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Home My WebLink About2015-10-27 Parks & Recreation Summary MinutesAPPROVED 1 2 3 4 MINUTES 5 PARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION 6 REGULAR MEETING 7 October 27, 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: Eric Filseth 16 Staff Present: Daren Anderson, Catherine Bourquin, Rob de Geus, Peter Jensen 17 I. ROLL CALL CONDUCTED BY: Catherine Bourquin 18 19 II. AGENDA CHANGES, REQUESTS, and DELETIONS: 20 21 Chair Reckdahl: Does anyone have anything? Then we'll move on. 22 23 III. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS: 24 25 Chair Reckdahl: At this time, anyone from the public can talk on any subject that's not 26 on the agenda. I have some speaker cards, but all of them are on the agenda. We will 27 skip over and move on to new business. 28 29 IV. BUSINESS: 30 31 1. Approval of Draft Minutes from the Special Meeting of September 29, 2015. 32 33 Approval of the draft September 29, 2015 Minutes was moved by Commissioner Hetterly 34 and seconded by Commissioner Ashlund. Passed 6-0, Markevitch abstaining 35 36 Approved Minutes 1 APPROVED 2. Review of the Baylands Interpretive Center Improvements and Boardwalk 37 Feasibility Study. 38 39 Chair Reckdahl: Daren is going to be talking. No, I'm sorry. 40 41 Daren Anderson: Hung Nguyen. I'll introduce him if you'd like. 42 43 Chair Reckdahl: Please do. 44 45 Mr. Anderson: This is Hung Nguyen from Public Works Engineering. He'll introduce 46 the consultant team and the other staff working on this topic. 47 48 Hung Nguyen: Good evening, Commissioner. My name is Hung Nguyen. I'm with the 49 Public Works Engineering Division. Tonight we have two wonderful project that we 50 bring in front of you. We have two wonderful design team. FOG Studio is going to 51 present the Lucy Evans Baylands Interpretive Center ... 52 53 Female: Could you speak up a little please? 54 55 Mr. Nguyen: ... and Biggs Cardosa will present the Baylands Boardwalk feasibility 56 study. We not asking for action from the Commission; however, we much appreciate if 57 you can provide any comment or input on the project that we present in front of you 58 tonight, so we can (inaudible) for our design. We will return to the Commission late this 59 year or maybe early next year for the PIO approval for the Baylands Interpretive Center. 60 We will return to you in the winter of 2015 for the final feasibility design study for the 61 Baylands Boardwalk. With that, I would like to introduce Tiffany Redding from FOG 62 Studio. They'll present to you about the Baylands Interpretive Center. 63 64 Tiffany Redding: My name is Tiffany Redding. This is my business partner, Brandon 65 Marshall. We have an architectural firm called FOG Studio. We were commissioned by 66 the City to shepherd the renovation of the Baylands Interpretive Center. Just as an 67 immediate comment, we are not looking to change the character of the building. We are 68 doing a renovation of the exterior, basically replacing all the deteriorated elements which 69 have been in the weather for 45 years and are suffering from it. Another part of the scope 70 is to renovate the bathrooms, reconfigure them to meet current ADA and building codes. 71 That is pretty much the extent of our scope of work. We're not doing an entire remodel to 72 the interior. That's not in this sort of fiscal allotment. 73 74 Brandon Marshall: Part of this effort is looking at the barn swallows that currently 75 occupy a portion of the building, what they're doing in the building and how that can be 76 addressed without ... 77 78 Approved Minutes 2 APPROVED Ms. Redding: Without eliminating them. 79 80 Mr. Marshall: Eliminating them or a detriment to their environment. We're looking at 81 solutions, and we present some of those today. 82 83 Ms. Redding: Let's see. This little diagram kind of covers where the areas of concern 84 are, that we are going to address. The fascia which is the sort of trim that runs around the 85 edge of the roof is badly deteriorated, and we are going to address that. We're looking 86 again at the bird habitat protection, trying to isolate and control where those birds nest, so 87 that they don't continue to make a total mess on the building. We also have to upgrade 88 the electrical system, the panel and the lights. We are going to replace the sprinkler 89 heads; it's due time. As I said, upgrade the restrooms. Refinish the floors, but not do 90 anything else to the interior on the inside. Replace the railings; they don't currently meet 91 code almost everywhere. Replace the decking which is popping up all over the place 92 outside that connects to the Boardwalk which is not in our scope of work. Anthony is 93 going to talk about that at the end of this presentation, the Boardwalk that goes out into 94 the marsh. As part of our scope, our structural engineer came out and did a thorough 95 assessment of the underdeck and structural condition under the deck as well as the sort of 96 roof structure, and did a full report on that with a few recommendations. It's in good 97 shape and has a few sort of remedial things that we're going to attend to in the scope of 98 work, but should last quite a long time if we get the codings and repairs done now. We're 99 also recommending some repairs to the piping and hangers and stuff under the deck to 100 make sure they don't fall off. 101 102 Mr. Marshall: This presentation is actually what we presented to the community maybe 103 about a month ago. We're going to try and go through it a little quicker. Please interrupt 104 us if you have any questions. This is the floor plan as it currently exists. You see the 105 restrooms are in the lower right-hand corner. Most of the cost and the focus of this 106 project is upgrading that so that they're accessible to all visitors. 107 108 Ms. Redding: This is just a diagram showing the main areas of concern on the exterior, 109 what we need to focus on. Just a colored diagram to help people understand. Just some 110 shots of the restrooms as they currently—unfortunately the finishes are in good shapes, 111 but they conflict with code all over the place. We're trying to remove and retain for 112 reinstallation where we can. Especially, some of the existing interior wood finishes are 113 very nice. 114 115 Mr. Marshall: The challenges of the old floor plan. It's hexagonal which doesn't jive 116 with current building codes. There are wood columns everywhere, where you don't want 117 them. That's what we're looking at. 118 119 Ms. Redding: And obtuse angles and acute ones. 120 Approved Minutes 3 APPROVED 121 Chair Reckdahl: Does that mean you have to remove things? 122 123 Ms. Redding: The structure won't be removed but all the—this diagram shows you the 124 current accepted proposal. We went through quite a number of different configurations 125 and arrived at this. I believe that it has met with some approval. We're proposing a lot 126 more opportunities for hand washing, both for adults at ADA height and for kids, with 127 these two sort of trough sinks at Label D, in addition to two fully compliant single-128 occupant restrooms up in the upper right. Then, a youth-height extra sort of toilet room 129 and a drinking fountain that meets code. There is one there, but it doesn't currently meet 130 code. 131 132 Mr. Marshall: The challenge we found was that a multi-occupant restroom was pretty 133 difficult to get to work at a code level, which is what they had with three fixtures in each. 134 The compromise was producing single-occupant rooms that included every code 135 allowance, including grab bars and baby-changing stations and that sort of thing. As 136 Tiffany described, a communal sink so that in particular when kids and classrooms are 137 there, there's a little bit more of an efficiency moving people along as opposed to getting 138 stuck in a room. 139 140 Ms. Redding: The single-occupant restrooms also have a lavatory inside next to the 141 toilet, you can see labeled B inside. There are also four extra places for groups of kids to 142 get in there and get cleaned up after they've been out in the Bay or doing whatever they're 143 doing out there. Some early concept ideas about what to do with the interior finishes, as I 144 mentioned. Up in the right corner, there's some interesting diagonal wood finish that we 145 hope to retain and showcase as kind of part of the history and character of this building. 146 A lot of it will require tile just for health and building codes. There's sort of like a basic 147 tile, and then we're proposing maybe behind the sink maybe take a cue from the 148 pickleweed and some of the beautiful vistas out there and turn it into an abstract mosaic 149 maybe, which is what you're looking at in that upper left-hand corner. The fixtures. 150 Another reason for doing this remodel is that there are now water-saving requirements, so 151 you have to have much more efficient water fixtures throughout. Everything we're doing 152 is quite modern. 153 154 Mr. Marshall: The lighting will be LED, high efficient water, low usage, complying with 155 CALGreen standards. 156 157 Ms. Redding: And Title 24, of course, energy requirements. 158 159 Mr. Marshall: Pretty much covered the lighting. The exterior lighting for the most part, 160 there's some that's been replaced, but a lot of the surface-mounted lighting just is in 161 disrepair and is, as we mentioned, low efficiency. What we're proposing is to replace it 162 Approved Minutes 4 APPROVED with similar lights that are better performing and have a consistent look throughout the 163 building. 164 165 Ms. Redding: You can see in these photos the condition that sun, wind, rain and birds 166 have taken their toll on both the siding and the decking all around the building. Some 167 places a lot more than others. The west-facing siding is really, really kind of cracked and 168 peeling. We propose to replace it in-kind, detail it very carefully. These images show 169 some different kinds of wood finishes that we spoke about with the public at our last 170 meeting. The direction from the public at that time was they're not interested in 171 something like on the upper right that has a lot of kind of character and wood. They want 172 something a little more muted and monochromatic. 173 174 Mr. Marshall: The building right now fits in well with the wetlands. I think that was the 175 direction, to keep a building that has that character. 176 177 Ms. Redding: We'll do basically a stain that makes it look kind of like the way it does 178 but in a lot better shape. Some more shots of the disrepair. 179 180 Mr. Marshall: Tiffany mentioned the railing. There are some areas in the railings where 181 the supports are larger than the code allows for fall protection. 182 183 Ms. Redding: The gaps between the (crosstalk). 184 185 Mr. Marshall: There are also some issues with how high the rail is off of the deck. The 186 current proposal is to replace the railing with a wood railing. We'll get into a little bit of 187 the ideas for that in a moment. 188 189 Ms. Redding: We also want to make sure that we accommodate. There's an interpretive 190 graphics effort that is not part of our scope, but we want to make sure that the railing that 191 we design will accommodate that very neatly when it comes along. We're trying to 192 future-proof the railing design. 193 194 Mr. Marshall: One of the potential changes would be adding the ability for people of 195 lower stature, like a child, to be able to see through the railing. One of the ideas the team 196 came up with was either glazing or a plastic vision panel that could actually work in 197 conjunction with interpretive graphics that Tiffany is mentioning. 198 199 Ms. Redding: This would be here and there. This would not be the whole railing. We're 200 talking about maybe a section or a few sections that will allow people ... 201 202 Mr. Marshall: Purposefully placed. 203 204 Approved Minutes 5 APPROVED Ms. Redding: ... to look into the marsh. 205 206 Mr. Marshall: That's something we're studying and looking at the pluses and minuses of 207 that. 208 209 Chair Reckdahl: Do you have to worry about bird strikes on that? 210 211 Mr. Marshall: Yes. And maintenance. We're looking at how easily they can be cleaned, 212 because everything gets dirty out there. 213 214 Chair Reckdahl: At the last meeting, someone mentioned putting a section of that on the 215 floor, and you said there was a possibility but we never addressed it later. 216 217 Ms. Redding: Not transparent, but we'll get to the idea of opening the deck. 218 219 Mr. Marshall: An opening in the deck. 220 221 Ms. Redding: It's coming up here. Having to do with the swallows actually. 222 223 Mr. Marshall: These are just quick ... 224 225 Chair Reckdahl: Oh, I see what you're talking about. 226 227 Mr. Marshall: ... quickly highlighting some of the subtle repairs to the structure just to 228 make sure this building lasts another 40 or 50-plus years. It's, as Tiffany mentioned, in 229 very good shape. 230 231 Ms. Redding: We get to the swallows which are the primary occupants, by the way, of 232 this building. Everyone loves them. They do a lot of damage and so how do we guide 233 their nesting habits. I think John is going to speak to the—hi. 234 235 John Aiken: John Aiken, Community Services Senior Project Manager. I oversee 236 interpretation in the open space preserves for kids. I'm here mostly because my 237 background is actually in ornithology and bird conservation. It's out of the architect's 238 scope of work to do the research to figure out what the best treatment for the swallows 239 were. I reached out to my colleagues and we came up with some options. Here are the 240 issues. The swallows are nesting on the building. It's a great site for their colonies. 241 There are two species of swallows, the barn swallows that were already mentioned and 242 then cliff swallows are the ones that are overhead. Let's go to the next slide. It's the acid 243 in their droppings that's causing the wood to deteriorate. If you look at the drawing on 244 the right-hand side, their droppings drop at a trajectory that, if they're nesting close to the 245 walls, they hit the walls. If they're further out from the walls, they hit benches or they hit 246 Approved Minutes 6 APPROVED the walkways. They seem to prefer to nest in the areas where there is a structural 247 member in the soffit because they can fit their nests in those areas ideally. If we go to the 248 next slide; there we go. We mapped out where their preferred nesting areas are. The 249 orange areas are where the swallows seem to prefer to nest and where—correct me if I'm 250 wrong—but where we've marked in blue is all of the soffit areas that have those structural 251 members. The plan would be to actually seal off those structural members so that we can 252 control where the birds nest throughout the building. 253 254 Ms. Redding: Basically block them off with what we call a soffit board. In other words, 255 instead of having all those hundreds and hundreds of cavities, something smooth that 256 they're much less likely to nest upon or within. Does it show up? I'm not sure if the 257 soffit board is in there anymore. Basically the soffit board would match the siding of the 258 building and be colored the same. 259 260 Mr. Aiken: Let's go to the next slide. Besides sort of controlling where the nest colonies 261 occur, we've also looked at opening up areas of decking so that the droppings can 262 actually drop through. That has a double benefit of allowing kids to see down into the 263 marsh and look under the building and notice that you're on piers. That actually, I think, 264 might be an interesting aspect. It does restrict circulation on the deck a little bit, and so 265 it's problematic there. We wanted to bring this forward both to the community and to the 266 Commission for their input. Next. Our plan, we've got a couple of options here. Section 267 A and Section B show where we would attach—once we block the swallows from nesting 268 under the soffit areas, we're actually going to attach swallow boxes. They're not really 269 nest boxes in the traditional sense; they're actually shelves that have been designed and 270 used for swallow mitigation, where the swallows can nest. We can place those in 271 different parts of the building depending upon where the problem is and where the 272 swallows want to nest. They're looking for a particular sort of microclimate, and we're 273 going to put those in that microclimate for them to nest. We're going to try and position 274 them out of harm's way, so to speak, and where we can kind of manage the cleanliness 275 and the long-term deterioration of the building that they're causing. Is that my last slide? 276 Yes, it is. 277 278 Biggs Cardosa: Now I'll talk on the Boardwalk portion of the project. We're actually not 279 nearly as far along as the Interpretive Center. Our scope of work at this point has been 280 for a feasibility study, basically looking at the existing constraints, the existing structure 281 condition, and then three primary options for what we can do with the project. Again, 282 our three options that we're looking at on the Boardwalk as part of our scope of work for 283 the City is to look at what we call repair of the project. This would be a very short-term 284 repair. The existing structure is closed to the public currently. There's been a lot of 285 public interest in getting that open as soon as possible. The repair option would be do 286 some minimal repairs, open the structure or a portion of the structure up to the public 287 while more detailed design and either rehab or replacement options are considered. We 288 Approved Minutes 7 APPROVED also looked at the feasibility of rehabilitating the existing structure. We looked at options 289 for replacement of the existing structure. Our structural was complete; we had a team of 290 structural engineers out on the site for two days. They looked at each and every one of 291 the supports underneath. They looked at all of the members on top and did a general 292 assessment of the total structure. In general, we assessed the structure to be in serious 293 condition for the superstructure—that's basically the walking surface and the hand rail 294 elements—and also for the substructure. That would be your supports and your girders 295 and beams. The overall assessment was serious, but it actually varies quite significantly 296 over the length of the structure. The portion closest to the Interpretive Center, roughly 297 200 feet or so, is in actually fairly satisfactory or good condition. The central portion of 298 the structure, roughly 200 to 600 feet out, is in actually quite poor condition. There's 299 several elements that have failed. Several of the posts have actually deteriorated and 300 broken off. That portion is in serious condition or has already failed, which is why the 301 structure is currently closed to the public. As you get out towards the Bay, the final 302 overlook area is actually in decent shape again. Also while we looked at the structure, we 303 also had our team of subconsultants out there. We had environmental subconsultants, 304 biologists, geotechs, hydrologists. We also had architects looking at the access and ADA 305 compliance issues. Environmentally we are dealing primarily with three species out 306 there. We have the Ridgeway rail; we have the marsh harvest mouse; and we also have 307 the swallows that we've already spoken on. Those three species are in plenty out in this 308 general area. They actually have quite significant constraints on work windows and on 309 our ability to work in and around the marsh. We'll have to significantly restrict any 310 operations by contractors. Subsurface-wise or geotechnically, we're out in what we call 311 Bay muds. They're a very soft material; they're still settling over time. The whole 312 structure will settle with the Bay muds, because they're fairly deep and the foundations 313 are shallow. They'll over the course of time settle. We will need a structure that's fairly 314 flexible and can work with that condition over time. The soils out there are also quite 315 corrosive. That salt environment has done a lot of damage to the existing timbers out 316 there, and existing metal components are also deteriorating. Any of our solutions will 317 have to address those conditions. Hydrologically we've got—the marsh is subject to the 318 normal tide flows. They go up roughly about 4 feet and down about 3 1/2 feet over a 319 normal cycle. We also have the occasional king tide where you have a very significant 320 tide that may coincide with some storm conditions. Those can go up as high as 6-8 feet. 321 During those kind tides, we actually have recorded flooding of portions of the structure 322 predominantly in those low-lying areas. In those areas where the structure has failed, 323 there's been some sagging, and they're a little bit lower. Those areas tend to flood first. 324 Lastly, the project wants to look at the condition of sea level rise. The experts in the field 325 have predicted that the sea level is going to rise over the next so many years. There's 326 kind of a graduated scale of what they've projected, so we want to design a structure or 327 rehabilitate the structure that can work with those projections and accommodate sea level 328 rise, so we can keep the facility open year-round as much as possible. The last issue we 329 looked at was access and ADA compliance. The existing structure has numerous 330 Approved Minutes 8 APPROVED challenges associated with ADA issues. We have the same issues with our railing as the 331 nature center. There's things that need to be done there to tighten that up. Due to some 332 of the structural damage, there's been a lot of settlement and warping of the walkway. It's 333 become uneven. Each one of those has a corresponding compliance component to it, so 334 there will be a lot of work required to basically level out the walkway, smooth out the 335 walkway so you don't have tripping hazards. Maintaining slopes. The existing slopes—336 the structure comes from the nature center. It's higher than the Boardwalk by about 3 337 feet. There's a ramp down; the slope of that ramp is higher or steeper than current ADA 338 compliance. The handrails along there aren't quite long enough for current code. 339 Likewise, when you get to the end, to that last observation deck you see in the photo, the 340 structure rises up again and, again those ramps and those handrails exceed current 341 criteria. For all of our options, we're basically looking at how we can best accommodate 342 those. Our first mandate from the City was to look at the repair option. I mentioned 343 earlier this was actually quite popular with the public at the community meeting. Based 344 on the structural assessment that we did, we are proposing to do minimal repairs to open 345 the nature center up to the first overlook platform. About 200 feet away from the nature 346 center, there's a little platform that sticks out. There's a little bench. We would be able to 347 open the structure up to that location with minimal repairs. In order to meet some of the 348 environmental criteria, all those repairs would basically be minimal in nature, can be 349 done from the existing Boardwalk. Any substructure work, we'd pull up planks and do 350 the work from the platform, staying out of the marsh area. That'll allow us to use existing 351 maintenance procedures that the City's allowed to maintain the structure; we can fall 352 under those criteria. 353 354 Mr. Anderson: If I can interject just quickly. Daren Anderson, Open Space, Parks and 355 Golf. Staff went ahead and made those repairs. As of this morning, that first 200 feet of 356 section of Boardwalk is now open to the public. 357 358 Biggs Cardosa: We can move right on. Don't need to belabor that one. We also looked 359 at rehabilitation options. Given the existing structure's condition, rehabilitation would 360 require significant level of effort, based on the existing damage and the existing number 361 of things that would need to be corrected to meet the various criteria. Looking at ADA 362 compliance—actually maybe back up. Option 1 is basically rehabilitate the structure in 363 its current place, in its current configuration. We'd use some temporary screw anchors. 364 Basically you screw these into the ground, and we'd use them as a platform or a jacking 365 platform to tweak the structure back into level and get it to the elevation that we want it 366 to be at. You basically lock off the structure in this location, remove those screws and 367 move on to the next segment, and kind of work your way down. ADA compliance 368 issues. It'll be difficult to meet current standards without significant overhaul. Getting 369 some of those slope issues resolved would be a challenge. We would be able to take care 370 of leveling the deck, removing tripping hazards. We'd also look to replace the railing, so 371 Approved Minutes 9 APPROVED we could take care of those issues. We still have some challenges with the slopes and 372 things. That'll be a little bit harder to meet. 373 374 Chair Reckdahl: What would be the advantage of this? The cost and the duration is 375 about the same as full replacement. 376 377 Biggs Cardosa: Our early looks, the costs were not significantly lower. We're still 378 refining those numbers for the City. In our mind, the only advantage would be really if 379 the public or the City wants to maintain that look and feel of the structure. Both the 380 rehab options have challenges. They actually have a lower design life; we're estimating 381 25-50 years. The newer elements you put in will last longer, but you are still dealing 382 with elements that have been existing out there for some time, so it's going to have lower 383 overall design life. Again, I think the rehab options have fallen behind the replacement 384 options. I'll just kind of breeze through them briefly. The second option is slightly 385 different. Here we would be putting in some new vertical supports outboard of the 386 existing. One of the challenges from the existing structure is when the tides come in and 387 out, a natural channel had formed underneath the Boardwalk. The Boardwalk blocks the 388 sun from hitting everywhere underneath. The pickleweed doesn't grown underneath, so it 389 made a natural channel for the water to come in and out. That would erode the soil in and 390 out of there, and it exposed more and more of the substructure. Those are the areas that 391 really deteriorated. By putting these new anchors outboard, we could get them out into 392 the pickleweed, where the pickleweed's going to stay. We feel we get a little bit better 393 overall long-term design life out of it. Again, we still have similar challenges to Option 394 1. It's going to have reduced design life, because we are reusing some of the existing 395 elements, can't really accommodate sea level rise very well, and construction costs are 396 going to be high and maintenance costs would continue to be high. The more preferred 397 options are the replacement options. Replace Option 1, in general, sort of mimics the 398 Rehab Option 2 I just described. We're going to have outboard vertical supports. We can 399 either use a timber post option as you can see on the left side of the sketch, or you can use 400 a screw anchor on the right. A screw anchor is basically like a big screw head on the 401 bottom. They actually get screwed into place. They act like a pile, so they take the 402 vertical support, and they'll anchor quite well into the soil out there. For both the timber 403 and the steel screw anchors, when we get into the final design phase, we have advised the 404 City that we want to bring onboard a corrosion specialist and kind of give some advice on 405 which is going to give the best long-term performance for the City. For this option, the 406 superstructure has a similar style as the existing with the walkways consisting of timber 407 planks that run longitudinally in the direction of travel. This system could easily 408 accommodate sea level rise. We estimate a design life of 50-75 years. Moderate 409 construction costs. We expect maintenance costs to be less than the existing, because 410 we've got newer elements in there. Construction ideally would take one year. Because of 411 our constraints to work around the existing wildlife out there, we are restricted. Typically 412 from February to August is their nesting seasons. Depending on how quickly we can 413 Approved Minutes 10 APPROVED mobilize, weather conditions during the winter season, we're hopeful we can get that in in 414 one year, but want to plan for two at this early stage of the game. The second option is 415 fairly similar to the first, except we've changed the walkway portion. Instead of those 416 long timber deck planks, we're going to go with a transverse timber boards. This is more 417 traditional of what you see on a lot of the prefabricated steel bridges around the area, 418 these small timber boards. One of the advantages of that is you can look at using 419 engineered wood that may have a longer design life out there. They're smaller elements; 420 they're easier to discretely replace if issues happen in the future. You get roughly the 421 same aesthetic, and you have basically the same benefits as the other options. Those are 422 basically the concepts that we're working on. We're at the point of wrapping up the 423 feasibility study for the City, and then they'll be able to make their decisions as to how 424 they want to move forward with the design project. 425 426 Mr. Nguyen: At this point for the Interpretive Center, we plan to go the ARB for review 427 in December 2015 and return to PRC for the PIO approval next January, and then 428 complete the Interpretive Center 100 percent design by the spring of 2016. We hope to 429 obtain the permit with the project and have construction start in 2016. That's depending 430 on the permit approval. For the Boardwalk, we hope to complete the draft feasibility in 431 the fall/winter of 2015 and return to PRC for the final recommendation in the winter of 432 2015. We hope to go to Council early next year and seek their guidance on how to 433 proceed with design on the Boardwalk. 434 435 Chair Reckdahl: Very good. We'll move on to public comment here. First is Shani 436 Kleinhaus. You have two minutes. 437 438 Shani Kleinhaus: Thank you. I'm Shani Kleinhaus with the Santa Clara Valley Audubon 439 Society. I'm glad to see this project moving forward, both the Interpretive Center and the 440 Boardwalk. It's very nice that you're making an effort to keep the swallows' nesting 441 there. I have one comment about any kind of transparent glass or Plexiglas anywhere 442 should be proofed for birds. That means probably fritting which is they put these ceramic 443 lines in the glass. It's almost invisible; you can see through it. A lot of buildings are 444 doing it right now. If anybody wants to see an example, Intuit is building a new building, 445 and they have an example wall. Facebook put it on the entire campus. I don't think it's a 446 huge investment, but it's important to have that. I think that's all for this one. Thank you. 447 448 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. Our next speaker is Herb Borock. Herb, you have two 449 minutes. 450 451 Herb Borock: Chair Reckdahl and Commissioners. Attachment C indicates general 452 agreement that all exterior colors should match the more earthy color tones of the 453 Baylands. You may have noticed on the slide that was displayed (inaudible) that that's 454 not the case in that slide. I would feel that that first slide that was shown should show the 455 Approved Minutes 11 APPROVED color rendering that is being recommended for the Interpretive Center. In terms of the 456 various processes and procedures and the order in which they're done, I would hope 457 that—as I understand it, it says an ARB review. Does that mean that they are making a 458 decision or actually recommending a decision to the Director of Planning and 459 Community Environment for the project? If so, I would have preferred that you would be 460 making a recommendation to them rather than to staff. All projects should have some 461 kind of environmental section in the staff report even if it's just to say that it's exempt 462 from the California Environmental Quality Act. In terms of the Park Improvement 463 Ordinance, if one is needed for one of these projects, then I believe it would be needed 464 for both. If it's not needed for one, then it's not needed for the other. Those are not 465 decisions of the Parks and Recreation Commission, but rather recommendations to the 466 Council since it's the Council that would make the action. The purpose of this 467 Commission is to make a recommendation to the Council. For that reason, I think it 468 would be a good idea for both of these projects to have clarity on what the roles of the 469 various Boards and Commissions are with the Council and with the project, so that the 470 various items are placed in their proper order so those recommendations and roles and 471 responsibilities are fulfilled. Thank you. 472 473 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. Daren, one question. The Boardwalk and the Interpretive 474 Center, they are two separate projects? 475 476 Mr. Anderson: Yes. They are separate, though we've linked them together for the 477 purposes of the public meeting and presentation to Commission. They are separate CIPs. 478 Obviously there's commonalities where we want to link them up to have our two 479 consultants working together so that they jived and were cooperative. 480 481 Chair Reckdahl: If there's a delay in the building, we still can go ahead and do the 482 Boardwalk? 483 484 Mr. Anderson: That's correct. 485 486 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. Commissioner comments? Commissioner Markevitch. 487 488 Vice Chair Markevitch: I have a question about the plumbing for the building. I know 489 there's an interest of late in the City to include gray water. I know that's not included in 490 this project. If it wasn't too expensive, I was wondering if you would consider plumbing 491 this building for gray water so you don't have to rip these walls up ten years down the 492 road when somebody says, "Let's run this pipe here and use gray water." If you did it 493 ahead of time, it would be minimal impact later on. 494 495 Ms. Redding: Would the City like to comment? 496 497 Approved Minutes 12 APPROVED Male: Yeah, we can consider that. 498 499 Chair Reckdahl: Other comments? Commissioner Lauing. 500 501 Commissioner Lauing: Just a couple. One, could we get any more visuals or clarity on 502 what those creative deck holes are? I think it's great that the kids can look down and get 503 really a feel of where they are as opposed to being suspended there. You alluded to 504 potentially some constraints. I don't know if this time or next time we could get actual 505 visuals of what that's going to look like, looking down or traffic patterns around there. 506 We don't want to indirectly restrict access to that place, because you do want to get them 507 out there and look around. The second was just terrific effort on all this stuff relative to 508 the swallows. I mean there's just a lot of work that went into that, a lot of meticulous 509 work on everybody's part to allow the birds and the people to live happily ever after. 510 That was just really terrific. I think just generally, Daren, this project is in great hands. It 511 was a very good presentation, very thorough and, I think, right on target. 512 513 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Knopper. 514 515 Commissioner Knopper: Yes. I would concur. I mean everything was really great, and I 516 too was thinking about the holes in the deck. That would be really great to look at. My 517 one question is sea level rise came up during the discussion of—thank you—the 518 Boardwalk but not the building. How is that being addressed or is it not being addressed? 519 520 Mr. Anderson: Maybe I can allow the consultant to come. I believe the building is safe 521 from the predicted 50-100 year sea level rise. 522 523 Commissioner Knopper: Can I just ask, Daren, a question? The building is getting, like, 524 some basic fixer-upper kinds of things. Is there an anticipation that the building is going 525 to need more work in a relatively short period of time? Like, is this Phase 1 in just doing 526 the ADA compliant and the fascia and, like, some of the rotted wood kind of thing? Is 527 there planning for Phase 2? That kind of thing. Like, what other structural things might 528 need to be done to this building? 529 530 Mr. Anderson: I think you hit the nail on the head. This is the structural, make sure you 531 take care of the very basics of it, that structurally it's sound. The Phase 2, in 532 conversations with John Aiken who helps manage the facility, is really the functionality 533 of it, the interpretive elements. That's kind of separate from the structural part. I believe 534 that's the Phase 2. I'll ask John and Hung to elaborate on that. 535 536 Mr. Aiken: We have only funding for this portion of it. There is another CIP that starts 537 in two more years for some graphics, but it literally is just enough money to get a few 538 graphics onto some of the railings. We're planning now for the eventuality of really 539 Approved Minutes 13 APPROVED rolling out a more robust graphics program. I've met with representatives from the State 540 of California; there are grant opportunities that the City is likely to seek that will fund 541 trail interpretive elements including interactives, sculptural elements and graphic 542 interpretations on the Boardwalk. These projects are significantly long and we want to 543 time the seeking of those funds and the expenditure of those funds to match, I guess, 544 when we finish the Boardwalk piece. 545 546 Commissioner Knopper: Thank you. With regard to the Boardwalk, there were a lot of 547 different options presented and the sort of repair, like, 3-5 year repair and then—I forget 548 the year thing—and then the 50-75. There's a lot of different options. Obviously cost is a 549 factor. Who is deciding what option we're putting forward? Like, is this literally going 550 to be like a laundry list that you want to present to the Council, like, for—I'm making 551 these numbers up—$100,000 we'll get the basic repair. For $200,000, we'll get ... and 552 then let the City Council decide how significant the Boardwalk repair is going to be or 553 are we trying to guide the conversation in a specific way with regard to the Boardwalk 554 repair? 555 556 Mr. Anderson: What staff intends to do—first of all the repair portion is done now. That 557 first 200 feet, so we're left ... 558 559 Commissioner Knopper: Sorry. The replacement or rehab. 560 561 Mr. Anderson: And rehab, yeah. We're left with just those two. Our hope is to have 562 Biggs Cardosa flesh it out a little more fully. Our preliminary assessments are they're 563 very comparable in costs. It begs the question whether we should really consider the 564 rehab when the cost is relatively the same, the permitting is relatively the same, but the 565 lifespan is almost doubled if you go with new. What I anticipate is we'll come to you 566 with a staff recommendation, flesh it out through the Parks and Rec Commission, and 567 then ultimately make that recommendation to Council. 568 569 Commissioner Knopper: Thank you. 570 571 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Crommie. 572 573 Commissioner Crommie: Thank you for your presentations. This is a really important 574 project, and I'm glad it's underway. I thought that the permitting process was going to be 575 more lengthy for replacement versus rehabilitation. Is that not true? 576 577 Biggs Cardosa: I failed to go into a lot of detail on that. Actually it's going to be fairly 578 similar, just because we're going to physically have to get in there, get approval to do the 579 work. In general, we're going to go through the same review processes with various 580 agencies. We're looking at the Regional Water Quality Control Board, Corps of 581 Approved Minutes 14 APPROVED Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the 582 BCDC or San Francisco Bay—I always forget exactly what it stands for—Conservation 583 Development. 584 585 Commissioner Crommie: I guess I misunderstood. If the cost is the same, the permitting 586 process is the same, what is the advantage of rehabilitation? Is there not a single 587 advantage? 588 589 Biggs Cardosa: It's really if you want to ... 590 591 Commissioner Crommie: The look, you said. 592 593 Biggs Cardosa: The look, yeah. The costs are probably a little bit lower, but they're 594 going to be significantly high so that you're not saving that much. Again, at this point, 595 we were asked to look at all of these various alternatives. We've presented everything 596 we've looked at. Now, we'll start refining it down. But, yeah, that's been the general 597 consensus from the City side, it seems to make more sense to go with replacement which 598 ... 599 600 Commissioner Crommie: I did go to your meeting, the public meeting. I got to hear you 601 speak; I didn't get to hear both presentations. I did hear the presentation on the 602 Boardwalk. There was one difference that was discussed at that time which was the 603 height of the Boardwalk. People were used to it being a certain distance to the nature that 604 we're observing when we're on the Boardwalk. Can you discuss that a little bit? If the 605 replacement would make it be how many feet higher. How good are these predictions? I 606 mean, what's the uncertainty in the water level rise predictions? 607 608 Biggs Cardosa: I'll hit the last point first. There's a fair amount of uncertainty. If I look 609 at my numbers, the original predictions were you'd get 6 inches of sea level rise by the 610 year 2030. I think these were done back in about the year 2000. Currently measured rise 611 in sea level, they haven't really noticed any significant change yet, though they're still 612 predicting that rise. In my mind, there's a fair amount of uncertainty. I know all of the 613 various cities up and down the Bay are currently looking at their levee improvements and 614 things. There's a lot of discussion going on as to what's going to be our target level. I 615 know Foster City, for sure, is working on that currently. There's a lot of discussion about 616 what's the appropriate level. We can look at the design life of the structure and decide 617 what level is appropriate. The public in general at the public meeting was in favor of 618 keeping the structure as low as possible, so they can get that sense of belonging in with 619 the nature which is the great part of having that Boardwalk go right out into the middle. 620 One of our challenges when we get into final design will be to balance that and to really 621 take a hard look at what we think will be the true sea level rise over the life of the project. 622 I think the goal will be to keep the structure as low as possible and yet try and keep it 623 Approved Minutes 15 APPROVED open for the majority of the year. There are disadvantages. If it does get flooded and you 624 have to close it, and there's a loss of use too. There's going to be kind of a balance I 625 think. 626 627 Commissioner Crommie: Great, thank you. Now as far as the visibility for the children 628 looking over the railing, in nature areas, natural areas, I've never seen that glass siding 629 work very well. It usually gets really dirty. I know it sounds good in theory, but I guess 630 my gut reaction is it's better to have slats that little people can look through rather than 631 dirty glass. Also mentioned I know there's the bird risks with that kind of material; 632 although, I'm sure you would take the recommendation from Audubon very seriously. I 633 don't know. I just don't see that. Personally, I've never understood the real benefit of that 634 unless you can show examples and best practices and things where it actually works. I 635 just hate to get something that looks good for a very short amount of time. It's the 636 longevity that I care about. Also, the color scheme. I know you heard strongly in the 637 community outreach that people really want this building to blend and be unobtrusive as 638 it was originally designed. Are you going to keep that color pallet in mind? Do you want 639 to just confirm that? 640 641 Ms. Redding: Yes. One of the ways that we anticipate addressing that is to ask in the 642 project specifications, which are directions to the contractors. Whoever ends up bidding 643 on this projects gets a set of directions in addition to the drawings. The specifications 644 should, I believe, call for mock ups of various stains that are put out on the building so 645 that we can get consensus on what's the best color and opacity of the treatment. We have 646 to treat the wood; we have to coat it with something, because it lasts much, much longer 647 if you do that. You probably all know that, but I had to say it. Rather than picking the 648 color now, I think the best way to do it would be to pick the right performance coating 649 and then let the color and opacity be selected in the field. Yes. 650 651 Commissioner Crommie: In the field, what does that mean? 652 653 Ms. Redding: That means not just on paper, but put up actual painted pieces of redwood 654 so that we can see what it looks like in the daylight, next to the pickleweed and out in the 655 sun. 656 657 Commissioner Crommie: Who makes that final decision out in the field? 658 659 Ms. Redding: It would typically be the client which is the City. Lots of people will be 660 able to see it and weigh in. 661 662 Commissioner Crommie: I would just say here to make sure our public gets to weigh in 663 when anything gets put out in the field. 664 665 Approved Minutes 16 APPROVED Mr. Anderson: I might just add. This is typically something that the ARB loves to weigh 666 in on, paints and colors. They often provide us with details on that. However, we do 667 have the Baylands Design Guidelines which do dictate the very colors that you're talking 668 about. That's why the nature center is the color it is and all the other buildings and 669 structures within the Baylands are compliant with that. By that nature, it'll constrain the 670 options to things that are compliant with the Bay guidelines which the ARB is privy to. 671 672 Commissioner Crommie: My last question is, since we might be leaning toward 673 replacement as long as we can get the height, correct? I mean, it sounds like we need 674 more discussion on that. Aside from the timbers going vertical versus cross-wise, are 675 there other differences between the replacement options that I'm not picking up on? 676 677 Biggs Cardosa: No, that's really the primary difference between them, that walking 678 experience, whether you have those long boards that are more flexible or you've got the 679 shorter ones. In general, the substructure is going to be at about the same spacing on 680 center which will pretty much match what's out there currently. Yeah, primarily, I think 681 the substructure elements are pretty well defined based upon past history out there and 682 past experience. 683 684 Commissioner Crommie: Thank you. 685 686 Commissioner Hetterly: I think that goes to my question—oh. 687 688 Chair Reckdahl: Go ahead. Commissioner Hetterly. 689 690 Commissioner Hetterly: Has been addressed, but I have two additional ones. As far as 691 the decision whether to rehabilitate or replace, my only question there is about salvage if 692 that's the only difference in terms of cost and time. What we would do with the existing 693 materials if they would just go to waste, then that might argue for rehabilitating rather 694 than replacing. I'd like to know a little more about what would happen to the salvage of 695 the materials. 696 697 Biggs Cardosa: The same question came up at the public meeting. Now, there are 698 opportunities in the project specifications that we could require the material to be 699 salvaged. I think, from an architectural standpoint there is a market out there for the 700 salvaged material, all that nice weathered wood. Yeah, we could definitely work that into 701 the project if it's so desired by the City. 702 703 Commissioner Hetterly: I think we should encourage the City to do that. My next 704 question is again on the difference—I think you already explained the difference between 705 the two replacement options. It seemed there was some question about whether or not to 706 use the screw things or wood posts. Right, that's the difference? 707 Approved Minutes 17 APPROVED 708 Biggs Cardosa: Correct. 709 710 Commissioner Hetterly: I would like to know what the difference is functionally. The 711 screws, can you adjust them over time as it starts to settle? I think there's this kind of 712 aesthetic difference as well. 713 714 Biggs Cardosa: Key differences are, number one, aesthetics, whether you want the look 715 of the timber posts similar to what you currently have or if you want the look of the round 716 steel rods coming up out of the ground. From an installation standpoint, the equipment 717 for putting in the steel helical anchors is actually quite small and can be easily brought 718 out to the site. It's basically a motor that'll screw the thing in, and then they have a big 719 kicker bar that comes out off of that which will take the torque off of that engine that 720 drives it into the ground. We basically butt that up against one of the existing posts. You 721 need a larger piece of equipment to put in the steel posts. You typically have to push 722 those in, and so a small bobcat-type ... 723 724 Commissioner Hetterly: For the wood posts? 725 726 Biggs Cardosa: For the timber posts. The contractor would have to look at utilizing the 727 existing structure for that, so he may have to make some minor repairs, just enough to 728 accommodate his equipment through the areas that have already failed. There may be 729 some costs there. There is the possibility with the screw anchors of doing some 730 adjustments in the future should there be localized settlement of some of the spans. We 731 may be able to come back in and adjust them. It won't be quite as easy as just turning a 732 nut to get it to come up. You'll probably have to bring in some equipment, temporary 733 support and do an adjustment to it. There is more of an opportunity, I think, for a simpler 734 adjustment in the future with the steel. The corrosion specialist, though, would be key. 735 From my research, it appears that the steel holds up just fine, though we do know that the 736 environment out there is not friendly to steel, nor has it been friendly to the timbers in the 737 past. It'll be—have them give us some advice on that as we get into the final design 738 portions. 739 740 Commissioner Hetterly: Thank you. 741 742 Commissioner Ashlund: Thank you. I really like a lot of the accessibility improvements. 743 I want to ask a question about the unglamorous subject of the restroom design and the 744 challenges of working with the hexagonal building. You've done a really good job of 745 making them accessible here. I'm wondering—this is probably only a signage question 746 rather than a layout question. The single bathroom with the changing table is labeled 747 women, and the other one is labeled men. More and more what I'm seeing in newer 748 buildings these days is a gender-neutral bathroom. I'm wondering if they couldn't both be 749 Approved Minutes 18 APPROVED just gender neutral with signage to indicate which one has a changing table so that 750 anyone could use that. 751 752 Ms. Redding: Actually both restrooms have changing tables. Maybe we mislabeled it, 753 but both of those single-occupant rooms are planned to have a changing table. In terms 754 of gender neutral, we're advocates of that. It's, like, kind of a universal access precept. In 755 the past, some plumbing (inaudible) don't recognize a unisex or a non-gender bathroom, 756 so it would be kind of a building review exercise to go through. Certainly it makes them 757 more versatile for user groups. I would love to pursue it if that's okay with the City. 758 759 Mr. Marshall: I would point out, I think there's a urinal in one of the rooms. 760 761 Ms. Redding: That's right. We did squeeze a urinal, barely, into the one labeled men. It 762 tends to be a little tidier. Something to weigh. We could remove the urinal or we could 763 just keep them both gender neutral and have one have a urinal in it. 764 765 Commissioner Ashlund: That was it. I didn't see the second changing and really don't 766 care much about the urinal personally. My other question. On the interpretive signing, it 767 said that they don't comply with ADA requirements. I assume they would be, when 768 they're repaired, brought into ADA requirements. I was wondering if that was including 769 Braille or audio. The Braille usage among blind and visually impaired users is actually 770 dropping significantly. It never has been very high among blind users. It is dropping 771 significantly because of the prevalence of audio availability. I was wondering if that was 772 something that could be considered in the repair of the interpretive signage. 773 774 Mr. Aiken: Good point. We're going to be looking at universal access to all of the 775 interpretive messages in as many ways as we can. The JMZ, where I also work, right 776 now is doing a series of focus groups with special needs kids and families around 777 interpretation. We're going to incorporate what we learn from those focus groups into 778 what we apply to this building as well. 779 780 Commissioner Ashlund: Thank you. I guess the last question I had was clarification 781 about the gap. When we were talking about those nesting swallows and the possibility of 782 the gap in the platform, you mentioned some restriction in walkway. Would it still meet 783 ADA clearance requirements? 784 785 Ms. Redding: Yeah. We wouldn't recommend it if it didn't. What we have currently 786 drawn in, just on a conceptual level, restricts the walkway in a few places to just over 5 787 feet wide which meets code. 788 789 Commissioner Ashlund: It does meet code. 790 791 Approved Minutes 19 APPROVED Ms. Redding: It's not throughout; it's just in those locations. You can see on the drawing 792 that there are some faint dashed circles; those are showing just over 5 feet there. 793 794 Commissioner Ashlund: Thank you very much. 795 796 Chair Reckdahl: I have a couple of questions. What are the constraints on the bird 797 nesting periods where we can't do construction? 798 799 Biggs Cardosa: February 1st to August 31st is the nesting season, the breeding season. 800 801 Chair Reckdahl: February 1st to August 31st. That gives us what? About four months, 802 five months. 803 804 Ms. Redding: This applies to the building as well. 805 806 Chair Reckdahl: Five months. 807 808 Female: (inaudible) the swallows usually come (inaudible) so that changes (inaudible). 809 810 Chair Reckdahl: We have the swallows, and then we also have the—what are the birds? 811 812 Biggs Cardosa: Ridgeway rail. 813 814 Chair Reckdahl: The rails. Isn't there a mouse nesting also? 815 816 Biggs Cardosa: The mouse is more of just restricted—you need to restrict your 817 operations so you don't ... 818 819 Ms. Redding: Step on them. 820 821 Biggs Cardosa: Step on them, kill them. You don't take a mouse, I think is the official 822 term. Avoid takes. 823 824 Chair Reckdahl: There's no (inaudible) of stay out for the mouse. You just have to be 825 careful. 826 827 Biggs Cardosa: Right. You have to tailor your operations for them. 828 829 Chair Reckdahl: You talked about driving the piles into the mud. How far do we have to 830 put the piles into the mud? 831 832 Approved Minutes 20 APPROVED Biggs Cardosa: That will be determined for sure during the final design phase. 833 Conceptually, around 20 feet. 834 835 Chair Reckdahl: The screws, how deep do you have to put the screws in? 836 837 Biggs Cardosa: They would go 15-20 feet likely. 838 839 Chair Reckdahl: Finally, the one thing that I've been sad about Lucy Evans right now is 840 just the time that's it's open is so small. It'd be really nice if we could incorporate some 841 type of—I don't know if you can make the interior exhibits turn around and face outside 842 so people who come there when it's closed can have more to look at than just the outdoor 843 signage. 844 845 Mr. Aiken: Our long-term goal is to take all of those interpretive messages and begin to 846 put them out where people can see the phenomena on the Boardwalk and on the trails, so 847 that the messages are always available. 848 849 Chair Reckdahl: Would we eventually still have exhibits still inside? 850 851 Mr. Aiken: We haven't gone through a design phase for that. The preferred use of the 852 building right now is as a meeting space for kids. We teach in there primarily. We're 853 open Tuesday through Friday for about 3,000 school children every school year that take 854 classes out there, and then evening events. I think it works really well for an event 855 center, less well for an interpretive center. It's likely that we'll have some interpretive 856 elements in there and always have a wet lab function so that people can actually get their 857 hands dirty looking at the life that's out there. 858 859 Chair Reckdahl: What are the current hours for the Interpretive Center for the public? 860 861 Female: Wednesdays from 1:00 to 4:00, Thursdays from 2:00 to 5:00. The times are 862 going to change soon because of the time change. Then Sunday afternoons from 1:00 to 863 4:00 or 5:00. 864 865 Mr. Aiken: Thanks. I knew I'd get it wrong. 866 867 Female: it's going to change though in the next couple of weeks because of daylight 868 savings and getting dark earlier. 869 870 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. That's it. We will be (inaudible) come back in—the PIO is 871 going to be in January, so you're coming back to the PRC later. What was the schedule 872 that he showed? In January. 873 874 Approved Minutes 21 APPROVED Commissioner Hetterly: I have one last question. Sorry. On the Boardwalk, does the 875 ARB review the Boardwalk as well? 876 877 Mr. Nguyen: At this point we don't plan to go in front of the ARB until we have further 878 instructions from the Council, which option that we plan to proceed. Then we will 879 further the design and go back to ARB for (inaudible). 880 881 Commissioner Hetterly: They'll comment on the entire (inaudible). Thank you. 882 883 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. 884 885 3. Discussion on the Shared Use Dog Park Pilot Program. 886 887 Daren Anderson: Just one second. Let me pull the materials. 888 889 Chair Reckdahl: Okay. We have some speaker cards. If anyone has not filled out a 890 speaker card for this, please do so now. 891 892 Mr. Anderson: Good evening. Daren Anderson with Open Space, Parks and Golf. I'm 893 here tonight to seek your guidance regarding the shared-use dog parks, basically your 894 feedback on how we're going to meet the community's dog park needs. At the last 895 Commission meeting, I had provided an update on this topic where we covered the vast 896 majority of the background in this staff report. I'll gloss over that and move on to the 897 discussion section. As I mentioned in my previous update, Staff had hosted a community 898 meeting July 30, 2015 to collect feedback specifically on the shared-use concept. The 899 vast majority of the participants were dog owners advocating for dog parks and generally 900 expressed dissatisfaction with the limited hours. Our proposal had Monday through 901 Friday 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. at these sites, Greer Park, Baylands Athletic Center and 902 Hoover Park. The feedback was that morning hours just aren't enough. That's not going 903 to be adequate. To be successful, (a), you've got to make them morning and evening at 904 least, and it's got to be more than one site. One site's inadequate to be successful. There 905 were a small number of participants who attended, who were park neighbors, who said 906 "We don't want a dog park near our house. There's parking issues. There's dog waste 907 issues. There's unwanted confrontations with children and dogs off-leash." There were 908 also some participants who voiced concerns about potential impacts to the fields 909 themselves. These are athletic users saying, "There's incompatibility between having 910 dogs off-leash and a contained athletic facility." One of the meeting participants 911 mentioned that City of Mountain View had recently made a number of their parks off-912 leash areas. After this public meeting, the ad hoc committee did some additional 913 research. One was to verify what our current recreational use is brokered at those three 914 sites, Greer, Hoover and the Baylands Athletic Center, and determine if we'd have 915 conflict between evening use dog off-leash and athletic use. Unsurprisingly, there was 916 Approved Minutes 22 APPROVED conflicts at all three sites with the exception or at least the least amount of impact for the 917 yellow area in Hoover Park. That outfield area was the least impacted if we had evening 918 and morning off-leash hours, if we did a pilot there. The other kind of follow-up research 919 that staff had done was to reach out to Mountain View, talk to their staff, and see what 920 lessons they learned from their entire experience with these off-leash areas that they 921 recently instituted. My interview of staff brought out some interesting facts. One was 922 that they started this pilot program in June 2014, made it permanent in May 2015. Only 923 one of their nine off-leash areas is a dedicated dog park; that's Shoreline Park. The other 924 eight are off-leash areas that is unfenced. Only one of those eight is on an athletic field. 925 The rest are kind of passive sections of a park. The majority of the complaints that they 926 received were about non-observance with their hours and days, that people were bringing 927 their dogs when they weren't really allowed to or outside of the areas that they were 928 allowed to. There were also concerns from parents who had off-leash dogs approach 929 their children. Mountain View's got a contract with a security firm that performs 930 enforcement on two of their sites. Their staff explained that the success of the program 931 really depended on that enforcement component. They also explained a little bit of the 932 process they went through, that their parks and recreation commission had not advocated 933 for doing a pilot program, but rather said, "You should research and look for dedicated 934 sites." Their Council directed staff to move ahead with the one-year pilot. After the pilot 935 which had some mixed results, some very positive, some against the program, the 936 commission said, "We should extend this pilot for a year with additional enforcement." 937 Their Council disagreed and said please proceed in making it permanent. Staff recently 938 learned some additional news about Menlo Park's experience with shared-use dog parks. 939 Since 2005, the softball field at Nealon Park has been a shared-use site. That is from 940 Monday through Friday 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Recently the Menlo Park Recreation 941 Commission identified some concerns about the field conditions at the site. Their City 942 Council concurred and basically said that the joint use was not optimal for either user 943 group and approved a CIP to find a dedicated spot. This November, they're having a 944 public meeting to see if they can relocate what they had as that shared-use site for a 945 dedicated spot somewhere either in that park or another. Some of these challenges that 946 we've encountered, both in our public meeting and some of our outreach to other 947 agencies, led the ad hoc committee to explore opportunities for new or expanded dog 948 parks that could be implemented quickly without investing too much money nor waiting 949 necessarily for the Master Plan to be completed. Give me just one second to pull up the 950 ... This was in your staff report. This first site is across from Greer Park; it's called 951 Colorado Avenue Utility Substation. This is the landscaped area just outside it. It's about 952 an acre, .96 acres to be precise. It would require about 600 feet of fencing which would 953 cost about $15,000. There's parking available on the street side, and it's close proximity 954 to neighborhoods. There are a few challenges with this site. The Utilities Department 955 has informed us that they may need this site for future expansion, that is, they're 956 constrained on the land they have and there's a possibility they might need to use this and 957 they're reluctant to give it up. They also had some concerns about security. This is an 958 Approved Minutes 23 APPROVED area where the City gets a tremendous amount of its power. Having people very close to 959 the fence line was potentially an issue for them. Lastly, the Utilities Department pays a 960 significant amount of money to lease that land. There'd be an impact to the General 961 Fund; if we were to take it over for a dog park. They'd no longer be contributing that 962 money. However, we are going to remain diligent in looking to see if this is still an 963 option. CSD will continue to pursue it. This next site is Mitchell Park. The idea is can 964 we expand Mitchell Park. The red polygon is our existing dog park. It is about .56 acres. 965 We, with very minimal costs, could extend the fence line to that green polygon, which 966 takes you from .56 to 1.21 acres. This would only cost about $9,500. The last site we're 967 looking at—these three sites are not exhaustive. These are three that the ad hoc 968 committee and staff could find that seemed to fit the paradigm of not very expensive, 969 could be implemented potentially quickly if we clear some hurdles. This last site is El 970 Camino Park. This is undeveloped area of parkland just outside. Of course, the photo 971 here is not that helpful. Just to the left of that red polygon that you see is the softball 972 field. There's a fence line that separates it. That's kind of the park proper to the left. 973 This undeveloped area is just largely mulch, and there's utilities on site. If we fenced off 974 this little area, you would gain about .77 acres of a dog park at about $15,000 cost. We 975 did reach out to Utilities and found out they didn't have a conflict. We could work 976 around their access needs. However, Planning advised staff that there are plans for a 977 future transit improvement that may incorporate changes to this area. CSD staff is in 978 communication with Planning to see if we can work around that. That concludes my 979 presentation. I defer to the ad hoc committee to see if they have anything they'd like to 980 add. 981 982 Commissioner Hetterly: Sure. I would just add, what we're really looking for today is 983 feedback from you all on what should be our next step. Should we be continuing to think 984 about a shared-use option, in which case Hoover seems the only place that's really 985 workable in terms of the hours and for trying to set it up for success. As you can see 986 looking at the picture, that does take up a big chunk of the park for some hours of the 987 days. We'd like your thoughts on that. Also, these three sites, as Daren said, we're not 988 looking to preempt the Master Plan process in any way, but we're really trying to find 989 something that we can do in the near term to expand our off-leash dog opportunities. 990 These seem some places where, short of a CIP since they're a much smaller investment, 991 we may be able to open something at least for the interim until we're able to find 992 something more permanent or maybe one of these possibilities could become a 993 permanent option in the future. On this one at El Camino Park in particular, like I said, 994 all of them we're not proposing any improvements aside from fencing and a gate and a 995 poop bag station, maybe a bench. Who knows. They could be interim projects that could 996 be easily removed later for future use. This one, this Planning project, they're talking 997 about extending Quarry Road through to the transit center, which of course will have all 998 sorts of its own issues since that's parkland. It doesn't seem like something that they're 999 Approved Minutes 24 APPROVED going to break ground on in the next six months, so why wouldn't we go ahead and use 1000 that space? I'd like any reaction from you all (crosstalk). 1001 1002 Chair Reckdahl: Who owns the transit center itself? 1003 1004 Commissioner Crommie: Do we need community input? 1005 1006 Chair Reckdahl: Yeah, we will. I wanted to get one clarification. The transit center 1007 there, just to the right of the red line, who controls that? 1008 1009 Mr. Anderson: I'll have to look into that and get back to you. 1010 1011 Chair Reckdahl: Is that City land do you know? 1012 1013 Mr. Anderson: I don't. 1014 1015 Chair Reckdahl: We have some speakers here. First, we have Howard Hoffman. 1016 Howard, you have two minutes. 1017 1018 Howard Hoffman: Pardon me? 1019 1020 Chair Reckdahl: You have two minutes. 1021 1022 Mr. Hoffman: Thank you very much to the staff and to the Commission for at least 1023 recognizing that if we're not going to go ahead with a shared-use facility, that we really 1024 need at least some sort of interim dog park improvements until the Master Plan. We're 1025 optimistic that that's going to identify multiple locations. Palo Alto dog owners would be 1026 happy to see all of these. The people that have dogs running off-leash right now all over 1027 Palo Alto are not an asset to the community. It would be an asset to have one or more of 1028 these sites enclosed whether it's the shared-use facility at Hoover Park or any of these. 1029 We do appreciate that you're working on this and recognize that it's long overdue. We 1030 just hope that—we're not going to endorse any one particular option. The one other 1031 option that I would like to hold out there, which I didn't see in here, there's the part of 1032 Rinconada Park. Of course, the dog use facilities are especially in north Palo Alto. 1033 Rinconada Park back by the power substation there, there's an area I think in the Master 1034 Plan for that park that was identified for bocce ball perhaps. I think we've got bocce ball 1035 somewhere else. It's a small area, but it could be with artificial turf. We don't have any 1036 artificial turf parks being discussed here. That does give you another option over dirt or 1037 decomposed granite or over grass. Grass needs to be fairly large. I think that some of 1038 you are familiar with the Mountain View artificial turf park for dogs, and that's worked 1039 out really well. Thank you. 1040 1041 Approved Minutes 25 APPROVED Chair Reckdahl: Thank you, Howard. Next we have Amarad Acharia. 1042 1043 Amarad Acharia: Hi. I'm Amarad Acharia. I'd like to appreciate and thank the staff for 1044 taking the effort to put this together. The two things I would like to point. Centralized 1045 parks, wonderful to have them when there's nothing else available, but they take up the 1046 opportunity of intercommunity socialization. I mean, largely I meet my neighbors when I 1047 have kids and I take them to the park or if I have a dog and I go with the dog for walking. 1048 Those are largely the only times I get to meet my neighbors. Otherwise, I'm just living 1049 isolated and have relationships elsewhere. Having parks that are within communities 1050 provide that opportunities. It comes with all the other constraints; I understand that. We 1051 do have parks, Rinconada for example, for people living on the northern side of town. 1052 That does have some room that could be taken advantage of to provide such an 1053 opportunity. Thank you. 1054 1055 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. Shani Kleinhaus, you are next. 1056 1057 Shani Kleinhaus: Thank you. I'm going to speak as a resident who owns three dogs right 1058 now. One of them is probably not going to last much longer, and then I'll say something 1059 about environmental issues wearing my environmental hat. First, I find that dog parks 1060 provide a huge service to the community, especially when there is no fence around them. 1061 I have to say that it brings the community to the park. It brings people together, and it 1062 creates an opportunity for people whose children are already not at home. They don't 1063 socialize with their kids; they socialize with their dogs. That is very evident in our 1064 neighborhood. There is a need for more dog parks, for sure. I do want to say a few 1065 things about the one park at the Baylands that was proposed here. I have concerns about 1066 that. I've had other people from the environmental group have concerns about bringing 1067 dogs there. One reason is that you'd have to drive there, and it's not really a wonderful 1068 idea to drive anywhere these days if we don't have to. If you can provide the service in 1069 the City, it's better. The other thing is that unless there is somebody to actually monitor 1070 what happens and how people behave and whether they take the dogs then for a walk 1071 along the creek, then that could be a huge impact to that creek, especially as now the San 1072 Francisquito Creek is supposed to go through a flood control and habitat restoration 1073 project. Hopefully it will go through sooner or later. When it does, I don't want to have 1074 to look at an existing condition of dogs already there because this project moved forward 1075 before the creek was in place. When it goes to any kind of additional analysis, the dogs 1076 will already be there. I know it's already been through CEQA, but still I think that that's 1077 not a very good selection for a dog park unless there is huge monitoring of how people 1078 behave and that they don't go on the levee with dogs off-leash, which they already do 1079 anyway, but that just brings more people to do that. I think that the less risk of inviting 1080 unauthorized use to a remote location may not be a good analysis unless you have data to 1081 support that. That is of concern. 1082 1083 Approved Minutes 26 APPROVED Chair Reckdahl: Your time's up. 1084 1085 Ms. Kleinhaus: Also artificial turf, I don't know. You may like that park over there. I 1086 find it kind of yech. 1087 1088 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. Mot Huri, you're up next. 1089 1090 Mot Huri: Hi, good evening. We've only moved to Palo Alto about 2 1/2 years ago with 1091 a dog. Since he can't come to the meeting, this leash is him representing himself and his 1092 friends here. One of the lovely things about Palo Alto is almost everybody has a dog. I 1093 would like to thank you all for these wonderful proposals. There's only one potential 1094 problem here. I live in Crescent Park. Most of these are concentrated south of Oregon, 1095 Hoover, Greer, Mitchell. The one exception is Baylands, and she very articulately 1096 mentioned why it wouldn't be the best option. These proposals leave seven communities 1097 which would be Crescent Park, Community Center, Saint Francis, Professorville, 1098 University South, Leland Manor and Old Palo Alto, with no options to walk to a dog 1099 park. The reason we would like to walk is many. One is you get to meet people. I know 1100 more people from all over Crescent Park just by running into them and their dogs and our 1101 dogs interacting than I would normally had I moved to any other community. The second 1102 things is—this also reference to her concern—when you're around people you know, you 1103 behave better. I don't know why, but we do that. When we are in a park and there are 1104 neighbors and we're all there with our dogs, we are going to pick up and they are going to 1105 pick up, because we are being watched. The third thing is the Baylands, besides 1106 everything else, all of these communities would have to negotiate Embarcadero during 1107 commute hours to get there. We all know Embarcadero is a traffic nightmare with 1108 unenforceable speed limits and many other problems, very congested. I would like for 1109 you all to think about the possibility, given how many dogs exist here and given the 1110 benefits of allowing for areas where dogs and people can meet, I would like you all to 1111 think about putting in off-leash, fenced dog areas in all the major parks in the north side. 1112 Certainly Rinconada has the space for it, as does Pardee. If you can go ahead and find 1113 some space for it in either Johnson and Heritage as well, that would be great. More are 1114 better for many reasons. I don't know how close I am to running out on time, but 1115 Mitchell is the one good off-leash in Palo Alto, which means it gets lots of people and 1116 lots of dogs. There have been dog confrontations. All of that can be eased up if there are 1117 multiple alternatives. Thank you. 1118 1119 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. Herb Borock is next. Irene Keene follows him. 1120 1121 Herb Borock: The first answer, Chair Reckdahl, is a question about El Camino Park. 1122 The land is owned by Stanford University and leased to Palo Alto. I believe the current 1123 lease runs to June 30, 2033. We have off-leash dog areas already, except they're not 1124 legal. Because they're not legal, they don't get the intensive use you would have with an 1125 Approved Minutes 27 APPROVED official, sanctioned dog park. I've been familiar with the area in Hoover Park, the turf 1126 area outside of the ball field that's used off-leash illegally. That park also has an official 1127 dog park, and there people with dogs use both of those and some use one or use the other. 1128 When the most people congregate is the hours when animal control is not working. It 1129 limits the number of people, the number of dogs that come there. If you're going to be 1130 having more dog parks, they should be in the north area of town, north of Oregon 1131 Expressway. They should be on neighborhood parks. El Camino Park and Rinconada 1132 Park are district parks. When you tried to have a dog park or a bathroom even in Eleanor 1133 Pardee Park, you saw the resistance. The woman from Crescent Park who thinks 1134 everyone's got a dog and her neighbors want to go to a neighborhood park and do that, 1135 she'll find very quickly that in north Palo Alto there'll be a lot of resistance to having 1136 more dog parks. If you want to do something for the community as a whole, then you're 1137 going to have to make that kind of decision. You should expect that it'll be more than 1138 just people who are in walking distance. People will drive to any of these parks. If you 1139 did, for example, try Hoover Park with that area delineated in yellow, you should put a 1140 very firm time limit because you'll very quickly find not only the intensive use but also 1141 all the damage and concerns that people have mentioned will then happen that are not 1142 happening now. Thank you. 1143 1144 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. Our last speaker is Irene Keene. 1145 1146 Irene Keene: Hello. I also live in Crescent Park, but I'm on the edge of Community 1147 Center, so I'm in north Palo Alto. There are no dog parks anywhere near me. I have to 1148 get in my car and drive. We only have three dog parks in Palo Alto. It's crazy, only 1149 three. There's only one that's halfway decent which is the one at the big park, Mitchell. 1150 The one at Hoover is small; it's dirty; your dog gets filthy there in the summertime; in the 1151 wintertime the dog gets muddy because it turns into a mud puddle when there's rain. The 1152 other one is at Greer; that's a run. It's really narrow; it's kind of long, but it's also a mud 1153 pit. I love the dog park in Mountain View, the one that's got the fake grass. I mean, it's a 1154 little over the top, but I'll tell you what. It keeps your dog really clean. When it's wet 1155 out, grass gets wet. Your dog is going to be filthy because it gets a little wet on the feet, 1156 then he walks in dirt and it's a mess. I will get in my car and drive to Mountain View to 1157 keep my dog clean. Then I'm going to shop over there, because there's the nice Safeway 1158 there. Sometimes I go to Menlo Park, then I go to the Safeway in Menlo Park. You want 1159 people to stay in Palo Alto and spend their money in Palo Alto, get some dog parks in 1160 north Palo Alto please. Thank you. 1161 1162 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. That was the last comment, so now we'll move on to 1163 Commissioners. 1164 1165 Commissioner Lauing: Chair Reckdahl? 1166 1167 Approved Minutes 28 APPROVED Chair Reckdahl: Yes. 1168 1169 Commissioner Lauing: Just a process question. Would it make sense to just go quickly 1170 around for questions before we came to conclusions just to make sure everything was 1171 answered? 1172 1173 Chair Reckdahl: Okay. Do you have any questions? 1174 1175 Commissioner Lauing: I do. 1176 1177 Chari Reckdahl: Fire away. 1178 1179 Commissioner Lauing: I'd actually like to ask questions about the permanent ones first, 1180 the permanent options that have been identified. For example, Mitchell Park, there's no 1181 cons listed here. By the way, I thought this whole ad hoc report was terrific, very 1182 detailed, very thorough. Good job by the ad hoc and staff. It's just really, really helpful. 1183 Mitchell, there's no cons listed, and the cost is $9,500. I always think of cost as a con. 1184 1185 Commissioner Crommie: Con is location. 1186 1187 Mr. Anderson: I should clarify. The pros and cons list were conducted for our shared-1188 use ones. When we put together our list of potential dedicated parks, we hadn't done the 1189 pro and con analysis. It was just preliminary. We haven't quite resolved a lot of the other 1190 potential challenges like the substation (crosstalk) we didn't get to the pros and cons for 1191 this one. 1192 1193 Commissioner Lauing: This one seems to get to wow, we can get a real-size park here in 1194 a way that your analysis, the ad hoc's analysis, it'd be nice to have an acre and to be able 1195 to add that much—if there really are any cons and there's $9,500 as the cost, that seems 1196 like a way to get some—like we created in the Baylands. What did Council say? We 1197 created land out there by doing that. You might be able to create a big dog park here. 1198 1199 Rob de Geus: Can I just comment on that? 1200 1201 Commissioner Lauing: Sure. 1202 1203 Mr. de Geus: There's always going to be tradeoffs and some pros and cons. I haven't 1204 been out there recently. That area, people do sit on that grassy area. It's sort of a hilly 1205 area. It's a nice place to just lie down on the grass and relax. I see people do that all the 1206 time, so that's one tradeoff that we have to consider. 1207 1208 Approved Minutes 29 APPROVED Commissioner Lauing: Your point is an important point for all of this discussion. The 1209 public, some of whom spoke tonight, always need to know that there's a tradeoff. If 1210 you've got a dog there, you're not kicking a ball, you're not lying in the grass, and so on. 1211 That's part of our challenge with this whole issue Citywide. With respect to both 1212 Colorado Avenue and El Camino, the issue of there may be a future need, in and of itself 1213 doesn't seem too compelling to me as a con, because we can use it now. I guess my 1214 question back is how long do you think it would take to resolve that situation for either 1215 one of those? Yes, you might need it later, but as we know it takes time and it could be a 1216 couple of years before they need it, Let's be active with it, would be one approach. 1217 1218 Mr. Anderson: That's certainly the position that staff is taking. The conversations for 1219 both of those sites are ongoing right now. 1220 1221 Commissioner Lauing: I mean, I know this is a little bit unfair. Do you think this is 1222 going to be resolved in a month or 12 months or ... 1223 1224 Mr. de Geus: I don't think we have an answer. We're trying to get the answer to that. 1225 We have the same question, Commissioner Lauing. One of the things we've heard for 1226 this location here from Utilities staff is the concern that once you provide that service, say 1227 this is a dog park even if it's temporary, it's very hard to take it away once you've 1228 provided it. They've expressed that concern. 1229 1230 Commissioner Lauing: The other side of it is if we don't do it all for two years ... 1231 1232 Mr. de Geus: I know. That's what we ... 1233 1234 Commissioner Lauing: We have some blank space there that looks compelling. Just to 1235 be sure about the security concern issue there. Was it just getting too close to the 1236 electrical facilities? Is that what you mean? 1237 1238 Mr. Anderson: That's what they voiced, yes. That was the Utilities staff. Security in 1239 terms of protecting the asset of the City's power. 1240 1241 Mr. de Geus: That's a particularly important power plant, not that I know much about it. 1242 What I've heard from the Utilities staff is—I asked them about this. How serious are 1243 these constraints that they're suggesting? This site is where all the electricity for Palo 1244 Alto comes through, into that particular location. They're especially sensitive to ... 1245 1246 Commissioner Lauing: Is it a two-way security concern? They're concerned that 1247 somehow the public is going to get in there and disrupt that or is it a concern that we 1248 don't want the public to be hurt? I just didn't (crosstalk). 1249 1250 Approved Minutes 30 APPROVED Mr. de Geus: I think it's both. I do think it's both. It wasn't a complete shutdown; it can't 1251 happen. The Utilities staff were willing to in fact even meet with the ad hoc committee if 1252 they'd be interested in doing so. I think we'll pursue that. 1253 1254 Commissioner Lauing: I didn't quite get the concern about the amount of money. Again, 1255 it's just sitting there vacant, and there wouldn't be any change for that if they needed it 1256 back in five years. I didn't understand why that was a potential constraint. 1257 1258 Mr. de Geus: I don't know if this is it. Daren, I don't want to jump in. Utilities is an 1259 Enterprise Fund, so they pay rent for the land that they use. They're paying rent to the 1260 City's General Fund for the use of that land including that. Once it's used for a different 1261 purpose, not a utility purpose, then they no longer pay rent back to the City. There's a 1262 financial (crosstalk). 1263 1264 Commissioner Lauing: Legally or conveniently? 1265 1266 Mr. de Geus: It's just there. They ... 1267 1268 Commissioner Lauing: I don't want to take too much time. Another question I had is 1269 that in the summary many, many dog owners at that last large meeting, which I attended, 1270 said that the hours just don't work. Again, it's a debate with if that's all you could get, 1271 would you take a shared-use dog park with a couple of hours. I share that concern, 1272 because what we're trying to do with any pilot is basically do a test market of will this 1273 work in a lot of different ways. If you only test two hours or three hours on five days a 1274 week, we're just not testing anything that's very comprehensive relative to, as you would 1275 say with a product, to be able to roll it out. I wasn't on the ad hoc, so I don't have the 1276 level of detail. I was surprised that at Baylands, for example, there weren't Sunday nights 1277 between 4:00 and 8:00 in the summers that might be open. I don't think, from my 1278 recollection of Babe Ruth which I was involved with, that they play at that time. My 1279 question is, if we really strive, could we find some other segments of time to test different 1280 time segments besides 10:00 to 12:00 in the morning. Has the ad hoc already exhausted 1281 that? 1282 1283 Mr. Anderson: I'll defer to the Commissioners on that one. 1284 1285 Commissioner Hetterly: I would just answer on when the Baylands Athletic Center is 1286 used, they're telling us from 3:00 until 10:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, it's booked. 1287 Weekends from 8:00 a.m. 'til 10:00 p.m. it's booked. That seemed to us to preclude joint 1288 use during those evening hours. 1289 1290 Approved Minutes 31 APPROVED Commissioner Lauing: I'm surprised at the evening hours. I haven't worked on those 1291 schedules in a few years. Also in terms of the Babe Ruth, which is a big user of that, it's 1292 not 12 months out of the year. 1293 1294 Chair Reckdahl: They close down the field for how many months? Three months during 1295 the winter? 1296 1297 Mr. Anderson: Mm-hmm. 1298 1299 Chair Reckdahl: So no one can access the field just because of damage to the field. The 1300 field gets wet. 1301 1302 Commissioner Lauing: That makes sense. 1303 1304 Chair Reckdahl: During the non-closed, it's between Babe Ruth and other people that 1305 rent the field, it's brokered down there. It's pretty busy. 1306 1307 Commissioner Lauing: That was just one example. The question is do you feel like 1308 you've exhausted any options for evening walks. Basically, anybody who has a job, has 1309 an 8-5 job, is not going to be able to use this shared-use dog park. 1310 1311 Commissioner Hetterly: I think it's pretty clear to the ad hoc. Anyway, we concluded 1312 that Hoover was the only viable option of the three for a shared-use pilot that could 1313 handle those evening hours ... 1314 1315 Commissioner Knopper: The yellow. 1316 1317 Commissioner Hetterly: ... at the yellow part, outside that fence. 1318 1319 Commissioner Knopper: The stakeholders that use that said they would not use that part 1320 of the field. Now, part of the field they use sort of for practice, but if it was shared use 1321 with dogs, they wouldn't even put children on it at that point, because they'd be scared 1322 dogs would dig a hole and the kids ... 1323 1324 Commissioner Lauing: This is Hoover? 1325 1326 Commissioner Knopper: Yeah, outside the yellow portion. The baseball stakeholders 1327 said they just wouldn't use the yellow if we did ... 1328 1329 Commissioner Hetterly: They occasionally use it now, but it's not booked through our—I 1330 don't know (crosstalk). 1331 1332 Approved Minutes 32 APPROVED Commissioner Knopper: For official practices. 1333 1334 Mr. Anderson: That's right. 1335 1336 Commissioner Hetterly: It's just informal use. 1337 1338 Commissioner Knopper: It's not official, but you use it to take kids out there to teach 1339 them technique or whatever. If we were to implement a pilot of shared-use, they 1340 wouldn't put kids out there. 1341 1342 Commissioner Lauing: Okay. Was the small field at Baylands the same way in terms of 1343 its usage? 1344 1345 Mr. Anderson: Yes. 1346 1347 Commissioner Knopper: Mm-hmm. 1348 1349 Commissioner Lauing: No further questions. 1350 1351 Chair Reckdahl: Deirdre. 1352 1353 Commissioner Crommie: How come Sterling Canal didn't end up on your list of extra 1354 opportunities? 1355 1356 Mr. Anderson: It just wasn't a comprehensive list. As I mentioned, these three jumped 1357 out at us. Both because there was partial fencing there on all three of those that limited 1358 the cost to something that we could afford without waiting for a CIP. As soon as you 1359 need a new CIP, you're looking at a much longer timeframe. Once you're within the 1360 20,000 and less category, it's something we could probably fund with our existing funds. 1361 1362 Commissioner Crommie: I have a problem with that actually, for generating a list that 1363 way. First of all, if you end up at Mitchell, there's already a dog park there. It seems like 1364 you're not even in line with the mandate to look for areas that are not served currently. If 1365 that's what you've come up with, it means you didn't look enough, as far as I'm 1366 concerned. I don't know if this is our comment section. I would just say that you're not 1367 being expansive enough right now. 1368 1369 Commissioner Hetterly: Should I respond? Would you like a response to that? As far as 1370 what we were limited—our mandate was really to look at shared-use sites. The whole 1371 purpose behind that was to find large sites. Shared-use was appealing because it offered 1372 the opportunity to have a big chunk of land that dogs could really run in. We had agreed 1373 as a Commission to defer the bigger question of how we can distribute dog parks 1374 Approved Minutes 33 APPROVED Citywide within our parks better through the Master Plan, because we know there's a big 1375 public outreach process for every single park, as you know. Who wants a park, who 1376 doesn't want a park, dogs, bathroom, whatever. We thought that was more appropriate 1377 through the Master Plan process. We were really just looking at what can we do in the 1378 short term to test something out for shared use, which limited our options to begin with to 1379 the three we talked about because of the cost and the size, where we had athletic fields 1380 that were available. Then when we looked at non-shared-use options, again we were 1381 looking for big sites with few improvements that could happen quickly. That's how we 1382 ended up with those three that we ended up with. I think Sterling Canal has a number of 1383 issues, as you probably know because you were on the Sterling Canal ad hoc committee. 1384 There was limited options there. It's completely fenced off at this point, and there's no 1385 public access at all. 1386 1387 Commissioner Crommie: We never got to the bottom of that. Let me just ask this 1388 question then, based on what you just said. Is the current Mitchell Park dog park bigger 1389 than a baseball field diamond shared-use would achieve or smaller? The current size. 1390 1391 Commissioner Hetterly: Small, small. 1392 1393 Commissioner Knopper: Smaller. 1394 1395 Commissioner Crommie: Can you just give me the two square footages? 1396 1397 Commissioner Hetterly: They're on your handout. 1398 1399 Mr. Anderson: Mitchell's .56 acres. For example, Hoover which is up on the display, 1400 you can see the yellow area is 1.17 acres. Inside the red area is .96 acre. They're all a 1401 little different. As I toggle back to the Baylands, you can see it's much larger, for 1402 example. That large red area has 3.27. 1403 1404 Commissioner Crommie: Thank you. 1405 1406 Chair Reckdahl: Stacey, do you have any questions? 1407 1408 Commissioner Ashlund: Yeah. In the Hoover Park option, it's listed as a con that there's 1409 frequent use of the field by the Keys School. Why is that a con? Because the field is 1410 occupied? 1411 1412 Commissioner Knopper: There's a lot of children using it during the day, so that leads to 1413 the issue of use, because they use it for their PE activities during the course of the school 1414 day. A lot of the comment with regard to public comment is that you have dog waste that 1415 Approved Minutes 34 APPROVED isn't necessarily cleaned up and the occasional dog digging the hole and tearing up the 1416 grass. That is an opportunity for kids to ... 1417 1418 Commissioner Ashlund: That applies at any park, right? 1419 1420 Commissioner Knopper: For shared-use, yeah. 1421 1422 Commissioner Ashlund: For shared use. Do you only want questions at this point or 1423 we're making other comments as well? Is this the first pass through? 1424 1425 Chair Reckdahl: The first pass through. (inaudible) two. 1426 1427 Commissioner Ashlund: That's it for now. 1428 1429 Chair Reckdahl: That's it, okay. Any other questions? Okay. Now, comments, 1430 conversations. Ed, do you have anything? 1431 1432 Commissioner Lauing: Yeah. Why don't you start at that end? I'm happy to go if you 1433 want. 1434 1435 Chair Reckdahl: Stacey, do you want to start? 1436 1437 Commissioner Ashlund: Okay. 1438 1439 Chair Reckdahl: Go for it. 1440 1441 Commissioner Ashlund: I really like the recommendations. I mean, it's been so 1442 consistent all along from the community and Council and everybody that the need is in 1443 the north of Palo Alto. I really like the potential triangle we'd have if we kept Mitchell 1444 the size it is, use the Colorado substation area and the El Camino Park area. I think that 1445 would be really, really good coverage. The Colorado substation, today's the first day I've 1446 heard that brought up. I don't know if we've discussed that before on the Commission, 1447 but I may have missed that one in the past. If we are looking at shared-use, I don't see 1448 that use of a public park by a private school for PE is a con. It's public land, so I don't 1449 think that applies here as a con. It's public land. I mean, there's schools adjacent to all of 1450 our parks. It's public land; it's not private PE land. 1451 1452 Chair Reckdahl: Do they pay rent? 1453 1454 Mr. de Geus: I have to look into that. I'm not sure if they get a permit; I don't believe 1455 they do. I have to check. 1456 1457 Approved Minutes 35 APPROVED Commissioner Ashlund: If they were renting the field, that would be one thing. 1458 1459 Commissioner Knopper: I think you have to look—just pardon me for interrupting. 1460 Point taken with regard to it's a private school. I think some of the other cons are there's 1461 a nearby playground and it's a heavily used park on any given day, all hours of the day. 1462 1463 Commissioner Ashlund: Yeah, I understand that. I don't think location-wise that Hoover 1464 is really jumping out. I mean, it's been so consistent that the need is in the north. The 1465 other possibility—I don't know if we have already approached the neighborhood 1466 associations. Since we do frequently hear from speakers in the north saying, "We want 1467 them in the neighborhood parks in the north," have you approached the neighborhood 1468 associations at all and said, "Talk to your neighbors and let's see what your consensus is. 1469 Do you guys want it or do you not want it in your neighborhood park?" Once it comes 1470 back to the Commission, then we have to go back and do the outreach. If the 1471 neighborhoods are asking for it and can start to say there really is more demand than 1472 there is resistance in a certain neighborhood park, that could help with community 1473 feedback. 1474 1475 Commissioner Hetterly: We have not done that primarily because the Commission had 1476 asked us not to do that and to leave that to the Master Plan process. 1477 1478 Commissioner Ashlund: Leave that to the Master Plan process, right. 1479 1480 Commissioner Hetterly: Just to reiterate, the idea of trying to get more dedicated dog 1481 parks in neighborhood parks across the City is, as we understood it, really part of the 1482 Master Plan process. This is an additional process that we're trying to move something 1483 forward quickly. That's a big (inaudible). 1484 1485 Commissioner Ashlund: I would avoid expanding at Mitchell. Mitchell is really, really 1486 crowded by a number of schools, a number of tennis players, bicyclists, pedestrians. I 1487 would really avoid it. The need just isn't there. Nobody is coming to our meetings 1488 saying, "We wish we had—if Mitchell were bigger on the south end of Palo Alto." We're 1489 hearing north, north, north. That's my feedback, is really, really keep the focus there. 1490 1491 Chair Reckdahl: Other questions? Deirdre. 1492 1493 Commissioner Crommie: Are we just doing comments now? 1494 1495 Chair Reckdahl: Comments, questions (crosstalk). 1496 1497 Commissioner Crommie: I knew the shared-use was dead on arrival when it was just 1498 morning hours. I mean, I wasn't surprised one bit because everyone I know that hangs 1499 Approved Minutes 36 APPROVED out with their dogs in public places are doing it in the evenings. It just seems obvious. 1500 Just look around our City. Look around our neighborhoods. Look around our parks. 1501 Everyone comes out after they get home from work. They like to come during that 1502 twilight hour. All across the City, that's happening, and it's not happening in the 1503 morning. I'm not surprised that we got all that feedback. I brought it up at the time that 1504 the ad hoc was formulating their idea, but I was told, "We just have to do that as a pilot." 1505 These things are all connected. I mean, it's not independent. It's like you have to satisfy 1506 the need even when you do a pilot. I think we should take the Baylands park off the 1507 table. There's not a single person who's coming here saying they want to go over there 1508 and use that as a dog park. We need to look at what the constituency is saying. No one is 1509 saying that. Plus, it can harm the wildlife as people move from that park to the levee 1510 which they absolutely will do if they're over there. I just think that should be a non-1511 starter. I know it was sort of put on the table because it was cheap, but I just don't see 1512 any reason to keep it there. Mitchell Park is in my neighborhood, relatively close. I 1513 guess it's a 20-minute walk or 5-minute car ride. None of my neighbors with dogs go 1514 over there. They just don't want to do it. They hang out at the tiny, little Monroe Park. I 1515 wish I could get them to go to Robles which is a 7-minute walk. People just don't seem 1516 to want to go very far from their homes with their dogs. Mitchell Park, I don't even like 1517 being there with my dog. It's all dirt. I haven't heard good things about the experience at 1518 Mitchell Park for a dog park. If we don't have a good experience with a half-acre dog 1519 park over there, I'm not sure it's going to improve to go into that nice sitting area nearby. 1520 We can't keep the grass nice at Mitchell Park. Now, if you double the size, maybe there's 1521 a lower impact, somehow you can keep it nice. I've just not seen that happen. I'm a big 1522 user of the artificial turf dog park; I go there multiple times a week with my dog. It's in 1523 the shopping center at San Antonio and Fayette. I was never into artificial turf; it seems 1524 gross to me. I will say it works, it really does work. It's hugely used, a massively dense 1525 dog park, and the dogs are all different sizes. It'd be really nice to know the acreage on 1526 that dog park. It seems tiny to me. I've talked to a lot of people there. Kind of the word 1527 at that park is, it's tiny but we all can see our dogs so the dogs are not misbehaving. 1528 That's why the small dogs work with the big dogs, because they're highly monitored. 1529 Some people in dog parks say where you really get into trouble is when it gets too big, 1530 the dogs run off. People want to stay and congregate with each other, and then the dogs 1531 start misbehaving or not getting picked up after and stuff like that. I guess of all these 1532 proposals, I would say put them where the people want them which is in the north. That's 1533 where we have the deficit. We should do whatever it takes to get something over there. 1534 Then we have to look at just neighborhood by neighborhood and make sure every 1535 neighborhood park is assessed for a dog area, because that's where people want to go. 1536 They want an easy walking distance. Some parks are a lot better suited for it. It's an 1537 absolute tragedy at Eleanor Pardee. The reason you don't have a dog park there is 1538 because people rebelled in that neighborhood. We need to have a stronger policy 1539 mandate to really counteract the NIMBY-ism. I've been on the Commission now for 1540 seven years. Ever since I sat here, we have looked at dog parks. I just hope the next 1541 Approved Minutes 37 APPROVED wave we get more going with it. You really do need to look at where the users are, where 1542 people want it, independent of cost at this point. I think we're being misled to look for a 1543 cheap solution. Look where we ended up; we ended up in areas where we already have 1544 dog parks, looking at that. That's not what people are telling us they want. That's what I 1545 feel. 1546 1547 Female: Can I ask a question? 1548 1549 Commissioner Lauing: Not really. 1550 1551 Chair Reckdahl: No. 1552 1553 Female: Come back next month on this. 1554 1555 Chair Reckdahl: Ed. 1556 1557 Commissioner Lauing: Yes, thanks. As we address this whole issue, we need to go back 1558 over the last year and half when we got started and over the last six years. Why are we 1559 looking at shared-use dog parks? Because there aren't enough dog parks. Why aren't 1560 there enough dog parks? Because there's not enough parks and there's not enough park 1561 space. To have a comment that we should just survey the public and put them where they 1562 want them is not practical in any way, shape or form. We have to do what we can with 1563 the limitation of park space until we can get more park space, if we can, and do the best 1564 we can to identify existing spaces that can be turned into dog parks. We've been working 1565 on this for a long time. The need is there. We know that it's going to come out as a very, 1566 very high need in the Master Plan. The top three, maybe the top issue in all of parks, 1567 maybe in the top three of all City issues, but certainly as park specific. There are other 1568 options that are being uncovered, which I agree is above and beyond the scope of what 1569 the ad hoc was supposed to look at. I thank them for also looking at those. There are still 1570 a lot of cards to overturn there. We don't know if that's going to be the case. I would be 1571 very happy to see action at our next meeting in favor of going ahead with these pilots to 1572 get some data. That's what you do, as I said earlier, in a test market. You try to get some 1573 data on what works and what doesn't. For example, I think it would be a very valid test 1574 to have Hoover and Baylands because, amongst other things, it's comparing the usage 1575 that we get from someone who's walking to the park and the usage we would get with 1576 someone who is driving to the park. If I lived in north Palo Alto, which I do, and I had a 1577 dog, which I don't, I would love to go to Baylands a couple of hours and run my dog in 1578 that big space as opposed to never go there because it takes me five minutes to drive 1579 there. I think it could get extraordinary use. We don't know that if we just restrict it to 1580 one pilot or say, "Forget about it. Let's just wait another couple of years until we can get 1581 some permanent dog parks." To be able to test Hoover versus Baylands, number one, 1582 you really do need an A-B split test to have a valid study. You're testing north and south; 1583 Approved Minutes 38 APPROVED you're testing drive to and walk to. I think you would get some pretty interesting 1584 feedback there. I'm very aware of the challenges involved, but I don't think the cons are 1585 so overwhelming that we say we shouldn't do it. In the meantime and in parallel if those, 1586 call them ready options, can be looked at, certainly the El Camino would be a tremendous 1587 alternative. We worked really, really hard on the El Camino Park to get a dog park in 1588 there. We were shot down on that a couple of years ago by the environmental; otherwise, 1589 there'd be one right there today because I see the park is almost ready to open. I'd like to 1590 see us move to action on the ad hoc at the next meeting. I'm sorry, on the shared-use at 1591 the next meeting that the ad hoc has studied. If we ended up saying contingent on if a 1592 permanent one opens up in 60 days, we can kind of reel it back in. The footnotes that I 1593 would have is that I still would like to see if there will be a way to extend the hours. In 1594 contrast to my colleague, I don't agree that nobody's going to come between 8:00 and 1595 10:00, because a lot of people walk their dogs in the morning. A lot of people. I've gone 1596 on morning walks, and I run into a lot of dogs and make a lot of dog friends. Let's see. 1597 The second thing is in the pilot I would like to see—this may be a detail—during the pilot 1598 I would like to see outreach and support from the dog owners in terms of the clean-up 1599 aspect of it just to make it a very successful pilot. We can sort out later what to do 1600 around that. 1601 1602 Chair Reckdahl: Anyone else? Pat. 1603 1604 Vice Chair Markevitch: It seems to me there's one park that has not been mentioned, and 1605 it's in north Palo Alto. That's Heritage Park where the old clinic used to be on Homer. 1606 They specifically planted trees there so soccer clubs couldn't play. I think it's a good 1607 shared-use option to look at. 1608 1609 Chair Reckdahl: We went over there after the May Fete Parade. I brought that up, that I 1610 thought there is room there to have a dog park whether it be a shared-use or a dedicated 1611 dog park. I understand the ad hoc was not addressing the whole dog park issue. They 1612 were very focused on the shared-use. Once the Master Plan comes in, I think we'll have a 1613 little more freedom. When I look at these options, I think the most promising one is El 1614 Camino. I think that is a very good location. If we can do that on the cheap, I think we 1615 should do it now and not wait for the Master Plan. I do think that, in my anecdotal 1616 experience talking to people who have dogs, most people want something that they can 1617 walk to. I hear that over and over again. We don't have big parks in Palo Alto. We can't 1618 have big dog parks in every park, but we can have small dog parks in a lot. Down the 1619 road, if I look in my crystal ball, I think that's the solution that's going to percolate up, 1620 having some small—it'll probably have to be artificial turf since you have high use on 1621 it—in neighborhood parks. That's a decision down the road, but now I think we should 1622 just move ahead and do something, either the shared-use at Hoover or the El Camino 1623 Park. Those are the two most feasible. Hoover Park, you could have evening hours. 1624 There is not the constraint that you would have if you had it inside the diamond where 1625 Approved Minutes 39 APPROVED you would have competition from kids. You could do Hoover and have morning and 1626 evening hours, and that would be an option. You could have a dedicated park over at El 1627 Camino. I think those are the two best options. I don't see any reason to wait for the 1628 Master Plan for either of those. A couple of points I would bring up. A lot of people 1629 complain, "I'm a neighbor to a park. I don't want to have a dog park nearby." When I go 1630 over to San Antonio, I'll sit there and listen. One thing is if you look up there, people 1631 have their windows open looking out over that dog park. If it was really that noisy, they 1632 would have their windows shut. I don't think a dog park is any more noisy than any other 1633 park use. When I sit there and try and listen and pretend if I was in my living room, 1634 would I find this objectionable, I don't. I think that neighbors' objections are not based on 1635 fact. It's based on concerns that are not real. The second thing is off-leash without 1636 fences. I think that's a really bad idea. My son was knocked down in a park once by an 1637 off-leash dog, and it was very traumatic. He had a dog phobia for years after that. I think 1638 if we want to off-leash dogs, they really should be inside some type of fence. I think 1639 that's the best option. I think we do have options here. I agree with Ed that we should 1640 move on, and we should in the near future try something. If it doesn't work, we always 1641 can back it out. Failing any other comments, we'll move on to the Master Plan. 1642 1643 4. Update on the Parks, Trails, Open Space and Recreation Facilities Master 1644 Plan. 1645 1646 Rob de Geus: Just to kick us off. Shall we get started, Chair Reckdahl? Missing a 1647 couple of Commissioners. A few things we wanted to share on the Master Plan this 1648 evening. One, staff have been working hard on putting together a much more 1649 comprehensive report for the City Council following our last Study Session. We hope to 1650 be ready for that follow-up Study Session on November 2nd or 3rd, 2nd. We got close to 1651 doing that, but then we felt like there was just a little more work that needed to be done. 1652 We went and reflected on the Council Study Session and reviewed the tape again and felt 1653 like there was still just a few things that some of the Council Members had asked about 1654 that weren't reflected sufficiently in the report, even though it is much more 1655 comprehensive and includes a lot more and tells the story, I think, a lot better. I felt like 1656 there was still a little more we needed to add. We're not going forward on the 2nd; we're 1657 looking for another date. That did give us an opportunity then to put it in the packet for 1658 the Commission, so that you have that and can provide feedback on what you think of the 1659 report. We're particularly interested if there are areas that you think need to be amplified 1660 or there are omissions from your reading of that report. That's one thing that we want to 1661 do today. I think we can start with that, just sort of feedback and response to the draft 1662 report for the Council Study Session. 1663 1664 Chair Reckdahl: I'll start off. One of the things that came back last time was they didn't 1665 like when you talked about the principles. The principles are kind of nebulous. They 1666 were saying how is this going to help me plan the parks. They want concrete—one thing 1667 Approved Minutes 40 APPROVED when I looked at the listing of this, I thought this was good stuff, but part of it was what 1668 am I getting out of MIG out of this? What are the deliverables? That should be made 1669 clear, what are we getting. On Attachment A, on that second paragraph there, it does talk 1670 about that, but I would itemize that and make that clear. We're getting this, we're getting 1671 this, we're getting this. Just to be clear this is what the Master Plan is producing. Each 1672 one of those, how will those help us plan parks. The other thing was when I looked back 1673 at my comments, there were some comments about—Council Member Schmid had 1674 comments about demographics. I didn't think that his questions were addressed properly. 1675 His concerns were that when he looked at the existing conditions report, he saw one 1676 growth and that did not agree with the CPA and the ABAG projections. I think we really 1677 need to look hard at the projections that the City and ABAG have and really incorporate 1678 them into the report. That's not done right now, and he's going to have that same 1679 comment. Every time we've talked about that, he's come back to demographics. He's 1680 very concerned—I am too—that the population is growing very fast and our parks are not 1681 growing fast. I think that's what he's poking at, saying you need to look at the 1682 demographics that we're projecting and how is the park system going to handle all those 1683 extra people. If you look on page 12 of the MIG report, way in the back, the 1684 demographic and recreation trend, it says what do we learn. They really didn't talk about 1685 this, this long-term growth. The City has grown steadily and they look in the rearview 1686 mirror. Then looking at current, the City has a lot of commuters who travel by bike. 1687 You're missing Schmid's whole point. The whole point is that we're getting more and 1688 more people in here and how is the park going to handle that. I think we need to address 1689 that. 1690 1691 Mr. de Geus: Yeah, that's a good point. I know he felt very strongly about that. MIG 1692 have gone back and revised the demographic report to sync up the predictions of growth 1693 with the Comprehensive Plan and the analysis that they're doing. 1694 1695 Chair Reckdahl: Can you incorporate some of that into the (crosstalk). 1696 1697 Mr. de Geus: Yeah, we can, definitely. 1698 1699 Chair Reckdahl: That would be very useful. I think, number one, it's a good point. 1700 Number two, he asked it and it'd be nice to address what he asked. There's two reasons to 1701 go after that. The other thing is that .... 1702 1703 Council Member Filseth: Can I throw in my comment on that? 1704 1705 Chair Reckdahl: Yeah, go ahead. 1706 1707 Council Member Filseth: As you were talking, I was sort of thinking about Ed's 1708 comment here, the fact that we're short of dog parks has to do with the fact we're short of 1709 Approved Minutes 41 APPROVED parks in general. One of the members of the audience said there's only one really good 1710 dog park in town, and it's the one at Mitchell Park. You go there, and it's crowded all the 1711 time. Sometimes there's sort of dog-to-dog issues and so forth. If that's not a concrete 1712 manifestation of what you're talking about right now, I don't know what is. For what it's 1713 worth. 1714 1715 Mr. de Geus: I agree. 1716 1717 Chair Reckdahl: I think that is a good point. Yogi Berra, no one goes there anymore 1718 because it's too crowded. My final point was the principles I'm not real warm to, but the 1719 criteria, I think, is solid. Can we reference that earlier in the memo? We do talk about, 1720 way in the back, the criteria. These aren't numbered, but it's the second to last page. 1721 Currently there are five identified criteria. I would really like to see can we move that up 1722 somehow. I think that's the meat that Scharff wanted. It's how this is going to help me 1723 define the park. I think this is going to tell me. Not even change the content, but just 1724 shuffle things around so he sees that earlier. I'm afraid that people on the Council will 1725 read through this and lose patience before they get there. My question's not being 1726 answered, my question's not being answered, and they won't get all the way to the end. If 1727 you can get it up towards the front, saying this is criteria. One of the deliverables is a set 1728 of criteria, and we'll use that to judge projects and parks. 1729 1730 Mr. de Geus: One of the thoughts we had was, because the Council had a lot of 1731 questions, is to have actually an attachment that was specific to their questions that then 1732 refers back to areas in the report that gives the answer. If it's not in the report, then it 1733 provides it in that attachment. That's what we're currently working on. 1734 1735 Chair Reckdahl: That would be useful for them. 1736 1737 Mr. de Geus: That's what they want to see specifically (crosstalk). 1738 1739 Chair Reckdahl: They can go back and look and see questions. 1740 1741 Mr. de Geus: I see my question; I see the answer. Good, thank you. 1742 1743 Commissioner Lauing: To two of your points, since we're on that page. The first one 1744 you said is something about the principles were fuzzy. They're so fuzzy that they're not 1745 even on the page. I was actually thinking that at the top of that page before criteria, that 1746 we should just go ahead and re-list the principles. I think you referenced them in the 1747 back. If they were in the document here, you'd have the principles and then you'd have 1748 the criteria. If you want to swap them, that's all right but that's not how we created them 1749 in advance. That's why we have them in that batting order. What I'm saying is I don't 1750 think it's redundant to list them here for clarity of how the ... 1751 Approved Minutes 42 APPROVED 1752 Mr. de Geus: Are you on the staff report? 1753 1754 Commissioner Lauing: I'm on the staff report, exactly, where you guys were talking 1755 about it. Where Keith said can you get the criteria in sooner. Just above that, you 1756 reference the principles, but you didn't list the principles. I just thought it'd be clearer for 1757 them to have on their mind. Here are the principles and then here are the criteria that 1758 dropped out of that. The last paragraph above that criteria section. 1759 1760 Chair Reckdahl: Any other questions? Stacey, did you have any? Do you guys want to 1761 walk through ... 1762 1763 Commissioner Lauing: I had one. 1764 1765 Chair Reckdahl: ... this handout? 1766 1767 Mr. de Geus: Yeah, that's the next topic. 1768 1769 Chair Reckdahl: I'm sorry. Ed. 1770 1771 Commissioner Lauing: I had one. I didn't quite understand the number two here under 1772 criteria evaluation. They will be evaluated by an evaluation panel. I didn't quite 1773 understand. 1774 1775 Peter Jensen: We haven't talked about that yet. 1776 1777 Mr. de Geus: That's the next topic that we're going to discuss here. 1778 1779 Commissioner Lauing: You're going to present that to them before it's discussed? Okay. 1780 That's fine. 1781 1782 Commissioner Knopper: I had a quick question. On page 15, what we learned, the 1783 second bullet point says fewer neighborhoods are within—this totally could be me, 1784 because I'm not a spatial person. Fewer neighborhoods are within a half mile service area 1785 of every essential activity. I understood the bullet point above it. Maybe I'm missing it. 1786 You're saying that most have within a quarter to a half mile distance to a park. The next 1787 bullet point is fewer. Are you just saying more people are a quarter mile closer and then, 1788 like, there's just a lesser amount that are a half mile? I wasn't sure. It just didn't seem 1789 clear to me. 1790 1791 Commissioner Crommie: I think it's talking about two separate things, each bullet point. 1792 1793 Approved Minutes 43 APPROVED Commissioner Hetterly: I think the first one's about geography, what's the distance 1794 between your house and a park. The other is about what's the distance between your 1795 house and a park that has an essential activity. Essential activities, throw, kick a ball. 1796 1797 Mr. Jensen: Play, sit. 1798 1799 Commissioner Knopper: Okay. 1800 1801 Mr. de Geus: Enjoy the outdoors. We can look at that to see if that can be a little clearer. 1802 If it was confusing as you read it, it might be to others. We'll take a look at it. 1803 1804 Commissioner Knopper: Maybe not. Maybe it's just me, which is entirely possible. The 1805 other question I had very quickly is on page 11, what we learned. The Master Plan has 1806 the potential to help advance recommendations and policies (inaudible) existing adopted 1807 plans, blah, blah, blah, Our Palo Alto, the Public Arts Master Plan and Urban Forest 1808 Master Plan. I guess my question is do you want to clarify what Our Palo Alto 2030, 1809 like, should you like indent more or is it just fine to do like those big broad, like I don't 1810 know how far in the weeds ... 1811 1812 Mr. de Geus: This report is intended for the City Council (crosstalk) familiar with these 1813 plans. 1814 1815 Commissioner Knopper: I just wasn't sure how, like, if you needed to do an indentation, 1816 like, Our Palo Alto 2035 includes buh, buh, buh, Urban Forest Plan, like highlight. I 1817 wasn't sure. That's just sort of like a question. I'm trying to, like, sort of anticipate if 1818 somebody says what exactly is that comprised of. Thank you. 1819 1820 Mr. de Geus: Other questions or are you ready to ... 1821 1822 Commissioner Crommie: I just had one. Where's the demographic study cited in here? I 1823 couldn't find it. 1824 1825 Mr. de Geus: It is ... 1826 1827 Mr. Jensen: Page 12. 1828 1829 Mr. de Geus: Twelve is it? 1830 1831 Commissioner Knopper: That's what Keith was talking about, what we learned. 1832 1833 Mr. de Geus: We can certainly add more there. 1834 1835 Approved Minutes 44 APPROVED Commissioner Crommie: I agree with that comment. 1836 1837 Vice Chair Markevitch: Are you done? 1838 1839 Commissioner Crommie: Yep. 1840 1841 Vice Chair Markevitch: The final report, is it going to be closer to the size of the binder 1842 or to this? If it's going to be closer to the size of the binder, then it might be good to tell 1843 Council that this is just a snapshot of what the staff and the Commission have been 1844 working, so they don't think this is all we've been doing. There's a lot of information 1845 within that draft report that we're pulling together. 1846 1847 Mr. de Geus: Hopefully this illustrates that, that it points to the depth of the work and 1848 scope. We've been working on the website as well to make that a little more readable and 1849 accessible to all of the background documents and surveys and so on. Shall we move on 1850 to the next—actually, Peter, did you want to share the thinking around the model that we 1851 handed out? I'm going to pull it up on the screen here. How about that? 1852 1853 Mr. Jensen: This is going to start creating a structure that we're going to understand how 1854 this process flows through. If you saw the original flow diagram of this ... 1855 1856 Mr. de Geus: Did they see it? I don't know if they ever saw that. 1857 1858 Mr. Jensen: It looks something like this. 1859 1860 Mr. de Geus: Did you see that last time? 1861 1862 Chair Reckdahl: No. 1863 1864 Mr. Jensen: It's a much more complex process, and it's not very easy to follow through. 1865 We've been working on and generating this. What this is now telling us is what the 1866 process will be for us starting basically now as we develop the principles and the criteria, 1867 and then how we get through to the actual final recommendations. You can see then 1868 what's happening is that the potential list of projects, program ideas is a list that comes to 1869 us from the consultant. They put this list together from all the analysis that they've done. 1870 How they do that is they use the community input that we have received. They review it 1871 through the principles, and then they also look at it through the data opportunities 1872 summary which is basically the matrix. Taking all those line items and looking at all that 1873 data that's there to generate that list. All right? This is the list then that they're producing 1874 right now. We hope to have some version of it in the next month to share, because it's 1875 really kind of where the rubber meets the road in all of this. We started to look at the 1876 spreadsheet that the consultant has put together and allows you to look at it in a 1877 Approved Minutes 45 APPROVED geographic sense and the program and how the parks, trails, open space, recreation 1878 facilities, recreational programs, so you can cross-reference all this data and look at how 1879 the system is balancing out when we start to prioritize. The list now—I'm not quite sure 1880 how long it's going to be. We've discussed it's in the hundreds to look at. When that list 1881 is generated, basically the criteria then is kind of the meat of the process of evaluating 1882 and prioritizing. That's going to be based on a point system. We're going to talk about 1883 that point system, what that point system is. Each one of the criteria is going to have a 1884 number associated with it, either a 1-5 or—I don't know what that is yet. Every project 1885 that's on that list will be run through that criteria process and a number will be generated. 1886 That number will then allow us to rank all the projects. That's the first pass of the 1887 prioritization. The second pass is going and looking at this segment of the process where 1888 we have our finalized list, and then we start to look at what we're recommending is 1889 balanced, how cost is associated with what we're recommending. That screen is too 1890 small for me to see it on here. 1891 1892 Commissioner Hetterly: Geographic distribution. 1893 1894 Mr. Jensen: Geographic, if it's distributed throughout the City. All those things will then 1895 come into play in whittling down the list. That is composed of a panel which we don't 1896 know how that's formulated yet. We will have to talk about that as we go along with the 1897 process in the next couple of months. Once that list is finalized and becomes the final 1898 list, it is then vetted again through the Commission, the City Council and gets us down to 1899 our final prioritization. These are the processes of how we're going to be doing this. 1900 How this has changed from before is that, I think, the flow diagram made the principles a 1901 more major thing at the beginning that seemed to be eliminating a lot of stuff. Really that 1902 isn't the case. Each project is looked at in how many principles it is fulfilling. Really the 1903 criteria is the key where the evaluation and the weight is put onto the list itself. Where, I 1904 think, the principles are really powerful is at the actual end of the process, when you have 1905 your list and then you go and look at—these projects don't have some of these principles, 1906 so how can we incorporate those principles into the project to make the project better. I 1907 was listening to your conversation before when you were talking about the Baylands. 1908 When you talk about the Baylands and that project doesn't incorporate playful in it, does 1909 it have balance in it, so you can start to look at those things and start to incorporate those 1910 things into the scope of the project to make it a more full-breadth project having a larger 1911 impact. That's what the principles really are, powerful. This is a more simplified 1912 diagram. I think it's a lot cleaner and easier to understand. I think the process now is 1913 starting to be structured where it's defensible, actionable, getting us to a recommended 1914 list that we can have backup and verification of. I'll open it up to discussion and 1915 questions about that. 1916 1917 Chair Reckdahl: Deirdre. 1918 1919 Approved Minutes 46 APPROVED Commissioner Crommie: Just on the last point that you made, that very end process. It 1920 sounds kind of cool to reincorporate principles back into a project, but it seems a little 1921 backwards if you've let something win a race and then at the end you decide it doesn't 1922 really have what we want. Did it beat out a competitor that had more of those things? It 1923 just seems like a backhanded way—why are things sifting out that don't already have—1924 why are you getting to the end of the process where you have a lot of items that don't 1925 have those principles? 1926 1927 Mr. de Geus: They're at the beginning as well. I think that's key. Maybe that was 1928 missed a little bit. 1929 1930 Commissioner Crommie: No, no. You are looking at that at the beginning. I guess, at 1931 the end ... 1932 1933 Chair Reckdahl: You're scoring them with criteria. You're not scoring them with the 1934 principles. 1935 1936 Commissioner Crommie: You never score with the principles is what you're saying. 1937 They have to have those, but then you look at what falls out at the end. 1938 1939 Chair Reckdahl: I mean, they don't have to. If you had a really good project that only 1940 had half the principles, you still might go for it. 1941 1942 Commissioner Crommie: Yeah, I guess that makes sense. 1943 1944 Mr. Jensen: There may be a project that maybe only one principle applies to it that is a 1945 legitimate project to use. We don't want to use the principles as the means to eliminate 1946 the projects. We want to make sure that they're aligning with the principles and we want 1947 to then try to bring the principles in to make the project better. 1948 1949 Mr. de Geus: I would say as we sort of reflect on the Study Session we had with Council, 1950 I think we emphasized the principles far too much. They're important, but they're really 1951 high level and talk about the whole system. We really need to be thinking about the 1952 community input that we've received, which is a lot, and the summary matrix, 1953 opportunities matrix which is a great deal of data, plus the principles that generates this 1954 pretty significant list is what we (inaudible). The criteria really allows us to prioritize 1955 which one should be higher and lower and what timeframe should they be invested in. I 1956 actually really think that's—the way Peter shared this and we've talked about it internally 1957 is sort of reapply the principles toward the end to say how can the project be even better. 1958 Have another sort of test against is it as accessible as it should be, is it as inclusive as it 1959 should be, does it incorporate nature, did we really get that or could we do more. 1960 1961 Approved Minutes 47 APPROVED Commissioner Crommie: That's why I get suspicious. Nature's tacked on at the end, and 1962 it really isn't substantial. That can be very superficial, just to add in some like natural 1963 play area instead of ... 1964 1965 Mr. de Geus: Hopefully it's there already, and it's just ... 1966 1967 Commissioner Crommie: Just be careful when you're dealing with nature that way, I 1968 would say. 1969 1970 Chair Reckdahl: I like the principles at the end. I think that's good. I can see that. Like 1971 you were talking about CIPs, you have some projects you present (inaudible) which is 1972 reviewed and is there any way that we can improve it, add a little wrinkle here or there. 1973 It's still the same fundamental project, but you're just adding the wrinkles at the end to try 1974 and align it more with the principles. I think that's more defensible than using it at the 1975 front end. Using the front end—you do want to keep them in mind as you're going 1976 through that list. I think this is a more logical way. When the Council was kind of 1977 confused how we're using them, I think this is a good explanation. Pat. 1978 1979 Vice Chair Markevitch: These principles and this criteria are all going to be held up 1980 when we do CIPs for the parks. Is this standard also going to be applied to other CIPs 1981 within the City? If it isn't, are our allocation of funds for parks going to fall by the 1982 wayside because it's not as strong as the metrics for the other CIPs? Does that make 1983 sense? 1984 1985 Mr. Jensen: It does. From my experience of how the CIPs now are formulated, it's based 1986 on maintenance and keep-up or it's based on what the flavor of the month of the project is 1987 at that time or whose special project can go forward. Building a framework that gives us 1988 the guidelines that can give us better projects, more in-depth projects, is the better way to 1989 go than just what we need right now and planning that out for the future. 1990 1991 Mr. de Geus: I think it'll strengthen it a lot actually. As we go through the CIP process 1992 and all the departments have different needs, if we have a Master Plan that has a process 1993 for defining priorities and needs that is very community-based in terms of input, we'll 1994 have a much stronger case when we come to the table with all the different CIPs that 1995 people want to do. We have this document that supports what we're putting forward as 1996 here's why this is a priority. 1997 1998 Mr. Jensen: Right. I think that is definitely the key. When it comes down to sitting 1999 around the table and deciding what CIPs are going to be awarded, this is going to 2000 generate background information that we can give as why we want to do this. That will 2001 make it more powerful and, I think, will allow parks projects to gain more revenue in the 2002 future, because it does have definitely a backing, a clear guide of what we're trying to do. 2003 Approved Minutes 48 APPROVED 2004 Commissioner Knopper: I just wanted to say that a company having a mission statement 2005 where they have a set of core values that go back to and they evaluate is always helpful. 2006 It doesn't mean that every project—to your point, Peter—hits every key measure every 2007 single time. It keeps you mindful of what the overall goal is, what the overall strategic 2008 position is and what we're trying to do and what we're trying to achieve. I really like the 2009 idea of having this core set of principles to go back to and say, "It meets these three 2010 measures. I think that if we think about accessibility a little bit differently with this 2011 project, we can integrate it this way." Again, it's that overall umbrella of value 2012 statements that you can come back to. It reminds you of what you need to be thinking 2013 about on a consistent basis. 2014 2015 Chair Reckdahl: What is the schedule for going back to Council? 2016 2017 Mr. de Geus: We're looking for a date, so it's with the Clerk's Office right now. We very 2018 much would like to be back before Council before the end of the calendar year. There's a 2019 lot on the Council agenda as Council Member Filseth can attest to. It's a bit of jockeying 2020 to find an hour where we can present this to them. We don't want it to be too long, 2021 because we want to continue to work on the plan and make progress. We do feel like this 2022 check-in with Council is a very important next step that we really need to be doing now. 2023 Hopefully soon. 2024 2025 Chair Reckdahl: If you went to Council, will that change what you're doing? I guess 2026 they could give you different direction. 2027 2028 Mr. de Geus: They can always give us new direction. 2029 2030 Chair Reckdahl: You're not waiting on anything, you're still going full blast? 2031 2032 Mr. de Geus: Yeah, we're still moving ahead. I mean, the next big piece is the work of 2033 MIG to draft potential new project program ideas, which they're working on 2034 concurrently. 2035 2036 Chair Reckdahl: Do we have an update to the matrix? We had some updates, but then 2037 we never got the final. 2038 2039 Mr. Jensen: I do have a final now that I'll post and send out to the group. 2040 2041 Chair Reckdahl: We were converging, but I don't think we had converged yet. 2042 Commissioner Hetterly. 2043 2044 Approved Minutes 49 APPROVED Commissioner Hetterly: On this new handout, I have some suggestions and some 2045 questions. I think one of the pieces that's missing is the site survey and analysis, which 2046 was a big chunk of MIG's work. I wonder if it doesn't make sense to put community 2047 input and the site survey and analysis at the top, because those are kind of the big inflows 2048 of information and those feed through the principles and the data and opportunities 2049 summary to get to the project ideas and programs. I would stick both of those up top 2050 rather than on a parallel line. I think we want community input as the most important 2051 thing on the flow chart. In terms of potential project and program ideas, I'm still not 2052 entirely clear what differentiates a project from a program idea. Bunching them together, 2053 that could include we should put a dog park at this place and this place and this place or it 2054 could be we need more dog parks. The former is a really useful recommendation. The 2055 latter not so much a useful recommendation. 2056 2057 Mr. Jensen: It'll be the former. 2058 2059 Mr. de Geus: It has to be. Otherwise, we can't apply the criteria. It has to be ... 2060 2061 Commissioner Hetterly: That was going to be my next question. I wasn't sure what 2062 program ideas meant. 2063 2064 Mr. Jensen: It'll be site specific for those that are physical elements in parks. 2065 2066 Commissioner Hetterly: That might be useful for Council to know as well, if they're 2067 wondering what these ideas are, how are we going to act on an idea. Maybe a little 2068 clarity around program ideas. 2069 2070 Mr. de Geus: I would just add that the program could relate to the recreation piece of it, a 2071 changing of a trail or a (inaudible). It's more of this type of activity for this age group. 2072 2073 Commissioner Hetterly: It would be more specific than expand services for seniors? 2074 2075 Mr. de Geus: Yes. 2076 2077 Commissioner Crommie: Can you call it programming rather than ideas? 2078 2079 Commissioner Hetterly: That's the level of specificity that I think is useful. 2080 2081 Vice Chair Markevitch: What was that? 2082 2083 Commissioner Crommie: I was just saying can you call it programming instead of 2084 program ideas. You're talking about programming. If you're talking about programming, 2085 it does imply a site. It's more concrete. 2086 Approved Minutes 50 APPROVED 2087 Chair Reckdahl: The distinction here is that project means some type of facility or park, 2088 something physical. Programming is like recreation programming. 2089 2090 Commissioner Crommie: I was just trying to get rid of the word "idea." 2091 2092 Commissioner Ashlund: Staffing as opposed to facility, right? 2093 2094 Mr. de Geus: Hmm? 2095 2096 Commissioner Ashlund: Staff-run activities as opposed to facility. 2097 2098 Mr. de Geus: Yeah. 2099 2100 Mr. Jensen: Feedback on the potential project and program ideas, we'd like to have that. 2101 We discussed this at length with staff a few times of what that should be, and it's changed 2102 just as we talked to the consultant a few times. If there's more ideas about how we should 2103 frame that, we started calling it draft recommendation list and then it developed into 2104 potential actions. There has been a process of ... 2105 2106 Mr. de Geus: It took us a long time to get to this. 2107 2108 Commissioner Hetterly: (crosstalk) be able to talk about it so that you can convey the 2109 level of specificity. My other comment was the scoring and the review panel are 2110 certainly the things I'm most interested in. I suspect they will also be the things Council's 2111 most interested in. I understand those are still being fleshed out. Is that right? 2112 2113 Mr. de Geus: They are. The current thinking is a panel of some type. We'll have to 2114 discuss how best to do that. My feeling is it's probably easier if staff takes a—we sort of 2115 present the process and get comfortable with it as staff and Commission. Then we take a 2116 shot at doing that and bring that to the full Commission for review to see if it makes sense 2117 as opposed to a couple of Commissioners. We still have to think about this and what 2118 involvement does the stakeholder group have in something like that. I think they could 2119 play a role here as well. We still have some thinking to do about how we do. If you have 2120 thoughts, ideas, that's going to be a topic (crosstalk). 2121 2122 Chair Reckdahl: The stakeholders, won't that be community input? Are you saying 2123 community input would be both top and in the iteration? 2124 2125 Mr. de Geus: We see community input going through the whole process really. How do 2126 you do that in a meaningful way? We have this stakeholder group that's very engaged, as 2127 you know, sort of 25 or 30 members. How do we effectively use them through this 2128 Approved Minutes 51 APPROVED process? It seems to me they have some role to play below the line here, after we come 2129 up with the list of potential projects and ideas. How do we filter those through the 2130 criteria? It would be good to engage the stakeholder committee in that some way. 2131 2132 Chair Reckdahl: We do have outreach meetings to the community before we remodel 2133 parks. Even if we convince ourselves that we want to remodel Rinconada park, we go to 2134 the community and say this is what we're planning to do. 2135 2136 Mr. de Geus: Absolutely. 2137 2138 Commissioner Ashlund: There's sort of individual community responses from individual 2139 residents versus the stakeholder group is more representative. It's like the dog owners 2140 want more dog parks. The soccer clubs need more field space. That kind of thing. It's 2141 more collective feedback. Can I ask a quick question about the stakeholder list? When 2142 there was a discussion about getting rid of the Girl Scout house at the Rinconada Park, 2143 the Girl Scouts weighed in really, really heavily on that. I see Boy Scouts are on the list. 2144 In terms of gender equality, is there a reason that the Girls Scouts are not on the ... Palo 2145 Alto Unified is actually on there twice. If you ... 2146 2147 Mr. de Geus: I'll have to look at that. 2148 2149 Commissioner Ashlund: You might want to check Palo Alto ... 2150 2151 Mr. Jensen: Maybe the Unified was (crosstalk). 2152 2153 Commissioner Ashlund: Get them on there once and maybe add the Girl Scouts. 2154 2155 Mr. de Geus: Yeah. Maybe we'll have to add that. We're trying to create a model as 2156 well that helps us complete the Master Plan, of course, but then as a model we can use to 2157 evaluate future ideas and programs and projects consistent with how we came up with the 2158 Master Plan. 2159 2160 Commissioner Ashlund: The last question about the stakeholders. The very first 2161 stakeholder meeting that we attended, I know Olenka was there and spoke about Magical 2162 Bridge and accessibility. There's no organization like Abilities United mentioned, or 2163 Vista Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired. There's several organizations in Palo 2164 Alto, even Children's Health Council which is affiliated with Stanford but represents 2165 children with special needs, could be represented as well. 2166 2167 Mr. de Geus: Okay. 2168 2169 Approved Minutes 52 APPROVED Chair Reckdahl: If you want to talk about how community input goes in, I think that's 2170 the last circle at the very bottom where we're applying principles. We really are applying 2171 principles and also community input. When we get a draft plan, we'll present that to the 2172 community and say, "What do you think about this?" Then we'll get their feedback. 2173 Sometimes we do tweak things. That would be one place if you were looking at places 2174 where community input would fit. Pat, anything else? 2175 2176 Vice Chair Markevitch: No. 2177 2178 Chair Reckdahl: Abbie? 2179 2180 Commissioner Knopper: I'm good. Thank you. 2181 2182 Chair Reckdahl: Deirdre? 2183 2184 Commissioner Crommie: I was just looking at the stakeholder list. Did we drop any 2185 people, other stakeholders or is this the same list that we've carried through? 2186 2187 Mr. de Geus: It should be the same list. If something's dropped off, it might be 2188 intentional. 2189 2190 Mr. Jensen: There are some individuals though that I did not name specifically that didn't 2191 really represent an organization. 2192 2193 Commissioner Crommie: That makes sense. 2194 2195 Mr. de Geus: The other thing, just to Council Member Filseth, we don't have to talk 2196 about it here, but I do want to get your feedback on this as well, particularly because 2197 you're the liaison to this Commission. As we go back to Council, having your support 2198 and have had a review of it would be helpful. 2199 2200 Council Member Filseth: I think it's all good stuff. I think as you said before in the 2201 previous meetings, it's pretty high level and process oriented and so forth. I think for the 2202 next one, the closer this group can get to sort of more concrete is—top priorities are this, 2203 this, this and this, and the next set are this, this and this, a list—the better. I think that's 2204 sort of what everybody's looking to see. 2205 2206 Mr. de Geus: I think (inaudible) good. 2207 2208 Mr. Jensen: We'll send the group the source index that we've made online. I might have 2209 sent it to the ad hoc committee. It's basically a PDF that's like the binder. It's just like the 2210 source index at the front. You can click on that specific section and it takes you to that 2211 Approved Minutes 53 APPROVED data source. It's like having an electronic binder basically. I think it's a lot easier to look 2212 through that way than trying to flip the pages. I think that turned out really good. I'm 2213 hoping that the Council can use that if they have questions about it. We did clean up the 2214 web page quite a bit and made it more streamlined and easier to use. It's now arranged 2215 per the binder so we're all on the same page talking about the same sections and 2216 everything. 2217 2218 Chair Reckdahl: The prioritization exercise, when does that stop? 2219 2220 Mr. Jensen: We haven't set a date on that. It was going to stop when we had the 2221 community meeting that did that. 2222 2223 Mr. de Geus: How many people have responded to that? Do we know? 2224 2225 Mr. Jensen: The last time it was up over 300 people. That was a couple of weeks ago. 2226 I've sent out more emails about it. (crosstalk) should have a timeline or (crosstalk). 2227 2228 Chair Reckdahl: I think I saw more emails from the previous park survey. I'm not sure 2229 why I haven't seen that much traffic on the list that I'm on for this one. When the parks 2230 plan came out, that first survey, I was forwarded a lot of emails. 2231 2232 Commissioner Hetterly: I was glad to see it on Nextdoor this week. I think that'll get a 2233 lot more people. When is the meeting, the prioritization meeting? Is that scheduled yet? 2234 2235 Mr. de Geus: I don't think it's been set. 2236 2237 Mr. Jensen: No, we have not set that yet. 2238 2239 Mr. de Geus: We don't want to get too far ahead either. I really feel like we need to get 2240 back to the City Council before we get too far along in terms certainly prioritization. 2241 That's sort of the next critical part, get back in front of Council with a Study Session. 2242 2243 Chair Reckdahl: You want to do the Council before you do the meeting or do you want 2244 to do the ... 2245 2246 Mr. de Geus: We haven't decided. 2247 2248 Council Member Filseth: Let me ask this. What do you want from the Council at the 2249 next Study Session? 2250 2251 Mr. de Geus: It's really a check-in to be sure that the Council's comfortable with the path 2252 that we're on and the kind of community outreach that we've taken in and a green light to 2253 Approved Minutes 54 APPROVED move on. Once we get into prioritization and start really defining, that really gets down 2254 to starting to build out the plan. If there is some red flags or something from the Council 2255 saying you're really missing a certain principle or other thing, then we need to know that 2256 now. Otherwise, we'll have to redo work. I think the first Study Session was helpful in 2257 that regard. We made a number of adjustments because of the feedback that we received 2258 in that first Study Session. I feel it's important to do another check-in before we get too 2259 far along. 2260 2261 Council Member Filseth: Obviously, you can't just do this, but everybody's eager to hear 2262 here's what we're going to do. I think that's sort of where we are. 2263 2264 Mr. de Geus: Right. 2265 2266 Female: We are too. 2267 2268 Mr. de Geus: Like last night with the Healthy Cities. 2269 2270 Council Member Filseth: The Healthy Cities thing is ... 2271 2272 Commissioner Knopper: You can pass an ordinance that they don't (crosstalk). 2273 2274 Council Member Filseth: That one's more aspirational. This one's got to be more 2275 prescriptive. 2276 2277 Mr. de Geus: This one will lead to the—right. 2278 2279 5. Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates. 2280 2281 Chair Reckdahl: Does anyone have ad hoc? We talked about maybe having website ad 2282 hoc. Are we doing that next month or is that—do we have anything to add? 2283 2284 Commissioner Ashlund: We haven't had time to meet. 2285 2286 Commissioner Hetterly: I am on that. We haven't had time to meet since last month's 2287 meeting. (crosstalk) next month (crosstalk) depend on whether we can get together. I 2288 don't know if (crosstalk) with us (crosstalk). We know it's on our to-do list. 2289 2290 Chair Reckdahl: You're the only two on the website right now? 2291 2292 Commissioner Ashlund: We were the two, yeah. 2293 2294 Commissioner Lauing: We need to crank up the CIP too. 2295 Approved Minutes 55 APPROVED 2296 Chair Reckdahl: Yes, that's a good point. 2297 2298 Rob de Geus: (inaudible) that meeting and it's on the (crosstalk). I'm going to talk to 2299 Daren. 2300 2301 Chair Reckdahl: It would be good to get that going. I think last year we were started by 2302 now. 2303 2304 Mr. de Geus: Yeah, we actually were, that's right. It hasn't started at the City yet. There 2305 hasn't been a kick-off meeting or anything from the Office of Management and Budget. 2306 It's right around the corner, so it's right now. 2307 2308 Chair Reckdahl: Do you have a wag on how much money? 2309 2310 Mr. de Geus: No, I don't. 2311 2312 Chair Reckdahl: We can still prioritize. 2313 2314 Mr. de Geus: We definitely should and probably not think too much about what money 2315 is available, rather what are the needs and trying to (inaudible). 2316 2317 Chair Reckdahl: Although when you have your matrix, and then you say, "How many 2318 can we do each year," you know you have less money and that column becomes more 2319 bare. If you have more money, you can populate that. We only have one Peter, so that ... 2320 2321 Mr. de Geus: That's right. I'll set that up. 2322 2323 V. COMMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 2324 2325 Rob de Geus: I just had two that I wanted to share with you. We're working on an event 2326 here for Veterans Day. It's actually on the 9th, that week. It'll be here on the plaza. It's 2327 going to be a really nice event recognizing our service men and women. The Gunn High 2328 School band will be there. There'll be some food. We'll be doing some service projects 2329 for kids to make thank you cards and other things. There's a proclamation that the Mayor 2330 and Council will read that evening. It should be a nice day. It's on the 9th, 4:30 on the 2331 plaza, 4:30 to 6:00. Lots of activity. The other thing I wanted to mention was Cubberley 2332 Community Center. Discussions with the School District have begun about the master 2333 planning of the campus. Maybe you've seen some articles in the paper about that. Just 2334 starting out, but some exciting developments, I think, starting to emerge particularly out 2335 of the School District. They seem much more engaged than I've ever seen before. I'm 2336 much more hopeful about possibilities at Cubberley and what could happen there about 2337 Approved Minutes 56 APPROVED experimenting in some ways with education and modern education and choice type of 2338 school. It might be really something innovative that Dr. Max McGee, the new 2339 superintendent, is spearheading with the community. When we met with him, he was 2340 interested in what the community wants and what the community might want to build on 2341 our 8 acres and how that might support and complement what a new school might look 2342 like. That's just starting out; we'll have more to follow-up on that. As you recall, we 2343 have a five-year lease agreement with the School District. Part of that lease agreement 2344 includes a master plan for the Cubberley campus. We want to get started on that. 2345 2346 Chair Reckdahl: When we say master plan, this means if they put a school there, what 2347 they would want the campus to look like? 2348 2349 Mr. de Geus: Right. It's a 35-acre site. The buildings are very old. Most of them are 2350 very old and really are not worthy of repairing or spending a lot of money on them. What 2351 might we do there that would meet the future needs of the School District and the future 2352 needs of the community. 2353 2354 Chair Reckdahl: Do we have a soonest construction date? We're talking ... 2355 2356 Mr. de Geus: Oh, wow, I don't know about construction. 2357 2358 Chair Reckdahl: The reason I ask is that we have a lot of stuff in Cubberley that really 2359 needs updating and how much do you throw into Cubberley. 2360 2361 Mr. de Geus: This is a great question. The new lease agreement with Cubberley does set 2362 aside about $1.8 million that used to go to the School District, now sets it aside for 2363 investment in Cubberley and the buildings there, but more importantly probably what the 2364 future of Cubberley might be and investing in its future as opposed to repairing very old 2365 buildings. You're right, there are some things that we have to do there, roofing and other 2366 things. There's some parking issues that we are investing in. I think the focus is let's see 2367 what we can do in terms of a master plan and a long-range plan for what we do on the 2368 campus, so we're not spending money on things that are not going to be there long term. 2369 2370 Chair Reckdahl: What's the status of the old library that was going to be remodeled? 2371 2372 Mr. de Geus: The auditorium at Cubberley was a temporary library. Now they've moved 2373 out, of course; they're back at Mitchell. Renovating the auditorium back so that it can be 2374 a rentable space is one of the higher priorities. It's a big space. People really enjoyed 2375 using it. It generated about $80,000 in revenues every year, just from rental revenues. 2376 2377 Commissioner Crommie: It has that kitchen, right? That little kitchen, does it still have 2378 that? 2379 Approved Minutes 57 APPROVED 2380 Mr. de Geus: It doesn't have the kitchen anymore, because that was renovated to be 2381 office space for the technical staff of the library. Putting back a catering kitchen of some 2382 type so that it could be used for a rental space. 2383 2384 Chair Reckdahl: It's just sitting empty right now? It's not being remodeled? 2385 2386 Mr. de Geus: The plans are underway to remodel it. It's mostly empty. It's used for 2387 some small programs, but not as much as it could be. 2388 2389 Chair Reckdahl: Do we have an estimate of when they would start remodeling that or is 2390 that a CIP that has to get funded? 2391 2392 Mr. de Geus: It's a CIP; it's with Public Works. It's on there, but it's soon. I think it's 2393 within the next year they're going to get started on that. 2394 2395 Commissioner Crommie: Can you just mention how that plan impacts the fields that are 2396 there now? Do you want to bring that as an agenda item to the Commission? 2397 2398 Mr. de Geus: You recall the Cubberley Community Advisory Committee spent a year—2399 Commissioner Hetterly was chair of the one of the four committees. Which one was 2400 that? 2401 2402 Commissioner Hetterly: Facilities. 2403 2404 Mr. de Geus: Facilities, right. It was a big report that came from that. One of the key—I 2405 thought it was like 14 recommendations, one of which was to retain those athletic fields 2406 for community use as much as possible as long as possible. 2407 2408 Commissioner Crommie: Are those on the school property? As I recall, that was a 2409 problem with them. 2410 2411 Mr. de Geus: Yeah, that's right. 2412 2413 Commissioner Crommie: Just as you said, there's a master plan process. It's probably 2414 impacting those fields. 2415 2416 Mr. de Geus: Yeah. I think there's interest from both the School District and the City 2417 that we retain those athletic fields. Any questions on Cubberley? A lot happening there. 2418 Are you going to ask about the golf course? I just bring it up with the announcements. 2419 There isn't a lot of news on the golf course. We did make a decision. We met with our 2420 City Manager, yesterday actually it was, and the Public Works staff got an update on the 2421 Approved Minutes 58 APPROVED permitting process, which was new to me as well. The earliest time we could get the 2422 permit and actually be able to go out to bid and start construction is summer of next year, 2423 2016. That's the very earliest that we could begin. We're going back to the City Council 2424 to give them a report on that update. We have funding in the budget to keep operating 2425 the golf course until the end of the calendar year. 2426 2427 Chair Reckdahl: This calendar year? 2428 2429 Mr. de Geus: This calendar year. We thought we'd be under construction after that. 2430 That's not going to happen. We've done some analysis on the cost benefit of closing 2431 versus staying open, and it does pencil out that it's better to be open, even though we 2432 don't fully recover. Annually, it's better to stay open and generate some revenue. We're 2433 recommending that to Council, that we increase revenues by some $600,000. That's 2434 approximately what we would make in revenues to keep it open. An approximate similar 2435 cost to keep operating. It's sort of net neutral. That's the status. 2436 2437 Chair Reckdahl: I don't understand how this can drag on. 2438 2439 Mr. de Geus: Neither do I. 2440 2441 Chair Reckdahl: It just seems dysfunctional. 2442 2443 Mr. de Geus: It is dysfunctional. 2444 2445 Chair Reckdahl: Do they have a specific rationale or are they just twiddling their thumbs 2446 and saying, "We're thinking about it"? 2447 2448 Mr. de Geus: I think opinions vary about the motivation, why things are taking longer. It 2449 is very frustrating for our side, the Community Services side. We're sort of not even at 2450 the table really. It's really about the creek and the flood control project and the necessity 2451 to get those permits in place and have all of the regulatory agencies be comfortable with 2452 that project before they will permit our project. Our project, every indication is that 2453 they're quite satisfied with that, but they're holding off on the permitting because they 2454 want to be sure that the flood control project is in its final state in terms of where the 2455 levees are actually going to be placed and so on. You've heard that story a few times. 2456 2457 Commissioner Lauing: Move the dirt and open the other holes again. 2458 2459 Mr. de Geus: You've got 300,000 cubic yards of dirt out there and a possible El Nino 2460 winter. 2461 2462 Peter Jensen: We could move the dirt into a perfect dike. 2463 Approved Minutes 59 APPROVED 2464 Mr. de Geus: It looks like a new levee out there. 2465 2466 Commissioner Knopper: You could make money. You know the motocross, the guys 2467 that go vroom, fly. 2468 2469 Vice Chair Markevitch: (crosstalk) they actually open up the creek under 101 before the 2470 rain really starts. Every time I drive by there, it's just blocked on the east side. I think 2471 they're going to forget to do that, and it's just going to be a huge problem. 2472 2473 Commissioner Hetterly: I think they're clearing it out now. 2474 2475 Mr. de Geus: They are. They're doing a lot of work in the creek in preparation for 2476 potential storms and a lot of rain in January-March timeframe. 2477 2478 Commissioner Hetterly: I think the project shuts down for the winter, so I think they're 2479 moving all their stuff out of there. 2480 2481 Commissioner Lauing: I have other questions for Rob. Can I go ahead? 2482 2483 Chair Reckdahl: Ed, go for it. 2484 2485 Commissioner Lauing: Give us an update on your staffing. 2486 2487 Mr. de Geus: Right. We've got a lot of vacancies right now that we're working through 2488 recruitment. The key one right now is the Assistant Director position that I vacated. 2489 We're down to one candidate and doing reference checks and background checks. 2490 Hopefully we'll have an offer out by the end of the week. We have a Superintendant of 2491 Parks that we've been recruiting for for quite some time now, and still don't have a really 2492 great pool of candidates unfortunately. That's Joe Vallaire’s old position. You may 2493 remember he retired. We have to decide whether we need to reopen that. The other 2494 position is the Superintendant of Recreation Services. We've got a lot of great candidates 2495 we're interviewing this Friday, eight very qualified candidates. We'll make a decision 2496 there quickly. Senior Ranger Lester Hedrie, remember he's retired; he's moved up to 2497 Oregon, very happy up there. We've got a couple of good candidates. One internal 2498 candidate I think might be a really good fit. That's keeping us busy. 2499 2500 Commissioner Lauing: El Camino Park looks like it's ready to go. Do you have an open 2501 date for that? 2502 2503 Mr. de Geus: Yeah, it's November—do we have a date? 2504 2505 Approved Minutes 60 APPROVED Peter Jensen: I have not heard the date yet. 2506 2507 Mr. de Geus: I think there's a date out there, isn't there? 2508 2509 Commissioner Lauing: I thought the run in the outfield grass was just beautiful. 2510 2511 Mr. de Geus: I'll have to send you some pictures. We did a little fun thing. We're trying 2512 to do some things to get the staff together to do things together; it's good for the team. 2513 There's 80 full-time staff within the department, and we're all over the town in different 2514 buildings. We had a workday at El Camino Park just to help Daren and the crew do the 2515 final sort of cleanup and cutting back of the brush. 2516 2517 Commissioner Hetterly: I got some oak (crosstalk). 2518 2519 Mr. de Geus: Catherine was out there really working hard. It was a great morning that 2520 we spent together and then had lunch. The park is just fantastic; it's beautiful. If you 2521 want to go and have a little tour or something we can coordinate with you. 2522 2523 Commissioner Lauing: Yeah, that'd be great. 2524 2525 Vice Chair Markevitch: I have a question about it. In the outfield of the baseball field, 2526 when you're driving past El Camino, it looks like there's this landscaped part that kind of 2527 juts out into right field. Now, is that just an anomaly? 2528 2529 Mr. de Geus: That's the redwood (inaudible). 2530 2531 Mr. Jensen: No, that's there to buffer and protect the bike path. It's further out in the 2532 outfield than it was before. It's pretty deep. You'd have to hit it a long way to get out to 2533 that landscaped area. Yes, every once in a while a ball's going to roll into that space, and 2534 it's going to be like Wrigley Field when it goes into the ivy, ground rule double. It is put 2535 there to buffer the pathway that's there. It's stopping balls from hitting the bikers as they 2536 drive past out there. 2537 2538 Vice Chair Markevitch: That's just another hit. 2539 2540 Chair Reckdahl: One of the news stations did a series about rubber crumb tires in turf. I 2541 have three questions people ask me about the new park, whether it has rubber crumb. 2542 2543 Mr. de Geus: No. 2544 2545 Chair Reckdahl: I said no. 2546 2547 Approved Minutes 61 APPROVED Mr. Jensen: It's got a material called TPE. 2548 2549 Mr. de Geus: We'll set up a time. I'm sure you can't all be able to make it, but just to get 2550 a little tour, to walk around. You spent a lot of time on the design of that park, many 2551 meetings. I think you counted up ... 2552 2553 Vice Chair Markevitch: Eighteen now. 2554 2555 Mr. de Geus: It was something like that. Because of all the Julia Morgan building, 2556 remember all that? 2557 2558 Commissioner Lauing: Oh, yeah. 2559 2560 Mr. de Geus: It's something to be on that park and see how it's come together. You want 2561 to take a good look at it before it opens. We'll set that up. 2562 2563 Mr. Jensen: This past weekend we had a good tree planting event at Bol Park. That was 2564 brought about by the Barron Park Homeowners Association in response to the tree 2565 removal that occurred from the Veterans Hospital project. We planted 105 native plants, 2566 55 oak trees of three different varieties. It was a pretty good turnout; I would say 2567 between 50 to 70 people were there, all different ages. Keith came and helped and 2568 worked hard. 2569 2570 Chair Reckdahl: I was sore the next day. Boy, I was sore. It was a lot of fun. I was 2571 really glad. 2572 2573 Mr. de Geus: (inaudible) 2574 2575 Mr. Jensen: Definitely. It was a great event. Like I said, we planted a lot of plants out 2576 there. It should help rejuvenate that native corridor that's there. It was a great day. It 2577 was funny. I was tired; it was a long day. It's about a half mile, the little walk there. 2578 Your iPhone now tracks you if you don't know this, your steps. I woke up and went there 2579 and worked there until about 2:00 in the afternoon. I went home and just fell asleep the 2580 rest of the day, so I didn't walk at all. I looked the next day and in that whatever, 4 1/2 2581 hours, I walked 7.2 miles. I walked up and down that thing constantly talking to people 2582 the whole time. It was a good event. Yeah, it was fun. 2583 2584 Chair Reckdahl: Peter was the ringleader, so everyone was say, "Ask Peter about that. 2585 Ask Peter about that." There was a queue of people needing Peter's help. It was a good 2586 turnout. We had people from—there was a few Gunn students, but we had Canopy and 2587 Acterra there. We had some CCC volunteers or workers. There was some good kids 2588 there; they were working hard. They weren't sloughing off. 2589 Approved Minutes 62 APPROVED 2590 Mr. de Geus: Good. Last little announcement is just because I'm involved in some other 2591 things now that we're doing in the department. Public Art is a new area which is really 2592 fascinating, interesting to work with Elise DeMarzo. We have a new piece out here on 2593 the plaza called Rondo I, a Bruce Beasley piece, big rings. Aurora the tree is gone, so I'm 2594 sad about that. Some are happy to see it gone. That's the thing about public art, a lot of 2595 opinions. Thursday there's a little get-together at 5:30. The artist will be here, and the 2596 Mayor will say a few words. I think it looks really, really cool. If you're around, come 2597 on by. 2598 2599 Commissioner Crommie: I wanted to mention an announcement too. 2600 2601 Chair Reckdahl: Go ahead. 2602 2603 Commissioner Crommie: They've finally started work at Monroe Park. They put some 2604 fencing up last week. 2605 2606 Chair Reckdahl: I peeked over the fence, and they had already dug up all the old asphalt. 2607 2608 Commissioner Crommie: Yeah, I could hear them digging. I didn't look. We had some 2609 traffic problems, so they had to take some of the fencing away because of visibility at the 2610 intersection. They just had to take down some of the green covering on the fence. 2611 2612 Mr. Jensen: It did have green covering? 2613 2614 Commissioner Crommie: Yeah, they put green covering all the way around, and then 2615 people couldn't see getting through the intersection. 2616 2617 Mr. Jensen: They shouldn't have put that green covering up. 2618 2619 Chair Reckdahl: Do you have something? 2620 2621 Commissioner Hetterly: Yeah. I just wanted to say I'm on the Comprehensive Plan 2622 Advisory Committee. I just wanted to let you all know where we are. Before I joined, 2623 they did a first run through of the Community Services Element. That'll probably be 2624 coming back to the full committee for action before the end of the year. I'll let you all 2625 know when that's going to be on the agenda. We're through our initial discussions of the 2626 Transportation Element. Starting next month, we're going to be looking at Land Use. 2627 Land Use is another one that I think the Commission might have a lot of interest in. You 2628 might want to plug into the process, come speak or listen or send your comments in on—2629 what's it called? It's not Open City Hall. I will send an email out with the link to 2630 (crosstalk) public commenter. 2631 Approved Minutes 63 APPROVED 2632 Commissioner Lauing: Open what? 2633 2634 Council Member Filseth: I think it's Open Gov. 2635 2636 Commissioner Lauing: Open Gov. 2637 2638 Council Member Filseth: It's Open Gov. 2639 2640 Commissioner Hetterly: No, it's not Open Gov. It's specific to the Comp Plan process, 2641 and it's like open community. I'll send it around. It's an opportunity for you to comment 2642 on any program or policy or a general vision for any elements in the plan. 2643 2644 Chair Reckdahl: One other thing is the City Council will be interviewing candidates on 2645 Monday, this coming Monday. 2646 2647 Mr. de Geus: Are they interviewing or they're selecting? 2648 2649 Chair Reckdahl: They're interviewing five candidates for Parks and Rec on Monday. 2650 2651 Mr. de Geus: I think they're selecting—selection of applicants to interview for the Parks 2652 and Rec Commission, I think is what they're going to do. 2653 2654 Chair Reckdahl: Is that what it said? 2655 2656 Mr. de Geus: Yeah. 2657 2658 Chair Reckdahl: It's not actually to interview them. 2659 2660 Mr. de Geus: Right. That's how it reads on the agenda. 2661 2662 Female: They usually do a special meeting for the interviews (crosstalk). 2663 2664 Mr. de Geus: It's (crosstalk) will interview all of them, to see what they're saying. 2665 2666 Council Member Filseth: That'd be my guess. 2667 2668 Commissioner Crommie: How many are there now? 2669 2670 Mr. de Geus: I haven't heard. 2671 2672 Chair Reckdahl: In the online agenda, there's five of them. There's five candidates. 2673 Approved Minutes 64 APPROVED 2674 Mr. de Geus: There must be another date selected already. (inaudible) 2675 2676 Chair Reckdahl: They do a selection and then they do the interview and then they do the 2677 voting. 2678 2679 Mr. de Geus: They take a motion, say who should we interview. That's a specific item 2680 on the agenda. Then usually it's a separate meeting they come in for to do the interviews. 2681 I did bump into Anne Cribbs; I know that she's in there. Staff (crosstalk). 2682 2683 Chair Reckdahl: I (crosstalk) names; I didn't know any of the people. 2684 2685 Vice Chair Markevitch: She was on the Commission when I started. 2686 2687 Mr. de Geus: She's a longtime Palo Altan. She's an Olympian too. 2688 2689 Commissioner Crommie: That's how I know her name. She is very active in the senior 2690 games. 2691 2692 VI. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR DECEMBER 8, 2015 MEETING 2693 2694 Catherine Bourquin: The meeting is October 8th. I mean December 8th. Excuse me, 2695 December 8th. 2696 2697 Commissioner Crommie: Our next meeting? 2698 2699 Ms. Bourquin: Yeah. 2700 2701 Rob de Geus: We have the Master Plan, obviously, coming back. There should be a lot 2702 to share there. I heard the dog park item might come back, at least there was interest in 2703 making a decision to try. I have to get with Daren and maybe the ad hoc committee to 2704 see what we'll recommend there. It sounded like there was some interest in getting a pilot 2705 started. 2706 2707 Ms. Bourquin: The Boardwalk. (crosstalk) 2708 2709 Mr. de Geus: Boardwalk comes back. 2710 2711 Chair Reckdahl: The Boardwalk is coming back in December? 2712 2713 Ms. Bourquin: Yeah. 2714 2715 Approved Minutes 65 APPROVED Mr. de Geus: That's all I have for now. 2716 2717 Chair Reckdahl: Is that an action item? 2718 2719 Ms. Bourquin: Isn't that what he said on this, on the schedule? They asked to be on it. 2720 It's probably going to be an ordinance. 2721 2722 Chair Reckdahl: I thought the PIO was in January. 2723 2724 Ms. Bourquin: No, the other one. 2725 2726 Mr. de Geus: What other one? 2727 2728 Commissioner Hetterly: The draft feasibility study was to be done in the fall/winter. 2729 2730 Ms. Bourquin: Yeah. The PRC recommendation for adoption, that's what's coming to 2731 you. 2732 2733 Mr. de Geus: That could be January. 2734 2735 Commissioner Hetterly: Winter of 2015, we don't know what month that's going to be. 2736 2737 Mr. de Geus: We'll see if it's ready. I thought it might be nice to acknowledge the 2738 Commissioners that are leaving the Commission. In their honor, we have some orchids 2739 here for their service, and a card for the three Commissioners. Just a thank you for all the 2740 time and the passion and commitment you all bring to this work. It's much appreciated, 2741 and it helps us do our work in all sorts of ways. Thank you from all the staff. 2742 2743 Commissioner Crommie: Is this our last meeting then? 2744 2745 Mr. de Geus: We don't know. We'll have to see in December. 2746 2747 Commissioner Crommie: Maybe not if they get ... 2748 2749 Mr. de Geus: I expect you'll be back, frankly, because of the way Council's got so many 2750 things going on. The new Commissioners will probably be seated in January, if I had to 2751 guess. 2752 2753 Chair Reckdahl: These will be big shoes to fill. They've a lot of experience on this 2754 (inaudible). 2755 2756 Commissioner Ashlund: Deirdre's seven. How many, Pat? 2757 Approved Minutes 66 APPROVED 2758 Vice Chair Markevitch: It's either ten or eleven. 2759 2760 Commissioner Lauing: That's at least 19 to 20 years amongst the three of you. 2761 2762 Chair Reckdahl: You guys will have so much time on your hands; you won't know what 2763 to do with it. They'll be doing public comments, saying what they really think. 2764 2765 Vice Chair Markevitch: I'd like to give a shout out to Herb Borock. 2766 2767 Commissioner Lauing: Is he still here? 2768 2769 Vice Chair Markevitch: He's long gone. He kept us in line for so many different aspects. 2770 I really appreciated his insight on (crosstalk). 2771 2772 VII. ADJOURNMENT 2773 2774 Meeting adjourned on motion by Vice Chair Markevitch and second by Commissioner 2775 Ashlund at 10:00p.m. Passed 7-0 2776 Approved Minutes 67