stuff to maybe also specify that like if the phones are down,
People would probably feel it was not anyway, but like the town center, town hall is a good emergency meeting point for coordinating.
It was good to see that there's contacts established for fire and police, but I didn't know if you had designated points of contacts with neighbors and the state, and so far as you needed that, and that is time I've hit more or less all of it, sorry for talking really fast.
Thanks, Josh. You're a great way to get it all in there.
We'll have them.
Yeah.
Anybody else for public comment on this item?
And Mayor, we have no other hands raised.
Okay, so we'll close public comment.
We'll bring it back here.
There's no action.
We're receiving and filing a report here.
So I'll ask if any of my colleagues have any comments on this item.
Just one question that Dave might know the answer to.
Or maybe others.
Maroon emergency radio, that was funded by a ballot measure, if I remember correctly.
Is it in perpetuity or do we have, since it's our, I believe our third layer, is it a permanent,
leaf-funded option for us?
And what does it require of the town?
I have more familiarity at the county wide level.
No, I don't know if that was until ended by voters or not, I'm not sure, Steve.
It was.
It was okay, so that is a reliable resource and do we have any specific role as a town in?
We'll just have we have a membership on the board. Just like all the other members.
Yeah
Anyone else
Go ahead. Yeah, like Josh. I just want to say thank you. I am pardoned that we have a good
Security and vulnerability posture today. I agree that there are other things we can should be doing
So look forward to continuing that conversation as we continue to strengthen this is like an ever
evolving I don't need to tell you an ever evolving environment that we're operating in so thank you for all the hard work and putting this together appreciate it anyone else and I'll just say
You know to quote Mike Tyson everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face, right? And I you know, we see these threats coming up there
You know engaging government agencies big corporations
corporations that have much bigger budgets than we do to provide cyber security, but it's still happening.
And I think with how these threats have evolved and continue to involve, we need to remain hyper vigilant about safeguarding our people and our assets from these threats.
Therefore, I would recommend that we have all of our employees require the training for all of our employees, as you'll have said, the problem typically exists between the chair and the keyboard.
And so I think just by way of making people aware of these threats, particularly the ones that are becoming in Vogue and are trending now that we may not have seen before, I think it's really, really important.
I had a situation where it was in a cyber threat, but my grandmother in the last years of her life received a call from somebody saying it was me, and luckily she was heads up enough to give me a call and say, hey, did you just call me?
where you're in a car accident, but it's really disturbing how much of these types of threats
are out there, cyber, those affecting our elder community and anyone really, and they're
getting so much more sophisticated.
So I think that's really, for me, where in my day job, the training becomes important because
is, you know, I'm learning about things that, you know,
I may not have seen before, but also, you know, really,
you know, the ones that come in that say, you know,
they're from Bank of America and it looks just like Bank
of America and it's, you know, talking to you,
like it's your account, but it's not.
You look for it's B-O underscore A or something like that.
Like that was eye opening for me is always look at those things
and scrutinize everything.
So I think making sure our staff just have that at the front of our, their mind would be a great improvement and as recommended by Marin IT here, and they do it with their staff, I think it would be prudent for us to recommend it for ours.
So, tons of gratitude for this. I know we probably took way more time than you were expecting on this, but it's a very serious issue and I think, you know, again, protecting our people and our assets are at the front of our minds. So thank you.
All right, with that, we'll move on to our next item, receiving and filing a presentation from the Bay City Joint Power Insurance Authority.
Jason, this is you.
All right, roll in right along.
Do we have-
Yeah, I think it's-
Jason, you can go.
While you're pulling that up, I will just go ahead and get started.
So I will keep this brief.
I will be honest, I have done this presentation over a period of six hours.
I think Dave had the pleasure of sitting through that.
We used it as a training opportunity for our board members a few years ago.
I certainly will not take anywhere near that for this, but I will fly through it.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
So Bay City's was formed in 1986.
We are celebrating our 40th year anniversary this year, which is very exciting.
We formed in 1986 in response to the commercial liability market.
And so we started with the liability program with the goal to reduce the amount and
frequency of our losses by risk sharing with other agencies,
saving on our excess purchases by group purchasing
with other members within the JPA.
And San Ensemble joined Bay Cities in 1996
into the liability program.
So San Ensemble has been in Bay Cities for 30 years.
The Bay Cities members are all geographically based
in the Bay Area.
Our bylaws used to state that members must be within
100 miles of Emeryville.
We've since expanded those recently to 250 miles of Emoryville.
There's various reasons why you would want to geographically center your JPA.
So we started as a liability pool.
The litigation style and frequency down south is and in the Central Valley is very different than in Northern California, and specifically the Bay Area.
So when Bay cities was formed, they originally wanted to keep the membership geographically based around the Bay Area.
If you were a property only pool, you probably wouldn't want to just be in the Bay Area.
You'd want to diversify throughout the state, but because we started in the liability program, that is where your membership has landed.
So you'll see that there are only cities and
And fire and police authorities within base cities are bylaws do allow for any public agencies,
but we are not interested at this point, the board is not interested in expanding to things like school districts
because they come with their own set of exposures that are very different.
Everyone within base cities is municipality based, so you all have similar exposures.
And that you have streets, you have sidewalks, you have police, you have fire.
and we're able to pool our risk and around those exposures, which makes them more expected and anticipated.
And we can also create resources to support all of the agencies since you all have similar exposures.
Some of the major advantages of being a member of Bay City is you're sharing the cost of risk with other like-minded agencies within the Bay Area.
So part of being on the board is attending board meetings and establishing things like risk control plans things like the cyber liability program where you are the board was
determining whether or not to require an annual audit and we have multiple things amongst all of our programs like that various risk assessments not just focused on cyber but on all areas of your town operations.
It's member controlled, so the governance, each agency has a seat on the board.
The board also gets to determine coverage.
So within the liability, you know, work comp, we are pretty much at the mercy of the state.
But in the liability program, there are various nuances to our memorandum of coverage.
We are not insurance, we are self insurance, we are governed by contract law and our memorandum of coverage within the liability program.
And the board gets to determine what is or is not covered under that MOC.
So if they decided we don't want to cover X type of claims that can be written into the MOC.
But in general, the board has wanted coverage to be as broad as its members' exposures are.
Rates are based on the actual claims experience of the members.
I am very proud to say that our liability rates and our pooled layer have reduced every year for
the last four years.
That is pretty much unheard of in California right now,
and that is due to the proactive efforts of the members
and trying to reduce their losses, reduce their frequency,
reduce their severity, and we are seeing those results
in our financial, in our actuarial analyses year over year,
which is fantastic.
Improved risk control services.
So annually we conduct, we are conducting right now,
what we call risk management assessments,
where we are able to go in and it's really a checklist of best practices.
And we do that for all the members, it's mandatory, the board decided that should be a mandatory process.
And once we have finished all of those assessments, we're able to go and look at what are the common denominators?
Where can our members really use support?
Where can we tailor our services and our trainings to support all of the agencies to reduce risk within their towns and cities?
better clean management services and investment income is retained by the JPA.
Some of the potential disadvantages of a JPA are that ultimate cost is not guaranteed.
So similarly to where if the JPA as a whole is doing well and the board can approve
what's called a dividend where we give money back, members can also be subject to assessments
if we did not collect enough in those years.
base cities has never collected in the 40 years in assessment for our pooled layer.
Something that the board has been very proactive about, we fund conservatively,
and we have really strong net position policies in place to ensure that we are collecting enough
to pay for the losses that we're expecting to have.
Members are jointly and separately liable. So, as a member of the JPA, you cannot say, oh, I don't want to pay for that claim over there, because I don't like it. That's not how the JPA works once you sign the JPA agreement. We're not an insurance company, so it requires active participation by our board members. So, Jeff is very active on the board of directors. He sits on multiple committees, including our executive committee. I work at the direction of the board.
So, I need our board members to be active in participatory and we truly have such a collaborative board of directors who truly try to work together to problem solve and be proactive to find solutions for things that are impacting not just their agency but other agencies as well.
And it is a governing board with fiduciary responsibilities.
Governance, each member of Bay City has a representative on the Board of Directors and one alternate representative.
Our Board of Directors meets two to three times per year or more frequently as needed.
The day-to-day is really run by the Executive Committee, which meets four to five times per year.
And that's comprised of seven members, Jeff Zipes on our Executive Committee.
And we have a nominating committee that assists in appointing members to the Executive Committee and
in our various other JPAs that we participate in,
which are listed on the right-hand side,
Karma Irma and Locke's.
Going quickly through our primary programs,
these are not all of our programs.
We have some other ancillary programs
that I did not include in here,
but these are our primary programs.
Like I mentioned, we started in 1986
with the liability program,
all 21 members of Bay City's now participate
in the liability program with the town of Tiberon,
recently joining us at July 1st.
That's very exciting.
This town has an SIR of $10,000 in this program, which means that the town is responsible
for the first $10,000 of every claim.
Above that, we have what's called our pooled layer, up to $2 million.
That's our base city's pooled layer, so that's the layer that you are all resharing in.
And then above that, we participate in an excess pool called Karma.
We purchase excess, they are a pool and then above that they purchase a combination of
reinsurance and excess insurance for total limits of $44.5 million.
That $44.5 million is new this year.
The board just approved purchasing an additional $10 million in limits from last year which we
we were able to obtain again because of our proactive loss reduction and focus on reducing
our frequency and severity of our losses.
The Workers' Compensation Program started a few years later in 2002, currently 16 of
our members participate in this program.
You'll see these self-insured retention are a little bit higher.
That's intentional.
We have evaluated multiple times if the board would like to look at lower retentions
But currently the town has an SIR of 150,000. We have a pooled layer up to a million dollars and we participate in an excess
JPA called locks and above that another the largest JPA in the nation called Prism
And we participate through those two JPs for statutory limits.
The property program started one year later in
In 2003, 19 of our 21 members currently participate in the property program.
The town has a $10,000 SIR in this program.
This is the Alliance Property Insurance Program in the excess that I mentioned through the cyber presentation earlier.
And so we have a pooled layer up to $250,000, and then we purchase excess coverage above 250.
The important thing to note about the pooled layers, both our pooled layers and our JPA partners that we participate in is that that is not purchased commercial insurance.
So when we are paying our contributions for those annually, they're doing the same thing we are where they're looking at, okay, did we collect enough?
Yes, did we collect more than enough?
Yes, great, we have the potential to return some of those funds back to the membership or
or no, we didn't collect enough and we need to assess to bring those programmers whole.
Our excess pools are very viscally responsible as are we, and I think that the further you
can get from the commercial market, that is the benefit of being in a risk pool.
So we've done that not only through base cities, but also through our excess JPA partners.
On the next slide, this is a new coverage this year, this parametric earthquake coverage.
So, before July 1st, none of the members of Bay City's purchased earthquake coverage.
We used to purchase it up until 9-11 and then the market, the commercial insurance market,
skyrocketed.
The coverage became essentially unobtainable, it was very expensive.
It comes with high deductibles and so we as Bay City stopped purchasing that coverage.
the board decided to stop purchasing it right after 9-11.
Starting in July 1st of this year, we are now purchasing a product called Parametric
Earthquake Coverage.
The town purchases 4 million in limits.
Please scratchable in number three, there is no SIR for this program that is your
property program SIR. This sits entirely outside of your property program.
Parametric coverage works differently than your traditional earthquake coverage.
parametric is based on the event, not the damage, and so the town is purchasing 4 million
in limits, and the scale of payments is issued based on shaking intensity of the ground.
So the trigger is the earthquake, and the payout is based on the shaking intensity, and there
is a, I believe we put the payout table on the next page.
So there were two options that were evaluated, a base option and a light option.
As you can see, the base option provides payout earlier than the light option, and everyone
that is purchasing this coverage through base cities, which is all but two members this
year, is purchasing the base option.
We're group purchasing this, so everyone received a pretty significant reduction in premium
for this coverage for 2627.
Funds are received quickly unlike a traditional earthquake policy where you are waiting for
adjusters that can take years and years for a claim to close the event happens.
You confirm that the event happened, they confirm the shaking of the ground intensity and
the issue payment.
And that payment can be utilized for not just your damaged potential buildings, but for things
like overtime, equipment needed in response to the event, really anything in response
to the earthquake happening, and that's very different than your traditional earthquake
tower, which your traditional earthquake insurance would cover your town buildings
that are scheduled. As you can imagine, it's very expensive to cover all of your town buildings
for earthquake coverage. It also, in traditional coverage, comes with a very high deductible.
It's typically 10% of the damage.
So if you have $5 million in damage,
you're paying a very high deductible for coverage to trigger
and you are still waiting years and years.
It can also impact your ability to recover from FEMA.
So this product is a new coverage for this year
and it sits entirely outside your property coverage.
The other difference between a parametric product
And a traditional product is that the traditional market moves with the property market.
We are seeing a little bit of a softening in the property market right now, but
over the last six years, the property market has seen significant rate increases.
And so this specifically, we would not expect to see any impactful changes to premiums in the upcoming years.
We are working on a mechanism to be able to self-fund the parametric premium in the future
with a long-term goal of creating a comprehensive catastrophic risk response, and so that's something
that the Bay City's Board is working on right now and a long-term goal, it's on our strategic
plan, and something that I am looking forward to reporting more on in the future.
I touched on the payout table, I'll just go to the sample event and payout.
This is really what people are like, what does all this mean?
So this is the sample payout of the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 that had a 7.9 magnitude.
So magnitude does not determine ground intensity, so two different things.
but the USGS has sensors all over the state and they can determine what the ground intensity
shaking will be or would be in your jurisdiction.
So you can see in this event under the base payout option, San Enselma would have received
1.4 million and I typically show this one when I'm talking to any of our members because
is it impacts pretty much every single agency
within Bay City's this event.
So this is a good illustration of
in a what I'll call a worst case scenario,
pretty catastrophic.
This is what we would expect to see.
And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.
Thank you.
Anybody got any questions?
Go ahead, you only have a couple of questions.
Okay, so we're jointly and severally liable.
Correct.
What does that mean in practice if one of the members has a catastrophic loss and can't
meet its obligations?
If you've never made a supplemental assessment, what's our realistic worst case scenario
or financial exposure?
So the catastrophic loss as it relates to property is very different.
So earthquake, that is a group purchase product that's like toy.
But let's say hypothetically a wildfire ripped through every Marin agency, we have a pooled
layer of $250,000 and that would all be considered one occurrence.
So all the agencies impacted would pay that $250,000 and then we have purchased through our
excess coverage up to $1 billion per occurrence.
There are no exclusions to wildfire, there are no sublimits to wildfire through our current
coverage, which is great, by the way.
But should an agency not be able to pay their portion of that 250, I mean I suppose we
would end up in litigation on the road with them, hopefully that wouldn't happen but.
Next question that's related, how well funded are the pools today, right?
So what's the current funded ratio, are there unfunded liabilities, like what does the
actual fund look like?
Yeah, so we have a very conservative what we call dividend release policy and so in order to release dividends back to the members, that's money's back to the members that we collected over and above.
We not only look at what's called IBNR incurred but not reported at the 90% confidence level.
We fund at the 90% confidence level, we budget at the 80% confidence level in both of our pooled programs.
We have a positive net position in both of our primary pooled programs, our liability and our workers compensation program right now.
We actually do have and have issued dividends from the property program.
In the last five years, I think we released close to 1.8 million back to the members from the property program.
We currently have funds available in both the liability and work comp program.
The board elected to hold those for a year to continue to evaluate.
AB 218 was approved many few years ago, and we are still seeing claims come in from the 80s,
which can have a significant impact on potential equity in those program years.
so we are watching that. But the sport is very, the basicity sport is very conservative.
They've always taken the approach of they'd rather pay now than have to come back and pay more
later for those older program years. So we're very well funded. Great. Three more questions, sorry.
What categories of claims are driving losses? Yeah, great question. I should have included that slide.
So, trees and sidewalks are two liability drivers.
It's always the chicken or the egg is the trees lifting the sidewalks.
And so, actually, for the last two years, we have spent a significant amount of time
and pushed a number of resources out to all of the agencies specifically around those two
areas, sidewalk management policies, train maintenance policies.
And so those are the two drivers in our liability program.
In the work comp program, you have your typical slips, trips and falls, and lifting.
So, ergonomic training, employee training, especially on your police, fire, public works, provide a lot of training.
And is our workers comp SIR at $150,000 the same for all of the agencies?
Or are we subsidizing them by having a higher SIR for workers comp?
So 150 is actually the lowest in the work comp program that's available.
So no, you're not subsidizing.
There are different rates available for different SIRs.
So if you move up in SIR, your rate changes.
We've done that analysis for the town.
I think as recently as last year.
Yeah, I was gonna say that sounds familiar and so we look at that we've done it for both the liability program and the work comp
We have a program to determine which SIR is best for your town based on your losses and your contributions. Thank you. And last question, why $4 million? Is that arbitrary? Was it derived from an estimate of emergency response costs? Is it just, like, where did that number come from? I think that was a group effort between our, so when we originally got the proposed
proposal, they provided a proposal for $2 million from the carrier, and that was really
strictly based on the size of your agency because of the, so there is something called
an, I don't want to get to in the weeds, but there is something called an aggregate
limit that is shared amongst all of the members.
And so there is a potential benefit to, if you want to look at higher limits, getting those
higher limits earlier rather than trying to purchase them later because when you try
to purchase them later they might give you more limits but they may not increase the
aggregate. And so I think that was part of the discussion and probably the thought process
when the town was evaluating those limits.
We also, since we have looking in terms of town buildings, we have two of the three fire
stations for Ross Valley Fire. So if something happens, having that extra limit would just
help with those kinds of things.
It just seemed like the payouts for like men low park or whatever else were up there
were much higher rent limits than ours.
And that was probably due to the shaking intensity, not the limits purchased.
85 shaking intensity, whatever that means.
Okay, that's it for me.
Thank you.
Anyone else?
Go ahead.
How do you train your board members?
It sounds like they're both governance and somewhat operational.
Yeah, so anytime we have a new board member, I always like to come visit all the fabulous
agencies that we have in Bay City, so I spend quite a lot of time in the Bay Area.
But really my goal is to give board members the information, hope they stay on the board
for at least a couple of years, because it does take a couple of cycles to get through
all of our processes.
We have multiple opportunities for training at conferences like Kajapa, the California
Association of Joint Powers Authority.
That's the authority that we are accredited through, JPs are lightly governed by the
state.
And so we established Kajapa years ago, the JPA community established Kajapa years ago so
that is a great training opportunity.
But really attending board meetings, participating, talking to your cohorts, you know, members
on the board. Board members are each other's best resources because they guarantee that
if an agency is trying to problem solve something that there is another agency either trying
to solve the same problem or has solved the same problem so we always encourage board networking
and I'm always happy to come out to different agencies.
Another question that, thank you, that was very helpful.
When you're doing your risk management assessments for professional services contracts, things
along those lines, are you looking at the language in our contracts and are you advising
on standards and are they consistent across member agencies?
Yes, so we have a contractual risk manager on our team.
We're happy to review any contracts that you are entering into.
we are the most ideal situation is that you have a template contract that we have reviewed
and vetted and approved and we do that for all of our members and that is definitely
risk transfer is the number one training that we try to provide because any time we can
transfer the risks to someone else that's usually better for us.
Are you staying across your member agencies they're using similar templates around what they
transfer for things like professional services?
Yes, we are in communication with our membership.
We look at not only the templates and individual contracts, but we also look at when they receive
those certificates from other agencies, evidencing their insurance, we'll have them send them
to us so we can review them and ensure that they are providing what is required within the
contract because seven times out of 10 they're not so yeah we're happy to do that.
And the last question is it sounds like we're paying in and figuring out the SIRs you're
looking backwards at historical data and what else are you looking at to set those rates
and how much are we paying?
Yeah so that's there's a lot that goes into the budget but it is my favorite thing to talk
about. But so we work with BICMAR Actuarial. They conduct our actuarial studies annually.
So they're looking not only at our outstanding losses, but they're also projecting our losses.
That's based on our own loss history, our memberships SIRs, industry rates, you know what's
what they know is happening with jury verdicts and settlements. And so we rely heavily on our
actually is for our pool layer rates. We also have built within our budget what we call an experience modification factor, which allocates contributions amongst our membership to those members that have had a higher than average losses, then the base cities pool, so if they're above the average of the pool, they're going to pay a little bit more, they're going to have an XMOM that's a little bit higher for a period of,
It depends which program but it's mostly five years and that can fluctuate but the goal
of the X mod is so that we don't have big swings and contributions for our member agencies
as a public agency that's what you don't want is big swings and contributions.
So the X mod is intended to soften that but also allocate contributions to those members
that are having either more losses, higher frequency of losses or more severe losses.
What's our contribution?
So for all the programs that Jason mentioned this evening, 825,000 for fiscal year 2627.
Okay.
So I have a question.
You talked about trees and sidewalks as the main claims.
Are there any that you see in the future as growing or potential problems that we should
be addressing?
Emerging on the liability side,
so we are in the process of supporting an initiative
through Kajapa and a logislative effort to look at tort cops in California that is our biggest
vinyl I know I'm sorry you know we have seen jury verdicts over you know that are they're
going to bankrupt our our city since school districts so when we talk about emerging risks within
based cities really that is a focus of ours but as far as a town and your
exposures. Sam claims following your sexual abuse and molestation claims if
you have wreck programs making sure that the correct policies are in place and
are being followed and that you are appropriately transferring risk to contractors
or vendors that you're working with and your wrecked departments and things like
I thought that is definitely an area,
but trees and sidewalks have been a major driver
for the last several years, and continue to be.
My question was about the earthquake insurance.
That's a relatively new kind of setup, is that correct?
So I was wondering, we're relying on federal infrastructure
for those sensors, and I'm concerned.
I know that a lot of like weather sensors have been removed by this administration, and I know
San Enselmo, we can't really tell what the weather is going to be anymore, so I'm wondering
is there, I was concerned that there might be an instance where sensors have been removed,
but there's still a lot of damage. Is there a way to bear that in the policy that if there's
damage but it hasn't been sensed if the sensors have been removed.
I mean, is it contingent upon those sensors staying in place?
Yeah, you know, I would have to go back and research that.
I don't know the specifics around how often the sensors are
mean and store looked at.
So I would have to go back and get more information on that.
I guess my question is whether or not the policy would still
on our, you know, risk or need for many if buildings had fallen and it hadn't been sent.
The policy triggers are around the ground shaking intensity, so I would have to go back
and research about the sensors to answer your question.
Okay.
I don't need a report back, but I mean, I guess my recommendation would be to review that
everyone's in a while because we can't really count on the federal government to
have infrastructure in place anymore, unfortunately. We'll look into that.
All right, any other questions for council members? No? All right, let's open up public
comment. I'm sure this will be robust. Anybody in the chamber, Kathleen?
So my PhD is in disaster insurance, I'm a civil engineer, my PhD is in civil engineering,
But it is in disaster insurance and I've been wanting to ask these questions at very long time so I have a few questions
I'm just going to run through them you don't have to answer them, but just kind of the
so
We're having all hazards insurance policy for our buildings. Does that
insurance coverage
Cover replacement cost and does
Does this account for the fact that we have a flood barrier around the city buildings and sort of how is the
actuarial rates for the city buildings established. It is a replacement cost
coverage as far as flood coverage. Flood can be purchased separately on various
properties.
Currently the town is not purchasing flood on its properties but
that's something that we can always evaluate. You purchase it through FEMA. Oh,
Well, you purchased it through FEMA, okay.
Well then, the other question sort of comment comes more for this, for the city's staff.
FEMA is proposing to change their policies regarding disaster recovery payments to cities.
And in the past, FEMA would cover 100% of the disaster recovery costs during the emergency phase.
FEMA is now proposing to reduce this to 75% or even 50%.
Even if they do not reduce the disaster recovery payment percentage,
their lack of staff and changes in the program resulted in long delays in disaster recovery.
It would not be unthinkable that it may take one or two years before the CDC's a disaster recovery payment.
So I just want to kind of point that out to the city staff.
I helped negotiate a parametric insurance policy for the city of Ileton for the flood risk.
And so you might want to think about having a parametric policy that would cover the gap that FEMA is probably not going to and having it be all hazards policy might be the way to go.
So just some comments from that. Thank you.
That actually was robust.
Anybody else in the chamber?
Anybody online search?
Mayor there are no hands raised.
All right, then we will bring it back up here for comment.
There's no actual action here associated with this.
We're just receiving and filing the report.
Anybody have anything to say?
Thank you.
Thank you for the detail.
Yeah.
Very helpful.
Thanks, Jason.
I'm glad you're doing this work, not me.
Thank you.
It was very informative.
All right, so we'll move on.
But before we do so, I want to ask Council for approval to flip items 2, 3, and 2, 4.
We have some members of the public here that I know were some we've lost already, that
I know wanted to comment on item 2, 4, so I'd love to get approval to kind of flip those
last two items.
Yeah.
Do we need a formal vote?
Yeah, so I'll take a motion in a second.
I move that.
Second.
All in favor?
Aye.
Okay, great.
So now we will take up, now we will take up aisle 24, which is receiving a presentation
and providing direction to staff on the Memorial Park Athletic Courts Improvement Projects
60% design.
I
think that is me, is my mic on, yes.
And Mayor, just so you know, the families that lapped are going to try and just do a minute
of the moment.
I'm sorry we couldn't get to them.
It's okay.
They held out as long as they could.
So good evening, Mayor and Council members. I'm here tonight to talk about Memorial Park and the Athletic Court Improvement Project. I could not be more excited to talk about it and I will try to make this brief because I know we've got one other item tonight.
So tonight we're just asking that you as the Council take a look at where we are with the conceptual design and provide direction to staff on moving forward.
So a quick project background in 2018, the town council adopted the Memorial Park Master Plan.
Quick note is in 2015 and the town went out for measure E, which was the flood control measure from Memorial Park.
And so this is actually year 11 of us doing this.
And between 2018, 2020, 26, we have done some improvements.
We've upgraded the grass that Memorial and Irrigation System done playground improvements, pathway improvements in field improvements.
and I think picnic area improvement.
By our retention. Oh, I forgot about that, but it's replaced by the log cabin. There's been a lot of work. There's been a lot of work. But as you guys can see from that initial picture, the athletic courts are in still in dire need. So in 2024, the master plan amendment process considered improvements to the park southern area and gathered a ton of community input through multiple surveys. And then in 2025, as this council's aware, we went out to do
a feasibility assessment to evaluate whether we could raise $4 million through private funding
for this project. During that feasibility assessment, we identified that there are certain constraints
in that that was too big of a ask for Sandin's almost first big park project. And then as of
2026, we narrowed the effort specific to the athletic courts and entrants of study hills and we
re-engaged Intrigua planning and landscape architecture and I want to let you know Mike Cook is here
tonight, and he has been with us through the last few years for this project.
So just to give everybody an idea, like conceptually, what was approved back in 2024, you can
see the skate park has been relocated, all of the courts are in different places.
There is a restroom, concessions, storage, additional seating, and so this was the conceptual
design that was put together with community feedback back in 2024 and approved by Council.
Here's just a side-by-side comparison.
In 2024, we had a multi-sport court for Futsal and Basketball, two tennis courts, two
pickable courts, updated skate park, new restrooms, concessions, seating-shade plantings.
We have scaled that all back to try and do this within our means, so the scope only includes
the athletic courts and frontage entrance improvements.
This new design does include a dedicated synthetic turf Futsal court, two tennis courts, and
And then we actually went from two designated pickle ball courts to three in this design,
and the existing half court basket ball court remains with three hoops.
So this is the beautiful picture of the updated design.
We were hoping also to include kind of a promenade along the pathway from Sunny Hills
to the end of the tennis courts, but because of the cost of the project we had to scale it back a little bit.
So you'll see the two tennis courts on the right, the turf foot saw court top left,
The three pickleball courts and then you'll see some frontage area beautification and accessibility improvements on the left.
Here's kind of a basic sketch to give you guys a visual and what is most exciting about this is the pathway that then connects to the veterans' place pathway over to the log cabin.
There is no sidewalk as it currently exists and there's a lot of elevation change over here.
And so you'll see some concrete bleachers there that are actually serving as a retaining wall and concrete bleachers.
Okay, this is the big question.
So why switch to a dedicated to her footcell court?
So for those of you who are following, we had a ton of strong community interest generated by the World Cup Street Soccer Program.
Gabe Turner was here tonight.
This was a huge effort.
Him, Fabian Lopez, Fiona Oslovin, who's here tonight, Nate Marsh,
Javier Fernandez, put together this amazing group of individuals,
fundraised money, and made this World Cup program happen.
Additionally, the sound impact, I don't know if you guys are familiar with the courts,
but they're right next to residential units, and so the turf actually does help with that.
Something I found out during this process was the multi-sport court tiles,
when wet actually become very slippery,
and so they're not great all year round outdoors.
And then what I'm really excited about
is having a flexible year round space
for rec programming in the community to use.
As you guys know, we closed Memorial Park in the winter
to let the field rest,
and this will give us an opportunity
to expand programming on top of the fact that,
from my research, I could only find two foot sole courts
for Rent and Marin.
One was 215 an hour,
and the other was 125 an hour, so this is kind of new age to have a city, have a turf
foot cell core available for the community.
I staff would recommend that we prioritize rec programming and community use versus
commercial renting rates, and part of the reason why this makes sense is because we will keep
the three hoops.
In the original design from 2024, those are removed for full core, but since they're going
a stay, it allows us to become a more flexible space.
Why now?
This is a huge community asset.
This is our central and largest park, and this is something that we field calls for almost
daily at the REC department.
I know our public works, here's about it.
This is a huge area that is connected right to a shopping center, and I think it's time
it gets a little bit of love, which includes accessibility and one of the things we heard loud
out and clear from the feasibility study was activation, activate the park.
We do activate it a lot with sports programming, but this allows it to be activated in a year roundaway for lots of years.
So proof of concept, this is a picture of Gabe and Fabianne as well as the tournament and World Cup watch party for the first USA game.
I could not be more pleased to share with you guys that gave me this a reality.
Not everybody can take a dream or talk a big talk and then produce something like this.
So, all credit goes to him and the team, but I just want to go over some quick stats.
So, there were over 30 visitors every day between all five weeks.
We had over 220 people at the World Cup Watch party.
150 participated in the culminating tournament with six teams with three divisions, youth, middle-age, adult.
300 people on the resident list, we had 18 volunteer court monitors and over $20,000 in donations.
So this was all done because of Gabe Fionna Fabian had this vision and they made it a reality on top of the number of sponsors.
They were able to secure and this is just for a one month program, they raised $20,000.
In addition to the proof of concept, our soccer program is growing.
I'm happy to report we're 25% higher than we were two years ago.
So two years ago, we had about 589 kids, we're about 786 right now.
So, we're writing that World Cup momentum.
So this is an interesting part.
This is how we're proposing to structure the bid.
We're proposing to structure the base bid and
focus just on the athletic court improvements.
It prioritizes them as the top need and makes the project financially manageable.
That said, improving the courts, we also need to think about some accessibility around that frontage area and beautification.
So because of the bidding process, this type of structure allows us to manage the risk of budget while preserving the opportunity to advance both pieces of the project.
Just for a visual, the green is what we're considering the base bid for the project, and
the purple is what we're considering the ad alternate should additional funding come
about.
Okay.
So this is the interesting piece.
So as I've asked you one question about the ad alternate, is that the accessibility and
sort of the beautification?
Yes.
Correct.
So we have $871,000 in current actual town funding plus a $15,000 one-time donation received
in December.
As you can see, this project is upwards of 1.7 million.
So we're looking at a funding gap of about 837,000.
That to me is accomplishable, if that's a word, versus a 4 million ask.
So I feel like kind of downsizing what we need to do to close the gap could actually be a reality and I think I will talk about that in the next slide.
So here are some creative options to assist with funding. One of the things we heard loud and clear once again from the feasibility study is we need to focus on a smaller project or quick wins.
That's what the consultant said.
And so, you know, using this project and fundraising through San Enselmo Parks, I know Gabe is very committed to this fundraising, especially for the turf footsaw court.
Could be a big asset.
And then another option is scaling back some of the design elements.
You know, we're talking about adding electrical upgrading the panel, the light heads, all of that.
We can kind of downgrade the scope and take some things out.
Another thing we talked about is or that's in the cost estimate is all the chain link fabric replacing all of that we can take that out
So there's a lot to play with here, and then another option is considering rec department reserves
As council knows we committed a hundred thousand dollars via the rec department reserves to the painting of Isabel Cook
Which if you haven't seen it lately drive by it. It looks amazing
And we are committed to making this happen. So that is a possibility as well
So just wanted to give you guys a quick update from the Park and Rec Commission, which was just last week.
It was all positive feedback, a ton of support for Futsal, positive feedback for designated tennis courts, designated pickleball courts versus them being combined.
People were so happy with the summer program, they really liked that possibility to expand rec opportunities for everyone.
And a lot of what I actually heard a lot through public comment or people emailing in about footsol was the unstructured play that kids were showing up and they were playing games and talking to each other and meeting each other and, you know, very rarely do you see a community where pickup games happen anymore and that was created through the footsol program.
One person at the parking right commission talked about a safer crossing connection between Red Hill shopping center and the Sunny Hills entrance to the park.
I'm happy to report Gabe Turner, said he's happy to pursue fundraising on behalf of this project for us, and once again the designated Pickleball versus Tennis Courts is very important to those in attendance.
So the Parking Rep Commission talked about the, they had multiple questions, most was in regards to the turf, and I committed that we will not be using infill rubber.
There's a lot of information and research we still have to do, but there are a lot of
organic options now.
And because of the size of the pitch or the foot sole court, there's a possibility we
may not even need to use infill because they have compaction pads that are so solid now.
So that is an option.
And then one of their other questions was making sure we have a discussion and a lot of thought
around generating some revenue off of the courts.
Turf has to be replaced every 10 years, the compaction pads have to be replaced every 20.
So not to mention we don't want the tennis courts looking like they look like now, again.
The Park and Wreck Commission outside of those two comments decided to move forward as it's presently, as you guys have seen tonight.
To identify turf material, drainage, safety, environmental maintenance considerations, make sure that's built into the plan.
and then figure out fundraising and operational strategies
for next project phases.
So I just want to say thank you real quick to Fiona
who's here tonight, she is our soccer club director.
So thank you for all your support.
Thank you to Mike Cook, our landscape
and planning and architecture.
And we honestly couldn't have done this without public works
not to mention all of the community support that's come out.
We didn't have one negative comment
which I feel like never happens.
Our Parking Met Commission has been super supportive,
and then thank you to you guys at Town Council
for kind of being patient with this,
and especially to Council Member Burke and Mayor Burdo
for kind of seeing this through,
because you guys have been part of this since day one,
since before I was part of it.
And then I know this is kind of crazy,
because we're talking about Creek Park at the same time,
but my hope is to complete 100% design by the end of this year
So we can go out to bid next year and hit the pavement in summer of 2027, which I know is ideal
But I'm also realistic that it may not happen. So I'm happy to answer any questions
So thank you, Maddie and and thank you to
Fiona gay Bobby on and Mike
Certainly councilmember Burke and I you know got a little sneak preview of this so I don't have many questions
but I do have two, which is, you know, on the slide where you have our construction estimates, right?
Those are the estimates. I understand there's a gap, but like Memorial Park isn't there a
possibility that we could get an underbid? Correct. And those also contain 20% contingencies,
which as we get farther along and kind of narrow down on certain things, that will get lower as well.
And, and with that, I mean, I'm really glad to hear that, you know, gave the team have
expressed an interest in fundraising, any, is there any sense because this is, if we
want it, because my, I'm yes to all, right, and looking at this, if we were going to go
with those construction estimates, there would be a significant gap as you articulated.
What do we think we can, real, having just come off the feasibility study, what do we
We think we could realistically fundraise.
That's a great question.
So as part of the 21 interviews, I went back and looked through some of the communications we had with the consultants.
And I think there was like a $250,000 pledge to fundraise.
On top of that, there was another about $100,000 for the project.
And that was for the larger scope.
So then we're talking about $350, right?
Hypothetically.
But for a smaller scope.
For a smaller scope.
50 and reduce it. Correct.
But we're still hypothetical. So 350. Yes, so 350. I feel, you
never know every year is different, but I do feel fairly confident in our rec team and how
creative we've been and how financially stable we've been that we would be able to commit
to this. I don't see another large pro, I mean the Isabelle Cook painting was a big one
and this is the other big one. I do not foresee any other large projects kind of falling
on the wrecked shoulders. So going into our reserves could possibly help. I don't know
right now I can't tell you.
That's 100,000 or 200,000, but that gets up to 550. And then we're pretty close. And hoping for that underbid. Exactly. All right. I have questions about the budget because, you know, if we wanted to, so we're going to have fun raising. So usually when you do a capital campaign, you have to like tack on 10 to 20% more one for the fundraiser or for the name wall or the materials where the donors names go or the sponsor.
And you could, you know, have the sponsor flags every year and that would cover maintenance, but, you know, a nice donor wall can be very spendy, so I just want to make sure you guys are including that in the cost.
Yeah, totally.
It's something that has been thought of, and then on top of that we've identified two people that have capital campaign fundraising experience that we're part of our task force for this for the feasibility study.
that we're hoping to meet with soon and kind of kick off this idea of friends of San
Ensemble Park Sport and formalize more of a plan specific to Memorial Park.
But yes, those are very expensive.
So I love the design, I love the concepts I think having these fields look the way they
are rendered would be amazing.
But this is a money question at this point.
This is not a vision question because it's clear that the vision is there, it's clear that
of the community support is there, the letters,
all that sort of thing, but the money's not there.
Correct.
And that's a problem for me right now
in thinking this through, right?
Because you sort of have like, I'm very impressed
with the work that Gabe did in fundraising this summer.
It was unbelievable, but there's a big difference
between raising $20,000 and raising $200,000.
Totally.
And what you're kind of asking us is to like,
approve in a way, notionally, give direction
to move forward in this with a big, unfunded gap.
and a decision associated effectively to prioritize this for measure J funds over other capital projects that might otherwise receive capital measure J funds.
So it's like a pretty big ask when it comes down to it to fund what is likely to be a million dollars and that's only for the basement.
So I guess I'm going to push you to not be so squishy on this because I don't think we can be squishy on well maybe we can raise around 50 and maybe we'd get $100,000.
I think if we're going to go forward with this we have to have an actual financial plan for doing it and potentially make the planning contingent on fundraising which is once we have raised $X
dollars, then the following things happen, but to give direction for a hundred percent
design, et cetera, et cetera, at this point, like, I want to know where the money is going
to come from.
So are there ways that we can get to a crisper budget for the funds, and like, can you envision
a way that we could get there?
And maybe I'm the only one who has this to come for it, before, right, the advancing to
I think it's tough just because, you know, we won't know a lot of this until we get the bids.
Like, for the memorial park field, we were figuring that was going to cost around a million dollars.
It came in at, like, $687, but we know that it's going to take more than just measures.
Right. We know it's going to take more than, but to your point, we're going to know more what that gap is
once we get the bid. And I think there is an opportunity to move forward with the vision that's here tonight.
and then reassess. It does seem like discussion.
My question was, is there really is there a way that we could get to more clarity on
the sources of funds? Can you envision a plan that would get to more clarity, both on
the fundraising side, but on what from the reserves might be available, what you'd be proposing
to the council in terms of allocation from our own general fund reserves?
If we failed, is there a path to doing that?
Totally, I think there is, I think that town staff has to meet, I got to meet with Jeff and Dave, and we got to figure out what type of priority this is and come back with that information for both rec reserves, possible general fund reserve, but I'm trying to keep that out of the conversation right now, but this is just 60%.
And this is to get your guys' buy-in on the conceptual design so we can kind of move the ball forward.
This timeline doesn't have to be this timeline.
But then again, devil's advocate is every year the construction costs are rising, seven, eight, nine, ten percent.
So the longer we wait, the hypothetically the more it could cost.
And the whole reason why we structured it like this is, no matter what,
I think that athletic courts are doable, they are doable.
at a million with a 20% contingency right now, they're totally doable and that's with all the
bells and whistles. You know, all of the little convenience outlets and the electrical panel
upgraded and this and that and you know, what was it? 12 inches of base rock instead of nine.
Like it's the drainage is one of the most important pieces of this so it's all the bells and whistles
so we can start to scale back a little bit. We can narrow in more on a more accurate cost estimate.
And I do feel like this is very conservative, but I think the question is going to fall on town staff to figure out what type of priority this is and what is actually available.
This is all kind of hypothetical at this point. Give it right. Like, hence your squishy comment. I totally get that.
But I feel like in order to move the ball forward, we have to have your buy-in in direction on the conceptual design and structure.
And then we can hopefully kick off fundraising.
But once again, it all comes back to how much actual money the town can put into it.
So related question for Dave and Jeff, do we have a prioritized list of projects for
measure J funds and the associated dollar amounts with those projects because this
does effectively ask us to prioritize this over any of their projects that might receive
measure J funds?
So do we have a prioritized list for where those funds could go?
Yes, so back in 2024 the town council approved a five-year CIP 24 through 29 I believe it was
With those projects listed out for measure J
They have changed over time even from 24 till now because the fire station for example costs more than we expected
At the September 22nd, so we've gone to
Infrastructure and fiscal monitoring committee. We've gone to planning commission
Scott and myself have put together a rolling five-year CIP based on discussions with the
infrastructure and fiscal monitoring.
Scott is out in vacation right now, but that will be coming to you on September 22nd or
the second meeting in September, which I know everything on there for fiscal year 2627
was approved in the budget, but it's the four years thereafter that you haven't seen yet.
So it's essentially the measure J. Yes, it was approved in 24, that's CIP.
So there is a list of projects, but it's ever changing in fluids.
So if Council will see something on that list, that's before you and us, the 22nd, that you would like to shift in place put in this project, it's totally doable.
And I just wanted to touch based on the last comments.
I think what's most important for the financing is getting to that final design cost in the fall and winter to see what our true gap is.
and then from there we can determine where the needs
will come from from which funds and which departments.
And what would it cost us to get to that?
To get to it, this is the work.
To get to the 90% design, so we can get a cost estimate.
Yeah.
You know, the design contract is $100,000.
And there's been one change order 5,000 so far.
So it's about 105 total.
from the starting of this early in, what was that, when did I reach out to you?
I can't even remember May or earlier, maybe even February actually.
I'm thinking all the way through the end of the year till 100 percent.
Okay, thank you.
Any other questions?
Just a couple.
So it sounds like, and that's why I was asking you on that slide, we have most of the money
in hand for the courts.
Correct.
And as we look at the courts and without any controversy around this,
if at some point I noticed their parallel, the foot cell court,
very supportive of that.
My kids played soccer here, soccer the whole time.
My daughter played under, I mean, so very supportive.
If over time we need to reuse the courts,
are they all the same surfaces?
Because what if pickle ball is on an up swing?
What about if it goes on a down swing?
It's right next to foot saw are they all the same surfaces and do we have you know with repainting
Some flexibility and changing those courts if needed
So the pickleball and the tennis courts are asphalt like tons of base rock underneath and then asphalt on top
Um, we're proposing that the post speed permanent on pickleball and tennis not movable
So they say designated for that purpose
The foot salt court, however, is being proposed as synthetic turf.
So that is the different material and different surface.
Yeah, resurface like, if, let's say we expand it into the pickle ball courts.
Yeah, two foot salt courts.
Yeah, okay.
That was the controversial part.
But yeah.
So the good part of this design is because we know how important drainage is.
The concept is that the drainage would be done so well that it could hypothetically be converted.
And it's supposed to be hopefully standing the test of time.
I really like that we can at least get a footprint on good athletic courts.
How will we know, besides usage, what residents want and what the waves are?
How do you keep that information, say, five years from now current in case we need changes?
That's a great question.
I think that if we still had plaster AI, it would be very easy to do a geofence and see what
the activity is, but our contract has ended with the county or they have ended their contract.
So that tends to be more narrative based, what we see walking around the park.
We have to figure out what the access is going to be like.
If it's reservation, if it's keys, all of these certain things.
And so there probably will be a way to track it.
And in recreation, what we do is we track program registration, right?
So we have a database and a system for registration that we can track everything.
And then if we have a reservation system, that's also a way to track.
So between those two, we should be able to.
The one thing I would ask then is think about how we can have proactive access to the
brain's information, wants and desires of those who don't come to us, because all the reservations
and the people who are going to come, they're coming.
But there's a whole circle of folks around them that may not be coming.
How do we engage them?
And so not for tomorrow, but maybe a year from now, at least we'd have a plan.
It was in love with Heidi's report about community development over time, it'd be great to see.
Here's how we're accessing engaging community members that don't come to us.
We're proactively finding them in the school clubs or the whatever.
Sure, I think.
The grocery store.
I do think that's a big conversation on how we want to go about the use of space.
Is it just open for the community?
is it just available, free for residents, do we charge non-residents?
You know what type of act like saying, it's more for residents now,
because I love that broader conversation, but for residents who are potential rec users,
how do we proactively reach them?
Let's track what people are doing.
I think the broader conversation, who's our audience, really important, townwide,
but for the purposes of this conversation, how do we proactively reach San and
and so more residents who aren't currently coming to us.
Like specific to the courts?
To usage of the courts, to ongoing information
about priority and importance.
Okay, okay.
Any other questions?
All right, let's open a public comment.
We'll start with the chamber.
Fiona, you wanna come on up?
Yeah.
Welcome.
Thank you all for hearing these comments
and for listening to our ideas and programs.
I just wanted to say that I thought that this summer was a really great testament to many things that I feel
Our community needs one thing that really stood out to me about these courts was that it attracted people from
Many different socio economic areas, which was so great and that is one of the greatest things about sports
It's the ultimate
that connector of people doesn't matter what you look like,
how much money you make, you can all play the game together.
And that was so evident on our watch parties
and our free play.
We had people that were living in the apartments
that are right next to the courts
and there was kids that had never even been on the court.
That was right in their backyard.
And I had parents that came and told me how thankful
they were that their kids were not sitting inside
this summer watching TV, but they were actually outside
and they could still hear them.
I also thought one of the special things was that sometimes we focus or I know that
I was really interested as soccer director to not just focus on a rec program but soccer
for all ages and that was something that I thought was so great not only were there kids playing,
we had time for younger kids, we had time for kids that were you know fifth, sixth grade
And then we had the kids that, you know, I, for me, I'm most excited to make sure they're not on their phones
But doing something that's truly productive for them and athletic and making friends and so I saw that
And then I also saw adults and then I saw a grandparents. I have a neighbor that
She's really sweet, but she actually came down to watch the games because she was a huge soccer fan
So it was really great to see multiple age groups come out
kids getting off their tablets and seeing a lot of barriers that sometimes come up
with who has money and who doesn't.
That was totally erased by this. And I know that Maddie and I have talked a lot about this, but I think one thing that would be so special for this town to be the leader in, is it's getting so expensive for kids to play sports now in the United States. There's a New York Times article that came out today, or sorry, New York Magazine article that came out today, about how expensive it is and how parents are now feeling like they don't have an option or they'll avoid sports all together.
because it's just too much for their family.
I think this would be such a great opportunity
for our REC program to lead the way
in making sure there's access to sports for all.
Yeah.
Thanks, Fiona.
Do I miss anything, Maddie?
OK.
Anyone else in the chamber wishing to provide public comment
on this?
Search anybody online?
Mayor, we do have one hand raised.
And right, let's do it.
Dave, you have been unmuted.
You guys hear me?
We can.
Gabe.
Welcome.
Hey everybody, I was there in the chamber and I had to run home and take my
girls home so far. I will make it quick because I don't have much time. Really, I'll
comment a few things sad but one more day, this is a thank you comment, thank you to
Maddie and Rack for taking a shot on this crazy idea this summer. I know I've
spoken about it to several of you there in the council and so you know this has
been kind of a long time an idea and this summer was really just a chance
to kind of activate that idea and test it out, and I think the town resoundingly said
we want this.
And so Chef Todd here, to your comment about how do we know what the town wants?
I mean, in case in point, right, like, I showed up to a meeting about Memorial Park and
Futsal Soccer wasn't even on the plans, you know, and so I kind of raised hands and, hey,
have you guys interviewed like a lot of the young people in town and said, well, no, the
majority of people responded to survey, we're like, you know, above a certain age, and so
So then they kind of sent us a survey out to the other folks and they got an overwhelming
response that Futsal was of interest.
So I think doing things like that, you know, really asking the town what it is that we're
doing and like you said, by these waves that are coming.
But I think, resoundly, what we saw this summer is that soccer in Futsal is of interest.
I mean, so many people came out.
Hopefully you guys got a chance to see it.
And so, you know, big thank you to everybody involved Fiona and their Fabian.
As Sam's, I'm a rec soccer, we're so supportive and I just couldn't be proud of our town the way they showed up and
how inclusive it was and just how good of a community we live in.
I know on the budget gap piece, you know, I fully agree that has to be sorted out and
look, I think we are a big believer in momentum, right, and like activate it, build it and it'll come and I think we have to
to leverage the momentum we built this summer
and go out to some of the folks in town
who want to see this become a full-time thing
and hopefully we'll raise some of the money,
but I agree, like we have to have a plan for a good chunk of that
and I will be working kind of hand in hand with Maddie
to make sure this becomes real.
I'd love to see it as part of just living here
and being a soccer fan and being a fan of our town.
So thanks again for you guys for supporting this
and I'm confident we'll be here in a year's time, celebrating a new court opening both for Pickleball and Fletzell.
Thank you, Gabe, and again, great job this summer.
Thank you.
Our next speaker, Johnny, Johnny, you have been unmuted.
Johnny, welcome.
We can't hear you, Johnny.
I'm so sorry.
We can hear you now.
I missed the blinking blue button right in front of my face.
Hi, John Moss, I'll make it quick to very supportive of the athletic facility renovation.
I had a chance to be down at the courts this summer with my kids, with my family, with
a lot of other people who were interested.
and I echo what Fiona mentioned and what Gabe has also shared and I know we're not changing
minds here. It sounds like we have a lot of support but what a special experience to be there
with so many different people at different ages and seeing all the smiles and all the fun that
happened. So I think Gabe you mentioned something really important which I think is that we should
build off the momentum of what you guys did there and I think that's a great idea. I think there
there's so much support that I have to think that from a grassroots level there's some
funding opportunities just from within the community itself.
And I urge the council to have the gumption to move this forward on the faith that the
community will step forward to fill that gap where it's needed and rise to the occasion.
So thank you all for considering this project.
I think it's going to be a great asset for the community, and thanks to everyone that made this summer happen, appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you, John.
May I ask?
There are no other hands raised.
Okay, so we'll close public comment at this point, and staff is looking for direction on this, so that's where we'll focus our discussion.
Would anybody like to start?
I want to answer to some questions that people had about how do we know what the community
wants.
We have had years of meetings about this project and surveys and then as Gabe suggested
iterations of surveys to try to reach more people.
So the design and Mike, thank you so much for the design and sticking with this project because
you've been a joy to work with and you're really smart and good at what you do.
So it's been great. I think everyone likes the concept. I don't think we're really even
arguing about that at all. But kind of what I do want to drill down a little on your
U.S. comments about, okay, what's our list of priorities and why does this move up? Because
that's a good question. And I am really proud of this council and this town council for many
years that we have always focused on infrastructure and always triaged into wants, wishes and needs,
and put needs first.
And I just think about the fire station, you know, we'll fix a failing bridge.
We did all the work recently on Robeson when it had dry rot on the library, on the roof here.
But it is so uppercase that this discussion is following the insurance discussion.
because that park has moved into a need.
Anyone that goes out there and looks at the condition of the surfaces, this isn't just a lot or a wish.
It is in such bad condition that if we don't do it, we're going to have claims, because people are going to get injured.
But that's the real reason, the stick to do it, but there's a carrot, and that is that so many of our residents use it.
And so I think this we absolutely should move forward.
I think, I mean, I can just tell you right now if we have to dip into reserves.
I think this has become a need in a project, we should do it.
I hope we don't and I hope fundraising works.
But we have been focused on trying to remedy this park for a decade is the truth.
And the project has been appropriately scaled back.
We may not be able to do the beautification in the beginning right away, and that's okay, because we'll get the areas that will be used, which is what we primarily want, which our rec programming will be able to use year round.
So I think it's thinking about that, and I also compare it with Creek Part where we just got lucky and aren't going to have to spend a bunch of money in or even diverting a little money we had set aside for that over to this project, right, Jeff?
So because we were able to divert that money, that even gives us a little more of a push.
And that was money that I liked, it was hoarding for Cree Park eventually.
And then we got lucky and got these donors.
So I'm happy to move that over.
But I think that this is a real smart move and keeps us focused on infrastructure,
which is really our primary job here.
So that's my thoughts.
Thank you.
You can go next.
go ahead. I'm very supportive of the project, the need. I've watched both of my children play
foot sol on basketball courts inside and worried that they go face-first into the bleachers,
so it's going to be really, it's going to be really nice. We'll have a dedicated foot sol
court in terms of, and I know there's great love for a pickleball as well as tennis, but you know,
You get to have favorites in this sort of thing.
The other piece that I would say was just the piece about what's our plan five years
from now to no engagement.
Wonderful that we have a look back process, wonderful that folks who've been here for
20 years have been doing this work.
And there are multiple new generations here in Gabe say that this came up in a meeting
and we pursued it actively, gives me hope, but I think the core of the community engagement
piece that I'm thinking about is for people who don't cross the metaphorical
transom, how are we reaching them? So that's the key there. Other than that, I think
about noise but I'm sure both planning and the rec commission will think about
that in the surfaces, you know, how can we minimize noise for, you know, the
apartments that we have the most influence over, are we thinking about it, is a bell
cooker for those units there. Can we put an extra layer of window over the window for
noises to reduce noise for those families? But I think those are, you know, long term
thoughts after you get past the next phase. The final thing is, you know, it would be great
once you all talk about priorities, but as usual, and as Jeff mentioned, the priorities will
certainly come to this council to be voted on by the collective and shifted or fully
affirmed as necessary, so I feel confident in that process and that we'll get there.
Very excited.
Thank you.
Go ahead.
This is a great plan.
I love it.
I am.
I've been wanting to try pickleball and every time I look up where to find it, it's frigging
like 400 bucks and I'm not, I can't afford that.
So I just, I hope that we at least for the beginning will maybe consider some programming
that will be provided for residents so that they can learn how to use these
things in a reasonably priced way. College of Marin has almost free cloth.
I'll take you out to play pickle. Oh, good. I'll take you out to play pickle.
I should say the library has you can check out in their library of things. You can
check out pickleball. So I did reserve that, but I don't know what I'm doing.
So pickleball noise complaints are not due to the surface. They're due to the ball against the paddle those are the that's the noise abatement that actually required
Sorry, were you done? I wasn't sorry. Okay, like I said, I love this concept. I think it would be such a huge improvement to our community, to engagements providing services and resources for
or a growing sport and activity in our community
and growing interest in soccer and puts all dedicated
pickleball courts, like the vision is great.
And so I'm fully supportive of moving forward
with the design and moving forward the vision
do want to get to clarity on the finances here.
Because unlike, I mean, I would not be okay
going into the general fund reserves for this.
like I don't think, given the thin line on which we are operating there, and potential
liabilities coming down our way, for example, if Roth decides to open a new fire station
and what that would mean for what our costs would be to operate public safety, right?
Like, we are looking down a world in which I think our reserves and our general fund reserves
are going to become increasingly important, and so I do think that we need to be very clear
are on where the sources of funds for this project
in particular given the uncertainties around it.
So that's my only hesitation,
but very supportive of the goals, the vision,
the design moving forward, again,
just with wanting to put the financial pieces
together appropriately.
All right, well, and I'll be fairly brief here,
but again, a huge thank you to staff,
Mathi and the REC team, Mike for your work, Fiona, Fabian, Gabe, the whole team, like this
is really exciting to be at this stage.
I certainly do echo a lot of what council member Burke had mentioned on this item and kind
solidly with her on those points.
I think, you know, this is a big ask certainly, but we don't know what the bid is going to
coming on, there is uncertainty at this point about what investment we could make as a town
or the wreck department. And we certainly don't know what fundraising will look like. So,
I think we should move forward with the current design and vision and come back to reassess
the financial particulars once we have a clearer, a closer design, a clearer idea of what
our internal funding sources will look like and what we think we could fundraise.
You know,
rather than a watt is very poignant and I think she you know made the case and
and we this is the same kind of conversation we had about the playing field at
Memorial Park right where it wasn't a safe field to play on and we were we
were really at risk of you know claims of people getting injured we have
softball there we have soccer and this is no different with the tennis courts and
and kind of the surfacing that we have down there you know I've been I've been
here for a while now. I'm not, you know, I haven't lived here my whole life like
Eileen, but I'm not 20 years now. What I've learned, you know, when I first moved
here, San Ensemble, was still that sleepy antique town, you know, and what I've
learned is
That when we invest in our infrastructure and our programs and our ideas, we improve the town certainly, but it also pays dividends. Look at live in the avenue, look at our parklet program, look at the things we have done. These were all risks at one point that have paid huge dividends. And I think this project is no different. I do put it in the need category as opposed to the want. And I think, you know, not so similar to a lot of other jurisdictions.
We've been very fiscally prudent.
We've been great fiscal stewards for our residents.
And I think, you know, as we articulated earlier,
prioritizing the fire station, prioritizing the library,
prioritizing the roof, the rec center.
Like, we've got our priorities straight.
And I am hopeful that, you know, fundraising will materialize
and we will be able to get this across the finish line.
But as it stands right now, I'm still a yes to all.
And, you know, want to see this move forward.
So at this point, we've heard from everyone.
I want to ask Maddie and Dave, do you guys have you heard
everything you need at this point to continue moving forward?
Excellent.
Well, then with that, we will close the item.
Thank you to everybody who stayed for this.
Mike and Fiotta.
You can just stay up on a Tuesday.
We are so sorry.
I'm sure that risk pool discussion really
I'll just check in. I think we could make it through this last item pretty quickly. Does anybody need a bio break or anything?
Let's power through.
All right, let's go.
So, our last item of the night, formerly item 2-3, is reviewing a letter and authorizing
me to sign it with respect to the grand jury report on Marine Clean Energy.
Heidi!
Good evening.
Oh, Heidi, you're waiting here.
Oh, man.
You.
I'm sorry, Heidi.
No, okay.
You're good.
Okay, great.
Well, I'll start again.
Good evening, Mayor Birdo, members of the town council.
Before I start, I'd like to thank Vice Mayor Walker and Brigitte Whitpler, the town's
climate action coordinator for taking the lead on this report.
Brigitte is unable to attend this evening, so I will be pinch hitting and hopefully I'll
be able to summarize the report accurately.
So why are we here this evening, stemming from an over-expenditure at the Marin Clean Energy
MCE, now known as MCE, the Marin County Granjury Commission to report to examine MCE's
governance, oversight and transparency practices, and identify some findings and recommendations
to move forward. For a background context, MCE originally was formed in 2008 as a joint powers
authority using what they call a community choice aggregator model, so it was kind
of a new concept how to form and buy energy and allows communities to buy alternative
sources of energy that might be cleaner than normal PG&E, but in terms of San Enselmo
PG&E is still our utility provider and they provide it, but MCE provides this alternative
option that people can play into. Currently, MC started just more in county and as
expanded currently there's 38 members. As part of this CCA and it's comprised of
more in county, Contra Costa County, Napa, and Sonoma counties. There's approximately
1.8 million customers and their annual revenues exceed over $840 million. So the
So grand jury report that was written for NCE identified 14 findings that were deficient
in 13 recommendations of those findings and recommendations.
The town of San Enselmo is responsible for responding to two findings and two recommendations.
The remaining of the findings and recommendations are to be addressed by NCE and another state
agency.
And if you saw in the Marine IJ, there is an article that's written about MCE's response.
So the background, so what are the findings and recommendations that send and sell most
responsible for, is one of the findings is that they've identified that board members have
limited specialized expertise regarding a large and complex companies such as MCE.
And the other finding is that board members are a local elected officials with competing
demands and attendance matters for effective governance is necessary.
So those are summarized.
So in response to those findings, there are two recommendations that by December 31st of
this year, primary representatives on the MCE or designated alternates are committed to
attending each meeting regularly.
Finally, the other recommendation is also by December 31st of this year that the town
reassess its appointments to prioritize members with financial and energy expertise.
In terms of the draft response that the town has prepared for response, the first response,
the town agrees with it or the recommendation and that it's been implemented.
So, represented representation is already addressed and in some of the points both primary
MCE members and alternates and if a primary member is not able to attend the alternate
then attends the meeting.
The second recommendation, the town's proposed response is that we partially agree with it,
and this is regarding expertise related to appointments, expertise matters but shouldn't
be the only criterion.
So the proposed response recognizes financial and energy expertise would be important but we also want to consider governance, institutional knowledge, compliance, continuity, and community representation.
So staff is recommending that the town council consider the proposed draft response, identify if any necessary changes are needed or warranted and authorize the mayor to sign the response.
and then following the town council's action, then staff will button up the
response and send it off to the Marin County grand jury. So with that
concludes our presentation and Vice Mayor Walker and I are available to answer any
questions you may have. Great. Anybody have any questions? I don't I have a lot of
comments in the class but no questions.
I have no questions either so let's open a
public comment. We'll start with the chamber.
Move to online. Mayor, there are no hands
raised. All right, so we'll close public comment. Now we can get to comments.
Tara, would you like to? Yeah, I'll go ahead. So I was on, I served on the board probably
the longest of anyone in this room, which was not that long. We're relatively new here.
But one of the things I definitely felt was that there were too many people on that board,
and it made speaking up about your opinion very vulnerable and difficult, and I'm wondering,
it seems to me in looking at the questions that we're asking, that we're asked to respond to.
It's almost putting the onus upon MCE to do a better job of training us as board members,
and I'm not necessarily of the mind that that's the case.
I think there was a lot of orientation and training that I went to. In fact, the packets were always 200 pages long or longer.
Sorry.
I'm getting it done.
And you know, in the orientations, we're hours and hours. You have to drive the concrete sometimes.
And there was a lot of information.
I really, I'm concerned with this new governance review that is happening that they will possibly
stick to the same number of board members, that's what I've heard, that the consultant
is possibly considering, that's what I've heard through the grapevine, it might not be true,
but I'm concerned that if that's the case, we're going to be in the same situation and that
this, our response will not be adequate.
I have a copy and I gave it to Megan of Belvedere's response and Fairfax's red line response
to the Belvedere response.
And I think I would like to see us revise our response with a little bit more meat that talks
about the difficulty in getting the expertise needed when you have a representative from
every single town on that board. I would like to, I would like the governance committee
to consider, and maybe that's, there's no place for that in this response, but I would like
the governance committee to consider something like what we have for the Coastal Commission
where everybody, where maybe a few representatives from each county goes as a board member and those people are chosen based on their expertise, not just the fact that they were the last person standing and got pushed in that direction.
So I think we can do a little bit better. I think our answers are really short and probably that's by design but I think there's a good model in what Belvedere provided that I think we should consider.
consider.
Do you have a deadline to respond?
December 31st I think.
No.
September.
Yes.
This is the last meeting at which we can comply with that deadline.
I thought there was one more, I'm sorry.
We would have one more.
We have another meeting.
We have September 8th.
That's right.
So how did we want to, because I'm sure both Heidi and I have thoughts but how do you
want to proceed?
Yeah.
I want to hear from everybody else at this point and then we can make a decision of how we want to proceed.
Do you have more to?
No, I think that's it. I just think that there's an opportunity in this.
It might not be the best venue for it, but there is an opportunity and I see that the other towns are taking this opportunity to kind of let people know that that's what we're thinking.
I don't disagree with the idea that we could use this response to be a little bit broader in how we want to address some of the failings.
that MCE rather than simply covering R5, R6, etc., and couching some of our larger concerns
as a town and as a council about the governance feelings.
So I'm certainly open to that.
My own individual feedback, however, was about our response on R6 where I think we actually
can and should be in my estimation, a little bit more pointed in our objection to what the
the grand jury has pointed out here, because extensive energy expertise is silly.
Let's just be honest, that is not what is, first of all, it's very unlikely that the
town councils, you know, Belvedere, Tibberon, whatever, are going to have extensive energy
expertise, but that was not the primary failing of the board of MCEO's governance and financial
oversight, not energy expertise.
Well, in lack of transparency.
I know many, many things, but I just mean like the individual expertise of board members
in the energy sector itself is like 10th on my list of things that I would be looking
for in a capable member of that board.
So personally, I would like to see us be a little bit more pointed in the fact that that
That is silly, and financial expertise is certainly merited as governance and all those
other sorts of things.
But that energy expertise is of itself not a major factor that we believe, not only
for us, but for others in terms of board member representation, should be one of the criteria
after consideration.
Council Member.
Yeah, so I mean, I mostly defer to those who've been on it because I don't know the experience
exactly.
Everything I've read both in the paper and in the report suggests that there were
many members who just either didn't put in the work or deferred to management because
it was a lot of work. And that may go to the structure, as Terrell says, that it's a structure
that does not lend itself to council members for the most part. And so I think we should
maybe wait. I don't know how we're going to get together or have a consensus between
now in our next meeting, but it sounds like we should have a more robust response.
So that's kind of my thoughts.
I'm happy to defer to Vice Mayor Walker on that, to the extent others want to contribute
their thoughts to her.
What do you think about that?
I'm deferring to you now, I guess.
Sure.
I mean, I think by design, this response focuses on San and Selma.
And as the person who set on the MCE broader response put more than 20 hours into face-to-face
meetings and reading, a lot of thought and discussion has gone into the broader concept.
So I would say keeping our response focused on us, we agree with the first two findings.
And I don't think that in our agreement, we're saying that 100% of the board was deficient
or 100% lack of transparency happened.
But the comments while challenging from the grand jury were substantially correct.
The grand jury also suggested some things that we already do, that's important.
The final piece, you know, would it be partially disagree, partially agree, we literally
spent about two hours on the broader response, with partially agree, partially disagree,
for the broader organization.
I think for us, saying what we think is important, and I largely agree with you.
I don't think that the issue necessarily was energy expertise, and people spoke to that at the last meeting. But what we do need to highlight is some of the things where the deficiencies did show up. They did show up on on governance, on following through on some of the rules, on over deferral to staff on certain occasion. Now, and I also think that it's important for us to be specific about the elements that we think are important.
So, the governance is in there, you'll see the things that we added.
It is probably not the best forum for our broader comments to say,
here's all the things we'd like him see you to do.
As a council, we could discuss that, but for the purposes of our response,
we've been authentic, true to San Enselmo and clear.
We as individuals can have extended personal responses to our feelings about this,
in writing, or more broadly, but this segment covers what San
Enselmo needs to do.
We agree largely, and I don't hear any of us saying,
no, you know, we want to disagree on lots of things.
Could we strengthen our response on why we want to align
with what's in the report?
We could, but I don't think it's necessary to substantially
strengthen that response because there is a governance survey
out there are governance interviews, I participated in one hour interview individually, there are multiple surveys happening.
This information will come together. It doesn't necessarily exclude the idea that the board could be smaller, that the board could be elected members of bodies or it could be appointed members of bodies.
But in this, we've been crisp, clear and taken care of San
Enzelma.
I've read the response from Belvedere
hit conversations with their rep.
I think their approach makes sense.
I think our approach is aligned with what we need to do
with San Enzelma.
So first, I want to thank Vice Mayor Walker
and Heidi for their work on this.
I think generally, the responses are good and I'm good
with them.
I also do support the idea of maybe adding
a little more detail, not going so far overboard, but focusing on the areas that relate to San
and Salmo. You know, I'm the alternate on MCE and I was at the meeting, I was the participant
at the meeting where everything came to a head.
In the lead up to that, and in the prior meetings
I attended, there was really no onboarding process. There was, you know, not a lot of except
for that last meeting where there were serious decisions that had to be made in closed session,
there was essentially two days of meetings with legal counsel leading up to that to get you,
you know, fully brief for that. Again, it seemed very, and I understand with the timing of the
meeting and everything, but it was very last minute and we have to get this information, you know,
to the point where I had to take time off of work to participate in these briefings.
As the alternate, I have participated in the governance survey that they sent around, and I was very candid in my responses there.
I do believe that I share a lot of council member callways feelings about the makeup of the board.
I think when it started and it was just Marine County, it was an appropriate side board and the governance model was one that worked.
However, as it has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and it is now a multi-county jurisdiction.
It is very tough and in the expertise aside, right, I don't expect everybody to have
energy expertise.
For our positions, financial oversight, governance, best practice, that kind of thing, absolutely,
right?
But in terms of how the board is, I know a lot of the board members are on there because
they like the green credentials they get with the environmental community for being on the board,
but in my conversations with members of the board, if you ask them to get into the weeds on how
the sausages made there, they cannot tell you, right? I don't believe it's because they don't have the
expertise. I believe it is because this is an ancillary assignment compared to what we do here at
the council and the other vital committees we serve on, right?
So, and I don't want my words to get twisted, I'm a huge fan of MCE, right?
Like I think the programs are very important, aside from just the clean energy that they
provide, I think the programs are, the additional programs are very important and very helpful and
very wanted at least in our community.
But when you look at how it is evolved over the years and you consider that this is not
a committee like the fire board or the police board where there is an absolute direct connection
to our community, right?
I would never want to see this, but if MCE went away tomorrow, we would still get electricity,
right?
This is about getting clean energy and having a provider to do that.
So I think it is very difficult for a board member who, whether you're a council member, a county supervisor,
you have competing priorities every day.
You know, for me, it's the person who wants to talk about the pothole or the tree,
or having to go to a meeting about the 60% designs for Memorial Park and the things that are priorities for our community
to find the time to delve deep into this very nuanced subject matter is very, very hard.
And I, again, in conversations I've had with other board members when I have to fill in and
ask them, you know, hey, what's going on here? They're like, oh, well, staff says this,
everything was staff driven and that's where they got into problems because there was,
you know, a lot of, you know, just trust in staff and not that they shouldn't trust staff,
But when you saw the final result of where things were going, that was a very dangerous dynamic.
And so I do think the board should be smaller.
I think the board should consist of people that are not necessarily council members.
I think they could be appointed by a council or a board of supervisors,
whether it's, you know, same amount of members and we appoint somebody.
Or it's every county appointing five people that may be the board of supervisors figures out.
I think that's something that needs to happen, and to your point, Council Member Callaway,
I've been shocked that that discussion hasn't been more prominent within the overall discussion
about MC and what's happening, and I know that's no fault of Vice Mayor Walker.
She's been a great advocate for us on there and has participated very intimately in these
processes, and she knows how we feel this is a good discussion for us to have.
So again, I don't know that we need to go into a huge level of detail with the response.
I was fine with what was written, but if the council majority wants to add some more
meat to the bones, I would support that.
You know, I feel confident after hearing both of you speak that it's fine the way it is.
The reason being is that due to Brown Act, I wasn't able to talk to either of you and
And I wanted to have this discussion during this forum because it was our only opportunity.
So it sounds like we're all on the same page and we did it publicly so it's ordained
and so.
Okay.
And the issue of the board size and composition is being deeply discussed, deeply.
All right, so I think we need to take a vote right now to see if we want to authorize
me to sign this response to the civil grand jury. So at this time, I'll wait. I'd like
to open a public comment first. I felt you gazed, Megan.
Telepathic communication. So we'll start in the chamber. Anybody wishing
to ride public comment? Seeing none, anybody online surge.
Sorry, Mayor, but there are no hands
All right, so then we'll close public comment and at this time I will accept a motion to approve the letter
I'll move that we approve the town of San San was response the Marine County Civil Grand Jury report
And I'll second that all right all in favor hi and you posed all right and thank you we are adjourned
We will see you in September
I don't know.
You want it?
We can read that.
I don't have any point in my comment to do that, but now that I want to.
I don't know.
I'm
going to do it.
I mean, I don't approve it.
I don't approve it.
And I have to do that.
I want to do it.
Right.
The most important thing is that I'm doing it as it was.
But I didn't, I didn't feel that anybody would exactly know I'm just one of these miles from an area in the 19th century.
That's right.
It was.
But it wasn't around.
So it was around?
No.
It was around the 19th century.
Okay.
Thank you very much everybody.
No, we did hold back for him I will leave that one down.
There's that on.