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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-09-26 Parks & Recreation Summary MinutesAPPROVED 1 2 3 4 MINUTES 5 PARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION 6 REGULAR MEETING 7 September 26, 2017 8 CITY HALL 9 250 Hamilton Avenue 10 Palo Alto, California 11 12 Commissioners Present: Anne Cribbs, Jeff Greenfield, Jeff LaMere, Ryan McCauley (arrived 13 late), Don McDougall (arrived late), David Moss, and Keith 14 Reckdahl 15 Commissioners Absent: 16 Others Present: 17 Staff Present: Daren Anderson, Kristen O'Kane, Tanya Schornack 18 I. ROLL CALL CONDUCTED BY: Tanya Schornack 19 II. AGENDA CHANGES, REQUESTS, and DELETIONS: 20 Chair Reckdahl: Any changes? We'll move on. I should note all the handouts are in the 21 back. If the public wants to get copies of what we see, they're all in the back. We also 22 have speaker cards. If you want to speak on any item whether it's on the agenda or not, 23 please fill one out and give it to Tanya. 24 III. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS: 25 Chair Reckdahl: We'll move onto Oral Communications. We do have one speaker card 26 here, Prachi Agarwal [phonetic]. Have a seat tonight. Our standing mic is not working, 27 so you can sit at the front table. You have 3 minutes. Thank you. 28 Prachi Agarwal: Hi. I'm a resident of Crescent Park here in Palo Alto. I have an 8-year-29 old son. I was wanting to propose—I sent an email about this, about proposing a play 30 streets program for Palo Alto. An interested block would be able to block off a street so 31 that kids could come out and play and enable some unstructured, free playtime. Many in 32 our generation have memories of roaming around in our neighborhoods unfettered and 33 unstructured. Unfortunately, given the current status quo, an entire generation of kids 34 Approved Minutes 1 APPROVED will not have that opportunity of roaming around on the streets, playing with their 1 buddies, and having free playtime. This is something that would enable them to do that. 2 I was going through the Master Plan proposal, and it jives really well with what the 3 Master Plan says. It has a lot of reference to community building, unstructured, free 4 playtime. It's also very easily implemented program. All you need is to block off a 5 street. There are various examples throughout the country where it's been done. Seattle 6 has a lovely program, and they have it on their website, on the city website. Seattle, New 7 York, San Francisco has these programs. This is an opportunity for Palo Alto to be a 8 pioneer in the Bay Area. Why restrict it to Silicon Valley? Even the City government 9 can bring some good programs to its residents. This is what I wanted to propose. I'm 10 happy to work as a volunteer if you decide to go ahead with the plan. I just wanted to 11 bring that forward. 12 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. Talk to your neighbors. If you can get a critical mass of 13 neighbors, we will, I would think, look highly on it. We currently do have the capability 14 of doing block parties. There's a permit process for that. I don't know exactly the permit 15 process. Do you happen to know that, Kristen? 16 Ms. Agarwal: Yes, I'm aware that it's once or twice a year. That's through the Police 17 Department. This will be more like if a block is interested in, let's say, once a month on a 18 Sunday, 3:00-6:00, being able to block off on a recurring basis if the block is interested in 19 doing so, having some kind of mechanism in place for that kind of recurring or non-20 recurring request as opposed to block parties, which is through the Police Department. 21 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. I encourage you to talk to your neighbors and see if you 22 can get consensus. 23 Ms. Agarwal: Thanks. 24 Chair Reckdahl: That's the only speaker card, so we'll move on to Department report. 25 IV. DEPARTMENT REPORT 26 Kristen O'Kane: Good evening, Commissioners. Kristen O'Kane, Community Services 27 Department. I only have some special events to announce and remind the Commissioners 28 of. The first I wanted to mention was starting today actually, the Great Glass Pumpkin 29 Patch outside the Art Center. The exhibition for that started today and goes through the 30 29th. Sales for the glass pumpkins are September 30th and October 1st. You can go 31 online and get more detail at greatglasspumpkinpatch.com. I also wanted to mention that 32 this Sunday is the Midtown Neighborhood Ice Cream Social. We have a few 33 Commissioners who are planning on attending. I will be there as well. We'll have a table 34 set up just to talk to the community about what's happening in our parks and recreation, 35 and also we can talk about the Master Plan as well and how that was recently adopted. 36 Approved Minutes 2 APPROVED This Friday, October 6th, is the 33rd Annual Palo Alto Moonlight Run and Walk at the 1 Baylands. I believe it's a slightly different course this year, again, because of the 2 construction going on, on the creek and in the Baylands. We're happy that we're still able 3 to do the event with the Palo Alto Weekly. Sunday, October 15th, we're hosting a new 4 event at Lucie Stern Community Center, and it's called a Harvest Festival. This is the 5 first year we're doing it. We're just seeing how much community interest we get in an 6 event like this, a fall family event for kids to come and do crafts, decorate pumpkins, 7 things like that, and also to showcase the Lucie Stern Community Center a little bit as 8 well. 9 Chair Reckdahl: That's being run by the City or is that … 10 Ms. O'Kane: This is a City event, correct. That's all I have for Department Report. A lot 11 of the other things that I wanted to update you on will come out of the ad hoc report later 12 in the agenda. 13 Chair Reckdahl: Very good. 14 Commissioner Greenfield: While we're talking about events coming up, I just wanted to 15 add a plug for Bike Palo Alto, which is also Sunday, October 1st. It's at the same time as 16 the Midtown Ice Cream Social that I'll be attending. It's from 1:00-3:00 throughout the 17 City. It may be based at El Carmelo School. 18 Chair Reckdahl: Very good. That is a good event. We are done with Department 19 Report. 20 V. BUSINESS: 21 1. Approval of Draft Minutes from the August 22, 2017 Parks and Recreation 22 Commission Meeting 23 Approval of the draft August 22, 2017 Minutes was moved by Commissioner Cribbs and 24 seconded by Commissioner Greenfield. Passed 5-0 McCauley and McDougall absent 25 2. Junior Museum and Zoo Redesign Park Improvement Ordinance 26 Chair Reckdahl: Now the fun stuff, the Junior Museum and Zoo. Rhyena, are you going 27 to be starting? 28 Rhyena Halpern: Yes, I am. 29 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. 30 Approved Minutes 3 APPROVED Ms. Halpern: Good evening, Commissioners. I'm Rhyena Halpern, Assistant Director 1 for Community Services, overseeing the arts and sciences division, of which the JMZ is a 2 part. It gives me pleasure to come here before you again. This is our sixth visit to you. 3 Before I start with opening comments, I just wanted to welcome the Friends of the Junior 4 Museum and Zoo Board President, Aletha Coleman, who is in the audience and I'm sure 5 would be happy to talk tonight if you had any questions for her. As you know, the Junior 6 Museum's mission is to engage a child's curiosity for science and nature through hands-7 on inquiry-based activities and inspiring encounters with live animals. We certainly love 8 what we do at the JMZ. We have about 184,000 visitors a year, and this is a treasured 9 community asset. As you know, the Friends of the Junior Museum and Zoo under Aletha 10 Coleman's leadership have raised $25 million for the construction of a new building. We 11 have been working actively with Friends of the JMZ and their architects sitting next to 12 me, that I will introduce to you momentarily, on the design for the new JMZ. We've been 13 working for about 4 years now on the design. We came to the PRC first in February 14 2015, again in July 2015, again in April 2016, and we most recently gave you a design 15 update in June of this year. In August, Peter Jensen presented the Rinconada Park Long 16 Range Plan. I gave an update to that and gave you an update on our CEQA Initial Study. 17 Tonight, we're coming to you to give you a little better view of the design as it stands 18 now and to ask your approval on the Park Improvement Ordinance. As you know, the 19 actual site where we're building the new JMZ is the existing site and has some very 20 interesting constraints on the site from the utility corridor to the park boundary line to 21 special specimen trees. Based on your input and changes in the designs, we have 22 decreased the footprint of the Zoo into the park. When we first came to you in 2015, we 23 had asked for an 11,000-square-foot expansion into the park. Now as the design is today, 24 5,217 is the total expansion. Brent and Sarah will go into that a little bit more. At your 25 request from 2015, there are also no buildings in the expanded space. It's all Zoo space. 26 In April of '16, we received a vote of support for the project, and in June of '17 we 27 received positive feedback from you. Tonight, we're hoping to receive your approval for 28 the Park Improvement Ordinance. I want to point out to you the at-places memo. We 29 had a small error in one item. In Section D in the Park Improvement Ordinance, we 30 corrected the square footage numbers. That's in your at-places memo. Now, I would like 31 to introduce to you Brent McClure and Sarah Vaccaro from CAW Architects, who have 32 just been doing a stellar job on the design and redesign and are real pleasures to work 33 with. They will walk you through the PowerPoint. 34 Brent McClure: Thank you, Rhy. Commissioners, thank you very much for having us 35 here tonight. We've put together a short PowerPoint just to walk you through the design 36 and its impacts and how it touches the park. My understanding is much of this you've 37 already seen. This first slide is showing the existing site as we know it today. The 38 Museum building is this rectangular shape here. The green is the park boundary, and the 39 existing Zoo is this gray-shaded area with the dashed line around it. This is the footprint 40 of the Zoo as we know it today. I wanted to go back to this image here. This is a slide 41 Approved Minutes 4 APPROVED showing the photographs, if you're in the parking lot with the Zoo right here on the right, 1 behind this fence, entrance into the park. If you're standing in the park, this is the fence 2 looking out at the existing Zoo with the play structure on this side here. This is the 3 design as we have it currently today. As Rhy mentioned, we've been before you several 4 times. We've done a lot of work to, like we say, sharpen the pencil, go back and scratch 5 our heads, go back to the drawing board with a lot of input from you all at previous 6 sessions, the ARB as well, as well as the client balancing the many constraints that these 7 projects face. We were successful at getting all of the building program out of the park 8 boundary. As you can see, it is a green dashed-line that wraps around. We conform to 9 this edge here. The utility easement runs right through here, so that all that is in question 10 is really the footprint of the proposed Zoo and what we call the Zoo support space that's 11 also open air and enclosed with a fence line back through this zone here. One of the 12 other aspects of the design, working with the ARB—this is outside the park boundary; 13 however, we really focused on creating these pathways and circulation for pedestrians, 14 bike path that's going to come in through here, to link the Lucie Stern complex, Girl 15 Scout building, the park, and the Museum and Zoo in a much stronger civic, contextual 16 experience, so that the parking lot is renovated. However, all of the pathways are cleaned 17 up and organized. How this affects this design into the park. Here's an existing footprint 18 of the Zoo in the parkland of 8,800 square feet. The new design will expand to 14,017 19 square feet. That is this line edge right along here. The net increase is this 5,217 square 20 feet, which is the red zones here. There's a little bit of flare that's in this area, and then 21 this is the expansion along the edge, tucking up real nice and tight to the Walter Hays 22 School and the multipurpose building where there's a lawn space behind some existing 23 chestnut trees. If we blow up on this area here, just to highlight the footprints of the areas 24 of work, our focus and project boundary is really in this red zone with the Friends having 25 their emphasis with the 25 million that's been raised on the Museum and Zoo, and then 26 the City and the Friends working on sitework over here together. Outside the walled 27 edge of the project would then be park improvements that are part of the Master Plan and 28 spearheaded by Peter Jensen. We wanted to note to you all that all of the mature trees—29 there was one point we were looking at losing some of the chestnuts. We preserved all of 30 the chestnuts and the redwood and the oaks that are all within the park boundary. All of 31 those trees will be preserved. Here's an image within the netted enclosure, what the Zoo 32 itself is going to look like. The Zoo design is over into here with the pathways and 33 exhibits. These lower areas are the back of house, where they can take animals out of 34 exhibit to rest and whatnot. We've done a rendering of a view of what it would look like 35 primarily focusing on the wall and the edged perimeter. A lot of what we're trying to do 36 with this project is to, getting back to what Rhy said, engage children in science and 37 nature and expand their curiosity and how much can we utilize the building and the 38 surroundings to do some of those things. To break down the scale of this enclosed 39 perimeter and maintain the height that we need, we've established the fenced perimeter 40 around the Zoo with two primary materials. One is a wood fence, and then also an 41 interval-colored stucco/plaster wall as well so that there'd be these layers of the wood 42 Approved Minutes 5 APPROVED fencing and then the plaster fencing. These are consistent materials and colors that echo 1 within the building itself. The columns and the netting would then sit inboard of that to 2 enclose the Zoo because they have Loose in the Zoo. They're going to let animals 3 actually loose within the space to have a hands-on experience and whatnot. The redwood 4 and the chestnuts are preserved to help shield some of that. The landscaping work that's 5 in front was developed in its early stages with Peter Jensen. I think he brought forth a 6 sketch at a prior meeting. One of the other things that we're looking to do is interject 7 some scale and some patterning on the fencing primarily around the corner so the kids 8 can see how big is a blue whale or how tall are certain aspects of things. The last thing I 9 wanted to touch on really is to also highlight other aspects of the design you might not 10 have seen. It's outside the park boundary, and I'll go through this quickly. We're really 11 excited about how to extend the arrival and this experience that we believe is very park-12 like in a lot of ways and then also very science-like as to how the journey, if you will, 13 starting with Middlefield Road through public outdoor space along this promenade is 14 envisioned. We've established this play zone, if you will, to again engage children's 15 curiosity in watershed, in lights, in scale and science and kinetics and all sorts of things. 16 Along Middlefield, we're going to have this entry tunnel that you'll go through this 17 rainbow tunnel to transform the experiences. You then pull through, across a bridge 18 where there's going to be a bioswale and a bridge that will then cross it. On the other 19 side, we're going to have a dinosaur sculpture and this Jurassic garden, which will be the 20 center focus around the dawn redwood tree that we're celebrating within the project itself. 21 Here are some of the plants and some of the experience as to how that might look. As 22 you come across—this is a view across the parking lot—we're going to have a wind 23 sculpture as part of the Arts Commission that will be … I'm sorry. You shook your 24 head. 25 Ms. Halpern: It's a concept. 26 Mr. McClure: Yeah, it's a concept that's in development as a possibility. As the 27 experience goes along with the pecan tree and the outdoor stump maze and what not. 28 Then, this bends around and then pulls you into the park. The idea is that, although this 29 is outside the park boundary, it's getting this park-like experience and this sense of arrival 30 and linking all these spaces together. Just to highlight our key points. The renovation, 31 we feel, is consistent with the existing park use. We've gotten no new buildings in the 32 parkland. I think one of the last times that we came before you, we had a lot of 33 conversations about buildings in the park and can we get those buildings out. We're 34 maintaining all of the existing trees. We're preserving the existing amount of parking as 35 well, which is not a bullet point up here. We talked about it at one point. It's consistent 36 with the Long Range Master Plan, and restrooms are not incorporated in our specific 37 project, but that's something that's very much on Peter Jensen's radar and is part of the 38 park plan. Thank you very much. 39 Approved Minutes 6 APPROVED Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Cribbs, do you want to start? 1 Commissioner Cribbs: First of all, thank you very, very much for the presentation and 2 for all the great work that you and staff and everybody has done on this. I know it feels 3 like we've been doing this for a really long time, but it's very exciting to see the results. I 4 so appreciate the work that the Friends of the Junior Museum have done. I had one 5 question about the City's piece. You showed the red building of the Junior Museum that 6 the Friends would concentrate on. There's a lot of other work to be done in the parking 7 lot and that kind of thing. Is there a way to put a price tag on what the City's doing or 8 probably too early? 9 Ms. Halpern: We have some rough estimates, and we will be going to Council later this 10 year with more detail on that. Right now, the park improvements are, we estimate, about 11 $8-$9 million. 12 Commissioner Cribbs: Will the Junior Museum Friends have to raise any more money in 13 the future or do you anticipate that? 14 Ms. Halpern: In terms of the operating model for the future, we've been talking a great 15 deal with Friends. Right now in the basic agreement that will also be going to Council, 16 Friends will be increasing their fundraising capacity as part of the new building. 17 (crosstalk) 18 Commissioner Cribbs: We're certainly lucky to have the Friends. Thank you very much 19 for the work that they've all done. I think it's really exciting. I'm just interested to know 20 how soon we're going to get started. 21 Ms. Halpern: The plan is to break ground in June of '18. ARB did approve the project 22 last Thursday. We have completed CEQA, so it's moving along. 23 Commissioner Cribbs: That's exciting. Thank you so much. 24 Ms. Halpern: It's getting real. 25 Chair Reckdahl: How long will construction be? 26 Ms. Halpern: About 2 years. 27 Chair Reckdahl: So 2020. 28 Commissioner Cribbs: 2020. 29 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner Greenfield. 30 Approved Minutes 7 APPROVED Commissioner Greenfield: Thank you. I echo the praise that the design looks very 1 impressive and well thought-out. The community funding is awesome. I have just a 2 clarifying question regarding the CEQA study. My understanding is it's not yet complete. 3 It's been done, or it's not approved. I'm just trying to get an understanding of our place to 4 recommend a PIO without the CEQA being complete. 5 Ms. Halpern: The CEQA was completed. 6 Commissioner Greenfield: The CEQA was completed, okay. 7 Ms. Halpern: We came to you after CEQA was completed for the PIO. 8 Commissioner Greenfield: There were notes that said the CEQA would be completed in 9 September. It wasn't clear that that (crosstalk). 10 Ms. Halpern: September 5th it was. Just as a wonderful postscript on it, what I've heard 11 from Planning is that it's the best CEQA process the City's seen with the least amount of 12 controversy, the most support. 13 Commissioner Greenfield: That's great. I just have a couple of general questions. Is the 14 Jurassic garden accessible when the Museum is closed? 15 Sarah Vaccaro: That's a great question. Parts of it are open to the public throughout the 16 day, and then parts are part of the Junior Museum visitor experience. Partway through 17 that courtyard, there's a low fence that will divide the visitor versus public experience. 18 Commissioner Greenfield: Where is the fence on the diagram? That's the basis of my 19 question, what I'm trying to understand. 20 Ms. Vaccaro: It's right where that hand is moving across the screen. The dinosaur 21 sculpture is part of the Junior Museum visitor experience. On the public side, there's the 22 bridge that goes over the bioswale as well as opportunities for kids to jump off the bridge, 23 climb down onto boulders through the bioswale area. 24 Commissioner Greenfield: The dinosaur is behind a fence. 25 Ms. Vaccaro: Correct. 26 Commissioner Greenfield: That's not easy to pick up right now. The Middlefield tunnel 27 is always open? 28 Ms. Vaccaro: Correct. 29 Approved Minutes 8 APPROVED Commissioner Greenfield: Just one last question. For the outdoor classroom, is there 1 ingress and egress—where is the ingress/egress? Is it just to the Museum or is there 2 access to the outside of the Museum as well? 3 Ms. Vaccaro: There's both. There's a connection into the Zoo enclosure, and then there's 4 also a door. You can't see it here, but there's a gate that leads out to the pecan tree plaza, 5 which is all part of the public experience as well. 6 Commissioner Greenfield: Thank you. 7 Vice Chair Moss: This is really great. The one question I had is the brown wall that 8 faces the park. Is there some way that we can break that up a little bit, put bushes in front 9 of it, or maybe some glass porthole windows at 1-foot, 3-foot, 4-foot levels that people 10 could peek in and get a desire to go inside? 11 Ms. Vaccaro: That's a great question. It's one we've toyed around with a lot on this 12 project. The location that's shown as red or brown on this rendering is a retaining wall 13 for an exhibit that's built against it on the Zoo side. There are not too many opportunities 14 for windows there. Further down on the wood fence, we are looking at some porthole 15 opportunities to get some transparency between the Zoo and park experience. However, 16 we will take note of your comments about trying to de-mass that red portion as well. We 17 can work with Peter on what the landscaping looks like in front of that. 18 Vice Chair Moss: That's all I had. It's really great. 19 Commissioner LaMere: I echo the sentiments of my fellow Commissioners and also just 20 a really amazing job by the Friends to raise the money for a project of this scope. I like 21 the thought put towards the path and the journey. Those are great things, even the paths 22 outside of the Zoo in terms of how people are getting to it and thoughts towards bikes and 23 pedestrians. Anything we can do in future projects, as we think of ways to get out of the 24 car especially with how traffic is in our area, is extremely important. My other comment 25 would be toward the actual construction of this project, the impact that it'll have on 26 Middlefield Road, which is an incredibly impacted road especially during school hours. 27 If there's heavy equipment coming in or if there's big deliveries coming in, and all of a 28 sudden that delivery is planned for 8:00 in the morning, that road at 8:00 a.m. is crazy of 29 people trying to get to school. I would just hope that there's, in the planning of how this 30 is going to be constructed, going to be some mindfulness given to the fact that 31 Middlefield is one of the main thoroughfares but also how impacted it already is. As far 32 as this plan goes, I am excited to see it get going and excited to see it constructed. 33 Congratulations. 34 Ms. Halpern: Thank you. 35 Approved Minutes 9 APPROVED Commissioner McDougall: Bad position to be at the end and have to say, "I echo all they 1 said about it." Thank you to the staff and the consultants and particularly the Friends. I 2 do have a couple of quick questions. On your page 6 on the slides, where you have the 3 pathways, it's again on page 16 you can see the same thing maybe more effectively. 4 There's a path across the parking lot. That path dead ends at the other end away from the 5 Zoo. It dead ends right where there's a cluster of redwoods. Previously, when you 6 presented it at another time, we said, "Why not see if we can't make that path connect to 7 the redwoods and make the redwoods part of the nature part of the experience," even if 8 that just means putting up signs that talk about redwoods and maybe encouraging that the 9 same kind of—not necessarily the same, but something like what's at Rinconada Library. 10 Those lighted sculptures would just make that whole environment more connected. Right 11 now, it looks like it dead ends, and that doesn't make any sense. On page 14 where you 12 show the side of that with the walls and stuff, I really like the idea that you've got the 13 patterns and scale there. A question that I frequently ask in these presentations is could 14 we think about the signage that you might have there now rather than after we put the 15 painting up and say, "Maybe we should put some signs saying what kind of dinosaur that 16 is" or "What kind of whale that is," and what the difference in height and weight and age 17 and how long they live and what they eat or whatever. It would seem to me you could 18 make that into a complete educational or interpretive experience, not just be some 19 interesting art. That might also inform what animals you put up there in that. On page 20 20, not that it matters what page it is, you've got the dinosaur. Have we given thought to 21 what kind of dinosaur that is, particularly now that the State of California has a state 22 dinosaur? Is that what we'll be using? 23 Ms. Halpern: Yes, it is. It is the exact California dinosaur. 24 Commissioner McDougall: Can anybody tell me what that is? 25 Ms. Halpern: Tina Keegan [phonetic] can tell you. 26 Commissioner McDougall: It's the osteo-whatever. 27 Female: (inaudible) 28 Commissioner McDougall: It doesn't matter. I tried to remember myself, and I didn't. If 29 that dinosaur is the state dinosaur, I also heard you say that was behind the fence. Is it so 30 fragile that it has to be behind the fence and couldn't be in front of the fence, so that it 31 was continually or half and half? 32 Ms. Halpern: It's visible from the pathway, but it is part of the visitor experience, so it's 33 an actual California dinosaur garden that's part of the visitor experience. It is visible. 34 Commissioner McDougall: Again, thank you. Great work. 35 Approved Minutes 10 APPROVED Chair Reckdahl: What is the concern about not having that open? Are you worried about 1 wear and tear on the item or … 2 Ms. Halpern: It's actually a part of the JMZ experience. The visitor comes in through the 3 front of the building. They can go through the dawn redwood garden to the dinosaur 4 garden. They can go in and access the Zoo. It's part of the whole visitor experience. It 5 just happens to be outdoors. 6 Commissioner Greenfield: I did have one more question regarding the Middlefield gate. 7 Is there any concern that that is encouraging drop-off of visitors on Middlefield? Most of 8 the time it's probably a moot issue because there are cars parked there anyway. It just 9 strikes me as a bit of a concern. 10 Ms. Halpern: The actual entrance—do you have that? That's easy to see on the 11 circulation slide. The actual entrance, you can see, is fairly close to that Middlefield 12 tunnel entrance. The way the parking lot's designed, it really lends itself to drop off right 13 in front of the Junior Museum and Zoo. We're really hoping between that for vehicles 14 and the pedestrian and bike pathway to discourage the drop off on Middlefield. 15 Eventually, I believe, there is a plan or there has been talk of a plan of a bus stop, a 16 shuttle stop right there, which would also mark it off from cars stopping there. 17 Commissioner Greenfield: You know that the entrance is around the corner, and I know 18 the entrance is around the corner. I'm just concerned that you drive by, you see this 19 round portal, and you say, "Let me drop you off here. Here's where you go in." Thank 20 you. 21 Vice Chair Moss: I was wondering if you turned right into the parking lot, could you 22 drop somebody off and go right back out? This looks like you have to go all the way 23 through the parking lot to get out. Is that right? That's daunting. I wouldn't go in there if 24 I had to just drop somebody off. I'd drop them off on Middlefield. Is there some way to 25 make a hole in those first four or five rows so that they could go in, drop them off, and 26 come right back out? 27 Ms. Halpern: We talked about that. It has gone through a lot of iterations, and the 28 parking lot is still going to go through some more iterations because we have so many 29 concerns about drainage and circulation. We'll definitely take that in advisement. 30 Appreciate the comment. 31 Chair Reckdahl: My guess is that they're worried about losing the spots. If you had a 32 little U-turn area, you'd lose a couple of spots. That is a good point. If you have to go all 33 the way through that parking lot, you're going to be much more likely just to drop them 34 off right in front there. I guess the question is do you want—I guess we have trees there. 35 Approved Minutes 11 APPROVED We can't have a little turn-in. They know that's an issue. What is on the parking lot side 1 of the first floor right there by the tunnel? 2 Ms. Halpern: Can you say that again please? 3 Chair Reckdahl: The tunnel that goes through from Middlefield, what is on the first floor 4 of the Museum between the tunnel and the parking lot? 5 Mr. McClure: This little building, the portion that's over here on the end? 6 Chair Reckdahl: Yeah. 7 Ms. Halpern: That is the tunnel. 8 Ms. Vaccaro: The program inside that little sliver of building is a lot of building support. 9 We have our electrical room, our data room, and long-term bike storage for the Staff. 10 Chair Reckdahl: It's just going to be storage. We're not going to have windows in there, 11 have any displays? 12 Ms. Vaccaro: No. It's going to be a utilitarian box that will look nice. 13 Chair Reckdahl: My comments are the JMZ is just an institution. Everyone loves it in 14 Palo Alto. It is showing its age at times. This really will update it and improve it. I'm 15 very excited to get this moving. I think you've done a really nice job compared to the 16 first proposal. The first proposal had some nice features that we have downscaled. 17 Overall, we're really balancing the park use versus the Museum. I'm quite happy with it. 18 Speaking of park use, the initial design did have an amphitheater looking out into the 19 park. As a Zoo user, I thought that was really good to get the Zoo exhibits out there and 20 show the animals outside for larger crowds. As a Park Commissioner, I wasn't real wild 21 about it because it looked like a museum. I really encourage JMZ to work with Peter 22 Jensen and design the park of Rinconada, right next to it, so it can be used both as a park 23 and also for JMZ. There are a lot of potentials for getting programs out in the park. It's a 24 nice—getting outside sometimes, people are more receptive than being stuck inside. I 25 encourage that, but I also want it to be a park. I don't want it to be a dedicated display. A 26 bathroom, I really wanted a bathroom in here. Peter is comfortable with moving it 27 further away. I guess that's what we have to do. That's it. Schedule, 2 years from now or 28 2 years from June. Any other follow-up questions? 29 Commissioner Cribbs: Yes. What's happening with the current sign on the entrance, the 30 really cool Junior Museum sign? 31 Approved Minutes 12 APPROVED Ms. Vaccaro: We are relocating it to a very prominent location just on the north side of 1 the bridge that leads into the tunnel. There's a box just a little down from that. Right 2 there. 3 Commissioner Cribbs: I like the word "relocating." That's good. 4 Ms. Vaccaro: It'll be front and center. 5 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you. 6 Chair Reckdahl: This is an action item, so we have … 7 Commissioner McDougall: Just one quick question. Just looking at that picture that's got 8 the extra 5,000 square feet, that's now in the park, right? That has a building in it, but 9 you're—there's no building in it? What's in it? 10 Female: It's a zoo. 11 Commissioner McDougall: There's no enclosed building, but it's now enclosed. It's now 12 walled, but not roofed. Your statement that's in your bullets about no buildings is not 13 particularly useful. I'm not sure why you made it. 14 Ms. Halpern: One of the requests the PRC made was to move the animal care building 15 out of the park. That was moved out of the park. That's the major change, so it's all—16 there's no structures built in the park on the increased parkland. 17 Mr. McClure: There were three components to the … 18 Commissioner McDougall: I understand that. It's still a walled structure. I'm being 19 picky and warn you that somebody else might be when you present it. 20 Chair Reckdahl: The reason we didn't want those buildings in the park wasn't so much 21 the fact that they were buildings, but they extended way into the park. It was their 22 location; it wasn't the fact that they're buildings. From the PRC, we really don't care 23 whether it's a wall or a building. We do have that utility access, so we can't put a roofed 24 building on it. I think this is a pretty good use considering the constraints that were on it. 25 We can get a building without it really being a building. This is an action item. Do I 26 have a motion to approve the action item? 27 MOTION: 28 Recommendation to Council to approve the Park Improvement Ordinance for the Junior 29 Museum and Zoo Redesign Project was moved by Commissioner McDougall and 30 seconded by Commissioner Cribbs. 6-0 McCauley absent 31 Approved Minutes 13 APPROVED Chair Reckdahl: We're on the way. 1 Ms. Halpern: Thank you so very much. 2 Chair Reckdahl: I do appreciate the work. I appreciate all the iterations. This was not 3 easy for either side, and I do appreciate the fact that we were able to work together and 4 get it done. 5 3. Baylands Boardwalk Park Improvement Ordinance 6 Chair Reckdahl: The next is another PIO, Baylands Boardwalk Park Improvement. 7 Megha, you'll be presenting? Are you presenting or … 8 Elizabeth Ames: Good evening, Commissioners. 9 Chair Reckdahl: Welcome. 10 Ms. Ames: This is Elizabeth Ames, Senior Project Manager with Public Works. Tonight 11 we have a presentation on the Baylands Boardwalk. We have Megha Bansal, our Project 12 Engineer. We have Amy Ashton, our environmental consultant from H. T. Harvey and 13 Associates, and we also have our City Planner, Clare Hodgkins. She's back here. Thank 14 you, Clare, for attending. This is a very exciting project. We're moving along. We were 15 hoping that the Commission would consider the Park Improvement Ordinance tonight. 16 Simultaneously, we have the environmental document being circulated, the Mitigated 17 Negative Dec. We would like you to have comments on this, which is this document 18 right here. Hopefully, you've had a chance to look at that. You did see the scope of work 19 for the Boardwalk, which Megha will do an overview on. Hopefully, we can get your 20 comments. I just wanted to point out a few items that, with this project, we would like 21 your comments on the scope of the project. I guess you had some issues with the 22 schedule, and we did hear this. We talked to the environmental consultant. We are 23 trying to get the permits. We're going to submit an application soon. We got a draft of 24 the permit yesterday. Hopefully, we can submit that as soon as possible because, with 25 permits with Fish and Wildlife and the 404—there are so many agencies, which Amy can 26 elaborate on—we're hoping to start sooner than later. Right now, we're not being super 27 optimistic, but we are going to try our hardest to try to go out to bid pending permits next 28 summer. Thank you. I'll turn it over to Megha. 29 Megha Bansal: Thank you, Elizabeth. Good evening, Commissioners. Megha Bansal, 30 Project Engineer with Public Works Department. I will go over the key project elements, 31 which have not changed since we last presented to you in August. The project replaces 32 the existing Boardwalk with the new Boardwalk of same length and on the same 33 alignment. The deck height of the Boardwalk is same as the new and awaited 34 Interpretive Center along the entire length of the structure. The vert is 5 feet to meet 35 Approved Minutes 14 APPROVED ADA requirement. Similar to existing Boardwalk, the new Boardwalk will have an 1 observation platform at the far end of the structure. Existing Boardwalk has two 2 overlooks; we are proposing four new overlooks to capture some of the marsh features 3 and to place interpretive signage on that. Based on your input from last meeting, if cost 4 becomes an issue, we may consider fewer overlooks. With regards to railing, we are 5 considering redwood railing on both sides of the structure along with slanted railings at 6 the overlooks and observation platform to place interpretive signage. Interpretive signage 7 is part of a future project. We will also have glass or wired mesh viewing panels at the 8 railings at the overlooks and observation platform. Based on the input we received from 9 regulatory agencies, we will have rollers attached on top of the railing to prevent raptors 10 from perching. Those rollers will also be placed on the slanted rails. We are considering 11 redwood decking. Based on your input, we are considering transverse planks for the 12 decking. Piles and supports will be made of Alaskan yellow cedars, which is a material 13 recommended by regulatory agencies due to its durability and suitability for marine 14 environment. We will also have benches with armrests and backrests at the overlooks 15 and observation platform. All timber or wood elements and metal components—wood 16 elements will be stained, and metal components will be painted in accordance with Palo 17 Alto Baylands Design Guidelines. With that, I turn it over to Amy to go over the Initial 18 Study and mitigation measures. 19 Amy Ashton: For both of these projects, obviously we're looking at sensitive habitat in 20 particular for the Boardwalk. We were very careful and very thoughtful with the 21 measures that we proposed. We've got different bird season issues. We've got high tidal 22 and flooding issues that we have to deal with, and different species react differently to 23 those conditions. We crafted measures—as you can see right here, we've got several. 24 They're quite similar with regard to avoiding sensitive habitat, making sure that the 25 workers are aware of what they need to be looking for and what they're doing in the field. 26 In particular for the Boardwalk, we've got a rather restrictive work only in the non-27 nesting season because we do have known nesting rails out there. That's only when work 28 will occur. We'll also have biological monitors out there full-time, keeping an eye out, 29 being that set of eyes to watch for species. For the overcrossing, we've got slightly less 30 sensitive habitat. Ruderal grassland primarily is the most sensitive habitat that you've got 31 going over there. That would be on the northeast side of the overpass, where you've got 32 the approach structure. For that, we're not proposing full-time monitoring because we 33 think we can avoid impacts with preconstruction surveys, installation of barriers and, 34 again, just a very thoughtful means of avoiding impacts at that particular site. As far as 35 permitting goes, the overcrossing will not require federal water permits. We are not 36 impacting wetlands or any sort of stream feature that would require a formal permit, for 37 example an Army Corps or a regional bird permit. However, for the Boardwalk, those 38 permit applications are being prepared right now, as Megha mentioned. We're working 39 on that, and we'll be closely coordinating with the agencies so they have buy-in on the 40 measures and will be set to go. 41 Approved Minutes 15 APPROVED Ms. Bansal: Real quick on the schedule. We have completed 35 percent design and 1 Initial Study is in circulation until October 16. We will really appreciate any comments if 2 you have. After today's meeting, we are tentatively scheduled for an ARB hearing in 3 October and CEQA approval by November. Based on discussions we had with you in 4 last meeting, we discussed with our environmental consultant. At that time, we were 5 going to submit permit application after CEQA approval. We discussed with them to 6 expedite the process, and we are going to submit our first application with Army Corps 7 404 permit hopefully this month to jump start the process. That is the longest lead time 8 permit. We are hopeful and we are trying to begin construction in September of next 9 year. However, if we do not get all our permits, we will have to unfortunately delay the 10 construction by 1 year. That concludes our presentation. Thank you. 11 Commissioner McDougall: A couple of quick questions. Thank you; nice to have you 12 back. The interpretive signage, I understand what you said. That's a future project and 13 not part of this project. I'm going to insist again that it is useful to create the signage 14 whether you put the signs up or not. It might even tell you how many outlooks you 15 need—sites you need to have based on how much have you got to say. Maybe you don't 16 want to repeat the same thing three different times at three different locations or 17 whatever. It may inform you where you want to put things or whatever. It just seems to 18 me that if the goal is to create interpretation for people that are visiting, then we might 19 just as well right from the start identify what that is. Whether we're putting up the signs 20 or not, I think we should try and identify it. On the biological monitoring, my question 21 would be what the strategy was for that. Would that be a third party that would do that or 22 what would be the … 23 Ms. Ashton: This would be with regard to the Boardwalk. That's where we've got the 24 full-time biological monitors during all construction activities. Typically, that's—not 25 typically. It's required to be a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service certified biologist. They 26 actually have to submit a resume, get approved. It typically is a third-party biologist, so 27 someone, for example, from H. T. Harvey or another biological firm that has experience 28 with the species and knows what to do in the field. 29 Commissioner McDougall: Somebody like Environmental Volunteers. Certainly they're 30 resident right there, so they would have a place to operate from. I doubt they have any 31 biologists. On the other hand, Santa Clara Valley Audubon does employ two biologists 32 that are registered biologists. In the long run, they could apply for that. Is that basically 33 the—it would be to everybody's benefit to fund a nonprofit if they have the right kind of 34 staff. 35 Ms. Ashton: I suppose that would be—yeah. 36 Commissioner McDougall: I don't know that you need to answer that question. 37 Approved Minutes 16 APPROVED Ms. Ashton: I suppose that would be the City's call ultimately, who the contract with the 1 monitor was for construction and with the engineering firm that manages the project 2 overall. As long as it was a Fish and Wildlife Service approved biologist, that's what our 3 measure says. 4 Commissioner McDougall: That's what they use them for. 5 Ms. Ames: Yes, thank you. We probably would seek out somebody, like Amy is saying, 6 that has the credential that Fish and Wildlife would agree to. Certainly, if they're a 7 certified biologist, I would think the U.S. Fish and Wildlife would agree to that. We'll 8 seek out some expertise. It's not going to be through the contractor. It'll be a separate 9 proposal. 10 Commissioner McDougall: I know they use biologists for other activities that they need 11 to be certified for by Fish and Wildlife anyway. Thank you. 12 Commissioner LaMere: Just quickly, anything we can do expedite this project is great. 13 It's too bad that it's no longer accessible because it is a wonderful view, and you do feel 14 like you're in a real different place. A quick question. What is the elevation of the 15 Boardwalk? We had discussed that in a previous meeting. You said it's the same as the 16 Interpretive Center. I was just wondering what that height was. 17 Ms. Bansal: That elevation is 13.5 feet, and that's along the entire length of the structure. 18 Commissioner LaMere: Thank you. 19 Vice Chair Moss: I want to follow up on that because I do feel that is very high. What 20 they're doing shows that a wheelchair can go straight out without having to go down and 21 back up. It does take away from the ability to get down close to the marsh. Right now, 22 you're within a foot. Some of this was also 100-year flood plus global warming plus, 23 plus, plus. You've got the most conservative, conservative situation. What I would 24 suggest instead is maybe you have some things that hang off the Boardwalk, where 25 somebody, not somebody in a wheelchair but others, could go down closer to the water at 26 maybe one of those overlooks. That way, you have the main threat be up at that high 27 level. It would be a real benefit if, at some point, you could get down closer to the water. 28 The other thing is the construction in phases. We're all hoping that you'll get all your 29 permits done, and we can start next September. If you don't, if there's a possibility that 30 we could do this in phases so that next September you could start working from the 31 Interpretive Center out and do a third of it and then stop, that way we could at least get a 32 third of the benefit for all that following summer. Let's just hope we can get everything 33 done. If we can't, it would be nice to have that as an alternative. We talked about that at 34 length at the last meeting. The last thing is there are many biologists in that 35 Approved Minutes 17 APPROVED Environmental Volunteers. We will have to get the word out to them. They'll find you 1 some biologists, I promise you. 2 Commissioner Greenfield: Thank you. I know the community is certainly looking to get 3 this valued resource open as soon as possible. I know that sentiment is shared by 4 everyone in the room. I do have the same question that I had for the previous discussion 5 item regarding the sequencing of the CEQA approval. If I'm reading this correct, CEQA 6 approval is slated for November. Is it appropriate for us to be recommending a PIO 7 before the CEQA approval? 8 Ms. Ames: This is a recommendation to approve the PIO. The official approval is going 9 to happen at the Council level. We're asking for your comments by October 16th. I think 10 we had that scheduled. You don't have to comment on the CEQA totally, right this 11 moment. We have until October 16th. We're going to take those comments into 12 consideration. It is not anticipated that that's going to change the scope of the project. 13 We're just getting these comments to make sure we've got everyone's feedback. We're 14 going to proceed with the design with hopefully those comments included or not. It just 15 depends. What we're trying to do is expedite this process, get it to Council as soon as 16 possible. We're trying to expedite this whole schedule. Part of that is to consider the 17 California Environmental Quality Act document in conjunction with the scope and treat 18 this like a public hearing for the CEQA document as well. 19 Commissioner Greenfield: If I understand this correctly, you're recommending that the 20 Parks and Rec Commission approve the PIO prior to the CEQA adoption. You won't go 21 to Council for ultimate approval of the PIO until after the CEQA is completed. 22 Ms. Ames: Yes, that is correct. 23 Commissioner Greenfield: Also regarding the Mitigated Negative Declaration, I don't 24 believe that we received that information in our packet, unless we got it last month. 25 Ms. Ames: I apologize for that. It's actually buried in the environmental section of the 26 report. I thought we could just talk about the environmental components at this meeting, 27 since you had seen the Park Improvement Ordinance scope last month. It's in the—in the 28 environmental section, there's a link to the environmental document there. You have 29 until October 16th. Sorry I wasn't clear about that in the initial discussion. You have 30 time to comment. The public has time. We're hoping to get all of those comments 31 together by that date. We would take that information to the Council. 32 Chair Reckdahl: You're saying this is a public meeting to introduce the CEQA? 33 Approved Minutes 18 APPROVED Ms. Ames: Yeah. It's a combination. It served to get your comments on the scope of the 1 project and also an opportunity for the public to comment on the environmental 2 document, including yourselves. 3 Chair Reckdahl: For the approval of the CEQA, we have to have a public meeting. This 4 is being considered that public meeting. 5 Commissioner Greenfield: Which meeting? 6 Chair Reckdahl: This meeting, today. 7 Ms. Ames: This is an opportunity for the public to learn about the project and comment 8 on the environmental document. They can comment on this until the 16th of October. 9 Chair Reckdahl: Part of that comment has to include a public meeting. The public 10 meeting aspect of the CEQA is considered this meeting tonight. You will collect CEQA 11 comments online or via mail, and you will do that until October 16. 12 Ms. Ames: Clare … 13 Commissioner Greenfield: We're supposed to ignore the potential consequences of that 14 and vote to move forward with the PIO. I'm struggling with that frankly. I have another 15 question. 16 Ms. Ames: Excuse me. Let's have Clare, Clare Hodgkins. She is the Planner for the 17 City, and she can explain this in better terms than I can on the environmental process. 18 Clare Hodgkins: Hi. Clare Hodgkins, Project Planner, Planning and Community 19 Environment. Just to provide some clarification. When a recommending body is making 20 a decision to make a recommendation on the project but not to adopt the CEQA and make 21 a determination on the project, under 15025 of the CEQA Guidelines that recommending 22 body needs to consider the draft environmental document, not the final environmental 23 document. Then, we consider all of the comments received during the public hearing and 24 any subsequent comments that might be received by other recommending bodies. We 25 would prepare the final document for adoption by the Council. 26 Chair Reckdahl: What's the advantage of us approving the PIO tonight as opposed to 27 waiting for CEQA? Do we slow down the—I understand we really want to push this. 28 I'm all onboard on pushing this. What would happen if we waited for CEQA and then 29 did the PIO right after CEQA? What would that delay? 30 Ms. Ames: It could approximately delay the project a month to go to Council because we 31 have to take that recommendation and then fold that into a Council report. It's not a huge 32 delay. We feel that the environmental document does talk about the main components of 33 Approved Minutes 19 APPROVED the project that you had seen last month. There's an opportunity until the 16th to 1 comment on this. We're not anticipating a change in the scope of the project. 2 Commissioner Greenfield: In the big picture of the schedule, if going to Council were 3 delayed, would that delay the project? It sounds like you're underway with the agency 4 permit and review process now, and that's ongoing. 5 Ms. Ames: It helps to keep the schedule along so that we can get this to Council as soon 6 as possible. The agency does want to see that this project is approved at that level, the 7 Council level. That will expedite potentially the permit process. The sooner it gets 8 adopted by the community, by the Council, the sooner we will see some movement in the 9 permitting. 10 Commissioner Greenfield: Similarly with moving forward with the Army Corps 11 permitting, do I understand that you're getting in the queue for that? You don't expect 12 that permit would be granted until after CEQA was complete, but you're … 13 Ms. Ames: Yes, that is correct. We are trying to expedite the administrative piece, 14 where we're submitting it early. I don't think the agencies will really consider this 15 seriously until the Council and the community approve the project, which happens at the 16 Council level. It's hard to say which is the best approach, but we're thinking that coming 17 to you at this stage is going to expedite the schedule. We're trying whatever we can to 18 get this moving along. You could say maybe that's not going to help in the end, but it's 19 hard to foresee the future. That's what we're trying to do, expedite. 20 Commissioner Greenfield: Thank you. Enough on procedural questions. Just a couple 21 of quick questions on the actual meat of it and some follow-ups from last month. As 22 we've already mentioned, there was a suggestion from this body last month to consider a 23 lower access area from an overlook to get closer to the water. Is this something that you 24 have considered? I don't see any update regarding that. 25 Ms. Bansal: With that regards we are really restricted by the agencies. Agencies 26 required us to keep it the same elevation as the Interpretive Center to address future sea 27 level rise. They were pretty adamant about it. 28 Commissioner Greenfield: We should not have any expectation that the level of the 29 Boardwalk would be changing? 30 Ms. Bansal: We will discuss with our environmental consultant and see if we can make 31 some modifications at certain areas, but it may not be for the entire Boardwalk structure. 32 Commissioner Greenfield: I think there's encouragement from this body that, even if 33 there were something—I'm sorry? 34 Approved Minutes 20 APPROVED Commissioner Cribbs: (inaudible) drop down. 1 Commissioner Greenfield: Even if it wasn't envisioned for a 50-year plan, the lifetime of 2 a lower area might be more limited based on the expected sea rise. That's something that 3 we'd still like to see considered. 4 Ms. Bansal: We will talk to the agencies. It's mainly BCDC's guidelines, and we have to 5 follow those. We will discuss with them and get back to you. 6 Commissioner Greenfield: There was discussions about the roll bar on the railing, the 7 deterrent for the raptors. Am I correct in assuming that—we were told that we have to 8 have that, and that is being included now. Is that a done deal or there's still discussion 9 going on, on that? 10 Ms. Ashton: I would say that is a done deal. The agencies do not at all look favorably 11 upon these intrusions into the Boardwalk, to put it mildly. They're just not in favor of 12 them. Anything we can do to show that we're trying to make it better environmentally for 13 this really sensitive habitat is just crucial to the project. Trying to remove that would 14 probably doom the project with the agencies, to be completely honest. 15 Commissioner Greenfield: Could you explain what it's like to hold onto this? For 16 someone who needs a handrail, is it functional for them? 17 Ms. Ames: I think it might be a little bit difficult. There is an example in Alviso. Here's 18 the picture of the Alviso County Park. You can put your hand on that, but it does move. 19 It's not very user-friendly, I would say, for a pedestrian. 20 Commissioner Greenfield: It's not really designed then to be used for support for 21 someone walking along the path? 22 Ms. Ames: I would think it can provide some minimal support, but I wouldn't … 23 Commissioner LaMere: Are there any liability concerns with something like that if 24 somebody were to try to use it as a handrail? It's not necessarily intended to be used, but 25 it's placed there, and then they fall. Are there liability concerns? 26 Ms. Ames: We have not heard any issues related to this railing. Of course, we will talk 27 to the—once we get into more design, we can talk to the Building Department and see if 28 there are other solutions to this. We definitely have to provide the roller apparently. 29 We'll see what we can do with the railing so that maybe we can have a place to put your 30 hand there also with a railing. There's got to be some compromise there with the 31 agencies and the design. 32 Approved Minutes 21 APPROVED Commissioner Greenfield: I'm wondering if we should consider an inner, lower handrail 1 inside the walkway that could be used as a handrail, that wouldn't be that attractive to 2 raptors. 3 Ms. Ames: We'll take that into consideration. Those are great ideas. Thank you. 4 Commissioner Greenfield: That's all. Thank you. 5 Commissioner Cribbs: Just a couple of questions. What do they do at Alviso? Have you 6 spoken to them about the handrail versus the rollers? 7 Ms. Ames: I spoke to somebody over there. They thought it was working fine. They 8 didn't mention that they needed handrails. That was just one person. Your comments are 9 well received, I believe. We're going to try to do some kind of handrail. There's no 10 liability that we heard of, but you never know. Something could happen, so we will try to 11 incorporate some way to hold on. We haven't heard anything. I haven't heard anything 12 from the County on this issue. 13 Commissioner Cribbs: There's a field trip in order. Going back to the procedures, you 14 mentioned that this was going to be thought of as a community meeting or a public 15 meeting as part of the CEQA. When we have a public meeting, how is it noticed 16 beforehand? How would anybody know to come to be part of this if they weren't just 17 generally coming to a Park and Recreation Commission meeting? 18 Ms. Hodgkins: Planning and Community Environment actually sends out a notice to—I 19 think we typically do it to everywhere within 600 feet of the site or a wider range for a 20 site like this. It goes by the parcel versus the actual location on the site. We actually did 21 notice this project. It was also noticed in the Palo Alto Weekly. 22 Commissioner Cribbs: I missed that. Thank you very much. The last comment I have is 23 we were all very anxious for this to move as quickly as possible. We keep thinking of 24 things that may slow it down a little bit, but all of us would like to see this in September 25 of '18 started instead of September of '19. I'm sure that you would too. Let us know if 26 there's anything that we can do besides asking questions that are going to get in your way. 27 Ms. Bansal: Thank you so much. 28 Commissioner Greenfield: Just one quick follow-up on the handrail. Maybe a good 29 compromise would be an inner handrail on just one side of the path. That may be 30 sufficient. 31 Ms. Bansal: That's a great idea. 32 Approved Minutes 22 APPROVED Commissioner LaMere: I just had a quick question. As far as sea level rise goes, what's 1 the general rule they use in terms of time horizon? When they're doing a project like this, 2 is it a 50-year, 100-year? What are we forecasting out as we decide on elevation? 3 Ms. Bansal: They are using 100-year storm plus the tidal level as well as sea level rise. 4 That takes us … 5 Commissioner LaMere: Sea level rise over what horizon, I guess I'm asking. 6 Ms. Bansal: Fifty years. 7 Commissioner McDougall: I have one—two last questions. Can you remind me what 8 the cost of this is? 9 Ms. Bansal: Construction cost is estimated to be $1 million. That's what you … 10 Commissioner McDougall: Is that all in? When you say construction cost, is there 11 something more than the construction cost? 12 Ms. Bansal: No. The consultant cost is included in current CIP. That's all I wanted to 13 point out. 14 Commissioner McDougall: Basically $1 million? 15 Ms. Bansal: $1 million for construction. 16 Chair Reckdahl: The current CIP is paying for the consultant. On top of that, we have 17 construction. 18 Commissioner McDougall: How much use do we estimate? Is it 10 people a week, 19 1,000 people a week? 20 Ms. Bansal: I'm not sure about that. 21 Chair Reckdahl: Daren will give us an answer on this. 22 Daren Anderson: Daren Anderson, Open Space, Parks and Golf. That's probably our 23 most popular section of trail we've got in the preserve. Heavily used, obviously, by all 24 the classes that use the Nature Center, but also every passerby. That's just the place they 25 want to see. It's the boat dock, and then that one. The bang for the buck in terms of 26 investment is well worth it at that site. I've never had that number of requests for opening 27 a trail back up as I had at that site. 28 Chair Reckdahl: Like I said last month, that's the most common question I have, "When 29 are you going to open the Boardwalk?" That dovetails into a question I have about 30 Approved Minutes 23 APPROVED schedule. We have these permitting agencies. I appreciate that you listed in the report 1 the four agencies. You said that the Corps of Engineers is the long pole. These are black 2 boxes to me. Do we just throw stuff over the fence, and then they eventually get back or 3 do we call them once a week and iterate with them? 4 Ms. Ashton: I have a spreadsheet; I call them. Typically honestly, you really have to 5 stay on these agencies, especially knowing our timeframe. We're working with H. T. 6 Harvey, helping them with the permits. We'll be calling them probably every week, 7 every other week, "Hi, how are you doing? What's going on? Do we have a status?" 8 Make sure we know what each other needs to keep it going. It is constant. You have to 9 call and be the squeaky wheel. 10 Chair Reckdahl: Pestering is very effective. We have a tight schedule, so I would 11 encourage you to be a shameless pest. You mentioned that the Army Corps of Engineers 12 is the long pole. How long does it usually take the Corps of Engineers? A range 13 obviously. 14 Ms. Ashton: I've done a lot of boardwalk permitting for PG&E projects recently. This 15 isn't the first time they're seeing these boardwalks. They're a little more used to it now. I 16 would still say 6 months would be lucky. I think it's more like 8 months. I would love to 17 do it in 6 months, but 6-8 months is a conservative estimate. I know then Public Works 18 has to do the bidding and everything else that comes along with actually building this 19 project. 20 Chair Reckdahl: The bidding can't be done until the permits are in? 21 Ms. Bansal: Yeah. 22 Chair Reckdahl: The other three agencies are shorter; how much shorter? Are they 23 months or are they weeks? 24 Ms. Ashton: It just depends. In my experience, the Regional Board Section 401 permit 25 and the Army Corps Section 404 permits are the long leads. The other one—sometimes 26 BCDC is just a shorter time. It really just depends—I hate to say and sound vague, but it 27 really just depends on staffing the project. 28 Chair Reckdahl: Is there any reason we shouldn't just file all the permits right now? 29 Ms. Ashton: We've talked quite extensively about that. Depending on what happens at 30 Council, we may end up doing it still. It just gives the agencies an excuse to say, "I'm 31 going to set this aside. We don't have a complete application. I'm not going to look at 32 it." If we give them a complete application and a nice, clean CEQA document and the 33 Approved Minutes 24 APPROVED MND and life is good, they're much more likely to consider the project. Then, I can call 1 and do my hassling of them. 2 Chair Reckdahl: Can you call them up with this partial application and say, "What are 3 your concerns?" You, in parallel, can work off the concerns. 4 Ms. Ashton: We have been speaking with the agencies, in particular with regard to the 5 rollers and the height of the Boardwalk, working very closely with BCDC, to try and 6 make sure we're proposing something that can be approved. The discussions have been 7 ongoing continually. It's just filing that permit application. We really need a complete 8 application for them to consider it. That's our hurdle. 9 Chair Reckdahl: It seems to me if you gave them a partial and said, "Here's version 1," 10 so they can at least look at the big picture and say, "These are our big concerns," that 11 would be better than just waiting. 12 Ms. Ashton: Like I said, I know H. T. Harvey. I know the biologist has been speaking 13 with the agency folks, especially at Fish and Wildlife and at the Corps to make sure that 14 our measures are typical and appropriate, and they're going to meet muster with the 15 agencies. We already know those are okay. It's just a matter of getting the permit and 16 having to go through the process in getting it approved. 17 Chair Reckdahl: You have experience doing this, so please use your experience to twist 18 arms and whatever you can do. The second thing, I want to echo what other people said. 19 Not a big fan of the big rollers, but you've got to do what you've got to do. I can live with 20 that. David has a very good point. I would love it, if you have to keep the Boardwalk 21 high, if we could have a couple of overlooks where there is a stairway that you can go 22 down. Even if that only is open for 20 years, that's a long time. If the sea level rise 23 causes us to close it in 20 years, it's been money well spent. If we can have a couple of 24 those overlooks have ramps going down or stairs going down, that would be a really good 25 addition. That would be worth the money to put in. It's schedule, schedule, schedule. 26 This is a PIO. My personal opinion is that we should address the PIO tonight just to keep 27 it moving. Do other people have thoughts on that? 28 Commissioner Cribbs: It seems awkward to me to do it in advance of the CEQA report. 29 It just seems out of order even though I'm wanting this to go forward. I'm not sure. I'd 30 like to hear what other people think. 31 Commissioner Greenfield: I feel similarly. I absolutely want this to move forward as 32 fast as possible. It doesn't feel right. 33 Commissioner Cribbs: We lose 2 weeks, correct? The CEQA report is due back in 34 November. 35 Approved Minutes 25 APPROVED Chair Reckdahl: When we pass something, then there's a delay getting it to Council. I'd 1 be nervous about—we could lose a month. If we lose a month, then we're going to … 2 Commissioner Cribbs: Then we go into 2019. 3 Vice Chair Moss: I disagree. It's risky if we want to try to make September 2018. I 4 would rather take the risk. The CEQA is really—we have given a ton of input into that 5 CEQA already. The staff has done that, and the consultants have done that. I can't 6 believe that the CEQA would be so off the mark that we would have a problem. I'm 7 thinking that the CEQA is going to be more of a rubberstamp of what we've already 8 heard. I'd like to take that risk. 9 Commissioner McDougall: We just heard with the Junior Museum that that was the best 10 CEQA they had ever seen or whatever. I'm a little worried that the risk here, considering 11 the whole Baylands and everything you said about the height of it and the rollers and 12 everything else, is just going to have more hidden problems. I also hear your hesitation 13 of 6 months and maybe, if we're really lucky, 8 months. I'm suspicious that what you're 14 really trying to tell us is it could be a year in the Army Corps of Engineers. I'm worried 15 that we're making compromises to push this forward tonight against a date in the long 16 term that can't be met. I have to say I'm also having reservations in general. As much as 17 Daren was passionate about "it's the thing I get asked the most about" or whatever, that's 18 because it's a trap. It's there, and it's closed. If it wasn't there, nobody would be saying, 19 "Can I walk out on the Baylands?" We're saying it's not going to be at the height we 20 want it to be, and it's going to have hand rollers that might be dangerous or whatever. 21 We don't know what signage we're going to use. I'd really like a better answer, at least a 22 commitment to count how many people might be using it eventually. We should be able 23 to estimate how many people might use it. Relative to all of the things that we have our 24 on our list, the 7 acres, the 10 acres, the 30 acres, the bathrooms in the parks, the dog 25 parks, and everything that's taking up money and time, this has lost my momentum, 26 particularly because of the CEQA not being there. I worry about taking the risk of doing 27 that. I'm sorry if I'm being a pill. 28 Chair Reckdahl: If CEQA comes back with major findings and the plan has to be 29 significantly changed, then I assume you'd come back, and we would revisit this? 30 Ms. Ames: Yes, we—Clare is here. Do you want to … 31 Ms. Hodgkins: I can comment. Either way. 32 Ms. Ames: Go ahead. 33 Ms. Hodgkins: I was just going to say if something were to come back on the CEQA and 34 a different determination is made such that a significant finding is made or new 35 Approved Minutes 26 APPROVED mitigation is required to reduce an impact, it actually would need to be recirculated. At 1 that point, we probably would be coming back to you. 2 Chair Reckdahl: At that point, we've lost the year. We're into the next. 3 Ms. Hodgkins: If I could also just say something quickly. Typically, at least from 4 Planning and Community Environment perspective, when we go to other recommending 5 bodies such as the PTC or the ARB, those are always draft documents. We never finalize 6 a document that is going to Council or is going to be approved by the Director. 7 Everything is finalized and then approved by the decision-making body. 8 Chair Reckdahl: The decision-making body being the Council? 9 Ms. Hodgkins: Meaning the Council, or sometimes the Director of Community 10 Environment is the decision-making body. 11 Chair Reckdahl: The fact that this is a draft is ... 12 Ms. Hodgkins: Is typical. 13 Chair Reckdahl: Our motion would be to approve it as is, and we would be crossing our 14 fingers that the CEQA doesn't have any major findings. They'll come back if there are 15 significant findings. 16 Ms. Ames: We can come back with the CEQA findings after the 16th. We can report 17 back. We're going to continue on with the planning review. If there are other comments 18 coming in, we consider everything. Hopefully we're not going to be recirculating the 19 document because we've included the scope components and the mitigation measures. 20 We got a lot of feedback from you ahead of this. We've also talked to the agencies ahead 21 of this document being prepared. We feel it is representative of what the community 22 wants and what you want. If there are other comments out there by the 16th, we'll 23 consider those. We can report back anyway and let you know what those comments are. 24 If you wish to do that, we can do that as well. 25 Chair Reckdahl: Commissioner McCauley, do you have any comments? 26 Commissioner McCauley: (inaudible) 27 Chair Reckdahl: Don, what are you thinking right now? 28 Commissioner McDougall: I'm still concerned about whether—again, one of the other 29 things. You said you sent out notices to people 600 feet away from the … There is 30 nobody 600 feet away from that. Have you sent out notices to organizations that might 31 Approved Minutes 27 APPROVED care about that, like Environmental Volunteers, like the Audubon? Do we know if they 1 have the opportunity to respond? 2 Ms. Hodgkins: We can both speak a little bit to it. I'll just say again we also did send it 3 to the Palo Alto Weekly. We filed it with the County Clerk's Office. We filed it with the 4 State Clearing House, which was sent to all of the state agencies for comment. I did 5 actually specifically send it to the Audubon Society. We send all of our Initial 6 Study/MNDs per their request to them directly via email every time we circulate a 7 document. There were a few others that we specifically send to, and we post it on the 8 website. I think they have a few others as well. 9 Commissioner McDougall: Do you know which Audubon? 10 Ms. Hodgkins: It was the—what's Shani Kleinhaus'? 11 Ms. Ames: It was Santa Clara. I have a big email list. People attended community 12 meetings on this project including the Interpretive Center. We have a lot of people 13 interested in the Baylands in general over there at the Interpretive Center and the 14 Boardwalk. It was the Santa Clara Audubon. That's not the official title, but it's Santa 15 Clara. We have a lot of people on an email list including folks that are interested in the 16 Baylands. 17 Commissioner McDougall: Could I maybe in general—I'm not sure who to ask—suggest 18 that a list like that, at least myself as a Commissioner, I'd like to be added to so that I 19 would know what went out. For us to be sitting here saying, "Who'd you send it to," at 20 least, then I would know. It might fill up my mailbox, but I doubt it. I doubt we're 21 sending out that many CEQA. 22 Chair Reckdahl: I'm on the email list, but then (inaudible) work email. I think you added 23 the Commissioners because I got it also on my personal email, which I never—Elizabeth 24 never sent me messages until this month. Now, I got one at work and one at home. I 25 received two. I think at least some of the Commissioners were added. You did not 26 receive anything? 27 Commissioner McDougall: You got mine if you got two. 28 Chair Reckdahl: We should have all the Commissioners on that. We will double check 29 on that. Kristen, go ahead. 30 Commissioner Cribbs: I just think that that's what maybe we're reacting to, all of a 31 sudden we're having a public meeting and this is going to count as the CEQA. At least I 32 might have missed it. I'm really pretty good about emails, and I didn't know we were 33 Approved Minutes 28 APPROVED going to do that, which is why I didn't know that was going to count. It would be great if 1 we could get our names added to this. 2 Commissioner McDougall: You asked what I was—I'm sorry, Kristen. Please go ahead. 3 Ms. O'Kane: I just want to clarify. Our conversation is getting a little confusing. I'm just 4 going to repeat what I understand and then maybe, Clare, you can interject. The 5 requirement is that the Parks and Rec Commission consider the CEQA document when 6 taking action on the PIO. The staff report clearly wasn't obvious that that's what we were 7 asking, that we weren't asking you to consider the CEQA document at the same time. I 8 don't believe this was intended to be the CEQA public hearing. Correct? I'm seeing a 9 nod yes and a nod no. This is not the CEQA public hearing, correct? 10 Ms. Hodgkins: It is a public hearing that is available during the CEQA circulation. You 11 actually are not required to do a public hearing under CEQA. It's just a standard practice 12 that at least one of our public hearings is available during the circulation process, but it's 13 not a requirement. 14 Ms. O'Kane: One of the concerns is that the item didn't clearly state that this was a 15 CEQA public hearing or an opportunity for people to comment on the CEQA document. 16 I think that's what the Commission is having a little bit of concern about. 17 Ms. Hodgkins: I know that the notices we sent out and the notice that went into the Palo 18 Alto Weekly were very clear that this was a CEQA hearing during the public CEQA 19 process and was available to the public, should they have comments. 20 Ms. O'Kane: Those are the pieces. It's up to the Commission if you're comfortable with 21 that. You're not required to recommend adopting the CEQA document. The ARB will 22 do that. Who will recommend to Council that we adopt the CEQA document? 23 Ms. Hodgkins: Sorry. All recommending bodies in making a determination need to 24 consider the CEQA document and make a recommendation that you are recommending 25 that it be adopted when it goes to Council in its final form. 26 Ms. O'Kane: You're saying the Parks and Rec … 27 Ms. Hodgkins: Every recommending body for any piece of the project is making a 28 recommendation. 29 Chair Reckdahl: A recommendation on the project or a recommendation on CEQA 30 approval? 31 Ms. Hodgkins: On both. 32 Approved Minutes 29 APPROVED Commissioner McDougall: We're making a recommendation on the CEQA. 1 Chair Reckdahl: Which isn't done yet. 2 Ms. Hodgkins: Yeah, it's not done. That's the whole point, that it's during the draft 3 circulation period that you are considering it and based on your review of the document. 4 Ms. O'Kane: Just to clarify further, are you saying the Parks and Rec Commission needs 5 to take an action on the CEQA document tonight? 6 Ms. Hodgkins: No, they don't take an action on the CEQA document. 7 Commissioner Greenfield: Are you saying that, if we vote to recommend a PIO, we are 8 making that recommendation in consideration of the CEQA document as well? 9 Ms. Hodgkins: You are making an action saying that you have considered the CEQA 10 document. That is the action, you've considered the CEQA document in making your 11 determination on recommendation of the PIO. You're not making a recommendation on 12 CEQA. 13 Commissioner Greenfield: I'm concerned … 14 Ms. Hodgkins: Is that … 15 Commissioner McDougall: Parse that if you can. 16 Ms. Hodgkins: Is that more helpful? 17 Ms. O'Kane: I don't think they can do that because our agenda item and action does not 18 specifically say that they are going to be taking action on the CEQA document tonight. 19 Ms. Hodgkins: It didn't say consider the CEQA document anywhere? 20 Ms. O'Kane: No. 21 Commissioner Greenfield: I'm also concerned that we did not receive the Mitigated 22 Negative Declaration to review as well. 23 Ms. Hodgkins: It was provided to you—my understanding was it was provided, but … 24 Commissioner Greenfield: It may have been provided via a link but not in the packets 25 that we received to review. 26 Ms. Ames: I'm just trying to clarify this. In the past, we have had Park Improvement 27 Ordinance come before the Commission during the circulation period. Unfortunately, 28 Approved Minutes 30 APPROVED maybe some of the Commissioners didn't see the nexus here because it wasn't clear in the 1 staff report. We had prepared the CEQA document in consideration of your comments in 2 the previous discussions we've had. That's how we developed the scope. With that, we 3 developed this Mitigated Negative Declaration, which ties the project together 4 environmentally based on a scope of work. This has been done before with the 5 Commission. Maybe this is a new thing where we do the PIO after CEQA circulation. 6 With ARB, with the Planning Commission, we've actually discussed the project scope 7 with the document either circulated or it's been finished or even before it's circulated. 8 Before, during, and after, it's happened before. This process is not unusual where 9 you're—it's actually an opportunity for people to come to this meeting and comment on 10 the environmental document while they're learning about the project if they have not 11 heard it before. By law, it's not legal—it's not required to have a public hearing on the 12 CEQA document, but we're using this as a platform. 13 Commissioner Greenfield: In terms of precedent, the Parks and Rec Commission has 14 recommended PIOs in the past for projects where the CEQA was circulated but not 15 approved. Were these recommendations made in the case where there was no listing in 16 the agenda of considering the CEQA as part of that, which is the case that we're in today? 17 Ms. Ames: Yes. In the Park Improvement Ordinance, it talks about the Mitigated 18 Negative Dec. I think it's Section 3 of the PIO, if you have that. Maybe there's a 19 reference to the document. It talks about the Council would be—this is the document—20 the PIO is being recommended to Council. The way it's drafted here, the Council in 21 Section 3 would be the adopting body. It says that the Council would find that the 22 environmental impacts of the project have been analyzed through this Mitigated Negative 23 Dec. That's where the environmental document ties together with the scope, at the final 24 end, at the finish line with the Council. At this point, this is the opportunity for the public 25 to come to the meeting to provide comments to you. We encourage this through a notice 26 in the paper. We encourage it through email blasts. We did send this to the 27 Commissioners through that Commission email blast, but I'm not sure if everybody got 28 that. I'm sorry that some of you have not seen that email. The PIO does talk about the 29 environmental document as part of the project. Fortunately, you have it in circulation, 30 and you can comment on this by the 16th. 31 Chair Reckdahl: The way I read it, we are doing one action tonight, and that's approving 32 the PIO. In the PIO, it talks about the CEQA. By approving the PIO, we are saying we 33 considered the CEQA. That's correct. It's a single action. There's not any problem 34 having a bad agenda. Our agenda is accurate. The only question is are people 35 comfortable with it. Me personally, I have no problem with CEQA—approving it with 36 CEQA. I don't think there are going to be any surprises. If there are surprises, they'll 37 come back. I'm concerned that there are some features that we're not real happy with. 38 Having the Boardwalk really high makes it a lot less attractive to me. 39 Approved Minutes 31 APPROVED Vice Chair Moss: That won't be in the CEQA. 1 Ms. Ames: Excuse me. On the height, it's actually a benefit. I don't know if Amy wants 2 to talk about this. There is a shade study—ironically, you wouldn't think this. The higher 3 the Boardwalk, the more opportunity for light to enter underneath the Boardwalk. It's 4 actually a benefit to lighten that up and not create that channel that's devoid of vegetation 5 underneath the Boardwalk because of the shadowing. 6 Chair Reckdahl: A benefit to the environment, but not a benefit to the users. The kids 7 are going out there. If they have to look down and it's 10 feet away, it's not going to be 8 nearly as magical as if they can get down. To me that's a very important part of the … 9 Commissioner McDougall: Did you give consideration to my comment the last time 10 about why not put in a clear plastic or glass floor? 11 Ms. Bansal: We discussed with our design team, and we may consider that at 65 percent 12 design. That's the next level. One clarification on the height. It's the elevation 13 1/2 13 feet. The actual current ground elevation is about 7.8 feet. It's not 10 feet height. 14 Chair Reckdahl: It's going to be on the order of 6 feet. 15 Ms. Bansal: Yeah, it's not 10 feet higher than the current level. 16 Chair Reckdahl: I would like it if we could have one or two of those overlooks having 17 something go down to get even closer. That would be very instructive. 18 Ms. Bansal: We will discuss with the agencies, the BCDC, and see if we can have some 19 features like that. 20 Commissioner Cribbs: Does that design have to be part of the CEQA or can that be 21 added afterwards? 22 Chair Reckdahl: (inaudible) 23 Ms. Ashton: Only if the extent of the change were to cause additional environmental 24 impacts. It would definitely be something we would talk about and look at with staff. I 25 don't know how big these might be. It's difficult to say without seeing something. The 26 agencies are very worried—this is pickleweed out here. The agencies are very worried 27 about shading impacts. You start putting structures closer to the vegetation, it shades 28 them, it kills them. The Regional Board has also taken this on as a big issue. You've got 29 to choose your battles in this one. We'd have to talk about and look at the environmental 30 impacts of what that change might be. 31 Approved Minutes 32 APPROVED Chair Reckdahl: The net is we're—if we're raising the bulk of the Boardwalk, and we 1 have a couple of overlooks relatively small where you go down, the net impact is going 2 to be positive towards the environment. 3 Ms. Ashton: Exactly. We did a shading study specifically that looked at how much 4 decrease in shade we're getting by raising the Boardwalk. Perhaps by adding a small 5 lower overlook, it would still result in an overall decrease. It's just a matter of—BCDC 6 would be the one to really care about something like that. 7 Commissioner Greenfield: It seems likely that adding a change like that would trigger a 8 CEQA review. 9 Ms. Ashton: It really depends on the extent of the impacts. Without seeing and looking 10 at it and having it compared to what the existing proposed shading, it's hard to know 11 without seeing what the design might look like. Again, that would come back to you. If, 12 for example, we look at it and BCDC says, "Great idea. Put three new viewing 13 platforms. Put them 2 inches above the ground," we would have to potentially redo our 14 CEQA document. It would come back to you, and you would see it. 15 Ms. Ames: I don't think that's likely. That's the ultimate perfect solution if we could do 16 something this way. We've had a lot of consultation with the agencies, and we tried to 17 get it down lower, the way it is right now, at the same level, but they said no. We could 18 look at the PG&E boardwalk intersection as maybe a touchdown point because that's 19 existing. There's an existing level there. I don't think it would be beneficial to explore 20 the overlooks going down into the Baylands because that's more impacts. Right now, 21 they're asking us to raise it up. We do hear you that we want to have some interaction 22 with the community and get down into the Baylands as much as possible. I'm think it 23 might be safe to explore that at the PG&E catwalk, but that's as far as it probably would 24 go. 25 Chair Reckdahl: The fact that we already have this grandfathered use—if we were 26 starting from scratch, we'd have a much harder time getting this through at all. The fact 27 that we have this existing Boardwalk has kind of grandfathered our use. The existing 28 Boardwalk is at the level we want to go down to. It isn't so much that we're going down 29 at those overlooks, we're going up everywhere else. We are going to impact the 30 environment much less than the current Boardwalk. That's my spin. Do you buy it? 31 Commissioner McDougall: My view is nice try, Keith. As a Commission, we should be 32 dealing with what you see is what you get at this particular point in deciding what we do 33 about that. My thing is more if we delay this a month, you've given me no confidence 34 that we're going to make next September for a start anyway. I'm not sure I'm going to 35 make my decision based on that. I'll repeat again that I'm also nervous that we're going to 36 push this thing through. We're going to spend the money, and then people are going to 37 Approved Minutes 33 APPROVED say, "Are you kidding me? That's way too high. I can't hold onto the rails." Do we end 1 up with something we're not going to be happy with? We keep wanting to fix it. I don't 2 think we can fix it. I'm willing to believe that staff and the consultants have done the best 3 job they can. What you've presented us is as good as it's going to get. Us trying to nibble 4 away at it—unless we want to say, "Let's add another $10 million to put hot air balloons 5 out there," or something, I don't think we're going to change it. We need to make a 6 decision based on that. 7 Vice Chair Moss: Yeah. What you see is what you get. 8 Chair Reckdahl: Do I have a motion for "what you see is what you get"? 9 MOTION: 10 Recommendation to Council to approve the Park Improvement Ordinance for 11 reconstruction of the Baylands Boardwalk was moved by Commissioner LaMere and 12 seconded by Vice Chair Moss. Passed 4-3 McDougall, Greenfield, Cribbs voting no 13 Chair Reckdahl: Whenever we have people vote against it, it's very useful for the 14 Council if they make a statement. Don, why don't you start and explain why you voted 15 no on the PIO. 16 Commissioner McDougall: I'll repeat again. I think we're rushing to judgment on 17 something that needs more time for the public to really comment and for me to really 18 hear that they're going to end up with something they want. I think we're going to end up 19 with something that's environmentally correct. I'm not worried about that. We're going 20 to end up with something that eventually will get past the various agencies. I think 21 you've been very conscientious about that. I'm not convinced you're going to end up with 22 something the public is going to be happy with. 23 Chair Reckdahl: Jeff, do you want to explain? 24 Commissioner Greenfield: I agree with everything that Don has said. I am concerned, as 25 Don has suggested, that we're chasing a deadline that is going to be difficult to hit. A 26 little bit more time to make sure that we're moving in the right direction and going to end 27 up with something that the public is going to be happiest with is worth taking some more 28 time for consideration. 29 Commissioner Cribbs: I would agree with the comments of both the other 30 Commissioners. I'm also concerned about the process. I would have liked to know—31 maybe I just missed it—more about the opportunity for community input and if we really 32 got to the groups that really have the expertise to comment on this. 33 Approved Minutes 34 APPROVED Vice Chair Moss: I want to make one comment about Don's comment. I'm not sure that 1 we'll get anything better. You're suggesting that we delay with the idea that we might get 2 something better. What they're saying is we may not be able to get a CEQA passed by 3 the agencies if we keep asking for what we want. We may not get anything. 4 Commissioner McDougall: Remember, I'm the one who said what you see is what you 5 get. I am very complimentary of the work they have done and don't believe we will get 6 anything better. They have optimized this. I hate the word maximize; I love the word 7 optimize. They have optimized this from every angle. Now that it's optimized, 10 feet in 8 the air is 6 feet higher than it used to be, rolling rails and whatnot, and a very complicated 9 path to get there by putting platforms across the marsh and all that kind of thing. I'd like 10 to make sure that I've heard that the public will be happy with this. I'm not proposing that 11 we can get a better—they've got it as good as it's going to get. 12 Vice Chair Moss: What if the public is not happy? 13 Commissioner McDougall: We need to consider whether that's something we should be 14 spending money on. I've said before—I know I'm a pain in the ass about this. As we 15 look at these various things, whether it's the bridge crossing or this, I'd like to make sure 16 that we consider the return on investment. How many people are playing pickleball? 17 How many people are crossing the bridge? How many people are using this pathway? 18 How many people will use the 7.7 acres? Whatever it is, there's no reason why we can't 19 estimate that. There's no penalty for us estimating and being wrong or right. It's just 20 useful decision-making. 21 Vice Chair Moss: I feel that the penalty is we'll lose a year, and we'll get nothing. 22 Commissioner McDougall: They haven't given us—I'm sorry—the confidence that we're 23 going to meet the year. They haven't given me the confidence that I'm standing in the 24 way of us getting there in a year. In fact, they've said very specifically, if we go forward 25 with everything packaged together, you're more likely to get the engineers to do this in 6 26 months as opposed to going forward incomplete. With them asking more questions, 27 we're able to take 9 months or a year. Sorry. 28 Chair Reckdahl: Kristen, path forward. We did pass that. It was 4-3, which means it 29 can't go on Consent Calendar, but it can go to Council. Do we want to come back in a 30 subsequent month and revisit this after more work has been done? If we do that, we 31 certainly are going to be slipping, I suspect, unless the permitting agencies go extremely 32 fast. Do we want to go to Council and throw it in their lap? 33 Ms. O'Kane: It's my understanding that this is going to a couple other—it's going to 34 ARB, correct, and another Commission? 35 Approved Minutes 35 APPROVED Ms. Hodgkins: This actually is going to hearing at Council in any case. No, sorry. The 1 Baylands Boardwalk is not. It'll go to ARB. Yeah, it would go on Council Consent if we 2 came back and Council agenda. Sorry I'm mixing up the next … 3 Ms. Bansal: It is going to ARB, tentatively scheduled for October 19th. 4 Chair Reckdahl: Does that mean we'll move on, and we'll decide offline what the path 5 forward is? 6 Ms. O'Kane: Is your question do we come back with the PIO or come back with the 7 CEQA later? 8 Chair Reckdahl: Come back with—part of the concern was also the CEQA being 9 unfinished and the design being in flux. If we can iterate on that and come back with an 10 updated PIO, updated design. 11 Ms. Hodgkins: My understanding is that you have approved the project. If we choose to 12 go to Council without coming back, we would just have to go to a public hearing versus 13 going to the Consent Agenda. Is that correct? 14 Chair Reckdahl: Yes, that's my understanding. 15 Ms. Hodgkins: Do we need to make a decision right now on it or could we … 16 Commissioner McDougall: That's your decision. 17 Chair Reckdahl: Staff did discuss … 18 Commissioner McDougall: It was passed, and now you can decide to move forward 19 appropriately. Things could change, and you could have me at that meeting, ranting and 20 raving that this was the best thing since sliced bread. 21 Chair Reckdahl: In the past, when we've had PIOs pass but not unanimously, sometimes 22 we do come back to get a second iteration, so we get a unanimous vote before we go to 23 Council. That's staff's decision. 24 Commissioner McDougall: I'll repeat what we see is what we get. I don't think there's 25 anything to iterate. They've done an optimized job. 26 Chair Reckdahl: We'll move on to the next item then. Does staff want to say anything? 27 Ms. Ames: Thank you very much. We can come back next month. We'll wrap up what 28 ARB hopefully mentions about the project. Is that timing going to work with us? We 29 can go to ARB and then come back to the Commission. We might follow that meeting. 30 Approved Minutes 36 APPROVED We can get the comments from the environmental document. Hopefully it would 1 reinforce the vote on the PIO moving forward to Council. I don't know if we need to vote 2 on the PIO twice. I don't think that's necessary. It's just an update. 3 Commissioner McCauley: If you want to update this group, that's fine. If you wanted to 4 re-present the PIO potentially, I guess you could in the hopes of having a unanimous vote 5 and then going to the Consent Calendar. Again, that's totally up to you. This is done as 6 far as we're concerned for the time being. 7 Chair Reckdahl: I concur. Thank you. Sorry that wasn't very satisfying, but that's life on 8 the Commission. 9 4. Highway 101 Pedestrian/Bicycle Bridge Park Improvement Ordinance 10 Chair Reckdahl: Number 4, we're moving onto the Highway 101 pedestrian and bicycle 11 bridge. This, again, is a PIO. Hopefully, a shorter PIO than this one. 12 Ms. Ames: Good evening again. Here we go, round two. This is the Highway 101 13 overcrossing. Hopefully, this evening you would recommend approval of the Park 14 Improvement Ordinance. We actually have a Mitigated Negative Dec in circulation. 15 This is the document here in hard copy; it's also online. It's in the staff report in the 16 environmental section of the report. The deadline is October 2nd. All the comments, 17 again, go to Clare Hodgkins in Planning Department. She will be consolidating these 18 comments at that time, after the 2nd. We can also report back to you on what those 19 comments are, like we had just talked about with the Boardwalk. With that, I think I'd 20 rather turn it over to Megha because of the time to go over the scope. Again, you saw 21 this last month. Hopefully, we can address any other comments that you have on the 22 project. 23 Ms. Bansal: Thank you, Elizabeth. I will give a quick overview of the project and then 24 discuss key refinements made to the design since we presented to you back in July of this 25 year. As you can see on this slide, this project includes principle span structures 26 consisting of self-weathering steel trusses across Highway 101 and East and West 27 Bayshore Roads with concrete approaches and 12-feet wide pathway. To the west of 28 Highway 101, there is a pedestrian access ramp incorporated into the western approach 29 structure via a "Y" connection. This is shown as Item E. There is another small self-30 weathering steel truss at the confluence of Adobe and Barron Creeks, which is referred to 31 as Adobe Creek Bridge on this graphic. On the west side, there are two new trailheads. 32 One is at West Bayshore Road, and one is on East Meadow Drive, which is not shown on 33 this graphic. The Adobe Creek Reach Trail connects these two new trailheads. To the 34 east of Highway 101, there is an overlook included in the eastern approach structure, and 35 a roundabout connects the bridge to San Francisco Bay Trail. The project also has 36 landscaping component. We are removing 28 trees. Majority of them are on the west 37 Approved Minutes 37 APPROVED side. We are placing them in accordance with City Street Technical Manual. On the east 1 side within the Baylands area, our baseline project includes hydroseeding and some 2 native planting; however, based on input we have received from environmental 3 stakeholders, we are considering habitat restoration of this area as an additive alternate to 4 hydroseeding. With regards to lighting, we have … I'm sorry? 5 Chair Reckdahl: Could you repeat that? 6 Ms. Bansal: We are considering habitat restoration in the Baylands portion of the project 7 as an additive alternate because it was not part of our baseline project that was approved 8 by Council. We have pole-mounted lighting only on the west side and railing-integrated 9 lighting within the rest of the bridge structure. We are also replacing couple of street 10 lights located on the West Bayshore side. The project also has signage and amenities. 11 We have a refined plan, which is included in your package. We identified location and 12 types of signage and amenities. We are looking at wayfinding, informational, and 13 educational signage. Pretty much the wayfinding signage will be at trailheads, at the 14 entrance points. We may have some pavement marking at the West Bayshore Road 15 trailhead. If you would like to go into detail, we can review those graphics. We have 16 bike racks, benches, trash receptacles, drinking water fountain, and bike repair stations 17 included in the amenities. With that, I have—the key refinements in the project include 18 bike racks revision based on input we received from you. We presented you specialized, 19 aesthetically pleasing bike racks before. Based on your input, we have revised them to 20 bike racks used on other City projects. We have refinements made to signage and 21 amenities plan. Adobe Creek Reach Trail will now be paved as part of this project based 22 on input we received from Planning and Transportation Commission and public. With 23 that, I turn it over to Amy to go over Initial Study and mitigation measures. Thank you. 24 Ms. Ashton: Similarly to the last project, we have been consulting with the agencies and 25 discussing with them various measures in particular to biology. For this one, we don't 26 quite have the sensitive habitat. It is considered ruderal vegetation, so we don't have full-27 time monitoring. However, we do have requirements for exclusion fencing, pre-28 construction surveys, vegetation removal that is monitored. Work will not occur during 29 extreme high tides, when water will be located within 100 feet of the work area. That's to 30 avoid saltmarsh harvest mice from entering the area during high tide events, when they're 31 escaping the water. Otherwise, I'm here for any questions, in particular if you have any 32 specific questions about the measures. Again, these were coordinated with the agencies, 33 and we worked closely with the wording. I think that's it. 34 Ms. Bansal: Touching on the schedule, we have preliminary design, 35-percent design 35 complete. The Initial Study is in circulation until October 2nd. PTC recommended 36 approval of site and design review application on September 13th. Again, after today's 37 meeting, we are tentatively scheduled for an ARB hearing in October followed by 38 Approved Minutes 38 APPROVED Council approval of CEQA and site and design and review in November. Caltrans, 1 NEPA, and right-of-way and final design will begin upon CEQA approval. We are 2 currently on schedule to begin construction in early 2019 and complete by 2020. That 3 concludes our presentation. Thank you. 4 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. Let's go down the line. Commissioner Cribbs, do you want 5 to start? Jeff. 6 Commissioner Greenfield: Thank you. Just a few quick comments. On page 6.1, where 7 you show the pictures of the trees and you have the dots of the different trees, it'd be great 8 if you could add the symbol of the tree key to match the tree rather than having to flip to 9 another page. On page 7.1, I'm really thrilled to see this circulation map that clearly 10 shows bike-only and pedestrian-only and mixed bike and pedestrian. That's great. Just 11 one suggestion there. I would recommend adding the blue and green lines for the bike 12 and pedestrian pathways on Fabian Way as well. If the connector along the creek is 13 closed, then Fabian Way becomes part of the primary use path. Let's just fill those in 14 please. A clearer picture of the layout of the bike pump area and the trail and the bike 15 lane would be helpful. You can kind of see where it is. It's kind of hard to see how far 16 the pump area bulbs out into one or the other. It'd just be useful to get a clearer picture 17 there. I just have one question. Do we have an overall count of the removed trees, 28, 18 and the new trees that are planted in return? 19 Ms. Bansal: As I mentioned, we are still refining that plan. We will follow City's 20 ordinance, basically based on canopy area. We are working with City's Landscape 21 Architect, Peter Jensen, and Urban Forrester and environmental stakeholders. There will 22 be some refinements. Number of trees removed will be 28. 23 Commissioner Greenfield: The number added will be more than 28? 24 Ms. Bansal: Yes, absolutely. 25 Commissioner Greenfield: Thank you. 26 Commissioner LaMere: The importance of signage is very high in that this is going to be 27 a path that bicyclists are going to be going at an extreme speed because it's wider. It's not 28 like the current overpass, which is very narrow. People, even if they are told to dismount, 29 are still riding their bike, but they're going slower because they know there's not much 30 room. People are going to be going either direction, and so the signage is going to be 31 important, and the stencils on the pavement and so forth as far as safety and the fact this 32 is mixed use. Because it's so nice and wide, I envision bicyclists really using it as a 33 commute path and really using it not slowing down. I think that's going to be extremely 34 important as you guys go forward. 35 Approved Minutes 39 APPROVED Commissioner McCauley: Thank you very much for the presentation. (inaudible) 1 Ms. Bansal: Thank you. 2 Commissioner McDougall: I just want to agree with Jeff's comment about the fact that 3 there will be fast users and slow users and reiterate my previous comments about 4 everything, which is it'd be really nice if we figured out a use model ahead of time, so we 5 had some idea. Is this for commuters or is this for visitors? 6 Ms. Ames: I just wanted to—I do remember that comment from last time. We had this 7 November 2011 feasibility study, where Alta Planning and Design did some modeling 8 about the use of the facility. They had estimated—I think this is—maybe I lost it. They 9 call it the seamless travel model they came up with based on pending land uses and full 10 development. They had projected that there was going to be ultimately between 57,000 11 trips to 74,000 trips. This is at full build-out. When you consider there's development in 12 Mountain View, there's housing units going in there. We have the Comprehensive Plan. 13 We have some development on San Antonio potentially. I'm not sure where that is in the 14 timeline. I think it's going to be a commuter route as well, but we don't have the split of 15 commute and recreation. It will be heavily used. 16 Commissioner McDougall: Where do I find that? 17 Ms. Ames: We used to have this on our website; we can repost this. This is just 18 information from when we determined that this site was going to be the site for the 19 bridge. We looked at different crossings over 101. We can post this on the website for 20 you or we can just send you—maybe there's a link to this; we can send it to you. 21 Commissioner McDougall: If you could send me a link, I'd appreciate it. It's good to 22 know the total numbers there. I never didn't believe it'd be heavily used. I still question 23 what kind of use because we're putting in amenities that were not for the commuters. 24 Chair Reckdahl: For what it's worth, when I go into Lefkowitz today, Monday through 25 Friday, it's just commuters. I don't see any kids. That's not quite as user friendly as this 26 nice, new bridge, so we may expand the range of people. First question is schedule. We 27 have no constraints here? We can build any time of the year? Do we have harvest mouse 28 or whatever—which mouse is it? 29 Ms. Ashton: We've built in measures to allow the project to continue year-round 30 essentially. The only real prohibition would be during extreme high tides because you do 31 have saltmarsh harvest mice and rails that might enter close to the work area during those 32 times. It's expected that those would be relatively infrequent. 33 Approved Minutes 40 APPROVED Chair Reckdahl: End results is as soon as the bidding is done and as soon as all the 1 permits are done, we'll just start building. We don't have to wait for a time of year? 2 Ms. Ashton: Yes. 3 Chair Reckdahl: In the previous design, they were going to have a staging area, build it, 4 and then transport it and erect it overnight. Is that still going to be the case, we're going 5 to have the staging area? 6 Ms. Ames: Yes, we do have a staging area over by the Los Altos Treatment Plant side; 7 that's in the environmental document. We don't want to try to do any staging in the 8 Baylands or near the vicinity because that's a sensitive habitat. We do plan to have the 9 steel bridge being fabricated offsite and then delivered over to the site here at that 10 Treatment Plant site. 11 Chair Reckdahl: None of the staging will be done on the Baylands or along East 12 Bayshore? 13 Ms. Ames: Correct. 14 Chair Reckdahl: Things will be done over at the Los Altos site? 15 Ms. Ames: There might be some little bit of staging, but not this—if there are 16 construction activities, they might have some materials when they're closing a lane, but 17 nothing like stockpiling, blocking the lane with materials for a long time. Most of this 18 stuff is going to be stored at Los Altos Treatment Plant site. 19 Chair Reckdahl: I had one question on page 9.7. They have a cross-section of the ramp. 20 One thing I noticed is that the curb is 1-foot wide, which is rather wide. Why would you 21 have a 1-foot curb? If you have any handrail there whatsoever, it's going to be very 22 awkward to hold a handrail that's a foot away from your body. The rest of the design has 23 6-inch curbs. In the upper right of 9.7. Do you see what I'm looking at? The upper right 24 of page 9.7. 25 Ms. Ames: We can double check with the consultant. I thought there was some lighting 26 conflict. There's going to be some lighting near the railing. We can double check on the 27 1-foot dimension there. 28 Chair Reckdahl: My only concern is the handrail. If the handrail's against the fence, will 29 that be awkward? Finally, if you go back on your slide, on page 2 of your presentation, 30 can you back up to that? Right now, we have "F" on the lower right. There's going to be 31 a bench there. I really think having a bench over at the Adobe Reach Trail, at "H," would 32 be a very good location. We have a senior housing just down the road. Some of the 33 seniors will be using it, and it'll be good to have two benches there, one at each end. That 34 Approved Minutes 41 APPROVED bench H would be right next to the bicycle repair. If you're changing a flat, it's really 1 nice to have a bench to put that flat on. I'd see it as a win-win, both for the people using 2 the bike changing and also for the seniors to have a bench at "H." There's room there. 3 Ms. Bansal: We will discuss with Santa Clara Valley Water District. We are limited in 4 this area, at (inaudible) Trail and west Bayshore trailhead due to their requirement. They 5 really don't want us to put anything except the bike repair station that we are proposing. 6 In our subsequent meetings, we will discuss about the benches with them. 7 Chair Reckdahl: Okay, discuss that. It's something that could be added after the fact, but 8 the fact is at least on the drawings you had there was room for a bench there. I thought 9 they had added one there. Especially with the seniors next door, that would be a very 10 good idea. Any other follow-ups? Don. 11 MOTION: 12 Recommendation to Council to approve the Park Improvement Ordinance for the design 13 of the Highway 101 Pedestrian/Bicycle Overpass Capital Improvement Project was 14 moved by Commissioner McDougall and seconded by Commissioner Cribbs. Passed 7-0 15 5. Allowing Public Access to the 7.7 Acres of Parkland at Foothills Park 16 Chair Reckdahl: Next, we're going to be talking about the 7.7 acres. Daren Anderson is 17 here. 18 Mr. Anderson: Good evening. Daren Anderson, Open Space, Parks, and Golf. I've got 19 my colleague, Kurt Dunn who's the Supervising Ranger at Foothills Park. We're here 20 tonight to discuss allowing public access to the 7.7-acre parcel at Foothills Park. We'll 21 give you a quick background, and I'll walk you through a few photos. In August 2014, 22 Council passed an ordinance dedicating that 7.7 acres as parkland and directed the 23 Commission and staff to develop ideas with the community on how best to use that land. 24 Staff hosted a number of public tours and a public meeting to discuss feedback on our 25 community's ideas on how to use that land. One of the items that kept coming up was 26 "you really ought to figure out Buckeye Creek before we decide what ultimately to put on 27 this." That brought about the CIP to study the hydrology of the creek. Now, we're at a 28 stage where we're very close to presenting a final draft of that study. Both the 29 Commission and the Council in 2015 directed staff to conclude that hydrology study first 30 and keep the parcel closed until that was complete. Let me walk you through these 31 photos real quick. This shows the parcel from a high aerial view. On the right side, you 32 can see the park shop and the oak grove picnic area furthest to the right. The yellow line 33 outlines that 7.7-acre area. The light blue line is the creek itself. The orange line is that 34 emergency evacuation easement that passes through the park out to Los Trancos Road. 35 Approved Minutes 42 APPROVED Chair Reckdahl: I have a question about that emergency access. Right now, there's a 1 fence there, a locked gate, that prevents people from going through it. Is it that Rangers 2 have keys and we would open that in certain emergencies? 3 Mr. Anderson: That's right. The Fire Department or Police if they had to. They have 4 had to. They'll typically come through, and oftentimes they don't use keys. They'll just 5 cut it and come in and stage for fires or whatever they need to. In the event that we had 6 to have people exit that way, the Rangers would go and open that lock. It hasn't 7 happened in the duration of our time, where the Rangers had to do it. We have had the 8 Fire Department come in through that place plenty of times. 9 Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. 10 Mr. Anderson: This is looking from the maintenance shop towards the 7.7-acre area. 11 This is the existing fence that stops people and deer from going in there. Currently, the 12 only access right now is usually for Grassroots Ecology to take care of the nursery that's 13 onsite. This is as you just pass a little pedestrian and vehicle bridge that opens up to the 14 flat area, approximately 2.1 acres of the 7.7-acre parcel. Right now, it's looking towards 15 Mr. Arrillaga's property, which is just beyond that tree line. This is Buckeye Creek 16 following through, looking really nice there. What you also see just to the left of that is 17 about 30 cubic yards of debris and sediment that had washed down with the last rain and 18 been pulled out from this area and piled, later on to be removed. What happens if you 19 don't remove that debris pile is it builds up and blocks, and the water would overflow. 20 It's regularly cleaned out. We've talked about this before. On average, on typical high 21 rain events, it could be three times where we have to come in with a backhoe. You could 22 be removing 600 cubic yards of soil. Sometimes on really low rain years, you don't have 23 to remove any. It really varies. Sometimes it could be a tremendous amount. This is the 24 7-foot diameter culvert that exits that 7.7-acre area. Buckeye Creek flows through there. 25 This is one of those items that we talked about needing to fence off to protect the public 26 from getting into an area where they might get harmed. The other fenced-off area that 27 we've discussed before is the nursery itself. That's to protect their investment. Also, 28 there's the phytophthora issue. Phytophthora is a disease that can cause trouble for 29 nurseries. There's a number of best management practices, which include limiting the 30 access in and out of there to make sure you're not bringing in that problem. 31 Chair Reckdahl: Can you talk about fencing this off and how we would—do we have to 32 worry about debris building up at that fence at this location? 33 Mr. Anderson: My colleague, Kurt Dunn, and I were discussing that issue just before this 34 meeting and all the different options. We've got some preliminary cost estimates for 35 fencing off the nursery. This site, we were looking at a bunch of different options. This 36 is the area right near that, if you can see my cursor. That's where that 7-foot diameter 37 culvert is. The creek flows all the way down here. If someone wanted to, right now, they 38 Approved Minutes 43 APPROVED could walk, if the parcel was open, the creek line all the way out into this 7-foot diameter 1 culvert and eventually would narrow down to the point where you probably couldn't pass. 2 That's our assumption. I had originally thought that we would do some very simple fence 3 right here. The rest of the area would either have vegetation or something else blocking 4 you from getting through. We'd put a gate and a very simple fence that says "please stay 5 out, hazardous area." The gate would allow a backhoe to come in and scoop out debris as 6 necessary for high rainy years. That's another spot where the debris settles. 7 Chair Reckdahl: The gate nominally would be locked? 8 Mr. Anderson: The gate would be locked, but there's nothing to go to beyond that point. 9 It's right to the creek and then immediately up to another fence on the opposite of the 10 creek, that separates the property owner's piece. It's not precluding you from anything 11 except for going into the creek. The problem is there's a little service road/pathway that 12 goes off this way. If I fenced it here, this one leads you on a one-way path that peters out 13 around here and would encourage people to go in. We're still thinking through what kind 14 of fencing would be necessary or just signage. What I would like to stay away from is 15 fences that go right through the creek to block people off. First of all, I think it's going to 16 be expensive, trapping debris. There might be pluses and minuses to that. We just 17 haven't figured it out. Something Kurt and I were just discussing before the meeting was 18 maybe we start with the very basics of signage and the simple fence and a gate that 19 allows the backhoe in and maybe some signage over here to tell people where they can 20 and can't go, but not to overthink this huge, barricade, exclusion fence. I'm not convinced 21 it's necessary, frankly. The analogy I gave to Kurt as we talked about it, on why that 22 might be so is I've got dozens of areas throughout all of open space where it's far more 23 precarious. On the edge of 15-foot drops or 30-foot drops, we don't put exclusionary 24 fence. We don't put signs that say "don't go down in there," even though it'd be far more 25 dangerous. A modicum of intelligent design of a very simple fence with the right kind of 26 signage could address our needs without overly burdening the expense, overly damaging 27 the aesthetics with ridiculously high fence lines, or potentially delaying the project by 28 putting fence into creek that would necessitate additional permitting. The ad hoc 29 committee has been visiting the site and discussing where we're at with both the Buckeye 30 Creek hydrology study and what to do with the 7.7 acres. We're at the stage on our last 31 visit where the ad hoc committee suggested maybe now's the time that we open up this 32 parcel to public access. Again, the original concept that Council had talked about when 33 they dedicated it was that we should open it up as soon as possible. There was a lot of 34 naysaying that we would even wait for this hydrology study at all. Ultimately, the 35 recommendation was to wait until it was complete, but there was a lot of feedback saying 36 "open it up as soon as you can." One of the chief advantages during the discussion of the 37 value of opening it up, especially as it pertains to deciding what we do with the land, was 38 let them in there to see what's there. It's so difficult on a 15 or 30-minute tour or just an 39 aerial photograph to envision how that land could really be used. We also feel, the ad 40 Approved Minutes 44 APPROVED hoc and staff, that the value of opening that up to the public is to let them in, and they can 1 learn and figure and provide valuable feedback when it comes time, which is hopefully 2 very soon, to discuss how the public and how the Commission and how the Council 3 would like to ultimately use the other parts of that property. Another piece to this is its 4 connection to the Buckeye Creek hydrology study. As we've discussed, there's a 5 preferred recommendation that staff is proposing, that includes using about 1.2 acres of 6 the 7.7 acres as floodplain. That's part of the process of remedying the erosion problem 7 that creek has. What we could do, one idea, is we open it up when we bring this to 8 Council for their adoption of the Buckeye Creek hydrology plan and the recommendation 9 and we ask Council at the same time. Our recommendation is we open this up now. It's 10 dedicated parkland, so it wouldn't require any PIO or anything like that. It's just really 11 Council guidance saying go ahead and do the necessary fencing and open it up to the 12 public. Another element that the ad hoc had discussed was debating do we add any 13 elements, do we add any amenities to this property before we open it up, benches, trails. 14 The more we looked at it the more it seems prudent not to, to just leave it an open 15 property much like you would walk in the open area in front of the Interpretive Center, a 16 huge lawn area that we just let people go. You can go right down to the creek in several 17 areas. This would be very similar. Also of note is it's such a short walk to the oak grove 18 picnic area. We've got drinking fountains, bathrooms, picnic tables, a parking lot, and all 19 the other amenities that you could want in a very close area. With that, I think I'll turn it 20 to the ad hoc committee and see if I missed anything that they'd like to weigh in on. 21 Chair Reckdahl: Who is on the ad hoc? 22 Commissioner McDougall: I would say you've covered everything. We would support 23 basically everything you've been saying, personally. 24 Commissioner McCauley: I agree. Providing public access as soon as possible is the 25 priority from my perspective. 26 Commissioner Greenfield: I agree with everything. Keeping it simple and opening it up 27 as-is is the most appropriate use for the area. It's the most expedient and in keeping with 28 Council's direction of waiting for the Buckeye Creek study. It totally makes sense to 29 make the recommendation to open the area at the same time we're presenting the 30 hydrology study. 31 Chair Reckdahl: What about Acterra? Would we be moving them? 32 Mr. Anderson: No, we would fence off their area, and they would stay just where they 33 area. 34 Chair Reckdahl: Long term, are we going to plan on moving them or is that still no 35 decision? 36 Approved Minutes 45 APPROVED Mr. Anderson: The lease and terms—what we learned from the hydrology study is it's 1 not necessary to move them to resolve our creek issues. 2 Chair Reckdahl: They do kind of clog it up, but the maintenance yard kind of clogs it up 3 to begin with, so it doesn't make it much worse, I don't think. 4 Commissioner McCauley: Something that we had discussed was to try and consolidate 5 that footprint of the maintenance shop and Acterra at the extent possible, so that 6 everything is centrally located in that area and you have the smallest area possible fenced 7 off for those two purposes. 8 Chair Reckdahl: I forget. Does Acterra have any real infrastructure there or is it all stuff 9 that's fairly easily moved? 10 Mr. Anderson: They do have some infrastructure there that would be … 11 Chair Reckdahl: Some concrete they've poured or something or is it … 12 Mr. Anderson: I think there's a rudimentary base rock foundation to that structure, but 13 Kurt can probably elaborate. 14 Kurt Dunn: There is actually a building there with a concrete foundation, standalone 15 solar system. All the rest of them are portable buildings, shade structures, and that kind 16 of stuff. Even the storage container they have for secured lockup is movable with a 17 crane. 18 Chair Reckdahl: If down the road we want to consolidate that and scoot that over closer 19 to the maintenance yard, we'd have to repour a concrete foundation. That would be the 20 extent? 21 Mr. Anderson: I'm not convinced that would be necessary. In conversations with 22 Grassroots, rather than have them expand out towards the creek or out in other areas of 23 the 7.7, it may make sense to have them move closer towards—if they were going to add 24 tables or other grow areas, maybe that's towards the shop, and they use that area. 25 Chair Reckdahl: How close are they to the shop right now? 26 Mr. Dunn: It varies in distance. There's actually a little bit of an unused area between, 27 that was spoils from prior floods. Part of the plan was to actually fence off that area in-28 between and maybe reclaim that as part of the fenced-in area of our shop so that 29 everything is contained. There's a definitive barrier between us and the Grassroots 30 nursery. 31 Commissioner Cribbs: Is there a cost? 32 Approved Minutes 46 APPROVED Mr. Anderson: There is a cost of the fencing. We're looking at approximately $40,000, 1 but we need more price quotes. 2 Commissioner McCauley: Daren, are you—excuse me. I don't mean to jump the gun. 3 Are you anticipating removing fencing that's essentially old fencing, that no longer has 4 purpose? 5 Mr. Anderson: Yes. 6 Commissioner McCauley: Could you show folks where that would be, the fence that you 7 (inaudible)? 8 Mr. Dunn: The existing fencing is pretty much this white line here. It does protrude up 9 here on the hillside where it matches up with the private property fencing. It'd be pulling 10 this out, down to about where our fence starts at the shop area. This fence would stay in 11 place down to just before the creek. This would have a slight opening here, before the 12 private property starts. Again, this area would be open. Essentially, we'd fence in this 13 triangular section and match it up with our shop. 14 Commissioner McDougall: There is no fencing along the bottom, where that yellow line 15 is. I understand we have tentative agreement from the property owner to put the fence in. 16 Mr. Anderson: That's correct. There is some fencing there, but there needs additional 17 ones. They've agreed to add it. It's going in right now. 18 Commissioner Greenfield: I think it's worth noting that … 19 Commissioner McDougall: I knew you could do it. 20 Commissioner Greenfield: I think it's worth noting that this really is not the most pristine 21 area of Foothills Park. Opening it up for a simple walk through is an appropriate use. 22 We had considered the possibility of adding a loop trail because it's something a little bit 23 more interesting than an in-and-out walk. The assessment we got was the area was too 24 steep. The hillside was too steep to add a trail onto, to make it practical. That's not really 25 a viable alternative for us. Just having a walk out there, it's a pretty simple area if the leaf 26 blowers aren't blowing on the property across the way or there isn't some other noises. 27 The best thing that could happen to this area is to flood out the creek plain and add some 28 more riparian environment and add some of the plants supporting that as well. 29 Mr. Anderson: If I could just add onto that. For about a year, in this area just on the 30 other side of the creek—this is just on the other side of the creek and the Grassroots 31 Ecology nursery—we've done plots to analyze how well native vegetation would grow 32 through that 5-foot of over-burden. Grassroots did, I think, four or five plots of either no 33 amendments or some amendments with mulch. We're going to continue doing more of 34 Approved Minutes 47 APPROVED those to learn—if it ends up being the will of the Council and the Commission and the 1 public to restore it, we'll have some insight on what it would take, how successful, which 2 plants do well. We've learned so far, for example, that planting certain native plants with 3 the mulch and having done modest breaking up of the soil was somewhat successful. 4 We're going to try it again now with compost in addition to that, see how that plot does 5 and learn a little bit more. 6 Chair Reckdahl: That means that down the road we don't necessarily have to haul that 7 gravel out. 8 Mr. Anderson: We'll learn more about that. Grassroots might provide even more 9 direction on the speed with which we can do the renovation. For example, I learned 10 through Mr. Arrillaga's caretaker that you can get trees to grow there, but they don't grow 11 real well. That might be the same thing with those plants. We can get native plants to 12 grow there, but maybe we can get them to grow a whole lot better if we do something 13 different. I'd like to keep doing the little plots where we study. Maybe one plot is a rip 14 out and we put in something new, and then we can juxtapose the various techniques and 15 see what's most successful. 16 Commissioner McDougall: I like the idea of getting some local college or whatever to 17 take it on as a research project. 18 Commissioner Greenfield: My understanding is that if the creek restoration were done in 19 that area, that would require some regrading, which would mean pulling out a lot of the 20 over-burden and the soils. Soil removal is part of the envisioned, long-term plan. 21 Mr. Anderson: That's true for that 1.2 acres of floodplain, which is in this area here. 22 Vice Chair Moss: The mounds of dirt that are there now, have you taken that dirt and put 23 it back uphill to fill in the ever-deepening … 24 Mr. Anderson: No, no. Unfortunately, we can't dump it into the creek. We would need 25 the permits to do that. What's happened in the past is they've either spread it on the 7.7 26 acres or it's gone up to different debris piles that we've got and need to manage. That was 27 one of the recommendations that came out of the Buckeye Creek hydrology study. Tell 28 us what to do with the enormous amounts of earth that we've got, or debris. Some of the 29 recommendations are that we move it to other spots in the park where we had—one 30 example is we had historically taken a significant amount of earth to build the dam next 31 to Boronda Lake. One idea is we could put the earth back there, for example. Off-32 hauling it is awfully expensive, and no one wants it. We'd be paying to bring it 33 someplace. 34 Approved Minutes 48 APPROVED Vice Chair Moss: The second question is what are we going to do this coming winter. I 1 don't know where we are with the hydrology study, when we can actually get it approved 2 and do it. It's going to be a year or two, a winter or two. What are you going to do for 3 the 7 1/2 acres for this winter? 4 Mr. Anderson: Thank you for that question. I think it might even be longer than a winter 5 or two before we're able to actually accomplish it. It looks like it'd be a 5-year project if 6 we started right away. The funding is still in question. There's more work to come on 7 the Buckeye Creek hydrology recommendation and exactly which way we go. I still 8 need to consult with the City Manager. I haven't had an opportunity to speak with him on 9 the support of the recommendation that we do the entire thing. A little more to come on 10 that. To your question, though, what do we do in the interim, much of the same. We'll 11 keep monitoring that creek flow. As debris comes down, we're going to take it out. 12 More of the same basically. 13 Vice Chair Moss: Will you restrict people's access if it floods? 14 Mr. Anderson: I don't think that's going to be a problem. If it did—let's say in a 15 hypothetical situation where we didn't get the material out and it was really, really high 16 flow and it was unsafe, we'd shut it down like we would shut down any area. It would 17 just be for the duration of the hazard. I've done that at the Baylands during extreme high 18 tides. When it overflows the levee, we shut down that portion of the park or the levee 19 trail for the duration of the high tide event. Then, it opens back up. 20 Vice Chair Moss: That's all I have. 21 Chair Reckdahl: Comments, questions? 22 Commissioner McCauley: Very quickly. When we were last there, the hillside, for those 23 of you who may not have been to the site recently, is essentially everything to the right of 24 the creek, where Kurt is outlining right there. It's a fairly steep hillside. You had 25 speculated that the hillside itself contributes to erosion and the burden that falls into the 26 valley essentially. Right? 27 Mr. Anderson: To some degree, yeah. It's very loose. Kurt and our trail contractor hiked 28 it at the suggestion that perhaps we could find a pathway through there. On the 29 recommendation from our trail contractor and Kurt, it just wouldn't work. It was just too 30 loose. I'm imagining some of that probably ends up in the creek. 31 Mr. Dunn: It tries to go to a 1:1 slope eventually at some point. If it's too steep, it'll go 32 in. Plus some of the material that was pulled out of the creek, the property manager at the 33 time was actually trying to pack into those steep hillsides to lessen that slope. Just 34 Approved Minutes 49 APPROVED because it's been there so short a time, it's going to settle, and some of it may end up 1 going towards the creek. 2 Commissioner McCauley: Certainly in the next month as you think about presenting the 3 hydrology study again, it's going to be important to determine whether or not that hillside 4 is going to have a long-term effect or whether you think the current plan to have the creek 5 meander is going to be sufficient to resolve issues in that area. 6 Mr. Anderson: That's a good question. I'll follow up with our consultant on that one. 7 Chair Reckdahl: Was that hillside historically dug out? Why would it be loose up there? 8 Mr. Anderson: Our understanding is it was over-burden that created most of that. Is that 9 your understanding too, Kurt? 10 Mr. Dunn: From the scars before he filled in, it actually looks like it was excavated at 11 some point or it was on the edge of that excavation for the quarry, which is now John's 12 property over there. 13 Chair Reckdahl: Is there any benefit to building it up or would you be building up 14 something that you wouldn't use? 15 Mr. Anderson: Building up the hillside? 16 Chair Reckdahl: Yeah, the hillside. If it's too steep—if you made it more shallow, you 17 may not get erosion then. 18 Mr. Anderson: It's so heavily vegetated, I don't think it's that serious of a contributor to 19 the materials. I think most of it is upstream, and I'm judging that by the down-cutting 20 that's so obvious upstream. I have not seen in the last 17 years that significant of a 21 change to that hillside. While it's some, it's certainly nothing like the down-cutting we're 22 seeing. 23 Chair Reckdahl: One last question. Down in the bottom corner of the yellow, is there 24 any way that you'd have a trail that would go up that hill? Basically from the bottom 25 corner and then straight down into that area and hook up to Los Trancos or something 26 like that? Would there be any access or is that just too steep? That hillside is pretty steep 27 there. 28 Mr. Dunn: It is fairly steep and heavily vegetated with a variety of bay trees, poison oak, 29 all that kind of stuff. Distance-wise from where—that whole slope is actually really 30 steep, to the point where I don't know if it would be advantageous to actually do that one 31 or if it would create more erosion from that hillside going down toward the creek. 32 Approved Minutes 50 APPROVED Chair Reckdahl: I'm grasping at straws as to how to use this thing. Thank you. This was 1 just a discussion item, so there's nothing to recommend. Down the road, are we going to 2 have an official recommendation to Council to open it up? 3 Mr. Anderson: I don't want to speak for the ad hoc, but my recommendation is it gets 4 tied to the recommendation for Buckeye Creek. When it goes to Council, we present 5 both. 6 Chair Reckdahl: All in one fell swoop. Any other follow-ups? We'll move on. 7 6. Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 8 Chair Reckdahl: One last item here, the Master Plan. The gift that keeps on giving. 9 Ms. O'Kane: Kristen O'Kane, Community Services. I first want to just remark on the 10 fact that our Parks Master Plan was adopted by Council on September 11th. 11 Congratulations to the Commission on that huge accomplishment. Now, we have 12 probably an even bigger task ahead of us, and that is to develop a plan for how we're 13 going to fund the Master Plan. Council actually included in their motion a statement to 14 direct the Parks and Rec Commission to explore funding options to fund the Master Plan 15 including a possible ballot initiative. Tonight, we're not going to try and come up with 16 that funding plan by any means. Chair Reckdahl and I thought it would be a good 17 starting point to talk about what the Commission's role is versus staff's role, what the next 18 steps might be in that process. Rob de Geus and I met with the ad hoc committee, which 19 is Commissioner Cribbs, Commissioners Moss and LaMere, just yesterday—was it—to 20 talk about just the first steps. I don't know if the ad hoc wants to say anything at this 21 time. Chair, do you want to talk about your plans? I can give a brief thought as to … 22 Chair Reckdahl: Why don't you start out, and then I can chime in later? 23 Ms. O'Kane: The ad hoc did develop an initial list of items that might be considered in 24 this Phase I funding plan, which are those taken from the list of high priority projects and 25 programs that we might want to start looking for funding in the nearer term. That was 26 sort of a first shot at that list. We as staff are going to be creating our own list. At some 27 point, we may want to come together and develop a final one. We met internally today as 28 staff. I think we might take it a bit further and look at all of those high priority projects in 29 the Master Plan and develop either a spreadsheet or some sort of description of each of 30 those and what sorts of funding might be possible for each of those priority projects. 31 Then, develop that into a Council staff report that we would bring back to Council and 32 share with them the different options for funding. Some may be funding through public-33 private partnerships, some may be through a bond measure, some may be through our 34 normal CIP process. There could be others, a capital campaign, donations, things like 35 that. That was our thought process moving forward in the nearer term. We agreed that 36 Approved Minutes 51 APPROVED getting back to Council sooner rather than later is probably a good idea, especially if it is 1 a recommendation that we do a bond measure in November 2018. That means we don't 2 have a lot of time to be developing that. I'm not saying that's the direction we're going. 3 If it is a recommendation, then we would want to know sooner rather than later from 4 Council that's the direction they want to go. 5 Chair Reckdahl: Have you discussed with Manager Keene about his preferences about 6 bond measure versus not bond measure and timing if there is a bond measure? 7 Ms. O'Kane: I haven't directly, but I know there have been discussions with the City 8 Manager about that. I don't think he specifically stated one way or the other. There are a 9 lot of other funding needs within the City. This is just one of them. Some of those other 10 ones might need public financing as well. It's definitely something that we need to weigh 11 all of those and really have an expert tell us what the different options are for financing 12 some of these projects and what makes the most sense if we group some of them together 13 or if we don't, and the order of looking for financing. There's a lot of little nuances that 14 we don't have the expertise. I think it would be helpful to have someone who did have 15 that expertise weigh in. The City Manager is out of the office visiting some of our Sister 16 Cities right now. He won't be back for a couple of weeks. We'll be definitely checking 17 in with him before we bring anything to Council. 18 Chair Reckdahl: He needs to have a good discussion with Council. We had a short 19 discussion at Council. We really could have had a more focused discussion about how 20 we're going to fund this. That was just a small, little piece. Jim wasn't there, so we're not 21 getting a full discussion. When I look in my crystal ball, I don't see us doing a bond 22 measure for this just because the City would have to pay that off out of the General Fund, 23 and the General Fund is so strapped right now. I don't see that being an attractive option 24 for the Council Members. The most attractive option for the Council would be having a 25 parcel tax, and then the question is timing on that. Whenever you have an election, you 26 have not only the time to the election but what else is going on in that election. Maybe 27 we have a window now, and that window may be much harder in 3 years as it is in 1 year. 28 We really have to work this quickly and some type of estimate of costs, so they know the 29 scope. One of the questions was, if you did every project in the Master Plan, how much 30 would that be. We don't even have a rough order of magnitude on that. If we can price 31 things out, even if it's plus or minus 4X, just rough order of magnitude estimates, that 32 would be very useful to our Council. 33 Ms. O'Kane: I said bond measure when I intended to say a ballot measure. Just for 34 clarification. 35 Commissioner Cribbs: This is what this list is supposed to help us with? Obviously, if 36 you are going to raise money, the first question you get from everybody is how much do 37 you need to raise. The second question is who are the interested groups who might help 38 Approved Minutes 52 APPROVED you, who are the stakeholders. The third is how long is it going to take and what's in it 1 for me, essentially. This list is really important. The list can have both the staff's idea of 2 what they see as the priorities from the Master Plan and then the Commission's ideas as 3 well, and see how they go together. If you were to put a couple of columns in this great 4 Excel sheet, one that had to do with the stakeholders and who they might be. Obviously 5 for the dog parks it's the dog people. We could go through the list and see who these 6 stakeholders are. The last thing is how the CIP money fits into that for some of the long-7 term projects that we think there may be CIP money already in the budget or not. Then, 8 we can all come back together and explore the options of whether it's a parcel tax or it's a 9 bond or whatever else. We have to factor in what kind of foundation money there is 10 available as well and who is actually going to do the work of finding that out. That's not 11 something our staff is able to take on right now. There are a lot of pieces to this. 12 Chair Reckdahl: To me, the foundation is a hard question. How much foundation money 13 is out there is a very hard question. 14 Commissioner Cribbs: There are foundations out there who want to support parks and 15 programs in parks and recreation. California Park and Recreation has some opportunities 16 for grants. You just have to know about them, and you have to be able to have the 17 statistics and apply for them and that kind of thing. 18 Vice Chair Moss: I don't think it's an either/or. Even if we had a ballot measure or a 19 parcel tax, you might fund 90 percent. The other 10 percent, you would go to the 20 foundations or stakeholder groups. 21 Commissioner Cribbs: I didn't mean to say it was an either/or. I mean to say we have to 22 find all the potential possible sources of money. The one we didn't talk about, that we've 23 seen fairly successful with the Junior Museum, is the high net worth individuals in Palo 24 Alto, who might want to leave something for the future and how we can facilitate that. 25 We need a price for all these things. 26 Chair Reckdahl: Are we getting assistance to price out these or how are we determining 27 how much a gym costs? 28 Ms. O'Kane: That we can do internally, provide estimates. We need to decide if it is 29 everything in the Master Plan or if it's this list of things we would like to do in the next 5 30 years with a consideration that the Master Plan is a 20-year plan. It was also intended to 31 be aspirational. With the caveat that we anticipate not everything in the Master Plan will 32 get done in 20 years. 33 Chair Reckdahl: Some things may add to other things and come out. From the Council's 34 standpoint, if they knew it was X million dollars to do the high priority items and Y 35 Approved Minutes 53 APPROVED million dollars to do most of the Master Plan, that would give them a sense of how much 1 money we need to raise. Right now, they don't know, and we don't know. 2 Commissioner McDougall: Does our ad hoc committee have the lead on this, and we can 3 leave it with them for now? 4 Ms. O'Kane: Was that a question to … 5 Commissioner McDougall: It was more a question to our Chairman than it was to you. 6 You've indicated that your team is moving ahead and already building the answers to the 7 questions that we need and what not. 8 Ms. O'Kane: We're moving ahead with the ad hoc. It's not doing it alone. We'll check in 9 with the ad hoc and get their input as well. 10 Commissioner McDougall: I'm just wondering do we need to discuss it more here now. 11 Does the ad hoc have the lead on this? 12 Commissioner Cribbs: Don, coming out of the meeting that we had yesterday, we 13 thought we would all talk about it tonight at this meeting, and then we would get this list 14 put together and have another ad hoc meeting and then come back probably at the next 15 Commission meeting, that's what I understood, and have another discussion because we 16 have some more information. 17 Commissioner McDougall: That's okay with me. What input are you looking for from 18 us at this point, when you say discuss it together? 19 Commissioner Cribbs: At some point, each one of us can look at this list and add to the 20 column about the stakeholders. That would be really beneficial and useful. All of us 21 have an idea of what things cost. It'd be interesting to see just our ballpark estimation of 22 what stuff costs. 23 Commissioner Greenfield: It sounds like the—putting together a cost estimate is a huge 24 challenge. As Kristen mentioned, the Master Plan is an aspirational document. It's a 25 guiding document. There are plans that are outlined, but they're not detailed. Whatever 26 cost estimate we have is just that, an estimate. There's going to be some range in it. I do 27 really like the idea of focusing on a 5-year plan. We just created a 20-year document. It 28 doesn't seem realistic to try and put a cost estimate on what we're going to do for 20 29 years. Biting off a prioritized chunk that's manageable really seems like a good 30 approach. At the point that we do consider a ballot measure, it'd be wise to consult with 31 the Friends of the Library who have been through the process. They've been through the 32 downs and the ups. They have lessons learned. 33 Approved Minutes 54 APPROVED Commissioner Cribbs: What I didn't mention earlier is that the ad hoc has had a couple 1 of meetings with the people who did the successful fundraising for the Library. We're 2 trying to learn from people's past experiences, whatever advice they have about what we 3 should do. We're talking to Junior Museum and also (inaudible). The other thing that 4 we've been successful in is being able to identify how you actually give money to the 5 Friends of the Parks and how you give money to the Palo Alto Recreation Foundation 6 and specifically say, "I want this to be for this," and "I want this to be for that." That's an 7 important thing that people want to know, how you give money to the City. 8 Chair Reckdahl: There are other questions on that, but that's another tangent. What I 9 want to get into is timing. When do we expect to go back to Council? We can't sit on 10 this very long. Otherwise, we paint Council in the corner. 11 Ms. O'Kane: We'd like to go to Council in November. 12 Chair Reckdahl: A month from now, we'll have our October meeting. Shortly thereafter, 13 we'd go back to Council. 14 Ms. O'Kane: Correct. 15 Chair Reckdahl: We should be striving for that. 16 Commissioner Cribbs: We just didn't want to lose the momentum of having the Master 17 Plan approved and people being excited about it. We want to be able to move ahead, but 18 we want to have some of the answers. There are a lot of answers that we don't have yet. 19 Chair Reckdahl: We're not doing Council any favors if we go back there without enough 20 information. If we go back too fast, it's not going the job. If we wait too long, we're not 21 doing the job. There's a Goldilocks spot. Ad hoc, do your stuff. We'll come back in a 22 month, and we'll talk about it and hopefully head to Council shortly thereafter with an 23 informational packet. Any other comments? 24 Commissioner McDougall: Is the ad hoc going to create a list that gets shared with us, 25 that we can comment on and add … 26 Commissioner Cribbs: We have a beginning list right now. The staff is having their 27 beginning list. Those lists are going to get mushed together. We're going to have another 28 ad hoc meeting. We're going to do the list of who the stakeholders are. We're going to 29 do a couple of other things. They're going to find out what the potential is for bonds and 30 other ways of raising money. We're going to come back to the Commission next month. 31 Commissioner McDougall: We will see the mushed list? 32 Commissioner Cribbs: Yes, the mushed list with the prices on it, we hope. 33 Approved Minutes 55 APPROVED Commissioner Greenfield: I have a couple of other questions regarding the Master Plan, 1 not related to funding. I don't know if this is the time to talk about it or wait 10 seconds 2 to talk about it in other items. 3 Chair Reckdahl: No, go ahead. 4 Commissioner Greenfield: The first question is the updated copy of the Master Plan. Is 5 there a finalized copy available? When you go to the link for the Master Plan, it's still the 6 August draft. Is there a schedule for that to be posted? 7 Ms. O'Kane: The consultant is working on revising the Master Plan into its final form. 8 We'll have that bound, and we'll provide each of you one of those. 9 Commissioner Greenfield: That's the goal, a bound copy? Is there a time estimate for 10 that? 11 Ms. O'Kane: It should be in the next few weeks. 12 Commissioner Greenfield: Thank you. One other significant item of Council discussion 13 in approving the Master Plan was regarding the usage of public facilities by private 14 parties. Do we want the field, court, and facility use ad hoc to start work on 15 recommending a policy change consistent with that Master Plan? Is that something we 16 should be moving forward with in short order? The second part of that question is that ad 17 hoc is already working on pickleball as part of the court use. Would staff recommend 18 that we try to tie in the court use change and the facility use by private parties into a 19 single recommendation to Council or should we look at these as separate efforts? 20 Ms. O'Kane: I'm going to start with your last question first because that's the one I 21 remember. They should be two separate Council items, especially if one is related to 22 pickleball. I just feel like they're very separate and have a different feeling to them. As 23 far as the ad hoc meeting, what I recommend is the ad hoc meet with staff, and we can 24 talk about our plan for moving forward with that policy partly because some of the 25 changes to that policy are related to things like the golf course, changing the fees, things 26 like that. It would be helpful to have staff there to have the conversation. 27 Commissioner Greenfield: I wasn't actually suggesting meeting without staff. I was 28 thinking of including staff with the meeting. 29 Vice Chair Moss: Why do we have to go to the Council about pickleball? It seems like a 30 very low-level, staff kind of thing. 31 Ms. O'Kane: If we move forward with having some courts dedicated for pickleball … 32 Approved Minutes 56 APPROVED Vice Chair Moss: I thought it was going to be they could reserve a tennis court like any 1 other tennis player. 2 Ms. O'Kane: That could be too. It's depending on if we're doing a change to a policy or 3 if we're … 4 Commissioner Cribbs: (inaudible) change to a policy is the issue. 5 Commissioner Greenfield: The current policy outlines tennis as the only allowed use on 6 the court. Anything we do is going to require a policy change, which is going to require 7 Council approval. 8 Vice Chair Moss: It doesn't seem like it's at the policy level. It just doesn't seem like it's 9 at the policy level. 10 Ms. O'Kane: It may or may not require a trip to Council. We'll go with that. 11 Commissioner McCauley: Since we're on the topic of pickleball—forgive me. I don't 12 mean to pile on. We've heard loud and clear from many people on the pickleball issue. It 13 seems as though that issue is lagging. I don't know if there's a way to prioritize it. It was 14 in February and March and April and probably May and June as well that we heard from 15 pickleball users, who were very vocal. It's a large number of people who are interested in 16 the issue. It's not a criticism at all. It seems as though the issue is going slowly, and it's 17 one that perhaps we could fast track because it doesn't require the same sorts of 18 environmental reviews and other considerations that other issue before ad hocs do. For 19 what that's worth. It seems as though it's something we could act on quickly, and it's 20 lagging. 21 Chair Reckdahl: I agree it seems like something you should move forward with, but look 22 at the dog parks. How long did we work on dog parks, and that really wasn't that 23 complicated. 24 Mr. Anderson: I can tell you that my staff is working with the recreation team to look at 25 Mitchell Park and see where we can reconfigure things to have dedicated, permanent 26 pickleball. We're actively working with the consultant, taking measurements in the field, 27 and identifying areas. The next process is public outreach. What I see as part of the 28 challenge is the tennis clubs are not going to love giving up courts. We don't just 29 arbitrarily make that call. We meet with the community, as always, with multiple public 30 meetings and try to reach a happy compromise. That process is always a little 31 cumbersome and a little slow. We'll expedite it as quickly as we can. My staff is 32 committed to at least fleshing out all the options that we can think of. Hopefully, that 33 makes that process a little bit faster. 34 Approved Minutes 57 APPROVED Vice Chair Moss: You already did that masterfully with the Rinconada pool and the 1 adult swimmers versus the lap swimmers versus all those others. You did a great job to 2 work among themselves to come up with a solution. Hopefully you can do the same with 3 the tennis players. 4 Mr. Anderson: We'll try to do it and do it quickly. 5 Chair Reckdahl: When you say dedicated pickleball, does that mean we'll replace a 6 tennis court and make it pickleball? We're not talking about building any new courts? 7 Mr. Anderson: It might be both. We're trying to look at all the options, which would 8 include one possibility of taking the handball courts, which are far lesser used relative to 9 the tennis, and say, "Can we convert that?" We're right now trying to get all the options 10 on the table. When we go to the community process, we can have everything laid out in a 11 sensible—rather than guessing what options there are, we'll know in terms of what 12 actually fits. 13 Commissioner Cribbs: Daren, do you have an idea of the timeline for the options to be 14 ready? 15 Mr. Anderson: My staff will probably have that in the next 3 weeks or so, 3 or 4 weeks. 16 Commissioner Cribbs: Once you have that, then we have to go to the tennis and the 17 pickleball community meetings. How long does that take? 18 Mr. Anderson: My team's not leading that endeavor. It's another recreation staff person. 19 I would help them and guide them where I can, be helpful. I'm not sure of their schedule. 20 Maybe Kristen has more. I would imagine it would be shortly after we have those 21 options identified. 22 Ms. O'Kane: Adam Howard, who's one of our Community Services Managers in 23 recreation—I just received a schedule from him today on what the process might look 24 like including how we would reach out to the tennis players as well as the pickleball 25 players and the schedule for that. I'll take a look at that, and I'll share that with the ad 26 hoc, if that sounds like a plan. We can talk about that and get your feedback. 27 Commissioner Cribbs: The good news for the pickleball people is that there is a class for 28 pickleballers, and that's very well attended. Everybody seems to be very happy about 29 pickleball in Palo Alto. Although, they would really like to know that they could reserve 30 courts and have—it'd be great to have some dedicated courts. It's good. Pickleball is 31 increasing in Mountain View and Foster City with dedicated courts, and actually all over 32 the place. 33 Approved Minutes 58 APPROVED Ms. O'Kane: I'd like to add that I did spend an afternoon playing pickleball at Mitchell. I 1 had a blast. It was so much fun. Great people. I just learned so much about the sport, 2 not just how to play but also the benefits of the sport, the social, the emotional, the 3 physical. I kept saying, "One more game," because I had to go back to work. I went on 4 my lunch break, for the record. It was really fun. 5 Commissioner McDougall: That's exciting. Thanks for doing that, Kristen. That's great. 6 Chair Reckdahl: The next time the pickleball folks come, you'll look back with your 7 racquet with them. 8 Commissioner McDougall: I'm going to suggest that—what we do at the Library 9 Commission—we started to move and have the meeting at different libraries. Maybe we 10 should have our next meeting at the pickleball courts. 11 Chair Reckdahl: Let's move on. 12 7. Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates. 13 Chair Reckdahl: Ad hoc committee, any other updates? 14 VI. COMMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 15 Chair Reckdahl: We'll move on to Comments and Announcements. Do you have 16 anything more to add? 17 Ms. O'Kane: I just wanted to add that we did have the Commissioners recognition event 18 last weekend. Thanks to those who were there, and thank you also to those who weren't 19 there. You probably noticed that there was a proclamation at your seat and also a little 20 gift for you from the City Clerk's Office. Just to reiterate what they said, thank you so 21 much for your service, for the time that you volunteer to give back to the community, and 22 for our great parks system that we have here, and the recreation programs we provide. 23 We truly do appreciate it. We couldn't do this work without you. Thank you very much. 24 Commissioner Cribbs: I'm really glad that Kristen brought that up. It was really a very 25 nice event. Keith and I were both there. It was pretty amazing to see the commitment 26 and Commissions that Palo Alto enjoys. Thanks to all of you for putting it on. It was 27 very well received. The ice cream was good. 28 Chair Reckdahl: The ice cream was very good. It's always nice to get together and just 29 talk with the Council Members. It's a much more informal setting. You also realize 30 we're not the only Commission. There are other Commissions out there. It was a nice 31 event. We have it up at Foothills Park sometimes, which is a much nicer situation but 32 less convenient. It's always a tradeoff. Any other comments and announcements? 33 Approved Minutes 59 APPROVED Commissioner McDougall: Keith, if I might. I was remiss in not submitting anything 1 from my contact with Project Safety Net. I have spent time with Mary. This is National 2 Suicide Prevention Month. There have been activities going on all month. It is a good 3 organization. Our participation relative to Project Safety Net has to be associated with 4 the total wellness of all teens. It's important that we take that position and support them 5 that way. Just be aware this is National Suicide Prevention Month, and Project Safety 6 Net does have activities going on. 7 VII. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR OCTOBER 24, 2017 MEETING 8 Chair Reckdahl: One issue that we have to decide tonight is our next meeting. It's 9 scheduled for October 24, and then we have the November meeting, which will be 10 Thanksgiving week. Do we want to … We can shimmy the November meeting up or 11 shimmy it back. 12 Commissioner Greenfield: The November date is fine. 13 Chair Reckdahl: We're missing Thanksgiving? 14 Ms. O'Kane: That's correct. It's the week after Thanksgiving. 15 Chair Reckdahl: December, do we want to deal with that now or do you want to wait 'til 16 next month and chew on our schedules then? 17 Vice Chair Moss: I would prefer moving it up before Christmas and New Year's. 18 Commissioner McCauley: (inaudible) 19 Chair Reckdahl: Our personal schedules will be more firmed up. 20 Commissioner McCauley: (inaudible) 21 Chair Reckdahl: Let's talk options first. We have Wednesday, December 12th—22 Tuesday, December 12th, and Tuesday, December 19th. The 26th will not work out. If 23 we do want to move it up, we have the option of the 12th and 19th. Do people want to 24 stew on that for a month or do you have feelings? 25 Commissioner Cribbs: I can say right now I'm not available on the 12th. I'm not in town. 26 Ms. O'Kane: I could ask Tanya to send out an email, and you could all check your 27 schedules and see what date might work best. 28 Chair Reckdahl: If it's a special meeting, we don't have to be on a Tuesday. We 29 probably want to avoid Mondays. Let's do a doodle poll. Any other items? 30 Approved Minutes 60 APPROVED VIII. ADJOURNMENT 1 Meeting adjourned on motion by Commissioner Cribbs and second by Commissioner 2 McDougall at 10:13 p.m. Passed 7-0 3 Approved Minutes 61