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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2015-05-26 Parks & Recreation Summary MinutesAPPROVED 1 2 3 4 MINUTES 5 PARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION 6 REGULAR MEETING 7 May 26, 2015 8 CITY HALL 9 250 Hamilton Avenue 10 Palo Alto, California 11 12 Commissioners Present: Stacey Ashlund, Deirdre Crommie, Jennifer Hetterly Ed Lauing, Pat 13 Markevitch, Keith Reckdahl 14 Commissioners Absent: Abbie Knopper 15 Others Present: Council Liaison Eric Filseth 16 Staff Present: Daren Anderson, Catherine Bourquin, Rob de Geus, Peter Jensen, Matthew 17 Krupp 18 I. ROLL CALL CONDUCTED BY: Catherine Bourquin 19 20 II. AGENDA CHANGES, REQUESTS, and DELETIONS: 21 22 None. 23 24 III. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS: 25 26 None. 27 28 IV. BUSINESS: 29 30 1. Approval of Draft Minutes from the Special Meeting of April 28, 2015. 31 32 Approval of the draft April 28, 2015 Minutes as amended was moved by Commissioner 33 Lauing and seconded by Vice Chair Markevitch. Passed 4-0 34 35 2. Approval of Memo to Council on Supporting Funding for the Implementation 36 of the Foothills Park Fire Master Plan. 37 38 Chair Reckdahl: Do we want to do the presentation and then have public comment? 39 Approved Minutes 1 APPROVED 40 Commissioner Lauing: We do? 41 42 Chair Reckdahl: Yeah. Herb wants to talk. Let's have Daren present first, then we'll 43 have Herb talk. 44 45 Daren Anderson: Good evening, Daren Anderson. Sorry, go ahead. 46 47 Commissioner Lauing: Do we want to do it that way or do we want to do it in terms of 48 recapping from the CIP process? 49 50 Mr. Anderson: However you'd like. I could just give a quick background on this and 51 explain what's in the CIP. 52 53 Commissioner Lauing: In the context of CIPs. 54 55 Mr. Anderson: Sure. Good evening, Daren Anderson, Division Manager, Open Space, 56 Parks and Golf. The memo that was attached was originally drafted on behalf of the 57 Commission to the Finance Committee. It was at the request of the Commissioners at the 58 retreat when I explained that funding that was originally submitted for the Foothills Fire 59 Master Plan as a capital improvement project had been turned down last year. Instead of 60 going in as another capital project, we were informed that from now on it would be in the 61 operating budget. A quick back story on the plan itself. It was adopted by Council in 62 2009. The plan was about lessons learned from Oakland Hills Fire and how the Palo Alto 63 Foothills is very similar with similar threats. The goals are designed to mitigate and 64 address those impacts and those fire hazards. The plan has 51 treatment areas, and 65 they're largely centered around Foothills Park, Pearson-Arastradero Preserve, and 12 66 miles of City roads. When it was first created, the plan had a cost estimate of about 67 $700,000 for the cycle of treatments. A few years later in fiscal year '12, Council 68 approved a capital improvement project to fund $200,000 worth of the plan. It was slow 69 to take off, largely because staff lacked the capacity to manage this project. The other 70 important thing to note is there was only $200,000 even though there was $700,000 of 71 work. As I mentioned, we struggled. This was co-managed between Public Works, Fire 72 Department, Emergency Services and Police and Community Services, all working 73 cooperatively. It didn't have much traction until we formed a partnership with the Fire 74 Safe Council. They have helped us manage and implement this project and have utilized 75 the vast majority of funding that was in that capital improvement project. Knowing that 76 the funds were running out, we contracted with the author of the original plan in 2009, 77 who gave us fresh numbers, reevaluated what there was to do. The memo I attached 78 explains the breakdown, but roughly it delineates the little pot of funding for Fire. Fire 79 already had that money in a previous budget allotment that they were operating from. 80 There was $60,000 mainly focused on doing prescribed burns, fuel load assessments, and 81 Approved Minutes 2 APPROVED then a portion of the project management consultant fee. Public Works by and large does 82 the roadside clearing. They also have a portion of the project management. Everything 83 inside the parks was going to be Community Services' portion. You can see that's 84 reflected in the $66,700 price. That's the back story. I'll turn it over to Commissioner 85 Lauing. 86 87 Commissioner Lauing: The ad hoc committee has been meeting for a couple of years, 88 three years now I think, with the CIP staff to review CIPs which has been a very effective 89 process for all of us. This project of fire prevention, as Daren discussed, was funded as 90 he discussed, but then it was underfunded by a lot and it still is. Instead of depending on 91 the vagaries of the CIP approval process, we discussed at the retreat the idea that we 92 should have this amount of expenditures put in the budget regularly and annually, 93 because it's a safety hazard. We previewed that last month. Tonight with Daren's 94 introduction, we have a motion that is itemized in your packet in the boldface, which is to 95 ensure that residents are protected from fire risks in Foothills Park and Arastradero 96 Preserve, PRC recommends that Council approve the necessary maintenance for the 97 Foothills Fire Management Plan annually and routinely in the respective departmental 98 budgets rather than have this work be subject to prioritization and potential non-approval 99 of longer term CIP projects. The way this document is constructed, part of that motion is 100 a summary of the explanation of why, particularly that we want to emphasize and 101 prioritize the safety of our residents in all of our parks. I would like to make that motion. 102 If it's seconded, then we'll have a discussion. 103 104 Female: What time are we letting the public speak? 105 106 Commissioner Lauing: After we make the motion. 107 108 Chair Reckdahl: Okay. 109 110 Commissioner Lauing: I need a second to that. 111 112 Chair Reckdahl: I will second that. 113 114 MOTION: Commissioner Lauing moved, seconded by Chair Reckdahl, to recommend 115 that Council approve necessary maintenance for Foothills Fire Management Plan 116 annually and routinely in the respective departmental budgets rather than have this work 117 be subject to prioritization and potential non-approval of longer term CIP projects. 118 119 Now public comment. We have one speaker, Herb Borock. You have three minutes. 120 121 Herb Borock: Chair Reckdahl and Commissioners, I was at the Finance Committee 122 meeting this afternoon. One concern I had was trying to decipher what was being done 123 Approved Minutes 3 APPROVED (inaudible) the budget and related Request for Proposal for the Foothills Fire 124 Management Program. Despite its having been explained to me in general terms, I 125 attempted to go to the operating budget to see if I was going to be using it to find this out. 126 If you turn page-by-page and you're lucky, you might find all three of these, but they are 127 in the descriptions in the part of the budget document for each department program. It 128 says budget adjustments. It's only then you would know. Maybe if year-to-year they're 129 the same, then it wouldn't appear there. I would hope that if it continues to be in the 130 operating budget rather than the capital budget, that there's some central way in the 131 budget document itself of finding this rather than having to find it in three different 132 departments. There's no index for this. Other than the fact that it mentions in each of 133 them that it's in the other departments as well, it would seem to me to make more sense to 134 have it all in one place. My second concern is that the operating budget is something 135 that's adopted every year by the Council. They're not committing themselves to future 136 expenditure amounts in each succeeding budget. This is the Commission's 137 recommendation to the Council. I haven't seen an action the Council can take that would 138 ensure today that it's going to be in the budget in year 2, 3, 4, 5. Finally, the last sentence 139 of the letter says that the joint department implementation plan and projected budget from 140 CSD staff is attached for your reference. My question is, is that something from the 141 memorandum or is that some other document. What is it? I don't see anything to 142 indicate what that attachment is. Thank you. 143 144 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. Discussion? 145 146 Commissioner Lauing: Speaking to the motion at this point. The objective is to take 147 some of the vagaries out of this safety hazard by being able to clear the brush and not 148 have it be an ongoing safety hazard. The thought is that by our recommendation of 149 having it be annually and routinely approved, that it is an operating thing for the safety of 150 the parks as opposed to being dependent on the difficulties of the prioritization of CIPs. I 151 want discussion on this as well, but I'm proposing that we send this overlay letter in 152 reverse order of how it came in the packet. The memo that Daren wrote on behalf of staff 153 was very thorough and detailed as it always is when it comes from Daren. It's very much 154 appreciated. That lays out the budget as it's broken down in those three departments and 155 is in support of the idea of why it makes sense to do it as part of the annual budget. 156 157 Chair Reckdahl: I have some questions. How is the City budget allocated? For the CIP 158 process, we do one year at a time, but we have a five-year allocation going forward. 159 Even though we're not committing to that, we are saying these are the coming attractions. 160 We expect to be paying this in the next five years. Is there anything like that for the City 161 budget? Can you put a placeholder in future years, so that when they're doing the budget 162 they know these fixed numbers are already in the budget? 163 164 Approved Minutes 4 APPROVED Rob de Geus: There's not a five-year plan for the operating budget. As we submit new 165 requests, new needs like this one, we submit it as, in this case, an ongoing funding need. 166 That's how it's being presented to the Finance Committee and then ultimately to Council. 167 We can also submit things as a one-time need, and it's not in the base budget essentially. 168 We have to ask for it again for the next year. 169 170 Chair Reckdahl: If you designate it as ongoing, then it is like the CIP. 171 172 Mr. de Geus: It becomes part of the base budget. Each year we have to approve the 173 operating budget and this is true and things can get removed. There needs to be a good 174 reason for that. Generally when things are ongoing and we have a need like this one 175 where there's a plan that says that we need to do this to keep the residents and property 176 safe, it's unlikely that it would be removed. 177 178 Chair Reckdahl: How does it work if you have money left over? For the CIPs, if you 179 have money left over, you have a little window of time to spend it past the end of the 180 calendar year, don't you? 181 182 Mr. de Geus: Generally that's not the case. In the operating budget, if you don't spend 183 the money and it's not encumbered for something, then it returns back to the reserve. 184 185 Chair Reckdahl: CIPs, if it's not used, you can extend it into the next year. 186 187 Mr. de Geus: We can reappropriate it, right. 188 189 Chair Reckdahl: By putting it in the operating budget, we are losing some flexibility 190 then. 191 192 Mr. de Geus: Correct. It becomes part of the base budget. You have to help me out 193 here, Daren. If it's $150,000 a year, that's the estimate for keeping up with the Fire 194 Management Plan, then we would do as much as we can to spend down those funds and 195 make sure we're doing the work. If we don't spend it all, you're right, it would return to 196 the reserve. Then the next fiscal year begins July 1, and you get another $150,000 to 197 continue to work. 198 199 Mr. Anderson: The only thing I'd add to that is ASD had contacted us and said this is not 200 the kind of program we're going to do through the capital budget any longer. It's not even 201 applicable for the capital budget in their eyes. Hence, they were the one who originally 202 directed us to put this into the operating budget. 203 204 Mr. de Geus: Say Daren, for his piece of it related to Foothills Park, enters into a 205 contract with some firm to do work in Foothills Park but the work is not complete by the 206 Approved Minutes 5 APPROVED end of the fiscal year, he can choose to extend that contract and move the money into the 207 new fiscal year to continue to spend on it. 208 209 Chair Reckdahl: If you contract out and the work is not done, it's the same thing. You 210 lose that money. 211 212 Mr. de Geus: No, you can actually choose to reappropriate like a CIP project. You can 213 say this work is going to continue. We didn't get it done by the end of the fiscal year. 214 We intend to get it done within such-and-such time in the new fiscal year. We want to 215 take this 2015 funds into 2016. 216 217 Chair Reckdahl: That doesn't decrease the amount you get for the next year? 218 219 Mr. Anderson: I don't think so. That does have to be encumbered, the contract. 220 221 Mr. de Geus: It does have to be encumbered, correct. 222 223 Commissioner Lauing: Keith, could I just add one other thing to your point? It seems 224 like it would be more accurate, because you're making these budgeting decisions a year in 225 advance or six months in advance of when you're going to use them. Whereas, with a 226 CIP, you're taking a five-year horizon and saying, "I think it's about $100,000 a year." 227 He's making these decisions in a very short term and knows that it's a safety problem and 228 knows that he wants to be able to use it. The fact that it's being contracted out also 229 minimizes the constraint on staff time. It seems like it's a pretty low probability. I raise 230 that for you to speak to, not me, that it wouldn't be used. 231 232 Mr. Anderson: We agree, and I think we can spend it down appropriately especially with 233 that relationship we have now with the Fire Safe Council. They're really helping to 234 project manage this. Also, it puts a little onus on us to be tight with our schedules, to be 235 planning a little more diligently and strictly, which is a good thing. 236 237 Chair Reckdahl: In the past, the flexibility to spend in future years actually maybe has 238 slowed us down a little. We didn't have the gun to our head and some of the work wasn't 239 done when we expected it to be done originally. 240 241 Mr. Anderson: That can be true, yes. There is some added flexibility. There are times 242 with certain capital improvement projects where we have a five-year project and it's 243 ongoing. In the case of tennis courts, maybe we load up a couple of big sites that lend 244 themselves to getting done. The annual funding for tennis courts isn't enough to do all 245 the courts at the site, so you have to save a little and it rolls over and allows you to plan 246 like that. It's not necessarily something you can do in this scenario with the operating 247 budget, but that was an added flexible component of the capital budget that was helpful 248 Approved Minutes 6 APPROVED 249 Chair Reckdahl: In this memo, we said $181,000. How much of that is due to making up 250 work that wasn't done in the past, and how much of that is ongoing? 251 252 Mr. Anderson: That's a good question. In my memo you'll see that it's anticipated in FY 253 '17 we're going to require less funding for CSD, approximately $48,000. This year we're 254 $66,000. It is variable due to the cyclical nature of vegetation control. We made some 255 good strides this last year or two since we formed that relationship with the Fire Safe 256 Council and spent that money. You might see a little dip, and then you might see a little 257 increase, where it goes even higher than what we originally asked. It's continual 258 evaluation. Like I said, we did hire the consultant. He is going to redo the Fire 259 Management Plan, so we'll have revised numbers. We'll monitor it closely and request 260 what we need. 261 262 Chair Reckdahl: The yearly budget, in steady state when we get everything taken care of, 263 will be in the neighborhood of $180,000? 264 265 Mr. Anderson: About. 266 267 Chair Reckdahl: Maybe a little lower, but in that neighborhood. Not dramatically lower. 268 269 Mr. Anderson: Right. I think you're going to see peaks and valleys, and not too deep or 270 too high. 271 272 Chair Reckdahl: The work that we're doing for this, we're clearing brush. Are we doing 273 anything with fire breaks? If a fire does start, it only burns a segment of the park. 274 275 Mr. Anderson: Yes. The $66,700 for CSD's portion also includes fire break clearance 276 inside the park, clearing around the facilities inside the park, the interpretive center, the 277 restrooms, the picnic areas, all those kind of areas, and the roadways as well inside. 278 279 Chair Reckdahl: Is there anything else we could do if we're worried about fire at 280 Foothills Park? Could we add additional hydrants up in the park or is there any other 281 type of action we could take other than clearing brush? 282 283 Mr. Anderson: No. The plan was well thought out. It was a comprehensive one and 284 looked at the whole area. There are components of our relationship with the Fire Safe 285 Council and especially this consultant who drafted it. We've got a good relationship with 286 them. We're looking at things like educating surrounding residents that they're doing the 287 right thing, contacting our associates like Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space. We own 288 a good portion of the right side of the road as you're going up Page Mill. We own the 289 Palo Alto side. There are components of the left side of Page Mill Road that are owned 290 Approved Minutes 7 APPROVED by Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District or managed by them. It doesn't make a 291 lot of sense to clear one-half of the road. You've got to clear both. Having 292 communications with them, making sure they understand what we're going to work 293 towards and what they could do cooperatively to achieve the same goal, those are the 294 steps we're taking. I think we're on the right path. 295 296 Chair Reckdahl: If a fire starts there and we want to put it out with water, is it tanker 297 trucks or do we have some hydrants up in the park? 298 299 Mr. Anderson: We have four reservoirs, one inside the park up by Station 8 and three 300 others in and around the adjacent area, one in Pearson-Arastradero Preserve. They would 301 utilize those. In the past, they've also utilized Lake Boronda. We've done training 302 exercises where they'll bring down a helicopter and fill up their bucket from the lake, and 303 come and do targeted drops when they need to. There are hydrants in and around the area 304 as well. 305 306 Chair Reckdahl: Where are the hydrants? 307 308 Mr. Anderson: There's one in Foothills and, I know there's another one in and around 309 Page Mill Road that they could utilize. 310 311 Chair Reckdahl: It's down near the interpretive center, or where would it be? 312 313 Mr. Anderson: Forgive me, I don't have that information handy at this moment. I can get 314 back to you. 315 316 Chair Reckdahl: I'm just curious. Clearing brush, I think, is a very good thing to do, but 317 sometimes we get so focused on what we do for fire plan and not look at the big picture. 318 There are other things we can do that can mitigate the fire risk. That's all my questions. 319 Do you have any questions? 320 321 Commissioner Crommie: Yes. 322 323 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Crommie. 324 325 Commissioner Crommie: Can you remind me who is the Fire Safe Council? 326 327 Mr. Anderson: There are a few Fire Safe Councils. They are nonprofits formed by 328 citizens that are concerned about the issues of fire safety. They've just hired a staff 329 person, so they're becoming a little more robust. It's two to three people who help 330 manage that and they have relationships with all the surrounding agencies, CAL FIRE, 331 Menlo Fire, of course Palo Alto Fire. They essentially work as a project manager for us. 332 Approved Minutes 8 APPROVED We've entered into a contract with them. We provide them with the funding, and they 333 contract with CAL FIRE, for example. The CAL FIRE hand crews will come in and take 334 care of some of the brush work. They can also enter into contracts with private tree 335 companies, for example, to take care of the work for us. 336 337 Commissioner Crommie: I read the fire plan. How many years ago did that pass? You 338 said 2009? 339 340 Mr. Anderson: 2009. 341 342 Commissioner Crommie: That was six years ago. I have to say I don't understand this 343 well enough to vote on it. I have to abstain, unless I somehow gain more clarity. At the 344 time when the fire plan came through, we had time to digest it. We did a site visit. At 345 that point, I got a good sense of what it was all about and what we were spending the 346 money on. I'm just really confused by this. It seems like it's a multijurisdictional issue, 347 because we're bordering also Los Altos Hills. I don't know what they're doing. Do they 348 put any money in the pot to help? I don't know if that's a reasonable request. Does Los 349 Altos Hills contribute anything to this? 350 351 Mr. Anderson: Not to our work, because our work is focusing on our land. We're not 352 doing any work on anybody else's. 353 354 Commissioner Crommie: What if a fire breaks out across the street from our land? Do 355 they have their own fire plan to come put things out? Is it going to cross the street over to 356 our property? It seems like we have to work together with the bordering communities. I 357 don't understand how this budget works exactly. I can't really agree to voting yes on 358 something where I don't understand how the money flows and how it works year after 359 year. I will have to not vote on it yet. If we're going to do a new fire plan, that's when it 360 should come back to us so we know what we're voting on. 361 362 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Lauing. 363 364 Commissioner Lauing: Were you here for the first part, when we went over the memo 365 and all this? I don't remember when you came in. 366 367 Commissioner Crommie: I came in five minutes late. 368 369 Commissioner Lauing: There's no difference in the fire plan. The issue on the table is 370 not to re-discuss the fire plan. That's not the policy issue. The policy issue of this motion 371 we're making is a recommendation to move the same amount of funds from a CIP process 372 to the normal operating budget, so that we make sure we can do these things, that these 373 folks are going to do anyway wherever that money is, on the same fire plan to make the 374 Approved Minutes 9 APPROVED parks safe. There's no readdressing of the fire plan in this at all. Could there be or should 375 there be is a whole different discussion, which could be perfectly fine. It's just a question 376 of where to put the monies to make sure that the work gets done. 377 378 Commissioner Crommie: Do you know why our fire plan didn't get approved and funded 379 adequately when it went before Council? 380 381 Mr. Anderson: It was approved by the Council in 2009. It was funded, but it was 382 underfunded. My hunch is that it was a time when there wasn't a lot of excess money. It 383 was probably $200,000 to get the process started to see how it goes. That's why it was 384 funded at $200,000. It was approved. It was well vetted at the time. A great deal of 385 public outreach went into it. The plan is still good. Again, this calls for no scope change. 386 It's just allocating funding. The request has already been submitted; it's gone through the 387 Finance Committee who had no issues with the funding as proposed. Again, parts of it 388 are already in there. Fire, for example, has $60,000. That had been part of their 389 operating budget for some years, and it was dedicated towards the fire plan, specifically 390 for their component which is that prescribed burn and fuel load assessment. Public 391 Works has always done the roadside clearing. Before the fire plan, that was always in 392 their department's responsibilities; although, it wasn't as robust as it's called out in the fire 393 plan. They are heading up that portion. CSD as stewards of the land have the inside of 394 the park component. I think you heard it suggested that maybe it would be best as one 395 pot of money, as we discussed it, between all the various departments who are involved. 396 No one wanted to bear the full responsibility of having all the funding in one site. 397 There's always the vagaries of budget years. When you're in a down year, someone is 398 prone to take it. The onus is all on the department with all the money to manage the 399 entire thing. The criteria we have right now is each of those departments will stagger or 400 vary leadership. Right now CSD is leader of this committee that is working on the fire 401 plan. Come July 1st, that'll switch to Public Works, and they'll do a year. That's why the 402 funding is separated the way it is. 403 404 Commissioner Crommie: It seems really confusing to me. For something as important 405 as fighting fire, we should have a clear funding pathway. I've never seen anything come 406 before us this complicated. 407 408 Chair Reckdahl: Let's keep it simple and keep it focused here. Commissioner Lauing, 409 can you reread the motion that we have? This is what we're voting on, the motion. 410 There's a lot of other things associated with it, but this motion is very simple. Can you 411 please read it again? 412 413 Commissioner Lauing: Sure, thank you. To ensure that residents are protected from fire 414 risks in Foothills Park and Arastradero Preserve, PRC recommends that Council approve 415 necessary maintenance for Foothills Fire Management Plan annually and routinely in the 416 Approved Minutes 10 APPROVED respective departmental budgets rather than have this work be subject to prioritization 417 and potential non-approval of longer term CIP projects. 418 419 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Crommie, knowing that that's the motion, does that 420 change your objections? 421 422 Commissioner Crommie: No. 423 424 Chair Reckdahl: What are your objections with that motion? 425 426 Commissioner Crommie: Is there a precedent for this kind of management, multi-427 departmental CIPs getting approved? We're trying to put some money in an operating 428 budget. How are our other operating budgets handled? Are they handled by the City 429 Manager, making sure that the proper department has jurisdiction over them? I'm 430 confused about the management side of this. I feel like it's patched together. That's okay, 431 but I don't understand it exactly. Maybe other Commissioners do, and you don't need 432 my vote to carry it. 433 434 Mr. Anderson: Just for the sake of clarity, in my mind it's not so confusing and it's not 435 ill-placed. Having prescribed burn funding for the Fire Department makes sense to me. 436 No one else is going to do that but the Fire Department. Having the inside the park work 437 funded by Community Services, we manage that park, we have the funding to do all the 438 other operating components within the park. That seems to make sense to me too. Public 439 Works has routinely done roadside clearing as far as the last 25-30 years. It also seems 440 appropriate that roadside clearing would remain a portion of their budget. That was the 441 rationale behind the division. 442 443 Chair Reckdahl: Our motion is not specifying this break out. What we're saying is we 444 think the City Council should make a commitment to funding fire prevention every year, 445 annually. 446 447 Vice Chair Markevitch: As opposed to it being possibly not funded if some other CIP 448 comes in the short term and has a higher priority. This is just making sure we have it 449 every year. We're not at risk of losing the funding because it's in the CIP process. This 450 keeps going year to year to year. We don't have to keep fighting for it. It's just a matter 451 of which bucket we're taking it out of. 452 453 Chair Reckdahl: A further issue is what Daren mentioned earlier. We can't even fund 454 this by CIP anymore. They've changed the rules for CIPs, and this does not qualify as a 455 CIP. The funding has to come from a different source other than CIP. 456 457 Commissioner Crommie: If we don't do anything, what's going to happen? 458 Approved Minutes 11 APPROVED 459 Mr. Anderson: The money would be exhausted. There would be no funds other than the 460 existing $60,000 that resides in the Fire Department's budget. They could use that to 461 partially fund the Fire Safe Council. They would get a small amount of work done. By 462 and large the picnic areas, the evacuation routes and the defensible spaces would over 463 grow eventually, and we would have a higher and more dangerous fire risk. 464 465 Mr. de Geus: Let me just add to that. The money's not necessarily in danger of going 466 away. Who puts the budget together, you asked. It's the City Manager. It's the City 467 Manager's operating budget, and he prepares that with department heads. The Public 468 Works Department, Community Services and Fire Department put it in the proposed 469 budget for '16 as an ongoing cost to keep up with the Fire Management Plan. The 470 Council approved the Fire Management Plan, so it is in the proposed budget that's going 471 through the process now. The memo is more to support the recommendation that it be in 472 the operating budget and be ongoing. To the other question you had, Commissioner 473 Crommie, I was trying to think of an example where we share responsibility. I don't 474 know if this one helps or not. For our parks, CSD manages the parks in a lot of ways, but 475 Public Works manages the trees within the parks. They'll go in and do the tree 476 maintenance, while Community Services is managing ground maintenance work. We 477 share that responsibility. We also meet regularly with them, park by park, to talk about 478 maintenance of the parks. We do a lot of that shared work with other departments. 479 480 Commissioner Crommie: With a standing budget? 481 482 Mr. de Geus: Right. They have a tree budget, in that example, and they have contractors 483 and crews. We have our contractors that do the mowing and other landscape work. We 484 share in that to maintain the parks. 485 486 Commissioner Ashlund: I have a couple of questions. 487 488 Chair Reckdahl: Okay. Commissioner Ashlund. 489 490 Commissioner Ashlund: I have four of them, and I'm not sure who can provide the 491 answers. The first one is why was this a CIP in the first place considering it's not capital 492 improvement. It's always been ongoing maintenance. That's the first question. Why did 493 it start that way that we have to change it? Second, if it's only a question of allocating 494 appropriate budget, why is it coming to our Commission at all? What feedback do you 495 want from us? If the Finance Committee approves it, then I'm not clear what feedback 496 you are looking for from us. The third one was, how does this ongoing work that CSD is 497 doing inside the parkland differ or overlap with the other ongoing maintenance that's 498 already happening in the park. That's not clear to me as well. We don't have that budget 499 or those tasks delineated, so I'm unclear if there's overlap or if they're the same or how 500 Approved Minutes 12 APPROVED that relates. Lastly, if this is an ongoing expense, why are we allocating it to a consultant 501 rather than hiring the Staff to handle this work? 502 503 Vice Chair Markevitch: Consultants are cheaper. 504 505 Mr. Anderson: Let me start with your first question, why a CIP. At the time lots of CIPs 506 were strung together to support programs on an ongoing basis. Usually they were more 507 capital related, obviously, like tennis courts. There are other ones like weed 508 management. There's one called open space, lakes and ponds. It's predominantly used to 509 clear the milfoil weeds that grow in Boronda Lake. That's a vegetative clearing too, and 510 it was a CIP and remains one. It's grandfathered in; it was set to be ongoing. It was a 511 different paradigm, I guess, where that kind of thing was encouraged and thought to be 512 the way we're going to do things. ASD has changed. Now we're no longer doing that 513 kind of program through the capital budget. Instead they want it in operating. Your 514 second question, why not hire staff. It's just exponentially more expensive. This is the 515 wave of the future as we work with a nonprofit partner who has the time and resources to 516 make this happen. For example, we had the funding in 2012 and four departments 517 involved, but nothing happened. It took off once we formed this partnership. It's a good 518 thing; it's effective; it's certainly cost effective relative to hiring a person to run this 519 independently. We still have oversight. CSD, myself, I'm heavily involved. I help 520 develop the work plan with the Fire Safe Council. We manage their contract. We're 521 involved in oversight. Our rangers are on scene at every single bit of work that happens. 522 Staff is still involved; it just helps take some of the onus off. Can you repeat your two 523 other questions? 524 525 Commissioner Ashlund: Yeah. If this is just a question of which bucket of money does 526 it come from, why is it coming to our Commission? What feedback are you looking for 527 from us? How does this overlap with other ongoing park maintenance that we're already 528 doing? 529 530 Mr. Anderson: The feedback and the reason I'm coming to you is at our Commission 531 retreat we brought up that we would be requesting these funds. It was brought to me as, 532 "Would you please draft a memo for us to consider sending to the Finance Committee to 533 say we support this." The feedback is essentially I was sharing the memo that I was 534 asked to create. The Commission, if it felt so inclined, could express that to the Finance 535 Committee or, as we found out, it's more appropriate to send it to Council. You can show 536 your support or lack thereof to the Council. How it differs from routine maintenance is 537 routine maintenance is not strictly focused on fire. There may be some components that 538 address that, but by and large it has to do with fixing fences, mowing grass, routine 539 maintenance, trail clearing. Fire safety that's prescribed in the plan is far more robust and 540 involves clearing. That's already happened, of course, because this has been going on 541 since fiscal year '13. Clearing areas that haven't been cleaned for some time. One 542 Approved Minutes 13 APPROVED example would be on Page Mill Road. The norm had been that Public Works would 543 clear something like 3-4 feet off the road. The fire plan calls for 30 feet. It's not clear 544 everything 30 feet in, but it has a very clear and detailed prescription of what we're going 545 to limb up, ladder fuels which are fuels that will lead into trees. Canopy over the road 546 can cause all sorts of potential for spreading fire faster. It's very different; it's far more 547 robust. 548 549 Commissioner Ashlund: Thanks. 550 551 Vice Chair Markevitch: I call the question. 552 553 Commissioner Lauing: I was just going to make one comment ... 554 555 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Lauing. 556 557 Commissioner Lauing: ... since Daren is absolutely correct. He did this on our behalf. 558 We've been talking about this from the CIP program for the last two-plus years openly at 559 the Commission. This isn't a budgeting issue. Our role is to advise Council on important 560 policy or substantive issues with respect to parks. The view in putting this memo 561 together, which we also did discuss at the retreat, was to say, "We have a safety problem 562 in our parks that hasn't been treated adequately for the last X years, since 2009 it turns 563 out. This is a way that we feel you can address it in a very simple way, by just changing 564 around how it's funded." Annually and routinely being the critical words there. That's 565 the role that we're taking here. We're not taking a budgeting role or anything like that. 566 567 Chair Reckdahl; We're not voting on the implementation. We're voting on whether the 568 City Council will have a commitment of funding this every year or we encourage them to 569 have the commitment. 570 571 Vice Chair Markevitch: Call the question. 572 573 Chair Reckdahl: Okay. 574 575 MOTION PASSED: 4-0 Crommie abstaining 576 577 Commissioner Crommie: I'm abstaining because I don't feel qualified to vote on it. I 578 don't understand it well enough. 579 580 Commissioner Lauing: Thanks, Daren, for all your help behind the scenes and on the 581 scene. Thank you. 582 583 Approved Minutes 14 APPROVED Mr. de Geus: I need to ask a question about how to get this to the Council in a timely 584 manner so that they see it. I think it's June 8th, looking at Council Member Filseth, the 585 first time the Council will review the operating budget for this year. The hope is that they 586 see the memo or hear from the Commission on this issue this year. It might be best if a 587 Commissioner comes and says a few words about it and hands it in at that time. 588 589 Commissioner Lauing: The format was put together so they could get this at any time, 590 now if it's approved, which it has been. With this note setting the background, borrowing 591 liberally from Daren's work in the front for the summary, and then the detail in the back 592 in case they want to get into the budget. I don't know what that means in terms of when 593 the packet goes out and they would physically receive it. 594 595 Mr. de Geus: The packet is like six weeks in advance with so many reviews. That's one 596 concern, that it would be difficult to get it in there. 597 598 Commissioner Lauing: So is this an in-place memo, Council Member Filseth? 599 600 Council Member Filseth: As I look at this, it's $181,000 in 2016. Is that already in the 601 capital budget and it's just a question of moving it from the capital budget? 602 603 Mr. de Geus: It's already in the operating budget. 604 605 Council Member Filseth: It's already in the operating budget. I would say ... 606 607 Commissioner Lauing: It's just in support of what's already there. 608 609 Council Member Filseth: Yeah. I would say double check with Walter and all to see 610 what the best way to include it in the budget process is. 611 612 Mr. de Geus: We'll see if we can figure out how to include it as an attachment. 613 614 Council Member Filseth: I'm sure they're going to have an addenda sheet of some kind. 615 616 Mr. de Geus: Right. I'll let you know. 617 618 Commissioner Lauing: Thanks. 619 620 3. Approval of Recommendation to Council to Adopt a Park Improvement 621 Ordinance for Improvements Identified in the Byxbee Park Hills Interim 622 Park Concepts Plan. 623 624 Chair Reckdahl: We have one speaker, Emily Renzel. 625 Approved Minutes 15 APPROVED 626 Emily Renzel: I think staff has done a good job in developing the interim plan. It's 627 barren out there right now, as you probably know. Every little blade of weed or whatever 628 is going to grow out there is important for now. In the cover sheet of this Master Plan, 629 you will see that cute little burrowing owl. There's intention in this plan to provide some 630 little areas where the burrowing owl can survive. They use squirrel holes for their homes. 631 Due to State regulations, we are under some sort of mandate to kill all the squirrels out at 632 the park. When I go hiking on Monday mornings, someone is out there gassing all the 633 squirrels, which are practically the only wildlife out there on the land itself. I've read up 634 online about squirrels. They don't generally burrow more than 3 or 4 feet in for their 635 burrows. They go horizontal. That makes sense. If you were a squirrel, you're not going 636 to dig a hole that water will run into. Part of the issue from the State is whether water 637 will run into this. I'm just hoping that you guys might call this out to give a little bit more 638 power to our staff when they go to the State to try to alter that regulation. If you look in 639 the plan, the 10-acre Measure E site has nothing planned in it. That's appropriate, 640 because nothing can be done unless it's rededicated. However, as you look at the rest of 641 the plan and think toward the future, make sure that what gets put in place at least allows 642 for connections through there if and when it should become park again. I think that's an 643 important consideration. I noted this week when we were out there, and maybe it's been 644 there a while and I hadn't noticed it, every 50 feet along the road as you're looking out 645 toward the Bay are signs that say "no parking any time." They're these little signs 646 marching along there in an open space where you're trying to have a natural experience. I 647 know that at some point there was an attempt to have a signage plan for open spaces and 648 for parks. I don't know whatever became of it, but I think it would be important to try to 649 find out what became of it. If it was adopted, to find out how it's being implemented and 650 what the trigger points are for people to pay attention to them. I think "no parking any 651 time" is fine in an urban area where you know the patrol cars are going to come and 652 maybe tow somebody and you want to have the authorization ... 653 654 Vice Chair Markevitch: You're over three minutes. 655 656 Ms. Renzel: I'm sorry. I think that should be reviewed, because nobody's going to go out 657 there and ticket and tow people, especially on weekends. Thank you. 658 659 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. 660 661 Vice Chair Markevitch: Thank you. 662 663 Chair Reckdahl: Daren, go ahead. 664 665 Daren Anderson: Excellent. Good evening, Daren Anderson, Open Space, Parks and 666 Golf. Tonight I'm here with my colleague, Matt Krupp, from Public Works, and Taylor 667 Approved Minutes 16 APPROVED Peterson. She's with TRA Environmental Sciences who created the plan. Thank you for 668 being here. We are here tonight as an action item, seeking your recommendation to 669 Council to adopt the Park Improvement Ordinance with improvements identified in the 670 Byxbee Park Hills Interim Park Concepts document. I'm going to give you a quick 671 background of the project and the site. The park was developed and opened in phases. 672 Phase 1, you can see it—I'm sorry that screen is small. It's a 29-acre area located in the 673 northeastern part of the former landfill. It's currently developed as a passive park with 674 trails, restrooms, and some art features. Phases 2A and 2B are 46 acres. Matt might be 675 able to use the cursor to identify what I'm talking about next. This is the 46-acre area 676 south of Phase 1 that was capped and opened to the public in July 2011. Twenty-seven 677 acres of Phase 2C were opened to the public in April 2015, the celebration of Earth Day. 678 Staff is currently completing the cap construction for the final 24 acres of Phase 2C to 679 comply with the regulatory requirements and safely open up all of Byxbee Park Hills to 680 the public by the end of 2015. The initial landscape design for Byxbee Park was 681 completed by Hargreaves Associates in 1991, which is the skeleton or model we used 682 with our very first draft. Let me bring a little background but more recent. In June 2013, 683 Council approved the final landfill closure plans, which included a preliminary 684 configuration for this dual-use trail system which serves both landfill maintenance 685 vehicles and park visitors, habitat island concepts, other park amenities, and an 686 evapotranspiration (ET) cap. The ET cap is a new soil cap that replaces the older-style 687 clay cap with more soil. With that, we'll go to the current Interim Park Concept and 688 design. The City entered into a contract with TRA to prepare this Interim Park Plan for 689 Byxbee Park Hills in March 2014. The purpose of the plan was aimed at improving and 690 managing the habitat first and foremost, managing for the burrowing owls, creating a trail 691 system that allows for safe public access that doesn't impact wildlife, ensure that the 692 closed landfill can meet all regulatory requirements ongoing, identify opportunities for 693 interpretive signage, propose adaptive management techniques for maintenance which is 694 especially important given this is an interim plan. This is not long term or indefinite. 695 This is to make this a park now. Some examples of what adaptive management would 696 look like. One example would be the kind of plants that succeed up there. In different 697 areas, you sometimes have luck with certain species, and in others you don't. We intend 698 to adapt and learn from the mistakes and find an appropriate palette that benefits the 699 wildlife and does well up there. The same thing with the irrigation. We've got a plan 700 right now, but we'll learn from it to see how successful it is, how long is it going to have 701 to run, how long do we need it there. The long-term plan is to let the plants live without 702 any supplemental irrigation. I'll give you a little background on the public outreach and 703 the Commission and ad hoc committee feedback and involvement. In July 2014, staff 704 met with some Baylands stakeholders representing general park users, bicyclists, hikers 705 and environmentalists to discuss the project. Suggestions included reducing the number 706 of trails to reduce the potential impacts to wildlife, to add signage connecting the regional 707 trail system to the proposed trails on Byxbee, and to include benches at scenic outlooks. 708 All these suggestions were incorporated into the design. Some of the stakeholders 709 Approved Minutes 17 APPROVED advocated for a larger parking lot. No changes are part of this existing plan, so you'll see 710 the existing parking lot still in this design. That's largely because a bigger parking lot 711 would require more substantial and lengthy environmental and planning reviews as well 712 as exceed our allocated budget for this particular project. There is a little overflow lot 713 adjacent to the parking lot that can accommodate six to seven cars. Less than a quarter 714 mile away we've got some parking at the duck pond, and not too much further from that 715 at the golf course. Permanent parking, final maintenance plans and other structures like 716 covered lookout areas could be considered in future planning efforts for Byxbee Park 717 Hills or hopefully incorporated into the Baylands Comprehensive Conservation Plan, 718 which Staff proposes a CIP in 2017. In September 2014, staff presented a draft Byxbee 719 Park Hills concept to the Commission. The Commission formed an ad hoc committee to 720 discuss the project in more detail. Staff started meeting in October 2014 with the ad hoc 721 committee and met several times. Staff also brought the project to the Architectural 722 Review Board and received approval from them on these concepts on November 20, 723 2014. Staff modified and clarified many aspects of the plan based on the comments from 724 the meetings of the stakeholders, the Commission and especially the ad hoc committee. 725 A big thanks to the ad hoc committee; thank you again for all your work. I do have to 726 note and apologize that in a previous time we came to the Commission the plans were not 727 balanced so you could see them on a foldout like they are now. Commissioner Crommie 728 had gone to extraordinary lengths to fashion a map and go out there and hike it. I admire 729 that dedication and appreciate it very much. Hopefully this one is much better and easier 730 to read. That's adaptive management. The key modifications we made. Based on all that 731 feedback, we're adjusting the mowing and weed management regime. For example, in 732 response to a request and suggestion for less mowing and a "greater variety of 733 vegetation" hike, you'll notice that the slide slopes of Byxbee will not be mowed. There 734 are other elements of the maintenance plan that also call for varying heights of vegetation 735 to remain. We redefined an educated (inaudible) and management with vegetative 736 islands, low mowed grassland, mid-mowed grassland, untended grassland, delineated the 737 management for burrowing owls and squirrel areas. That will highlight the three areas 738 that I'm referencing. These are the areas where we would encourage and want burrowing 739 owls, ground squirrels and any other burrowing animal to use and not be abated as they 740 are on the rest of Byxbee Park Hills to protect that cap that I mentioned. We would bring 741 in 5 feet or more of soil. As you have heard, most of the time ground squirrels don't go 742 any deeper than 4 feet and usually branch off laterally, so there'd be no threat to the cap. 743 Staff totally supports this. We think it'd be a benefit for the park, but we do have to 744 receive regulatory approval. CalRecycle as of now has not conceded to staff's request. 745 Other feedback and modifications. The plan included reducing the number of trails to 746 create larger, uninterrupted habitat areas. We reduced 1,400 linear feet of trails based on 747 the feedback we received. Minimize habitat impact from maintenance vehicles. The 748 landfill purchased a lightweight golf-sized cart to conduct a lot of their inspections, as 749 much as possible. We corrected the map. A Commissioner pointed out that the rock 750 swales were overrepresented in the original map. We put the proper scale in this one, so 751 Approved Minutes 18 APPROVED it looks more like it really does in reality. Improved recommendations for park signage 752 to keep people on trails and away from the habitat area, should we get approval to put it 753 in. We'll put in trail etiquette signs and the appropriate signage around that burrowing 754 owl habitat area should we receive approval. Reduce the size of the group gathering 755 node. The ad hoc committee had gone out and looked at it. Matt, maybe you can 756 highlight the group gathering area with the cursor. It called for a 50-foot diameter 757 meeting area. Once they were up there, the Commissioners felt this was too big. We did 758 a little more internal analysis on the kind of groups that would be there. Considering how 759 far that hike is, it probably does not need to be that big. 35 feet is a more appropriate 760 diameter and width for a meeting area. It should accommodate volunteer groups, 761 interpretive programs that go out there. We're confident that would meet their needs. 762 There was another request and concern about trails being too wide. The average width of 763 the trails is 10 feet, and that accommodates the aforementioned dual use. They said, "Is 764 there any way we can narrow certain ones?" Public Works said the problem is these 765 heavy vehicles that are going to pass through there at various times of the year, including 766 wet times. We'd end up with deeper ruts and other issues like that. Vegetation, it's prone 767 to do this; it does this on every trail we've got. It will gradually creep in. We could mow 768 it to come in on that trail about 1-2 feet periodically. We can allow it to stay there. In 769 essence we'll have the durable surface at 10 feet. A truck can drive over that little portion 770 without leaving deep ruts or getting stuck. Yet, you still achieve a narrowed look via the 771 vegetation creeping over the edge. At this point we're going to walk you through some of 772 the key components of this plan. First and foremost is that trail configuration, how this 773 differs from what we once had. We again started with what Hargreaves originally 774 proposed and slowly cut away based on the feedback we had from the stakeholders, the 775 Commission and the ad hoc committee to what we have now. This still allows our 776 maintenance crews to get where they need to for leachate and gas well monitoring and 777 repairs, which is key to their operation and required of them. Most of the trails were 778 designed to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. There are a few small 779 sections of trail where the slope couldn't be adjusted due to drainage requirements. 780 They're fairly limited, and I believe they're marked on the plan in such a way that you can 781 tell if you were planning a trip and you weren't able to travail anything above the 5 782 percent slope, which does meet ADA. The plan also identifies locations for park 783 benches, interpretive signs and wayfinding signs. At this point, I'll give you a little detail 784 on the vegetative habitat islands. We're going to start with construction of three sets of 785 the vegetative islands. You can see what they look like on the display there. If we back 786 out to the main screen, you can see we have several delineated. Some of them are little 787 pockets. Each of those pockets, we're calling them the set of islands. We're going to do 788 three of those sets to start with. We believe we have funding to accommodate that via 789 that CIP. We will proceed as funding allows and as we see how successful they are. We 790 may find out with that three sets that we've got to redesign. Maybe it's not successful and 791 we've got to relook at our technique and come up with something a little different. What 792 Approved Minutes 19 APPROVED we've got on paper right now, we think we'll be successful and we're looking forward to 793 getting it installed as quickly as possible. 794 795 Chair Reckdahl: Do you know which three you're going to start with? 796 797 Mr. Anderson: Yes. We are looking at two of them being near the gathering areas. 798 Maybe Matt can identify them. We still may play with this a little bit, but those are the 799 two we were first looking at. Then one further away from any meeting area or seating 800 area. Matt's identifying those two other spots. They all are somewhat close to trails, 801 because we're going to have to get out there with equipment to service them and care for 802 them and weed them. I mentioned already the adaptive management plan and how we're 803 going to adjust as we go. The plan also mentions the three habitat areas. I think Matt 804 already showed you on the map about that. I mentioned in the staff report that we'll 805 continue to seek permission from CalRecycle to allow us to put this there. As we spoke 806 about it internally, it's staff's belief that it is incredibly beneficial to have stakeholders and 807 residents come to this organization or agency, CalRecycle, and anyone else who may 808 oppose it to voice their concern about how important this is and to get this out there, how 809 important it is to the diversity of wildlife that calls this their home. Staff is willing to 810 work with those organizations, in partnership with any sort of environmental group to 811 help make that connection happen. We'll also continue on our own to put in this request 812 to CalRecycle. It's been our experience that sometimes a resident's complaint seems to 813 carry more weight than a government agency. The timeline. The 27 acres of Phase 2C 814 were opened to the public in April 2015. We've got those last 24 acres of 2C to open in 815 January 2016. We're hoping we can complete construction of all the elements that you 816 see in the plan by the summer of 2016, hopefully in advance of that. That concludes our 817 presentation. We're available for questions. The author of the plan is here to help us with 818 specifics and especially environmental portions. 819 820 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Crommie. 821 822 Commissioner Crommie: Thank you. I'll go first with this. I appreciate working with 823 you, Daren and Ron, on this and our consultant as well. We had a productive time with 824 our ad hoc committee getting to give feedback and getting to advocate in different 825 directions that we thought would help with the wildlife, specifically the wildlife 826 experience in this open space. That's very tricky here. A good part of this plan is 827 dedicated toward trying to establish some burrowing owls in this area. One reason our ad 828 hoc and stakeholders advocated to reduce some of the trails was to allow more space for 829 the wildlife and not completely criss-cross it. Originally the trails were laid down along 830 the maintenance roads to get access to all these leachate sites. We didn't want to 831 recapitulate that in the trail system, to allow bigger areas of land for animals to settle and 832 not get flushed out as bikes, people and dogs and trucks to a certain degree go past. 833 We've made a lot of progress in this plan. I appreciate that. The vegetative islands are 834 Approved Minutes 20 APPROVED the way to go. Daren has thought that through. I hope that they work and, if they don't 835 work, there's another way that we can keep chipping away at what to do there to get 836 native grasses established. That's what we know the wildlife needs. I have a couple of 837 small points here, and I'll try to bring them up now. I wanted to talk first about the bigger 838 picture here. I might have to circle back to some of my smaller points. In terms of the 839 big picture, my main concern with this document is it doesn't have the teeth to help the 840 owls. It talks about what to do if they come The mowing descriptions are really good. 841 Our consultant understands what you need to do to try to make a place conducive for the 842 owls to come and then what to do once they're there. We are missing the key component 843 of the ground squirrels. I know I've probably asked you this already, but is it true that it's 844 Shoreline where they have burrowing owls? They don't gas the squirrels on their 845 landfill? 846 847 Mr. Anderson: That's my understanding, yes. 848 849 Commissioner Crommie: That's my understanding too. That is an area that's been 850 successful in terms of bringing burrowing owls in. They do have the squirrels. I struggle 851 with this document. We probably need the description in there to talk about the 852 burrowing habits of squirrels, maybe a section in here to say there's a reason that we don't 853 need to be concerned. We're trying to advocate before this permitting group called 854 CalRecycle, but I don't see any teeth in this document to do that. I know Daren has 855 mentioned that they are responsive potentially to concerned residents, but we don't have 856 anyone to lead that charge. As far as I know, I haven't heard that we have a stakeholder 857 that's necessarily willing to take that on. It's somewhat tricky to take that on, because 858 we're also going to be drawing attention to Shoreline Park. Shoreline Park which has 859 burrowing owls isn't compliant with what the permitting department wants. I don't 860 understand the history of that. Maybe Ron Arp can help us. Maybe it went under the 861 radar when they were setting up their program. I don't know why they're allowing 862 squirrels there. That's a fatal flaw in our plan to get burrowing owls. We have 863 everything there except for the squirrels. I want to brainstorm maybe with our staff and 864 consultants what we can do. I'm concerned that we don't in the document make a 865 stronger case for the squirrels. I'm also concerned that we don't have a plan to advocate 866 to our permitting facility. I'd like to have a plan in place before we approve this, so that 867 we know what's going to happen. Just saying, "It works best if residents say something," 868 I don't see that gaining traction. I don't know who would again lead the charge on that. I 869 want to brainstorm about that, but I want your responses about how this is going to work 870 so it doesn't look like window dressing, that we would try to get some owls in there. 871 Everything looks good, except we don't have the squirrels. We have a big onus on the 872 supervising ranger, is that what the person is called? There's a reference to this all 873 throughout the document, that the maintenance plan is managed by the supervising, what 874 is the phrase in here? 875 876 Approved Minutes 21 APPROVED Mr. Anderson: Supervising park ranger? 877 878 Commissioner Crommie: The supervising park ranger. As a secondary branch of my 879 discussion, I'm wondering who that person is, if we know who the supervising ranger is? 880 They have such responsibility in terms of the maintenance of the fauna and flora within 881 this document. I'm wondering also if that person has the expertise in all of those realms 882 to do that job. Can you guys go over those things? 883 884 Mr. Anderson: Sure, yeah. There's a lot of comments and questions there. I'll see if I 885 can recall the first ones. Maybe I'll just start with it doesn't have enough teeth for 886 squirrels. It is a balance, because we're obligated by those rules. To compare us to 887 someone who's not following rules is a little unfair. We put ourselves at risk for heavy 888 fines, and other communities may be violating that as we pointed out. 889 890 Commissioner Crommie: Do we not know? 891 892 Mr. Anderson: We do know they are. 893 894 Commissioner Crommie: You do know they are. I just didn't know. 895 896 Mr. Anderson: They are violating that. It's not something we can do. We are going to 897 follow the rules. We came up with a pretty good plan to work around that. That's some 898 pretty extensive areas highlighted on the back of this thing that shows those green spots 899 where we could have burrowing owls. You raised a good point though. How are we 900 going to get CalRecycle on board? Is it enough just to say staff's going to continue to 901 try? Maybe not. Separate from this plan, I could take it on myself, because we have a lot 902 of good relationships with environmental groups. We have a tremendous partnership 903 with Acterra. We have a tremendous partnership with Save the Bay. We have good 904 relationships with the Audubon Society. Partnering with them would be very, very easy. 905 Whether they're willing to come to CalRecycle or not would take a conversation or two, 906 but I'm willing to make that happen. I could commit to sitting down with them and 907 saying, "This is important for the park as a whole, not just Byxbee but the entirety of the 908 Baylands. I'd appreciate it." Almost like drafting a memo here, where I do the leg work 909 and say, "Can you guys get behind this? Can you support this?" I can't imagine an 910 environmental agency that wouldn't support opportunities to enhance a threatened species 911 like burrowing owls. I think we can get some traction there. I can't say for certain that 912 CalRecycle is going to be amenable to that. I think that's our very best endeavor, and I'd 913 be glad to lead that effort. That's a viable technique. 914 915 Commissioner Crommie: Is CalRecycle going to read this report? 916 917 Approved Minutes 22 APPROVED Mr. Anderson: Probably not. They've been dealing with landfills; that's all they deal 918 with, regulations regarding landfills. When a landfill reaches its capacity, it's not 919 uncommon for it to turn to parkland. This is not the first time they've heard this 920 argument to do something different. We need to sway them through a little bit of science. 921 I think we've got a good argument to make, that we've got some evidence that proves that 922 ground squirrels don't go deeper than 4 feet. If that's the case and we're having 923 substantial soil to address that, then why would it be an issue? 924 925 Commissioner Crommie: Can you put that in the report and cite the evidence? Just to 926 have that documented. 927 928 Mr. Anderson: It's possible, though I don't think we'll need it to sit down with 929 CalRecycle. It's a conversation, sitting down with people. We're not submitting a formal 930 amendment. It's a conversation. Ron Arp is not here today; my colleague Matt Krupp is. 931 Ron has sat down with CalRecycle and had the discussion and didn't get very far. As I 932 said, we'll continue, but I think (crosstalk). 933 934 Commissioner Crommie: Is Ron the right person? Mr. Krupp might be the right person 935 to do that. 936 937 Mr. Anderson: They're both involved in the same areas, and both have similar expertise. 938 Ron has managed the landfills, and he wrote the permits. He's the right person. 939 940 Commissioner Crommie: The tension here is we need somebody who understands the 941 wildlife to sit down with them. People who understand public works, I do not think 942 they're the best spokesperson. I do not feel comfortable putting Ron Arp in charge of 943 that. When I sat down with him as a part of our ad hoc committee, he didn't understand 944 the environmental concerns that much. I want to put that out. If he's in charge of getting 945 them to do this, I don't think he's the right person. 946 947 Mr. Anderson: He won't be alone, as I pointed out. We've got a good partnership with 948 Public Works. We did this collaboratively, together. We brought in an expert; we 949 brought in Tay Peterson, a well-respected expert in this field, to help with exactly what 950 you're talking about. Our Senior Supervising Ranger is Richard Bicknell. He's got a lot 951 of experience up at the Baylands, as do I. I work with him very closely, especially 952 around the Baylands since it's my baby. That's where I cut my teeth with Palo Alto, and 953 I'll never leave it alone. I'll always be there working for it, fighting for it. Rich is in good 954 hands, but he's also got a very comprehensive document to help him manage it, which is 955 exactly what we wanted. (crosstalk) 956 957 Commissioner Crommie: That's why I'm asking again. To educate Ron Arp, it needs to 958 be documented in this document, the burrowing behaviors of owls to educate people in 959 Approved Minutes 23 APPROVED Public Works who don't understand animal behavior. I feel like that's a serious concern 960 in our City, because we have these two arms that don't understand each other. Public 961 Works has a really big role in this. I won't be on this Commission after this year. I've 962 worked hard to try to have a voice for conservation among staff members who are in 963 Public Works. They don't get it as far as I can tell. 964 965 Chair Reckdahl: I have a big picture question here. I want to go back to focus on what 966 we're trying to accomplish here. We're here to hopefully approve the interim plan. It's 967 not the final plan, it's the interim plan. Currently, they're not waiting for this interim plan 968 to be passed, right? The trucks are driving everyday and dumping soil down there. 969 970 Mr. Anderson: As I mentioned early on, there was already a Council-approved landfill 971 closure plan. That included having that system of pathways to get them to the leachate 972 wells. We couldn't wait on that; they needed to do that immediately. The capping 973 process also has already been approved, outside the purview of the Parks and Rec 974 Commission because they have to do it. That part has started. The rest of the plan with 975 the real park components, no, that won't start until we get your recommendation and we 976 go to Council and get approval for this. 977 978 Chair Reckdahl: When we vote on this, this will then go to Council. Council will 979 approve it. At that point, you're free to do the gathering spot and other park amenities, 980 put up signs? 981 982 Mr. Anderson: That's correct. 983 984 Chair Reckdahl: Those types of things will not happen without this plan? 985 986 Mr. Anderson: That's correct. 987 988 Chair Reckdahl: This is the interim plan. Down the road there will be a final plan? 989 990 Mr. Anderson: My hunch is that in 2017 we could tie that into the Baylands 991 Comprehensive Conservation Plan and have a Master Plan that finalizes this, learns from 992 where we've made wrong steps, and hopefully improves it. That's already in the five-year 993 CIP book. 994 995 Chair Reckdahl: At that time, I assume we would know what our standing is with 996 CalRecycle. 997 998 Mr. Anderson: I'm hoping it's sooner than that. I would like to concurrent with the rest 999 of this construction have an answer and push CalRecycle into moving forward with the 1000 soil import on those three areas delineated for the owls. 1001 Approved Minutes 24 APPROVED 1002 Chair Reckdahl: If Council passes this and then a month later CalRecycle says yes, you 1003 can do this with the owls. 1004 1005 Mr. Anderson: We can still do it. 1006 1007 Chair Reckdahl: You would not have to go back to Council to get approval? 1008 1009 Mr. Anderson: Correct. 1010 1011 Chair Reckdahl: How about if CalRecycle compromises and says, "You can do this, but 1012 you can't do that"? Do you have that ability to work with CalRecycle? 1013 1014 Mr. Anderson: Yes. 1015 1016 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. 1017 1018 Matthew Krupp: Can I add something? 1019 1020 Mr. Anderson: Please do. 1021 1022 Mr. Krupp: Hi, Matt Krupp with Public Works Environmental Services, Zero Waste. 1023 One of the interesting challenges that we have in terms of trying to address the burrowing 1024 owls is the regulatory restrictions that we're under and that Daren did a great job in 1025 talking about. Ultimately, we do hope to put pressure on the State and believe that this is 1026 an issue that can be resolved by the State EPA. Fundamentally it's two different State 1027 EPA Divisions that are in conflict with each other. It's the California Fish and Wildlife, 1028 which wants to see this happen, and CalRecycle, which doesn't want to see it happen. 1029 They both have different reasons obviously. We in Palo Alto and in Public Works are 1030 committed to seeing this out. It's a priority for us. We invested a lot of resources in this 1031 plan to making a burrowing owl habitat happen. We'd be very disappointed if it doesn't. 1032 We think it's an opportunity that's unprecedented in the Bay area. It's a rare commodity 1033 to be able to find burrowing owl habitat. There isn't much in the south Bay. We are 1034 committed to making this happen. We're going to work with Daren and CSD to the best 1035 extent of our abilities to put pressure on the State to make this happen. Ultimately, it's an 1036 intramural State fight to be able to resolve it. CalRecycle being the regulator of authority 1037 over the landfill is the one that has all the cards in their hand. We believe that we can 1038 make a difference in that community pressure and staff pressure can make a difference 1039 and make this happen. That's why we put it in here. We actually talked at length about 1040 taking it out, the whole burrowing owl plan. We were afraid that it wasn't going to 1041 happen. Because we were confident that we can make it happen, we've put it in there, 1042 Approved Minutes 25 APPROVED we've left it in there. It's a prominent part of the plan. Like I said before, I'm confident 1043 that we can make it happen for Palo Alto. 1044 1045 Mr. Anderson: I would also note that the habitat section of the western burrowing owl 1046 plan does call out how heavily dependent upon the presence of burrowing animals, 1047 commonly the ground squirrel and their habitat, the burrowing owl is for their nesting 1048 place. It does capture in the document that they are dependent on them. It's not like it 1049 completely excludes squirrels. It just really calls out a separate area, given the confines 1050 of the regulations that we're under. You know what I mean when I say those three? 1051 1052 Commissioner Crommie: I understand that. That's why I think you need to put the 1053 science behind how owls burrow. You're not going far enough, like Emily Renzel said. 1054 You're almost there, but why not put in your arguments that you're going to take this to 1055 the permitting agency? I want to see the strongest arguments within this document. 1056 1057 Mr. Anderson: We don't need the document to make that argument. I can make that with 1058 a separate memo. Again, it's going to be a sit-down meeting with them, and I'll have the 1059 most robust argument I can muster. 1060 1061 Commissioner Crommie: I don’t understand why you wouldn't cite that burrowing 1062 behavior within this document. Does it harm your case? 1063 1064 Mr. Anderson: No. It's just that we're here now. I don't see how it will affect this. I'd 1065 like to get this plan approved and move forward, rather than coming back another time. I 1066 just don't see it necessary or germane to make the case that I need to make to CalRecycle. 1067 1068 Vice Chair Markevitch: I agree. 1069 1070 Chair Reckdahl: Other comments? 1071 1072 Commissioner Ashlund? I do. 1073 1074 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Ashlund. 1075 1076 Commissioner Ashlund: The first is about what's going on, why squirrels have to be 1077 gassed here and don't have to be at Shoreline. I understand this is up for a vote tonight. I 1078 don't want to delay that. This is a very delicate question to ask. Why is it happening and 1079 is there a timeline that it needs to happen? Maybe Shoreline has passed that timeline, and 1080 they no longer have to. We don't have that information. That would be worthwhile to 1081 know. Additionally, I'm not sure if this is because this is an interim plan, but there are 1082 very few of these vegetative islands shown on the diagram and a lot of intersections of 1083 the walkways where there aren't any proposed. I'm wondering why that is it. It seems 1084 Approved Minutes 26 APPROVED like it would enhance the natural environment we're trying to create there as well as 1085 increase wildlife habitat and improve the aesthetics. 1086 1087 Mr. Anderson: Your first question is why is Shoreline not abating their ground squirrels. 1088 They're not following the regulatory requirements. Is there a timeline? As I understand 1089 it, no. Right now the requirements are you protect that cap, otherwise you run the risk of 1090 leachate and gas escaping. That's why Shoreline is not following it. In Palo Alto, we're 1091 going to follow the law. Your last question, can you repeat that one more time? 1092 1093 Commissioner Ashlund: Increasing the vegetative islands. 1094 1095 Mr. Anderson: Originally, my hope was that we'd allow them to expand out. In some 1096 areas, that might be possible. You would plant a couple, and the concept is they'd spread. 1097 Some of the species on the island itself unfortunately are deep tap rooted. Each of those 1098 islands have to have extra soil added. Some species will be able to spread out, and that'll 1099 be great, and we'll encourage that. Some species that are on there have a tap root that will 1100 go down and damage the cap, so they'll have to be pulled. Originally my thought was 1101 plant a few. They'll naturally spread out. Eventually, we'll have this one big, giant, lush 1102 native garden out there. That's part of the answer of why so few. The other one is these 1103 all have to be hand-manicured. We're not going to come in with a mower and clear the 1104 vegetation and weeds that grow into those. They're really labor intensive. We're going to 1105 have our hands very full with three sets, to be honest. You can't come in with a weed 1106 whip; it'll all have to be hand-pulled. We utilize volunteers as best we can, and staff will 1107 do it as well. Again, this is adaptive. We're going to start with what we've got there. We 1108 come back in 2017 with a more elaborate plan, and we'll have learned are these 1109 successful, can we manage them and sustain them, and how many can we manage and 1110 sustain. My intent is we'll learn from these. We'll have our hands plenty full with three 1111 to start. Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll be very successful and easy, and we'll do 1112 everything on the plan and then do many more when we come back with a master plan. 1113 1114 Commissioner Ashlund: Thank you. 1115 1116 Chair Reckdahl: Any more? 1117 1118 Commissioner Hetterly: I'm coming in late, so I apologize for that. I gather there's been 1119 a hearty discussion already. I'm just going to ask one brief question about the vegetative 1120 islands. I do hope they're successful and we can do several more of them in the future. 1121 My question is whether the current plan includes a bench in all three of them. Is that a 1122 standard layout? You have all these layouts with the bench outlook nestled in the wall of 1123 the vegetative island. I would hope that as we expand those, every one of them does not 1124 have a bench. 1125 1126 Approved Minutes 27 APPROVED Mr. Anderson: That's definitely the plan. We had mentioned earlier, I'm not sure if you 1127 caught this part, that we were going to start with two near the benches and then do, 1128 forgive me it's hard to show you on the plan. Maybe Matt can pull it up. If you'll look 1129 behind you, he'll identify with the cursor some of the areas away from those meeting 1130 areas, so you can see the seating areas that will also be part of that iteration of groups. 1131 1132 Commissioner Hetterly: They will be? 1133 1134 Mr. Anderson: Mm-hmm. We're going to do three clusters of them. We'll start with two 1135 on the far right near those meeting areas. That essentially gives more people a chance to 1136 see it up close and experience some of that native vegetation, we hope. Then one more 1137 remote, to see the differences they have, different success rates for any reason that we 1138 can't predict. I don't know. That's the starting ones, and then we'll expand out from there 1139 and certainly include many that are further away and eventually ones way off the trail as 1140 well. That is our hope. 1141 1142 Commissioner Hetterly: Thank you. 1143 1144 Chair Reckdahl: You're concerned with wildlife or what was ... 1145 1146 Commissioner Hetterly: Yeah. 1147 1148 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Lauing. 1149 1150 Commissioner Lauing: Just a couple of quick ones. In the absence of Palo Alto and 1151 Baylands Golf Course, I do play the Shoreline Golf Course, which I did yesterday. I was 1152 astonished. The science on how to raise these little owls is very clear, because they're 1153 proliferating everywhere. This far away from the squirrels and this far away from one of 1154 my golf balls. They have them marked off, so they're relatively, I don't want to say tame, 1155 but they don't blast away and get all freaked out when you go in. 1156 1157 Rob de Geus: It's fascinating, isn't it? They're beautiful. 1158 1159 Commissioner Lauing: Yeah. They're beautiful animals. The other thing that was just 1160 fun is that the squirrels and the owls are not always mutually complementary. One 1161 mamma had a couple of babies, and the squirrel got a little bit too close. Smacked him 1162 down. It was very exciting, much better than (crosstalk) the golf shots that I witnessed 1163 out there. This has made a lot of improvements from an already good document that we 1164 saw the first time back about eight months ago, I think it was. Hats off for digging in on 1165 that. Process question. Eight months is probably a little bit too long. It probably would 1166 have been good to have it come back to the Commission one more time before we have it 1167 Approved Minutes 28 APPROVED as an action item and have to adjust this. The changes have been really good. I salute the 1168 ad hoc for that. 1169 1170 Mr. Anderson: If I could make one point about the burrowing owls. In the vast other 1171 parts of the Baylands Nature Reserve, we have ground squirrels. We don't abate them. 1172 In some areas, we put in artificial mounds, and the squirrels are allowed to be in there, 1173 they're all mixed in. We put in the right kind of grasses; we did everything right. Those 1174 squirrels came. I say that only to point out that just having squirrels is no guaranty you're 1175 going to have the owls. There are a lot of other factors. Some of it's hard to predict. I've 1176 gone to several owl trainings with Lynne Trulio, the foremost expert in our area and a 1177 professor at San Jose State. She shows lots of slides of owls in the middle of Mission 1178 College, right below a little uplifted section of concrete, no squirrels there. It's where 1179 hundreds of students walk every day, and that's where the owl decided to nest and raise 1180 babies successfully. Sometimes it's just hard to predict. I totally agree that the best case 1181 scenario is have squirrels there, have mounds there, have the vegetation cut the right way. 1182 That's what we're going to aim for, but I'm just letting you know that mother nature 1183 doesn't say, "You checked off all the boxes, we'll move in." It just doesn't happen that 1184 way every time. 1185 1186 Chair Reckdahl: I have a couple of comments. I've been up there recently. It looks a lot 1187 better than it did six months ago. It looks much less barren. I mentioned this to you 1188 before, the seeding in some spots looks good. In other places, it looks a little sparse. Are 1189 we planning to reseed? Is that yes, no, maybe? 1190 1191 Mr. Anderson: Yes, there'll be more hydroseeding to come. 1192 1193 Chair Reckdahl: How do you do that? Do you do that by hand or do we have a truck that 1194 drives around? 1195 1196 Mr. Anderson: A truck comes and sprays out the hydroseed. It's incumbent on us to time 1197 it with rain, which is difficult. If you just put down the seed, it will not survive. Your 1198 germination rate will be very, very low. 1199 1200 Chair Reckdahl: How long did it take to reseed the whole thing the last time we did it? 1201 1202 Mr. Anderson: They've done a few hydroseedings. Some unfortunately continue to settle 1203 below an acceptable standard, so they had to come in and add more soil and reseed on top 1204 of that. Matt, do you have any more information on the seedings? 1205 1206 Mr. Krupp: I know that we had one that essentially failed completely on a good portion 1207 of Phase 2. The last one did much, much better where the plants are starting to take hold. 1208 What we're concerned about now is getting monocrop weeds. There's a lot of mustard 1209 Approved Minutes 29 APPROVED out there and some other things we don't want to see. It's a huge area. It's hard to keep a 1210 handle on it. 1211 1212 Chair Reckdahl: Do we have funding to go through and take out the non-native species? 1213 There is mustard everywhere up there. 1214 1215 Mr. Anderson: Maybe I can address that one. We've unfortunately got a tremendous 1216 problem with invasive species all over the Baylands, not just on Byxbee Hills. We do a 1217 tremendous amount already, 10,000 volunteer hours a year where they come in and pull 1218 invasives and plant natives. It's worked wonders, but there's no way you can do it all 1219 with one shot. Sometimes we use alternative methods like sheet mulching, where you lay 1220 down cardboard and put mulch. Then you basically solarize the plants. The absence of 1221 sun kills the weeds; you come back and plant natives in there. You can't do that 1222 everywhere, so sometimes you mow. We use all these different techniques. In very, very 1223 few locations, you can use herbicide when absolutely necessary, when you can't control it 1224 any other way. We're talking about a 120-acre area, and so hand pulling is out. It'll never 1225 ever be possible to hand pull all of Byxbee. There's just no way; there's not an army big 1226 enough to go in there and pull the bad ones. We'll use techniques in some areas, and in 1227 other we'll let it be. Even though it's an invasive weed, we're going to let it be. In some 1228 areas there are worse things. It provides some limited cover. Maybe Tay can speak to 1229 this a bit. We prescribed in our plan areas, all the slopes which is not an insignificant 1230 amount of acreage, to let them grow in. Most likely they will be mustard and aloe and 1231 other less beneficial plants. It's not the end of the world. We're going to do our best to 1232 maximize those native ones, because it's our belief that you give your best bet to habitat 1233 and to wildlife when it's native vegetation. 1234 1235 Chair Reckdahl: Over the winter I went up there, and there's a lot of wildflowers on the 1236 slopes, some of the slopes. If you have mustard there, you won't get to see the 1237 wildflowers. That's a shame. Also, I like the interpretive signage. Baylands has some, 1238 but a lot of it is dated. It's been 20, 25 years since they were put in. You've identified 1239 some spots here. None of the spots are down below it, at ground level there. Do we plan 1240 to put any down there or is that outside the scope of this? 1241 1242 Mr. Anderson: That's outside the scope. The Junior Museum and Zoo have staff that 1243 help staff the nature center. We're looking at a holistic view of all our interpretive 1244 messaging throughout the preserve to get a unified and holistic message out in different 1245 areas to make sure we're not sending the same message too much and make sure we're in 1246 concert with our neighbors in Shoreline to our south and Cooley Landing to our north. 1247 Make sure we all gel in together. That's something that's in the works. It'll help inform 1248 and update those 20-year-old signs that you mentioned. We'll probably populate some 1249 signage on that lower portion of Byxbee as well. For this plan, it'll be focused on the top. 1250 1251 Approved Minutes 30 APPROVED Chair Reckdahl: I noticed you have park regulations up top here. We have the D over on 1252 the middle left. That's a park regulation sign. I would think you'd have that down below 1253 as people come up the hill as opposed to—no to the left. Right there, that's a park 1254 regulation sign. I would think you would move that down to one of the entrances as you 1255 come up. At some of the entrances, you have Ds. 1256 1257 Mr. Anderson: We should get them all at the entrances, but on occasion we have one up 1258 top. I'm pretty sure we've got them in every way up, which is the standard. 1259 1260 Chair Reckdahl: If you look on the far right, that slope on the far right is not—middle 1261 right farther up. That slope up does not have any signs on it, as you come up that slope. 1262 1263 Mr. Anderson: Over by the remnant marsh, Matt. 1264 1265 Chair Reckdahl: Yeah, right there. That does not have any. Also if you look up at the 1266 very top near the burrowing owl site, the green slope there does not have any signs at the 1267 entrance. Those two entrances don't have any signs as you come up. 1268 1269 Mr. Anderson: Part of that is we're catching them before. You can't get to any spot out 1270 there, you can't get to the one on the far right that you mentioned without passing one on 1271 Matadero and East Bayshore. Every way into the preserve, you're going to get hit with a 1272 regulatory sign so you can know the basic rules. The one on top is often helpful for the 1273 ranger who comes up to someone with their dog off-leash and says, "I didn't know it." 1274 There's one right there and every single way up here, you passed something that said you 1275 can't do that. 1276 1277 Chair Reckdahl: I assume you're not wedded to these sites. 1278 1279 Mr. Anderson: No. 1280 1281 Chair Reckdahl: You could (crosstalk). If you down the road don't like this, you have 1282 the freedom to move the signage wherever you want. 1283 1284 Mr. Anderson: Yeah, there's flexibility. Like we do everywhere in our preserves, if 1285 something's not working or it becomes a problem or is no longer effective in that area, we 1286 can do the appropriate thing. Sometimes we change the sign too. Sometimes the same 1287 message becomes invisible. They see the same sign over and over. We see that with our 1288 non-feeding ones. If we don't mix it up, there will be people standing right in front of it, 1289 because they no longer see it. Yes, sometimes we move it. 1290 1291 Chair Reckdahl: One last question is about funding. I agree we're not going to be able to 1292 nail it the first time. We're going to learn a lot as we plant things and change things. 1293 Approved Minutes 31 APPROVED What pot of money is now, as opposed to two or three years from now, (crosstalk) come 1294 out of the same pot? 1295 1296 Mr. Anderson: Yes. It'll be the capital budget. 1297 1298 Chair Reckdahl: It's not like there's a special budget that the landfill people have made 1299 for making it a park? 1300 1301 Mr. Anderson: No. 1302 1303 Chair Reckdahl: It's coming out of our general City budget? 1304 1305 Mr. Anderson: That's right. 1306 1307 Chair Reckdahl: We don't have any rush. 1308 1309 Mr. Anderson: There was a steady contribution from the landfill budget to the 1310 components, the trails for example that were already done. If you were to have done that 1311 same trail system with oyster shell, you were like $800,000 in. It was ridiculously 1312 expensive. We got that quote from one of our better contractors. We got a fantastic deal 1313 by having our own Public Works build it. 1314 1315 Ms. Renzel: It's not as easy to walk on as oyster shells. 1316 1317 Vice Chair Markevitch: Do you have any other questions? 1318 1319 Chair Reckdahl: No. 1320 1321 Commissioner Crommie: I have just a couple. 1322 1323 Chair Reckdahl: Okay. 1324 1325 Commissioner Hetterly: I have one question too. 1326 1327 Chair Reckdahl: Let's start with Jen here. 1328 1329 Commissioner Hetterly: I just have one question that you maybe already covered. 1330 There's a trail in the bottom left, from the bottom C and D going off to the right, that 1331 connects to the other trail. It's currently restricted. Is that going to be open? 1332 1333 Mr. Anderson: Am I right here? 1334 1335 Approved Minutes 32 APPROVED Commissioner Hetterly: Yeah. It's on here as an accessible trail. Is that going to then be 1336 open to the public? 1337 1338 Mr. Anderson: If you look at my cursor, are you talking about this part right here? Or 1339 are you talking about this? 1340 1341 Commissioner Hetterly: I'm talking about to the right. 1342 1343 Mr. Anderson: It's closed off-screen right over here. That's a cable that has always been 1344 there. The plan is to open this up so you could go this way. Where did we leave this, 1345 Matt? That we're ending right here, right? For the interim. Yes, this will be open, and 1346 you can get in here. What we're working on is connecting so you can come down 1347 through this way, which we think will happen soon. 1348 1349 Commissioner Hetterly: That's where the fox are, on the left there? 1350 1351 Mr. Anderson: There are fox in here. They travel through this area. Yes, there is a den 1352 site in and around this area, off-screen. 1353 1354 Commissioner Hetterly: Thank you. 1355 1356 Mr. Anderson: They use Byxbee Hills too. 1357 1358 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Crommie. Just one note. That was a 20-minute item, 1359 and we're at 50 minutes right now. If we can keep it crisp, let's keep it crisp. 1360 1361 Commissioner Crommie: You gave us this edited piece of paper that was based on the 1362 width of the gathering node that came out of discussion with our ad hoc subcommittee, 1363 which is great. When I looked at the document, it was still sited as 50 feet. Has that been 1364 corrected in the document? 1365 1366 Mr. Anderson: I couldn't change it in the plan. That's why we added this amendment 1367 here. 1368 1369 Commissioner Crommie: Why can't you change it in the plan? 1370 1371 Mr. Anderson: It's a complicated answer. Help me with this one. 1372 1373 Commissioner Crommie: Can you please let me know why? 1374 1375 Mr. Krupp: We can add it in as an attachment to it. We were basically out of money and 1376 had to finalize the plan. That's the nuts and bolts of it. We didn't have any more funds 1377 Approved Minutes 33 APPROVED available to our consultant to change the actual document, so we did that other drawing 1378 in-house. 1379 1380 Commissioner Hetterly: You can append that to the plan? 1381 1382 Mr. Krupp: Yeah. 1383 1384 Mr. Anderson: It is. 1385 1386 Mr. Krupp: That's why we attached it to this document. We wanted to make sure that it 1387 was reflected as our intention of what would happen over there. We also wanted to show 1388 it as well, because it did reduce some of the seating in that area. We had to lose two 1389 benches of that seating. 1390 1391 Commissioner Crommie: It's confusing when there's two statements in the plan, how you 1392 know which one to follow. 1393 1394 Mr. Anderson: The plan won't be the construction document. When we put this out to 1395 bid, all the nuances will be scripted by both Matt and I with this contractor. The guaranty 1396 is that when we write the contract to actually do the construction, it'll go in with a 35-foot 1397 diameter meeting area. 1398 1399 Commissioner Crommie: There's a statement in this plan that is a little confusing on one 1400 of the bullet points. It's on page 22 of the plan, where you say what this plan does. The 1401 last set of bullet points on the final one-third of the page. You precede it by saying what 1402 the Byxbee Master Plan says we should do, and then you say what this plan is doing. On 1403 the third bullet point down, it says the trail system in the park provides pathways to keep 1404 pedestrians and bicyclists from entering environmentally sensitive areas. You really need 1405 to say there are barriers to entering environmentally sensitive areas. This is saying the 1406 opposite of what we're trying to say here. It almost seems like you're saying that you're 1407 enhancing the ability to get into those sensitive areas. The way I read this. 1408 1409 Taylor Peterson: The idea is that they stay on the pathways, and the pathways guide 1410 them past the sensitive areas and not into them. We could certainly clarify the ... 1411 1412 Commissioner Crommie: There needs to be some clarification in the language there. 1413 1414 Commissioner Hetterly: Is there any signage encouraging people to stay on the trails? 1415 1416 Mr. Anderson: Is that on the general sign? It may not be. We do periodically put in a 1417 "stay out sensitive habitat area" sign. We have that throughout the rest of the preserve. 1418 That's what we were going to use along the habitat areas for the owls, for example. The 1419 Approved Minutes 34 APPROVED message we were trying to send with that comment was we're providing trails in the 1420 appropriate places to guide you and keep you where you should be as opposed to no trails 1421 and you can go where you want. That's where people end up in places they shouldn't be. 1422 Every once in a while someone will creep into the flood basin; we don't have trails in the 1423 flood basin. You're not supposed to be out there, but people end up in all sorts of crazy 1424 places, mainly because we're not providing the place that says this is where you need to 1425 go, this is where you're supposed to go. 1426 1427 Commissioner Crommie: The way you said it was very clear, but it's unclear here. If we 1428 can pay for another minute of consultant time, there's a bullet point missing where you 1429 say this concept provides habitat for wildlife. This is missing from here, and this is the 1430 issue I keep bringing up over and over again. We have these forces at play to make it 1431 Public Works oriented to taking care of a dump, a former dump. Are we really putting 1432 teeth into this document that this is for the preservation of wildlife? There's one bullet 1433 point which says it provides three locations to create burrowing owl habitat, which we 1434 know are subject to this permitting. There's no other bullet point about wildlife habitat. 1435 It's recreationally oriented, but I'd like to have another bullet point that speaks to all the 1436 work that's going in to provide habitat. That's what this plan is doing, which is consistent 1437 with our Master Plan which is guiding this document. I don't know if we can afford to 1438 have that extra bullet point added. If we can, it would be important in this document. 1439 1440 Mr. Anderson: Matt just highlighted—was it page 22, Matt? 1441 1442 Commissioner Crommie: Yeah, I'm on page 22. 1443 1444 Mr. Krupp: Going from the goals, the idea is that the Byxbee Park Hills plan would be 1445 working with all the goals that are established in the Baylands Master Plan which, we're 1446 at the top of page 22, is preserve and expand marshes, protect wildlife and restore upland 1447 diversity to plants and animals. We would be consistent with those key core goals. 1448 1449 Commissioner Crommie: The top bullet point, preserve and expand marshes, is 1450 incredibly important, but you're not doing any of that in this plan. That's why you're 1451 missing the statement about what you're actually doing, providing habitat. This plan does 1452 nothing for marshes. It doesn't make the connection to what this plan actually is doing. 1453 It's not written from the perspective of wildlife. 1454 1455 Ms. Peterson: The reason that this section is in here is to lay out what the Baylands 1456 Master Plan goals are, just in the general. Then to identify what goals in the Master Plan 1457 this interim Byxbee plan is (crosstalk). 1458 1459 Commissioner Crommie: I understood that, yes. The goal of providing habitat is not in 1460 there. 1461 Approved Minutes 35 APPROVED 1462 Ms. Peterson: That's not on the list. 1463 1464 Commissioner Crommie: That's what preserve and expand marshes is. It's providing 1465 habitat. It's just for marshland creatures. The spirit of the Baylands Master Plan is 1466 conservation with non-invasive recreational activities. I've read the Baylands Master 1467 Plan several times, and that is the spirit of the Master Plan. I want to see that spirit of the 1468 Master Plan carried into this document. Public Works doesn't quite understand that, and 1469 that's why I want it in this document. I want to force it in there. I forced it all the way on 1470 the ad hoc subcommittee, and it's just a continuation of that effort to now force that bullet 1471 point into this document if we can pay for another couple of minutes of consultant time. 1472 I've never had a report come to us where we couldn't add a necessary point in here as our 1473 Commission. I've never been told we can't do that on my seven years on this 1474 Commission. 1475 1476 Mr. Krupp: I don't know the answer to that. It's their work product. We can't wholesale 1477 modify their work. It's their work product for us, so we can make modifications, but they 1478 have to be okay with those modifications. If they're okay with it, we can modify it. 1479 1480 Mr. de Geus: It's our plan. 1481 1482 Mr. Krupp: It's our plan, and we can modify it. It's also based on their work product. As 1483 long as the consultant is okay with the modification, then we can make that modification. 1484 1485 Mr. de Geus: Did you have specific language that you ... 1486 1487 Commissioner Crommie: "Provides habitat for wildlife" is the bullet point. Also to fix 1488 the bullet point that's hard to read, and Daren already said some good language for that. 1489 The third bullet point down is too confusing. 1490 1491 Mr. Krupp: We can make those changes. 1492 1493 Commissioner Crommie: While we're making those, can you reference the scientific 1494 studies that show how squirrels burrow into this document? This document is about 1495 burrowing owls. That's one of the main features of this document. It's missing from 1496 here. I suspect you know the references. 1497 1498 Ms. Peterson: I suspect the references are in the reference section, so it would not be 1499 difficult for us to ... 1500 1501 Commissioner Crommie: Thank you. If you could just site that, that would be fabulous. 1502 I really appreciate that. Just some small points. We have these three locations that are 1503 Approved Minutes 36 APPROVED labeled 6. Those are locations for burrowing owls. Since we have our consultant here, 1504 one of these locations, the one that is in this corner over here, this one, the contour lines 1505 are very close together. I'm just wondering if owls had ever burrowed in an area that 1506 that's steep. I was the one who said I thought there was a mistake on the contour lines. 1507 When I first looked at this map, I didn't see the contour lines listed in the sphere for 6. 1508 When I walked that, it's such a steep area. I was baffled that owls could hope to settle in 1509 an area that steep. Is there precedence for that? 1510 1511 Ms. Peterson: That's the area where they have burrowed in the past. They like to burrow 1512 where they can come out of their burrows and see everything. That's gives them an 1513 angle. It must be flat enough for them to be happy. 1514 1515 Commissioner Crommie: I didn't want to have a document go forth that we declare this 1516 is a place for them; yet, scientifically they've never been known to be on a slope that 1517 steep. I didn't want to carve new scientific hopes. 1518 1519 Ms. Peterson: They also have mounds ... 1520 1521 Commissioner Hetterly: It sounds like they have. 1522 1523 Ms. Peterson: ... built for them with artificial burrows. 1524 1525 Commissioner Crommie: To help supplement the steepness of the grade. Good. As long 1526 as there's a sensitivity. I just wanted to point that out in this document, from having 1527 walked it. Lastly, on your page A6, which is this page, it's the mowing page. I want to 1528 make sure this is clear. You have the yellow part and you say side slopes mowed less 1529 frequently. I'm a little bit confused as to what mowing is being done in this yellow 1530 quadrant. Right here. It's labeled as page A6. In the key it says that the side slopes are 1531 mowed less frequently. What does that mean exactly? That covers a lot of space. 1532 1533 Commissioner Hetterly: It's Appendix A. 1534 1535 Ms. Peterson: That's not the best graphic to look at. It's better to look at this new one. 1536 The steep slopes are in darker blue. 1537 1538 Commissioner Crommie: Can you fix this? It's too confusing. I don't think someone 1539 could follow the directions based on this figure. I don't know how someone ... 1540 1541 Ms. Peterson: I don't think that would be the figure that they will have in hand when 1542 they're following directions. 1543 1544 Approved Minutes 37 APPROVED Commissioner Crommie: It's in this report, and I don't think it should be in this report 1545 unless someone can look at it and make sense out of it. I don't know what this is saying. 1546 It's implying that that's the only place that there's slopes. Yet, we know other mowing is 1547 going on there. It's very confusing. 1548 1549 Mr. Krupp: Probably it would be best if we just remove the graphic. It's something that 1550 doesn't reflect the most up-to-date mowing regime. Thank you for that. We can pull that 1551 out. 1552 1553 Commissioner Crommie: I wanted to let Emily Renzel know that we are going to have a 1554 CIP for signs in the Baylands. We might want to revisit signs as we get through that CIP. 1555 The idea that John Aiken had was to take a more comprehensive look at how we do our 1556 signage. That's when we can address the problem of having signs that are eyesores 1557 without conveying the information. 1558 1559 Chair Reckdahl: We're at 65 minutes, so ... 1560 1561 Commissioner Crommie: Lastly, I hope you would not put a sign that says "don't dump 1562 feral cats here." It gives the wrong impression, and it gives people more ideas than 1563 anything. I'd really not like that in there. That was the end. 1564 1565 Chair Reckdahl: If we vote now, the vote is on the modified document. Is that how it 1566 works? 1567 1568 Commissioner Crommie: Can we specify that in the motion? 1569 1570 Chair Reckdahl: Okay. Do we have a motion to modify the document and approve it 1571 (crosstalk). 1572 1573 Commissioner Crommie: I'll make that motion. 1574 1575 MOTION: Commissioner Crommie moved, seconded by Vice Chair Markevitch, that 1576 the Parks and Recreation Commission approve the plan with the specified modifications 1577 to which the consultant and staff agreed. 1578 1579 Mr. Anderson: Let me just clarify those modifications. I want to make sure I get 1580 everything right. Matt, maybe you can help me if I miss this, or Rob. We're adding 1581 bullet points. I want to make sure that the page (crosstalk). 1582 1583 Commissioner Crommie: One bullet point. 1584 1585 Approved Minutes 38 APPROVED Mr. Anderson: That provides habitat for wildlife. We're fixing the language on the third 1586 bullet point. This is page 22, right? 1587 1588 Commissioner Crommie: Correct. 1589 1590 Mr. Anderson: We're adding a reference under the burrowing owl plan about ground 1591 squirrels, strengthening that component of the association with burrowing owls. 1592 1593 Commissioner Crommie: With a citation to the scientific literature. 1594 1595 Mr. Anderson: Especially details on typically 4 feet deep max. 1596 1597 Commissioner Crommie: And horizontal versus down. 1598 1599 Mr. Anderson: Was the comment about owls on that steep slope addressed to your 1600 satisfaction so that we don't need additional comments on that? 1601 1602 Commissioner Crommie: Yeah, I think so. 1603 1604 Mr. Anderson: We're removing A6, the ambiguous yellow area. Is that everything? 1605 1606 Commissioner Crommie: Yep. 1607 1608 Mr. Anderson: We're good. 1609 1610 MOTION PASSED: 6-0 1611 1612 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you, Daren. 1613 1614 Mr. Anderson: Thank you. 1615 1616 4. Matrix Comments Review for the Parks, Trails, Open Space and Recreation 1617 Facilities Master Plan. 1618 1619 Chair Reckdahl: Peter Jensen. 1620 1621 Peter Jensen: Rob has stepped out to make a short phone call, but he's going to be back 1622 in here. Good evening, Commissioners. Peter Jensen, Landscape Architect for the City 1623 of Palo Alto. Our continuous process of the Park Master Plan. It's going to be a two-1624 phase discussion tonight. One is going to focus on the comments received from the 1625 homework item that you were given last time to review some of the matrix items. There 1626 were a few Commissioners that had some specific comments on that. Those were in your 1627 Approved Minutes 39 APPROVED package, if you saw those things. We're also going to pass out some updated binder 1628 items, which we can go through and put them in, in a few seconds. Hopefully at the end 1629 we're going to start the initial transition to the next phase of the project, which is setting 1630 up the principles that will guide the process of making recommendations. Without 1631 further ado, I'll give it over to Ryan and Ellie, consultants from MIG, to go through this 1632 process. 1633 1634 Ryan Mottau: Thanks for having us back. A few things have run over, so I'm going to 1635 try to keep my part real brief and make sure that we get a chance to make sure that you 1636 guys are comfortable with the comments and revisions that we've made and introduce 1637 perhaps the timeframe discussion. We can continue that conversation as you guys get a 1638 chance to sit and ponder it. It's important to get a little more time. As Peter mentioned, 1639 we're in a place right now where we've been spending a lot of time and effort right here 1640 with our wonderful binders and our great big matrices. We have an updated matrix for 1641 you tonight as well as a few other pieces. Out of the comments and responses that you 1642 made, we're feeling like you all are doing pretty well working with this. This has helped 1643 to share what we're working from in terms of our raw material as well as how we're 1644 putting all of those pieces together. It feels like the comments are showing a pretty high 1645 level of comfort with that. Our intention is not to say, "Now we're done with that and 1646 we're moving on." What we want to do with this in terms of process is to continue to 1647 work, continue to use and reference this matrix and especially to use and reference this 1648 extensive library of source material you'll see as we go through some of the stuff tonight. 1649 We'll continue to reference things specifically by section number. We may well find that 1650 there are some pieces of information that we still need to tease out. We still need to dig 1651 up a little bit of additional of information. We came up with this at the last meeting: how 1652 do we transition from that last column of the Statement of Need and the findings of this 1653 overall process and into action that we can take as a part of this plan to move forward? 1654 We're right in the crux of that. We're right on the arrow between that data needs 1655 summary and the actions criteria and prioritizing part of this process. With that, I want to 1656 run through quickly with you what the materials are and what our intention is for you 1657 guys. The comment and response memo that you guys got is responding to both what we 1658 heard at the meeting last month as well as the comments that were submitted on line over 1659 the couple of weeks following that meeting. We tried to be as descriptive as possible of 1660 "yes, we made a change based on this thinking. This is what we changed it to." What we 1661 want to give you tonight is the updated actual documents, so you have them in your 1662 binder, that reflect those changes. We didn't have them printed and prepared in time for 1663 your packet. We wanted to make sure that you got them and had them in place for your 1664 binder. There's basically four pieces that are in play here. In the comment and response 1665 memo we just talked about, it did come in your packet, and it details the reasoning behind 1666 what we might have changed. The updated data needs matrix will be your new version of 1667 the great big sheet which responds to some specific comments about inventory. It 1668 responds to the specific comment, the request to provide a little bit more of our thinking 1669 Approved Minutes 40 APPROVED in Column K which is that projected demand. Each one of our line items has a little bit 1670 more explanation on that front now. It resolves a few other questions that were 1671 clarifications from the comments and response. We also talked last meeting about the 1672 inventory and it missing a page that explained which sites we had identified as serving 1673 the different activities and some of the access to nature and those kind of things. The 1674 new inventory which you'll be receiving here, I'm going to have them pass all of this out, 1675 has a third page that explains all of this. It was intended to be a part of that original 1676 inventory. We've also updated the inventory to react to the comment about the sports 1677 fields at the high schools, specifically to make sure that they are not part of the sum totals 1678 of what's available to the community. I didn't want to take them out of the inventory 1679 entirely, so we gave them asterisks and took them out of the totals, took them off of the 1680 matrix. That inventory is a replacement for what's in your binder. Just clarifying there. 1681 Just pull the other stuff and drop this stuff in. The same with the program analysis. We 1682 made some clarifications and revisions to that. We wanted to give you a whole chunk to 1683 replace that section, so that we know that we have the current version. I know there was 1684 some question last time as well about making sure we have current versions of 1685 everything. We're trying to clean up some of that as well. Those are the materials that 1686 have been revised. The revisions that we spoke of are pretty much detailed in that 1687 comment and response memo. I know that many of you took advantage of the 1688 opportunity to do the homework assignment. I wanted to make sure there weren't any 1689 other lingering comments that we wanted to get out on the table at this point. I also want 1690 to do a little bit of explaining following that, of how we have used this working document 1691 and carried it forward into building some direction and some recommendations for this 1692 plan. I'll let Peter start passing some things around. I don't know if anybody had any 1693 other notes that they wanted to relay about the specific revisions or points on the matrix. 1694 I'll give that an opportunity while we're handing things out real quick. 1695 1696 Mr. Jensen: I didn't know if each of your binders had a pocket in the front, so I gave you 1697 that clip if you wanted to clip it into the front inside of your binder. You can, but it's not 1698 necessary for you to have a (inaudible). 1699 1700 Mr. Mottau: Unless you have your own notes that you really want to keep, there isn't any 1701 particular reason to keep the old version of the matrix either. There's no magic. It was 1702 pretty much an additive process in terms of responding to your comments. 1703 1704 Mr. Jensen: Ryan, what section is the inventory? 1705 1706 Mr. Mottau: Inventory is Section 8. 1707 1708 Mr. Jensen: It has two 11 by 17 ... 1709 1710 Approved Minutes 41 APPROVED Mr. Mottau: As I said with Section 8, you can just tear out what's in there and drop this 1711 in. 1712 1713 Commissioner Crommie: I'm sorry. Where does this go? 1714 1715 Mr. Jensen: That's Section 8 in your binder. Let's take out the old and put that in as the 1716 new. 1717 1718 Mr. Mottau: It's behind the map. Sorry. I told you, you could tear out a whole section; 1719 I'm lying. Sorry. It's the Excel sheets that are behind the map. Don't take out the map. 1720 The map will be useful. 1721 1722 Commissioner Crommie: I have one thing to put on the table. Can I do it now? 1723 1724 Mr. Mottau: Please. 1725 1726 Commissioner Crommie: I wanted to talk a little bit more about the high school playing 1727 fields, because one issue I've had forever on this Commission is just how we use the 1728 schools' resources for our City. Sometimes it seems like we do a really good job using 1729 them. We have the middle school athletic program. From what I have understood, it's a 1730 good partnership. I'd have to ask Staff whether they think so. Superficially from what 1731 I've heard, that seems like a really good partnership. It does provide resources for our 1732 residents. We don't have that same thing going on with the high schools. I'm in a unique 1733 position. I live in Palo Alto, but my kids are actually in the Los Altos school district. 1734 The Monroe Park neighborhood, the 150, now 178 families because we've built 24 1735 condos there. We have 178-ish families going over to the Los Altos school district. I see 1736 how they use their high schools. They have two high schools, just like Palo Alto does. 1737 Los Altos also has two high schools. My kids have always used those resources as 1738 students, and I see the community using them a lot in Los Altos. I've never drilled down 1739 by talking to people in the City structure, of how they do it. What I've heard anecdotally 1740 in this City is that there are these fiefdoms within the high schools, and they're controlled 1741 by the coaches. It's a money maker for the school, because they can rent the facilities at 1742 very high prices to all these hungry clubs, many of which do not have residences within 1743 our City. They're hungry for high-quality fields. Paly has a beautiful, new high-quality 1744 field. I don't know about Gunn's resources as much. Yet we have this movement within 1745 our City to possibly build more playing fields way out in the Baylands, which are really 1746 hard for kids to get to. At one point we had at least one Council Member interested in 1747 doing that. I saw the power of that, because I sat on the golf course ad hoc, and that 1748 person had a lot of sway. I don't know if that person still wants fields out there or not. 1749 I'm saying why are we not trying to do something about these beautiful resources that are 1750 actually located geographically closer to where the residents are. Now based on a 1751 comment from at least one Commissioner, I don't know how many Commissioners 1752 Approved Minutes 42 APPROVED wanted those taken off our table. I don't know if taking them off is getting us farther 1753 away. I don't agree with any movement that hides that resource and buries it. 1754 1755 Mr. Mottau: I agree with that, especially the part about not removing them. We didn't 1756 end up removing them. They are not calculated in the total. There's a note at the bottom 1757 of the second sheet that says the high school fields are not available for community use. 1758 They're starred essentially. They don't add into the total available for community use. 1759 1760 Rob de Geus: You just want to add "quite yet." 1761 1762 Mr. Mottau: There we go, yet. Carrying your thought forward, that is a recommendation 1763 that could certainly be in this plan, to continue to make this ... 1764 1765 Vice Chair Markevitch: I'd like to say that we're getting off topic on this. The high 1766 school fields are not owned by the City of Palo Alto. They are school district property. 1767 We have no jurisdiction over them at this point. I don't see that in the foreseeable future. 1768 We need to move on. 1769 1770 Mr. Mottau: The other piece that Peter has passed out, just so that we have this correct, is 1771 the program analysis. This replaces Section 5 in your binder. It's both pieces of the 1772 program analysis. As we talked about before, the first part was supplemented later by the 1773 extensive data analysis of the recommendations which we talked about at the last 1774 meeting. Both of those are now pretty much as a whole complete. They are now Section 1775 5 in your binder. The references all remain the same. We are cleaning up a few 1776 clarification points. 1777 1778 Commissioner Hetterly: There's no major substantive change from the earlier version? 1779 1780 Mr. Mottau: The only thing is an addition to Part 2 that is worth drawing your attention 1781 to. At the very end, we did add on at your request some of the data about the visitation of 1782 the preserves. We had that conversation at the last meeting. It's the final section of Part 1783 2, so it's really the last page or two that highlights a few key facts that we discovered 1784 from that data analysis. 1785 1786 Commissioner Lauing: I know you're putting a new date on here now, which is the way 1787 you're doing version numbers. 1788 1789 Mr. Mottau: Yes. Anything that we do, we'll make sure that we have the revised date 1790 listed so that you can tell it's the current one. Thank you again for that. We were trying 1791 to clean that up. That was one of the reasons why we gave you both sections again, so 1792 that we didn't have any clarification necessary there. 1793 1794 Approved Minutes 43 APPROVED Commissioner Crommie: I just want to clarify that the packet that Peter handed us, 1795 where does that go? 1796 1797 Mr. Mottau: Section 5. 1798 1799 Commissioner Crommie: It looks pretty different. 1800 1801 Commissioner Hetterly: This doesn't go in Section 5. 1802 1803 Commissioner Crommie: I must have something switched. I'll talk to Peter afterwards. 1804 1805 Mr. Mottau: Peter can help you sort out any of those. The first section, I believe, has the 1806 resource list which has the document titles as well. You can double check that too. Like 1807 I said, I don't want to say, "We're done talking about this. We can't bring this back up at 1808 some point." The matrix is something we're going to continue to reference. The binder is 1809 something we're going to continue to reference. If you find questions that you want to 1810 get answered, let us know. I would like to use a little bit of your precious time tonight to 1811 talk through the plan framework, which is what we're working on. We're just introducing 1812 this to you. This is not something that is final. We don't feel like we have this 100 1813 percent done yet, 100 percent right. We want to introduce it to you to illustrate to you 1814 how we're envisioning moving from these needs, from all of this data analysis into some 1815 direction for this planning effort. Peter's handing out to you now ... 1816 1817 Mr. Jensen: This is going into the binder. 1818 1819 Mr. Mottau: This is a concept. Before we did the matrix process, we wanted to show 1820 you where we were going and how. We wanted you to have this in hand, give us a 1821 chance to introduce it and talk about it a little bit. We will continue to work with this. 1822 It's something that is in process as we go forward. What it's really about is this transition 1823 between the data and actions. The key piece that is necessary to shape the development 1824 of actions, what ultimately are the recommendations of this planning effort, is to make 1825 sure that we are setting some direction, where this park system is going. We aren't just 1826 going to pull that out of the air. We aren't pulling that out of our pocket. We're drawing 1827 that from what we heard in this community, what we've heard from you, what we've 1828 heard from your staff, but putting a high priority on what we've heard from the 1829 community. There are four pages to this document. The first page is a little bit of an 1830 introduction, where we're at with this. The second page, I'll highlight the second section 1831 here. There is a set of bullets that really do emphasize what we're talking about here. 1832 This is a working version. What we're hearing, the themes that we're hearing, and I don't 1833 think these will be foreign to you, are that Palo Alto's parks, trails, open space and 1834 recreation system is or should be in the future inclusive, accessible, balanced, healthy, 1835 flexible, sustainable and playful. I'm going to walk through each of those quickly just to 1836 Approved Minutes 44 APPROVED give you a sense of how we're organizing this. The third page then talks a little about 1837 where those came from, where we heard those themes, particularly in some of the public 1838 involvement and outreach results. If you want to go back and look at, "Where did we 1839 hear this? What did we see," these are some specific sources. As we said, we see these 1840 as themes that have come up in a lot of different places and are supported by what we're 1841 hearing from you all as well. The final page on this, page 4, is about applying these 1842 ideas. One of the ways that we find this to be most useful is as you're considering any 1843 given action, any given recommendation, one of the questions that you would ask 1844 yourself is to see if it fits. We've offered a couple of these questions for each of these 1845 principles to give a sense of, as we apply this, how would we judge this meeting this 1846 principle or coming close to this principle or approaching this principle. We don't 1847 necessarily consider this to be an exhaustive list yet. We're working on it. We wanted a 1848 chance for you all to provide some feedback. I want to walk through these quickly to 1849 give you a sense of what we're talking about when we use the word inclusive in this 1850 context. The wording may shift. You guys may have some thoughts on that as we go 1851 forward. I want to quickly walk through each of those principles. Inclusive, thinking of 1852 ages and abilities, languages, cultures, all levels of income, involving the whole spectrum 1853 of this community in the recreation opportunities that we're offering. There's a couple of 1854 questions that we posed to start thinking about that and some sources that tie back into 1855 that. All the material that's on the slide here is just reorganized out of this memo. There's 1856 nothing new. It's just giving me something to follow along with. Accessible is about 1857 making it easy for people of all abilities to get to and to use those activities year round, 1858 get there by walking, biking, rolling, however they need to. This one has a few more 1859 questions, a few more sources. Balanced is another way of thinking about the mix, how 1860 are we going to do this. It's not going to be all about one thing. It's not going to be all 1861 about trail or it's not going to be all about nature. It's not going to be all about 1862 competitive sports. We want to seek those different points of balance. We've suggested 1863 a few of those points of balance, that we've been hearing, between natural spaces and 1864 manicured landscapes, historic elements and high-tech and high-design features, self-1865 directed and programmed activities. What we heard in the community was that it should 1866 not overly emphasize any one side of those kinds of balances. Healthy mostly speaks for 1867 itself, but I do want to emphasize that we are talking about both physical and mental 1868 health and well being here. There's a lot of great evidence around that. We have a lot of 1869 potential to benefit both physical and mental health with our system. Flexible is talking 1870 about how can we pack in those layers of activities. Multiple uses across time including 1871 adaptable spaces that will create some space not only for what we're doing now but what 1872 will emerge with future use. Sustainable, while a well-used if not over-used term these 1873 days, there is a standing definition with the City around the Es of sustainability, 1874 economy, environment, and social equity. We felt like there's some important aspects of 1875 that that we really want to work into this overall. Finally playful. This is the one that I 1876 personally feel pretty strongly about. There's a lot of potential, and this goes to how do 1877 we get people to get excited about the park system. There's an inspiration factor. That's 1878 Approved Minutes 45 APPROVED play for kids. That's play for adults. Imagination, creativity, joy, innovation is very tied 1879 into these kinds of things. We wanted to make sure that that element is continually 1880 worked into this as well. I know this is a lot. This is new. This is a lot. I'm curious 1881 about your first responses to these principles. In talking with staff about these, there are 1882 some that feel like maybe seven is too many. Maybe there's some that could be 1883 collapsed. Maybe there's some things that are missing or aren't explained well enough at 1884 this point. On first blush, they're "I get that. That makes sense to me." I'd like to have 1885 you guys' first blush about the principles themselves. I have a couple of examples, if we 1886 have a little bit of time, that I can walk through of how we would start to apply these. I'd 1887 like to walk through some of that. Maybe some thoughts. 1888 1889 Vice Chair Markevitch: I'd put playful at the top. 1890 1891 Mr. Mottau: Put playful at the top. 1892 1893 Vice Chair Markevitch: That's the whole reason to go to a park, to have fun and relax. 1894 The other one, accessible, for people of all abilities to use year round and to get to by 1895 walking, biking or rolling. Rolling is such an odd word. I would just say "vehicular." 1896 There are people who have limited mobility and can't walk or bike to a park. It just 1897 seems a little too out there. Spell it out more. 1898 1899 Mr. Mottau: Appreciate that. 1900 1901 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Crommie. 1902 1903 Vice Chair Markevitch: I'd like ... 1904 1905 Chair Reckdahl: Are you done? 1906 1907 Vice Chair Markevitch: No, I'm sorry. Sustainable, I do think it's overused. I'm seeing it 1908 start to creep in a lot. I'd like to be cautious about how we proceed with that bullet point. 1909 I'm not sure how yet, but I need to give it some thought. I do like the other ones. 1910 Inclusive, balanced. The rest of them ... 1911 1912 Commissioner Lauing: Don't resonate? 1913 1914 Vice Chair Markevitch: Yeah. I'm good. 1915 1916 Commissioner Crommie: I also concur with Commissioner Markevitch. Sustainable 1917 needs some definition in there, more than what you've given it. A clearer statement. 1918 Balanced, I don't like that bullet point particularly. All the bullet points add up to 1919 balanced, so I don't think you need that. It's confusing. The bullet point that's missing 1920 Approved Minutes 46 APPROVED here is the word "nature." I would suggest a bullet point that says "respectful of and 1921 connected to nature." Your bullet points should bring balance, and you don't need a 1922 specific one. It's trying to say too much. 1923 1924 Mr. Mottau: Appreciate that. 1925 1926 Commissioner Hetterly: I actually like the balanced bullet. It's really important. Under 1927 all of these principles, there's a balance that has to be struck. 1928 1929 Mr. Mottau: You could go too far on any one of them. 1930 1931 Commissioner Hetterly: Yeah. Particularly the flexible one. I wanted to add something 1932 there about balance. I don't want the impetus to be to cram everything you can into a 1933 park. The questions that are raised here could well lead to that. 1934 1935 Mr. Mottau: That's helpful. 1936 1937 Commissioner Ashlund: Accessible, public transportation ought to be mentioned there. I 1938 wasn't sure about when it says for all people of all abilities to use year round. I don't like 1939 to go to the park in the rain. I do like to go inside to nice places in the rain. It seems like 1940 that is trying to say a little bit more than is really feasible. Maybe it's implying there's a 1941 variety of amenities such that there are indoor facilities as well as outdoor facilities. 1942 1943 Mr. Mottau: I see where you're going with that. 1944 1945 Commissioner Ashlund: For the healthy bullet, I was thinking of adding social or 1946 community to that in some way. It's physical and mental health and well being, but it's 1947 also social opportunities and community building that I felt like was missing from the 1948 list. 1949 1950 Mr. Mottau: That community health piece. 1951 1952 Commissioner Ashlund: Bringing people together and enabling that. 1953 1954 Commissioner Lauing: We've got good comments already, so I won't even (inaudible) to 1955 that. The flexible one, there should be somewhere in here that we're actually trying to tell 1956 people the limits. Commissioner Hetterly's comment, that was a good one. We can't just 1957 jam it all in, because everybody needs it. We also have to be tolerant of multiple uses 1958 with the limited amount of stuff we have. Somehow that teaching moment could be here 1959 for residents. I don't know how we escape the sustainability, because it's a big deal in 1960 Palo Alto. It is a guiding principle and since it is, it has to be there. Wordsmithing could 1961 Approved Minutes 47 APPROVED be fine. Not there, but the right tone. If you could get it a little smaller, the tendency is 1962 to get it even bigger than this. If you get it a little smaller, it's just ... 1963 1964 Mr. Mottau: We'll keep working on dialing that in. That is an important one especially 1965 as you start applying them. The more factors you start trying to work with, the less clear 1966 it becomes sometimes. I would agree. 1967 1968 Chair Reckdahl: When I first looked at the list, my first instinct was "What a bunch of 1969 (inaudible) buzz words." When I walked through each one, each one seems reasonable. I 1970 wouldn't necessarily yank any of them. The one thing that came to my mind which isn't 1971 on this list is the growing population. We have no more space to buy parks and we have 1972 a lot more people coming in. That's a huge challenge. I don't know how you work that in 1973 or if you even do. In my mind that is the biggest challenge that I look for. 1974 1975 Mr. Mottau: There's something to that. Where we fit that in, that is one of the big 1976 challenges. 1977 1978 Vice Chair Markevitch: That goes in the sustainable one if it's spelled out and worked a 1979 little. 1980 1981 Mr. Mottau: That's an interesting point. As population grows, you've got the capacity 1982 component of that. That's another one like balanced that hits probably on a number of 1983 different points. Capacity is going to be an issue for a lot of them. 1984 1985 Commissioner Ashlund: Flexibility will (inaudible). 1986 1987 Mr. Jensen: Ryan, do you want to go over an example real quick? 1988 1989 Mr. Mottau: Let me run through one really quickly. Like I said, we'd love to get any 1990 additional thoughts on this. Just thinking about what action might start looking like, if it 1991 was guided by these principles as we originally wrote them and as we were thinking 1992 about them. We've talked a little bit about nature play as an additive feature in the 1993 system. As an action, you can think about these as recommendations as well, but action 1994 items that we would be thinking about in the plan. Add universally accessible nature play 1995 feature to existing sites. There's a few key words in this. What the guidance of these 1996 principles allows us to do as we're developing these actions is to try to tailor them a little 1997 bit, rather than just saying, "Wouldn't it be great to have nature play." Let's talk about 1998 how we would do that in order to react to the guidance that we've heard from the 1999 community. Universally accessible nature play, not just nature play, not just universally 2000 accessible play. Adding it to existing sites in this case is a specific choice as well. The 2001 needs we're addressing here are about those additional play experiences. These are pulled 2002 right off that last column on the matrix. We're trying to find ways to meet multiple needs 2003 Approved Minutes 48 APPROVED as well as multiple principles as we go through this. We've got several needs specifically 2004 called out here, including integration of accessibility of all ages and abilities across the 2005 system. Nature play experiences as a way to experience nature but also as a different 2006 type of play experience. Thinking about that same action against these principles. You 2007 can make a pretty convincing case, as that action is written, that it could address all of 2008 those principles pretty directly. I'm not going to rattle through them, but if anybody has a 2009 particular question about one, I do have some thinking about each one of those. To give 2010 you the other example as well. On the programmatic side, thinking about "That works 2011 for a physical addition to the system, but what about something that is purely about 2012 people, purely about the interaction of services that we provide." One of the things we 2013 heard a lot about, and one of the things that came out in the comments from you all, was 2014 the importance of developing coaching capacity for middle school athletics, for sports 2015 programs as a whole. One way to approach that might be to develop a coach training 2016 program that feeds into middle school athletics and other sports. It's based on building 2017 capacity within those volunteers. It addresses a variety of those needs that were called 2018 out. This one, however, doesn't necessarily in our minds hit all those principles. 2019 Ultimately, we think that's okay. The intention is to build as much of those principles 2020 into everything as you can, but you're not going to hit seven out of seven every time. 2021 That's a little bit about how we would apply this. What we're saying here is this is how 2022 we, as your planning team, take these needs and shape them into an action. We're using 2023 these principles as the guidance. This is your opportunity in helping us shape these 2024 principles to shape what those recommendations might look like as they start coming out 2025 onto the ground. With that, I’m curious if you guys see immediate questions or thoughts 2026 about what would that do in terms of the overall plan or specificity of guidance that you 2027 guys want. I'm happy to talk about other topics, but these two came to us as good 2028 examples to start with. I know that's a lot as well, but it's something that you wanted ... 2029 2030 Commissioner Lauing: It doesn't have to meet them all? 2031 2032 Mr. Mottau: It doesn't have to meet them all. 2033 2034 Commissioner Lauing: It can't violate them violently. 2035 2036 Mr. Mottau: That's an important point. They should be ... 2037 2038 Commissioner Lauing: It doesn't have to check the box with bells ringing. 2039 2040 Commissioner Crommie: Can I ask you a question? What do you mean as our 2041 consultants when you say nature play? What does that mean for you? 2042 2043 Mr. Mottau: Nature play, for me, is primarily about creating creative play environments 2044 that integrate natural surfaces, natural environments. It's so much easier to explain in 2045 Approved Minutes 49 APPROVED experience. It emulates the "playing in a vacant lot or a forest" experience in a designed 2046 environment. That's my shortish answer. There are a lot of things it can mean though. 2047 2048 Commissioner Crommie: That really scares me, because I don't want that to substitute 2049 for what I see people saying as wanting a connection to nature. You can't replicate 2050 nature. You can preserve it and allow people to come into nature. That's what is at huge 2051 risk in the City. Maybe we can do both. I don't want one to replace the other. It's very 2052 superficial to decide you're going to bring nature into an urban landscape. It doesn't cut it 2053 for me. It's one of those things that looks good. It's great to do it. If you have a choice 2054 of a bunch of plastic or more natural materials, great. Kids benefit by having contact 2055 with natural materials. I'd say do it. If you think it's substituting for that, I would look 2056 very closely at the end of this at how much you're allowing. Those ideas of the butterfly 2057 garden and the bee garden, where kids have an experience of real nature, not fake nature 2058 that you buy through the internet by having these lovely natural materials. That's natural 2059 materials. It's not nature. I would always support using natural materials, but I don't 2060 think it substitutes. As long as you can do both, that's great. 2061 2062 Mr. Mottau: Thank you. That's an important point. 2063 2064 Commissioner Ashlund: I recently heard, and I can't remember which park it was, but 2065 that some of the new benches that were installed were actually plastic designed to look 2066 like wood instead of wood. Are you familiar ... 2067 2068 Mr. Jensen: I think they're recycled material. 2069 2070 Mr. de Geus: Much more durable. 2071 2072 Commissioner Ashlund: We are going plastic in our park benches now? 2073 2074 Mr. de Geus: Not all our park benches. I know that we're experimenting with some of 2075 that. 2076 2077 Vice Chair Markevitch: Experiment that when it's 90 degrees. Go sit down on it with 2078 shorts. You're not going to be happy. 2079 2080 Commissioner Crommie: That's pure sustainability creep. 2081 2082 Vice Chair Markevitch: Yes, exactly. That's exactly right. 2083 2084 Commissioner Crommie: It's invisible, yet pervasive. 2085 2086 Approved Minutes 50 APPROVED Mr. Jensen: I think you got what we wanted to do. We wanted to put this out to the 2087 Commission so you guys can look over it, have some time with it, have some thought 2088 with it. Next time we're going to come back and have a more extensive conversation 2089 about what this is. The other thing is that this isn't the end of how you get to the 2090 recommendations and how to prioritize them. You can get a list of recommendations 2091 from this process. There's going to be another process on that that talks about the 2092 prioritization of those recommendations. They'll talk about timeline and how much 2093 things cost and how many things that we have and how big it is and if we have room for 2094 it. We're applying detail that will go past this. This allows us to start to form that list of 2095 those items and then to get into that process. 2096 2097 Mr. Mottau: We're filtering as we go, and we're working from the big list, the needs and 2098 everything that was possible. There were things that we identified from data and from 2099 input that were the needs. We're starting to work down to the actions that could address 2100 as many of those needs as we can work in. As Peter said, there's going to be a process in 2101 this that will be those practical points around how do we figure out which we do first, 2102 how do we apply limited resources. 2103 2104 Commissioner Crommie: I wanted to comment on accessibility, because I think we're 2105 talking about some big ideas based on your presentation. As far as accessibility goes, we 2106 have to be very researched-based. I want to make the point that our City just invested in 2107 this beautiful new park, the Magical Bridge Playground. Just being there and talking to 2108 the people who are using it and excited about it, that community would like features of 2109 that park in all of our parks. That's exclusively accessible. Eventually maybe all parks 2110 can be exclusively accessible, but that's a pretty big price tag. I want to know what is our 2111 City doing to keep the research going. Of the elements that were put into that park, 2112 which are the most popular? Also throw in natural materials if you want, to fold in more 2113 than one feature. Are the ones that have some natural materials really popular within that 2114 park that can bring what you're calling nature play? I consider more natural materials in 2115 my own head, unless you're going to build a stream or something, but it won't have any 2116 fish in it probably. To me real nature has little critters in it, bugs and fish and that kind of 2117 stuff. I'd really like the accessible community to have an ongoing voice to let us know 2118 what works, what holds up. It seems like a lot of those things are very expensive. How 2119 is that going to be documented? Is this an appropriate question? 2120 2121 Mr. Jensen: As far as the Magical Bridge goes, it is. It's one of a kind that should be 2122 always looked at and improved hopefully in the future. We should learn from it. We can 2123 use some of those things that we review and understand over the next years. This process 2124 goes on to put into our Master Plan. They are two separate things. I don't know the 2125 process or how it's documented now or if we we're going to do that. The Friends are out 2126 there every day, and they make comments to me about what they think is working or 2127 Approved Minutes 51 APPROVED what's good or what needs work. We can start to document that somehow and add it to 2128 the Master Plan. 2129 2130 Commissioner Crommie: At the end of this, when we're getting to prioritization, 2131 accessibility I see as essential and it's one of the tenets, rightfully so. It can go in a lot of 2132 different directions. I want to make sure at the end of the day we're not lost in terms of 2133 where do you want to go with that. Do you feel like you're gathering enough information 2134 over time? I don't feel like I know enough right now. 2135 2136 Mr. Mottau: There's two pieces that I'll add to that. I don't think that we're going to, in 2137 this plan, be recommending at the level of what features are going to be in a playground. 2138 That will come in the subsequent process of designing that playground on that site. In 2139 terms of the guidance, we will be able to draw on some of the things that we've heard. 2140 Magical Bridge will be forefront knowledge, but we also have a group within our firm 2141 that does nothing but accessibility largely focused on parks and is in constant 2142 communication with the ability and disability community in California, specifically 2143 around what is working, what can be worked into existing sites. Those pieces of 2144 guidance are something we can bring to this plan. 2145 2146 Commissioner Crommie: To broaden that, to connect it to paths, I consider accessibility 2147 to also relate to elderly getting down a path. We have had comments in Byxbee Park on 2148 surfaces. Some surfaces are easier for elderly to walk on than other surfaces. I would 2149 like that dialog to happen with the proper people, so they can give that kind of feedback. 2150 2151 Commissioner Hetterly: This is a good start, and it's helpful to look at it this way with 2152 these principles and these kinds of questions. It would be helpful for me to have a few 2153 more examples of where this would lead you, so that we can contemplate. It may lead us 2154 one place; it may lead you another place. If they're far apart, we're going to want to come 2155 back together. Some more examples would be helpful to react to. If we could get them 2156 in advance of the meeting and not at the meeting. 2157 2158 Mr. Mottau: Now that we've had some general discussion about this, we can definitely 2159 do that. That was one of the things I wanted to end with. What would be most useful? It 2160 sounds like a few more examples, some tweaking of language based on the comments 2161 here. We can build from that. 2162 2163 Chair Reckdahl: The tricky part is when you have so many options or so many criteria. 2164 How do you weight them? If you give a group of people the rules and say here are the 2165 park decisions, even with the same criteria they'd make different decisions because they 2166 would weight them differently. It all comes down to the weighting. 2167 2168 Approved Minutes 52 APPROVED Vice Chair Markevitch: It also depends on the park and the neighborhood and who lives 2169 near there. That's what's important to them. 2170 2171 Mr. Mottau: There is a level of specificity that will be a trick. This kind of guidance can 2172 help keep it in a discussion that's going in a direction that is in line with the rest of the 2173 system. That's important. 2174 2175 Vice Chair Markevitch: Humans are like squirrels; they're unpredictable. If you have a 2176 park that is going up for renewal, this is a good guiding document but it might not always 2177 work. That needs to be acknowledged. 2178 2179 Mr. Mottau: Thank you all. I know that this is a lot of material to drop on you again. 2180 Like you said, we wanted to bring back some feedback and take a step forward. 2181 Hopefully you guys will get a chance to dig into both of those and let us know if there's 2182 any other thoughts. Please contact Peter about that specifically. 2183 2184 Mr. de Geus: Can we talk about next steps and the next few months and what we can 2185 expect? There's some new material that you were given last month. There's some new 2186 material again today. There are some big things there. Reviewing all of that and making 2187 sure that you're comfortable with it. Reviewing this new framework. We come back in 2188 June and look at this again? 2189 2190 Mr. Mottau: We're working with your staff on this. We will continue this conversation 2191 at your next meeting. What we're going to be building are the list of actions, whether 2192 they stay in the public (inaudible) and larger categories of actions, and then start refining 2193 down from there. Because of the summer break, we don't want to push too much 2194 community engagement into the holiday. We're going to build towards a check-in with 2195 the community about what seems most important to them probably first thing at the 2196 beginning of the school year. That's what we're aiming for right now. We're going to 2197 spend the summer building towards that with you all and with us and staff. At that point, 2198 we will have most of the content for the overall plan in place. It will be getting down to 2199 more review and getting into the specifics of timeline and how we will ultimately push 2200 things forward. We're figuring that the last public push would be at the end of the 2201 summer, possibly with some type of outreach effort to make sure that we get as much 2202 involvement as we can. We've been talking a little bit about possibly asking some 2203 questions in an online forum that leads up to a public meeting forum that tries to 2204 maximize what we can get out of that last push for what seems most important to them. 2205 Using that as another major input for you guys in thinking about what comes first and 2206 how to move that forward. That's the thrust right now. We'll be able to get you a little bit 2207 more detailed schedule based on some conversations we were having with staff today. 2208 Probably by your next meeting, it'll get more fleshed out on what that looks like. 2209 2210 Approved Minutes 53 APPROVED Mr. de Geus: We're trying to set a time for a Council study session. We've asked for 2211 that. It'll be right after the summer break, which will be good. We have the stakeholder 2212 meetings and community meetings and the plan for a draft plan to get ready. What was 2213 the timeline again? 2214 2215 Mr. Mottau: We're looking at the end of the year, depending on how it falls. Because of 2216 the holidays and everything else, it's going to be the end of the year, beginning of the year 2217 to get that draft out. Then things get a little bit more dependent on things like Council 2218 and Commission schedules, so the timeline becomes harder for us to dictate. We'll have 2219 to turn it over to the whims of the scheduling people. We'll try to push that through the 2220 process appropriately. 2221 2222 Female: I don't know exactly when I can ask. I'm just a citizen of Palo Alto. I'm 2223 interested in a couple of issues regarding parks. Is this the right time and place to ask it? 2224 2225 Vice Chair Markevitch: No, but you can leave your name and one of us will get back to 2226 you. 2227 2228 Commissioner Crommie: Does she want to speak to this agenda item? 2229 2230 Mr. de Geus: Is it related to the Parks Master Plan? 2231 2232 Female: It's about off-leash dog parks within the existing parks. I don't know if it could 2233 be part of the Master Plan. 2234 2235 Chair Reckdahl: We can't talk about that, because of the agenda. 2236 2237 Vice Chair Markevitch: It's not agendized. 2238 2239 Chair Reckdahl: You can come back next month. The fourth Tuesday of every month 2240 we have a meeting, and you can talk about anything you want right at the very beginning 2241 of the meeting, right at 7:00. 2242 2243 Female: I see. 2244 2245 Chair Reckdahl: You have three minutes to say whatever you want. 2246 2247 Mr. de Geus: We're almost finished. 2248 2249 Commissioner Crommie: You can also write us a letter by looking at our website. 2250 2251 Approved Minutes 54 APPROVED Commissioner Ashlund: We don't have a joint meeting tomorrow, right? You canceled 2252 that. 2253 2254 Mr. de Geus: Right. For me, the biggest part is this framework, just to really spend some 2255 time thinking about that. This is a filter that will be used as we do the public outreach 2256 and think about priorities. We can't do everything, so how do we start to prioritize 2257 recommendations? This is the filter for the first draft. 2258 2259 Commissioner Hetterly: Keith's point is a good one. It's easy to come up with priorities 2260 that represent all these issues. It's hard to prioritize among the items. 2261 2262 Mr. de Geus: Yeah. That was my reaction. 2263 2264 Commissioner Hetterly: This doesn't address how you're going to weight the various 2265 pieces. 2266 2267 Mr. de Geus: Think about that over this next month. This is going to be the main topic 2268 for next month, how to deal with that. 2269 2270 Chair Reckdahl: They're all admirable goals. It's like arguing against motherhood and 2271 apple pie. In practice we're going to have to weight some higher than others. We're not 2272 going to weight things equally. 2273 2274 Mr. de Geus: We're going to have two interests for the same park. How do we make a 2275 decision? 2276 2277 Chair Reckdahl: I have some comments on the matrix. Should I email that or do we talk 2278 about that now? 2279 2280 Mr. Jensen: It's up to you. 2281 2282 Chair Reckdahl: It's pretty quick. In the middle section, we're talking about recreation 2283 facilities. We need to determine whether we have enough capacity. On column F, that is 2284 in the middle section. When I looked at them, a lot of them come under Source 5. 2285 Source 5 is City programs. Knowing how many people sign up for tennis classes doesn't 2286 tell you how much tennis courts are being used. You really can't use the under-2287 subscription or over-subscription of tennis courts to justify the number of tennis courts. 2288 We see that up and down ... 2289 2290 Commissioner Crommie: Which column? 2291 2292 Approved Minutes 55 APPROVED Chair Reckdahl: That's Column F. It's not bad data. It does give you some insight. For 2293 something like tennis, people who have been playing tennis for 40 years are not taking 2294 tennis classes, but they're playing every Saturday morning. That by itself is not enough 2295 data to justify tennis courts. That was my comment. Are you done with everything else? 2296 2297 Mr. Jensen: Yep. Thank you. 2298 2299 5. Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates 2300 2301 Chair Reckdahl: Do we have any ad hocs? I contacted some people, and I don't think 2302 any of them had anything that they wanted to say about their ad hocs. We have stuff in 2303 the works, but nothing that needs sharing. 2304 2305 Commissioner Lauing: When are dogs going to come back? 2306 2307 Chair Reckdahl: Dog parks were penciled in for next month to have an update. Are you 2308 having a public meeting between then and now? 2309 2310 Commissioner Hetterly: I don't think so. We're waiting on Abbie for something, and I 2311 see she's not here tonight. I don't know what her status is on that. 2312 2313 Commissioner Reckdahl: If you have something in the next month, we'll talk about it. 2314 Otherwise, two months from now. No more ad hoc announcements. 2315 2316 V. COMMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 2317 2318 Chair Reckdahl: Rob, do you have anything? 2319 2320 Rob de Geus: I don't have anything. 2321 2322 VI. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR JUNE 23, 2015 MEETING 2323 2324 Rob de Geus: The Parks Master Plan will come back. That's the main topic. 2325 2326 Chair Reckdahl: I sent you an email, Rob, about cost of services. That was scheduled to 2327 go to City Council? 2328 2329 Mr. de Geus: Cost of services has gone to City Council. It was on consent and was 2330 approved. Within the staff report, it talks about Community Services and how we have a 2331 fee-based cost recovery policy. Once the larger Citywide policy was approved, then we 2332 would go back and review that policy specific to our department. 2333 2334 Approved Minutes 56 APPROVED Chair Reckdahl: Is that coming back to us then or is that going to staff? 2335 2336 Mr. de Geus: It goes to staff first, and then it'll go to the Commission. 2337 2338 Commissioner Crommie: Is it going to City Council before it comes to us? 2339 2340 Commissioner Hetterly: It's already gone. 2341 2342 Commissioner Crommie: It's already gone. 2343 2344 Mr. de Geus: The Citywide cost of services (crosstalk). 2345 2346 Commissioner Crommie: It was already presented at City Council. 2347 2348 Mr. de Geus: It was on consent. It went through the Finance Committee. It was 2349 approved there unanimously, and then it went to Council. 2350 2351 Commissioner Hetterly: I have a question for you, Rob, about that. How do you see the 2352 intersection between the cost of services study and the Master Plan in terms of the cost 2353 recovery for Community Services? The last time we talked about it here, the Community 2354 Services Department had a tiered approach for subsidizing various types of programming 2355 that's based on principles of what the City's goals ought to be in serving certain 2356 populations. Shouldn't that same framework somehow integrate with the Master Plan? 2357 2358 Mr. de Geus: I think it will. It'll intersect. There's a part of the Master Plan that'll talk 2359 about revenues and cost recovery. It's in the scope. That's one of the last elements of the 2360 plan. The Citywide cost recovery policy mirrors in a lot of ways the Community 2361 Services cost recovery policy, which is tiered. The more personal individual benefit, the 2362 higher expectation that you would pay to recover the cost of that compared to a more 2363 public benefit. 2364 2365 Commissioner Hetterly: I'm concerned that we don't want to end up with some internal 2366 inconsistencies between that major project and this major project. How do we check 2367 that? That's my question. 2368 2369 Mr. de Geus: We'll make sure that that happens. I can resend the policy to you all, so 2370 that you can take a look at it, make sure it makes sense to you and refreshes your 2371 memory. I'll also send out the policy that was approved probably seven or eight years 2372 ago related to just our department. You can take a look at that. I think we'll start in the 2373 fall with reviewing that policy, which will be right when the Master Plan is starting to 2374 come together. 2375 2376 Approved Minutes 57 APPROVED Commissioner Crommie: Is that the policy that Lam presented to us? 2377 2378 Mr. de Geus: That's right. 2379 2380 Commissioner Crommie: It'd be great if you'd resend that. 2381 2382 Chair Reckdahl: My major complaint with that cost of services was we are constraining 2383 ourselves artificially low on our costs, because we were not reflecting the fact that we're 2384 using City facilities. If we were a private company and we wanted to use City facilities, 2385 we'd have to pay rent. We were just looking at how much labor we have for our costs. 2386 We really should be looking at the cost of renting that parkland or renting that room. 2387 That would reflect a more accurate cost. That's doesn't necessarily mean we have to 2388 charge more, but we have the freedom by the law to charge more. 2389 2390 Commissioner Hetterly: There's an opportunity cost for using it ourselves instead of 2391 renting it out. 2392 2393 Chair Reckdahl: Exactly. We could be renting it out to someone else. 2394 2395 Mr. de Geus: Some of those costs are built in. There's an overhead factor built into the 2396 cost of services policy. 2397 2398 Chair Reckdahl: That was my general complaint. Because we're constrained, we can't 2399 make money off of it. I thought we were constraining our costs artificially low by not 2400 representing the City assets that we're using. 2401 2402 Vice Chair Markevitch: Is that something you want to bring back to discuss next month? 2403 To Policy and Services or ... 2404 2405 Chair Reckdahl: Let staff chew on it for a month. 2406 2407 Mr. de Geus: Let me send that to you all. If there's an interest, certainly. 2408 2409 Chair Reckdahl: I would like to see it in the next two or three months if possible. If we 2410 don't do anything but chew on it and maybe give staff some recommendations. 2411 2412 Commissioner Crommie: Have you thought about having John Aiken come back next 2413 month? 2414 2415 Chair Reckdahl: We penciled him in for next month. 2416 2417 Commissioner Lauing: For what? 2418 Approved Minutes 58 APPROVED 2419 Commissioner Crommie: The signage CIP. 2420 2421 Chair Reckdahl: For the Baylands. 2422 2423 Commissioner Lauing: Not the zoo? 2424 2425 Commissioner Crommie: No, nothing to do with the zoo. He's also in charge of open 2426 space at Baylands. He wears two hats. 2427 2428 Mr. de Geus: He's responsible for programming at the interpretive center in the 2429 Baylands. He's helping with the CIP for that center. 2430 2431 Commissioner Crommie: Do you want to have any staff? We're coming upon summer, 2432 and we could get a presentation on how summer camps are going. That kind of thing is 2433 always really nice to have around now. 2434 2435 Mr. de Geus: I'll see if someone can come in and present on that. 2436 2437 Commissioner Crommie: A report on how the new facility is. 2438 2439 Mr. de Geus: The new Mitchell Center? 2440 2441 Commissioner Crommie: Yeah. How we're integrating teens, something catchall that 2442 has to do with teens as well. It's always nice to hear about them. 2443 2444 Chair Reckdahl: I found our last meeting with the zoo to be unsatisfying. What's the 2445 path forward for that? 2446 2447 Mr. de Geus: This is the new Junior Museum and Zoo potential rebuild. We're working 2448 through a process with the Friends of the Junior Museum and Zoo on a potential 2449 construction agreement and governance agreement. We're meeting regularly, but we're 2450 not anywhere near an agreement yet on that. At the same time, there is an environmental 2451 assessment happening of the design of the building and Rinconada Park Master Plan 2452 generally. That's still several months away before being completed. 2453 2454 Chair Reckdahl: We had some comments. Could they use offsite storage to shrink the 2455 building? Could they have a basement to squeeze it into a smaller footprint? Are any of 2456 those being considered? 2457 2458 Mr. de Geus: We shared that information with the architect for the Friends Board and 2459 John. 2460 Approved Minutes 59 APPROVED 2461 Commissioner Crommie: Do you think we need an ad hoc committee on that, just to 2462 have representation from our Commission on some of those conversations? Maybe we 2463 could discuss it on our agenda, whether to put together an ad hoc. 2464 2465 Mr. de Geus: You could do that. I don't think the Commission was interested in meeting 2466 onsite at the Junior Museum and Zoo, so we could look at the facility, think about it, walk 2467 out to the park and look at the boundaries. If I recall, the Commission didn't think that 2468 was the best idea. Rather it wanted the team to come back with some more thinking. 2469 2470 Commissioner Lauing: We wanted to see some alternatives. (crosstalk) only one option. 2471 There's always more than one option for every project. 2472 2473 Commissioner Crommie: We asked for that in Byxbee, and we only got it through 2474 having an ad hoc committee. It's hard to get those things. It takes a more intimate 2475 meeting time. 2476 2477 Commissioner Lauing: They can't misread the comments that we gave. (crosstalk) past 2478 this Commission would be my conviction. 2479 2480 Mr. de Geus: Unless they can define it a little better. My assessment is that it's 2481 somewhat rightsizing the activity that happens there now. It's so busy there. There's so 2482 many people that use that site. It's not just Palo Alto residents; it's a regional draw of a 2483 program. It's jam packed. They certainly don't think this is the big option for them. This 2484 is rightsizing the program for (crosstalk). 2485 2486 Chair Reckdahl: If I take both of those comments that I said before about whether they 2487 have a basement to shrink the footprint or whether they have offsite storage so they can 2488 have 100 percent of the space utilized for programs, those would be things they could 2489 certainly consider. 2490 2491 Mr. de Geus: I'll bring it up to them again. They need to come back to the Commission, 2492 and they need to come back with some thinking around alternatives. The alternatives 2493 might be, "We could make it smaller, but it compromises what we're trying to do here in 2494 these ways, and that's why we don't want to do that." On the other hand, they could say, 2495 "We were able to tweak a little bit and not encroach onto the parkland as much." 2496 2497 Chair Reckdahl: I'm worried that if we don't get ourselves involved, they will go down 2498 the path and say, "Sorry, Park Commission. It's too late. We've done all this work on the 2499 new design, and we can't go back and revisit anything." 2500 2501 Approved Minutes 60 APPROVED Mr. de Geus: It requires a Park Improvement Ordinance to get this passed. The 2502 Commission will have a say at some point. Preferably we want to bring something to the 2503 Council ... 2504 2505 Commissioner Crommie: It's better early than late. 2506 2507 Mr. de Geus: ... that the Commission feels good about. It's better to have a process like 2508 this, where it comes back a few more times. It does get changed a little bit, tweaked so 2509 we get a better product. Usually we get a better product at the end. That's why you go 2510 through this. I'll talk to them again, and see what makes sense in terms of the timing for 2511 them to come back. 2512 2513 Commissioner Hetterly: Another possible agenda item is the Field Use Policy. It's been 2514 two years now since we did that. We have this great matrix in here, but it doesn't 2515 represent all of the sports field users. It represents the City programs for the most part. It 2516 would be helpful to have Adam come and give his sense of how the brokering is going, 2517 how much clamoring is there for more or different, what's working, what's not working. 2518 That would be helpful in building into the prioritization process that we're getting started 2519 on here. 2520 2521 Mr. de Geus: He just finished last week fall brokering with all of the users. You know 2522 how those meetings are. It would be good timing. 2523 2524 VII. ADJOURNMENT 2525 2526 Meeting adjourned in honor of Ray Bacchetti on motion by Vice Chair Markevitch and 2527 second by Chair Reckdahl at 10:00 p.m. Passed 6-0 2528 Approved Minutes 61