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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2015-06-23 Parks & Recreation Summary MinutesAPPROVED 1 2 3 4 MINUTES 5 PARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION 6 SPECIAL MEETING 7 June 23, 2015 8 CITY HALL 9 250 Hamilton Avenue 10 Palo Alto, California 11 12 Commissioners Present: Stacey Ashlund, Deirdre Crommie, Jennifer Hetterly, Abbie 13 Knopper, Ed Lauing, Pat Markevitch, Keith Reckdahl 14 Commissioners Absent: 15 Others Present: Council Liaison Eric Filseth 16 Staff Present: Daren Anderson, Rob de Geus, Ashley Ford, Adam Howard, Peter Jensen 17 I. ROLL CALL CONDUCTED BY: Ashley Ford 18 19 Rob de Geus: This is Ashley Ford. I'm not sure everybody's met Ashley. She's a new 20 employee with the Community Services Department. She took the position that Sally 21 Camozzi had. Some of you know Sally; she retired. 22 23 II. AGENDA CHANGES, REQUESTS, and DELETIONS: 24 25 None. 26 27 III. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS: 28 29 None. 30 31 IV. BUSINESS: 32 33 1. Approval of Draft Minutes from the Special Meeting of May 26, 2015. 34 35 Approval of the draft May 26, 2015 Minutes was moved by Vice Chair Markevitch and 36 seconded by Commissioner Lauing. Passed 6-0 37 38 Approved Minutes 1 APPROVED 2. Update on Park Improvement Projects. 39 40 Daren Anderson: Good evening. Daren Anderson, Open Space, Parks and Golf. I'm just 41 going to take a few minutes to give you a briefing on some of our park renovations and 42 capital improvement projects. I'll start with King Plaza. This is a project Landscape 43 Architect Peter Jensen is leading. This week the maintenance work began on King Plaza, 44 and it's going to continue through the end of July. The project will have a little bit of 45 impact on the circulation of the plaza; you may encounter small areas cordoned off for 46 your safety. The work on the plaza is going to include refreshing the decomposed granite 47 walkways under the magnolia trees; removing turf and shrub plantings along Hamilton 48 Ave.; removing ivy in the driveway entrances; replacing irrigation valves around the 49 entire building; replacing benches; and replanting with drought-tolerant plants. El 50 Camino Park is on schedule. 51 52 Chair Reckdahl: King Plaza, what's the schedule for that? 53 54 Mr. Anderson: It's ongoing. It'll be completed July, the end of July. It's already 55 underway. 56 57 Chair Reckdahl: We are underway. 58 59 Mr. Anderson: El Camino Park is on schedule, slated for completion November 2015. 60 We've got a few photos to show you that I took this morning. This is the north field, the 61 softball field. This is the pathway that heads towards the Utilities pump station. This 62 will be a pathway, and there's lighting and other posts for fences. This is the parking lot 63 closest to the synthetic turf field, which will be over here. Just starting to take shape. 64 This is the scorekeeper's booth. This is the edge of the north synthetic turf field. On 65 target which is great, so we're looking good. Stanford-Palo Alto Playing Fields are up for 66 synthetic turf replacement. That's going to happen December, looking like December 1st 67 through February 15th. Both fields will be replaced. Right now the game plan is to 68 stagger them, so we'll leave one open as we do the other and then flip flop. We'll have El 69 Camino Park synthetic turf field up by that time, so we're hoping the impact will be 70 reduced on our field users. Scott Park is slated to be completed mid-July. The Baylands 71 projects, we've got a couple. We've got the Interpretive Center and the Boardwalk. The 72 consultants for both those projects are onboard and have begun work. Contractor FOG 73 will be working on the—this is the inside of the Baylands Nature Center. They've 74 already begun work on the structural evaluation of the facility. The contractor working 75 on the Boardwalk independently but still in communication is Biggs and Cardosa. 76 They're up and working on it. The next step on that process will be a community meeting 77 late summer/early fall to look at both projects together. 78 79 Approved Minutes 2 APPROVED Chair Reckdahl: What's the scope of those projects? Are those investigations of what 80 we're going to do or is it actually work? 81 82 Mr. Anderson: One of them, the Boardwalk, is the investigation one. It's an analysis and 83 feasibility study on how we can repair it, looking at short-term, medium-term, long-term 84 fixes. The other is a project to replace more infrastructure inside the building and some 85 ADA improvements as well. Monroe Park is going to Council for approval of the Park 86 Improvement Ordinance. It should be going in August. We're working on bids with 87 purchasing right now. Buckeye Creek hydro study. As you know, the capital budget got 88 approved, so we're working right now on writing the scope of that to get ready and 89 hopefully get going as soon as possible. We're just getting started. Bowden Park is just 90 about ready to go out to bid. That concludes my updates on the park projects. 91 92 Commissioner Lauing: What about the bocce ball court park? 93 94 Mr. Anderson: That's at Scott Park, and that one is again slated for mid-July. 95 96 Vice Chair Markevitch: Daren, also Scott Park, there was that little piece of asphalt 97 between the rehabilitation center and the park. Is that going to get replaced? 98 99 Mr. Anderson: Again, that one's not on park property, so we weren't able to incorporate 100 it in ours. I'll have to double check this with one of my staff, but they worked out an 101 arrangement. I believe it's going to be done. This is a small connecting piece of asphalt 102 about 5 feet wide by 4 feet wide. It's very small, but it wasn't on park land, which was 103 the challenge. It needs to be replaced. I'll have to double check, but I believe it's going 104 to be replaced. 105 106 Chair Reckdahl: We talked, was it last month or the month before, about El Camino Park 107 and the fact that now if we put outfield grass in the softball field, that may take a lot of 108 water. We were hesitant to put new grass in when we're trying to cut down on water. 109 What's the status of that? 110 111 Mr. Anderson: That's a great question. Do you mind if I answer or do you have a ... 112 113 Rob de Geus: No, go ahead. 114 115 Mr. Anderson: You might recall that the plans had the south field grass and then a 116 passive grass area north of the synthetic turf field. The passive grass area, contingent and 117 consistent with our evaluation on what we're cutting for the drought, that passive 118 aesthetic turf is going to be let go. We won't be installing that. We're still working out 119 what will take its place. We were planning on putting trees in that area, in and around it 120 anyway, so we're going to feel our way through on that one. I don't have an exact answer 121 Approved Minutes 3 APPROVED of what will replace it, but it won't be turf. The south field, which will be athletic fields, 122 will be turf. We're going to put it in; we're going to sod it. 123 124 Chair Reckdahl: It will be natural turf? 125 126 Mr. Anderson: Yeah, it will be. If you look at the historic water use of that site, it'll be 127 50 percent less than it was historically. It's still exceeding our expectation of 34 percent 128 for most of our parks. It's an example of where we're exceeding it, because we're putting 129 this great investment into a synthetic turf field. 130 131 Chair Reckdahl: When you said that the park water use is going to be 50 percent, that's 132 because the soccer field now is synthetic? 133 134 Mr. Anderson: That's correct. 135 136 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Crommie. 137 138 Commissioner Crommie: What park did you mention right after Bowden Park? Did you 139 say something about Buckeye? 140 141 Mr. Anderson: I just mentioned the Buckeye Creek hydrology study. We hope to get 142 going soon. Since the budget got approved, that project can now happen. I was just 143 mentioning that we're going to be kicking it off sometime soon. 144 145 Commissioner Crommie: That's great. It's in process. 146 147 Mr. Anderson: Just starting, yeah. The money's not available yet, but we're going to start 148 working on the scope, finding the available contractors. I've already got a partial list. 149 We really want to ramp up and get that going. 150 151 Commissioner Crommie: That would be for a hydrology study? 152 153 Mr. Anderson: That's correct. 154 155 Mr. de Geus: I'll just add since you talked about the drought, there's an informational 156 report that is in the packet for the Council on the 29th. You'll find that interesting. It's 157 from Public Works. It talks about City facilities generally, but it also talks about parks to 158 some degree. I have to give Daren here some major kudos, because there's high 159 expectations of water savings from our park system. As you can imagine, it's one of the 160 City's highest uses of water. We have a lot of parks, and we have a lot of athletic fields 161 and a lot of use of those fields. Daren and his staff went park by park and looked at how 162 we might reduce water, but save trees and save athletic turf so that play can continue. It 163 Approved Minutes 4 APPROVED was an enormous amount of work, working closely with our Utilities Department that 164 oversees the drought plan. I'd encourage you to take a look at that informational report. I 165 can send you the link. That's a commitment. 166 167 Commissioner Hetterly: I have a quick follow-up question on that. Are we also trying to 168 reduce our recycled water use? I've noticed Greer Park has gone very brown in the last 169 couple of weeks. That is our primary recycled water park. 170 171 Mr. Anderson: Yeah, excellent question. Greer Park was due to a pump failure. We are 172 not reducing our recycled water use. In fact, we're trying to ramp that up and drop the 173 potable. 174 175 Chair Reckdahl: We also talked about the pipeline that carries the recycled water, and 176 eventually it'll be extended. Where does it go right now? 177 178 Mr. Anderson: That might be a great exhibit I could bring the next time I come to talk 179 about drought. I could bring maps for you and show you where it is now and where we're 180 planning to have it go. 181 182 Chair Reckdahl: For example, Bowden Park is not going to get recycled water. 183 184 Mr. Anderson: No. 185 186 Chair Reckdahl: Isn't the pipeline pretty close to Page Mill? 187 188 Mr. Anderson: I'd have to bring you a map; I'm not prepared tonight. 189 190 Chair Reckdahl: We can put that off. Thank you. Any other questions? Commissioner 191 Crommie. 192 193 Commissioner Crommie: As far as Monroe Park goes, it seems like it's been really slow. 194 Is there any glitch that's going on right now? Have some of those problems been solved 195 as far as planning? You said there were some unexpected things that you encountered. 196 197 Mr. Anderson: We did. Frankly, I just have to take the blame on this one. My schedule 198 became overbooked with so many projects. It slipped behind some other high priority 199 ones. It's my own fault. The delays are my own. I'm going to try to get it done as soon 200 as I can. 201 202 Commissioner Crommie: It's back in the queue? 203 204 Mr. Anderson: Yeah. 205 Approved Minutes 5 APPROVED 206 Commissioner Crommie: One of the trees died. We had all these big, mature trees die, 207 and then some of them got replanted. One of those died and got cut out again. I'd like to 208 hear about what happened with that. 209 210 Mr. Anderson: I'd be glad to check in with our trees department and find out. 211 212 Commissioner Crommie: I think it was one of the more unusual ones that had gotten 213 planted. One of the bigger ones. 214 215 Mr. Anderson: A new unusual tree? 216 217 Commissioner Crommie: Yeah. 218 219 Mr. Anderson: It was a disease that had affected a number of those. I'm curious to know 220 if that passed over somehow to the new one. I'll try to find out and let you know. 221 222 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you, Daren. 223 224 3. Review of the Parks, Trails, Open Space and Recreation Facilities Master 225 Plan. 226 227 Rob de Geus: We'll have Peter Jensen come join us and Ellie Fiore from MIG. We have 228 a presentation here that we'll have to load up. 229 230 Peter Jensen: Commissioners, good evening. Peter Jensen, Landscape Architect for the 231 City of Palo Alto, here in our monthly meeting to discuss the Parks Master Plan. Tonight 232 we want to focus on three areas. Firstly, we're going to look at the principles that we 233 discussed last time. We'll discuss how those were revised from your comments before. 234 We're looking to try to finalize those so we can move to the next process. If there are 235 extensive comments on those, we will be probably bringing back those at the next 236 meeting, but would like to focus on getting those solidified. The next step that we're 237 looking at tonight is areas of focus. That's something new that we're talking about. It 238 focuses on the community outreach aspect and what we're going to be asking the 239 community to do in our prioritization phase as far as ranking these areas to establish a 240 point that we can use for the criteria in ranking prioritizations when we come to that 241 point. We're also going to review briefly criteria that will work with the 242 recommendations and how we'll eventually end up ranking the recommendations. Those 243 are the three areas we're focusing on tonight. In general just to give you an overview of 244 our timeline, what we'd like to do is again solidify the principles tonight, talk about the 245 areas of focus this evening, and then bring them back next month in July, because they 246 dictate how the community meetings will be set up. I think we're in discussion on if 247 Approved Minutes 6 APPROVED you're going to take a break. If you are going to take a break, August is the time to do it 248 so we can have our community meeting at that point, and then come back to you in 249 September to talk about what we've heard from the community as far as the prioritization 250 and the areas of focus. Then move forward and talk more in-depth about the criteria at 251 that time. That's our next few months of how we're going to be moving through this 252 process. Ellie's going to take us through her presentation tonight, talking about those 253 three phases. Of course, we'll be taking feedback from you on the things that we're 254 talking about tonight, and we'll be bringing those comments and how we address them at 255 the next meeting. Without further ado, I'll let Ellie take over and give the presentation. 256 257 Ellie Fiore: Great, thank you. Good evening, Commissioners. Following up on Peter's 258 introduction, I want to reorient us to where we left off, which is in the transition between 259 the data and needs summary which culminated in our matrix that we've been spending a 260 lot of time on the last couple of months. Now, pivoting towards what do we do with that 261 information and how do we move forward. We're moving into the actions, criteria and 262 prioritizing phase of work. We also created this additional graphic that helps show how 263 we filter the ideas that we've heard from the community, the ideas that we get from the 264 PRC and from staff and how that becomes a Plan at the end of the day. It's a bit of a 265 funneling, filtering process, a winnowing down of ideas. What we want to do tonight is 266 focus on the framework and actions, and then give you a little preview on the criteria and 267 prioritization phases. This is our path forward; the key elements of that process. The 268 matrix we're all very familiar with now. The framework which we introduced last time 269 and will revisit here shortly shapes how the recommendations are tied to the 270 improvements. The recommendations or actions are the actual system enhancements 271 that'll be part of the Plan. The criteria are what we'll use to sort those recommendations 272 into an action plan. Going back to the framework. We spent some time wordsmithing 273 and reviewing these concepts last time, and then we did so with staff as well. We ended 274 up with the same list of seven, though we've revised the content of each. I want to 275 quickly go through those for your review and hopefully approval. Based on some of your 276 input, we put playful first, because we decided that's the intent of the parks and recreation 277 system. Healthy, physically and mentally, and community health were all highlighted in 278 this definition. That's a primary focus as well. Sustainable. We had a lot of conversation 279 on this, and folks feel like it's an overused word. We went back and forth, but we ended 280 up keeping it because we felt like it's the only term we could come up with that 281 encompasses these three elements; the natural environment, economic stability of the 282 system, and the social and community elements of what a parks and recreation system 283 does in Palo Alto. We also incorporated the words natural and stewardship, because 284 those are important. We also kept inclusive and accessible, but fine tuned the language to 285 better explain the difference between those two; ages, abilities, language, income. 286 Accessibility. People's ability to travel to and take advantage of the resources in the City. 287 Flexible. Again this is pretty important, because you have a constrained system. We're 288 not going to be expanding and building lots of new stuff or finding new land, so we need 289 Approved Minutes 7 APPROVED to find ways to have multiple uses in the same space in a way that's balanced, so it's not 290 overwhelmed by any given use or any given style of development. Any final thoughts or 291 reactions to those as they've been presented tonight? 292 293 Chair Reckdahl: Apparently not. 294 295 Ms. Fiore: No. 296 297 Commissioner Crommie: I've beaten this to death, but I always like to see the word 298 nature in here. That to me implies ecosystem, not just a natural space that doesn't include 299 any animals, insects or some kind of ecosystem that's living, something living other than 300 trees or animals. I just don't see it in here. 301 302 Ms. Fiore: We did build it into the definition of sustainable, but I hear what you're 303 saying. 304 305 Commissioner Crommie: I'd like to see the word nature. 306 307 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Lauing. 308 309 Commissioner Lauing: Did you want any comments at this point on the next part, 310 applying the principles? 311 312 Ms. Fiore: Not yet. 313 314 Chair Reckdahl: Go ahead. 315 316 Ms. Fiore: Moving forward. Where we're going with all of this is we're going to be 317 moving into our next phase of community outreach. The first phase that we started last 318 summer was asking people what are the community needs, what are the opportunities for 319 improvement throughout the system. Now, we want to go back and start talking about 320 prioritization. How do we address those issues, opportunities and community needs that 321 we spent this time defining? We're looking at a late summer/fall two-pronged process. 322 We want to do an online survey, because we had a ton of success. We got almost 1,200 323 responses to our last one. As well as an in-person workshop, one or two, still to be 324 decided, probably in August or September when school is back in session. The online 325 survey would ideally launch in July and then be ending following that workshop. We'd 326 be pushing the survey, pushing the workshop, allowing people to do either or both, and 327 then wrapping in September to do the data analysis on that. We'll also be reconvening 328 our stakeholder advisory group that met once last year. We did individual meetings with 329 several of those members over the last six months or so as well. We'll do a similar 330 prioritization exercise with them. 331 Approved Minutes 8 APPROVED 332 Chair Reckdahl: This will be the same stakeholders as last time? 333 334 Ms. Fiore: Correct,. What we want to talk about tonight is how we structure that 335 prioritization exercise. As we all know from looking at that matrix for a couple of 336 months, that's not the level of detail that we can put in front of the public and expect them 337 to be able to digest and react meaningfully to it. We want to make sure we're striking the 338 right level of detail here and also not overwhelming them. Not presenting so little detail 339 that it's not very meaningful; not presenting so much detail that it's impossible to digest or 340 prioritize or that allows people to promote their narrow interests. If we put neighborhood 341 park suggestions up there, people tend to vote for whichever neighborhood park is closest 342 to them rather than supporting system-wide neighborhood park improvements. If that 343 makes sense. Our proposed structure, this is what we'd like to focus on tonight, is what 344 we're calling the areas of focus. It's an awkward name; we're open to other suggestions. 345 These are essentially categories or groupings of recommendations. There's 18 of these, 346 and they're on page 3 of the memo that was in your packet. They're presented here about 347 four or five at a time, just so they're readable. The idea is that this is the level of detail 348 that we'd be presenting to the community and asking them to help us prioritize and rank 349 these. The conversation we want to have with you tonight is do these sound right, is 350 there anything missing. Projects, improvements, things that you were hoping would be 351 part of this Parks Plan, would they fall into one of these categories? 352 353 Rob de Geus: I would add to that that it intends to reflect the matrix and that needs 354 column. To Ellie's point, the matrix was a lot of good work, and this is a lot of good data 355 that we're pretty comfortable with now. Having the workshop for two hours with people 356 that may be new or have been involved only to a certain extent, we need to provide an 357 environment where it can be meaningful and productive to them. 358 359 Chair Reckdahl: It's not a weekend retreat. 360 361 Mr. de Geus: No, it's not. That's why these are the first parts, areas of focus is what 362 we're calling them right now, that would help us develop the workshop. 363 364 Mr. Jensen: Our general idea is that we present these to the community and then allow 365 the community in some form to rank them what they are. That's either done through how 366 the first community meetings were done with the clicking devices and getting a live count 367 of what's happening right there. Rob has suggested a good tactic as well of giving people 368 pennies and then they could put as many pennies as they want next to it. How they added 369 up would help to rank those things. 370 371 Mr. de Geus: I'm going to have to explain that, because you didn't do that very well. 372 There was an award given, I think it was to Newark or an East Bay city, by the California 373 Approved Minutes 9 APPROVED Parks and Recreation Society. It was during some budget cuts in 2008-2009, I think. 374 They called it A Penny for Your Thoughts. They did a big community workshop where 375 everyone got a certain amount of pennies. You could use them up in the way that was 376 most important to you. It was very effective, the way they wrote it up. Obviously you 377 can't afford everything. When you have something to work with, you've got to make 378 some decisions. You can put it all under state parks, if that's your interest, or you can 379 divide it up. It's an approach we might consider. 380 381 Chair Reckdahl: That might get some interesting results. 382 383 Ms. Fiore: We're in the process of developing what that exercise looks like, both in the 384 community workshop and online. What we want to spend the bulk of time on tonight is 385 getting your reaction to this list. 386 387 Commissioner Crommie: I'm a little confused why that list is so much shorter than the 388 one in our packet. 389 390 Ms. Fiore: There's four more, three more. We just wanted to make sure they were 391 legible for you on the slide, so we grouped them together. 392 393 Commissioner Hetterly: Can I just ask a clarifying question? 394 395 Ms. Fiore: Mm-hmm. 396 397 Commissioner Hetterly: At your community outreach, you're planning to only discuss 398 these areas of focus and ask the public to rank the areas of focus in a vacuum from 399 everything else that's going on? 400 401 Ms. Fiore: I wouldn't say in a vacuum. We'll provide the context of what we've done so 402 far, present some themes that we heard from the community input from 2014 and to date 403 and let them know where this fits in, that process, path forward. Again, we're trying to 404 zero in on what the right level of detail is to discuss with the public. We feel like this is a 405 manageable level. 406 407 Mr. de Geus: I would add to that it definitely shouldn't be in a vacuum. Again, this is a 408 first pass. The areas of focus should be reflective of the data that we've been gathering. 409 If there's a piece missing, then we should add it. There's also going to be an opportunity 410 for the other category. There's going to be folks that show up that just have new 411 information that we need to hear about and know about. That'll be an opportunity, both 412 the stakeholder meetings and the workshops. 413 414 Approved Minutes 10 APPROVED Commissioner Hetterly: Can you also explain what is the interrelationship between the 415 areas of focus and the principles? 416 417 Ms. Fiore: Just to add onto what Rob said quickly, we're moving people into that 418 tradeoff discussion. What we've heard is that there is need and desire for all of these 419 things, but we're operating within constrained resources, both financially and space. 420 That's where we start getting into the budgeting, prioritizing, ranking exercise, is the 421 intent here. I'm sorry, can you repeat your first question? Second question. 422 423 Commissioner Hetterly: My second question was what's the interrelationship between 424 the areas of focus and the principles. 425 426 Ms. Fiore: They don't necessarily talk to one another. The principles are used to 427 generate and to review the actions, the recommendations, all of which will fall into one of 428 these areas. This is an organizing structure for the recommendations as well as a tool for 429 presenting it to the public. The principles do two things. They set the vision for the 430 system as a whole, what the Plan will achieve, and then they help us review the 431 recommendations themselves. 432 433 Commissioner Hetterly: We expect the principles to all apply to the whole Plan. The 434 areas of focus, we want the public to help us prioritize among those. 435 436 Ms. Fiore: Within them, yes. As a whole, all of the recommendations will bring those 437 principles to life. It's three tiers, if you will. The principles of what we're trying to 438 achieve and what that vision is. The areas of focus are the different types of 439 recommendations and actions. Then the recommendations and actions themselves. 440 441 Commissioner Ashlund: I do have some questions and comments about this list. You 442 mentioned the clickers which we had used at the previous community meeting. Where it 443 says the Penny for Your Thoughts, I have a strong preference for the Penny for Your 444 Thoughts method, because it's much more interactive. I know from talking to people at 445 the previous community meetings, with the clickers they felt very disconnected. They 446 just clicked their button and they didn't feel heard. This sounds much more 447 approachable, that people are in conversation with each other and their actions are 448 showing. You can see how other people are casting their votes as opposed to it being 449 removed from that. That sounds like a great approach to try. Can I just go through the 450 list on these? 451 452 Ms. Fiore: Absolutely. 453 454 Approved Minutes 11 APPROVED Commissioner Ashlund: Number one, expanding existing parks. Can you please explain 455 what that means? We can't expand our parks, so do you mean adding parks or 456 expanding? 457 458 Ms. Fiore: Adding land if possible, through any possible acquisitions. 459 460 Commissioner Ashlund: Then maybe we could say "if possible" or "where possible." 461 462 Ms. Fiore: Where possible, yeah. 463 464 Commissioner Ashlund: Then it would be more clear. On the second one, enhancing 465 capacity of sports fields. The other thing I heard at the community meetings was quality 466 of the sports fields as well. The third one, indoor spaces sounds like staff speak more 467 than the public speak. We refer to it as community buildings or facilities. 468 469 Ms. Fiore: The language itself? 470 471 Commissioner Ashlund: The language feels a little awkward. I would assume it includes 472 gyms, yeah. Indoor spaces sounds not so clear to the layperson. Jumping down to 473 number seven on diversifying play experiences for all ages and abilities. You mentioned 474 the terms of inclusive and accessible. That would be nice to add here, because it does 475 help explain what you're talking about. It's not just a diversification effort, but it is for 476 inclusion and accessibility. Stop me if I'm going too fast. Number ten, it's not creating a 477 system of community gardens; that should be expanding. The following one, I was not 478 clear; integrating nature into all Palo Alto parks. In general we think of parks already as 479 a place where by definition nature is. I wondered if that meant something about 480 providing opportunities to interact or protect or learn with nature. I'm just throwing those 481 out. 482 483 Ms. Fiore: I think all of the above. It could be clearer. 484 485 Commissioner Ashlund: Protecting nature on large scale preserves, creeks and 486 waterways. Don't we also want to protect nature on the smaller scale as well? I wasn't 487 sure why that was just large. Number 14, it says encourage active transportation to and 488 from. We might add active and/or public transportation as opportunities to provide. The 489 only one that I didn't see here that I thought we might consider adding was something 490 about opportunities for community building and for social interaction in our community. 491 492 Ms. Fiore: Thank you. 493 494 Vice Chair Markevitch: The one that I was going to mention and you did was the 495 community gardens. I'm actually getting push back from neighbors at the Johnson Park 496 Approved Minutes 12 APPROVED area, because they are now saying they want more play space for kids and can we take it 497 away from community gardens. It's a two-way street on that one. We'll make sure they 498 come to the community meetings, so they can use their pennies. 499 500 Commissioner Crommie: Can I ask a question about that? Our existing community 501 gardens are in really big parks. Commissioner Markevitch, were they referring to any 502 particular park? 503 504 Vice Chair Markevitch: Johnson. 505 506 Commissioner Crommie: They're feeling squished in Johnson? 507 508 Vice Chair Markevitch: They're feeling the community garden is taking up space that 509 could be used—they need a bigger place because there's more kids in the neighborhood. 510 511 Commissioner Lauing: I agreed with every item that Commissioner Ashlund commented 512 on. The point is we just need to be clear when we go to the community about what 513 they're "voting on." Two other things, a little bit bigger picture. As I look at these things, 514 the weight or impact of each of these things is either very obvious or very confusing. 515 What I mean by that is obviously if we're going to expand existing parks or get more 516 parkland, that's a pretty big deal. Whereas, the second to last one, the last one is using 517 program signage and art to increase awareness. That's very helpful, but it's a completely 518 different order of magnitude. To have all these on the same list and have the folks 519 ranking that, I don't know how they're going to do that. I don't know how you give 520 guidance on that. Just the natural impact of those is quite different. 521 522 Ms. Fiore: The question we'll ask at the community workshops and in the online survey 523 is what's most important to you. If you could only choose five, which would they be? 524 People will be able to express their preferences that way. When we get to prioritizing 525 that whole bigger list, there's another set of criteria, which we'll introduce in a minute, 526 that starts to get at that and cost and impact. 527 528 Commissioner Lauing: In your prior experience, if they ranked this last one of signage as 529 one of the top five instead of more park space, that'd be pretty revealing. Has that 530 happened? I don't want to call it trivial, because it's not. It's just lower impact. 531 532 Ms. Fiore: It's low-hanging fruit. You're right. Expanding parks, my gut tells me that it 533 would be more popular; however, something like using more signage and increasing 534 interpretation is pretty easy to implement, so it may get moved forward in the process 535 because of staff recommendations or other considerations. 536 537 Approved Minutes 13 APPROVED Commissioner Lauing: Also, is this the time to talk about applying the principles? I 538 don't want to move out of order here. 539 540 Ms. Fiore: Let's hold that again. 541 542 Commissioner Lauing: You just answered Commissioner Hetterly's question in a way 543 about applying the principles that I want to come back to. 544 545 Chair Reckdahl: I want to echo what Ed was saying about the clarity. Some of these are 546 very vague. Are they intentionally vague? Were you trying to be nebulous? For 547 example enhancing capacity of sports fields, sometimes people say, "I don't want more 548 sports fields built. If you want to work on it and remodel it and make it more effective, 549 we can have quicker turnaround." They may be for one and against the other. Making it 550 nebulous makes them wonder what are they voting for. 551 552 Ms. Fiore: That's very helpful. 553 554 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Crommie. 555 556 Commissioner Crommie: This whole idea of expanding parks by acquiring adjacent 557 land, why is it specified as adjacent? What if we need a park in a new location where 558 there isn't one? How about something simple like adding more parks? They wouldn't 559 normally be adjacent, right? 560 561 Ms. Fiore: That's usually the first thing we look at, if there's available adjacent land that 562 could be acquired. 563 564 Commissioner Crommie: On the Mapita, that pointed out some gaps where we don't 565 have enough parks. That's exactly opposite of saying make something bigger. The 566 whole point was that we found some gaps in the City. I feel like this bullet point doesn't 567 accommodate that reality. 568 569 Ms. Fiore: That's a good point. Thank you. 570 571 Chair Reckdahl: I don't want to reject "adjacent," because there are some small parks 572 where adjacent land would make it much more useable. We'd want to look at both. 573 574 Commissioner Crommie: I live near one of the smallest parks in Palo Alto. I don't know 575 of adjacent land. Maybe there's some there, but it's a residential neighborhood. Maybe 576 there's something I don't know about. 577 578 Approved Minutes 14 APPROVED Chair Reckdahl: Mountain View bought those two houses and tore them down for that 579 new park over on ... 580 581 Commissioner Crommie: Not to take away from that concept, but I don't want to limit it 582 to that concept. 583 584 Chair Reckdahl: I would concur. Commissioner Hetterly. 585 586 Commissioner Hetterly: I found the generality a little unsettling as well. It seems to me 587 that you have three different types of areas of focus. You have the mom and apple pie, 588 everybody's going to want these things. You have 11 of those. Then you have four that 589 are a little more specific, like adding variety of things to do and diversifying play 590 experiences, increasing exercise and fitness. Those would lead the discussion towards 591 more specifics. Then finally you have the three that are particularized interests, like 592 sports fields, dog parks and community gardens, which are totally different from "yeah, 593 we want to have more and better parks." I wonder if it wouldn't be useful to separate out 594 the different kinds of categories and allow people to weigh in on the types as opposed to 595 having to choose, "I care a lot about dog parks and I want them, but in the big, grand 596 scheme of things I would much rather have more parks. I would give up my dog parks in 597 order to have more parks, because maybe later I can get more dog parks." You make 598 false choices ... 599 600 Ms. Fiore: Right. They're not all comparable. 601 602 Commissioner Hetterly: ... when they're presented altogether as the same thing. As for 603 the diversifying play experiences for all ages and abilities, I'm reluctant to change that to 604 be more inclusive and accessible. I read that to mean diversifying play experiences for 605 everybody, coming up with more variety of play experiences, not necessarily just around 606 inclusion and accessibility. To capture both of those ideas would be helpful. Integrating 607 nature into all Palo Alto parks. You have to be clearer about that. As you know, we've 608 had a lot of confusion just on this panel about what exactly that means. Are we talking 609 about natural materials? Are we talking about opening up creeks? (crosstalk) specifics 610 about that. 611 612 Commissioner Crommie: I read it to be like butterfly habitat. That's how I interpreted it. 613 614 Commissioner Hetterly: I absolutely agree that community gathering interaction is 615 something that should be added to the list. Sorry I'm jumping all over the list here. 616 Enhancing capacity for sports fields, I'd say sports facilities. We got a lot of input about 617 aquatic facilities as well as fields as well as gyms. I think that should be broader. Finally 618 encouraging active transportation to and from parks. I like the idea of addressing public 619 transportation, but I wonder why we would address the transportation at all. Maybe we 620 Approved Minutes 15 APPROVED just say "encouraging and facilitating safe access to and from parks and recreation 621 activities." Just as a general comment, if I were on the stakeholder group and this was 622 presented as a prioritization meeting after having had a year's work on a Master Plan, I 623 would wonder where's the meat. What do you really want from me? This is all 624 generalities. We already told you all this stuff. 625 626 Ms. Fiore: Are you speaking specifically for the stakeholder advisory group or the 627 community workshop or both? 628 629 Commissioner Hetterly: Both, but more for the stakeholder group, because they've been 630 following the process. They do have a lot more information than your general member of 631 the public who's just checking in for the first time. 632 633 Chair Reckdahl: Rob, do you have a comment? 634 635 Mr. de Geus: The thing I was going to say is that was really good feedback. The 636 workshop is not just a voting exercise. What MIG needs to do is take this and try to 637 create and develop a two- or three-hour dialog with the community with this as topics 638 that will be discussed. It's not just going to be a voting of this list of 17 things, but 639 breaking it up in a sensible way and having some conversation around these. Ultimately, 640 there may be some voting. It's not just going to be a straight voting on each of these. 641 642 Commissioner Hetterly: It's important to give some context. Maybe you don't go 643 through the matrix, but you give them a summary of what kinds of information is 644 presented there and what kinds of tradeoffs. A lot of us heard after the visual preference 645 survey that that did not feel like a meaty enough use of people's time. 646 647 Chair Reckdahl: One more comment that I have about the clarity. Indoor spaces, that's 648 really vague. It could be a gym. It could be recreation facilities inside where you have 649 yoga. It could be classrooms. There's a lot of different indoor facilities. You need to be 650 more clear about that for less confusion. Commissioner Crommie. 651 652 Commissioner Crommie: I liked what Commissioner Hetterly was saying about 653 grouping things into categories by making it more of a choice, if you can do that, so 654 people can think more deeply about a topic where a lot of similar things can fall under 655 one topic. You have this bullet point of integrating nature into all Palo Alto parks. Last 656 time I brought up the point about do you want to have logs for kids to play on. Is that 657 considered nature? Do you want to have a butterfly garden or habitat for birds? That's 658 all very different. Certainly the habitat is something that I care about. How would 659 someone express that? What would people be meaning when they check off that bullet 660 point? It's not at all clear. 661 662 Approved Minutes 16 APPROVED Commissioner Hetterly: One more thing I would add. In providing context to your 663 public groups, I would give them the context of we're working on these areas of focus, 664 but there's a process. People are going to look at costs and time and maintenance. You 665 have to treat them like they know something, because they do know something. They're 666 going to have questions about that kind of stuff. 667 668 Chair Reckdahl: You can move on now. 669 670 Ms. Fiore: Thank you. Maybe we could get to Commissioner Lauing's question about 671 applying the principles. 672 673 Commissioner Lauing: There were two areas. One was on page 4 of the bigger sheet 674 dated 6/17, plan framework, with a list. The question is how are these things going to be 675 applied practically. I believe you answered Commissioner Hetterly by saying that all of 676 these principles have to be active and obvious in order to prioritize a program or a focus 677 area, or whatever we're going to call them. I don't know how that's possible, and I don't 678 know why that's necessary. The goal I don't think is to quantify. It says it has to have 679 100 percent or six of the eight things; otherwise, we can't do it in the City. Somewhere in 680 the system, it just has to include these things and maybe not some other things. Right? 681 682 Ms. Fiore: Right. 683 684 Commissioner Lauing: I don't understand how you take this and make it into a goal for 685 the prioritization. 686 687 Ms. Fiore: I may have misspoken. It's not quite that rigid of a process. Not every 688 recommendation is going to tick off all seven boxes. We are using this as a tool to help 689 us find ones that do meet more than one, for example. We are also using it as a filtering 690 process when there are choices to be made. The recommendation that ticks off more 691 boxes and that is sustainable and healthy and promotes active transportation will be 692 prioritized over something that just does one of those in isolation. 693 694 Commissioner Lauing: For that reason? 695 696 Ms. Fiore: Mm-hmm. 697 698 Commissioner Lauing: That it hits seven out of nine, or whatever this thing is? 699 700 Ms. Fiore: Yeah. We're not going to say it has to hit four or it's out. There's two parallel 701 goals. One is that the collective set of recommendations creates a system that is 702 described by all of these words. Two is that these are used as we're looking at the 703 different recommendations to filter those and develop them. As we're writing 704 Approved Minutes 17 APPROVED recommendations, it encourages us to think more creatively and how can we create a 705 recommendation that does more than just address natural systems; one that addresses 706 natural systems and community health and accessibility all at once. 707 708 Commissioner Lauing: To take another slice of comment from the Commission. Part of 709 what we're trying to do is create lots of options for everybody. What I like to do in the 710 park system may not be what someone else likes to do. That doesn't mean we should 711 take a middle ground and then neither one of us gets what we want to do. If I want to 712 climb mountains and some people can't do that, I don't think we should just rule it out, it 713 can't be done in Palo Alto. It's unclear to me how we're going to apply this in a way that 714 draws the line, so that one's out because it doesn't meet it. 715 716 Ms. Fiore: What might be helpful is looking at this other graphic that we put in your 717 packet that's a funnel shape in the back of that framework. 718 719 Mr. Jensen: (inaudible) 720 721 Ms. Fiore: You should have an 11x17 hopefully. This is more of the tool that the staff 722 will use to create and review these recommendations or actions. What we're looking at 723 here is, starting from the top, all of the data we collected over the last year and a half and 724 analyzed. The system components and the summary of opportunity, those are things that 725 come straight out of the matrix. We pulled a few examples forward here to get a good 726 range of the types of components in the system and the range of options. At the staff 727 level, when we're generating these recommendations, that's generating from our 728 professional development and also pulling forward from you, from the community 729 workshops, from the stakeholder advisory groups, all of those sources. You're going to 730 create this big list. Again, we need to shape and refine those, and that's where the 731 principles come in. As an example, if I could walk you through for a second. The first 732 bullet under essential activity access in the first column is additional play experiences to 733 fill gaps in geographic access. What we've identified here is more close to home play 734 options for kids essentially. In the second column we have integration of natural 735 processes and features in parks and parks with potential to support this where appropriate. 736 Those are coming from two different rows of the matrix. If you zoom down to the 737 recommended actions, that last bullet there, the recommendation is to fill gaps in access 738 to play areas with nature play facilities and to include nature play features in all 739 playground redesigns. This is an example of how you can tick those multiple boxes, 740 meet multiple objectives, address multiple principles with one recommendation in the 741 Plan. Does that help at all or have I just confused it more? 742 743 Commissioner Lauing: I guess. 744 745 Vice Chair Markevitch: I don't see the public following this at all. 746 Approved Minutes 18 APPROVED 747 Ms. Fiore: This is for the staff. This is the other side of the coin of the areas of focus. 748 749 Mr. de Geus: Can I just add to that? This model is for staff and the Commission as well, 750 or those that are closest to this Plan. It's like the critical thinking of all of this data. How 751 do we do that? We need some type of process. What Ellie was walking through was 752 looking at the different elements of the Plan, facilities and parks and programs, and 753 seeing what were we hearing as a theme that was a thread through that, and using this 754 model to think about those threads, defining them and using a set of principles which also 755 come from the public feedback. That's where it comes from. In fact, it ought to be 756 shared at the workshops, the principles, because they came from the public and our 757 dialog. We should talk about that. Given these themes across these different elements of 758 the parks and recreation system, some recommended actions start to emerge. That's what 759 gets defined in that box. Finally, we have to prioritize those recommended actions with 760 some criteria that is still being developed. That was in that packet too, wasn't it? At least 761 a starting point for criteria. We don't want to get too far ahead, but that's where we are at. 762 I want to give you everything we have. It's a process. There's a lot of data to work 763 through. 764 765 Commissioner Hetterly: I found this funnel diagram a little bit confusing. I wasn't able 766 to distinguish what happened in the shaping recommended actions with the principles. I 767 hear what you're saying about how you can integrate items from several categories into a 768 single item. I do appreciate that. I'm not seeing how the principles are going to winnow 769 down the millions of recommendations in the summary of needs. Can you explain that 770 some more? 771 772 Ms. Fiore: Part of the answer is that we haven't completed that exercise yet. This is a 773 preview of what the outputs might look like. 774 775 Commissioner Hetterly: Okay. All we're supposed to get from this is what you just said? 776 777 Ms. Fiore: This is the process. 778 779 Mr. de Geus: I'll have a little shot at that, Jenny, if you don't mind. There's a lot of 780 information in that larger box. That is the summary of opportunities. It's big; there's a lot 781 there. How do we start to winnow down to something that's more manageable and start 782 to define actions, action plans? The idea is that's where the principles come in. That's 783 another filter to look at all of this data. Looking through that filter of principles, and 784 starting to use that to define some specific actions that might fall out. 785 786 Commissioner Hetterly: The sample provided of the recommended actions. That's 787 obviously not final, but is that an example of if we were looking at all of these things in 788 Approved Minutes 19 APPROVED this top column and filtered them through the principles, we could narrow them to only 789 these four things and we would throw out some of the other things? Did they get thrown 790 out in the process or are these just some examples of how you can combine (crosstalk) 791 purposes? 792 793 Ms. Fiore: It's the latter. 794 795 Commissioner Ashlund: I have a couple of questions about this funnel. In the left-most 796 column under essential activity, access for play for children, the third bullet down, more 797 diversified play experiences that provide high play value and contextual design response. 798 Does that just mean play experiences that are appropriate for the context? Is that what 799 the contextual design response is referring to? 800 801 Ms. Fiore: I don't know. That came directly out of the matrix. Out of context, I'm not 802 sure. 803 804 Commissioner Ashlund: Maybe we could follow up on that. 805 806 Ms. Fiore: Yes, I will. 807 808 Commissioner Ashlund: In the third column, special purpose buildings and parks. It 809 begins with no need for additional facilities expressed or observed. I believe in the data 810 we did hear additional facilities needed such as a pool on the south side of Palo Alto and 811 for sure the dog parks. Oh, this is special purpose buildings. 812 813 Ms. Fiore: Yeah, it's a more narrow set. 814 815 Commissioner Ashlund: Additional buildings, okay. Underneath that one, the second 816 bullet, facilities are needed to connect people to nature, but current facilities are not 817 meeting expectations. What does that mean? What kind of facilities are needed? Is that 818 like interpretive centers or what does that mean? 819 820 Ms. Fiore: That's a question to be answered. Our interpretation of the data and the 821 community input, we're talking about the structures that exist in the Baylands and in the 822 Foothills, some of them are outdated and people aren't using those as resources. What is 823 a different way to utilize those spaces that meets the goals that we identified about nature 824 interpretation and education? How can we re-imagine those spaces without building new 825 ones? 826 827 Commissioner Ashlund: Lastly, when the funnel goes down to where the four bullets are 828 in the middle of the page, the second bullet there is very specific about identifying 829 partners to build natural treasure hunt apps. Why is such a specific thing in there? 830 Approved Minutes 20 APPROVED 831 Ms. Fiore: I don't know; I didn't write that. I had the same reaction when I first read it. 832 It's an example and it ticks off several different goals. It's using technology to get kids to 833 interact with nature. It teaches again with the interpretation and the ecological setting, so 834 it could be all of the above. 835 836 Commissioner Ashlund: It's very interesting. I have two teenagers who hate to hike, and 837 I cannot bribe them enough to hike. I've been thinking about this idea for a long time. If 838 there was a treasure hunt aspect to it, they would do it. You almost have to distract them 839 to convince them to do something that, as adults, we appreciate. There is an interesting 840 idea there. I was just wondering how it was ... 841 842 Ms. Fiore: More specific than the others? 843 844 Commissioner Ashlund: So specific was pulled out of here. Yeah. 845 846 Commissioner Crommie: I just wanted to bring up this point that Commissioner Ashlund 847 was drawing some attention to which was under the special purpose buildings and parks, 848 the second bullet point about facilities are needed to connect people to nature. If you 849 look at the Lucy Evans Interpretive Center, one of the main problems there is it's not 850 staffed, it's not open. How does that relate? That's not a building problem; that's a 851 staffing problem. Are we going to address that? We can have the best buildings in the 852 world and not anyone in them opening the door. 853 854 Mr. de Geus: That's an interesting example as to how the principles might relate. If the 855 buildings are important, we think about those nature centers and that they add value. 856 That came through in the data that we collected. Then we think about the principles. 857 One of our principles is accessibility. That means it needs to be open, we need to be able 858 to get inside. It might then relate to a recommendation that isn't about enhancing the 859 building, but is about providing greater access to get into the building. A staffing 860 recommendation or something like that, having a partner occupy that interpretive center 861 or something so that people can have more access. That's a good example. 862 863 Chair Reckdahl: Either that or change the design of the building to have the exhibits 864 pointing outward so you don't have to have a staff. Right now we have a building design 865 that assumes it's being staffed and staffing that doesn't support that. 866 867 Mr. de Geus: That's correct. 868 869 Chair Reckdahl: When I look at all these different principles and criteria, when I look at 870 each individual one, they seem reasonable. When I look at the whole set, it seems a little 871 overwhelming. If you have no criteria, you're making an arbitrary decision. When you 872 Approved Minutes 21 APPROVED start adding criteria, if you add too much, it almost gets to be you can support anything. 873 An infinite number of criteria is the same as no criteria. In both cases, you're making 874 arbitrary decisions. I would want to look back here and say, "Do we really need all these 875 criteria?" If you have too many scaling or grading changes, you're not going to create 876 clarity. You're going to create confusion. 877 878 Ms. Fiore: When you say all these criteria, are you referring to ... 879 880 Chair Reckdahl: I'm looking at page 4 of applying the principles of playful, healthy, 881 sustainable, inclusive. That's a lot of different aspects. Which do we weight the most? If 882 one person weights accessibility the highest, they're going to have a totally different 883 answer than if someone has playful the highest, and so forth. You get so many criteria, 884 that you end up with arbitrary decisions. It may be painful to trim this down, but it may 885 help the decision making process to have a more focused set of criteria. What are we 886 really trying to do? We can't please everyone. There will be good aspects that we aren't 887 grading, but we are going to look at the whole thing. That's my two cents. 888 889 Mr. de Geus: It's good feedback, but there are principles and there are criteria in the 890 model. They're different. The principles that you're referring to, the playful, healthy, 891 sustainable, the list can be pretty long within there. There's still another filter that we 892 need to go through, and that's a set of criteria that talks about reality and cost and some 893 other things. We have some examples; do you have one up here? 894 895 Ms. Fiore: Mm-hmm. 896 897 Mr. de Geus: We need your feedback on this too. We're not sure if this is the right 898 criteria. These are some that we think make sense, that staff and MIG have considered 899 and other cities have used. This is the criteria that would start to prioritize ... 900 901 Chair Reckdahl: How do the principles dovetail with this or feed into this? 902 903 Ms. Fiore: They precede it essentially. The principles are used here between the needs 904 and what the actions are. We use the framework to define those actions. We come up 905 with our list of recommendations, then we apply the criteria to prioritize those 906 recommendations which gives us our draft Plan. 907 908 Chair Reckdahl: You're using the principles to whittle down the list, is that what you're 909 saying? 910 911 Mr. de Geus: Mm-hmm. 912 913 Approved Minutes 22 APPROVED Ms. Fiore: The list of the entire universe of ways we could potentially address the 914 community needs and improvements that we identified in that matrix; we're not going to 915 be able to do it all. 916 917 Chair Reckdahl: I'm just saying whittling down is going to be harder. The more 918 principles you have, the more arbitrary your decision is going to be. 919 920 Mr. de Geus: I would say that the principles are used not just to whittle down the list. 921 It's more to define the list in a more actionable way, more specific recommendations that 922 we can take action on. Even then the number of those recommendations is probably 923 going to be larger than we can do in 20 years, so then we use the other filter or a set of 924 criteria that says, "What is really actionable in the near-term, mid-term and long-term?" 925 That is the essential action plan of the Master Plan. All of this other stuff remains in the 926 Master Plan. This is going to be a very extensive volume of this book. 927 928 Commissioner Hetterly: I'm sorry I keep coming back to what are the principles. It 929 sounds maybe like they're more of a conceptual shaping of a list of options as opposed to 930 a scaling or a weighting of options against the principles. 931 932 Ms. Fiore: Yes, that's fair. 933 934 Commissioner Hetterly: There's not a scoring process involved with the principles, so it 935 wouldn't matter how many principles you had unless you had Principle Number 1 gets 936 three points, Principle Number 2 gets four points. They're more to do what you did in the 937 funnel, to reword what you have up here into more concise statements that are consistent 938 with those principles. The winnowing down, the filtering out happens with the criteria? 939 940 Ms. Fiore: Correct. 941 942 Chair Reckdahl: (inaudible) 943 944 Ms. Fiore: This one? 945 946 Chair Reckdahl: Yeah. On Slide 22 there, the framework and actions, you're using the 947 principles at that point to winnow down the list. Is that not the case? I thought that's 948 what you said. 949 950 Ms. Fiore: To winnow down the entire universe of recommendations to help us shape 951 and define the ones we think are most appropriate for Palo Alto. That's a winnowing 952 from motherhood and apple pie. Once we get those that meet as many of the principles 953 as possible, the criteria funnel those down into a shorter set. 954 955 Approved Minutes 23 APPROVED Mr. de Geus: Yeah, that's right. I would add that it's more than winnowing. It's a 956 redefining of what's on the upper list that's more actionable, that reads more like a 957 recommendation, that we could say, "We should fund something like that." Whereas, 958 these upper concepts and ideas, they're not written that way. They're more raw from the 959 public feedback and synthesizing that public feedback. Does that help? 960 961 Ms. Fiore: Yeah. One more example that might be illustrative. Back on the filtering 962 diagram, the first bullet in the narrow section says create walking paths in all parks with a 963 preference for loops and connect them to the pedestrian and cycling network. That could 964 have been two recommendations. One that said create more walking paths in parks, and 965 one that said connect parks to the pedestrian and biking system. The bigger picture that 966 addresses more of the principles is that you're creating an integrated system within the 967 parks, so you've got that safe access, you've got active transportation and you've got 968 opportunities for exercise and fitness in the parks. 969 970 Female: (inaudible) 971 972 Ms. Fiore: Sure. This is just our first pass at them. We wanted to introduce these, 973 because it helps answer the question of where do we go next. We'll be revisiting these. 974 If you've brought comments, we definitely want them. 975 976 Commissioner Hetterly: The first bullet, time to completion, projects can be done 977 quickly. Let me back up. It seems like in applying the criteria you want to consider 978 things like cost and funding as well as community preference as well as timeline. There 979 are three different types of things that you're trying to consider as you're coming up with 980 a shorter list. The timeline seems to me very different from cost and funding and 981 community preference conceivably. Time to completion, if that's a criteria for whether a 982 recommendation should be on the list, it doesn't seem like it should be. It seems like it's a 983 criteria for whether an item should be on the short list, the medium list or the long list 984 rather than ruling it out altogether. Surely there are things that are long-term projects that 985 we may well feel strongly about considering. 986 987 Ms. Fiore: That's a good point. 988 989 Commissioner Hetterly: The fourth bullet, community priority highly ranked category of 990 projects. We've stumbled on this often. In saying community priority, things that are 991 highly ranked, is that referring to things that are over capacity, that have a high expressed 992 need, that have a high projected demand, that came up in whatever outreach or some 993 combination of all those things? 994 995 Approved Minutes 24 APPROVED Ms. Fiore: As it's written, it's intended to be the results of that prioritization exercise with 996 the areas of focus that we were talking about earlier. That whole process will become 997 one of your criteria. 998 999 Commissioner Hetterly: That's not really projects at all. It's more ... 1000 1001 Ms. Fiore: Category of projects. Highly ranked areas of focus would tie them together 1002 more accurately. 1003 1004 Commissioner Hetterly: I wondered if it wouldn't be helpful to add another bullet, I don't 1005 know how to phrase it, getting at the idea of whether a certain project is new or 1006 duplicative, balanced, flexible. That principle would apply as a criteria as well. If we 1007 have a list of recommendations that includes a community garden, that's not a good 1008 example but I'll use it anyway. We would want to then put it through the filter of criteria 1009 to say, "Do we already have lots of community gardens or do we already have lots of 1010 playgrounds?" Like that. Should we give higher priority to something that's new or 1011 different or especially needed in that part of town? That's all I have. 1012 1013 Commissioner Lauing: I'd love to tag team on that. This is where I had my biggest 1014 exclamation point of the entire packet. I feel like this needs a lot of work. Starting with 1015 the first bullet, because that is a good kickoff point. Time to completion with projects 1016 that can be done quickly shouldn't be on this list. If there's something that's substantive 1017 and a big deal, we have the Baylands created acreage out there. If that's going to take ten 1018 years to build and it's going to be absolutely magnificent, you never say damn the costs. 1019 That always has to be considered. Over a ten-year period, that might be exactly what we 1020 should be doing. This thing of doing things that are quick because they're low-hanging 1021 fruit, that's just absolutely incorrect. I'm not understanding why the cost and the funding 1022 come up here. Then you've got partner funding. There's all these cost and funding 1023 issues. We need to prioritize what we want to do in the next 25 years. When it comes up 1024 and we say, "We thought that was going to be $2 million. Sorry, it's $20 million," we 1025 might lower that priority. We have to prioritize, and I don't know that the wording is 1026 correct yet, that it's a community priority. It's somehow within this process with staff and 1027 the Commission and the stakeholder group to come up with the right priorities for that. 1028 This preliminary criteria section needs a lot of work. I'll just leave it there. 1029 1030 Mr. de Geus: Given the feedback on the criteria specifically, maybe Commissioners have 1031 a suggestion on this. To get that feedback by next month, how would we do that? Do 1032 you want to give us your comments today? It sounds like there's a lot of thoughts about 1033 how this criteria should be shaped. 1034 1035 Commissioner Lauing: It's a big deal. 1036 1037 Approved Minutes 25 APPROVED Mr. de Geus: It is a big deal, yeah. 1038 1039 Commissioner Lauing; Maybe this is an ad hoc that has to get together and work hard in 1040 the next month. 1041 1042 Mr. Jensen: That was the idea of introducing it this evening. We do have the opportunity 1043 over the next couple of months to keep talking about this. It is a major part of this and 1044 how our final recommendations are going to be filtered out. We wanted to start that 1045 dialog. We can start looking at these, because there are a lot of questions, there are a lot 1046 of enhancement that can happen to this list. I do want to start thinking about that, I want 1047 you to start thinking about that. This is not something that we're going to come back next 1048 month and say we've got to have it finalized. We want to talk about it again next month; 1049 we'll probably talk about it again in September. Hopefully in October/November we're 1050 going to be looking around to finalize the criteria list. This is a longer-scale thing, and 1051 that's why we wanted to introduce it early. It is an early draft to get ideas to think about. 1052 1053 Commissioner Crommie: What's missing here is anything about geography within the 1054 City. 1055 1056 Vice Chair Markevitch: Could you elaborate? 1057 1058 Commissioner Crommie: That's what's behind some of the interests in dog parks. Dog 1059 parks tend to be clustered in the south of our City. Community gardens tend to be 1060 clustered in the north of our City. Some people are sensitive in the City about certain 1061 services not being available throughout the City. It's come up in surveying, and it's come 1062 up in various reports that have come before us, like the Urban Tree Master Plan, that kind 1063 of thing. 1064 1065 Commissioner Ashlund: I had the same reaction which is that the fourth, fifth and last 1066 bullets are the three most important. The priority, the reach and the urgency are very, this 1067 list is not parallel. Those three are very different than the time and the cost and the 1068 maintenance impact. Also, the sixth bullet about partner or funding availability and the 1069 second bullet about cost to build. Cost is cost. If cost is an issue, that doesn't need to be 1070 on there as two different criteria. It feels like one criteria to me as well. 1071 1072 Ms. Fiore: To wrap up, we wanted to outline a little more clearly our next steps. Peter 1073 referenced several of these. What we'll do at your July meeting, assuming you're not 1074 taking any break this summer before August, is to bring back the revised areas of focus 1075 based on your input tonight and see if we can't better hit the right level of detail and 1076 structure them meaningfully in a way that lends itself to a prioritization exercise. We'll 1077 also at that point have the design of those exercises, both for the workshop and online, for 1078 you to look at. As I mentioned, once we pin those down, we will launch the online 1079 Approved Minutes 26 APPROVED version at the end of July ideally, and it'll run through probably early September. Have 1080 the workshop when school is back in session, and then bring that more detailed 1081 prioritization exercise to this group and to the stakeholders advisory committee which 1082 will then roll out into draft recommendations. In the fall, refining these criteria, and 1083 developing the draft Plan over the winter. This is a big picture look ahead. 1084 1085 Vice Chair Markevitch: School starts August 18th, and the first three weeks are insane. I 1086 would possibly move that community meeting to mid-September. It gets tight, but you're 1087 not going to get the feedback that you are expecting. 1088 1089 Ms. Fiore: That's good to know. I appreciate that. 1090 1091 Chair Reckdahl: I want to go back; we've beat on this already. Refine criteria seems 1092 very late in that I still don't quite understand the whole process. We have a whole bunch 1093 of ideas and we're going to reduce them down to a small number of ideas that we 1094 implement. Some of it includes the principles. Some of it includes the areas of focus. 1095 Some includes the criteria. That process seems really vague right now. If criteria is the 1096 final decision, it seems strange that we're doing that after we're doing the areas of focus. 1097 We're having these stakeholders meetings and we still don't have our criteria set. You'd 1098 think you would have the cart behind the horse. 1099 1100 Mr. de Geus: The criteria is going to set priority, what gets done in the near, mid and 1101 long-term. The one reason it gets refined is we will do a check-in with the City Council 1102 and get their input. No doubt we'll have some adjustments there when we meet with 1103 them. That's one of the reasons. Just getting back to the earlier comment about an ad 1104 hoc. That would be a really good idea, because this is where the rubber meets the road on 1105 the Plan. The criteria and these principles and how we flow all this information into an 1106 actual action plan that tells us what we're going to do and in what order and why. It 1107 would be helpful for staff, if there's an interest on the Commission, to work on that. The 1108 criteria need a lot of work also. 1109 1110 Chair Reckdahl: Originally we talked about an ad hoc for the Master Plan, and we came 1111 to the conclusion that so many people have interest in the Master Plan that an ad hoc 1112 would leave some people on the outside looking in. 1113 1114 Mr. de Geus: Right. We ended up having ad hoc committees on specific topics, 1115 stakeholder outreach and survey work and some other things. This may be another one of 1116 those where if there are Commissioners that are particularly interested in how the criteria 1117 work and how that flow chart works, how we synthesize all of this information. What I 1118 want to avoid is coming back in a month and having another draft that is missing the 1119 mark of where you all are at. It's helpful to have a check-in with a couple of 1120 Commissioners to see what you're thinking in terms of how we're progressing. 1121 Approved Minutes 27 APPROVED 1122 Vice Chair Markevitch: Since Ed brought it up, he probably wants to be on it. Just ask 1123 for a show of hands of who would like to help him with that. That probably answers your 1124 question. 1125 1126 Chair Reckdahl: If everybody wants to do it, then we want to avoid it. If only a subset is 1127 interested in the ad hoc, then ... 1128 1129 Mr. de Geus: Even if everybody wants to do it, that's what will happen. It'll come back 1130 maybe just with that additional thought and perspective of residents that really care about 1131 this topic. Then you've got MIG, staff and a couple of your fellow Commissioners that 1132 have had a chance to think it through before the next meeting. It can be helpful. 1133 1134 Commissioner Hetterly: This is not an ad hoc that would recommend approving this plan 1135 as presented by the group. It's just an additional layer of input that then we would have a 1136 full discussion. 1137 1138 Mr. de Geus: It may come back with a number of options. There may be a lot of 1139 consensus around certain criteria, but others not so much. There may be differences of 1140 opinion there that can be shared, and then the Commission can grapple with that. 1141 1142 Chair Reckdahl: Do we want to talk about how we'd run that? Who would be on it? Is 1143 that something we'd do offline? 1144 1145 Mr. de Geus: This would be the time to do it. If there's a couple of Commissioners who 1146 would be willing to have a couple of additional meetings at your convenience to work on 1147 this particular topic, to help us get to a second draft. 1148 1149 Chair Reckdahl: Do we have interest? A show of hands. 1150 1151 Commissioner Lauing: First we should get consensus that we should do this. In other 1152 words, just get some discussion that yea or nay, we go ahead with this before we decide 1153 who should be on it. 1154 1155 Chair Reckdahl: What's the number of an ad hoc? Three? 1156 1157 Commissioner Lauing: Yeah. 1158 1159 Mr. de Geus: Yes. 1160 1161 Commissioner Hetterly: It makes a lot of sense. We ought to have an ad hoc if we can 1162 come up with an appropriate group to do it. There you go. 1163 Approved Minutes 28 APPROVED 1164 Commissioner Crommie: I agree. 1165 1166 Commissioner Ashlund: I also think it makes a lot of sense. I'd be glad to be on it. If it 1167 requires in-person participation, I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of July. If 1168 timing precludes that, I'm okay if I’m not on it as well. 1169 1170 Chair Reckdahl: What do you think, Ed? 1171 1172 Commissioner Lauing: This has got so far to go and it's so important to the whole 1173 process and to this Commission as advisory to Council on it, that we should put some 1174 cycles in to help get it right. 1175 1176 Chair Reckdahl: The other option would be to have a mid-month meeting of the whole 1177 Commission or whoever from the Commission wants to. If there's not an interest, people 1178 can always skip meetings. Do you think that's going to be too many cooks spoiling the 1179 broth? 1180 1181 Mr. de Geus: These meetings don't work well as working meetings. This is a working 1182 exercise of doing some thinking in advance and a little more informal as we start to work 1183 through the criteria. My preference would be an ad hoc committee over that option. 1184 1185 Chair Reckdahl: Who has interest in being on the ad hoc? 1186 1187 Commissioner Lauing: I can be recruited, but I’m not going to campaign for it. I'm 1188 happy to work on it. 1189 1190 Commissioner Hetterly: I feel the same. I'm willing to do it, but I'm happy to let 1191 anybody else do it. 1192 1193 Chair Reckdahl: Do you have interest? 1194 1195 Commissioner Ashlund: I have interest. 1196 1197 Commissioner Lauing: You've got a time constraint this month. 1198 1199 Commissioner Ashlund: Right. I just can't do in-person. I could do work on it and 1200 phone calls. I just can't do it in-person. 1201 1202 Commissioner Crommie: You still have a couple of weeks. 1203 1204 Commissioner Ashlund: It depends on the timing. 1205 Approved Minutes 29 APPROVED 1206 Chair Reckdahl: What would you envision the timing would be? 1207 1208 Mr. de Geus: I don't have any vacation planned unfortunately this summer. Peter and ... 1209 1210 Ms. Fiore: We want to bring a refined list of criteria back in July, correct? 1211 1212 Mr. de Geus: Yeah. We would need a little bit of time to pull together an agenda for the 1213 meeting and maybe even a little more work on the staff end, so we're not starting from 1214 just this. We'd actually integrate the feedback we've heard already, so we can start a little 1215 further along with the ad hoc committee. We'd probably meet at the earliest next week. 1216 Next week is July 1st. We have a big event to put on that Saturday. 1217 1218 Commissioner Lauing: Let's just meet at the cook-off. 1219 1220 Mr. de Geus: We could. Are you going to be a judge? That'd be great. I'll be there. 1221 We'll work around the schedule of the Commissioners. If you're willing to volunteer and 1222 support this, then we'll work to make it work for you. 1223 1224 Chair Reckdahl: We should do it then, if there's support on the Commission and support 1225 on the staff. I'm interested. Commissioner Lauing and Commissioner Hetterly were 1226 interested and Stacey also, Commissioner Ashlund was also interested. 1227 1228 Commissioner Ashlund: I'm fine to give my feedback and let you guys do it as well. I 1229 do not have to be everywhere all the time. I'm totally fine with that. 1230 1231 Mr. de Geus: I'm trying to check myself. It would be after July 4th given what staff are 1232 working on with summer programs and that event. Realistically, at least for me to 1233 participate, it would be after July 4th. 1234 1235 Commissioner Markevitch: Do we need to vote? 1236 1237 Commissioner Lauing: Yeah, probably. 1238 1239 Mr. de Geus: It would be good to vote. It's appropriate, yes. 1240 1241 Vice Chair Markevitch: I move that we create an ad hoc committee comprised of 1242 Commissioner Lauing, Commissioner Reckdahl, and Commissioner Hetterly to address 1243 the prioritization. 1244 1245 Commissioner Crommie: (inaudible) 1246 1247 Approved Minutes 30 APPROVED Vice Chair Markevitch: That's a quorum. You can't do it. 1248 1249 Commissioner Lauing: Second. 1250 1251 Vice Chair Markevitch: It has to stay at three. 1252 1253 Commissioner Crommie: I don't think she should be eliminated so quickly if she 1254 expressed an interest in it. 1255 1256 Vice Chair Markevitch: It's a quorum. 1257 1258 Commissioner Crommie: Pardon me? 1259 1260 Commissioner Ashlund: I'm fine giving my input to these guys. 1261 1262 Vice Chair Markevitch: Can you give the input when they bring it back to the 1263 Commission? 1264 1265 Commissioner Ashlund: No, I'd prefer to give it prior to. Otherwise, they're going to go 1266 away and do work without it. I would rather we give it beforehand. 1267 1268 Commissioner Hetterly: I'll pass. 1269 1270 Vice Chair Markevitch: Okay. I'll take Hetterly off there and put Ashlund on there. 1271 1272 Mr. de Geus: It needs to be three, no more than three. Commissioner Ashlund, if you 1273 weren't on the ad hoc committee, then you wouldn't be able to comment on it until it 1274 came back at the next Commission meeting. It sounds like you would prefer to give 1275 comment and work earlier. 1276 1277 Commissioner Ashlund: If we are giving our comments here in this meeting and they're 1278 taking it away, then I’m fine with that as well. 1279 1280 Mr. de Geus: It's up to you all. 1281 1282 Commissioner Crommie: What do you think Commissioner Ashlund, if you can't 1283 physically attend? We just have to decide whether we think you can make a significant 1284 contribution without being there physically. That's a choice. 1285 1286 Commissioner Ashlund: It's fine. Commissioner Lauing and Commissioner Hetterly 1287 have already made substantive comments tonight that I agree with, that echo my 1288 concerns. That's a great ad hoc, those three, including Commissioner Reckdahl. 1289 Approved Minutes 31 APPROVED 1290 Vice Chair Markevitch: I remove the amendment and go back to my original motion. 1291 1292 Commissioner Hetterly: Shall we move on? 1293 1294 Vice Chair Markevitch: We have to vote. 1295 1296 Commissioner Knopper: I don't know what I'm voting for. Say it again. 1297 1298 Chair Reckdahl: On the table is the ad hoc ... 1299 1300 Vice Chair Markevitch: An ad hoc comprised of Commissioners Reckdahl, Hetterly and 1301 Lauing to go over the prioritization of the criteria. They will come back to us and we will 1302 be able to discuss it at the July meeting. Do I have a second? 1303 1304 Commissioner Lauing: Yes. 1305 1306 MOTION: Vice Chair Markevitch moved, seconded by Commissioner Lauing, to form 1307 an ad hoc committee comprised of Commissioners Reckdahl, Hetterly and Lauing to go 1308 over the prioritization of the criteria. The full Commission will discuss prioritization of 1309 the criteria with the ad hoc committee's input at the July 2015 meeting. 1310 1311 Chair Reckdahl: We have a second. 1312 1313 MOTION PASSED: 7-0 1314 1315 Commissioner Hetterly: I have one more thing to say about this topic before we move on 1316 to the next agenda item. Are we done with this topic other than that? 1317 1318 Chair Reckdahl: Did Ellie want to talk through the next steps? 1319 1320 Commissioner Hetterly: She did already. 1321 1322 Chair Reckdahl: Okay. No more content? 1323 1324 Ms. Fiore: Nope. 1325 1326 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Hetterly. 1327 1328 Commissioner Hetterly: My only comment is the City Council long ago expressed an 1329 interest in hearing the feedback from public outreach on this Plan before we get far down 1330 the line. I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to do a briefing for them before you do your 1331 Approved Minutes 32 APPROVED prioritization outreach. If I were on Council, Council Member Filseth can weigh in if 1332 he'd like, I would want to be able to know what you're going to do in your final 1333 prioritization outreach before it has already happened. The question, Eric, is about 1334 timing, when Council would like to hear an update on the Master Plan, whether you want 1335 it before we go to the public for prioritization or not. 1336 1337 Council Member Filseth: I suspect the Council would like to hear something like that. 1338 Probably less important for me because I trust you guys, but I suspect the Council would 1339 like to hear something. 1340 1341 Commissioner Hetterly: The tricky thing being their schedule. You guys are gone for a 1342 long time. 1343 1344 Council Member Filseth: That's true. 1345 1346 Commissioner Hetterly: When are you gone? 1347 1348 Council Member Filseth: We are gone the month of July and the first couple of weeks of 1349 August. We're back in mid-August I think. 1350 1351 Mr. de Geus: I had exactly the same thought. You had emailed something similar, 1352 Commissioner Hetterly, to try and get on Council agenda early on if not in August. I 1353 asked that of the Clerk's Office on this topic. We're on like the last Monday in August for 1354 a study session. It's tentatively planned. That could work, could be in advance of the 1355 community meeting if we're going to mid-September or something like that, to get their 1356 input. 1357 1358 Commissioner Hetterly: That would be wise to do. I would encourage it. 1359 1360 Mr. de Geus: I agree. 1361 1362 Council Member Filseth: Didn't we decide to postpone the study session with the Parks 1363 and Recreation Commission until the fall anyway? This could be it. 1364 1365 Mr. de Geus: Yeah, we did. 1366 1367 Mr. Jensen: Thank you. 1368 1369 Mr. de Geus: Thank you, Ellie, Peter. 1370 1371 Commissioner Lauing: Thanks, Peter. 1372 1373 Approved Minutes 33 APPROVED Ms. Fiore: Thanks everyone. 1374 1375 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. 1376 1377 Mr. de Geus: Council Member Filseth, that actually might be two different things that 1378 you just talked about there. There's a study session with the full Commission which 1379 would include the Master Plan and other areas of interest. The study session I was 1380 referencing is specific to the Master Plan, where we are. That'll happen at the end of 1381 August. There'll be a subsequent study session with the Commission probably later in the 1382 fall. 1383 1384 Council Member Filseth: Most of the study sessions that I've seen so far have been at 1385 least an hour. In many cases substantially more than that. What you're talking about 1386 here, I'm tempted to say you might be able to be time efficient, although I don't know. 1387 Once it gets in front of the Council, maybe it's going to expand. You're envisioning an 1388 hour or an hour and a half or something like that? 1389 1390 Mr. de Geus: The Library Commission is coming forward with their strategic plan as 1391 well. I was talking to Monique about that, so we were looking at combining those two 1392 next to one another because they relate to one another. Maybe we can do them both in an 1393 hour and a half or something like that to save Council a little bit of time. 1394 1395 Council Member Filseth: That might be a good thing. 1396 1397 4. Update on the Field Use Policy. 1398 1399 Rob de Geus: We have Adam Howard here. He's been waiting patiently in the audience 1400 with all the members of the public. I'll just introduce Adam. You haven't seen Adam for 1401 a while. Adam is at Cubberley Community Center; he's the manager, oversees that 1402 campus. Many, many things happening there. He also does a lot work with our field 1403 users and oversees all of the brokering of not only the City parks and athletic fields, but 1404 the school district elementary and middle schools. He works very closely with the sports 1405 organizations. A few years ago we updated the Policy. You saw Adam a lot at that time. 1406 We're back to give you an update on how it's going. We just went through full brokering. 1407 We don't have a PowerPoint or anything; Adam's going to give you a little background 1408 and feedback on how it's going. 1409 1410 Adam Howard: Thank you, Rob. Good evening. Adam Howard, Community Services 1411 Manager overseeing field brokering and Cubberley Community Center. I'm going to give 1412 you a brief update on how we're doing with regards to the Field Policy. I'll start with a 1413 real quick background. In 2009, the Parks and Rec Commission, staff and users drafted a 1414 policy for reservations of the fields. That was ultimately adopted by City Council. After 1415 Approved Minutes 34 APPROVED three years of use in 2012, with some urging from some of the field users and some of the 1416 staff, an ad hoc committee, which Commissioner Crommie was involved with, got 1417 together to review how the Policy was working. Working with staff, field users and the 1418 general public, we had numerous meetings with users, with the public, with the staff. 1419 Ultimately we came up with some things that we thought needed to be changed. In 1420 February 2013, those changes were brought to the Commission and approved. In May 1421 2013, those were approved by the City Council. Some of the key changes that took place 1422 at that time, most of which met with very little resistance, were a cancellation policy 1423 which allowed people to state when they were going to return and how they would do 1424 that. We put a definition of game slots and practice slots in there. Again, a little 1425 resistance to that. It was things that we were already doing, but we wanted to make sure 1426 they were spelled out in the Policy. We put some information about how people could 1427 run tournaments. We put definitions in there about adult slots and game slots and what 1428 fields they would have specific times with. We also switched the field allocations so that 1429 fields were brokered by size, small, medium, large, and by age group, so that we didn't 1430 have groups of younger kids possibly brokering a Mayfield turf slot which is obviously 1431 very highly sought. We want to make sure the right age group is using the right fields. 1432 The last little part of this that changed and that had the most resistance, I'll say, was in the 1433 original Policy we had a separate priority level for groups that were above 75 percent 1434 residency and had a no tryout policy, basically anyone that signed up played. Only 1435 AYSO fit in that priority level. The rest of our resident groups fell below them. What we 1436 were hearing was that separate priority wasn't fair. We were separating out our residents 1437 based on their needs. What we were hearing was that it wasn't right for someone that 1438 wanted to be competitive to have a lower priority than someone that didn't. They were 1439 residents, and we should all have the same priority over the fields. The basic change was 1440 that any youth group nonprofit that was above 51 percent residency would fall in the 1441 same priority category. Effectively taking away that top notch priority level and putting 1442 them all in the same category. AYSO was the most concerned about that. They were the 1443 group that was in that top priority. For the three years that the priority was in existence, 1444 they got to choose any field they wanted, leaving the rest of the groups to scramble, 1445 giving those residents a little bit of a disadvantage. We have been with that new Policy 1446 for two years now. I'm happy to say things have been working a lot smoother now. The 1447 brokering meetings which used to run well into the night and be very nerve wracking and 1448 stressful and have a lot of animosity at the end have become a lot easier. The 1449 relationships are the best that I have seen them in my time here. People are working 1450 together now. There's a lot more flexibility. If something does go wrong on a field, they 1451 work together to correct those issues, rather than having staff do it. There's been a lot 1452 more flexibility in those things. Again, the relationships have been the best. Now we do 1453 a brokering meeting in about an hour, because we go off the last year's fall brokering or 1454 whichever season we're in. We make minor adjustments based off fields or agreements 1455 that they have amongst themselves. It gets done quickly. I've been seeing a great 1456 improvement on that. All those changes have been for the positive. The small issues that 1457 Approved Minutes 35 APPROVED aren't the result of the Policy, but are things that are coming to my attention that the 1458 Policy puts them in a certain category. It's important for you guys to hear that the amount 1459 of requests I'm getting from private schools that are opening or in Palo Alto that don't 1460 necessarily have their own field space but have decided to start leagues and have been 1461 coming pretty heavily to us to try to find them space. Most of the time, the best I can do 1462 is find them some slots to provide games. I very rarely can provide practice slots. I can 1463 explain the Policy to them, and they understand. It's just something that I've been hearing 1464 a lot more of in the past year. The other thing that is maybe in our Policy but not so 1465 much of a reality is we broker two practice slots per team per week. The reality is that all 1466 these clubs become more competitive. To say that a team is only going to practice twice 1467 a week isn't much of a reality. What they means is they seem to be putting more teams 1468 on their slots, which goes back to field conditions being the highest thing that we talk 1469 about regularly. If all the fields were at highest quality, then there would be very little 1470 conversation about their field needs. There's some fields that they try to avoid, because 1471 they're not as high quality, which has mostly resulted from they were never meant to play 1472 half as much play on them as they are. They're putting more than one team on each slot 1473 to accommodate teams having multiple practices. I don't think we could accommodate 1474 each team practicing five days a week, so I don't think that's necessarily something we 1475 want to change. We are putting more pressure on the fields in terms of condition. 1476 Ultimately, it's going really well. It's been very smooth. Everyone's pretty happy with 1477 these changes. Everyone's relationships are a lot better now. I can open it up to 1478 questions. 1479 1480 Vice Chair Markevitch: Have you ever considered the first Saturday in May when we do 1481 the May Fete Parade to have all the fields dark so the kids can participate in the parade as 1482 opposed to being on a field? 1483 1484 Mr. Howard: That is something that we could do. I always inform all of the users of the 1485 parade and encourage them to participate. At this point I can't necessarily tell them they 1486 can't practice on a certain day unless we're going to give a policy to shut down the fields 1487 on that day. I always encourage them to participate. That and chili cook-off. 1488 1489 Chair Reckdahl: Does staff have the capability to shut down or is that outside of Policy 1490 right now? 1491 1492 Mr. de Geus: That's outside the Policy right now. We looked at the Policy for how we 1493 use the fields. As you may remember, the Policy includes a gradation of fields. Not all 1494 fields are equal. Some fields that have a lot of parking, have a bathroom, don't have 1495 residents in close proximity, have synthetic turf, Grade A. We broker that many more 1496 hours than a field that is closer to residents or doesn't have a bathroom. I think it goes 1497 "A" to "E." It doesn't say anything about the City staff having the authority to make a 1498 Approved Minutes 36 APPROVED decision like making all parks unavailable for a particular Saturday. We would get a lot 1499 of unhappy people if we were to do that. 1500 1501 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Lauing. 1502 1503 Commissioner Lauing: Thanks, Adam. Your tough job got a little bit easier with that 1504 new Policy. Kudos to the committee that worked on that. Three questions. One's just a 1505 clarification. When you said people are practicing twice a week and then they put on 1506 more teams, which puts more usage on. I didn't quite understand what you meant by that. 1507 1508 Mr. Howard: When we broker, we allocate two practice slots per team. That's how we 1509 define the amount of slots people get. Almost every organization now, even the less 1510 competitive ones, practices four or five days a week. What they do is put more teams on 1511 a slot. Rather than one team on a ... 1512 1513 Commissioner Lauing: Two teams on the same field? 1514 1515 Mr. Howard: Right. Rather than having one team on half a slot, they put two teams on 1516 half a slot. 1517 1518 Commissioner Lauing: That's what I thought it meant. When we talked a while back, 1519 before I had that little meeting with little league and you were looking at the impact to the 1520 field and so on, there was always more insatiable demand, but you were pretty 1521 comfortable that you could accommodate the needs. Is that generally still how you're 1522 feeling? 1523 1524 Mr. Howard: Yeah, definitely. Like I said, the needs that I haven't necessarily fully been 1525 able to fit are these schools that come in and want to run a full league off of one of our 1526 fields. We have a lot more capacity for the "I just need two days a month from now on." 1527 We're able to accommodate those now. We are not being able to accommodate "I need a 1528 large field every day of the week," and it's not someone that's in our top priority. 1529 1530 Commissioner Lauing: The follow-on question there is we're putting more lights on 1531 fields, like El Camino. In fact as El Camino is coming back online, do you have a feel of 1532 a percentage increase that you'd be able to accommodate with that? 1533 1534 Mr. Howard: I would be guessing. What it's going to accommodate a little bit better are 1535 the growing sports such as lacrosse. They will be able to not have a bunch of teams on 1536 one slot. They'll be able to spread out a little bit more. I would guess probably 20 1537 percent more capacity just by adding a field with lights, especially turf and multiuse. 1538 1539 Commissioner Lauing: Twenty percent more on that field, not system wide? 1540 Approved Minutes 37 APPROVED 1541 Mr. Howard: Right. 1542 1543 Commissioner Lauing: That's great. What about pricing of the fields and reaction from 1544 leagues to that? Early on we got a lot of "we're going to go out of business" as a team, as 1545 a league. How are you gauging that right now? 1546 1547 Mr. Howard: It's been pretty minimal. Some of that reaction was how far are you going 1548 to go. We've been at $7 an hour for the past year and a half. That's where we're going to 1549 go until we get some stuff about cost recovery. We feel pretty comfortable at $7, and so 1550 far the organizations seem pretty comfortable with $7. 1551 1552 Commissioner Lauing: Plus we made that accommodation where you can return fields 1553 and put them back into there, so you get a return privilege like going back to a store 1554 (crosstalk). 1555 1556 Mr. Howard: Right, exactly. We want to encourage that they do return their fields. 1557 They do so a lot better now than they had in the past. They have almost a month and a 1558 half to create their schedule and then return unused fields to make sure they're not using 1559 something or paying for something that they didn't need. 1560 1561 Commissioner Lauing: Your job and the whole job here is field capacity, not total square 1562 acres. It's always important for all of us in the community to keep that in mind as we're 1563 trying to make plans around do we need more fields, which is always the big question. 1564 The capacity issue is the key one. To the extent that we can put in lights and have fields 1565 that don't wear out and have to be shut down for six months so that we lose that time, 1566 we're better off. Thank you. 1567 1568 Mr. de Geus: I was just going to add that Adam mentioned the $7 an hour per field. That 1569 only relates to Palo Alto youth-based sports programs. It's not for all leagues, adult 1570 leagues and others. They pay quite a bit more than that. 1571 1572 Commissioner Hetterly: I had a question. You said that teams are practicing more often, 1573 so that's why they're doubling up, because we're not giving them more in order to 1574 accommodate. Are you finding any conflicts between sports now that so many youth 1575 sports have gone to year-round programs? Are you having conflicts between soccer and 1576 baseball or football, whatever the overlaps are? 1577 1578 Mr. Howard: There is a little bit of that between predominantly baseball, softball and 1579 soccer. Each sport has its priority seasons. If it's not your priority, you're going to get 1580 squeezed. If it's baseball's priority and soccer needs that space, they are the ones that 1581 have to go way out by the fence line and make sure that they don't interrupt the baseball 1582 Approved Minutes 38 APPROVED users. They all have pretty good relationships at this point, so the conflicts have been 1583 minimal, especially the ones that they don't work out themselves. 1584 1585 Mr. de Geus: Maybe you'll know this answer. The Policy says that for one thing, so 1586 that's very helpful for Adam as he tries to deal with some of these conflicts. Is that a little 1587 reciprocal because they know the next season they're going to need to be asking? Soccer 1588 wants to play in the spring, so they're going to be asking ... 1589 1590 Mr. Howard. Right. They know that if they are not flexible, then the following season 1591 the different sport could do the same. They know they need each other to be able to go 1592 year-round. They're very good with that. 1593 1594 Commissioner Hetterly: They're working it out, and they each get a favored season. You 1595 don't anticipate they're going to come back and say, "This is crazy. We're all year-round. 1596 We should have equal brokering access all year." 1597 1598 Mr. Howard: I don't perceive that to happen, predominantly because, for now anyway, 1599 baseball's off season, they're just not as big as they are during their spring session. For 1600 baseball to grow in fall ball, soccer would need to decrease its size. They're the same 1601 kids playing both sports. I don't see that being a problem any time soon. 1602 1603 Commissioner Hetterly: How about the tournament functioning? I know that was 1604 another change we made in the Policy. I think it was one tournament a season for each 1605 league. Is that going smoothly? 1606 1607 Mr. Howard: Yep. Each priority organization gets one priority tournament a calendar 1608 year. They need to give me those dates prior to field brokering. The leagues get most of 1609 the time about three months notice before they even get a permit that there's a tournament 1610 weekend. There's been very little conflict. 1611 1612 Commissioner Crommie: Great job, Adam. Thanks for all the work that you've put into 1613 this to make it run smoothly. It's an art form to get this to work. I'm glad that there's 1614 more cooperation. That's a wonderful outcome. I had a couple of questions. First of all, 1615 I wanted to make a comment. You haven't worked with full capacity since the new 1616 Policy, because El Camino Park has been offline the entire time. That will be interesting 1617 information when you have everything available. You brought up the field maintenance 1618 question. Is there anything we can do as a Commission to help with this? Do you feel 1619 like you're getting enough resources for the field maintenance? 1620 1621 Mr. Howard: I would say yeah. Daren's not here. He might be a better person to answer 1622 that question, because they are the ones ultimately that take care of it. it's a double-edged 1623 sword. There probably are not enough resources, but it's also difficult, unless you get the 1624 Approved Minutes 39 APPROVED highest quality, it's just not going to take the kind of wear and tear that we have on the 1625 fields. The bonus to that is, especially with the new brokering system and teams having 1626 their section of fields that they're primarily on, they're going a lot further to help maintain 1627 the fields, whether that be spreading some seed before each game to help the grass grow 1628 or being super communicative of "this field seems to be getting a little wet or a little dry." 1629 We catch problems a lot quicker than we used to, because of that communication and 1630 their interest in keeping their little corner at the highest quality possible. That's gone a 1631 long way too. 1632 1633 Commissioner Crommie: That's great to hear. I know from sitting on that ad hoc that the 1634 clubs and the recreational players wanted to help. I’m glad that's working well. How do 1635 you feel the drought has impacted the fields? 1636 1637 Mr. Howard: At this point, there hasn't been a big impact. It's just now starting to get 1638 warm, and that's when we'll know if any reduction in watering is going to have a big 1639 impact on the fields. Right now, we're brokering as usual. They understand that we 1640 could have some issues with fields. They also understand if one of our major fields gets 1641 shut down,, that burden will get spread amongst them all. They will reconfigure as 1642 needed. 1643 1644 Commissioner Crommie: Just two more questions. How are the adults doing? We did 1645 reconfigure some space for them on the artificial turf. Has that been helping with their 1646 needs? 1647 1648 Mr. Howard. That reconfiguration was more of defining what was going on on the fields. 1649 They haven't lost or gained anything. They feel a little bit more secure that it's spelled 1650 out in the policy and they're not worried if they're going to lose it. They know that this 1651 time's designated and not too many groups are going to be able to come in and take that. 1652 They've been good. They have a lot of interest in having a couple more night slots at El 1653 Camino when it opens. 1654 1655 Commissioner Crommie: Last question. One outcome of our Master Planning that's 1656 going on here is this notion of having more periods of time for free play on the fields; 1657 ultimate Frisbee, pickup games. We've always grappled with that on the Commission. 1658 How do you see this fitting into the brokering process? 1659 1660 Mr. Howard: The key there is probably the Policy around releases. I get more releases in 1661 a more timely fashion, especially around the parks. There's just more time for people to 1662 go out and play that we know about. The space might have been there in the past, but 1663 they didn't officially release it. There was no way for me to know that they weren't out in 1664 these individual parks. If someone called and said, "I need free space Tuesday to go play 1665 catch," I could find a field and say, "This is empty. Have fun." 1666 Approved Minutes 40 APPROVED 1667 Commissioner Crommie: That's really great. You think there might be some capacity 1668 there for that and that it comes from creating this line of communication. That's the kind 1669 of thing we're going to have to develop to make that concept integrate with you. Right 1670 now there's no real way someone goes online to figure this out. The online system is 1671 complicated, so I don't think some youth group is going to be able to navigate that. 1672 Thinking toward the future, maybe we'd try to create some interface for that even through 1673 webpages. 1674 1675 Mr. Howard. Yeah. That really is the next step to streamlining this Policy even further. 1676 The more the neighbors can go on and say, "There's an open slot. We can go play there," 1677 is great. Then people don't have to just say, "What do you have available?" They can 1678 say, "Tuesday at this time, I see this is available. We'd like to do that." We are looking 1679 at that, because that's an important factor. 1680 1681 Vice Chair Markevitch: Regarding the private schools, do they meet the residency 1682 criteria? If they don't, too bad. Is there a way to have proof of residency on these teams? 1683 1684 Mr. Howard: The majority of them don't reach the 51 percent. That's why it's easy to 1685 respond to that. I think I was bringing that up because it seems to be a growing issue. 1686 Every time they hear the Policy, it's like, "Who can we talk to to change that?" At some 1687 point it might be coming to you. 1688 1689 Chair Reckdahl: Do schools in Palo Alto pay tax in Palo Alto? 1690 1691 Vice Chair Markevitch: What was that? 1692 1693 Chair Reckdahl: Do schools who operate in Palo Alto pay taxes to the City? 1694 1695 Mr. de Geus: Do you mean the private schools? 1696 1697 Chair Reckdahl: Private schools, yeah. 1698 1699 Mr. de Geus: I assume they pay property taxes for their school. At least some portion 1700 goes to the City. 1701 1702 Vice Chair Markevitch: If they're renting space like Garland, that probably goes to the 1703 school district, because it's school property. They don't own it; they're renting directly to 1704 the school district. 1705 1706 Chair Reckdahl: The school district does not pay taxes on their ... 1707 1708 Approved Minutes 41 APPROVED Vice Chair Markevitch: I don’t have that answer. If they're in just a building and it's just 1709 a regular building, then they're probably paying taxes. 1710 1711 Chair Reckdahl: I'm just wondering. If someone is running a school in Palo Alto and 1712 paying taxes to Palo Alto, maybe we should consider that they would have some place in 1713 the pecking order. I would think they'd be higher priority than some Mountain View 1714 resident who wants to use it with no affiliation. 1715 1716 Mr. Howard: They do have a spot on the priority list and they would be above a 1717 nonresident. The problem is their demands are so high, because they're trying to run a 1718 league and there's just not that much beyond our top priority groups. 1719 1720 Chair Reckdahl: What is the biggest demand? The turf fields? The artificial turf. 1721 1722 Mr. Howard. Basically full-size soccer fields. Most of them are trying to run soccer 1723 teams. The newest is someone trying to run a baseball team at a high school level which 1724 we only have one field. Baylands baseball is the only one big enough, so they're out of 1725 luck. They already have a team, so I don't know what they're going to do. 1726 1727 Chair Reckdahl: When El Camino Park comes on, we'll get another full-size turf field. 1728 1729 Mr. Howard: Right. 1730 1731 Chair Reckdahl: At that point, do you think you'll have more than enough turf fields or is 1732 there still demand for artificial turf fields? 1733 1734 Mr. Howard: A lot of the users would probably trade in their grass for artificial turf, 1735 because they can play on it rain or shine. The demand for turf might continue to grow. If 1736 that were to happen, there would be more open grass slots. 1737 1738 Chair Reckdahl: For adults, what are the most popular times for those big turf fields? 1739 1740 Mr. Howard: Sunday mornings, 8:00 to 1:00 and evenings after 7:00. 1741 1742 Chair Reckdahl: How late do we go in the evenings? 1743 1744 Mr. Howard: 10:00. 1745 1746 Chair Reckdahl: 10:00. Is there any reason we couldn't go to 11:00, say over at Mayfield 1747 if there's no neighbors there? 1748 1749 Mr. Howard: That's a policy decision. 1750 Approved Minutes 42 APPROVED 1751 Chair Reckdahl: Who sets the hours? 1752 1753 Mr. de Geus: I think there's a City ordinance that says what time parks are closed. I can 1754 look into that. I'll confirm that. 1755 1756 Chair Reckdahl: If we opened up an 11:00 slot at Mayfield, would that be in demand? 1757 1758 Mr. de Geus: There are residents that see those lights across from El Camino. There's 1759 some housing there. I'll get the answer to what is the legal authority that says you can't 1760 go past 10:00 or is it an internal policy. I think it's in the City ordinances. I want to say 1761 it's 10:00 or 10:30. I'll find out. 1762 1763 Chair Reckdahl: How about pickup leagues? There's a lot of cell phone leagues where 1764 people just drive around, find an open field and they call. Do we have any conflict with 1765 those users and our fields? 1766 1767 Mr. Howard: Yeah. We get those phone calls. If a field is not being scheduled for any 1768 given amount of time, it ends up that there's some kind of cell phone league that shows 1769 up. Ultimately, I end up going out there on a Sunday to make contact and talk to them 1770 about what they can and cannot do. Jordan on Sundays is a big one. 1771 1772 Chair Reckdahl: The rule is that you can't have more than ten people, is it? 1773 1774 Mr. Howard: Can't have a group bigger than 24 or be pre-advertised. 1775 1776 Chair Reckdahl: If you had 16 people come in with a cell phone league, they're happy to 1777 plop down on any field and use it? 1778 1779 Mr. Howard: There'd be nothing against policy for them to do that. 1780 1781 Chair Reckdahl: That's it. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Thank you, 1782 Adam. I should note that I talked to someone who used the brokering, and they were 1783 quite impressed with you. They were quite happy with the whole situation. 1784 1785 Mr. de Geus: Thank you, Adam. Appreciate that. 1786 1787 5. Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates. 1788 1789 Chair Reckdahl: Any comments, updates from ad hocs? 1790 1791 Approved Minutes 43 APPROVED Commissioner Hetterly: I'll give a quite update on the dog parks. We had been waiting 1792 to coordinate a meeting with the Keys School. They use Hoover Park quite a bit. We 1793 haven't been able to get on their schedule. Daren is going ahead to set up the bigger 1794 public outreach meeting for the whole community. He's got a plan to contact all of the 1795 neighbors around Hoover Park and Greer Park as well as the stakeholders group. He's 1796 working with Claudia Keith in the public relations office to figure out the best way to 1797 disseminate the most notice of that meeting. As soon as we have a date, we'll let you all 1798 know when that is. 1799 1800 Commissioner Crommie: I didn't quite understand how the Keys School fits in. Can you 1801 explain that a little bit? 1802 1803 Commissioner Hetterly: We had wanted to consult with them as a stakeholder for that 1804 particular site, because we know the school uses the field at Hoover Park. Hoover was 1805 one of the options we were considering for a shared use. We had met previously with 1806 dog owners' group and the field users' groups. Keys School was the other immediate 1807 impacted user group that we wanted to consult with. 1808 1809 Commissioner Crommie: That brings up the question of how much do we work around a 1810 private school. I don't quite get why they're ... 1811 1812 Commissioner Hetterly: We weren't asking them what we should do about the policy. 1813 We were explaining what the options were and trying to understand what their concerns 1814 and issues might be. We haven't met with them. 1815 1816 Chair Reckdahl: The only thing I should note is that Deirdre and I went up to Byxbee 1817 this weekend. They've opened up that new spot that's been open a month or two. Now 1818 about three-quarters of Byxbee is open. The newer stuff doesn't have the wildflowers on 1819 it. Some of the wildflowers in the other areas are looking pretty long in the tooth with 1820 lack of rain. It's getting there. It's looking more like a park. I'm optimistic that next 1821 spring it'll be looking very nice. 1822 1823 V. COMMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 1824 1825 Rob de Geus: I had a couple that I wanted to share with the Commission. We had World 1826 Music Day over the weekend. I don't know if anyone attended. We were debriefing the 1827 event. The Palo Alto Recreation Foundation supports and helps put that on with our 1828 Police Department and City, because we shut down University. If you do have feedback 1829 or hear of something good, bad or ugly, it'd be great to know. We're in the sixth year of 1830 that now. The chili cook-off, another event coming up Saturday, July 4th. How many 1831 people are going to be judges? Eric, maybe. 1832 1833 Approved Minutes 44 APPROVED Council Member Filseth: (inaudible) 1834 1835 Mr. de Geus: You should come. It's really fun. If you are by chance here and it's last 1836 minute, just let me know and we'll make sure you can be a judge and have some fun that 1837 day. I mentioned the drought plans. Take a look at that information report that I already 1838 sent. It'll be very interesting to see how this year comes along. Phil Bobel, who's 1839 Assistant Director of Public Works, said this could be the worst drought in a 1,000 years. 1840 It's really serious in terms of the water restrictions. We'll be talking more about that I 1841 expect in the year ahead. Even with all of the work that Daren's been doing to cut back 1842 irrigation, we'll be checking it month to month to see if we're meeting the target that is 1843 expected. We may have to reduce further, and then there'll be further impacts on our 1844 parks and fields and people that use them. We'll be coming back on that topic. If you 1845 have questions, certainly call. Other big news is the Community Services budget was 1846 approved by the City Council. Thank you, Council Member Filseth, who sits on the 1847 Finance Committee. That's quite a slog for a lot of people including the Council and 1848 particularly the Finance Committee that takes a lot of time with the budget and considers 1849 the different requests and tradeoffs. Not an easy job by any stretch. For our department, 1850 at least we're not in budget reduction times. We've had many years of that. In fact, we 1851 were able to put some things into the budget that will help the department function much 1852 better in the future. The biggest of which is an additional position, a Superintendant of 1853 Recreation Services, very much needed. I talked to the Commission about this before, 1854 but that was ultimately approved. Also the Council was very interested in seeing more 1855 focus and resources towards special events and events that bring the community together. 1856 They added some additional funding to our contract dollars for events. That's exciting. 1857 We'll have to figure out how exactly we're going to spend that money. It'll be fun to 1858 work on that. We're likely to bring back the Black and White Ball and a couple of other 1859 things. Foothills Fire Management Plan, the Commission was very interested in that. 1860 Got a lot of support from Finance Committee and the Council on supporting the funding 1861 for that. 1862 1863 Chair Reckdahl: That memo is being distributed to Council? 1864 1865 Mr. de Geus: I'll have to check with Daren. Daren's the lead on the memo getting 1866 distributed. In any case, the funding was approved in the operating budget. 1867 1868 Chair Reckdahl: All three buckets? 1869 1870 Mr. de Geus: Correct. 1871 1872 Commissioner Lauing: We don't know if they got our memo and our recommendation? 1873 1874 Approved Minutes 45 APPROVED Mr. de Geus: I know that we verbally brought that along when we talked about it at 1875 Finance Committee. It didn't come up a lot. I think the Finance Committee and the 1876 Council had the same reaction that this Commission had, that we need to fund this and it's 1877 the right thing to do. I don't know if the memo actually got in their hands. Eric, do you 1878 know? 1879 1880 Council Member Filseth: (inaudible) I don't recall a lot of discussion. 1881 1882 Mr. de Geus: It may have been. There was a lot of memos that went to the Finance 1883 Committee. I suspect it was in one of those. I certainly hope it was. 1884 1885 Commissioner Lauing: It was just a lot of work if they didn't even read it. 1886 1887 Mr. de Geus: I don't know. I'll find out, make sure that it got there. If it didn't, we can 1888 forward it. The memo was not just about one year. It was about ... 1889 1890 Chair Reckdahl: A commitment. 1891 1892 Mr. de Geus: ... a commitment, ongoing. It's still relevant even if it didn't. We'll make 1893 sure if it didn't get there, it will. 1894 1895 Chair Reckdahl: The City has placeholders for the next year's budget? Like, the CIPs 1896 have this five-year outlook. The budget also has some placeholders so you can say, "I'm 1897 going to need this money ongoing"? 1898 1899 Mr. de Geus: The operating budget is an annual budget. Every year we go through it 1900 again, justify what we're doing and why we're doing it. Another addition I thought the 1901 Commission might be interested in was additional funding for Mitchell Park Community 1902 Center, specifically for teen programs for later evening hours for high school teens in 1903 particular to be there after 8:00 on Fridays and weekends. We didn't have the staffing 1904 capacity to be able to open the center for that. We got some money added for that. That's 1905 also very good. A lot of positive things included in the budget. Another topic of interest 1906 for the Council was Project Safety Net and the future of the collaborative for youth well-1907 being and suicide prevention. Probably a topic we should put on the agenda, because it's 1908 a complicated one. It's something the Commission has been interested in for a long time. 1909 We're positioned to go in a very positive direction with that community collaborative. 1910 Some additional funding was added to that effort by the Council. We can report back to 1911 you on that in the months ahead. That's all I have. 1912 1913 Chair Reckdahl: Anything new on the golf course? 1914 1915 Approved Minutes 46 APPROVED Mr. de Geus: I knew you were going to say that. I had it here on my list and I thought, 1916 "Should I mention it?" There isn't enough new news for it to be really news. We have in 1917 the budget that we're going to keep the golf course open to generate as much revenue as 1918 we can while we can. It's open until January, the first six months of the year. It seems 1919 like every couple of weeks we make a little bit of progress, but it's like step 74 of I don't 1920 know how many. It's just so slow and out of our hands, certainly out of my hands. It's a 1921 Public Works project at this point who are the lead on trying to get these permits. 1922 Community Services was more regarding the design of the course and working with the 1923 community through that process. Of course, we finished that long ago and are ready to 1924 start, but we can't start until these permits are in place. The Joint Powers Authority 1925 working on the creek project doesn't yet have their permits either. They do have their 1926 Water Board permit. That's one step. They're still waiting for their Army Corps of 1927 Engineers permit. Making progress, but it's slow. 1928 1929 Chair Reckdahl: Why is it slow? 1930 1931 Mr. de Geus: There are different opinions about that. Some are not thrilled about the 1932 creek project and the alignment of the new design. They think there may be a better 1933 alignment of where the levees will be in the design. The Joint Powers Authority has 1934 provided an abundance of evidence why it is the best plan and has repeatedly provided 1935 the evidence. That seems to continue to come back to slow things down. There's many 1936 regulatory agencies involved, the Army Corps, the Water Board, the Fish and Wildlife. 1937 With the Joint Powers Authority on the creek project, they also have the marine fisheries 1938 agency that needs to consult. It's just taking too long. 1939 1940 Chair Reckdahl: What's the status on the Comprehensive Plan? 1941 1942 Mr. de Geus: We've had this Our Palo Alto effort going on for over a year. It's 1943 intentional outreach to the community. A very successful summit occurred at Mitchell 1944 Park. Commissioner Hetterly was there. Who else did I see there? That's the latest thing 1945 that happened, which was a very positive event. I was there with Peter; we had a booth 1946 on the Master Plan to get additional feedback. It was an opportunity to talk to folks about 1947 what we're doing. There was probably about 350 people attending. The planning staff 1948 did a very nice job and the City Manager in putting the context of what the 1949 Comprehensive Plan is and why it's such an important plan. It was these dialog tables 1950 with residents talking to one another about the biggest of topics that face our community 1951 like traffic and development and other things. That was the latest. I'm not sure if we've 1952 had a summary of the summit come out yet. It was pretty recent, within the last month. 1953 1954 Chair Reckdahl: Isn't there an ad hoc in here? 1955 1956 Mr. de Geus: Following that? 1957 Approved Minutes 47 APPROVED 1958 Chair Reckdahl: Yeah. Don't we have a Comprehensive Plan ... 1959 1960 Commissioner Hetterly: We used to for the Natural Environment Element and the 1961 Community Services.. 1962 1963 Chair Reckdahl: We have disbanded that? 1964 1965 Commissioner Hetterly: We did that. Today was the Public Art Commission's Art Boot 1966 Camp for staff and Commissions and Board Members. Stacey and I were both there as 1967 well as Daren Anderson and Peter Jensen. I wanted to thank them for participating. For 1968 those of you who didn't participate, if you have thoughts or ideas about public art in Palo 1969 Alto, where you'd like to see it, what kinds of partnerships you think would be useful or 1970 productive, what role public art ought to play in the work that we do, please do contact 1971 Elise DeMarzo directly. She's the Director of the Public Art Program. They are trying to 1972 gather as much input as they can from as many different perspectives as they can. They 1973 would surely appreciate it. Thanks. 1974 1975 VI. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR JULY 28, 2015 MEETING 1976 1977 Chair Reckdahl: Agenda items for next month. I thought John Aiken was going to be 1978 here this month. 1979 1980 Rob de Geus: The Junior Museum and Zoo would very much like to come back to the 1981 Commission in July for further discussion about their plans and fundraising and how 1982 that's going. We've several times reiterated the concerns that the Commission has had 1983 about the park and the impact to Rinconada Park related to the zoo. They're working 1984 very hard on trying to think through that feedback and if there are alternatives that would 1985 have less of an impact. They're struggling with that. I can tell you that they're thinking 1986 very hard about it and want to come back with that thinking to this Commission. If we 1987 meet in July and it sounds like we are, which is good because there's a lot to do, that 1988 would be something to put on the agenda. Plus the Parks Master Plan, of course. 1989 1990 Chair Reckdahl: What is their timeline, when do they want to start construction? 1991 1992 Mr. de Geus: They have to raise some $30 million. They've raised almost $20 million, I 1993 think. That is not raised really, but pledged. If the City and a variety of folks, mainly the 1994 City and City Council, approve the project. There's a lot of support behind it. That's 1995 certainly the case. It would be at least two years out before they would start building. 1996 1997 Chair Reckdahl: We do have some time. 1998 1999 Approved Minutes 48 APPROVED Mr. de Geus: Yeah. 2000 2001 Commissioner Crommie: Do you think that's a little too soon? Wasn't he just speaking 2002 to us a couple of months ago? If he's coming, I'd rather have him speak on the Lucy 2003 Evans Interpretive Center CIP for the signs. 2004 2005 Mr. de Geus: We might be able to do both if he's here for the ... 2006 2007 Commissioner Crommie: He also wears that hat. We haven't heard him speak on that 2008 yet. We have heard him speak on the Junior Museum. 2009 2010 Mr. de Geus: We could have him come back and talk about the Lucy Evans Center and 2011 the signage. I'm not sure how much progress has been made on it, so I'll check with him 2012 on that. 2013 2014 Commissioner Crommie: He told Commissioner Ashlund and I in an ad hoc committee 2015 with him, we have a Lucy Evans Interpretive Center ad hoc. He said the CIP didn't have 2016 enough money to properly do the signs. He wanted to talk to us about integrating some 2017 kind of larger plan for the Baylands Open Space. Some kind of integrated signage, which 2018 was a very interesting concept especially with all the work going on at Byxbee Park 2019 where we need signs. That's a thought that John Aiken had, that maybe we should look at 2020 that whole area educationally. 2021 2022 Mr. de Geus: Ultimately that's absolutely the right way to do it. We did in the capital 2023 budget get approved a Comprehensive Conservation Plan for the Baylands which 2024 includes the new Byxbee Park. I think it's 2017 when we begin that. Plus, we need to get 2025 this Master Plan done, and there's that work. That would be the right way to do it. It's all 2026 connected; the signage and interpretive programs are connected in that way. We'll see if 2027 John has new information ready to share. The reason that the Junior Museum and Zoo 2028 project comes back, certainly the Friends of the Junior Museum is anxious to move this 2029 forward. Concurrently staff and the Friends of the Junior Museum are working on a 2030 potential governance agreement of the new building if they are able to raise the money 2031 and the Council wants to go forward with this partnership. We are hoping to get back to 2032 Council by the end of the calendar year on those negotiations. They're also in the process 2033 of meeting with the Planning Commission and doing some study sessions with them. 2034 They heard the concerns of this Commission, so they're anxious to get back to the table 2035 on your concerns. They don't want to wait too long. 2036 2037 Chair Reckdahl: For next month, we have the Junior Zoo and Museum and Master Plan. 2038 2039 Commissioner Knopper: May I interrupt? Were we going to discuss whether we are 2040 having a July meeting? We talked about that, and Rob's mentioned it a few times. 2041 Approved Minutes 49 APPROVED 2042 Mr. de Geus: Our preference on the staff side is that we do. If anything, August is a little 2043 lighter in terms of the need to move along with the Parks Master Plan. The criteria 2044 discussion is very important, particularly if we can get to the City Council by the end of 2045 August. If we were to wait until August to have that conversation, it would be right there 2046 when we have the study session, too late to have the feedback incorporated. We should 2047 meet in July if there's enough Commissioners here and willing. 2048 2049 Commissioner Crommie: Should we have a show of hands at this point on how many 2050 people will be here? 2051 2052 Mr. de Geus: July 28th. 2053 2054 Chair Reckdahl: Let's close this by email, so we can check with our spouses and make 2055 sure that we don't commit for something that we can't. We'll pencil it in, and see if we 2056 will have a sufficient turnout. If not, we can ... 2057 2058 Mr. de Geus: We're open to, if it doesn't work, changing the date. It doesn't have to be 2059 on the fourth Tuesday. Maybe we can send something out to see who's available on the 2060 28th. If there's enough, we'll go with that. If not, we can look at some other dates. That 2061 still gives us a chance to talk about the Parks Master Plan in particular before we would 2062 go to Council. 2063 2064 Commissioner Crommie: A backup could be to meet the first week of August and the 2065 last week of August as well, if we don't get a quorum. 2066 2067 Chair Reckdahl: You also sent out the Cost of Services Study. There's some meat there 2068 that I would like to talk about. It doesn't have to be this month or next month. I don't 2069 think it's urgent; it's been sitting on the shelf for quite a while. There are some issues I 2070 would like to talk about. Is there other consensus for bringing that back sometime? 2071 2072 Commissioner Crommie: I would second that. I read the study, and it'd be really good to 2073 come to us. 2074 2075 Commissioner Hetterly: I always like to talk about the Cost of Services Study. 2076 2077 Chair Reckdahl: Some of it is beyond the cost of services. I'm still concerned about the 2078 vacancy rate in our rental property and are we pricing it properly and should we be off 2079 hours cutting price to get more people in and do our rental facilities meet the needs, 2080 whether it be video conferencing or whatever the business community would want or the 2081 potential renters would want. There's a lot of meat to chew on there. I would rather put it 2082 off and get a thoughtful presentation, than just rehash what we went through last time. 2083 Approved Minutes 50 APPROVED 2084 Mr. de Geus: We can do that. We can have a member of the Office of Management and 2085 Budget come who led that report. In that report, it talks about the fee=based cost of 2086 services policy, I'm not sure that's exactly what it's called, for Community Services, 2087 which exists and dovetails with what the City adopted as a policy. It calls that out 2088 specifically and says that it ought to be reviewed to make sure that it's still relevant. 2089 That's very specific to Community Services and Recreation Services. That'll come to the 2090 Commission in a very direct way for you to look at that policy. I can send that out. Was 2091 it included? I'll check. If I didn't include it in the last email, I'll send it along. 2092 2093 Chair Reckdahl: I don't think we should have that for next month, but we should put that 2094 on the medium-term items to work towards. 2095 2096 Commissioner Hetterly: Certainly before we make any final cut at the Master Plan. 2097 2098 Chair Reckdahl: For next month we have the Junior Museum, and we have the Master 2099 Plan. Is there anything else? 2100 2101 Commissioner Crommie: Did you add on Byxbee for that? I mean the Lucy Evans 2102 Interpretive Center, Byxbee Park signage. 2103 2104 Mr. de Geus: It might be helpful to have a report. I'll ask John if there's something to 2105 report. There's three different CIPs related to that center. Maybe we talk about the status 2106 of all those. Daren talked a little bit about them tonight. 2107 2108 Commissioner Crommie: I'm not sure we need to go over the status of all three of them. 2109 It's more the third one. 2110 2111 Mr. de Geus: The signage, the $56,000? 2112 2113 Commissioner Crommie: That's the one that's not underway yet. 2114 2115 Mr. de Geus: Right. 2116 2117 Commissioner Crommie: The other ones are done deals. Commissioner Ashlund and I 2118 weighed in on them, but they're already out to bid. They're already in process. The other 2119 one is where we could weigh in a lot. 2120 2121 VII. ADJOURNMENT 2122 2123 Meeting adjourned on motion by Commissioner Hetterly and second by Commissioner 2124 Lauing at 9:24 p.m.2125 Approved Minutes 51