Making the most of money: budget challenges are opportunities

The Sausalito budget was hit hard by the COVID19-induced recession. However, a once-in-a-generation strain on City finances doesn’t mean we can’t find a way to do more with less. The Golden Gate Bridge and the Empire State Building—two of our nation’s greatest, most enduring public improvement projects—were launched during the Great Depression. By being more transparent and effective in deciding how we spend our money and manage our vision, we can balance all of the various equities and at the same time be ambitious in what we want to create locally. Tackling the budget issues will be one of the first and most important things I do, and for which I am especially qualified. I will bring a disciplined approach to budgeting and a creative approach to finding solutions, and turn our challenges into opportunities for moving our City forward.

A new vision for downtown

As the Vice Chair of Sausalito’s Economic Development Advisory Committee, I participated in an exercise about what to do with the abandoned downtown Bank of America building. Our charge was to propose potential uses for this property. My approach as to how to reimagine the space and downtown was a bit different, as you can see in this video.

The current General Plan draft does not pay enough attention to our downtown, and its importance to residents and local visitors. As it is now written, the Plan calls for a buffer between our downtown and the rest of the City. I believe we can and should reclaim downtown for everyone; make it economically vibrant for local businesses and a place for all of us to visit and enjoy.

I don’t feel we should have to wait a decade to do big things like this. But the cornerstone of my approach is not the content but the process—in making the video here, I wanted to help people “see” a reimagined future for the locus of our City. Tools like this are essential in encouraging the sharing of ideas and building consensus, and I’m looking to champion a different, more effective, process for getting a united vision for our City.

A master plan for 2040

What will our neighborhoods look like in 20 years? The City just spent one million dollars and took three years to produce a document about the future of Sausalito, one that is simply not accessible to the vast majority of our residents. Read the plan and decide for yourself if you understand what Sausalito will look like in 2040.

Our Plan should be less complicated, and clearly lay out the priorities for our future. I think we can produce a vision of Sausalito 2040 more akin to my vision for Downtown Sausalito. It should be one that shows how all the pieces fit together: the parks, the bike path, the new housing, our resident businesses, and the kind of tourism we would like to encourage and discourage. It also needs to include policies to make the vision work from a budget point of view. If elected I will champion a way towards envisioning a better future, one that we can all understand and get excited about!

From parks to permitting: we can do better

Ask anyone who has opened a new business, applied for a building permit, or is concerned about zoning enforcement in the Marinship whether they think the current system is working well. Permits can take months, and sometimes years, and the process is frustrating to the point where it can force people into cheating or giving up.

The City of Sausalito staff is capable and incredibly dedicated to their jobs, but the system and procedures now in place are simply not working as they should for the benefit of our citizenry. Once in office, I will push for continuing improvement of city operations and will start by looking at ways we can make the permit process smoother and faster for applicants, while still looking after the interests of the city that the permit process is meant to protect.

We can take a process improvement initiative further and also apply it to bigger public works projects, like our City Parks, which shouldn’t have to be closed for two years or take ten years to make repairs. My goal would be to put in place a system that can make future public projects happen better, faster, and cheaper while also figuring out how we can give our city the resources to maintain the public infrastructure for future generations.

I believe even the way we conduct our City Council meetings can benefit from looking at how the Council can function more effectively. The current COVID-19 crisis has prompted significant and lasting changes to the way business is being conducted—we should look for ways to conduct the city’s business that encourages iterative thinking and drives toward consensus. For example, we might explore ways to include live and remote public comment at meetings. Progress requires change and I strongly believe we can find a better way.