Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016-10-25 Parks & Recreation Summary MinutesAPPROVED 1 2 3 4 MINUTES 5 PARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION 6 REGULAR MEETING 7 October 25, 2016 8 CITY HALL 9 250 Hamilton Avenue 10 Palo Alto, California 11 12 Commissioners Present: Anne Cribbs, Jennifer Hetterly, Ed Lauing, David Moss, Keith 13 Reckdahl 14 Commissioners Absent: Jim Cowie, Abbie Knopper 15 Others Present: Eric Filseth 16 Staff Present: Daren Anderson, Catherine Bourquin, Rob de Geus, Peter Jensen, Kristen 17 O'Kane 18 I. ROLL CALL CONDUCTED BY: Catherine Bourquin 19 20 II. AGENDA CHANGES, REQUESTS, and DELETIONS: 21 22 Chair Lauing: Are there any agenda changes or requests or deletions? 23 24 III. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS: 25 26 Chair Lauing: If anyone from the public wants to address the Commission on any subject 27 not on the agenda, please feel out a card and hand it to Catherine. Then, you can speak 28 on that. 29 30 IV. BUSINESS: 31 32 1. Approval of Draft Minutes from September 27, 2016 Parks and Recreation 33 Commission Meeting. 34 35 Approval of the draft September 27, 2016 Minutes was moved by Commissioner Hetterly 36 and seconded by Commissioner Cribbs. Passed 5-0 37 38 Draft Minutes 1 APPROVED 2. City of Palo Alto Special Events Update 1 2 Chair Lauing: The next item is the City of Palo Alto special events update from 3 Stephanie Douglas, introduced by Kristen. 4 5 Kristen O'Kane: Good evening, Chair and Commissioners. I would like to welcome 6 Stephanie Douglas, our Recreation Superintendent in Community Services here tonight. 7 She is going to be presenting to us on our special events program, including a recap of 8 what we've done in the past year and what we plan on doing this year. This is just an 9 informational item to share some of the good work that Stephanie and her team are doing. 10 11 Stephanie Douglas: Thank you very much. Again, my name is Stephanie Douglas, 12 Superintendent of Recreation. Good to be here this evening, talking about special events 13 here in the City of Palo Alto. When talking about special events, I think the first thing is 14 really why do we do them. It's really to bring people together, build community. Special 15 events weave the fabric of our community by creating opportunities to interact, promote 16 inclusiveness, build family traditions and support economic and emotional growth. 17 You'll see on the slide—I have two pictures up there. Those are actually my kids at the 18 most recent Moonlight Run. My daughter, Madison, is climbing the rock climbing wall 19 right there. My family is doing the Walk. When I talk about special events, I really take 20 it personally because I know for me that really makes me feel like I'm part of the 21 community. Even though I may not live here in Palo Alto, when I do these events I feel 22 like I'm part of something bigger and greater. Going over what we've done. This is what 23 we've done in the fiscal year 2015-2016. The Chili Cook-Off event, as I'm sure all of you 24 are aware, is our biggest event that we do. We have a community health fair in which we 25 partner with the YMCA. We have a Moonlight Run, which I just mentioned, which is a 26 partnership with the Palo Alto Weekly. We did a Lucie Stern bridal fair, past September 27 2015. We did a Meet the Streets in conjunction with the Palo Alto Chamber and also the 28 City Manager's Office. We did a Veteran's Day event. You'll notice the items in bold; 29 these are new events that we did for 2015-2016. We did a Veteran's Day event, again in 30 partnership with the City Manager's Office. Holiday tree lighting, seniors New Year's 31 bash which is an event that we do for seniors on New Year's Eve. Mitchell Community 32 Center anniversary, we did a frozen-themed event to celebrate the one-year anniversary 33 of the building opening. Summer camp registration fair, which is an opportunity for 34 people to come out and learn about the summer camps that we'll be offering. The Great 35 Race for Saving Water is a partnership with our Utilities Department that we do, which 36 really promotes saving water and the environment. A Bryant Street Garage Fund Gala, 37 this event was—the first year doing it was really an opportunity to acknowledge all of the 38 grants that we funded through the Bryant Street Garage and honor the teen projects. The 39 May Fete Parade, again, is our second biggest event that we do in the community. We 40 did a Journey for Veterans Walk, and that was in partnership with the Community 41 Manager's Office. Veterans actually walked from southern California up to northern 42 Draft Minutes 2 APPROVED California. One of their stops was here in Palo Alto. We had a Teen Buoyancy Festival 1 and Concert. Again this was a new event for this year. This was an event that was 2 actually planned by a teen advisory commission and youth board. They came up with the 3 name buoyancy, and it was actually a concert along with some carnival rides and some 4 carnival-type activities. World Music Day we do in partnership with the Palo Alto 5 Recreation Foundation. Again, you can see these are a lot of events that we do. This is 6 just recreation; it doesn't take into account events that are also done by other departments 7 and divisions. Looking at the future, one of the first things that I wanted to do was find 8 out what does the community really want. It's easy to kind of sit back and get 9 imaginative and come up with all these events, but you really want to find out what the 10 community is looking for. We went ahead and did a survey. We did this survey May 11 through July of 2016. The survey basically gave people an opportunity to put down what 12 they would like to see in the community. To kind of get a better idea, we actually gave 13 them examples of events so that they could choose which one they would be most likely 14 to attend. Events that we gave them were an event called Dogtober Fest Celebration, 15 which was a pet-focused celebration that embraces families and their pets. A Memorial 16 Day observance. Since our Veterans Day event was so popular, we wanted to see if 17 people wanted to have more events that would honor fallen heroes in the armed services. 18 A kite flight festival, which is an arts and sciences focused event with expert kite flying, 19 children's kite making workshop and a public kite flying demonstration. A biannual 20 bridal fair. Although we already do a bridal fair, we're kind of looking to see if that's an 21 event that the community really wants. That event showcases wedding services vendors 22 and the Lucie Stern Community Center. A tech specs festival, which is an event that 23 focuses on technology, past, present and future. We would have that at Mitchell Park. 24 Then, we gave an opportunity for respondents to put their own ideas; we had an "other" 25 category. The survey received a total of 564 responses. We distributed the survey at 26 May Fete Parade, the Chili Cook-Off, online and also at all of our community centers. 80 27 percent of the respondents were Palo Alto residents, and only 20 percent resided outside 28 of Palo Alto, primarily Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos and San Jose. From that 29 survey, we got some really great feedback. One of the things that really popped out is 30 this community likes their pets, and they would like to have a Dogtober Fest event. That 31 was 70 percent of the respondents that marked that as one of the items that they would 32 attend. 15 percent of the respondents marked "other" and provided their own ideas with 33 the most popular recurring themes suggesting arts, wine and food festival, bike or 34 transportation expos, and earth or nature-themed events. Those were the major groupings 35 that we extracted out of the survey. We also asked the respondents what events they 36 attend currently. Because we distributed it at May Fete and Chili Cook Off, that got a 37 high rate. Also, the Moonlight Run was recorded as being a very highly attended event. 38 From this survey, we really want to put words into action here. We're looking at the 39 future and looking at the survey and saying, "What can we do to really make sure that the 40 community is getting what they're requesting?" One of the feedback we got was kind of 41 a bike or mobility expo. Ironically, we're already in the process of planning an event like 42 Draft Minutes 3 APPROVED that. That actually occurred on October 2nd of this year. We had 800 people in 1 attendance. It was basically an opportunity for people to learn about alternative 2 transportation. It was in partnership with the annual Bike Palo Alto event. I foresee this 3 event probably becoming an annual, ongoing partnership and event. The next event that 4 we're working on is an Earth Day festival. Although we have the Great Race for Water 5 5K, we're really looking to expand that event. April 22nd is a Saturday, and it also 6 happens to be Earth Day. We're going to be hosting a very large festival event promoting 7 environmental awareness. We're still going to have a 5K run and just really expanding 8 that event. Last but certainly not least, because the community really wants to have a pet-9 type event, we are going to host a Dogtober Fest in October of 2017. We're looking at 10 having that event at the dog park and having the outside area be a festival with pet 11 vendors, food trucks, dog treats, prizes, giveaways, dog rescues, anything that you can 12 think of that would really support animals and families and people. We're looking 13 forward to getting that one on the way. With that, we're also looking at all of the events 14 that we already do, really kind of polishing them up a little bit. Things that we're looking 15 at this year is for our tree lighting event. We're actually getting a little bit of a stage, 16 we're getting some lighting out there, so it's a little bit more polished. We're looking at 17 our seniors' New Year's Eve brunch. We're actually partnering with Avenidas this year 18 and having it at Avenidas. We hope to get more seniors to attend that event, because it'll 19 be at a location that they're comfortable with and are familiar with. Little things like that, 20 that we can do to take the events that we already have and really just kind of take them to 21 that next level is also a top priority for our staff. With that, I have ended the PowerPoint 22 with a little collage of all the events that we do, ranging from teen events to children's 23 events, adult events, senior events. It's really quite an honor to work in Palo Alto, 24 because it is a City that really embraces community and special events. It's nice to have 25 that support and to be able to be creative and do new things. With that, if you have any 26 questions, I'll be happy to answer them. 27 28 Chair Lauing: Terrific. That's really cool. We sort of see all these things but not all 29 together. It's quite an impact when you put them all together and make those comments. 30 It's very cool. Comments from Commissioners one way or the other. Commissioner 31 Hetterly. 32 33 Commissioner Hetterly: I have a question. In the past, I think, for several years we did a 34 service day, probably around Martin Luther King. Did we not do that this year? If so, 35 why? Is that something we've decided isn't working or wasn't successful? 36 37 Ms. Douglas: I know that's in partnership with ... 38 39 Rob de Geus: YCS. 40 41 Draft Minutes 4 APPROVED Ms. Douglas: Yeah, YCS. I do know they're looking at doing that event again this year. 1 I may have failed to put it on that here, but that's another event. We have so many it's 2 hard to keep up. That's definitely another event that we will be doing and continuing to 3 do. 4 5 Mr. de Geus: I think we did do it this year, but it was a smaller event. We've done it for, 6 I think, 5 or 6 years. Some years, it's very successful. We actually do service projects 7 right here on the Plaza with Youth Community Services being the lead agency, but we 8 provide support. It's a great event. 9 10 Commissioner Hetterly: I think that's the best element of it, when you actually have 11 projects that people can go work on. I think in some years when you show up and there's 12 nothing to do but visit the tables, it's not quite the same as being able to actually 13 contribute. It would be great to be able—it sounds like YCS is the lead. It would be 14 great to be able to have some projects around the City that people can sign up for in 15 advance and participate in. The Cubberley Compact Day, they did that great tree planting 16 project. That kind of thing, people really love to do. It really (crosstalk). 17 18 Mr. de Geus: There's also a national movement called Make a Difference Day. I think it 19 was just recently. Last year, with the leadership of then-Mayor Holman, we did some 20 things. This year we did less, but it's another event that I think we could do something 21 with. It's a big movement, and it's another sort of volunteer service type of orientation. 22 The School District is quite involved with that. That's one we're looking at as well 23 adding. 24 25 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Reckdahl. 26 27 Commissioner Reckdahl: Impressive list. I knew we did a lot, but when you see it all in 28 a big list, it really is a nice variety of things. I was wondering of the existing ones that 29 were on that first page how many of them—are they all driven by CSD or do we have 30 other groups like YCS that are actually doing the organizing and the promotion of it? 31 32 Ms. Douglas: We do have partnerships with some of the agencies. The ones that I listed 33 are the ones where CSD does have a pretty substantial role in them. There are other 34 events that sometimes we do assist in a minor way, like we'll provide tables or chairs or 35 co-sponsorship, but we don't necessarily have staff on hand. The events listed here are 36 events that staff have actually participated in and been a major factor in. 37 38 Commissioner Reckdahl: How does it work for the setup and cleanup? Does CSD have 39 to pay for that or is that some City overhead where we can get workers that are full-time 40 employees come down and do setup and cleanup? 41 42 Draft Minutes 5 APPROVED Ms. Douglas: Typically, depending on the nature of the event, we'll have full-time staff. 1 Like we had the bike expo, our full-time staff would do the setup and the cleanup. If it's 2 at one of our facilities, we have custodial staff that we'll have do those events, and that 3 would come out of the CSD budget. 4 5 Mr. de Geus: Just to add to that, Stephanie, we sometimes contract with the Downtown 6 Streets Team—they've been terrific—for some of our big events. Really, really good. 7 8 Commissioner Reckdahl: Is May Fete on here? 9 10 Mr. de Geus: Yes. 11 12 Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah, it is. That would be a big cleanup, I would assume. Do 13 we get many requests for people coming in that want to pair with us, want to team with 14 us to do this or are we out there beating the bushes, like you talked about the survey? 15 How much of the action is on our side and how much of it is other people coming to us? 16 17 Ms. Douglas: It's funny you should ask. I just got an email today from somebody 18 emailing who wanted to kind of do a special event, something along the nature of a bike 19 expo. I think, from my experience and I've only been here since January, it's almost an 20 equal partnership. We'll go out and find out what the community wants, but they also 21 won't hesitate to let us know if there's something else that they're looking for. That's been 22 my experience. I don't know, Rob, if you have ... 23 24 Mr. de Geus: That's accurate. Chinese New Year is another one that comes to mind. I 25 don't know if it's on our list here. A local organization does a great event and have asked 26 for support for the last 2 years. We've provided free facilities and some staff support. I 27 think we'll probably partner even more in the future with that organization. 28 29 Commissioner Reckdahl: Thank you. 30 31 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Cribbs. 32 33 Commissioner Cribbs: I think it's a great list as well. Congratulations. I was interested 34 in three things. Our relationship with Stanford and the possibility of doing events with 35 Stanford, either at their campus or on our facilities. The volunteer group that you have, is 36 there a network? Are there volunteers that come with each event or are there some 37 volunteers that do everything? The third thing that follows that is the service clubs and 38 how well we work with them, because they're great. 39 40 Ms. Douglas: For Stanford, that's actually—when I first came on board, I know we had 41 talked about doing an Olympics Day. We had met with Stanford. Unfortunately, just due 42 Draft Minutes 6 APPROVED to scheduling, it wasn't going to work out. That's a relationship that's been created now. 1 We are trying to follow up and see if there's other opportunities for partnership. I think 2 they have a lot to offer, being right here in our backyard. They can certainly provide 3 some expertise in things that we might not have the expertise in. That's a relationship 4 that's there, and it's just a matter of finding that partnership that's going to work based on 5 schedules and locations. The second question about volunteers. We typically pull from 6 our teens for volunteers, but we also do have—when we have an event, we will put the 7 call out for volunteers. That may be from community groups, like you said Rotary, 8 Kiwanis, Lions Club, those types of service groups, if we need them. Then, we'll have 9 people, if they know May Fete is coming up, will raise their hand and come to us and say 10 they want to be involved. We'll put them somewhere and definitely have them be a 11 participating part of it. 12 13 Mr. de Geus: Just to add to that, Stephanie. Our sort of main partner is the Palo Alto 14 Recreation Foundation. They support lots of recreation programs, but their focus is 15 mostly events. They love events and supporting events. In fact, interestingly, that's how 16 World Music Day really got started. It was Claude Ezran, a community member, who 17 wanted to see this event happen in Palo Alto, and needed help and support and was 18 coming to the City. We introduced him to the Palo Alto Recreation Foundation, and then 19 he became a Board Member. Now, he's still on the Board. The Foundation and the City 20 together make that event happen, and he's still very close to it. There's a couple of other 21 events that are like that, where we've led them to the Recreation Foundation. They've 22 joined the Board and got their event to happen that way. 23 24 Commissioner Cribbs: Are you thinking the Black and White Ball might come back? 25 26 Mr. de Geus: It might. Stephanie probably knows more about that than me. The Black 27 and White Ball, they talk about it a lot, the Foundation, but we haven't seen much action 28 yet. 29 30 Ms. Douglas: My understanding is the Black and White Ball will be happening this year. 31 September 30th is the date they're looking at. We have a meeting tomorrow actually to 32 kind of nail down some more of the details and logistics. From my understanding, it'll be 33 at Mitchell Community Center on September 30th. 34 35 Commissioner Cribbs: That's good to hear. 36 37 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Moss. 38 39 Commissioner Moss: This is a really great list. It gets my creative juices flowing, and 40 I'm sure a lot of people as well. Of course, with our Master Plan, there is a number of 41 places where we want to encourage community events. I was wondering how this differs 42 Draft Minutes 7 APPROVED from, say, the music events in the park on the summer evenings and some of the bike 1 events that we've had, tours of Palo Alto and other events. Are they separate or would 2 you consider them altogether in one big list? 3 4 Mr. de Geus: Most of the events Community Services is involved in—I would say 5 almost all of them—it depends on the level of involvement. These ones here, as 6 Stephanie said, we're mostly in the lead on. There are other events that come out of the 7 City Manager's Office or come from Council or the Mayor's interest or from another 8 department like Planning and Transportation, in which case we will provide some 9 supportive role. They often come to Community Services for help if another department 10 wants to put on an event. 11 12 Commissioner Moss: The reason I ask is if you put all of those events on one big 13 calendar, you would have maybe three or four times as many events. Even these things 14 where they have the pet adoption event at some of the places there, there are so many 15 events that are happening. There's also a dog show that happens at Cubberley field once 16 or twice a year. Things that the community ought to know about. I'm sure that these 17 events would love the publicity. My only suggestion would be a community calendar 18 that includes not only these but also some of the smaller ones. I'm sure there's one of 19 these a week somewhere. 20 21 Chair Lauing: Thanks. I had just one question that wasn't already mentioned, and that's 22 staffing. Every time you do something new, it's either more work to do or you decide this 23 one has to get trimmed down, because it's not unlimited. How do you manage that and 24 make those kinds of decisions? We're always sensitive to the workload of the staff. 25 26 Ms. Douglas: One of the things, I must say, being new here to Palo Alto, I'm just blown 27 away by how dedicated our staff are. When we have a big event—right now what we've 28 been doing is kind of a divide-and-conquer approach, where each staff member has 29 certain areas that they focus on. We are also looking at possibly getting some part-time 30 assistance to help with the logistics with some of our bigger events. For the most part, 31 we have staff that kind of take on certain parts of it and can still manage that with their 32 current duties. It's been working so far. That is something we have to take into 33 consideration. As more and more events come our way, how would we manage that? 34 Right now, it's doable. As time goes on and more events come up, that's something we'll 35 have to look at. 36 37 Chair Lauing: Yeah, it's not unlimited. Rob. 38 39 Mr. de Geus: First of all, I think Stephanie's doing a fantastic job in adding events and 40 being really creative and thinking out of the box. Just as a reminder, we actually 41 eliminated the position that she's in, the Superintendent of Recreation position, in 2008, 42 Draft Minutes 8 APPROVED '09, in that period of time. The Council agreed to bring the position back partly because 1 of interest in special events and building that program. We needed more leadership at 2 this level for the recreation team to be able to do that. Stephanie's the first person to be in 3 that position since it's been back. I think that's been extremely helpful to be able to 4 manage these events as you can see. 5 6 Chair Lauing: Thanks very much for your efforts so far. We'll keep watching the list. 7 Thank you. 8 9 3. Healthy City Healthy Community Resolution and Current Initiatives. 10 11 Chair Lauing: The next item on the agenda is Healthy City Healthy Community 12 Resolution and current initiatives. 13 14 Ms. O'Kane: Kristen O'Kane, Community Services. Rob and I were discussing possible 15 agenda items for this meeting. We thought now would be a good time to give an update 16 on the Healthy City Healthy Community Resolution that was adopted by Council last 17 December and just provide an update on the progress that the group has made so far and a 18 little bit of background on the Resolution. The Healthy City Healthy Community 19 stakeholder group was created because in 2015 Council adopted Healthy City Healthy 20 Community as one of their priorities for the year and also again in 2016. A stakeholder 21 group was formed to draft a Resolution but then also implement the Resolution. I just 22 included a handful of the stakeholders here. There's different levels of interest and 23 involvement. We do meet monthly. This is only a handful. There's been a lot of other 24 stakeholders that have been involved, especially nonprofits like YCS, Canopy, Palo Alto 25 Forward. Depending on what we're talking about, people tend to come when something 26 is of interest to them. The Resolution was adopted in December 2015, and the purpose of 27 the Resolution was to adopt healthy social, cultural and physical environments that 28 promote and support well-being and creative expression for ourselves, our families and 29 our community in support of a healthy city, healthy community. I did want to mention as 30 well that the Healthy Cities is initiated by the League of California Cities. That's how we 31 modeled our Resolution, using some focus areas that the League of California Cities 32 recommended. They included healthy environment, healthy food access and healthy 33 workplace. Those are also focus areas that the City of Palo Alto has honed in on. We 34 also added healthy culture which was in response to stakeholder feedback, that healthy 35 culture would be an appropriate addition for Palo Alto. What is healthy culture? Healthy 36 culture is really the non-physical parts of health and well-being. It's social, emotional 37 and mental well-being, encourages inclusiveness, kindness and just builds social 38 connections. In the Resolution under each of these focus areas, it also includes some 39 specific tasks that are not necessarily directives but aspirational. What should the City 40 and the community be striving for? I've included an example on the bottom of this slide, 41 support and improve the lives of people with different abilities, children and seniors. I 42 Draft Minutes 9 APPROVED especially love this photo. There's just something about it that every time I look at it, it 1 makes me smile. This was from the May Fete Parade last year. A professional 2 photographer took it. I love it. Healthy environment was the next one. This is about 3 increasing opportunities more for physical wellness, walking, biking and other physical 4 activity, but then also increasing connections between residents and nature. One of the 5 tasks is to enhance walking and biking connectivity between neighborhoods and schools, 6 parks, recreational resources and retail. The third one was healthy food access. This is to 7 collaborate within the community to provide healthy and affordable food options for 8 everyone. One of the actions there is to promote community participation in community 9 gardens and farmers markets, to increase access to healthy foods. When I picked these 10 tasks, I tried to pick ones that were really relevant, especially to the Master Planning 11 effort. If you're looking at these, you can pick out those common words that we're all 12 really used to because they're in the Master Plan. The final one is healthy workplace. 13 This promotes work/life balance and educates employees on healthy living and just 14 supports overall health and wellness for employees. The specific task I pulled from this 15 one is establish Palo Alto as a leading example of open government dedicated to the 16 health and well-being of the public. Within the Resolution, there were seven initiatives 17 that were identified for implementation in fiscal years 2016 and 2017. Three of them, 18 which are actually Numbers 2, 3 and 4 on the slide, are very City-specific. They're 19 focused on City employees, advancing the Bike Pedestrian Plan projects and also 20 including Healthy City Healthy Community in the Comp Plan. When I say City-specific, 21 I mean tasks that City staff would be doing. The others are really community-based, and 22 that's what our stakeholder group has been working on. The first one is to create a 23 welcome packet for new residents that focuses really on what are health and wellness 24 opportunities in Palo Alto. This would be for new residents but also for visitors and 25 people who come here every day to work. It'd be very nice to have a place where you 26 could go and just see all the opportunities out there. The fifth is to establish a forum for 27 local businesses in partnership with the business community. The Chamber of 28 Commerce has really been working with us on this one and also our own HR Department. 29 We do have a pretty robust wellness program within the City of Palo Alto. This is a way 30 to collaborate and share ideas so that people are equally being provided wellness 31 opportunities. The sixth initiative is to coordinate and have an annual health fair, which 32 we just completed the second one. We had one last year as well. This year it was in 33 September, and it was very successful. That was in partnership with the YMCA. We 34 plan to continue doing those in the future. The seventh one which is, I think, one of the 35 most difficult ones is establishing metrics. How do you know when Palo Alto is a 36 healthy city and a healthy community? I know Rob has been involved in that initiative 37 and working on that one. We're also tying in with some other groups to find out what 38 they're doing to measure health and wellness within their communities. The eighth one 39 has been added since the Resolution was adopted. This is to develop actions to enroll 40 Palo Alto as an age-friendly community. This is an AARP designation. They're an 41 affiliate of the World Health Organization, who has a worldwide age-friendly community 42 Draft Minutes 10 APPROVED program. This is something that we're working on with Santa Clara County and 1 Avenidas as well. The idea is that we would be designated as an age-friendly 2 community. I read an interesting statistic today that one in three Americans is 50 years of 3 age or older. By 2030 one out of every five people in the U.S. will be 65 or older. As the 4 population ages and people are staying healthy longer, communities really need to adapt 5 to that and make their communities accessible and enjoyable for people of all ages. That 6 is all I have on this Resolution. I wanted to share this picture. I put this in here because 7 this is healthy workplace. This just happened last week. This is a Community Services 8 Department work day. We didn't spend the whole day; we spent about an hour and a half 9 out in the Baylands planting native plants and removing some invasive species. It was 10 really fun. It's mental wellness; it's good collaboration with your colleagues; also you get 11 a little bit of physical activity in there. I just wanted to share this. I thought it would be a 12 fun photo. 13 14 Mr. de Geus; Who's that cool guy in the hat there? Who is he? 15 16 Ms. O'Kane: I don't know. He just walked in the picture. Any questions on this? 17 18 Chair Lauing: First, I just want to know if you got rid of all those invasive plants in an 19 hour and a half? That's a lot with that much man and woman power there. 20 21 Ms. O'Kane: We didn't get rid of all them, but we estimated that we in an hour and a half 22 completed the work that would normally take 4 days to do. It was quite an 23 accomplishment. 24 25 Chair Lauing: When are you going back? 26 27 Ms. O'Kane: We're planning to do more activities like this throughout the City, not just 28 in the Baylands but anywhere that we could use a little extra hand to get some work done. 29 30 Chair Lauing: Private yards? 31 32 Ms. O'Kane: Maybe not. I don't think so. 33 34 Chair Lauing: Maybe next time. You had some comments. 35 36 Commissioner Cribbs: I do have a comment. One of the stakeholders is the Palo Alto 37 School District. As I was looking through this, I didn't see anything specifically about 38 the School District, but I know there's lots of programs going on that are back and forth 39 about wellness and health in the School District specifically. I didn't know how that was 40 being handled or if not. 41 42 Draft Minutes 11 APPROVED Ms. O'Kane: My understanding is that when the stakeholder group was originally put 1 together, their goal was to put the Resolution together and then also develop the 2 initiatives. I think a lot of the original stakeholders, when we don't have initiatives 3 specific to them, are not as involved anymore. As we move forward and develop new 4 initiatives in the future, I'm hoping we can address some of those areas that weren't 5 addressed in these 2 years. 6 7 Commissioner Cribbs: It just struck me as I was looking at the workplace and the 8 community that I didn't see specific about schools. That was one thing. The Palo Alto 9 Medical Foundation, are they considered to be a stakeholder or not? 10 11 Ms. O'Kane: They are. We did have a physician from PAMF come and give a 12 presentation related to the health forum, the workplace forum. He came and talked to us. 13 They are considered a stakeholder. I think part of it is just people's availability. 14 15 Commissioner Cribbs: I think this is a wonderful report. Thank you very much. 16 17 Mr. de Geus: We meet monthly, and there's a meeting this Thursday, if any of the 18 Commissioners are interested in attending. I know we had a Commissioner 19 representative attend last year pretty regularly. We provide a healthy lunch. 20 21 Chair Lauing: Provide what? 22 23 Mr. de Geus: We provide a healthy lunch. The meeting is here at noon in the 24 Community Room. 25 26 Commissioner Cribbs: Where is the meeting, here? 27 28 Mr. de Geus: It's right here at City Hall in the community room out front, there at the 29 lobby. Everyone's welcome. 30 31 Ms. O'Kane: I'll send the meeting invitation to everybody, and maybe someone can 32 attend. That would be very nice and helpful. 33 34 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Moss. 35 36 Commissioner Moss: Going back to the presentation we just had, it seemed like almost 37 all of those events have some tie-in to Healthy City Healthy Community plus all the other 38 ones that ought to be on that community calendar, that I mentioned before. Almost all of 39 them have some tie-in to Healthy City Healthy Community. There should be an "HC" 40 next to each one those, indicating which ones tie to this and maybe even how they tie. 41 You have tremendous potential to tie almost everything we do in the community to this. 42 Draft Minutes 12 APPROVED It's not like we have to start from scratch and come up with something new. We're 1 already doing it. We just need to toot our own horn and point to the things we do. It's 2 just fantastic. 3 4 Chair Lauing: Thank you. We do actually have a late speaker card here. I'd like to 5 recognize Shani Kleinhaus to speak on this item. 6 7 Shani Kleinhaus: Thank you. My name is Shani Kleinhaus. I'm a resident, and I am on 8 the CAC, but I do not speak for the CAC. One thing that I think is relevant to this as well 9 as to the next item, so I thought I'll say it now. I think we need a shuttle system to bring 10 people to Foothill Park and potentially to the Baylands. There is a lot of discussion in the 11 Comprehensive Plan Update about how people are not going to drive anymore. There's 12 also a lot of senior people who need access and others, maybe youth. Somewhere in 13 there it would be great to add a shuttle system to bring people to parks, that are not only 14 in the City. One other thing specifically about this Healthy City is most of what was 15 mentioned is already in the Comprehensive Plan Update, I think. One thing that was 16 different is this employee health and wellness and collaborating with local employers. I 17 want our workers to be healthy, but there was a lot of comment when this previously 18 came up from people who did not think that this should be there at all. It was in various 19 times that this was expressed. I'm not sure how I stand about it, but I thought I should 20 bring it to your attention, that this was not something people felt the City has a place in at 21 all. That's all for this one. Thank you. 22 23 Chair Lauing: Thank you, and for the report. 24 25 4. Parks, Open Space, Trails and Recreation Facilities Master Plan. 26 27 Chair Lauing: The next item on the agenda looks familiar, the Parks, Open Space, Trails 28 and Recreation Facilities Master Plan. Staff will review what we got in our packet. We 29 do have some speaker cards for this, so we can take these first. First of all is Jonathan 30 Brown. You have 3 minutes. Thank you. 31 32 Jonathan Brown: Thank you. My name is Jonathan Brown. I'm a member of the 33 Ventura neighborhood; I live on Fernando Avenue. The Ventura Neighborhood 34 Association, I should say. I'm chair of the Ventura parks committee. Thank you for your 35 work so far on the Parks Master Plan and the opportunity to help you move it forward. I 36 would like to propose that we add a project to Group 1, acquire the parcel at 3350 Birch 37 Street for future expansion of Boulware Park. Currently, one of the Group 2 projects is 38 acquire new parkland in high-need areas. At least the Boulware Park acquisition part of 39 this item should be moved higher in the priority. I looked through all the proposed site 40 concept plans in the City's draft park and facilities new amenities concept plans review 41 document from May 23, 2016. Of all those 35 proposed site concept plans, Boulware 42 Draft Minutes 13 APPROVED Park was the only one to identify an opportunity to expand the park to adjacent land. 1 Boulware Park was also the only one to note that the park serves a large neighborhood 2 with limited parkland. 3350 Birch is zoned public facility, a designation reserved for 3 community service or recreational facilities among a few others. Expanding the park 4 would help address the current lack of size of Boulware Park relative to the large 5 neighborhood it serves, and it would fulfill the City's stated objective to add parkland on 6 a corner lot. This land is owned by AT&T at a time when telecoms are looking to 7 downsize. In fact, AT&T has indicated that it is willing to sell this very parcel. Peter 8 Jensen in Public Works is actively working on this issue. There is no need for this 9 acquisition to be lumped into the more long-term aspirations described in Group 2; 10 although, those also are laudable. There are a lot of tie-ins to other City goals and 11 initiatives, such as the Healthy Cities one that we just heard about. The Ventura 12 Neighborhood and other organizations and citizens stand ready to act whether in the form 13 of a public/private partnership or otherwise to realize this goal. Thank you. 14 15 Chair Lauing: Thank you very much. The next speaker is Becky Sanders. 16 17 Becky Sanders: Thank you, Commissioners, for your service to our fair City. Thank 18 you, Rob and the Recreation Department, for working as hard and as diligently as you do 19 on our behalf. This is a City that has a lot of demanding, competing interests. We all 20 know that. I'm just here to add my voice to that of Jonathan Brown, the chairman of the 21 parks committee for the Ventura Neighborhood Association. We actually have an 22 official parks platform that has been sent to Peter Jensen. I believe that Boulware 23 actually is at the bottom of the list. I think it gets an F as a rating for a park in the City of 24 Palo Alto. We are underserved by parks in Ventura. We would love to have a bathroom 25 and all kinds of other improvements that are in our platform and were sent in March, I 26 believe, or in the summer, I believe, to the Commission and to Mr. Jensen. I'm just here 27 to add my voice to Jonathan's and say that that corner lot would be an amazing public 28 garden, community garden. Right now it's an eyesore. There is still a homeless issue in 29 that area; although, a lot has been done to address that. People still seem to think that that 30 park, which serves toddlers and families—some people think that it's still okay for 31 homeless people to use that for all of their personal needs. That's a problem. I don't 32 know if it's possible, but if we were to get that park, might it be possible to have an 33 emergency vehicle only drive through from Fernando to Ash to Lambert? That would 34 make it an even more safe and wonderful experience for all of us in Ventura. Thank you 35 very much for your attention. I appreciate it. 36 37 Chair Lauing: Thank you. The last speaker on this item is Shani Kleinhaus. 38 39 Shani Kleinhaus: Thank you. Shani Kleinhaus again, a resident and a member of the 40 CAC. I do not for speak the CAC. One of the things that came up at the Citizen 41 Advisory Committee was for acquisition to look into legacy programs and bequests and 42 Draft Minutes 14 APPROVED see if people are willing to donate their home for a park dedication. I didn't see it there. 1 It may be. Just to have consistency with the CAC, it would be good to add it here as 2 well. It looks a lot better than last time. Thank you. You've put a lot of work into that, 3 staff and the Commissioners. Again, the shuttle to parks. For signage, I think there is 4 one place where there is a reference to the Rinconada signage as a model, but there's no 5 picture of what that might look like. You might want to add a picture. There's discussion 6 of signage—there are programs to add signage that adds the distance to the next park and 7 languages and so on. I think people these days use their cell phones, and they don't need 8 additional signage. It kind of litters if you have too much. I'm not sure that's needed. I 9 would actually take out those extras. Being from a different country and speaking with 10 an accent—English is not my native language—I still don't necessarily need the signage 11 in my own mother language. Upgrading of open space trails to be ADA compatible can 12 be done very minorly. You've got to be very, very careful when you put paved trails in 13 parks. Often little critters are attracted to the warmer than the general environment. 14 They'll sit there and bask, and the bicycles will run them over. You really need to be 15 careful. I'm not sure we need a lot of that. You could do maybe one, so there is a way 16 for people who cannot use dirt rails to get around. I think Byxbee already has a lot of 17 trails that are accessible. I would be really careful about doing more of those. The same 18 with art in open space areas in the preserves. You have to be careful with that. There is 19 already art that is now going to be luckily removed. Some of that was providing perches 20 for raptors in an area that they could prey on endangered species. You have to be very 21 careful. Really, the focus in open space and natural areas should be nature. The last one 22 I have here is on lighting. Lighting, especially with LED, is a big problem for wildlife 23 both in the urban and suburban and in nature. I will provide the staff with a recent article 24 about the types of light that can be used and what is not so good to use. That might help 25 design lighting in a better way that's not too invasive. Thank you. 26 27 Chair Lauing: Thank you. That's the last speaker. Kristen, do you want to give us an 28 overview of what we're going to discuss tonight? 29 30 Ms. O'Kane: Sure. Kristen O'Kane, Community Services. I'm here with Peter Jensen 31 and Daren Anderson to discuss the Parks Master Plan latest updates. We're going to be 32 discussing Chapter 4 revisions. I know we all thought Chapter 4 was pretty much done, 33 but we did add a few programs in response to Council comments and feedback. We 34 wanted to share those with all of you tonight. Also, sort of the bigger topic is Chapter 5, 35 which has been developed quite a bit since the last Commission meeting. We've added 36 descriptions for all the project and programs and filled in some of the blanks where we 37 had sort of still under development included. Peter's going to be talking about the next 38 steps and schedule to get us to the finish line. The first two programs that we added are 39 under Goal 5 and specifically under Policy 5B, which is support innovation in recreation 40 programming and park features and amenities. We heard from most Council Members 41 the desire to have more intramural sports as well as opportunities for pickup games and 42 Draft Minutes 15 APPROVED non-league games. We added these two programs under this policy to reflect that. The 1 next was under Policy 5C, which is related to expanding the overall parks and rec system 2 through creative means. We've added 5C.1, which is explore a process to utilize and 3 reserve select public and private lands for park-like functions that allows for more 4 flexibility than formal park dedication. This addresses the desire to have something less 5 limiting than a parkland dedication. For example, if you were going to dedicate parkland 6 on a rooftop, that would come with a lot of limitations for that property. This would 7 provide something that has more flexibility but would still provide the park-like 8 functions. Even if it is temporary, it would still be there. That was the intent of this 9 program. Do you want to stop here, Chair, and discuss any of these? 10 11 Chair Lauing: These are the total new ones, right? 12 13 Ms. O'Kane: Yes, there's three total. 14 15 Chair Lauing: Any comments on those? Commissioner Reckdahl, go ahead. 16 17 Commissioner Reckdahl: Just with this last one, I understand once you make a park a 18 park, it stays a park until action is taken. This would just be a park-like area. How would 19 it become not a park-like area? What would be the decommissioning process for this? 20 21 Ms. O'Kane: We still would have to work all those details out, unless you have any 22 thoughts, Rob, on how that would be handled. This is just the idea. We would have to 23 figure out how this would actually be implemented and, like you said, decommissioned. 24 25 Commissioner Reckdahl: Is there any use constraints that currently a park can't do, that 26 people want these park-like areas to do? 27 28 Mr. de Geus: Not necessarily. This came up during the Council discussion on taking a 29 look at public land that is currently being used for park and recreation functions but is not 30 dedicated parkland and moving to dedicate those parcels. The discussion came up that 31 there may be instances where we do want to use the land for park and recreation 32 purposes, but we don't want to dedicate it as parkland because it could be limiting in 33 some way for that property. As the example was given here, if it was on a rooftop or 34 something, you wouldn't want to dedicate it as parkland. Is there another type of 35 dedication that is not quite as limiting as dedicated parkland, which requires a vote of the 36 people and all of those things and is pretty restrictive in terms of what you can use? It's 37 really to explore is there another designation. 38 39 Commissioner Reckdahl: I think it makes sense. I was just poking at what was the 40 features of parkland that people are objecting to. Was it the permanency or was it some 41 use of the parkland that's limited? 42 Draft Minutes 16 APPROVED 1 Ms. O'Kane: I think it's the permanency. 2 3 Commissioner Reckdahl: Thank you. 4 5 Chair Lauing: Any other comments on this? Anne. 6 7 Commissioner Cribbs: Just a question about intramural sports as opposed to intermural 8 sports. I just didn't understand the definition. 9 10 Ms. O'Kane: It could be that I misspelled it. 11 12 Commissioner Cribbs: No, I don't think so. I was thinking maybe you meant something 13 different, whether the "intra" was just within the school opportunities and "inter" was 14 between schools. I just was confused about what that was. 15 16 Ms. O'Kane: I think the "intra" means within the school. 17 18 Commissioner Cribbs: Within the school. 19 20 Ms. O'Kane: I can look into that and make sure I have the right one or maybe we include 21 both. I'm not sure. 22 23 Commissioner Cribbs: What would I prefer? I just think it's great to have kids have 24 opportunities to play in a not too serious manner. If that is better just within the school, 25 that's fine. It could be schools against each other too. I just wanted to ask the question. 26 27 Chair Lauing: David, did you have a comment? Put on the mike. 28 29 Commissioner Moss: I don't have a comment about Chapter 4. Everything's fine. In one 30 of the previous chapters, there's a typo that's pretty glaring, that I was hoping you would 31 correct. That's on page 11. It says that there are three elements. You really don't say 32 what those three elements are. It's on page 11 at the bottom of—the front page and the 33 top of page 11 talks about the three elements. I think the three elements are parks, trails, 34 natural open spaces and then recreational facilities and then recreational programs. When 35 you go over there, they're all the same size font. You really can't tell. If you could just 36 list the three elements in that first paragraph like you did later on with the other ones, on 37 the top of page 16, just make recreational facilities a little bigger and bolder. On page 19, 38 recreational programs, make it a little bigger and bolder than the rest. I think that would 39 make it flow a lot better. That's all I had. 40 41 Chair Lauing: Should we move to Chapter 5? 42 Draft Minutes 17 APPROVED 1 Commissioner Hetterly: I had a couple ... 2 3 Chair Lauing: Sorry. 4 5 Commissioner Hetterly: ... for the other chapters. 6 7 Chair Lauing: For four? 8 9 Commissioner Hetterly: For one through four. They're not big. Page 27, actually 10 throughout the demographics section, it would be great if we could add some more charts 11 or pictures. I know there was some work being done on that; I don't know if it's 12 completed or not. In particular, I'd like to see a chart showing the growth trend for kids. 13 Page 54 has the parkland acreage policy. It refers to the National Recreation and Park 14 Association standard and then refers you to the sidebar. The sidebar really just talks 15 about the 4 acres per 1,000. I would like to see the language of the NRPA standard in 16 there as well, because it does have some context that fits in with our new policy. Page 17 C14 is the map of the walkshed for dog parks. I think it just needs to be corrected, 18 because it looks as though the dog parks are in Mitchell Park and Rinconada, but it 19 doesn't show one in Hoover. We don't have one in Rinconada. It doesn't show one at 20 Greer. Perhaps I misunderstood what this map was representing. Please double check it 21 and make sure it has the right locations. That's all I had before Chapter 5. 22 23 Chair Lauing: Keith. 24 25 Commissioner Reckdahl: I have two comments here. Page 12, we talk about due to the 26 era in which they were built, many parks don't have flexible spaces. I think that term, 27 flexible spaces, needs some definition. When I think of grass, open areas, that's quite 28 flexible. You can do a lot of things there. I'm not sure what we're getting at with that 29 flexible spaces, whether it's courts that can be used for multiple sports or what. That 30 flexible spaces, more detail has to be added to that. The other thing was also on the same 31 page. The very last paragraph talks about the figure depicts all City-owned park sites. It 32 also shows the City-leased. Maybe we should say City-owned and City-leased or have 33 some general term, City-controlled or something like that, that includes both Stanford and 34 El Camino Park, which are not owned by the City. The second one was on page 28. On 35 page 28, we talk about our special needs. It says our community is also home to an 36 unusually high number of special needs students. I think more detail is needed on that. 37 Is there a reason for that or is that just a fluke? If there's a reason, then we expect it could 38 be sustaining, and we should plan more. If it's just a fluke that 10 years from now will 39 possibly go away, that would reduce our commitment to adding features in parks and also 40 programs for special need students. That's it. Thank you. Do we know why there's so 41 many special needs students? Is it a Bay Area thing or is it Palo Alto compared to 42 Draft Minutes 18 APPROVED Redwood City? When we say unusually high, what are we comparing it to? Do we 1 know? 2 3 Commissioner Hetterly: As I recall, the demographic report that MIG did highlighted 4 that. They were saying that it was due to the attraction of the school system. Since our 5 school system provides such excellent services for the special needs population, they're a 6 draw. 7 8 Commissioner Reckdahl: (crosstalk). That would ... 9 10 Commissioner Hetterly: I don't recall that there was any hard and fast data establishing 11 that, but that was their ... 12 13 Commissioner Reckdahl: We're speculating that's (crosstalk). 14 15 Commissioner Hetterly: ... presumption. 16 17 Commissioner Reckdahl: If that's the case, then that probably would be sustaining, 18 which means we would want to make a special effort. Thank you. 19 20 Chair Lauing: Did you want to give an overview presentation on Chapter 5 or just go to 21 comments? 22 23 Ms. O'Kane: I have a few slides. Chapter 5 is implementation. Last time, we came with 24 our list of 15 priority projects and 15 priority programs that we felt we had general 25 agreement on from the community and the PRC. These were things that could be 26 addressed in the very near term, whether that be completed in the nearer term or start the 27 planning process in the nearer term. The feedback we got from the Commission was to 28 add the 7.7-acre piece of land at Foothills Park, which we did. In meeting with the ad 29 hoc group, we chose to add enhance existing playing fields as well. Now, there are those 30 two additional projects. We've also grouped them by short-term versus long-term, those 31 that need further study, will take a long time to plan or fund, and also urgency. We've 32 added descriptions of each priority project and program including the level of planning 33 effort, capital cost, operation cost, timeframe and urgency. I've included the definitions 34 here. The planning effort is really how much time does it take to plan it. That includes 35 your community outreach, your environmental review, identifying the funding and also 36 PRC and Council approval. We've given those a rating of low, medium, high. There isn't 37 any certain amount of time or dollar amount connected to low, medium, high. It's just a 38 very general label. Capital costs, we did get more specific. This is the order of 39 magnitude capital costs to implement the project. We included annual operating costs. 40 Once the project is completed, how much will it cost to keep it going? Timeframe, 41 whether it occurs in the near, mid or long-term. The final one is urgency, which indicates 42 Draft Minutes 19 APPROVED the level of need. It's important to point out that all projects included in the Master Plan 1 have a demonstrated need. Otherwise, they wouldn't be in there. The level of urgency 2 does vary, and this is dependent on the availability of a particular program or a particular 3 amenity based on the demand that there is. We give this a rating of low, medium, and 4 high as well. One thing I wanted to touch on—Rob and I have talked about this quite a 5 bit; we've gone back and forth on it. Is urgency an appropriate category to be including, 6 given that these projects are all considered high priority? If something is rated low on the 7 urgency, what does that mean? If it is low, then maybe it shouldn't be on the list. We 8 wanted to just hear the Commission's thoughts on this and get some feedback from you. I 9 don't think we're recommending either. We just want to be able to better understand it 10 and better explain it to others. Any comments? 11 12 Chair Lauing: I think we could just have comments on that, the urgency question, before 13 we go into it. Is that okay? 14 15 Ms. O'Kane: I'm sorry. 16 17 Chair Lauing: Just to speak about this urgency question first, before we go into it. 18 19 Ms. O'Kane: Please, that would be ... 20 21 Chair Lauing: Does anyone want to start? I can. Commissioner Moss. 22 23 Commissioner Moss: I definitely think you should have the urgency on there. Even if 24 it's low, if there are some spots that we could stick it into, especially if it's not high cost, 25 we could just do it in between the higher priority ones, especially the bigger, more 26 expensive ones. If these are less expensive, even if they're low, we could squeeze them 27 in. It's good to have them on the list, I think. 28 29 Chair Lauing: The first thing that comes to my mind on urgency is if there's a safety 30 issue. Obviously, even though that would be a high priority and dog parks would be a 31 high priority maybe if there wasn't a safety issue, then you could get balance that way. I 32 think there are instances, but it may be an ad hoc decision rather than fighting over it in 33 terms of high priority versus urgency. Other comments? Commissioner Hetterly. 34 35 Commissioner Hetterly: I do think it's important to have an urgency element to it. When 36 I think about it, it's more in the sense of a time sensitivity. For example, the 37 Comprehensive Conservation Plans are important. All these things are important, but 38 those are one of the things that we want to do at the front end because they're going to 39 guide our decision-making around every other thing that we do. There is an urgency to 40 do that first. We don't want to wait until 15 years out to finish the last Conservation Plan. 41 I think there are several items that are like that. We had a speaker earlier talking about 42 Draft Minutes 20 APPROVED the AT&T property site. Hopefully that's something that could be resolved before this 1 Master Plan is put into action. If not, that seems to me something that we might want to 2 include as in fact a Group 1 project or at least an urgent Group 2 project that would get 3 immediate attention. If we fail to act, then we lose that opportunity. It's gone forever. 4 There's a lot of time sensitive items in here that really do need to be acted on 5 immediately. I think maintenance is another one of those, where we want to have a 6 sustainable maintenance strategy that's going to guide our maintenance for the next 20 7 years and every single project that we pursue. That, I think, does merit a special standing 8 in the evaluation. 9 10 Commissioner Reckdahl: I would concur. To me, it's important. There's high needs that 11 if they go unmet, there's not a big impact. There's other high needs, for example buying 12 property or there was one in here about ADA. If you have disabled kids who can't use a 13 playground right now, I'd consider that time urgency because they're going to lose their 14 childhood by the time they retrofit that park. It's what's the ramification if this high need 15 is not met. Some high needs can be prolonged. If you look at the catch-up and keep-up 16 list from the Blue Ribbon Committee, a lot of those were high, but they've just drifted 17 along, and we've gotten by without them. Other times, it's more time critical. 18 19 Chair Lauing: Let's just talk about Chapter 5. I had a couple of structural questions. 20 Were there any adds or deletions to the glossary this time around? 21 22 Ms. O'Kane: I don't believe so. 23 24 Chair Lauing: I noticed that all the appendices are up front, at least the way this has been 25 collated. Is that intentional? All these charts and maps and everything are before we get 26 to the text. 27 28 Ms. O'Kane: They should be at the end. I actually had a question for all of you on the 29 appendices. 30 31 Chair Lauing: I'm sorry? 32 33 Ms. O'Kane: They should be all at the end, the appendices. Actually that was timely 34 because my next slide is about those. I had a discussion question related to that as well. 35 36 Chair Lauing: It's collated before the Attachment B in the packet. 37 38 Ms. O'Kane: That's because one through four and those appendices were put in together 39 as this is sort of a final draft or near final draft, where Chapter 5 we still consider an 40 earlier draft. They were put in there separately. That's why. 41 42 Draft Minutes 21 APPROVED Chair Lauing: I think we should probably just go through this Commissioner by 1 Commissioner, page by page, unless there are other approaches. Did you want to do that 2 now, the discussion question? 3 4 Ms. O'Kane: Sure, that would be fine. 5 6 Chair Lauing: Fine. Sorry. 7 8 Ms. O'Kane: The appendices that are included right now, there are five of them which 9 are on the presentation. The question is are these the right appendices. Should there be 10 additional ones? What other information—because we have a lot of information, a lot of 11 data, what's missing from this list, if anything, that we should add? 12 13 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Moss. 14 15 Commissioner Moss: Thank you very much for putting all this stuff in the appendices. It 16 makes the flow of Chapters 1-4 much easier to follow. As far as the order, I think the 17 ones that—the geographic analysis and the park and rec inventory are the easiest for 18 people to understand. Having those up front is good. Of course, the community 19 engagement process probably could be lower down, because you're really just saying how 20 you came up with this whole community response. It's sort of the process. Maybe if you 21 wanted to switch geographic analysis and community engagement, just the order of the 22 appendices, that might be better. 23 24 Chair Lauing: Other comments? 25 26 Commissioner Reckdahl: One comment on Appendix A. Are these going to be fold-outs 27 in the final? The same with some of the maps. I find it a little cumbersome to have the 28 data divided on two pages, especially when the pages were on opposite sides of each 29 other. 30 31 Ms. O'Kane: Yes, we can make them fold-outs so they're easier to read. 32 33 Commissioner Reckdahl: Was this just to make it easier to print out or were we doing a 34 trade? Was there some disadvantage of fold-outs? 35 36 Ms. O'Kane: It's just easier for this review, for printing all the packets. 37 38 Commissioner Hetterly: I agree with Commissioner Moss about moving the geographic 39 analysis up. I think those maps are really helpful and informative and help get to the 40 substance of the Plan. Not that community engagement is not a big part of the Plan. It's 41 not as empirical. It looks like Appendix X that's related to Chapter 5 now is going with 42 Draft Minutes 22 APPROVED the other appendices at the end. The program evaluation tool, I didn't see that appendix. 1 Are you proposing to take that evaluating future projects section of Chapter 5 and make 2 that an appendix? It's on page 23 of Chapter 5. 3 4 Ms. O'Kane: Thank you. There's a form that MIG put together to go along with this, and 5 that would be what's in the appendix. It would be almost like a flow chart of "if this, 6 move to this; if not, stop your process." That's what the appendix would be. 7 8 Commissioner Hetterly: That should be referred to probably in the text, so people know 9 to go to that. As for other appendices that may be missing, I can't say off the top of my 10 head that any come to me. I think the survey results were very useful information that 11 people would find interesting. That's one I'd be inclined to include. Beyond that, I'd 12 have to go look at the binder to see what other pieces we had and what might be an 13 official supplement. 14 15 Chair Lauing: If you pulled page 23, would this chapter just end on potential 16 partnerships? The reason I ask is there seems to be a feel of closure if there's a way 17 forward in future years with projects. At least some summary there, I think, would be 18 helpful even if you're going to put more of this into the appendix. I'm saying you want a 19 way forward to prioritize things in future years and decades. I think stating that in the 20 body here, while you're talking about how you're going to implement it as something new 21 comes up, you ought to at least have a summary here even if you're going to put this 22 appendix in the back in terms of the scoring sheet and the quantitative aspects of that. 23 24 Ms. O'Kane: I think the text would stay in the chapter, and then there would be a 25 separate appendix referred to in the text. 26 27 Chair Lauing: Where are we saying we should have the geographic analysis? Would 28 that be "B," just swap "B" and "C"? That works for me. Is that what you're saying, 29 David? 30 31 Commissioner Moss: Yes. 32 33 Chair Lauing: Keith? Do you want to start, Keith or Jennifer? 34 35 Commissioner Reckdahl: We've talked about urgency. There were a couple in here 36 that—this is on Chapter 5 obviously, page 5—where we talk about establish and grow 37 partnerships. We call that urgency high. I'm not sure exactly why we would mark that 38 high. It's important to do, but I don't ... 39 40 Chair Lauing: Where are you? 41 42 Draft Minutes 23 APPROVED Commissioner Reckdahl: Page 5, on the very top, very first section, establish and grow 1 partnerships. I think that's important to do, but I wouldn't do it urgency high. At least in 2 my mind, the ramifications of not doing that is not as dire as some other things. When 3 we have—the second one also is high. We seem to be a little inconsistent. Like on page 4 6, we have the youth aquatics program as high, but expand programs for seniors is 5 medium. I would think that would kind of be in the same boat. I think they probably all 6 should be medium. It might be worthwhile just to go through offline and just review 7 urgencies. 8 9 Chair Lauing: Yeah. I'm questioning whether we should be going through it in 10 subsections here as opposed to just go all the way through the pages. The first section is 11 implementation and prioritization. We get comfortable with that before we go through all 12 20 pages, each of us. 13 14 Commissioner Reckdahl: That might be more orderly. 15 16 Chair Lauing: Yeah, I think so. Is that okay? 17 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: Yep. 19 20 Chair Lauing: Do you want to keep the floor and look at pages, I guess, 1-3? 21 22 Commissioner Reckdahl: I don't have anything on those (inaudible). 23 24 Commissioner Hetterly: I struggled a little with the organization. I think it's because I 25 keep stumbling on these timeframes. I was going to suggest that under prioritization 26 process and action plan, you just change that heading to prioritization and have a little 27 intro saying with limited staff time and resources we can't do everything at once. We 28 developed a process to evaluate programs in the Plan based on current and anticipated 29 needs and opportunities. The same process can be used throughout the life of the Plan as 30 needs and resources change. After that little kind of general intro, then you put in this 31 prioritization process. You've introduced it, and now you're telling them how it works, 32 the criteria and evaluation. I would move up the evaluating future projects section to 33 immediately after that process, because it's kind of a follow-on to what do we do with 34 future things as they come up. They don't go exactly through the same thing, but we have 35 to consider the control, the geography, all those other elements that aren't listed in these 36 initial criteria. Then, go into the priority needs and opportunities. This is what we found 37 through this planning process. These are the top 30 priorities. Followed by the action 38 plan and then funding challenges and progress reporting together at the end. I throw that 39 out as a suggestion. For the timeline, I felt like it lacked some context of why are you 40 telling us about these near-term, mid-term, long-term things before we understand how 41 the various projects might spread across the various timelines. I'd love to add some 42 Draft Minutes 24 APPROVED language in here. I don't think it's policy-related, but it just gives a little context. I'm 1 happy to share that with you offline, if you'd prefer that. It basically would just introduce 2 that projects don't always start and end in a single timeframe. There are a lot of different 3 kinds of projects. Some will extend across all of them; some are ongoing. Then, these 4 timeframes as described here kind of give the structure for how each project will be 5 integrated into the City planning process. I think it's useful to have this information; I 6 just feel like there's a disconnect. That's all I have before we get to the priority section. 7 8 Chair Lauing: I'll go that way and come back, and I'll go last again. Commissioner 9 Moss. 10 11 Commissioner Moss: I have a question about the process here. Are we presenting this to 12 the City Council next month or do we have one more month? What Commissioner 13 Hetterly just talked about is quite substantial. Are we ready to present it to the City 14 Council or do we come back one more time so that you've had a chance to think about 15 what she just said? 16 17 Ms. O'Kane: Our last slide is to go through the schedule. To answer your question, we 18 will not be able to go to Council in December because the agendas are already very full. 19 We do have one more meeting to come back to the PRC in December with another draft. 20 I'm sorry, November. 21 22 Mr. de Geus: We hope that in November we'll have a full draft including the comments 23 from today and a complete draft of Chapter 5. If possible, we'll still try to get to the 24 Council by the end of the calendar year. As Kristen said, it looks pretty challenging right 25 now. The meetings the Council has, there's only two meetings, December 5th and 26 December 12, and that's the last meeting for December. 27 28 Chair Lauing: As well as a draft EIR, something that has to be done. 29 30 Mr. de Geus: That's going to happen into the new year anyway. We hoped that we could 31 present a full draft to the Council this year, just because some of the Council Members 32 are not going to be continuing, and they've had an opportunity to work with us for a 33 couple of years. We're still trying to see if we can fit it in, but it looks like it might be 34 challenging. 35 36 Chair Lauing: Is that all? 37 38 Commissioner Moss: I wanted to encourage us to try if at all possible to put this before 39 the Council before the end of the year. That means that the comments we give you today 40 can't be major. 41 42 Draft Minutes 25 APPROVED Mr. de Geus: I think they can be substantive actually. As you read Chapter 5, there's still 1 some big gaps. There's going to be some substantive changes. We have the next several 2 weeks to include those and rewrite. We'll probably meet as an ad hoc committee a couple 3 more times so that November 16th, when we have our next meeting, you can read the full 4 draft of Chapter 5. Then, we'll decide whether it's really ready, if we think it's ready for 5 Council. We'll keep pushing to try and get a date for Council. 6 7 Chair Lauing: I totally agree with that. Keep using the ad hoc as rigorously as possible. 8 We can put a lot of cycles in it and come back. Anne, did you have comments? 9 10 Commissioner Cribbs: No. I'm still troubled by this list. I'm not troubled, but just 11 looking at the list and saying—if I were reading it without having the background, I 12 would say, "This is the first one. This is the second one." I think we have to—if it's not 13 prioritized, then we should say that it's not prioritized. 14 15 Chair Lauing: I think we should maybe dig into that a little bit. Since I'm going last, I'll 16 just make a few comments. Then, we can maybe look at that list. I'm still concerned 17 about the language leading the thought process. As we've been saying for—it's almost 2 18 years now. This is a strategic document. It's long-term. It's multiyear. There are some 19 really big deal things on here that we have to start on now even though they're going to 20 take 10 or 15 years to get through. We all know that, and we all believe that. We're all 21 committed to that, up here and in the City and on the Council. I don't mean this as 22 wordsmithing. I mean it as the right guidelines. In the first sentence of implementation, 23 we start talking about the annual process. In the next sentence we talk about the annual 24 cycle. Then, we talk about the annual action plan. Then, we start talking about the CIP 25 process. When we get down to the paragraph, we say that we're going to determine the 26 final order of implementation as part of the established CIP and operating budget process. 27 You reference staff and PRC and Council. I actually think that point is wrong. What we 28 really want to do is come to the Council with some things that are going to need 29 something other than CIP on an annual basis that we're going to look at. I know some of 30 it backs into the PRC, that you spend on an annual basis. I'm just concerned that if we 31 couch this in the language that's annual plan and CIP and annual budgets, we're going to 32 lose sight of the fact that, I think, separate action has to be taken on some of these items 33 by Council to get some things done. I'm happy to help work on language there. I don't 34 mean to detract from the fact that the CIP process is quite valid. I've been on that 35 committee for years and so on. I'm just concerned about how we're setting that up. 36 When we set up the groups, 0-5 years, 6-10 years, it's referencing the CIP process, which 37 is on page 2, in the near term and even in the mid-term for 6-10 years. It may be that one 38 of these things Council says, "We should do funding for that right now outside of the CIP 39 process." That's the kind of potential action that we would like to encourage, I think, on 40 some of these projects. I'm just a little concerned about how we're talking about it on a 41 day-by-day basis. When we get down to long term, we don't have any comment at all 42 Draft Minutes 26 APPROVED until we get back to the budget thing, where we talk a few pages later about various ways 1 to fund this thing. It doesn't say capital budget or anything else. I just don't know if 2 we're leading this thing in the right direction. That's my concern. I welcome comments 3 from my colleagues on that. On the list itself, I think last time it was switched. We had 4 projects first and then programs. A couple of us at least commented that the projects—I 5 don't want to say that they're more important, but they're more elaborate, they're more 6 initiatives, they're harder to accomplish. Maybe those should still be listed first for 7 visibility. The discussion that I'd also like to have is when we look at this list of Group 1 8 projects, I don't happen to agree that those are Group 1 projects. A lot of them that are in 9 the Group 2 list should probably be up on the Group 1 list. Just because it can get done 10 quicker doesn't mean that they're lower priorities. I still think we're kind of faced with 11 that decision. Enhance existing playing fields, if we believe that that's really serious, then 12 it's just as important, my goodness, as enhancing seating areas in the parks. It feels to me 13 like we should still have a bit of a discussion here and in ad hoc in terms of the right 14 priorities and maybe even the totals. We said last time there was nothing magical about 15 30 things. We could make it 50 or whatever. To me this is such a meat of the findings 16 section for everything that we went through that (a) it should be highlighted, but it should 17 be a big part of what we're putting there. I'll pause for any comments. Are you pressing 18 your button, Commissioner Hetterly? 19 20 Commissioner Hetterly: I was just going to ask. I didn't understand the Group 1 and 21 Group 2 as being Group 1 is more important, more urgent, we have to do those first, and 22 Group 2 is not. I didn't think that there was a normative judgment around placing in 23 Group 1 or Group 2. I thought it was about Group 1 projects, those are the ones that 24 could be initiated immediately and potentially completed in the short term. Group 2 25 required significant study before they could be initiated or required a specific funding 26 strategy in order to accomplish that. Those two things would be the first step that should 27 still happen in the nearer term, but it didn't make those less high priorities. I'm curious 28 what the intention is and what other people understand. 29 30 Commissioner Cribbs: If I could. I think it's maybe the way we're looking at it, the way 31 we're reading it. It appears that Group 1 seems like it's more important than Group 2, but 32 really the big things are in Group 2, at least from my perspective. The other thing about 33 these groups is there are some things that I know that we do as a matter of course, like 34 incorporate sustainable practices. If you could take some of those things and pull them 35 out and put them in a different space that says, "We as a City believe in these things, and 36 we do them on a daily basis," rather than putting them here like we're going to get—37 everybody's laughing. 38 39 Chair Lauing: We're smiling because Keith and I are going to put up signs about best 40 practices, best practices. We think they should be there period. It's the good judgment of 41 staff that we know they're going to do that. 42 Draft Minutes 27 APPROVED 1 Commissioner Cribbs: That's exactly what I was saying, that we do it on a regular basis. 2 The same thing with the Americans with Disabilities Act. If those can get pulled out of 3 these two, it would be great. 4 5 Chair Lauing: Just to answer your question and maybe ask for clarification, the point that 6 I'm trying to make is that I don't think we should be making a separation of priorities 7 based on short term or long term. I think we should be saying as a Master Plan here's 8 what's most important for the City to do. Now, let's figure out when. That is definitely 9 up to staff and financing and so on. That's what my concern about short term versus 10 further study in the sort of meat of the project. Here are our top priorities for the next 20 11 years. Just to explain what my thinking is on how it's written. David. 12 13 Commissioner Moss: Instead of saying Group 1, if you said "for example." Some of 14 these can be done in the short term. Some of the other ones—the ones that say Group 2 15 project needing further study, take away the word Group 2 and say essentially here are 16 other projects that will take a little bit more study. That way it doesn't look like a 17 prioritization; it looks like this is how we're grouping these things so that we can handle 18 them better. Not a priority thing, but how we handle them. We handle them with a 19 different process, not that one is more important than the other. 20 21 Chair Lauing: Part of that actually is covered in the subsequent copy that you have 22 written there in terms of going after parkland, the steps to be taken in what year and so 23 on. I think the copy enhances what we're really trying to do. 24 25 Commissioner Moss: One other comment I want to make about what you said about the 26 process being tied to an annual ... 27 28 Chair Lauing: CIP budget? 29 30 Commissioner Moss: What he said about the annual process, I got the feeling that you 31 already have these processes well in hand. They're ingrained in the way the City runs. 32 What we're hoping with this long-term Plan is that you will use it to guide you in what 33 we do every year. I don't think you can have a new process. You must stick with an 34 annual process, but what you put in that annual process is highly dependent on this 35 longer-term plan. Can we change the wording somehow to say that utilize the annual 36 process that we have in place and be guided by this long-term plan. I don't know how 37 you can word that better, but that's sort of what I think you're talking about. You're not 38 talking about creating a new process. 39 40 Chair Lauing: I think that is what's being said here. I think that's totally the intent of 41 staff. I'm actually not arguing about that. I'm saying that what we need to do is raise up 42 Draft Minutes 28 APPROVED these priorities and do it in a way that maybe says if we decide we need $100 million for 1 parkland, we can't look at that on—are we going to pull that off in the next 5 years? It's 2 not a CIP by definition, because that isn't the process. That's probably a 25-year thing, so 3 that can't fit that process, but we still need to do it. There are things that don't quite fit in 4 that process. I'm sorry. Did you want to make another comment, Rob? 5 6 Mr. de Geus: I'm just thinking about this topic. That was helpful to hear that point. I 7 also felt Commissioner Moss articulated correctly what we were trying to accomplish 8 here. We know that the City Council makes budget decisions during the budget process. 9 They don't typically do it outside of the process. It's through the capital budget process 10 and the operating budget process. We would fold that into there. The Chair is correct 11 that there are other bigger aspirations in here that don't cleanly fit into the CIP annual 12 process. How do we manage that and deal with that and make sure that it's clearly 13 articulated here, that there are big next steps that we need to take beyond the CIP plan? I 14 think that's very helpful. The other thing I wanted to mention, just back on how we order 15 these. I was thinking just now—I mentioned to Kristen—is having a summary list like 16 this really necessary. It seems like we're getting caught up on it a little bit. We're not 17 able to describe in the summary what it is that we're talking about, so assumptions are 18 made about how this list is put together and why is it put together that way. When you 19 get a chance to actually read the description of the program, the sense of urgency and 20 dollar amount, you have better context as to why it's listed as near, mid or long or high 21 urgency or not. I just wonder what the value is of having the summary list. Maybe it 22 causes more problems than not having it at all. 23 24 Chair Lauing: It's an interesting angle to consider as a way around the problem. 25 26 Commissioner Reckdahl: I personally like the list. I think we should just say that this is 27 the list and it's not prioritized. These are the topics that we'll be covering. You can look 28 at this in a half page and understand this is what I'm going to talk about. That puts you in 29 the context when you start reading the list. 30 31 Commissioner Hetterly: I think it's worth considering taking those Group 2 projects, the 32 high cost, high effort projects, and putting them up front. These are the extraordinary, 33 ambitious projects that we think are really important to do. Follow that with this is the 34 stuff that should go through the regular process. 35 36 Peter Jensen: In our conversations with the consultant on that, their idea was if you do 37 put the bigger projects up front, then those projects dominate the list. If your list ends 38 with the last program, which is a low-impact one, it looks like it is prioritized where the 39 bottom of the list is not as big as the other ones. That's why they were switched around. 40 When you got to the end of the list, it didn't seem like they were the small projects. 41 Draft Minutes 29 APPROVED Those were actually the big ones, so it didn't get smaller in scale as you went down. 1 Either way, how the list is—that was the idea of why it was done in this draft version. 2 3 Chair Lauing: I think we have very smart Council Members. I think you can figure that 4 out without too much trouble. 5 6 Commissioner Reckdahl: I think the big ones should go up front, just because they take 7 immediate action. If the other things on the list are delayed by 6 months or a year, not a 8 big deal. The other things we want to get going right away because there's such a long 9 lag. 10 11 Chair Lauing: What was that? 12 13 Council Member Filseth: (inaudible) 14 15 Chair Lauing: They're used to being asked for money. They have to make those 16 decisions. 17 18 Council Member Filseth: If there's stuff that you're going to need, ask the Council. Tell 19 us it's coming. I've been doing this for 2 years. We've had multiple study sessions. I 20 don't think you guys have asked us for anything. Ask. We'll probably say no, but at least 21 it will be in our mind when you come back next year. Ask. 22 23 Chair Lauing: Exactly. That was even better put than how I tried to say it. It's exactly 24 what I was trying to say. There is this residual issue here of some of these things might 25 be okay not to be listed because you're going to do them or there are more projects. We 26 should probably look at that one more time. What do we think about the quantity of 27 items that are here? Those are a relatively arbitrary number of things. Are we not raising 28 up the visibility on enough things or is this okay? Jennifer. 29 30 Commissioner Hetterly: I'm not sure the quantity really matters. What matters is that we 31 have the things we want to highlight included on the list. My question is really this list of 32 30 things, it's not all inclusive of everything that we want to do out of the Master Plan. I 33 think we should be clear that this is not a comprehensive list of everything we want to do 34 in the next 20 years. These are the things we've identified as critical priorities to move on 35 right away. In that context, I don't think it matters at all what the number is. We should 36 judge what goes on the list based on what we think is a critical priority that should be 37 highlighted for Council. 38 39 Chair Lauing: Do we want to look at the programs section and kind of go through there 40 with comments? 41 42 Draft Minutes 30 APPROVED Commissioner Cribbs: At the list or at the programs themselves? 1 2 Chair Lauing: At the programs starting on page 5. Comments on 5. Go ahead, Keith. 3 4 Commissioner Reckdahl: On the top of page 5, I'm kind of nitpicking here. Operating 5 costs for grow partnerships, the very top one. We're saying that it's going to take between 6 a quarter million and a million. I'm sorry, that's capital cost. $5,000 and $25,000, that's 7 reasonable. I was thinking that this was going to be a capital cost. Forget that. Do 8 (inaudible) down the list and then ... 9 10 Chair Lauing: Yeah. 11 12 Commissioner Reckdahl: That's all I have on that one. I guess also urgency being high, 13 my same comment as before. 14 15 Chair Lauing: We're just going to go page-by-page. I think that's the right process. Go 16 ahead, Jennifer. 17 18 Commissioner Hetterly: Page by page or item by item? Did you have a (inaudible)? 19 20 Mr. de Geus: Chair? 21 22 Chair Lauing: Yes. 23 24 Mr. de Geus: It'd be helpful if—like Commissioner Reckdahl saying that he thinks the 25 urgency shouldn't be high, if there's some sense of what the rest of the Commissioners 26 think about that. I actually think it should be high. We can do a lot more if we have 27 robust partnerships with our Friends groups, Friends of Palo Alto Parks, the Palo Alto 28 Recreation Foundation. We need to invest in those relationships and partnerships, so that 29 we're steering them to the highest priority projects that we have. I just mention it because 30 otherwise we're going to go back and be sitting in an office saying, "Keith said that, but 31 they answered this." 32 33 Chair Lauing: You want to try to get closer to consensus ... 34 35 Mr. de Geus: Yeah, a little bit if we could. 36 37 Chair Lauing: ... without having to vote on every one. 38 39 Commissioner Hetterly: I was going to say exactly that about that first one. I think it 40 should be high for that very reason. I don't have others on this page. 41 42 Draft Minutes 31 APPROVED Commissioner Cribbs: On the first one, the marketing campaign, does it include money 1 for a volunteer coordinator? 2 3 Mr. de Geus: Those are the things that we talked about, the kinds of things that we would 4 want to fund if we really want to invest in this one. 5 6 Chair Lauing: I'm good with that page. David? 7 8 Commissioner Moss: The third one about recruiting, do we want to say something about 9 outsourcing? What we've been talking about with aquatics for instance. Do we want to 10 say that that's an option? Expand recruitment and training or explore outsourcing. That's 11 a perfectly legitimate solution. 12 13 Mr. de Geus: Maybe public-private partnerships or some language like that. 14 15 Commissioner Moss: Maybe. 16 17 Chair Lauing: Page 6. Let's reverse it then. David, do you have anything on that? 18 19 Commissioner Moss: Number 2, you have coordinate with Avenidas. What about Palo 20 Alto Adult Ed? Do we want to say something about that? That's a huge source of 21 programs for seniors. I think it should be highlighted. Does anybody agree or disagree? 22 23 Chair Lauing: We fund Avenidas. That's why that's there. Anything else on that page? 24 Anne? 25 26 Commissioner Cribbs: No. 27 28 Commissioner Hetterly: I would like to take youth out of the heading for expand 29 aquatics programs. I don't think we only want to expand them for youth. 30 31 Commissioner Cribbs: That's good, yeah. 32 33 Commissioner Hetterly: I agree with Keith about the disparity between aquatics and 34 seniors programs. I'm curious why aquatics rose to a high urgency as opposed to seniors 35 and teens. Maybe teens we have made a lot of progress in that regard. I'd just love to 36 hear a little more about how you ended up on a (inaudible). 37 38 Ms. O'Kane: I'll respond to the aquatics first. I believe that got a high because we heard 39 a lot of feedback from the community that they would like to see the aquatics program 40 expanded, where we didn't hear as much, I would say, about seniors or maybe even teens. 41 Do you want to expand, Peter? 42 Draft Minutes 32 APPROVED 1 Mr. de Geus: I was just going to add on the aquatics that I think it can be changed. I 2 don't feel very strongly about it. The aquatics program is upon us right now. The 3 program we are running we know is inadequate, and we're not serving the public in the 4 way we want to. We have to do something immediately. Whereas, the senior program is 5 a little more of a slow burn, I think, over the time period. 6 7 Commissioner Hetterly: That makes sense to me. 8 9 Chair Lauing: Anything else on six? Keith? 10 11 Commissioner Cribbs: Yes. I'm sorry. 12 13 Commissioner Reckdahl: The aquatics, I was looking at the capital cost. That again is in 14 the $250,000 to $1 million for the program. What would be the cost—I would think that 15 would be a single dollar sign instead of two dollar signs. This is page 6 on the top, 16 capital cost for the youth aquatics programs. 17 18 Ms. O'Kane: That's a good question. We'll look into that a little bit deeper. 19 20 Commissioner Reckdahl: That was just my knee jerk reaction. 21 22 Commissioner Cribbs: Why is the nonacademic program for youth just a medium 23 urgency? How did that decision get made? 24 25 Mr. de Geus: We've done a lot for youth and teens, particularly teen programs, in the last 26 several years through the work at Mitchell Park and the new center, through the 27 Children's Theatre and the Teen Arts Council. The Art Center is also expanding their 28 teen program. With the Bryant Street Garage Fund we're doing mini grants for teens. It's 29 a program that's been heavily invested in over the last years. It's not something that we'll 30 not continue to invest in. That's why it's in the list of 30. It's still a high priority in terms 31 of the demand and sense of urgency. We're meeting a lot of the demand, we think. It's 32 not like there's a huge gap necessarily. It's something that remains very important, that 33 we need to continue to invest in. 34 35 Commissioner Cribbs: It just seems like with all of the emphasis on what we're trying to 36 do for kids and youth, that should go in the high priority even though we're already 37 servicing and doing all sorts of programs and stuff like that. Maybe it's just the optics of 38 it. I don't know. 39 40 Mr. de Geus: If I could just jump back to the aquatics quickly, as I thought about that a 41 little bit, why it has capital costs that are higher. The pool is not regulation length, so 42 Draft Minutes 33 APPROVED that's something that—to fix that would be considerable. The facilities, the locker rooms, 1 very old buildings. When the pool was renovated in the 1990s, those buildings were not. 2 That would also be a significant cost. 3 4 Commissioner Reckdahl: Is that program a recreation program as opposed to a facility? 5 Does this include both facility aspects of the aquatics and also the recreation program? 6 7 Mr. de Geus: It can include both. 8 9 Commissioner Hetterly: Just so I understand. You're saying that this program is 10 intended to incorporate not just programming changes but also the capital work involved 11 with the Rinconada renovation that's been developed through the Rinconada Master Plan? 12 13 Mr. de Geus: That's the way it's currently described. Correct. 14 15 Commissioner Hetterly: I think it would be better to separate the two and put that 16 Rinconada capital improvements under the costly items. I think it's likely to well exceed 17 $1 million, isn't it? 18 19 Mr. de Geus: That's actually (crosstalk). 20 21 Commissioner Hetterly: It would be more than two dollar signs, more likely three or 22 four. I would pull that out and add it to the big ticket items. 23 24 Mr. de Geus: That makes sense. 25 26 Chair Lauing: Page 7. 27 28 Commissioner Reckdahl: I had one. On page 7 on the very top, the timeframe being 29 mid. Why would we not do an immediate intramural sports program? Near term, I 30 guess, is the terminology. That's page 7 on the top. 31 32 Chair Lauing: There's some going on now, right? 33 34 Ms. O'Kane: There is the existing middle school athletics program. 35 36 Commissioner Reckdahl: This is intramural. Is this less formal than the current 37 program? 38 39 Ms. O'Kane: This is less formal. It's less competitive. Anybody can play. 40 41 Draft Minutes 34 APPROVED Commissioner Reckdahl: Right now we do the middle school athletics, but we don't do 1 anything in high school. The Council was saying, "If you don't make varsity, but you 2 still want to play basketball, we should have some pick-up times so people who still play 3 basketball and enjoy basketball can do it outside of the varsity program. I don't see any 4 reason to hold off on that. I would make that timeframe near or near to mid. 5 6 Chair Lauing: Is everybody okay with that? To Rob's point of trying to get some 7 consensus here. 8 9 Commissioner Cribbs: Yeah. 10 11 Commissioner Hetterly: Yes. 12 13 Chair Lauing: Is that it, Keith? 14 15 Commissioner Reckdahl: (inaudible) 16 17 Chair Lauing: Jennifer, on that page? The phraseology on the second one, since we've 18 done this, has always seemed a little bit odd to me. I don't know if we can get any more 19 specific or not. It's not a big deal. Other comments on seven? Page 8? None. Nine? 20 21 Commissioner Reckdahl: I had a question about therapeutic program development. 22 What does that mean? Is that for developmentally disabled, to help them progress? 23 24 Mr. de Geus; Yes. 25 26 Commissioner Moss: On the bottom of page 9, you should either say enacted 27 immediately or acted upon immediately. Pick one. 28 29 Chair Lauing: That raises that same question about whether this is going to be an 30 immediate section or not. That's kind of part of the broader picture. I had that circled as 31 a question mark as well. It continues on page 10. Go ahead. 32 33 Commissioner Hetterly: In this section, which is formerly Group 1 projects, I think that 34 the Conservation Plans should be the first item. I think instead of noting the timeframe 35 for those as near to long, we should just say near. Also in the second to last line, it 36 references that this will give Council clear direction on how to manage the Baylands 37 using an ecosystem-based model. That needs to be deleted because it applies to multiple 38 open space areas. That's page 10, second to last line of the text. 39 40 Chair Lauing: Moving that up and striking the words "to long." Is everybody okay with 41 that? 42 Draft Minutes 35 APPROVED 1 Commissioner Cribbs: Yes. 2 3 Chair Lauing: Moving to page 11 then. 4 5 Commissioner Cribbs: It'd be the same long, the near to long on the first paragraph? 6 7 Chair Lauing: I think so. Wasn't that your point earlier? 8 9 Commissioner Hetterly: What are we talking about? 10 11 Chair Lauing: On maintenance timeframe near to long, we should strike "to long." 12 13 Commissioner Hetterly: Yeah. Thanks. In fact, on that first one on page 11, I think it 14 might be helpful to break out the timeframe and say something like strategic planning is 15 going to happen in the near term and the implementation will be ongoing on near to long, 16 something to that effect. 17 18 Chair Lauing: Do we want to talk about what staff has in mind with this comment on 19 ADA? You're going to do that. 20 21 Daren Anderson: Can you repeat that question? What our plan is to do in terms of 22 ADA? 23 24 Chair Lauing: You're always going to comply with the law and upgrade things as we go 25 along. The question is does this really need to be stated as a separate objective or is that 26 just the best practices we know as Palo Alto citizens that's what we're going to do. 27 28 Mr. Anderson: I think what we have now is the best practice. I think we could do better. 29 If we were really serious about upgrading our facilities to be accessible and exceed—30 remember, this is the minimum legally required as you restore areas. If we want to 31 exceed that and get to universally accessible, then there's a lot of room to improve. My 32 recommendation would be that we do leave it in as a priority individuated and separate 33 from our regular, standard ADA upgrades that are part of every renovation and really 34 push the envelope and see if we can be a leader in that field. 35 36 Commissioner Reckdahl: The plan there is to do upgrades outside of the normal 37 refurbishing? 38 39 Mr. Anderson: It would be either that or to recognize it during the planning process for a 40 CIP and expand that part of the scope. Frequently it's done piecemeal into what's already 41 reckoned to be replaced. The playground is scheduled for replacement. We'll do ADA 42 Draft Minutes 36 APPROVED upgrades with the playground, but we don't look at all the other amenities within that area 1 to say let's do them all. If we were to focus on this as a priority, we would either make 2 that existing CIP more robust for a given place or as a standalone CIP just for ADA 3 upgrades. You choose areas within every park and focus on those. I think there's lots of 4 possibilities. Either way, you take it more seriously and invest more into it. 5 6 Commissioner Hetterly: I would recommend sprucing up the title to reflect that. 7 8 Commissioner Moss: You want to put the word exceed somewhere in that title. That's 9 the key word you're talking about. 10 11 Chair Lauing: A leader among cities or something like that, if that's what your goal is. 12 What do we think about the high urgency classification? 13 14 Commissioner Reckdahl: I would say high urgency to get it started. I don't think we can 15 expect that every park is going to be upgraded immediately, but I would think you'd want 16 at least some parks. Right now, we have Magical Bridge, and that's about it. It'd be nice 17 to have other options for people who have disabilities. I don't know if you would make 18 that urgency medium to high, meaning that you start at high. (inaudible) completion is 19 medium urgency. 20 21 Chair Lauing: That'd be all right. I just had a question on what we believe is included in 22 improve trail connections. That's for everything, right? Walking, biking, that's the intent 23 there. 24 25 Mr. Anderson: That's correct. 26 27 Chair Lauing: All forms of transport. I don't know that that needs to be called out. I was 28 just presuming that. 29 30 Commissioner Reckdahl: For that trail connections, the capital cost is quite the range, 31 from one dollar sign to three dollar signs. What was the thinking on that? Is there some 32 options that we're considering that would be more expensive? 33 34 Mr. Anderson: I think so. I think there are certain trail connections that if we wanted to 35 make to adjacent agencies perhaps that could be rather expensive. I'm sorry I can't give 36 you an example at the moment. I know there are some that are really easy, that wouldn't 37 take much to improve connection, and others that are just more robust, perhaps involving 38 bridges, for example. (crosstalk) 39 40 Commissioner Moss: There's also purchasing. You may have to purchase a gap of land 41 to get to, say, Thornwood or some other park. 42 Draft Minutes 37 APPROVED 1 Chair Lauing: The next one's adult fitness. 2 3 Commissioner Moss: Wait. You might want to add purchase somewhere in that improve 4 trail connections, that that's a possibility. 5 6 Chair Lauing: Adult fitness. I think a couple of us last time said we didn't think that 7 scored that high from the community input. Were we wrong or have we checked that? 8 What does your binder say? The grid. 9 10 Mr. de Geus: We talked about it as staff. We did go back and look at the binder. It did 11 come up. It wasn't necessarily a strong theme. This is one that maybe comes a little 12 more from staff, just because we've seen the technology and the concepts of exercise in 13 parks really be pretty innovative. Most recently, lots of new types of programs and 14 activities, new types of equipment that's getting a lot of use in neighboring cities. We felt 15 like it was important to keep it in here. 16 17 Commissioner Hetterly: For what it's worth, there has been a lot of conversation on the 18 Comprehensive Plan committee there's been a lot of interest in this kind of thing. That's 19 just another anecdotal source of data. 20 21 Mr. Anderson: I might add that we actually were starting to look at a Municipal Code to 22 prohibit adult exercise in playgrounds, because it's that big of a problem that we have 23 people do hard core and other exercise-related activities in a playground where it's not 24 appropriate, which highlights the needs of course for something like an adult fitness area. 25 26 Commissioner Reckdahl: What is the scope of this item? Would we try it in a couple of 27 parks and see how it goes? 28 29 Mr. Anderson: One good example would be we've got an antiquated system that really 30 stems back to the 1980s at Greer. It's these isolated, really uninteresting and not very 31 healthy or interactive pieces of equipment all around. It's that par course thing. No one 32 exercises together, of course, because there's only room for one person at a time. That 33 would be perfect to update that with something new, robust and interesting. 34 35 Chair Lauing: Good example. Integrate nature in community gardens. No comments? 36 Park seating. 37 38 Commissioner Reckdahl: One of the things I would say in the park seating is more 39 comfort. We have benches which are great if you want to sit. If you want to sit there and 40 read a book, we don't have very many places in the park where it's really comfortable to 41 sit and read a book. You can sit there for 10 minutes, and then you get uncomfortable 42 Draft Minutes 38 APPROVED against the hard back. If there's any other options—the problem with the parks is you 1 have to make things durable, and that makes it hard. Something that's comfortable and 2 durable is a very small cross-section. If we could have something that'd be easier for just 3 sitting, that'd be much better. 4 5 Commissioner Hetterly: That begs the question of what are we thinking about in terms of 6 seating. Are we going to look at any variety of seating, not just benches? We may have 7 tables and chairs. We're looking for opportunities for people to gather and hang out in a 8 park for a long time. Thanks. 9 10 Commissioner Cribbs: Is this part where we were talking about opportunities for gifting 11 for seating, like at the Baylands? Is this just meant to be seating in the park? 12 13 Mr. Anderson: We have a fairly robust memorial bench program, where people can buy 14 benches. They give us $2,500, and they get a plaque and the bench is restored or a new 15 one is installed. That's existing already, and it could be enhanced as well. We've often 16 talked about expanding it to other areas. Following some best practices, benches are 17 finite. You can only have so many in a preserve before, like a sign, it becomes overkill. 18 You look at places like Disneyland and other areas like that where they've changed the 19 model to pavers. You can have 1,500 pavers with donations associated with each one. 20 Someone gets their name. Whereas, the benches in a certain park we might be looking at 21 50 at a big park. 22 23 Commissioner Cribbs: I was just thinking about a gift catalog where people could buy 24 something for the City, put their name on it, and the benches came up. 25 26 Chair Lauing: Let's move on to the projects. This first one on fields, I think the wording 27 we have in the policy is to enhance existing sports fields, which I think is the right thing 28 to do. Do we all agree with that first sentence, and isn't that going to vary by year and 29 season and sport, not to mention policy? We've talked about this a number of times 30 before in my last 7 years here. Effectively there's insatiable demand for fields, but that 31 doesn't mean we need more fields. It means we need a policy to regulate 8-day-a-week 32 practices. I get a little bit nervous because there's certain Council interest in let's put up 33 some fields. That just takes up more space. We should be very prudent about building 34 anything without a lot of study. Are we kind of leading the witness here by determining 35 in the Master Plan for the next 20 years that we need more space? Plus, you reference the 36 future growth, and the stats we've been looking at, that are in here, say that school kid 37 ages are going to go down a little bit and then go up a little bit, as I recall. Did you want 38 to comment? 39 40 Commissioner Hetterly: I was just going to agree. I'd rather have it say something like, 41 "With current demand and projected future growth, improving and maintaining is 42 Draft Minutes 39 APPROVED important" rather than calling out that we aren't meeting the current demand with our 1 current capacity. 2 3 Chair Lauing: I love the language about clear plan to maintain quality and longevity. 4 That's definitely what it's about. That's really good. Other comments on this item? 5 6 Commissioner Reckdahl: I was looking at the capital cost. That makes me think what 7 exactly is the scope here. It says hire a consultant. We're not re-turfing here. We're just 8 augmenting; we're effectively doing preventive maintenance on turf. Is that what the 9 scope is? 10 11 Mr. Anderson: No. That's why you see that high dollar figure. Once you reconstruct 12 and engineer a sports field, which is what some of the recommendations that will come 13 out of this study will be. We've already spoken with a consultant who does this for a 14 living and seen other plans they've done for other cities. Oftentimes, that's exactly what it 15 calls for. When it was originally constructed, a ball field was a patch of dirt or grass. 16 They lined it, and you played baseball or football or soccer on it. When, in fact, if you're 17 going to have the amount of play that a City like Palo Alto or San Jose has, it really needs 18 to be engineered, meaning you've got the right kind of soils that drain appropriately. It's 19 got the right size. You've got the right irrigation system. If you're starting over, those are 20 very expensive. You literally have to come in and take out what you've got, mix in the 21 right kind of soil and rebuild. 22 23 Female: (inaudible) 24 25 Commissioner Reckdahl: We're talking about digging 6 inches down or how much do 26 you have to ... 27 28 Mr. Anderson: It varies. Part of this analysis that will come out of that study is a full soil 29 analysis of what you're got. Some areas might be okay with slight amendments. I look at 30 it as a far more robust plan to say, "Let's look at your need, how you've been scheduling 31 sports, and prioritize how many fields you're going to have at this very high level." That 32 will require maybe a complete tear out and re-engineer the soil. Others you might just 33 make do with what you've got with the soil and the irrigation and the drainage. It kind of 34 depends. I think they're going to put together a plan to meet our needs, is what I foresee. 35 I think it could be on the high end. I also believe you'll have options. You'll have a 36 Cadillac package all the way down to your more reliable Honda. 37 38 Commissioner Reckdahl: Thank you. 39 40 Commissioner Moss: One more comment about existing sports fields. I live behind 41 Cubberley field. On Saturday morning, there must have been 400 people on that field, 42 Draft Minutes 40 APPROVED which is about double what I've ever seen in all of history. Double. There were maybe 1 20 or 25 or 30 teams from 4 and 5-year-olds to high middle school, maybe even high 2 school, on the same field. I don't know how we're going to handle that crowd. Even if it 3 went down by a third, the demand over 20 years goes down a third, it's still a lot of 4 people on that field. I don't know what we can do. I thought we could get rid of the 5 parking lot and just expand the grass, but the parking lot was full. I don't know what to 6 do. 7 8 Commissioner Reckdahl: Was that a City program or was that external where someone 9 had rented the field? 10 11 Mr. de Geus: I'm not sure what the program was. Unlikely to be a City program. It was 12 probably a tournament of some type. 13 14 Commissioner Moss: It was little kids playing soccer, big kids playing baseball. Big 15 kids playing baseball, medium-sized kids playing baseball. Soccer on the big field, big 16 kids. It was a mix. It was not just baseball, and it was not just soccer. 17 18 Mr. de Geus: It's wonderful to see. If we talk to our field users, they would like to have 19 more space and more fields if they can get it. 20 21 Chair Lauing: The next one on here is the 10 1/2-acre site. My concern here is talking 22 about a project at all at this point as opposed to just stay with what we've said before, 23 which is to on a long-term basis evaluate options for recreational use at this site. I'm just 24 a little bit concerned about leading the witness by talking about a project that makes it 25 sound like there is one as opposed to it's just a wonderful resource that we've all created 26 out of the golf course. We could leave it to the birds and the bees for 20 years. 27 28 Commissioner Reckdahl: In general I agree with that. My only concern is that right now 29 that whole area is kind of dug up. Even if we just want to leave it fallow now and say 30 we're not going to put fields on it, but we're going to just let it go wild, you probably 31 would want to do some prep work anyway. That would be much less cost than making 32 fields. 33 34 Commissioner Hetterly: I think you could add that to the list of things to consider. The 35 way it's written now, it suggests that we should start a project that will either create 36 athletic fields or a native habitat area or some combination of the two. There's not an 37 option to retain it as a land bank, which sounds like what you're recommending, Ed. Is 38 that correct? 39 40 Chair Lauing: I'm not recommending anything. I just see it as a natural resource that we 41 should be very careful about using up. That's all. We could fiddle with the wording if 42 Draft Minutes 41 APPROVED there's enough consensus from this desk and that desk that we could fiddle with it a little 1 bit. If you want us to talk about it more to flesh out some things. 2 3 Ms. O'Kane: We can provide some alternative language and then discuss it with the ad 4 hoc. 5 6 Commissioner Moss: You've got the long-term—you say will require a long-term 7 planning and funding effort. That's sort of saying that you can't just do this very quick. 8 Isn't that enough language? 9 10 Commissioner Hetterly: It does say that in the nearer term we want to do planning and 11 design. If we don't know what we're planning and designing or whether we should plan 12 and design anything at this point in time, then maybe doing that in the near term is 13 premature. 14 15 Chair Lauing: Other than what Keith suggested. It's going to be an ex-construction site, 16 so something has to be done there. Let's fiddle with that. The next one down is 17 Cubberley. Go ahead. 18 19 Commissioner Hetterly: In the intro—I don't know if it's a separate paragraph. The top 20 of page 15 mentions the requirement of an assessment of current and projected future 21 needs and community. I would like that added to the second bullet, the prepare a 22 comprehensive Master Plan study including a needs assessment, including appropriate 23 needs assessment, whatever language you want to use, but I want to specify a needs 24 assessment in there. It could also reference the Master Plan as something that would be 25 incorporated in that process. I wouldn't say we should ignore all the work that's gone into 26 this, but that's just one part of the bigger picture. 27 28 Commissioner Cribbs: I would take out "particularly in south Palo Alto." When 29 Cubberley is renovated, it'll be a great resource for all of Palo Alto. 30 31 Commissioner Hetterly: I agree. 32 33 Chair Lauing: No more on that. We'll go down to the question of a gym. 34 35 Commissioner Hetterly: That one's missing the effort, cost, timeframe, urgency stuff. 36 37 Chair Lauing: The summary of what we're saying there is that we're looking at the two 38 areas, the 10 1/2 acres and Cubberley, evaluating that. Otherwise, we're going to 39 evaluate it separately. We're not saying 100 percent certain we're going to put one in. 40 We're still saying that it needs evaluation. 41 42 Draft Minutes 42 APPROVED Mr. de Geus: This one, at least the 10.5 acres, we had some conceptual drawings of a 1 gymnasium on the 10.5 acres as part of the athletic field, and it got a very negative 2 reaction, let's just say, from the Planning Commission and even Council at the time. I'm 3 not saying we shouldn't necessarily look at it again, but including it in the Master Plan I 4 would ... 5 6 Chair Lauing: I don't think the community was too charged up about that one either. The 7 community input on that ... 8 9 Mr. de Geus: Because it's in the Baylands and it's ... 10 11 Chair Lauing: ... during the Baylands and the golf course situation. 12 13 Mr. de Geus: ... a big building. 14 15 Commissioner Hetterly: I think there's great support for a gymnasium, but very little 16 support for a gymnasium in the Baylands. 17 18 Mr. de Geus: That's what I recall too. 19 20 Chair Lauing: Let's take out the whole Baylands reference here. That'll be okay with all 21 of us. The 7.7 acres. Just for historical reference, this already has an ad hoc committee 22 that was working on ideas for it. We truncated it because we needed to get the 23 hydrologic study. That's back in '17, so it seems like from my perspective the ad hoc 24 could just get reconstituted and drive this, lead this. It's always fantastic to get public 25 recommendations, but I think the Commission has to be the leader on this and figure out 26 the planning for that relatively urgently once we get this hydrologic study back. There is 27 a lot of community demand and Council interest in getting this thing active. 28 29 Commissioner Hetterly: I actually disagree with that. I think the ad hoc committee has 30 worked really hard to get community input and guidance about what should happen to 31 that site. They had a really hard time despite Herculean efforts to get people out there to 32 look at it. I do think it would benefit from having a consultant help with that process and 33 provide some options for the public to consider as opposed to trying to gin it up from the 34 grassroots and figure out what people want. 35 36 Commissioner Moss: Yeah. You have notes and information about that. I don't know if 37 Keith was on that committee, but it certainly would be nice to not lose all that and to have 38 a starting point when we reconstitute it. If there's anything you have about it already. 39 40 Chair Lauing: Yeah, there is stuff already. I don't think we're in that big of a 41 disagreement on that point. I'm just saying that the public has been asked, but they could 42 Draft Minutes 43 APPROVED be asked again. I don't think we want to hand it over to somebody else because we're 1 involved in this. If there's a consultant working with the ad hoc like we did on the Master 2 Plan, with the right consultant, then that could be great. 3 4 Commissioner Hetterly: I think that's fine. I just don't think that the ad hoc alone can 5 drive a project of this magnitude and complication. 6 7 Chair Lauing: I was reading this as saying the public was going to drive the 8 recommendations. That's why I brought it up. They have to be incorporated, but I don't 9 think we should just leave it there. 10 11 Commissioner Reckdahl: The 7.7 acres is so hard. It's going to take a lot of thinking. 12 The ad hoc knows it was a lot of work. We never found the perfect answer, and I don't 13 think we will. We'll have to always balance the lesser of two evils. 14 15 Chair Lauing: Daren gave some good, honest estimates about what that would cost to get 16 that back to actual dirt from that impacted stuff that's there right now. It's not trivial. 17 Parkland. 18 19 Commissioner Moss: I was wondering if the capital cost would be four dollars instead of 20 three dollars. Three dollars is up to $5 million. That would buy a lot. Maybe a lot and a 21 half. I'm just thinking bigger. 22 23 Commissioner Reckdahl: Also, I would say that this is one that should be high urgency, 24 just because right now real estate prices are high. Once everything is multifamily units, 25 it's going to be really high to buy multifamily units and tear those down. 26 27 Commissioner Hetterly: That's one where I might break it out and make a process for 28 identifying sites and developing a funding strategy a high urgency. Whereas, acquisition 29 is going to be variable depending on availability and population growth. Maybe you 30 could nuance the urgency a little bit. Since I have the microphone, I also think that it's a 31 little funky having the collaboration with the School District in the acquire new parkland 32 in high-need areas. I think maybe we want to separate out the School District 33 partnerships as expanding access to facilities or something like that. We're not really 34 trying to acquire parkland in that context. However you do it, I would not leave it as 35 plan, fund and maintain the construction of park elements in school grounds. I think we 36 could participate in those things, but we don't want to be exclusively responsible for that 37 as the City on School District land. 38 39 Commissioner Moss: One comment on that. Were you thinking that we would purchase 40 something from the School District? For instance, take over Cubberley. 41 42 Draft Minutes 44 APPROVED Commissioner Hetterly: No. I also would like to add in maybe a program in Chapter 4, 1 maybe a bullet here about what Shani was mentioning earlier. We've talked about in the 2 CAC, a program for accepting legacies and bequests of land. That is another way to 3 expand parkland inventory. I'd like to add in the concept of long-term lease. A purchase 4 isn't necessarily the only way that we can access additional parkland. Long-term lease 5 arrangements with private landowners are certainly a possible way to go. 6 7 Chair Lauing: I like all those additions. That's going to need an ad hoc in '17. 8 9 Commissioner Hetterly: I would love to throw out there again this AT&T site at 10 Boulware Park. It is a huge opportunity. Somebody needs to figure out and we need 11 to—I don't know how we can best weigh in to push for that. That is hugely time 12 sensitive, and we're not going to get another opportunity that good in a really long time. I 13 don't know what role we as a Commission can play. I'm looking to staff for guidance 14 about that. I don't want to just keep saying it and have nothing happen. 15 16 Mr. de Geus: I can give you just a quick update on that. It's definitely got the attention 17 of the Mayor and the City Manager. We're in contact with the property owner, so those 18 discussions are happening. With respect to purchasing property, that's something that the 19 Council has to consider. I believe they do that typically in closed session when it comes 20 to property purchases. I can tell you that staff are actively working on that. 21 22 Commissioner Hetterly: It would not be helpful for us to pass a motion saying we would 23 support that kind of activity consistent with all the learnings of the Master Plan process, 24 something like that. Council Member Filseth, is that something that would be useful to 25 the Council or can we just say it's in good hands and we don't need to worry about it? 26 27 Council Member Filseth: I'm about to text the Mayor and ask him (inaudible). 28 29 Commissioner Hetterly: Thank you. 30 31 Chair Lauing: If he responds quickly, he can still get a motion tonight. You can tell him 32 that too. 33 34 Commissioner Moss: It's more a point of the process. In the future, this is going to come 35 up again. Is it helpful for us to take a vote or do you just know because of this Plan that 36 we're all in favor all the time? 37 38 Chair Lauing: At the point we recommend this, that'll be there. It's a little bit trickier 39 when you get into private ownership as opposed to AT&T ownership, where they don't 40 need the land anymore. That's why this is even more urgent. It's a very unusual 41 opportunity that you're not buying it from a private owner. 42 Draft Minutes 45 APPROVED 1 Ms. O'Kane: Chair, could I interrupt? I have to excuse myself from the meeting. You're 2 in good hands. We'll see you next time. 3 4 Chair Lauing: We have the dates on other meetings or whoever you're delegating this to 5 has this, right? The wayfinding signage of safe routes to parks. 6 7 Commissioner Moss: I was wondering why there were so many dollar signs for signage. 8 It seems like there should just be two dollar signs. Were you planning to purchase some 9 land as a way to get to a park, a safe route? 10 11 Commissioner Hetterly: Surely we're not going to spend more than $5 million on 12 signage. 13 14 Mr. Anderson: No, no. 15 16 Chair Lauing: Per the public comment tonight, we don't want to get too carried away on 17 lots of signs, particularly in the natural areas. That's what we're looking for, natural. 18 That's it on the priority projects. What kind of comments do you want on the action 19 plan? Do you want to present any part of that or just keep going here? 20 21 Mr. Jensen: We'll take comments on that section if you have any. 22 23 Commissioner Hetterly: My only remaining comment was on the progress reporting. I 24 would like to see that include reporting on funding status under the various funding 25 streams and how we match up in terms of our sufficiency of maintenance funds, etc. 26 That's not true. I also had comments on the funding section. I still would like to see in 27 the IBRC paragraph ... 28 29 Chair Lauing: What page? 30 31 Commissioner Hetterly: I'm sorry, page 20. Middle of the page, it talks about in addition 32 Palo Alto's Infrastructure Blue Ribbon Committee blah, blah, blah. I found the wording 33 in that paragraph very confusing. I'd like you to just take another look at it to see if the 34 language can be cleaned up a little bit. I would also like it to take note, unless this is not 35 correct, that the catch-up identified in the IBRC report reflects only those needs that were 36 identified and prioritized as of 2012. It's now 2016 going into 2017. I imagine there are 37 additional items that weren't included in the IBRC, that we would still consider catch-up 38 items that have perhaps accumulated since then. I don't know if that's accurate or not. If 39 it is, I'd like to see that reflected. Alternately, if we feel like the catch-up and keep-up 40 that's covered under the infrastructure budgeting plan is all we need to be golden for our 41 maintenance. 42 Draft Minutes 46 APPROVED 1 Mr. de Geus: Peter can probably speak more to this. I understand that the IBRC report 2 and list of catch-up and keep-up projects from 2012, when it was published, is an 3 ongoing, working document that the staff in Public Works primarily are continuing to 4 revise and update with new data, new numbers, new costs. Is that correct, Peter? 5 6 Commissioner Hetterly: I also would suggest that the first paragraph under potential 7 funding options could be combined with the language under funding gap. Then, move 8 that heading down to just above expand existing funding sources. It seems a little bit 9 redundant. Thanks. 10 11 Chair Lauing: Any others? 12 13 Commissioner Moss: I have a comment on page 23. Are we there yet? 14 15 Chair Lauing: Yep. 16 17 Commissioner Moss: That combining Master Plan project with other infrastructure 18 projects, do we want an example of that? Like the East Bay Shore/San Francisquito 19 Creek change. There's a huge facility that went in where Ciardella used to be, a flood 20 control. It's just a big concrete block. If there was some way that we could have put 21 something on top of it, that kind of thing in the future, that would be great. Put a mound 22 of dirt on top of it and a bench on top of the mound of dirt. 23 24 Chair Lauing: No other comments? 25 26 Council Member Filseth: (inaudible) 27 28 Chair Lauing: I was going to say we would entertain a motion in support of the City 29 making best efforts to acquire this available land for extension of Boulware Park. 30 31 Commissioner Hetterly: Do we want to include in that consideration of the roadway? 32 We do have a program in the Master Plan that talks about looking at streets for possible 33 conversion into parkland. The way it's set up you have Boulware Park here, then you 34 have a road that comes here and here, and here's the AT&T property. It's an "L" that 35 doesn't get a lot of use. I think our commenter tonight suggested it could be limited to 36 emergency vehicles. I think it might even be worth considering whether there's a need 37 for it to remain open for emergency vehicles or if we'd want to turn it into parkland. I 38 don't want to solve that tonight. It might be useful to acknowledge that that's something 39 on the table that we would support considering. 40 41 Draft Minutes 47 APPROVED Chair Lauing: One's purchasing, and one is using a road to be rededicated, but it's going 1 to the same Council. It seems to me like it could be in the same motion. That's what 2 we're trying to support, get a bigger park there. 3 4 Mr. de Geus: First of all, this is a discussion item, so we really can't take motions. The 5 agenda isn't noticed specific to this piece of property. It wouldn't be something you could 6 make a motion on this evening. The message is clear; we understand where the 7 Commission stands on this. It just further illustrates the need for staff to keep working on 8 this, and the City Manager with the Council on the possibility of this property. 9 10 Chair Lauing: We can put it on as an action item and notice it for November. 11 12 Mr. de Geus: We can do that. 13 14 Chair Lauing: Thank you, Council. What's that? 15 16 Commissioner Moss: Do we have until November? 17 18 Chair Lauing: Yeah. 19 20 Mr. de Geus: We're not going to wait until November. I'll talk to ... 21 22 Chair Lauing: Thank you for taking that action, Council Member Filseth. Anything else 23 that you need on the Master Plan or should we go on to the next item? 24 25 Commissioner Moss: Do you want another indicator on page 25? Number of teams and 26 sports, something like that. That seems to be a big indicator of how much use we get. 27 Under number of time slots used on sports fields, I'd say number of teams and sports on 28 sports fields. 29 30 Chair Lauing: As opposed to the bullet that's there, is that what you're saying? 31 32 Commissioner Moss: Yeah. I was even thinking in addition to time slots. Number of 33 time slots, teams and sports on a particular sports field or used on sports fields. 34 35 Chair Lauing: That could work. Keith. 36 37 Commissioner Reckdahl: On page 25, this call to action, what is that? It's a section that's 38 going to be written, but what's the content going to be? 39 40 Mr. de Geus: The idea is to have some concluding, aspirational remarks about the Plan. 41 We've actually been talking about maybe it could even come from the Commission or a 42 Draft Minutes 48 APPROVED letter from the Commission that could even go at the front of the Plan. We thought that 1 might be a nice addition to the Master Plan, so it really has two bookends. Not long, a 2 page. One of those could come from the Parks and Rec Commission. We drafted some 3 things. It's not really ready yet, but we thought we'd send that along next time. 4 5 Mr. Jensen: If we're done with the review of Chapter 5, we will talk about next steps. 6 Next Tuesday night, we're having a community meeting for the Parks Master Plan to 7 review the draft, taking the comments that we've received tonight and incorporating them 8 into the draft that the community will see and get a chance to respond to. That meeting is 9 next Tuesday night at Mitchell Community Center, the Adobe Room, from 6:30 to 8:00. 10 There will be starting—a few days after on November 3rd the draft Plan will be posted 11 online very similar to how the site concept plans were with the ability for the community 12 to review the draft there and also to respond to or provide input about the draft Plan itself. 13 Those things are coming up. There's also been discussion about the next PRC meeting in 14 November and having that on the 16th. At that date, we'll be bringing the full draft back 15 to you again for review. As was alluded to before, depending upon the City Council 16 study date, there could be an opportunity to bring it back again in December to you for a 17 last review and recommendation to the Council. Within that timeframe, which we have 18 talked about before and is not on here, the environmental review, the initial study of the 19 document will start sometime in the next couple of weeks. That has a time to prepare it. 20 It also has a period that it has to be reviewed by the community. That basically pushes 21 the adoption of the actual Plan into the new year. We're still showing that happening—22 we're hoping that Council can get a study session in January, and then sometime in 23 February or March, right after that, once the environmental work is done, we can take it 24 back to them for adoption of the Plan. That's the timeline of the process right now. 25 26 Chair Lauing: This timeline we had in our packet showed a Master Plan review on 27 December 12th by Council. That's off, correct? 28 29 Mr. Jensen: It's not off, but I think they're still trying to negotiate that date, and it doesn't 30 sound like that's going to be possible with the current agenda items there. I think Rob is 31 still trying to push for that and work on that. We'll cross our fingers, but it seems more 32 likely that it'll get pushed to the new year. 33 34 Commissioner Moss: Maybe we could have a preliminary review, a short one, on the 35 12th, while we still have all the members on the Commission. 36 37 Mr. de Geus: The Commission certainly will see it. They'll see a full draft in November 38 and again in December if it's necessary. It's the Council that's the question. Whether we 39 can get ... 40 41 Commissioner Moss: I meant in front of the Council. 42 Draft Minutes 49 APPROVED 1 Chair Lauing: The date for the December meeting is the Wednesday, but that's the 13th. 2 Right? 3 4 Commissioner Hetterly: (inaudible) 5 6 Chair Lauing: They must have used a paper calendar that was wrong, because it says 7 Wednesday the 13th here. 8 9 Commissioner Moss: Both the November and the December meetings are on a 10 Wednesday? 11 12 Commissioner Hetterly: Yes. 13 14 Chair Lauing: That's it for the Master Plan. Thank you, Peter. 15 16 5. Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates. 17 18 Chair Lauing: Ad hoc committee and liaison updates. Are we going to hear about the 19 dogs? 20 21 Mr. Anderson: Yes, I can give you a brief update on dog parks. I've been working with 22 the ad hoc committee on this topic and what we do as next steps. We had a productive 23 meeting identifying the way forward. We would target the top two spots, that is Peers 24 Park. You might remember that Bowden had been another option in the nearer term. As 25 we really got into looking at what it would take to maneuver around the public art in the 26 spot, it became problematic. Peers, at least for the nearer-term project, has less hurdles 27 and also benefits us and it's much larger. It's one of the largest options we had at 0.73 28 acres. Between Peers and—you also might recall the other nearer-term option we looked 29 at was Eleanor Pardee Park. The problem there that we received some feedback from the 30 environmental groups was that the area we had identified was very heavily treed with 31 oaks. Their concerns was (a) there's a lot of wildlife amongst the oaks, and (b) the dog 32 run would negatively impact the trees. There was an early iteration of our examination of 33 Eleanor Pardee that identified another spot. It met all the criteria. It's mainly open lawn 34 that we'll consider actually as an alternative to that one. Right now, I'm doing outreach 35 with the stakeholders. These are the environmental groups, the dog groups too. Before 36 we do the public meeting to make sure I've got buy-in from some of the key stakeholders, 37 make sure they agree and flush out some of the problems and resolve them before we 38 host the public meetings. We'll do one for each of those neighborhoods, one for Peers 39 and one for Pardee, with the idea that we'll identify one of the two as the leading 40 candidate to move forward with as our nearer-term one. The other one, depending on our 41 Draft Minutes 50 APPROVED feedback, could be one of the ones we do in the future. Public meetings coming soon is 1 the update on dog parks. 2 3 Commissioner Moss: Do you have an update on Baylands Conservation Plan? 4 5 Mr. Anderson: Yes. We're putting out that item to bid. We developed the scope with the 6 help of the Commissioners and some ad hoc and staff and other stakeholders, 7 environmentalists. We have got a really solid scope, I think, for that going forward. 8 We'll put it out to bid and see who we get. Right now, the last step we just did was to 9 pull together firms that we recommend bid on it. Staff had a bunch of recommendations. 10 That's going through the process with purchasing. 11 12 Commissioner Reckdahl: I was out at Baylands at Byxbee. It looks like there's more 13 work there. Are they adding the cap on the southwest side? It looks like they're doing 14 more work on that one corner that had been done for a while. 15 16 Mr. Anderson: I believe they're importing additional dirt for settling areas that have 17 settled, that they're required to raise back up to Code for water drainage off the former 18 landfill, now Byxbee Park. The other work that's going on is the completion of the 19 Byxbee interim plan, which is one of my updates for you. I don't know if the photos 20 went out, but I sent one out to the Commission a couple of days ago, that shows plants 21 going in. This is the vegetated habitat islands. Plants are going in right now. The 22 irrigation system's going in. The next step—probably between now and the end of 23 November, we'll have the benches and the signs come into completion. That'll wrap up 24 our interim plan for Byxbee. 25 26 Commissioner Reckdahl: At the junction point, there were mounds on each of the 27 corners. Are those mounds going to stay elevated or are they going to be filling around 28 them? 29 30 Mr. Anderson: The vegetated islands are raised. 31 32 Chair Lauing: Any other ad hoc reports? 33 34 V. DEPARTMENT REPORT 35 36 Chair Lauing: How about Department Report, if you could do that. 37 38 Mr. de Geus: Just a few things to report. The golf course project is moving along nicely. 39 I've had a chance to be out there several times. I was out there last Thursday again and 40 did a tour with Forest Richardson. Most of the stockpile has been moved into place. I 41 want to say they're maybe 60 percent or something like that. You may remember one of 42 Draft Minutes 51 APPROVED the goals is to get golfers up, so they can actually see the Bay and see the water and the 1 coastal hills. That's a reality. We are nice and high, could definitely see the Bay. Got a 2 chance to take a few holes and see how it's going to play. It's really coming together. 3 Happy to see that progressing. You may recall that we did the replacement of the 4 restroom as part of the capital project. We're hoping we can bring that back in. We just 5 heard more feedback from the golfers. Now is the time to do it if we're going to do it. 6 We're trying to figure out how we can with a lower-cost restroom, but go in there and 7 replace it. That's something that we're looking to do. Just some quick announcements 8 about other events that are coming. The Junior Museum and Zoo is doing a Halloween 9 night this Friday, 5:30 to 8:00. They do a terrific job, the staff there. You want to attend 10 certainly if you have any kids in your life. You should get down there. Also, there's a 11 big veterans event that we're planning largely with the leadership, actually the City 12 Manager's Office and Janice, Jim Keene's assistant. We have a general that's going to 13 attend. It's on November 7th at Mitchell Park Community Center. It should be a really 14 great event. If you're interested in that, I'll just look at the time for that. It's 3:00 to 4:00 15 p.m., veterans services and resource tables. From 4:00 to 5:30 is the recognition event. 16 It's Lieutenant General Rex McMillian. I don't know who that is, but apparently he's a 17 big deal. That's all I have to report. 18 19 Mr. Anderson: I have a few park updates for you. The sailing station dock at the 20 Baylands had—you might know there's two docks, an upper dock and a lower one. The 21 connecting piece had broken, and part of the lower dock was dislodged and falling apart. 22 It had been closed for several weeks while we were working on getting the contractor in 23 to repair it. It's now repaired and back open. We're happy about that. It turned out nice. 24 Expect to get many more years of use out of it. Sarah Wallis Park is having some work 25 done in it starting today. The concrete pathways are being repaved, as an FYI. We'll also 26 be putting in replacement benches and trash cans for that site. It's a very small park. 27 This is at 202 Ash Street, if you're not familiar with it. The Foothills Park/Los Trancos 28 Trail, I think I mentioned in an update a month or two ago that we had completed the 29 repairs. This was where the contractor had come in and looked at structural fixes for the 30 wash-out areas on the back side of Los Trancos out at Foothills. Did a terrific job, came 31 out well. I hiked it right after this last rain, and the parts he had repaired held up nicely. 32 Some of the other areas needed a little work as they always do just given the nature of 33 trails in the hills like that. They need work in the rainy season. All in all, really proud of 34 the way Los Trancos Trail worked out. Encourage the Commission to go take a hike on 35 that one. I think you'll enjoy it. Lastly, on the hydrology study. We've completed the 36 survey work. I got to look over a preliminary hydrologist report of their findings, which 37 is basically unintelligible. I don't have anything great to share with you yet. We're going 38 to take that and mold it into something digestible for non-PhDs in hydrology. Really 39 soon that will lead to a couple of options to look at. We'll have the public come out, have 40 a public meeting, come to the Commission with that as well. 41 42 Draft Minutes 52 APPROVED Chair Lauing: Thank you. 1 2 VI. COMMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 3 4 Chair Lauing: Any announcements from up here? 5 6 Commissioner Cribbs: I just wanted to ask how is the health of our trees in all the parks 7 right now. 8 9 Mr. Anderson: I would say in the urban parks things are looking really good for the 10 trees. We've got lots of planting. In fact, when I spoke to Canopy about Pardee Park 11 where we were looking at that dog park, they said they are doing more oak restoration 12 work there. That's kind of exciting. Lots of planting going on there. In our open space 13 areas, we continually struggle with some of the challenges with sudden oak disease 14 killing some of the oaks. It's a real challenge for the entire region, not just for Palo Alto 15 of course. I think as part of the Urban Forest Master Plan, there are specific programs to 16 address that. Not that there's some cure that we can solve the problem with, but more 17 selective planting to plan for the future forest up there. 18 19 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you. 20 21 Chair Lauing: Go ahead. 22 23 Commissioner Moss: I want to piggyback on what Shani said about the shuttle, 24 suggestion for the shuttle. I sent out a note that they have now just created a shuttle from 25 East Palo Alto through Redwood City, through Menlo Park, to both Edgewood Park and 26 Wunderlich Park. That just started. There are big signs at those parks to announce the 27 shuttle. I was thinking how do we get that going up to, say, Arastradero Preserve or even 28 Foothills. Our problem is that Foothills isn't open to everybody. That's why I would 29 hope that perhaps we could have some of these community events. For instance, a 30 Foothills Park open house once a month or once a quarter, and you have a shuttle to that 31 as a starting point rather than the way they have it now. It's every Saturday and Sunday 32 that they have this shuttle going. I don't know how often. That seems a bit much for us. 33 Arastradero Preserve is not that big. It would probably be better if we tied it to a special 34 event, say, at Foothills. 35 36 Commissioner Hetterly: I just have a question about the Parks and Rec Commission 37 interviews. When are those going to get scheduled or have they already? Do they start in 38 December or do they start in January? 39 40 Chair Lauing: The 16th. 41 42 Draft Minutes 53 APPROVED Commissioner Hetterly: They start on the 16th. Thank you. 1 2 Commissioner Moss: If we don't get people and these guys roll off ... 3 4 Commissioner Hetterly: That's pretty close. 5 6 VII. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR NOVEMBER 16, 2016 MEETING 7 8 Chair Lauing: Agenda for next time. Is the Zoo going to come see us? 9 10 Mr. de Geus: Probably not. I can give you an update on the Junior Museum and Zoo. 11 The Friends are still designing. The cost for what we had hoped we could build were a 12 little higher than anticipated. They've actually gone back to the drawing board again, 13 looking at a one-story facility in a smaller footprint again. I think it's very good. 14 Actually I think it might be more palatable in the long run for perhaps the Commission 15 but the community generally. That's kind of where I think it's headed. We are scheduled 16 for a study session with the City Council on November 28th to give them an update on 17 how things have been progressing with negotiations between staff and the Friends. That's 18 the next check-in with the City Council under a study session. You might want to tune in 19 there. 20 21 Council Member Filseth: (inaudible) 22 23 Mr. de Geus: No. They've got a target of $25 million and actually doing outstanding. I 24 think they're at $24 million. They're right there. It's just the cost of construction has 25 gotten so high that it's just not—what we had designed is just many millions of dollars 26 higher than the $25 million target. 27 28 Chair Lauing: Not to get into a lot of the details, but is the parking about the same as it 29 was before? 30 31 Mr. de Geus: It is. 32 33 Chair Lauing: Agenda items that we'll have—sorry. Go ahead. 34 35 Commissioner Moss: Are we going to hear from Team Sheeper? 36 37 Mr. de Geus: We're planning on November 16th bringing the aquatics program back. 38 We haven't made a lot of progress there. Actually the feedback from the Commission 39 last month was very helpful. We're getting close to making a recommendation to work 40 with Team Sheeper. I wanted to be sure we have a chance to meet with all of the 41 different stakeholders, though, before we formally make the recommendation, which 42 Draft Minutes 54 APPROVED we'd like to do with the Commission to get your feedback and hopefully support, and 1 then move to Council after that. Currently, it's scheduled for December 12th. That is on 2 the agenda for the Council, at least right now. 3 4 Chair Lauing: I'm only hearing Master Plan and aquatics and the Resolution on the 5 AT&T acquisition. Keith. 6 7 Commissioner Reckdahl: There was some talk about having a tour of the ITT, as 8 opposed to AT&T, facility. Is that going to happen? 9 10 Mr. Anderson: I'd be glad to set that up. 11 12 Commissioner Reckdahl: If we get more than a quorum, then we have to notice that, 13 right? 14 15 Mr. de Geus: Yes. 16 17 Commissioner Reckdahl: Will Catherine send out some dates and then we can vote on 18 that? Is that how we're going to go about doing that? 19 20 Mr. Anderson: I defer to Director de Geus, but we had discussed the option of maybe 21 doing it with smaller groups. There's problems with that site that aren't safe for having 22 the public just wander around just yet. I think a safer option might be a smaller number 23 for private tours at this point until we can get the facility safe. 24 25 Mr. de Geus: I agree with that. 26 27 Commissioner Reckdahl: This could be either the same tour or a separate tour. I really 28 would like to look into the Baylands Athletic Center. They're trenching and making the 29 levee right next to it now. I'd like to see how that's going to impact the athletic fields. 30 Would that be a separate tour or would that be ... 31 32 Mr. Anderson: I'm not quite sure yet. I think it would be a conversation with Tygart, the 33 company that's doing that work. It's independent of CSD staff. We're not associated with 34 Tygart. We could connect with them and ask. It'd be nice to get in there and take a real 35 look as opposed to staying on the periphery. 36 37 Commissioner Reckdahl: What about things like the PAG softball and the Babe Ruth? 38 Would they be invited to come along? 39 40 Mr. Anderson: To the tour, to see ... 41 42 Draft Minutes 55 APPROVED Commissioner Reckdahl: To see how the levee is going to impact the athletic facility. 1 2 Mr. Anderson: I think I need to look into it a little bit to see ... I'll have to get back to 3 you on that. 4 5 Commissioner Reckdahl: The last time I was out there, when you look at that it looks 6 like it's going to be coming right by the softball field. We're talking 5 feet away from the 7 softball field. It's going to be very ... 8 9 Mr. Anderson: It will be very close. 10 11 Commissioner Reckdahl: Very close. The plan is to have some type of high fence there 12 or what are we going to do to prevent foul balls from going into the levee? 13 14 Mr. Anderson: I don't know the answer. I'll have to go look into it. 15 16 Commissioner Reckdahl: Thank you. 17 18 Chair Lauing: Are there any other agenda items that people want to have for next month? 19 Any other announcements or anything? 20 21 VIII. ADJOURNMENT 22 23 Meeting adjourned on motion by Commissioner Hetterly and second by Commissioner 24 Cribbs at 10:02 p.m. 25 Draft Minutes 56