Pension Reform Tops Council's Agenda

Public Hearing on Paramedic Tax

The Council will hold a public hearing on an ordinance to establish a tax rate in the 2012-2013 fiscal year for paramedic services. These services would apply to both residential and non-residential properties in San Rafael and Marinwood.

Pension Reform Resolution

San Rafael's near term pension costs are anticipated to continue to rise due to the lingering effects of the recession and other anticipated changes. This is true even considering an investment return of 23.4 percent in the year ending June 30,2011 and assuming a 7.5 percent return each year thereafter. The resolution offers a set of 12 guiding principles and practices for the Council's consideration.

Status Report on Regional Housing Need Allocation

Over the past year, there has been a substantial amount of local and Bay Area media coverage on the joint effort of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) to develop the "Plan Bay Area." The Plan Bay Area is being developed as the Bay Area's "Sustainable Communities Strategy" (SCS). As a requirement of Senate Bill 375 (SB375), the development of an SCS is intended to serve as a planning tool to facilitate regional reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to targeted levels by 2020 and 2040. During this process, ABAG/MTC has published several scenarios of year 2040 jobs and housing growth projections for each Bay Area county and the local municipalities. The jobs and housing projections have been criticized and questioned by some local jurisdictions as being unrealistic and unsustainable. This criticism has been coupled with concern that the Plan Bay Area SCS promotes the loss of local planning control.

Linked into the SCS process is the State-mandated Regional Housing Need Allocation (RHNA), which over the past 30 years, has been a staple base to planning for housing goals in local General Plan Housing Elements. The linkage of RHNA to the Plan Bay Area SCS has complicated matters in that there have been numerous scenarios of growth projection numbers published, some related to SCS and some related to RHNA. This staff report is intended to provide some background and clarity on SCS and RHNA, their linkage, as well as a status on the progress and next steps for Plan Bay Area SCS and RHNA.