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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2018-08-28 Parks & Recreation Summary MinutesAPPROVED Draft Minutes 1 1 2 3 4 MINUTES 5 PARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION 6 SPECIAL MEETING 7 August 28, 2018 8 CITY HALL 9 250 Hamilton Avenue 10 Palo Alto, California 11 12 Commissioners Present: Anne Cribbs, Jeff Greenfield, Jeff LaMere, Ryan McCauley, Don 13 McDougall, David Moss, and Keith Reckdahl 14 Commissioners Absent: 15 Others Present: 16 Staff Present: Daren Anderson, Kristen O'Kane 17 I. ROLL CALL 18 II. AGENDA CHANGES, REQUESTS, and DELETIONS 19 Chair McDougall: With the attendance taken, let's look at the agenda. Any requests for 20 changes, deletions to the agenda? Commissioner Moss, are you okay if we keep the agenda 21 as structured? 22 III. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS 23 Chair McDougall: Do we have any oral communications? I actually have one card here. 24 I haven't filled it out yet. I will soon fill it out for David Carnahan to speak to us. 25 David Carnahan: Thank you, Chair McDougall and Commissioners. David Carnahan 26 from the City Clerk's Office. I'm here because we are again doing Board and Commission 27 recruitment. The City is currently looking to fill three positions on the Architectural 28 Review Board, three positions on the Parks and Recreation Commission, which we're 29 hoping three of you will consider reapplying, and then also two positions on the Planning 30 and Transportation Commission. As you know from your work here on the Commission, 31 this is a fantastic way to make a mark on Palo Alto and help contribute to the fantastic 32 services that the City provides to the community. All of these terms run 3 years for the 33 Architectural Review Board, Parks and Recreation, and then 4 years on the Planning and 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 2 Transportation Commission. Again, we're recruiting to fill three positions on the 1 Architectural Review Board, three on Parks and Rec, and two on the Planning and 2 Transportation Commission. Applications are available on the City's website, 3 cityofpaloalto.org/clerk, and applications are due by October 17th at 4:30 p.m. I'm going 4 to hand out your homework, which is to reach out to a couple of community members that 5 you think might be a good fit for one of these Boards or Commissions. Thank you. 6 Commissioner Cribbs: May I ask a question? 7 Chair McDougall: Yes, please, Commissioner Cribbs. 8 Commissioner Cribbs: Can you tell us exactly what kind of outreach that you do for the 9 Park and Recreation Commission? 10 Mr. Carnahan: For all Boards and Commissions, we go to each Board and Commission 11 meeting. The City Manager announces the recruitments during a couple of City Council 12 meetings during the recruitment period. We run several ads in the Palo Alto Weekly, the 13 Daily Post, the Embarcadero Media Express, and then the Communications Office reaches 14 out through Nextdoor and reaches out to PAN, and then through Facebook and Twitter. 15 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you. 16 Chair McDougall: Thank you, Mr. Carnahan. If there are no other questions, I would like 17 to reinforce what Mr. Carnahan has said. Anything that we can do to help recruit people 18 that we can identify would be valuable to any of those Commissions would be extremely 19 useful. Thank you. The next thing would be—I would like to add one thing. I'd like to 20 note that we have received in the last couple of weeks a couple of times from Natalie email 21 on various subjects from the community. We should be reminded that that's the equivalent 22 of oral communications and use that as input and part of our outreach and input from the 23 community. 24 IV. DEPARTMENT REPORT 25 Chair McDougall: The next thing I'd like to do is ask Kristen to introduce the Department 26 Report. 27 Kristen O'Kane: Thank you. Kristen O'Kane. I have one item, and then I'm going to turn 28 it over to Daren who has some additional things to report. I just wanted to let everyone 29 know again that our first community meeting to co-design and master plan the Cubberley 30 Community Center site is going to be September 27th at 7:00 p.m. at the Cubberley 31 Pavilion. We are just kicking off our outreach. Hopefully, you'll be seeing this on banners 32 throughout town, Nextdoor, Facebook, email. I encourage you to reach out to your 33 organizations and groups that you're involved with to help spread the word. I did email 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 3 you all some information that you can share. As we have more media publications 1 produced, I'll forward those as well. I am setting up a meeting with the ad hoc possibly for 2 this Friday in advance of this meeting so they're onboard and can chime in on what we're 3 proposing. That's it. Now, I'll turn it over to Daren Anderson. 4 Daren Anderson: Good evening. Daren Anderson, Community Services Department. 5 Chair McDougall: Before you start, I would like to point out that Kristen did change the 6 date of that community outreach for Cubberley to not conflict with a local political event. 7 I think that should be appreciated and responded to with our encouragement to get people 8 to participate in both events. 9 Mr. Anderson: Excellent, thank you. Just a quick update. The public art project at Byxbee 10 Park that I've emailed the Commission about and we've spread the word among 11 stakeholders of the Baylands has started … 12 Chair McDougall: Excuse me. If I could ensure that the visitors that are coming in are 13 quiet please. Thank you, Daren. 14 Mr. Anderson: Sure. Again, the public art project at Byxbee has now started. This is the 15 foraging habitat island out at Byxbee. Again, the intent is to provide habitat for prey 16 species. Normally, we focus a lot on predator species. This will have both insects and 17 rodents and provide habitat for those animals which, again, will feed burrowing owls, 18 foxes, and other predator species that live there. The project's already started, and the 19 upcoming volunteer events are scheduled to start on Saturday, September 1st. I'll post all 20 the times and hours in the back, and it was in the email. The word's been spread. The 21 Baylands Comprehensive Conservation Plan. Earlier today I emailed out to the 22 stakeholders and the Commission a copy of some concepts for the former ITT area. I'm 23 excited to both hear from our stakeholders and bring this to the Commission for a robust 24 discussion very soon. I'll probably save that until I also have a conceptual plan for Byxbee 25 Park, which will be coming very shortly. I'll email them to you, and you can peruse them, 26 and then we'll have a discussion in an upcoming Commission meeting. A brief update on 27 Renzel Marsh. As you know, the Public Works Department has been working on that area. 28 They're currently working on building up the berm around the marsh. We'll have an update 29 from Karin North at the November meeting on next steps and what's going to happen. I 30 had a request from Commissioner McCauley, who noted that we've started a new contract 31 with our park landscape maintenance provider. The last one was a 5-year contract with 32 Gachina, and we've started a new one. We now have BrightView Landscaping. He asked 33 if I could tell a little bit about that because it's a change that you will see. Not only is it a 34 different provider, but they're new to the area. Their understanding of the scope and 35 breadth of so many sites is a little bit challenging. There's a little bit of stumbling as they 36 orient themselves to this really robust scope of work. We're trying to help them along and 37 get them going, but we've had a couple of trips here and there. I thought I might share at 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 4 least what they do very, very succinctly. It's a 5-year contract, so it would expire in June 1 2023. They do medians and roadside planting strips, parking lots, parking garages, City 2 facilities like community centers and fire stations, utility substations and well sites, tennis 3 courts. The big piece is the maintenance at the non-athletic center parks. While our City 4 staff takes care of Greer and Baylands Athletic Center, Stanford-Palo Alto, and El Camino, 5 your other ones like Peers and Hoover are maintained through this contractor. It's a 6 significant amount of work. Just lastly, a little bit on how we work together with them. 7 We have two park inspectors that are really in charge of making sure that they're complying 8 with their scope of work, that they're living up to the standards we've set, and that they're 9 responsive to our community needs, concerns, and complaints. We also work with them 10 very closely. Irrigation is done all inhouse, but they're out in those parks and they're seeing 11 things, whether it's dry or wet field conditions or broken sprinklers. They're in very close 12 communication with our team, and we work pretty well together. The last update I had 13 was regarding the Baylands Boardwalk. The project start date is predicated on the delivery 14 of the wood, the Alaskan yellow cedar. We're ordering an enormous amount because the 15 bulk of the Boardwalk will be made of that material. The delivery dates are still a little 16 uncertain, but the latest timeframe that we're anticipating is mid-September with the 17 completion date in early January 2019. 18 Chair McDougall: Are there any questions for the Department Report? Commissioner 19 Moss. 20 Commissioner Moss: Daren, do you have an update on the Magical Bridge? 21 Mr. Anderson: The status of the actual bridge replacement over the creek is it's moving 22 along well. There were a few problems with unanticipated breaks in the mainline. It was 23 at the base of the concrete footing. It shut off water to the park for a little while, the dog 24 park and some of the restrooms. I need to acknowledge Miguel Jacome, the park supervisor 25 in charge of irrigation. He brought out his team, and they spent 6 to 8-hour days out there 26 trying to get everything running. They water was only down for 2 days, and then they got 27 it back up thankfully. There were some challenges there. I don't have the latest ETA for 28 completion. I'll get that and share it with the Commission. 29 Commissioner Moss: Are you going to use the same bridge over again? You were thinking 30 about doing that. 31 Mr. Anderson: We're saving the bridge, and there's a possibility. Phil Bobel from Public 32 Works, the Assistant Director, has saved the bridge and transported it to the MSC area. 33 There's the possibility that we could utilize it in the ITT area where we could cross over to 34 Byxbee. 35 Commissioner Moss: One more question. The Renzel Marsh, did you say that they were 36 going to start up again like September 1st? 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 5 Mr. Anderson: They're starting now with building up the berm around there. There will 1 be a couple more updates. September 4th they're going to start moving sediment and some 2 reeds. Karin North will be here in the November meeting to give some more updates. 3 Commissioner McCauley: I'll just jump in, Daren. 4 Chair McDougall: Thank you, Commissioner McCauley. 5 Commissioner McCauley: Excuse me. Sorry, Don. Thanks for your report. From what 6 I've seen, BrightView seems like they're doing a great job thus far. They actually seem to 7 have a little bit less of a physical presence than Gachina, just from my own observation. 8 They perhaps are maintaining the parks at different hours, but the parks seem to be well 9 maintained. They definitely, from my perspective, are the frontline eyes and ears in the 10 park on a daily basis. I think that's a really important contract. I'm curious to know what 11 the evaluation mechanisms are between now and June 2023. Will there be regular 12 opportunities for you to provide feedback? What does that look like? Is there some sort 13 of probationary period? 14 Mr. Anderson: There isn't a probationary period, but the feedback is constant, really daily. 15 Via those two park inspectors and a park supervisor, there's no day that passes where we're 16 not in dialog with their project manager and usually several of their field staff. Sometimes, 17 it's directing more focused attention to a given area based on either our knowledge or 18 feedback from the community or special events coming up, that kind of thing. Sometimes, 19 it's transitions like at some point in the near future we're transitioning in areas where we 20 just have single trash cans, for example. That's no longer allowed by Code. By the end of 21 the year, we need to be transitioning to three bins for every spot. If you had a trash can, 22 you need to have recycling and compost. Those kinds of transitions call out for good 23 coordination between us and the contractor. In regards to evaluating their performance, I 24 would say that's a daily thing. We keep track of the bigger faux pas and have weekly and 25 sometimes monthly meetings with them to check in and say "here are the problem areas 26 we need you to address, here is the time period for our expectations." There are liquidated 27 damages in the contract. If they were to underperform, somehow damage our facilities or 28 infrastructure, we could have recompense that way, through those liquidated damages. 29 What we try to do is, rather than wait for larger corrections, correct them immediately. It's 30 those weekly and even daily check-ins to say "wait a minute, you missed this, and we need 31 you to be on it the next week." 32 Commissioner McCauley: How competitive was the bidding process? 33 Mr. Anderson: We had three bids, as I recall. This one with BrightView was significantly 34 lower than both of the incumbents and then the other bid by a fairly hefty margin. 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 6 Commissioner McCauley: You're confident that's it's going to be equal quality 1 notwithstanding the lower bid? 2 Mr. Anderson: Yeah. I think in some ways the quality will be enhanced. We did a lot of 3 work on that scope to enhance certain elements that were maybe a little weaker in the past. 4 One example would probably be related to care of the turf in certain parks, where the scope 5 of work for the previous contractor was lower. We also buttressed up the mandated number 6 of staff. They have to have 16 FTE, where in the previous contract it was a little more 7 nebulous, and they would slip below that threshold on occasion. My anticipation is the 8 quality will improve. The scope has grown slightly. I think we'll get better service. 9 Commissioner McCauley: You just mentioned one of the things that I think is very 10 important, the turf management component. In some of our parks where I think there's 11 adequate irrigation, as you get through the summer turf wears. It's in rough shape by this 12 time of year. That's excellent. Last question is really a request perhaps. Some of our parks 13 get very heavily used on weekends, and they have large accumulations of garbage such 14 that garbage is overflowing. I think they get emptied at some point on Sunday mornings, 15 but oftentimes when you walk through a park on Saturday evening there's a lot of trash. I 16 wonder whether seasonally it would be possible to have a sweep of the heavily used parks 17 to try and clean that up a little bit. 18 Mr. Anderson: I think that's a good request. It's something we've tried to address. I'll give 19 you a couple of examples. Probably Magical Bridge is the most poignant where no matter 20 what we did, how many trash cans we added, or how many extra services, we could not 21 keep up with the production of trash. We're still kind of managing that, but it's something 22 we haven't solved yet. 23 Chair McDougall: Commissioner Cribbs. 24 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you. About the trash. A long time ago we talked about 25 making a garbage bag or two available on the weekends—is that a possibility still—to 26 people because people are really good about picking up their trash if the garbage cans aren't 27 overflowing. If they're overflowing, the tendency is to say "it's already overflowing, 28 nobody cares, I'm just going to do the same thing." I would love to explore that. Have we 29 as a City looked at the new garbage cans that are solar powered, that actually have a lid 30 that the seagulls can't get into, and that compact the trash? You could put lots more trash 31 in them. 32 Mr. Anderson: Good question. First of all, let me address the bag idea. In certain areas 33 we've done it. When I managed the Baylands as a ranger we did leave extra bags out really 34 for litter getter folks that wanted to go around and collect loose trash, but not necessarily 35 leave them around a picnic area or the duck pond. We didn't do that and haven't explored 36 that as much. I think the opportunity to reevaluate our entire debris, recycling, composting, 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 7 and trash collection is now because we've got that new law that says you have to have those 1 threesome containers, no longer isolated single trash or recycling or composting. It has to 2 be the three. It's a good time, and we're looking at it right now. I think the plan will be 3 probably to pilot Rinconada Park. This is partially led through our Zero Waste Program, 4 which is through Public Works in combination with us. Once I know more about what that 5 pilot will look like, I'll bring it to you via Department Report probably. If you have an ad 6 hoc that you want to learn more about it, you're welcome to work with staff. I think that 7 would be a good place. The last question you asked was about compacting trash. We did 8 look at a special service; it wasn't solar powered. This was about 2 or 3 years ago. It was 9 a much deeper trash can that you'd have to remove with heavy equipment. In isolated areas 10 we thought it might work. Imagine a very deep and robust, heavy bag that you could reuse. 11 It goes under the ground maybe 6 deeper feet so you could—in theory it wouldn't overflow. 12 You'd have room for maybe a full week of trash in that one container. It was expensive 13 because you had to have special equipment that we wouldn't have. It would be a contractor. 14 They would need access to those areas. On the periphery of some parks, it seemed to 15 maybe make sense, but not enough to justify us jumping into that yet. We said at the time 16 that we'd monitor to see what other Bay Area municipalities were experimenting with that 17 and do tours to see how it was working and where. So far, we're sticking especially with 18 this new change of Zero Waste policy and those three trash containers. 19 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you. The last question is does the new company who's doing 20 our garbage in the park or our maintenance in the park have something like a sustainability 21 officer or somebody who looks out for sustainability as part of the contract. 22 Mr. Anderson: That is mainly handled through our partnership and relationship with 23 GreenWaste. They're the real processors of that. Whereas, BrightView is really moving it 24 from one place into a central area where it gets picked up by GreenWaste. 25 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you. 26 Chair McDougall: Vice Chair Greenfield. 27 Vice Chair Greenfield: Back to trash. I'm struck by the image of consistently overflowing 28 bins, particularly in an area like the Magical Bridge. I'm wondering if there's some sort of 29 educational opportunity here, some way of encouraging people to create less trash as part 30 of the process of reducing the trash problem. I don't have any specific ideas, just a concept 31 to throw out there to think about. 32 Mr. Anderson: It is an interesting one. You're right. In cases like that, you really have to 33 come up with another methodology because adding more trash cans is not the solution. 34 Either you're exploring a pack-it-in-pack-it-out—that kind of thing has to be integrated. 35 The other piece we did implement is at Foothills Park. A good example that may work at 36 other places like the Magical Bridge or even other parks is Orchard Glen picnic area at 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 8 Foothills Park has several picnic tables in there. Each one had a trash can next to it. We 1 changed that because even though we had the right lids that prevented or tried to prevent 2 wildlife from getting in there it didn't stop them. They would chew holes in it or the ravens 3 would lift the lids off and find a way. Debris would spread everywhere. In the mornings, 4 we'd find trash all over the place. What we did was get rid of all those individual trash 5 cans, put three bins in the parking lot next to it so everyone had to relearn or train 6 themselves to carry their trash from your picnic area to where you parked and dump it in 7 the big trash containers as opposed to a trash can. It's been very successful. 8 Vice Chair Greenfield: I agree. I've experienced the walk to those trash cans myself when 9 occasionally dining in that area with a group. It worked quite well. I think what you're 10 alluding to is really we're looking for ideas on how we can change behavior. It's not a short 11 path, but it's a worthy one. 12 Mr. Anderson: I think so. 13 Chair McDougall: Are there any other comments? I will make one more semi-trash. The 14 artwork which is a collection of twigs and whatnot, do we have a good collection of people, 15 are we well volunteered for that, or how is that going? 16 Mr. Anderson: I need to check in with the art team, Elise DeMarzo one more time to see 17 where we're at. I've been hearing good things, and people have been calling me to say 18 "how can I sign up," and I direct them to Brittany Amante, who's doing the organization. 19 I don't know if you've heard, but it's already started. We've got the skeleton framework 20 already there, which is great. I'm confident we'll get a successful structure built in these 21 next 4 volunteer days that are planned. 22 Chair McDougall: I really hope so. I was at a meeting last night where somebody was 23 appealing to the group to go to Palo Alto to help with this because they're short of people 24 on Thursday morning or whatever. I would encourage even now you might start thinking 25 about alternative days that go after that so that you're not scrambling after the fact. It'd be 26 worth checking and know if you have a contingency plan. 27 Mr. Anderson: Will do. 28 Chair McDougall: I hope all the Commission members are planning on being out there. 29 Commissioner McCauley: I had one sort of unrelated question. I don't know if it falls 30 under Department Report or not. Last month you presented a bunch of numbers for us, 31 budget and revenue numbers. Don, you were going to work with Kristen and others. 32 Chair McDougall: I met with Jazmin and Kristen, and we've created some good questions 33 and some structure. We decided that considering the agenda tonight we would bring them 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 9 back next time. They weren't particularly time critical. In order to provide a better structure 1 and understanding, we're going to bring that back to the next meeting. With completion of 2 the Department Report, we'll move onto the next item. 3 V. BUSINESS 4 1. Approval of Draft Minutes from the July 24, 2018 Parks and Recreation 5 Commission meeting. 6 Approval of the draft July 24, 2018 Minutes was moved by Commissioner Reckdahl and 7 seconded by Commissioner Cribbs. Passed 7-0. 8 2. Recommend to Council Approval of Revisions to City of Palo Alto Field and 9 Tennis Court Use Policy to Include Addition of Pickleball to Policy 10 Chair McDougall: The next item on the agenda is the recommendation to Council for 11 approval of revisions to the Field and Tennis Court Use Policy. So that everybody 12 understands the process we will use, we will have the staff report and staff 13 recommendations, then we will have public comment, then we will have questions across 14 the Commission in a first round. In a second round, we'll have comments. Hopefully we 15 can move to a motion from that. Relative to the public comments, I have between 20 and 16 25 cards here. I assume I have all the cards that are going to be submitted. If you have a 17 card that's not submitted, if you want to just hand it to me right now, then I've got it. There 18 are 25 cards. At 2 minutes a piece, that'll take us about an hour. I'm going to, number one, 19 strictly limit it to 2 minutes. I don't mean to be rude if I tell somebody there time's up, but 20 I'm going to limit it to 2 minutes. I'm going to encourage that it's probably more effective 21 if you're shorter than 2 minutes. With that, I'll turn it over to Adam for the staff report. 22 Adam Howard: Good evening. Adam Howard, Senior Community Services Manager for 23 the City of Palo Alto. Thank you for having me here tonight. I am here and asking the 24 Commission to send forward policy suggestions to the Field and Tennis Court Use Policy 25 to include pickleball. A little bit of background. The City of Palo Alto of has seen 26 increased pickleball players and requests for pickleball space. The Silicon Valley 27 Pickleball Club has been very active in Palo Alto, currently using Mitchell Parks courts 5, 28 6, and 7 on a first-come-first-serve basis. That play is actually not supported by our current 29 policy, which is very strict to tennis courts. Mitchell Park courts 5, 6, and 7 weren't heavily 30 reserved but were heavy for drop-in use and are the only lit courts in south Palo Alto. 31 Recently, Silicon Valley Pickleball received a Proclamation from the City Council 32 recognizing pickleball as the fastest growing sport with 2.5 million participants. Palo Alto 33 also hosts the senior game pickleball matches. Basically, we're seeing a lot more pickleball 34 interest in Palo Alto. With the increased demand, the Parks Department and the Rec 35 Commission began looking into available space for pickleball use. We originally proposed 36 converting those three courts, 5, 6, and 7 at Mitchell Park, into pickleball courts. That was 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 10 met with heavy resistance from the tennis community, specifically around the idea of losing 1 lit courts and preferring to keep the courts joint use. As we continue to gather information 2 and look at additional proposals, we think it's important to send forth the policy changes to 3 allow some designated times for pickleball, to allow them tournament times, really allow 4 pickleball some areas to grow here at Mitchell Park, and really see how evening play, 5 weekend play is adapted with the new policy. Staff understands that ultimately we need 6 designated pickleball courts, so this is not what we consider the end solution but something 7 to legitimize what is happening on our courts and give a little bit of room for growth within 8 the policy. We're dedicated to revisiting the policy in 6 months or less to see how things 9 are working, see if we have further solutions that would be more permanent. The primary 10 policy changes are up on the screen. This is a summary of the changes that we're 11 recommending. The first one is around court usage. Currently the policy is very specific. 12 It only allows for tennis. What we're allowing is a change in language for more flexibility 13 to call these courts rather than just tennis courts. We don't know what sports are coming, 14 so we don't want to pigeonhole ourselves into one sport on these spaces. We're allowing 15 more flexibility. We are designating priority hours on Mitchell Park courts 5, 6, and 7 for 16 both pickleball and tennis. We're allowing some drop-in time, nonpriority use for first-17 come-first-serve use. The priority times that we're suggesting for tennis would be 4:00 18 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. on Saturdays and 19 Sundays. Pickleball priority would be 4:00 to 10:00 Mondays and Wednesdays and 8:00 20 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Any time not listed, the courts are available 21 for first-come-first-serve use. We also are looking at court reservations and tournaments. 22 Currently, reservations are only made for USTA match play. The Palo Alto Tennis Club 23 has weekend mornings and some tournament play. The changes that we're recommending 24 is allowing pickleball reservations with residency requirements and allowing the 25 Department to run large events like the senior games. That's something that actually is a 26 practice that we're doing, but we want it written into the policy so we have a policy that 27 supports us for large-scale special events, for senior games specifically. We do it for tennis 28 and pickleball, but we want to have the ability to do that. Also, only 50 percent of the 29 courts can be reserved for USTA match play. We're not changing that policy, but we really 30 want to be very specific especially when there are odd numbers of courts that we're renting 31 the lower. If there are nine courts, there were times we'd rent five and leave four available. 32 We're going to be very specific that we'll rent four and leave five available. That's not a 33 change in the policy as much as it is just staff commitment to following the rule. Next 34 steps. If approved, we will bring the revised policy to City Council. Although we think 35 this is an important step, we know it's only the first step. We're going to continue to 36 investigate additional space for dedicated pickleball courts. We want to examine tennis 37 court fees compared to our neighboring cities to see if our charges compare to others. We 38 want to look at the process for USTA rentals and residency specifically. Those two things 39 are really to make sure that our residents have the most opportunity to get on our courts. 40 We want to look at additional lit courts, which have their own concerns. We want to look 41 at all the available options. There are two courts considered paddleball courts in Mitchell 42 APPROVED Draft Minutes 11 Park, and they're primarily used for pickleball. We want to restripe and make them 1 designated. Those are two courts that are pretty small and basically used for pickleball 2 now, but we want to investigate the use. If we feel that is what it's being used for, we 3 would just restripe and make those two courts pickleball courts as well. That's it for the 4 staff report. 5 Vice Chair Greenfield: Excuse me, Adam. Is it two courts or one court? 6 Mr. Howard: The pickleball courts are currently two courts. 7 Vice Chair Greenfield: The paddleball? 8 Mr. Howard. Sorry. Yeah, the paddleball courts are two pickleball courts. 9 Vice Chair Greenfield: It's currently one paddle tennis court, but it could be converted 10 (crosstalk). 11 Mr. Howard: It could be two paddleball courts too. They're roughly the same size and 12 dimensions. It's the size of the net that would need to change. 13 Chair McDougall: With that, I'm going to go through the public comments. Again, I'm 14 going to go through them in the order that they were handed to me. I'm going to limit the 15 conversation to 2 minutes and encourage 1 minute. As you come up, please state your 16 name and your city of residency please. Kay Carey. 17 Kay Carey: Good evening. I'm Kay Carey, a Palo Alto resident, and I'm also a past 18 president of the Palo Alto Tennis Club. I first of all appreciate the hard work that's gone 19 into this by City staff trying to work out an arrangement for shared usage of the Mitchell 20 Park courts. The effort is really appreciated. I really appreciate also the spirit of mixed 21 use and keeping the three lit courts available for both tennis and pickleball. I think there 22 maybe should be some clarification to the usage rules so that players would understand 23 when they're allowed to use the courts and when they have to give way to the other racket 24 sport. I also think there needs to be clarification if a pickleball is being used, do they have 25 to use up one court before they can use a second court, so that you're not spread out with 26 maybe six pickleball players on the three tennis courts. Some consideration of the actual 27 rules and maybe comments from both pickleball players and tennis players might be of 28 assistance. It would be interesting if you looked into facilities like SCRA where they have 29 mixed use, and their pickleball courts are a lot less confusing because of the way they're 30 painted in a light blue tone. Exploring some of those ideas would be useful to do. I did 31 want to say thank you for looking at this with fresh eyes and preserving the ability to have 32 lit courts. Do keep in the back of your mind that the Cubberley court should also be lit for 33 tennis. Thank you. 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 12 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Runlong Zhou to be followed by Robin Cook. 1 Runlong Zhou: Hi. My name is Runlong Zhou. I'm a resident of Palo Alto. I want to give 2 some opinion about the proposal. First of all, thanks for all the effort of sharing the 3 resource. That's definitely something we all support. In the meantime, I want to point out 4 that we have about 12,000 kids, and those kids use the tennis court quite a bit. The resource 5 currently we have is already very limited. Most of them actually using the court after the 6 school and maybe in the evening as well. Some of the kids ride bike to come to the courts. 7 Given the propose 2 day or even 3 days of the weekday, if we don't allow those kids to play 8 locally, I would worry that they would probably have to ride their bike much further away, 9 which can cause traffic, which can cause safety concerns. I would like to see that when we 10 make this proposal probably we want to share the tennis resource with the pickleball 11 community at the school time when our kids are in school and that they don't necessarily 12 use the court quite a lot. When the school is off, I think our kids more often will be using 13 the tennis courts quite a lot. We don't want to create that concern and the traffic concern, 14 especially the parent concern of their kids. That change probably need to be considered 15 about how our kids will be impacted because of this policy. 16 Chair McDougall: Thank you, Mr. Zhou. Robin Cook. Dave Charney [phonetic]. 17 Dave Charney: I'm Dave Charney, a member of the Palo Alto Pickleball Club. I just want 18 to say I support the work you're doing on changing the policy to formally bring pickleball 19 players onto the courts. What you've written is great. 20 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Sam McConnell. Susan McConnell; I'm sorry. 21 Susan McConnell: Hi. My name is Susan McConnell. I'm a member of the Palo Alto 22 Pickleball Club. We are in the process of changing our name, because we think it's more 23 appropriate and our membership of Palo Alto residents has increased dramatically, from 24 Silicon Valley Pickleball Club to Palo Alto Pickleball Club. I've been a resident of Palo 25 Alto for 45 years. I would like to thank the Park and Rec Department and particularly 26 Adam for his dedication in bringing this new policy. Previously, pickleball had no policy. 27 You may not realize that we have almost 150 members who live in Palo Alto. This number 28 will continue to increase due to the pickleball classes taught by Monica Williams through 29 the Palo Alto Rec Department. Our total membership as of June 2018 was 358; slightly 30 more than 40 percent of our membership consists of Palo Alto residents. The membership 31 of the Palo Alto Tennis Club is declining. We believe that we now have many more Palo 32 Alto residents in our club, and we keep growing. Thank you. 33 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Ann Lemmenes [phonetic] followed by Sam Friedman. 34 Ann Lemmenes: Hi. My name is Ann Lemmenes, and I'm a member of the Palo Alto 35 Pickleball Club and a resident of Palo Alto for 20-plus years. My husband was born and 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 13 raised here. I'm formerly a tennis player and now a converted pickleball player. I'd like to 1 thank the Palo Alto Parks and Rec Department and particularly Adam Howard for his 2 dedication in bringing us this new policy. It's certainly preferable to the current policy 3 which does not address pickleball at all. You might be interested to know that tennis clubs 4 throughout the country are coping with their declining memberships by starting pickleball 5 programs. Locally, the University Club, Los Altos Golf and Country Club, Fremont Hills, 6 Sunnyvale Tennis Center, and Alamaden Valley Athletic Club have embraced pickleball. 7 The iconic Bobby Riggs Club in San Diego turned towards pickleball 2 years ago and now 8 has more pickleball players than tennis players and is enjoying a new source of revenue. 9 On a personal note, I find it interesting that when I visit my sister in Wisconsin, there are 10 multiple dedicated pickleball courts. She's out in the country, but multiple venues within 11 a 20-minute radius from her rural home. I just think it would be really helpful to achieve 12 at least one dedicated pickleball venue here in Palo Alto. Thank you. 13 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Sam Friedman followed by Rich Pearson. 14 Sam Friedman: Good evening. My name is Sam Friedman. I'm a member of the Palo 15 Alto Pickleball Club and a resident of Palo Alto since 1972. I would like to thank the Parks 16 and Recreation Department for this new policy. Please note we have between 40 and 80 17 people using three courts 7 days a week. On many days, newly resurfaced tennis courts 1-18 4 are empty while courts 5-7 are full of pickleball players. Pickleball has exploded in 19 popularity, and Palo Alto needs to expand and modify its sports facilities to meet this need. 20 Anyone who has been playing this game for more than a month will tell you pickleball is 21 not a fad. I thank you and ask for serious consideration of establishing dedicated pickleball 22 courts in Palo Alto in the near future. 23 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Rich Pearson followed by Lori Michael. 24 Rich Pearson: Hi. My name is Rich Pearson, and I'm a member of the Palo Alto Pickleball 25 Club. I'm a resident of Palo Alto and have been for the last 12 years. I would like to thank 26 the Parks and Recreation Department and Adam Howard especially for your hard work on 27 this policy. It's an improvement over the current policy. Having said that, we really need 28 permanent courts. Earlier this year, I understood that funds had been earmarked for a 29 pickleball court conversion project at Mitchell Park. Now, I've learned that the courts will 30 only be resurfaced at this time. As a Palo Alto taxpayer, this is very concerning to me. 31 Why can't we do it all at once? If we can't convert all three courts, can we convert at least 32 one? It sounds like a waste of money to me to do it in two steps. Also, what steps can we 33 take to get the court conversion project back on the agenda? It feels like we've lost 34 momentum, and I really want to get it back. Thank you. 35 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Lori Michael followed by Susan Kearney. 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 14 Lori Michelle [phonetic]: Hello. My name is Lori Michelle. I'm a resident of Palo Alto 1 and a member of the Palo Alto Pickleball Association. I'd like to thank the Palo Alto Parks 2 and Recreation Department for considering this policy change. In particular, thank you to 3 Adam Howard. It's certainly preferable to the current policy, which really doesn't address 4 pickleball at all. It may not take into account that published numbers state that Palo Alto 5 has over 51,000 residents and 12,000 are seniors. A large percentage of our club in general 6 is seniors. This is because it's an easy game to learn, the games are short, and there's a lot 7 of socializing. This socializing is the magic that has brought many of these folks to this 8 room today. Pickleball brings us together, keeps us physically active, and it's fun. We 9 would love it if we could get more permanent courts in the future. Thank you for the 10 progress to date. 11 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Susan Kearney followed by Jerry Krumbein. 12 Susan Kearney: Good evening. I'm Susan Kearney. I'm a member of the Palo Alto 13 Pickleball Club. I want to thank Parks and Rec, especially Adam Howard, for his effort on 14 this policy. I support the change in policy. It's a big improvement. Essentially, I think it's 15 a very good first step. I'm also grateful to Palo Alto's leadership and vision regarding this 16 relatively new and growing sport. I was able to travel around a little bit this summer and 17 was able to play pickleball in Hawaii and San Francisco and Lake Tahoe. Nobody that I 18 saw has the membership and the enthusiasm and the number of people playing that we do 19 here. I hope we can continue to grow the organization. Thank you. 20 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Jerry followed by Linda Lettes [phonetic]. 21 Jerry Krumbein: That's Jerry Krumbein by the way. Like all the speakers before me, I too 22 am a member of the Palo Alto Pickleball Club and a Palo Alto resident for the last 50 years. 23 Reinforcing what others have said, thank you to the Commission and to Adam for what 24 you've done in looking at this policy. Palo Alto has 45 tennis courts and no pickleball 25 courts that are dedicated. Obviously, to everybody here it's something we would all like 26 you to do. We know you're talking about resurfacing the courts at Mitchell Park. That 27 would obviously be a time to put in a dedicated court, at least on court 5. However, you 28 could dedicate that court now just like that. I noticed several weeks ago when I walked in 29 two people were playing tennis on that court and 20 people were standing around waiting 30 for them to finish. That's not real neighborly, and it's a potential cause of contention that I 31 know nobody would like to see. I know you've been talking about creating a dedicated 32 court and building something new, but that's in the future. We'd love you to do something 33 now. Whatever it costs, if it goes above the budget that you think is reasonable, I know the 34 Palo Alto Pickleball Club will be glad to help create a partnership that will be a win-win 35 for everybody. Give it some thought. We're all going to be there tomorrow. We hope that 36 maybe there will be a place for us to do it. Thank you very much. 37 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Linda Lettes followed by Thomas Foladare. 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 15 Linda Lettes: My name is Linda Lettes. I'm a member of the Palo Alto Pickleball Club, 1 and I'm a resident of Palo Alto. I moved here in 1964. I want to thank you all for this 2 updated court policy. I'm also here because I wanted to let you know how much fun I am 3 having playing pickleball with everybody here. I also wanted to let you know that when I 4 was growing up the tennis courts were always full. If I was going to go play tennis, which 5 I loved doing, I knew I'd have to wait about an hour for a court to open up. That was just 6 part of the experience. In the number of decades since then, I've noticed that the tennis 7 courts are never full any more and often completely empty. It used to make me sad, as my 8 daughter will tell you—I've told her a thousand times—the courts used to be vibrant. The 9 good news is that over at Mitchell Park the pickleball courts have come alive again. It's 10 because everyday there are pickleball players filling up the courts. For years now, there 11 has been room for something like pickleball. Now that there's so much interest in the sport, 12 I urge you to dedicate some of those courts over at Mitchell Park to pickleball. Just that 13 comment about—I didn't quite understand, but I thought you said there were only lit courts 14 at Mitchell Park. There are lit courts at Rinconada too. We just looked it up, and the drive 15 between those two parks is just 6 minutes. Thank you very much. 16 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Thomas followed by Jamie Pearson [phonetic]. 17 Thomas Foladare: My name's Tom Foladare. I am the founder of pickleball at Mitchell 18 Park. I did that in 2014. I want to thank the Commission for all the work that they've done 19 in the last 2 years. I want to thank Adam for allowing me to abuse him for the last 4 years. 20 The policy that is being presented tonight is actually pretty good, but I'm not sure it takes 21 into account the growth of pickleball as it stands today. In 2014 when we founded the 22 game, there were about 7,000 paddles being sold in the United States per month. Right 23 now there are 32,000 paddles being sold per month, so the growth is starting to hit a hyper-24 growth stage. Indian Wells Tennis Center, which is the premier tennis center in California, 25 has just signed an agreement to hold the national championships for pickleball for the next 26 5 years. They have 2,000 players playing this year, and the registrations were done in about 27 15 minutes. The local tournament, the senior games, which I'm the tournament director, is 28 growing 50 percent year over year. This year we had 200 members. I wanted to also talk 29 about the scale of tournaments. The City of Naples in Florida this year is claiming that 30 they will bring $6 million into their economy because of their pickleball facilities. 31 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Jamie Pearson followed by Marlene Kawahara [phonetic]. 32 Jamie Pearson: Hi everybody. My name is Jamie Pearson. I'm a member of the Palo Alto 33 Pickleball Club. I have lived in Palo Alto, where I own a home and pay taxes, for 12 years. 34 Like everyone else, I want to thank the Parks and Rec Department for all the hard work 35 you've done and for recognizing pickleball and carving out a space for us at Mitchell Park. 36 It means a lot. The policy is a great improvement. Having said that, we really need 37 permanent courts, and we need them sooner rather than later. Many of you probably don't 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 16 know what it takes to set up our portable nets, so let me tell you what that's like. Every 1 single time we want to play, we lug bags of nets to the courts. They weigh 25 pounds; they 2 contain 12 pieces of steel tubing that we have to organize and assemble as well as nets that 3 need to be unrolled, installed, and tightened. It's time consuming. It's a multi-person job 4 and has kind of a steep learning curve. When we're done playing, it all has to be taken 5 down, re-bagged, lugged away, and stored. This is why I'm asking the City for permanent 6 pickleball courts. I honestly think it's only fair that the City provide facilities equal to those 7 that are provided to the tennis community. If the tennis players had to set up and take down 8 their courts every single time they played, they'd play a whole lot less tennis. None of us 9 is getting any younger. We'd love to see this happen sooner rather than later. Thank you. 10 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Marlene followed by Barrie O'Donnell. 11 Marlene Kawahara: Marlene Kawahara. I've been a resident of Palo Alto for 25 years. I 12 just started playing pickleball about a month ago. I found out about it from a friend in 13 Marin. The community is so welcoming and so gracious with their time in teaching me to 14 how play. It's a lot of fun. I get a lot of sweat when I play. I encourage you to set up some 15 permanent courts for us. Thank you. 16 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Dave Winters followed by—pardon me. Barrie O'Donnell 17 followed by Dave Winters. 18 Barrie O'Donnell: Hi. My name's Barrie O'Donnell. I'm a Palo Alto resident and have 19 been living here in Palo Alto for 11 years. My son's at Gunn. I've been exposed to sports 20 my whole life, coached little league right here in Palo Alto. Like everyone else here, I 21 thank all of you for taking up this issue and appreciate all the work you've done. I think 22 you're moving things in the right direction. Having said that, I still think the City can do 23 better. As others have said, the demand for this sport is huge. It's a life-changing type of 24 sport, addresses all kinds of demographic groups. This policy is a good first step and should 25 be taken, but I can guarantee very quickly we should be moving on to dedicated courts. 26 One of the things Jamie did not mention, the last speaker, was there's also a first step to 27 setting up these courts. Believe it or not, you have to have a combination to a lock on a 28 metal box to even get to the nets to set up pickleball. Imagine for a minute that you want 29 to play this sport, how difficult it would be and the kind of barriers that are already in place 30 for playing this sport here in the City. Yet, we still have hundreds of people coming out to 31 do it. I'd just ask you to maybe raise the bar even a little higher, take this important first 32 step. It will make a big difference, and it'll help us measure a lot of things we need to 33 measure. Be ready that we'll be coming back and pushing as hard as we can for the 34 dedicated courts that are going to help so many residents. Thank you. 35 Chair McDougall: Dave Winters followed by Peter Diepenbrock. I would just remind—36 when I say followed by, if that person could be getting ready. Dave. 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 17 Dave Winters: Hi. My name's Dave Winters. I'm actually a resident of Saratoga, but my 1 son works at Palantir. I hope that helps a little bit. I just wanted to thank the Parks and 2 Rec for the change in policy. I think it's going to really help. I'm a member of the Palo 3 Alto Pickleball Club and use the courts quite regularly. I just wanted to make sure you 4 guys are aware of the differences between pickleball and other sports in how it's played. I 5 liken it to pick-up basketball where you can just show up, and there's a community of 6 players there. Each game is only 15 minutes. I play with some people; I play with some 7 others, some different skill levels. It's a lot of fun, and I get a lot of exercise. I've lost 30 8 pounds since I started playing about 4 years ago. The dynamic of the game and the way 9 it's played—it's short games, and you switch players. It builds a community, and that's 10 what we have here in Palo Alto. I'd like to reinforce that. We've got good growth here and 11 a good spot at Mitchell Park. We've taken a first step in moving that forward. Thanks for 12 your time. 13 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Peter will be followed by Janet Diepenbrock. 14 Peter Diepenbrock: Hello. My name is Peter Diepenbrock, and I'm a member of the Palo 15 Alto Pickleball Club. I'd like to thank all of you for considering this new policy. Thank 16 you very much, Adam, for your work on this. We also started a youth class this summer, 17 that was very successful in Palo Alto. Palo Alto and pickleball can really be a great sport 18 for all types of athletes. I'm in a little bit of a unique position having taught the youth of 19 Palo Alto at Palo Alto High School for the last 22 years, having taught tennis and pickleball. 20 It's incredible to me the change of the last 22 years as far as how popular pickleball has 21 become. The other thing that should be pointed out that pickleball is unique is that in 22 today's culture and youth with all the club sports going on and the amount of hours kids 23 put in to specialize in certain sports before they even get to high school, a lot of high school 24 athletics is predetermined before they set their foot on Palo Alto High School campus. 25 Pickleball has been a great sport for kids that don't have a sport by the time they get to high 26 school. They're able to pick it up fairly quickly in class. It's really, really been growing in 27 popularity over the years. Like has been said, tennis is definitely not nearly as popular in 28 the last 5-10 years. The other thing that should be pointed out also, when you go by these 29 courts, is tennis players to every court there's two obviously, maybe four players at the 30 absolute most. Every time there's pickleball players playing, there's 16 players on every 31 tennis court. Those are the points I'd like to make. Thank you very much. 32 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Janet will be followed by Monica Williams. 33 Janet Diepenbrock: Hi. My pickleball name is JD Diepenbrock. I'm a member of the Palo 34 Alto Pickleball Club and a resident of Menlo Park. I would like to thank the Palo Alto 35 Parks Rec Department and particularly Adam Howard for your dedication in bringing us 36 this policy. Thank you. 37 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Monica will be followed by Ed Anderson. 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 18 Monica Williams: Good evening, Chair McDougall and Commission. I'm Monica 1 Williams with the Palo Alto Pickleball Club. I'm representing all the Palo Alto pickleball-2 playing families that couldn't be here tonight because of back to school night. We want to 3 thank Adam, of course, for working so hard on this court policy update and the Commission 4 for all the work that you have done. We want to allow us—and for allowing us to reserve 5 the courts. However, this does not address the necessity for permanent pickleball courts. 6 When we first appealed to you to update the court policy, we only had 80 members in our 7 club. You can figure that out, how many we have now. We'd like to know when can we 8 expect to play on dedicated courts. Despite the recent heavy recreational use of the courts 9 by Palo Alto residents playing pickleball, the City has been able to delay and avoid taking 10 any action to facilitate that play because of the initiative and private funding from 11 volunteers who provide nets and equipment as well as free instruction. We need permanent 12 pickleball courts. Because pickleball is a noisy sport, we are limited as to where we can 13 play. Mitchell Park is the only facility in Palo Alto where we can play and that does not 14 have residences within earshot. Tennis players have a choice of 45 tennis courts, but we 15 have none. If you can look at Mitchell Park and take the facility that's already there, we 16 don't need to build any more courts right now. Just take what's there, resurface the courts, 17 put permanent nets on court 5, multiuse line all the others, and everybody will be happy. 18 Please listen to Palo Alto taxpayers. In respect to your time, not everyone here will take 19 time to speak. May I ask all Palo Alto pickleball-playing, taxpaying voters to stand up so 20 that you didn't have to speak, and it saved a lot of time? Thank you, Commission. Please 21 come and play pickleball with us sometime. 22 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Ed Anderson followed by Kathy Danaher. 23 Ed Anderson: Hello. My name is Ed Anderson. I'm a Palo Alto resident and member of 24 the Palo Alto Pickleball Club. I thank the Commission for developing this detailed 25 proposal. I also have to say that this club has been one of the most welcoming and 26 enjoyable communities that I've been a member of in a long time. I'm really enjoying it. 27 I'm also a tennis player and understand the frustration of arriving at the courts and finding 28 them co-opted by a few dozen pickleball players. This is a good short-term solution, and 29 I'm definitely in favor of this new policy. Considering the national growth in this game 30 and also the local growth, I would like to urge the Commission to consider creating a few 31 dedicated pickleball courts. Thank you. 32 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Kathy followed by Anne Savage. 33 Kathy Danaher: My name is Kathy Danaher, and I live in Los Altos but only 10 minutes 34 away from Mitchell Park. It has been a life-changing experience to be involved in this 35 sport. You've heard it all tonight. Thank you to Adam and all of you for listening to us. 36 The fact that we can perhaps get reservations is good, and courts would be even better, 37 even really better. 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 19 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Anne Savage followed by Kathy Levinson. 1 Anne Savage: Hi. My name is Anne Savage; I live in Redwood City. I just really would 2 like to second everything people have said already. It's a fantastic game, and we really 3 need courts. Thank you. 4 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Jerry Fan [phonetic]. 5 Kathy Levinson: My name is Kathy Levinson. I've been a Palo Alto resident for more 6 than 40 years. I guess I was a resident before I was born. I'm a tennis player, a racquetball 7 player, and a pickleball player. I want to thank you all for your work on this effort, and 8 specifically for Adam to suggest the changes to the court reservation policy. I want to 9 acknowledge that what it basically does is give pickleball an opportunity to have priority 10 during certain times on three of the City's 45 tennis courts. I want to also make it clear 11 that, yes, courts 5-7 are lit in Mitchell but so are 1-4. We are unable to use courts 1-4 12 because they're not lined for pickleball. Courts 1-4 are right next to the paddle tennis courts 13 that Adam mentioned, but we can't use them. The paddle tennis courts in addition to being 14 restriped actually need modification because they're dangerous to play on. I just wanted 15 that to be clear as well. While I appreciate the change in policy, it's still falling short of the 16 national trends in terms of creating accessibility for pickleball play, as you've heard from 17 everybody who spoke tonight. So far, I think the City has been able to defer installing 18 dedicated pickleball courts but still have so much recreational use because of the 19 willingness by and private funding from volunteers like myself who provide nets, who 20 provide equipment, and who provide instruction all without any recompense from the City. 21 Historically, the Parks and Recreation Commission and the City of Palo Alto have 22 partnered with nonprofit friends groups to install public improvements. As such, our Palo 23 Alto Pickleball Club is prepared to make up the balance of the cost to convert a single 24 tennis court, specifically court number 5, into four dedicated courts should such cost exceed 25 the City's already earmarked funds for resurfacing courts 5, 6, and 7, which we understand 26 to be imminent. This is the type of public and private partnership that can produce a win-27 win for the City and for the public. Truly park resources should be in alignment with the 28 community's needs. Continuing the same level of support for a sport, tennis, that has 29 flatlined if not declined locally as well as nationally over the past decade is not being 30 responsive to the community's interests. Thank you. 31 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Jerry Fan. 32 Jerry Fan: Hi. My name's Jerry Fan. I'm in Palo Alto for 10 years, paying tax for 10 years 33 for sure. Thank you very much for the effort. I definitely support the court share. I'm an 34 active tennis player, playing in Mitchell Park for 10 years. This week is U.S. Open; right 35 now is playing tennis. Here tennis is not popular. You look at a TV, you look everywhere, 36 U.S. Open underway in New York, one of the four Grand Slams. In recent years, all of 37 these Grand Slams have been lack of U.S. citizens to win it, (inaudible) like 10 years ago. 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 20 That (inaudible) a lot of awareness in the nation. One example is hosting more tournament 1 to (inaudible) more tennis players to compete in the international level. Today in the 2 evening here, we're talking about taking a court away. If there's no court, how can we get 3 our next generation to come up to compete in the world? I support the sharing; it's a great 4 thing. Just two things. First, after you guys play the pickleball, please clean up your lines 5 if that is possible. So many lines on the court is confusing. Number two, the parking seem 6 to cause some disturbance to kids' parents, so please be careful for that. Thank you. 7 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Jenny Chin [phonetic]. 8 Jenny Chin: Hi. My name's Jenny Chin; I'm a Palo Alto resident since 1994. I've been 9 playing at Mitchell Park tennis courts since 1994. Although pickleball play is getting 10 popular, it's not to say that there's no demand for tennis. I think there's still a great demand 11 for tennis. The City should really look into building permanent pickleball courts rather 12 than taking courts away from the tennis players. You start with one child, and you have a 13 meal. You have another child. Are you going to only give the first child 50 percent? No, 14 you should buy a second meal for the child. This is a similarity. I have to stress that the 15 lit courts are very important for south Palo Alto because Mitchell Park is the only lit courts 16 in south Palo Alto. There is instruction on the main court, so the public really doesn't have 17 that many lit courts to use if the other ones are converted to pickleball. I do have to say in 18 Rinconada, even though they are lit courts, they are very crowded at nights also because 19 people do need those lit courts from north Palo Alto. There is still a lot of demand for 20 tennis because my son competes in junior tournaments. We would go in the morning; I 21 have to help him warm up to get prepared for his tournament. We would go literally to 22 Mitchell Park, and it's all full. We go to Cubberley, all full. We go to Gunn, and luckily 23 sometimes we can find a court. Sometimes we can't. If he cannot find a court, we circle 24 back to Mitchell Park, and he just warm up against the wall. That's how he gets prepared 25 for tournament. There's another location I like to point out. My son plays tournaments at 26 the Willow Glen Middle School sometimes. The school actually has nine permanent 27 pickleball courts. They were not converted from tennis. I would say a lot of time they're 28 empty. If there are some day senior tournaments on the weekend, maybe it can be hosted 29 there because it's not being heavily used. I'm there a lot for my son's tennis tournament. I 30 can see they're not really heavily used. Thank you. 31 Chair McDougall: Thank you. I have one card from Robin Cook. I want to make sure 32 that everybody has a chance to speak who has submitted a card. I don't remember that that 33 person spoke. Thank you all very much. I would like to thank the public for their candid 34 comments. I'd like to thank everyone for being brief and civil. I would like to thank 35 everyone for tolerating my destruction of many of their names. I appreciate the tolerance 36 of my mispronunciation. To be consistent with the appropriate approach, what I'd like to 37 do is go from left to right across here with questions to Adam in the first round, and then 38 we'll go to comments, and then we'll go to a motion. Commissioner McCauley. 39 APPROVED Draft Minutes 21 Commissioner McCauley: Thanks. Adam, you've been thanked many times tonight. It's 1 well deserved I think. I will add my thanks as well. You've been very responsive to this 2 group who said "try and come up with some interim way to accommodate pickleball." I 3 think you've done a nice job. Well done. Why are we concentrating pickleball courts only 4 at Mitchell and not more broadly across other City courts? 5 Mr. Howard: Some of those reasons have been discussed. Location in terms of residences 6 around the courts in general in terms of noise. The other one is pickleball is a very big 7 social event, so there are a lot of people there. You need a lot of parking to be available. 8 It's just general use. Those courts were used because they weren't reserved as much as the 9 other courts. There's still a lot of public drop-in, but they weren't reserved as much. 10 Commissioner McCauley: Several speakers mentioned the set up and take down of the 11 pickleball courts. Would it be possible to have one court where the default setup would be 12 the equipment stays up, and would that require any further action from this Commission or 13 the City Council if you wanted to make that possible? 14 Mr. Howard: Ultimately, that would be the decision, to make those dedicated pickleball 15 courts. Unless you're saying "or tennis courts could go up or tennis nets." 16 Commissioner McCauley: As I understand it, presently the pickleball nets are not 17 permanent. There would be a potential issue around maintaining the security of those nets. 18 I don't know if that would be an issue or not. If it were possible perhaps to allow the nets 19 to stay up on one court, that might be an accommodation that is appreciated without making 20 it permanent necessarily. Is that possible? 21 Chair McDougall: Commissioner McCauley, could we stick to questions? I think you got 22 an answer. 23 Mr. Howard: If you left the nets up and made it available to someone who could put up 24 tennis court nets, that would be a possibility. As they said, it's really been up to a committed 25 group of people to do it. They've purchased the box that they store those nets in. Could 26 we reverse it on some courts? I believe we could. 27 Commissioner McCauley: I wanted to get your feedback on two possible amendments to 28 what you provided us in terms of the policy. The first is on paragraph 3, a general question. 29 Would it be beneficial to the staff to have this be a little bit more general, a little bit more 30 discretion in the staff? Presently, it's worded courts are available for reservation for Palo 31 Alto Tennis Club and USTA tournament match use only. It continues that Mitchell Park 32 courts 5, 6, 7 are available for reservation by pickleball organizations. Are you with me? 33 Would it be easier on staff, particularly as trends, preferences, uses of the courts may 34 change in the future, to say simply that—rather than lining out specific organizations that 35 can reserve them, to give staff more discretion? Would that be helpful or is that … 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 22 Mr. Howard: Something around those lines is important. Even as they said it's not even 1 the Silicon Valley Pickleball Club. Somewhere more of an organizational verbiage would 2 be a good idea, so we're not selective to one. There could be other groups down the road. 3 Commissioner McCauley: My second question is about the second sentence there, 4 Mitchell Park courts 5, 6, 7 are available for reservation by pickleball organizations but 5 only for approved tournaments. When we do have tournaments for pickleball, they can 6 reserve more than just courts 5, 6, 7, correct? Is that the intended … 7 Mr. Howard: Unless it's a special event like senior games. 8 Commissioner McCauley: I understand. It might require a slight clarification then. As it 9 reads now, it suggests that only 5, 6, and 7 would be able to be reserved for pickleball. 10 Mr. Howard: For a normal typical weekend tournament, that's what we would reserve. 11 Commissioner McCauley: Understood for typical play. I think one of the folks who plays 12 tennis mentioned that it would be helpful to have something along the lines of a statement 13 that players should be mindful to keep as many courts available for use as possible and that 14 pickleball should be consolidated to fewer courts rather than all three if there's not demand 15 at that time for pickleball. Do you have any thoughts on that one? 16 Mr. Howard: I think that's correct. We would want to write that in, to be neighborly. You 17 fill one court before you spill onto another one. That's a good suggestion. 18 Commissioner LaMere: Adam, thanks for all of your hard work. Do we have any data or 19 information on the tennis usage of Rinconada Park versus Mitchell Park or is it all 20 anecdotal? I'm just curious about court usage. 21 Mr. Howard: The only data we have that we could compare would be only USTA rentals 22 because those are the only ones that make formal reservations through our system. We 23 could track those numbers. Off the top of my head, I know it's basically in terms of USTA 24 reservations, Rinconada, Cubberley, then Mitchell in terms of rank of use. That does not 25 in any way take into account drop-in play. 26 Commissioner LaMere: For a little history or color for me, how was it determined that 27 Mitchell Park became the pickleball playing area? Was that a decision by the Palo Alto 28 recreation staff or did it happen organically? I'm just curious. 29 Mr. Howard: It really was an organic thing. They saw available space and started to use 30 it. 31 APPROVED Draft Minutes 23 Commissioner Moss: Same question but for Cubberley, how many reservations are there 1 for Cubberley? I live nearby, and there are very few people playing tennis at Cubberley in 2 the afternoons and the evenings. 3 Mr. Howard: I don't have the exact numbers. It's more weekend use at Cubberley than 4 afternoon use. 5 Commissioner Moss: Even on weekends, it seems like they're empty in the afternoons and 6 evenings. 7 Mr. Howard: They are most heavily used Saturday and Sunday mornings until like noon. 8 Commissioner Moss: Since land is so, so precious and I don't want to dig up athletic fields 9 to put in pickleball courts because that would be not good, how much would it cost to light 10 a tennis court? It looked like you have not including the school district about 30-some-odd 11 courts, and 16 of them are lit. If we lit all the rest of the public courts so that the tennis 12 players had that many more hours especially in the non-summer hours, how much would 13 that cost? Maybe somebody here would like to help fund that. 14 Mr. Howard: Just to light Cubberley's courts was $550,000. That's just six courts. 15 Commissioner Moss: How about renting lights? 16 Mr. Howard: I don't know. 17 Vice Chair Greenfield: I want to thank Adam for all of his hard work and pile on with the 18 "embarrass Adam club" for the evening. You've done very nice work. As a member of 19 the ad hoc working on this issue with Adam, I want to thank the community for all of their 20 input. I'd like the community to know that the ad hoc and staff has done a lot of work on 21 this. We appreciate the nuance that you brought up. It is a complex issue, but it is 22 something we're working to get resolution as quickly as we can. I do have a few questions, 23 one following up on the potential policy change to the neighborly plan to fill up one tennis 24 court with pickleball before moving to the next one. I support that. We should have a 25 similar policy that tennis players should look to fill up courts 1-4 before moving to courts 26 5-7. Would you agree with that? 27 Mr. Howard: I would agree to that. There is the caveat that 1 and 2 are typically used for 28 training classes that are run through the City. There's a little bit more limited use there. I 29 agree with the thought of filling up 1-4 first. 30 Vice Chair Greenfield: That would mean courts 1 and 2 weren't available. 31 Mr. Howard: Right, 3 and 4. 32 APPROVED Draft Minutes 24 Vice Chair Greenfield: I'm curious what the requirements are for membership in the Palo 1 Alto Pickleball Club? Is this a sign-up thing or are dues required? Do you have an 2 understanding of that? 3 Mr. Howard: I do not have that information. 4 Chair McDougall: Monica, would you like to answer that? 5 Ms. Williams: From now until the end of the year, it's $15 total. That's it. That goes 6 towards our balls (inaudible). For a full year, it's $30. We're a nonprofit, so we keep it 7 very low. To us the joy is playing pickleball. We don't (inaudible). 8 Vice Chair Greenfield: What is the schedule or is there a schedule for resurfacing courts 9 5-7 at this point? 10 Mr. Howard: Daren might have a better answer than me. Ultimately, we're ready to move 11 forward once we have a better understanding of what we're doing to do with pickleball. 12 Vice Chair Greenfield: I do have some questions or concerns about the policy change as 13 written. I don't know if we want to get into that now or not, Chair. 14 Chair McDougall: I'd like to stick with questions, and then we can comment. 15 Commissioner Cribbs. 16 Commissioner Cribbs: First of all, Adam, thank you and thanks to the other folks on the 17 ad hoc committee. Thank you to both the pickleball and the tennis community for all of 18 the thought and all the patience that you are exhibiting and for the information too about 19 pickleball. It's important for the community to understand the growth of pickleball and 20 what it means to the people who play it, especially the senior community. Having said 21 that, I have two questions. Can you confirm that we really do have seven lighted courts at 22 Mitchell and there are 5, 6, and 7 that are in question? 23 Mr. Howard: Correct. 24 Mr. Fan: I can answer that. Right now, 1-4 are lit, and 5, 6, 7 no light just Magical Bridge. 25 Mr. Howard: Typically, yes. Because of the Magical Bridge construction, the lights on 26 those courts don't work. I didn't know that. 27 Commissioner Cribbs: The lights don't work? 28 Mr. Howard: I guess there's something with the construction at the Magical Bridge. 29 Commissioner Cribbs: At some point … 30 APPROVED Draft Minutes 25 Mr. Howard: Typically, yes, they are lit. 1 Commissioner Cribbs: If we all went out there after the Magical Bridge construction, there 2 would be seven lighted courts? 3 Mr. Howard: Correct. 4 Commissioner Cribbs: It's great to have this list of what's lit and what's not lit. Can we go 5 back and look again at the cost of lighting courts at some point? Not tonight obviously, 6 but at some point just in general following the Commissioner's question about how much 7 it costs. 8 Mr. Howard: Certainly. The quote we have of the $550,000 is very recent, if that's what 9 you're referring to. 10 Commissioner Cribbs: Are they the cool lights that don't do a lot of extra shadows? Are 11 they LED lights? 12 Mr. Howard: I'm not sure. I don't know the details of what that quote entitled. That was 13 to light those courts at Cubberley. We can get specific. 14 Commissioner Cribbs: I'll have a comment after we get through questions. Thank you 15 very much. 16 Chair McDougall: Commissioner Reckdahl. 17 Commissioner Reckdahl: No questions right now. I'll wait for comments. 18 Chair McDougall: Let's start from the other direction. I'll give you the opportunity to 19 comment since you're ready. 20 Commissioner Reckdahl: First, I want to thank all the public. We really do want to hear 21 the feelings of the public, and we really appreciate you taking your time. I'm sure you have 22 better things to do tonight. Coming out here and expressing your opinion helps us do the 23 job better. If we don't know what the community wants, we can't make decisions. Thank 24 you for your time. Thank you, staff. There's been a lot of work on this. I do appreciate 25 that. I want to echo what Jeff was saying. Those two additions to the policy would be a 26 very good change, that you have to fill up courts 1-4 before you start going to 5, 6, 7 for 27 tennis players and that pickleball players fill up one tennis court at a time. That's it. 28 Female: (inaudible) 29 Chair McDougall: No. I don't think that's appropriate at this point. 30 APPROVED Draft Minutes 26 Commissioner Cribbs: In terms of the policy and sending it to the Council tonight with 1 our recommendation, I would now be in favor of doing that. Thank you again for outlining 2 it all. I would love it if we all could find a way to shorten the time length of making an 3 assessment about where we are and how we're going to dedicate pickleball courts, at least 4 one but hopefully three. That's what I'd like to see. 5 Vice Chair Greenfield: I was going to make a similar suggestion of support for looking at 6 how we can consider moving the timeline along. I do appreciate we're stuck amidst the 7 Palo Alto process. We're working through it, but this has been going on a long time. I do 8 appreciate that the policy change as drafted now is the right change to make at this time. 9 It does address a number of primary needs for the pickleball community while also 10 respecting the needs of the tennis community. It's meeting the primary request of 11 legitimizing and authorizing pickleball play on tennis courts. Secondly, there are 12 provisions added to support the tournament reservations, which are in practice anyway. 13 Third, we are now dedicating specific evening slots for pickleball. This is very important 14 and will be interesting to help the community gauge the need and the use of pickleball 15 courts in the evening. There's some question about that right now; there's not so much 16 question about pickleball usage on weekends and during the mornings. It'll be very 17 interesting to see how the evening plays out. Fourth, we should emphasize that we are 18 working to immediately dedicate two permanent pickleball courts by converting the paddle 19 tennis courts to properly configure pickleball courts. We are looking to have two pickleball 20 courts that will support walk-up play. It's a very important consideration. I do appreciate 21 the logistic difficulty and impossibility of having walk-up pickleball play if you don't have 22 a combination for the locker, if you're not a part of the club. We want to be inclusive with 23 all of our recreational opportunities within the community. I will be supporting this policy 24 change. I do have a couple of very minor changes to section 12, court usage, which used 25 to be called tennis court usage. Under section 2, the fifth … 26 Chair McDougall: Commissioner Greenfield, if we're going to get into specific changes, 27 the proper approach would be that we need a motion to adopt the recommendation, and 28 then we need motions within that to modify. Kristen, can you help me with that? 29 Ms. O'Kane: If the Commission is going to pass a motion that's different than the staff 30 recommendation, we need those specifics in the motion. Commissioner Greenfield could 31 share those for discussion. 32 Chair McDougall: If you shared those right now for a second, we could come back to them 33 within—let's see if we're going to accept the recommendation or if we're going to make 34 substantial changes to it. 35 Vice Chair Greenfield: I'm happy to share the changes I'm suggesting a little bit further 36 on. They're basically superficial, and it's taking out the word tennis in many places where 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 27 courts are no longer specifically tennis courts. They're multiuse courts. Thank you. That's 1 all. 2 Commissioner Moss: I have several comments. We're talking mainly about the public 3 courts. There are 24 courts in the school district. Referring to the teacher's comments 4 about students, if the parents could work with PAUSD to get some of those courts to be 5 pickleball courts, that would be outside of our jurisdiction but would get them more playing 6 time. The court usage that you have here is only for those three courts in Mitchell Park 7 because I suggest that we do the exact same thing for Cubberley but do it in reverse so that 8 you have on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the evenings you can't play pickleball at Mitchell, 9 but maybe you can play pickleball at one court in Cubberley. It doesn't change this but 10 where we implement it. We should be thinking more than just those 5, 6, 7 courts. That 11 will increase the number of courts available for pickleball without impacting the tennis 12 players. I understand that this sport is growing, but I have very strong feeling for the Palo 13 Alto residents first. I want to make sure that we don't have unlimited growth. As I 14 mentioned earlier, our parks are heavily impacted by dozens and dozens of stakeholders. I 15 don't want to tear up other parts of the parks to add more pickleball courts just because 16 there are more players. I want there to be some reasonable limits in the number of 17 pickleballers that are using Palo Alto courts. I don't think we can do that now; I don't think 18 we're at that point now. It's just something to think about. Palo Alto is very restricted as 19 far as land. These rules are complicated, and we should post them so that people who come 20 up and haven't been to this meeting and aren't pickleballers know what the rules are. That's 21 all I have. Thanks. 22 Commissioner LaMere: It's obvious to recognize pickleball's growth and their impact on 23 this community. It's very important that we move as quickly as we can to figure out a 24 permanent facility and a permanent solution. We're finally getting traction and we're 25 developing court usage rules. It's very important. Adam, I'm glad this is coming to fruition. 26 Figuring out a permanent solution is going to be very important especially seeing the 27 growth of the sport. 28 Commissioner McCauley: I will very quickly echo two of David's comments. Thinking 29 about Cubberley or whatever other park where you might have a reverse schedule of this 30 schedule you have at Mitchell makes a lot of sense. Forgive me, David. Your other point, 31 I've already forgotten it, but it was a good one. 32 Chair McDougall: He made two other points. One was … 33 Commissioner Moss: (inaudible) 34 Commissioner McCauley: It's fine. That's it for me. I have a couple of amendments to 35 offer as well. I think it's on the table, so to speak. The policy's on the table, right? 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 28 Chair McDougall: Is it on the table for discussion and amendment or do we need a motion 1 before it's on the table? I think you need a motion before we start amending it. 2 Ms. O'Kane: Correct. 3 Chair McDougall: Can I have a motion then? 4 MOTION 5 Commissioner Reckdahl: I so move. 6 Chair McDougall: A second? 7 Commissioner Moss: I second. 8 Chair McDougall: Just to make it clear, Commissioner Reckdahl is moving and 9 Commissioner Moss is seconding that we approve the staff recommendation relative to the 10 Palo Alto Field and Tennis Court Use Policy, maybe the Court Use Policy. Are there any 11 comments that either of you would like to make in defense of the motion? 12 Commissioner Reckdahl: I think everyone agrees that this is not a permanent solution. 13 This is just a first step and will give us, as Commissioner Greenfield mentioned, good data. 14 We right now do not have any evening hours for pickleball. We'll see how that goes, and 15 we may be expanding that or shrinking that. I view this as just a step in the right direction, 16 but we still have a lot more work to do. I think the right move is to accept it and keep on 17 working, pushing the other aspects. 18 Chair McDougall: Does anybody have any other comments on the motion on the floor? 19 Vice Chair Greenfield: I'd like to suggest some amendments. 20 Chair McDougall: Please. Do we need a motion or do we just need—you make your 21 amendments, and then you get to … 22 AMENDMENTS TO THE POLICY 23 Vice Chair Greenfield: The maker of the motion can accept the amendments. The first 24 amendment is in section 12 under court usage, bullet number 5, no pickleball and tennis on 25 the same court, to capitalize the "t" for tennis to be consistent with what's done elsewhere 26 in the document. In section 12 under number 4, the bottom line, to strike the word tennis 27 regarding tennis or pickleball lessons for compensation on City-owned courts, just calling 28 them courts instead of tennis courts. 29 APPROVED Draft Minutes 29 Commissioner Reckdahl: Who's the official note-taker here because we're going to have 1 to modify this? 2 Ms. O'Kane: I'm taking notes, but we'll also have it in the transcript. 3 AMENDMENTS TO THE POLICY 4 Vice Chair Greenfield: I've got it printed out as well. The second part of the suggested 5 amendment is to change the name of the attachment B policy from the City of Palo Alto 6 Field and Tennis Court Use Policy, striking the word tennis. I don't know if we want to 7 include the word racket in the court policy to distinguish these courts from basketball 8 courts. It could become the City of Palo Alto Field and Racket Court Use Policy or simply 9 the Court Use Policy. I'd be open to suggestions from staff on that. There are six uses of 10 the word tennis before court in other sections of this policy of which section 12 was the 11 highlighted section to be amended. I'm suggesting that the word tennis be removed. In the 12 first instance under the purpose of the policy, the second bullet reads currently to establish 13 policies and procedures governing the use of City parks, fields, tennis courts, and district 14 playing fields managed by the City of Palo Alto. In that case, we'd probably want to include 15 the word racket in front of courts. All other uses in the other five locations, just strike the 16 word tennis. That's all I have. I'm open to questions or comments. 17 Chair McDougall: Are those amendments acceptable? 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah, they're acceptable. 19 Chair McDougall: Does anybody else have any amendments that they would like to 20 suggest? Commissioner McCauley. 21 Commissioner McCauley: Paragraph 3—I welcome input from both staff and other 22 Commissioners on this—change it to read courts are available for reservation by racket 23 sport organizations for tournament and match play consistent with the available court 24 facilities and CSD recreation priorities. Mitchell Park courts 5, 6, and 7 have priority for 25 pickleball tournament use. Adam, I would in the first instance welcome your feedback on 26 that. 27 Mr. Howard: I appreciate the idea of what we're going for. I want it to be non-specific 28 enough to allow us flexibility but specific enough to where we're not getting a lot of 29 additional inquiries. What I'm specifically thinking about is the USTA match play. We do 30 get a lot of school requests from the private schools to come out and play on our courts for 31 their matches, which currently we can say no to because they're not USTA match play. I 32 have a little bit of concern about removing that. We're pretty specific about USTA in terms 33 of match play. Being vague in the other instances is a good idea. 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 30 Commissioner McCauley: How would you propose wording that? 1 Mr. Howard: I was afraid you were going to ask me that. Maybe something around the 2 lines of USTA match play and then speak about nonprofit racket sports organizations, so 3 we're a little bit inclusive of—I'm not sure that would work. Honestly, I don't have a great 4 answer right now. 5 Chair McDougall: Adam, while you think about it, Commissioner Greenfield has a 6 comment on that. 7 Vice Chair Greenfield: I'd like to comment on the amendment. I do appreciate 8 Commissioner McCauley's sentiment here. Reading Adam's response and my gut feeling 9 on this as well, I would suggest given that this policy—this is a first phase of a policy 10 change. I would recommend sending this consideration back to the ad hoc for further 11 consideration in a 3-6 month timeframe when we have the next update to the policy to give 12 us an opportunity to think through potential consequences and implications of the wording 13 change here. 14 AMENDMENT TO THE POLICY 15 Commissioner McCauley: I have no issue with that idea. That's fine. It was an amendment 16 in response to Adam's thought. That's perfectly fine. The other amendment in paragraph 17 2, where we have this series of bullets, would be to add a last bullet that has wording along 18 the lines of players should be mindful to keep as many courts available for use as possible 19 at any given time. Tennis and pickleball play should be consolidated to as few courts as 20 possible with consideration given to the use of courts 5, 6, and 7 for pickleball use. Adam, 21 again … 22 Mr. Howard: That makes sense. That echoes a lot of the concerns we had about making 23 sure we're using the courts appropriately. That's good wording to make that effective. 24 Chair McDougall: Commissioner Reckdahl, is that amendment okay with you? 25 Commissioner Reckdahl: I'm satisfied with that. I'm curious what the other members of 26 the ad hoc think about that. Do you like the wording? 27 Chair McDougall: Commissioner Moss, you're the seconder, so you should comment first. 28 Commissioner Moss: I'm thinking that we should go with what we've got and in 3-6 29 months come back and finish it up. 30 Vice Chair Greenfield: This is significant enough that we should consider addressing this 31 now. It has immediate implications for how the courts will be used and how the flow of 32 APPROVED Draft Minutes 31 people to—how mixed usage will really work in practice. We should consider adopting 1 this amendment at this time. 2 Chair McDougall: Did you say should or should not? 3 Vice Chair Greenfield: We should. I support Commissioner McCauley's amendment. 4 Chair McDougall: Do we have other comments for an amendment? Do we need to vote 5 on it then? I would call a vote on the—do we need a motion before we vote on it? 6 Ms. O'Kane: You need a motion on the amendment. 7 Chair McDougall: We need a motion on the amendment. Commissioner McCauley. 8 MOTION 9 Commissioner McCauley: I move to amend (inaudible). 10 Chair McDougall: As you dictated earlier. Do I have a second? 11 Vice Chair Greenfield: Second. 12 Chair McDougall: All those in favor? 13 Vice Chair Greenfield: We haven't voted on the policy. 14 Chair McDougall: We're voting on the amendments because I thought Commissioner 15 Moss was going to object. I'm just trying to make it clear. Pardon me? 16 Commissioner McCauley: (inaudible) Vice Chair Greenfield had mentioned. I think we 17 need to take a vote on that as well. 18 Chair McDougall: No, we don't need to vote on it. We only need to vote on it if it looks 19 like there's not unanimous—we don't need to vote on the amendments as we go through. 20 My mistake was I thought we had somebody who was objecting to that particular 21 amendment. That's all that's happening. While it interrupted our flow here, I know that 22 we're taking a long time. We're trying to do this properly. I know there are people in the 23 community that are with us tonight and that would like to continue to comment, but I really 24 can't open up the conversation again. I'm trying to be consistent with everybody on that. 25 Do we have any other amendments that people would like to propose? In that case, I will 26 take the opportunity to propose an amendment myself. I would like to propose that what 27 we send to Council and without specific words actually calls out that the Council support 28 moving expeditiously with the resurfacing of courts 5, 6, and 7 and in that process court 5 29 be dedicated to pickleball. Are there any comments on that? 30 APPROVED Draft Minutes 32 Commissioner Reckdahl: You're asking Council to move with the … 1 Chair McDougall: I'm saying that the policy statement would dedicate court 5 at this point 2 to pickleball. 3 Ms. O'Kane: Chair, I don't think we can have—that wasn't part of the action. That's wasn't 4 the recommendation. 5 Chair McDougall: Can't we amend the recommendation? I know that's a big amendment, 6 but I would believe that we could amend the recommendation. Could we discuss it for 2 7 minutes and find out if we have … 8 Ms. O'Kane: We can discuss it. I'm just worried that the agenda item was not to dedicate 9 pickleball courts, which is different than amending the policy. 10 Chair McDougall: If that's the appropriate administrative case, then I'll simply call for a 11 vote on the motion to approve the staff recommendation with the amendments as dictated 12 previously. All in favor of that? Anybody opposed? 13 Vice Chair Greenfield: Commissioner Cribbs, do you have a question? 14 Commissioner Cribbs: I have a question. You were too fast for me. I would rather see us 15 send this forward the way it is right at the moment with the amendments that we voted on. 16 Chair McDougall: That's what we're doing. 17 Commissioner Cribbs: As we were doing. Then, I would somehow like to be able to 18 shorten the timeframe for discussion so that we can open the whole topic, not just one but 19 three or more. Is that what we were doing? If we were, I was lost. 20 Chair McDougall: No. That's basically what we're doing. If we vote on this as it is, then 21 at the end of the meeting we'll come back with our future agenda items. At that point, we'll 22 say a future agenda item needs to be the follow-up on that. Is that not correct? 23 Ms. O'Kane: That's correct, but I think you already voted on the motion. 24 Chair McDougall: Yes. 25 Ms. O'Kane: Did you already vote? You already voted on the motion. 26 Chair McDougall: We voted on the motion with the amendments. Tell me what your issue 27 is. 28 Vice Chair Greenfield: I thought the vote started, and Commissioner Cribbs wanted to 29 speak, so the vote wasn't completed. 30 APPROVED Draft Minutes 33 Chair McDougall: Let's start again and confirm the vote without interruptions. The motion 1 we're considering is to support the staff recommendation to submit a revised court policy 2 to Council with the revisions that we have defined tonight. The revisions basically are the 3 definition of courts, and that's basically what we've agreed to. Can I call for a vote on that? 4 All in favor? Is there anybody opposed? We pass it unanimously. 5 MOTIONS PASS UNANIMOUSLY 6 Chair McDougall: Adam, thank you. With that, move on to the next item, which is an 7 update on the Baylands Golf Links. 8 3. Status Report on Baylands Golf Links Usage 9 Chair McDougall: Good evening, welcome. 10 Lam Do: Thank you, Chair McDougall and members of the Commission, for this 11 opportunity to present to you the performance of the golf course since our opening 2 1/2 12 months ago. My name's Lam … 13 Chair McDougall: You might want to move your mic a little closer while we still have 14 some noise. 15 Mr. Do: My name is Lam Do; I'm Superintendent in Open Space, Parks and Golf. I'm 16 overseeing the operations at the golf course. I'd like to supplement the staff report with a 17 presentation this evening followed by your questions and comments. By way of 18 background, in 2013 the City considered a links course design and a full course renovation. 19 Excuse me, I'm sorry. In 2012, the City considered a course redesign. This coincided with 20 the mitigation efforts for the San Francisquito Creek levee project, which would have an 21 impact on the footprint of the golf course. At the same time, the City wanted to take 22 advantage of this opportunity to rethink how the course would be laid out with some design 23 considerations improving the golf course play, improving the turf, improving the drainage, 24 irrigation system as well, which had aged out. There was also consideration with this golf 25 course renovation to segment some adjacent areas for future recreation use. All this was 26 in addition to providing some enhanced wildlife on the golf course by adding more native 27 vegetation areas and wetland areas, which had a dual benefit. By adding those areas, we 28 also reduced the amount of turf that we had to manage, which reduced the consumption of 29 potable water for irrigation purposes, which was a win-win for both. After the 2012 30 discussions, the City explored in 2013 a links course design and, after several different 31 designs submitted by our golf course architect, the City opted for a full 18-hole course 32 renovation at the time. To accommodate that, the City began modifying the existing 18-33 hole course to carve out some space for the impact of the creek project but also mostly to 34 allow the City to begin importing over 300,000 cubic yards of dirt for the future build of 35 the links-style course, in which the dirt would be used to raise the elevation of the course 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 34 and also to add contours on the course. During the years of 2013-2016, the City then 1 pursued environmental regulation permits. It was a long process, much longer than we 2 anticipated, and so we weren't able to begin construction until 2016. The course then closed 3 in 2016 and reopened May 26, 2018. During the closure, all 18 holes were redesigned, 4 rebuilt. A full new irrigation infrastructure system was placed for the course. We also 5 enhanced the practice facilities by rebuilding the practice areas, the putting greens, and we 6 also bumped out the driving range, which allowed for more hitting base and more access 7 to the area. All this was done concurrently under the same contractor. This led then to our 8 opening of the golf course at the end of May. In discussing the golf course performance, 9 there are two perspectives of it, how is the course performing from a play perspective, 10 player experience in particular, and then how is the course performing from a financial 11 perspective. I'll start with the player experience, player perspective, and then I'll move into 12 some of the financials. To facilitate play, the City during the closure went out to request 13 golf course operators to provide management proposals. We were able to select a company 14 called OB Sports, which proposed to manage the course in all perspectives. This would be 15 course play, the practice facilities, course maintenance, merchandise sales, and food and 16 beverage service. This type of operating model, which we have now, is in contrast to the 17 operating model we had for over 30 years prior and possibly even longer than that. Prior 18 to this single operator model, the City had a golf course professional lease the pro shop, 19 manage course play. We had maintenance either provided by the City or outsourced to a 20 golf course maintenance contractor. The food and beverage was provided under a lease 21 and different lessees during that time. With the grand reopening, it's one service provider, 22 which we think provides an enhanced play experience. The play experience is not just one 23 single service provider; of course; it's also the new course itself providing a different 24 experience. There's also coordinated tournament play with food and beverage service, 25 which has been enhanced. Prior to that, it was anyone who came to play dealt with two 26 different vendors whether you were setting up a tournament or individual play. We now 27 also have the management company overseeing course maintenance. There's coordination 28 between their efforts to promote the course and maintain the course to ensure that there's 29 synergy too. In regards to the financial performance of the course, the course is operated 30 under the City's general fund. However, there is an expectation that the golf course 31 revenues will recoup the expenses. The target has always been that the golf course break 32 even at a minimum. Historically, the golf course did do that. A few years before golf 33 course closure, the course did not break even. The course operated in the red. In looking 34 at the reopening of the course, the City worked with OB Sports to establish an operating 35 budget of $3.6 million in revenues, which would fund the cost of having about $2.5 million 36 in direct expenditures and about $1.1 million in indirect expenditures. Direct expenditures 37 consist of course maintenance, course management salaries, and other direct expenses 38 whether it be merchandise and also operating and managing the driving range and the 39 practice facilities. Indirect expenses range anywhere from the course's debt service, which 40 the course is currently paying two debt services, prior financing and new financing for the 41 new course. There's also administrative costs associated with that, being a City operation 42 APPROVED Draft Minutes 35 and a general fund operation. There's some staff time in there as well. With the reopening, 1 the course was budgeted to operate at 68,000 rounds. Looking at these financial 2 performance figures, a comparison of how the course operated before its modification, 3 which we look at in fiscal year 2018, the course operated with an operating budget of $2.5 4 million. We're now operating at a budget of $3.6 million. In 2013, we had about 58,000 5 rounds, and now we're targeting 68,000 rounds. Now that we're open, the play experience, 6 what we're finding out is where we're drawing our customers. Eighty-five percent of the 7 players are coming from both Santa Clara County and San Mateo County. We have 18 8 percent Palo Alto residents, and another 39 percent comes from Santa Clara County—that 9 39 percent excludes Palo Alto residents—20 percent from San Mateo County, and 15 10 percent from other areas. A figure of interest is probably the Palo Alto residency play—11 keep in mind this is through 2 months of play—which is at 18 percent. In comparison, our 12 prior course had about 13 percent resident play. We've been able to increase resident play 13 by roughly 5 percent. Looking at revenues. We're really looking at just 2 months of 14 revenues at this point. We have figures for June and July. Those revenues place the course 15 on pace to exceed our $3.6 million budget. In looking at June and July, the revenue target 16 was $716,000, but the actual revenue earned was $799,000. This does straddle two fiscal 17 years, so just keep this in mind when looking at that. It's really just a sample look; it's not 18 even a sample look within the same fiscal year. I wanted to preface with that. Green fees 19 consist of multiple types of green fees. There's the standard green fees. There's the tiered 20 pricing, which we have. We have resident fees, and we also have Bay Area resident fees, 21 and then we have visitor fees. The other sources of revenues are the driving range, 22 merchandise sales, and cart rentals for course play. The area that we're doing the strongest 23 is within the greens fees. Having said that, the course is achieving our revenue targets. 24 The areas that we can improve are rounds of play, which are down 13 percent from the 25 projection, and merchandise sales, which has not achieved what we anticipated. When I 26 look at the figures at present, I just look at it from a sample perspective. I don't look at it 27 from a baseline perspective at all at this point. Please keep in mind that we're looking at 28 only 2 months, and in no way is this considered a baseline whether positive or negative. 29 We haven't been open long enough to have a good understanding of how the golf course 30 will perform over a longer period of time. With that. I want to thank the Commission for 31 this opportunity and turn this over to you for your questions and comments. 32 Chair McDougall: Thank you very much for your time and presentation. I'll start with 33 Commissioner Reckdahl. 34 Commissioner Reckdahl: How is the speed of the play? With this new course, is it more 35 difficult and slowing down the play compared to the old course? 36 Mr. Do: With the new course, speed of play does vary on the day. We are currently 37 operating at between 65 and 67 percent capacity. The weekday versus weekend play has 38 a breakdown of 54 percent play during the weekdays and 46 percent during the weekends. 39 APPROVED Draft Minutes 36 Where I'm going with that is pace of play is really dependent on the tee sheet that day, how 1 busy the tee sheet is. There are days when the rounds are short. At times, you can plan in 2 4 hours. I have heard that it has taken 5 hours to play. OB Sports is currently, which we 3 didn't have on a regular basis before, having marshals on the course to encourage those that 4 are slow play to speed up and/or allow someone that's playing behind them to pass them. 5 That is how we're addressing course play, but it really does vary on the time of day. 6 Commissioner Reckdahl: When you said sometimes it was 4 hours, sometimes it was 5 7 hours, is that because of the weather or just because the population gets too cramped? 8 Mr. Do: The latter. 9 Commissioner Reckdahl: Most of the time when you get in the tee box, can you tee off 10 right away or is there a twiddling your thumbs waiting for the people ahead of you? 11 Mr. Do: You are able to tee off. Where you may have to wait is depending on which hole 12 you're approaching. There are par 3s and par 5s, which allows—on a par 5, it could allow 13 two groups playing concurrently on the same hole. When you're on a par 3, it really only 14 allows one group to be on there because someone can reach from tee to green in one tee 15 off. In that type of instance, you may need to wait for the group in front of you to get off 16 the par 3. 17 Commissioner Reckdahl: Do we think the speed of play will increase while people get to 18 know the course down the road, that they'll play the course better? 19 Mr. Do: Yes. That is a challenge right now. Depending on how you approach the game, 20 some people find that is a great challenge to learn and to study the course, to fight the wind. 21 Some people find that a difficulty. It just depends on what type of golfer you are and how 22 you approach the game. In general, as people play it more, they'll be more accustomed to 23 its layout, to where you don't want to play your ball. 24 Commissioner Reckdahl: Right now, tee times are spread by 15 minutes or 10 minutes? 25 What's the spacing? 26 Mr. Do: They are spread by 7 and 8-minute intervals. 27 Commissioner Reckdahl: Right now, when we're talking about 65 percent capacity, that 28 means there's a lot of empty slots along the way. 29 Mr. Do: One could say that. From an absolute number, that's right. There's about 35 30 percent of open slots. However, from a performance factor, that's not necessarily that the 31 course is underperforming or underutilizing. For comparison during our opening thus far, 32 other municipal courses are operating at 56-percent capacity. In comparison to other non-33 municipal courses, they're operating at 53-percent capacity. Having said that, you're 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 37 absolutely right that 65 percent would mean there's 30-percent vacancy, I guess you could 1 say. Not necessarily every course you would want to operate at such a high level. Pace of 2 play then gets further impacted, player experience gets further impacted the higher 3 utilization you have on a course. 4 Commissioner Reckdahl: Right now, are our empty slots spread out through the day or 5 just in the mornings or evenings? Is it pretty well spread? 6 Mr. Do: I don't have absolute figures in looking at that. My observation of the tee sheet is 7 that they tend to be anywhere from 11:00 to 2:00 or noon to 2:00. Part of that is because a 8 lot of golfers want to get on in the morning to be able to get off by early afternoon. Also, 9 twilight rates start at about 2:00, and so some people wait to play until 2:00. That midday 10 tends to be where the vacancy is. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's all there. We do 11 see some vacancy throughout the day. 12 Commissioner Reckdahl: When we talk about 65 percent, is there an upside in that? Do 13 we think we could squeeze more in or will that cause people to stand around more and 14 actually ruin the experience? 15 Mr. Do: I think there is room from experience. We just have to be meticulous on how we 16 approach that and how we market the course and how we drive golf course play. If we 17 were to get more play midday through promotions of some sort, that would be the right 18 area. Trying to get more course play during the morning hours would absolutely make the 19 play experience less desirable simply because there are more players on the course. 20 Commissioner Reckdahl: You talked about also selling the items. We've not been able to 21 sell the retail as much as we expected. What do we sell retail? Are we selling clubs at all 22 or is it just other things that you would use, more disposable items and balls and things like 23 that? 24 Mr. Do: We're selling both hard goods and soft goods. Hard goods consist of clubs, putters 25 as well. Soft goods are course wear, jackets, and anything that a player needs to grab as 26 soon as they get on the course from balls to tees to markers. It's a mixture of both hard 27 goods and soft goods. 28 Commissioner Reckdahl: With all the competition with the internet and other sources, do 29 we expect to sell a lot of clubs out there? 30 Mr. Do: That is the exact challenge right now. Locally, we have a PGA Superstore just 31 one exit down the street. In addition, to that we have online sales. Those provide other 32 avenues for players to buy merchandise. One of the things that the course is doing is a 33 focus on branded merchandise. The golf soft goods are branded with the Baylands Golf 34 Links logo. We also have price matching as well. Price matching is a difficult process 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 38 because not all the goods are exact matches. It doesn't necessarily mean that we're going 1 to be just as competitive by price matching. We do have to find the right spot. Right now, 2 the focus is on hard goods sales, clubs and putters, and on customized merchandise with 3 the Baylands logo to develop an affinity to the course so that players see that this is their 4 primary course. I'm sure you've all seen players, whether on the course or off the course, 5 wearing golf gear that is logoed merchandise. That's where we're focusing as well. 6 Commissioner Reckdahl: How does it work with the contract? Do we get a slice of the 7 profits or do they pay us a fixed fee and then any sales increases or decreases goes to their 8 bottom line? 9 Mr. Do: Particular to merchandise sales, all revenues from merchandise sales go to the 10 City, and the City incurs all costs of the goods sold. We also pay for the inventory as well. 11 Commissioner Reckdahl: We actually are the retailer, and we're hiring them to sell our 12 stuff. 13 Mr. Do: That's correct. That's part of the management contract. They manage the golf 14 shop on behalf of the City, but it is the City's revenue and inventory. 15 Commissioner Reckdahl: Thank you. 16 Chair McDougall: Commissioner Cribbs. 17 Commissioner Cribbs: Just a couple of questions. First of all, I'm excited about the course 18 and what's going on out there. It looks great, and I have some good comments from people 19 in the USGA. They came out and played the course, and it was great, and they loved it. 20 Anecdotal information only. What kind of marketing is our vendor doing right now to the 21 Bay Area? 22 Mr. Do: There are several channels that our current golf course management company 23 uses. They operate over 55 courses nationwide. They've got their own customer database. 24 They promote our golf course through different channels, whether it be the web. They also 25 use partnerships with third-party golf reservation entities. They have also a local course, 26 which they use to cross-promote our course. There's also the Links program, the Links 27 card, which is a membership program, which allows a participant to receive both 28 discounted course fees. They also can extend their discount course fees to their three guests 29 per day. Aside form that, there's also the opportunity for discounted golf merchandise and 30 discounted food and beverage sales. That's how they're using opportunities to promote golf 31 course play. 32 APPROVED Draft Minutes 39 Commissioner Cribbs: What about the clubs that were existing before we did the 1 renovation, the men's club, the seniors' club, the women's club? That's all still moving on, 2 right? Still doing that? 3 Mr. Do: That's correct. During closure, clubs did play at other courses. We've brought 4 them back. How we brought them back is not exactly the same as before. As we work out 5 the relationships, it's not 100 percent as we have been before, but we're working towards 6 that point. We do need to make some changes. We can't necessarily offer everything the 7 same that we offered before. Obviously, course fees have to be different, and time of play 8 is being adjusted as well. 9 Commissioner Cribbs: It's probably too soon to tell, but in about a year is it possible that 10 you all would come back and talk about how that's going with the clubs and the First Tee 11 and all of that? 12 Mr. Do: Yes, absolutely we could come back to the Commission once more time has 13 evolved. In regards to specifically the First Tee, they have already returned. They returned 14 this summer with their summer program at the course. 15 Commissioner Cribbs: I saw their banner when I was out there today. My last comment 16 and question is about the restaurant, where I happened to drop in for lunch today. It was 17 really great. They have table service. If you Commissioners haven't been there, we should 18 probably go one-by-one instead of altogether in a group. It's definitely worth making the 19 trip. I just wanted to mention that there is a ton of businesses on the east side of Bayshore 20 and 101. My office is over there, and we're always looking for a place to go to lunch that 21 doesn't involve driving through traffic in Palo Alto. It would be great to reach out to all 22 those businesses to have some sort of happy hour or something to let them know that the 23 café is back in business and up and running and really, really looks nice. 24 Mr. Do: The golf course operator does have an interest in expanding the customer base 25 beyond golf players. They have a banquet business as well. With that location, as you 26 point out, it's a convenient location and a captive audience because to those on that side of 27 101 it would be attractive. 28 Commissioner Cribbs: The other great thing is there's lots of parking. Thank you very 29 much. 30 Ms. O'Kane: Can I add something to that? I actually ran into Commissioner Cribbs today. 31 Monique and I had lunch there as well. We were talking to the general manager, and he 32 said that they're releasing a new menu this weekend. There will be some more food and 33 beverage items on the menu than there is currently. That's exciting. Also, we are going to 34 take a little more active role in promoting the space that is for rent for banquets to try and 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 40 get more people interested in doing meetings there or just making the space promoted more 1 just like we'd promote our rooms at Mitchell Park or Lucie Stern. 2 Vice Chair Greenfield: I'm happy to hear that the revenue has exceeded expectations. I'm 3 sure you're very happy as well. It's a testament to the hard work and the diligent effort that 4 has been put in by many. I'm also glad to see that the Palo Alto resident usage numbers 5 are up. I hope this continues. A question I have about these numbers is are they based on 6 the reservation rate paid or the address of the person making the reservation? 7 Mr. Do: They are based on address because the reservation rate varies. When one makes 8 a tee-time reservation, one has to choose whether to walk or not walking and the rate that 9 you would qualify for. Upon check-in, you're asked for verification. Once again, the rates 10 are based on residency, so you're asked for residency verification. That's where we track 11 the figures. In particular, the tracking mechanism is primarily a survey because tracking it 12 based on what someone books online is not as accurate as—I shouldn't say survey. They're 13 asked when they check in. I just want to clarify that. 14 Vice Chair Greenfield: I understand there's different buckets of reservation rates. I was 15 just making sure that you were gauging residency on the address, not which rate to play 16 they were paying because there could be an issue of residents paying a higher rate to be 17 able to reserve earlier, which is a question I have. I'm still bothered in concept that the 18 reduced-rate resident reservation window opens later than the higher out-of-town guest 19 window. I'm wondering if we've received any complaints about this from the community. 20 In other words, is this a problem? 21 Mr. Do: No, I have not heard complaints about that. 22 Vice Chair Greenfield: Regarding the debt service, how long will we be serving the debt 23 for the recent renovation? Is that 30 years? 24 Mr. Do: Yes, it's 30 years. 25 Vice Chair Greenfield: I attended the open house of the golf course, and I rode my bike 26 there. There was no place to park my bike, and I wasn't the only one. I understand that 27 bikes are not the first thought at a golf course. There is a possibility for someone to meet 28 other people at the course and bike there. If we're looking to improve use of the restaurant, 29 biking to lunch is certainly a consideration. I'd really like to see some bike racks be added 30 to the facility. They would be used. Certainly we want to promote alternate modes of 31 transportation even to play golf. 32 Mr. Do: Thank you for the observation. 33 APPROVED Draft Minutes 41 Commissioner Moss: You've had to give many long, long answers. I hope the questions I 1 ask won't require such long answers. I play with old duffers, and the price is very high. 2 The course is too hard, so they're not going to play here. They're going to play at Deep 3 Cliff or some place easier. What I'm a little concerned about is the price isn't too high, but 4 it's too high for them between 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. I was wondering if you could work 5 on your marketing so that people know—they didn't understand about the dynamic pricing. 6 People need to understand that there are many different times that you could play and days 7 of the week that you could play and that there are some times when it's much easier and 8 cheaper to play. If you can just make a note of that and try to figure out how to change the 9 pricing—not change the pricing, but market the pricing especially, as you said, between 10 11:00 and 2:00. Maybe you need a new tier in there or something like that to push people 11 to the edges of the play instead of everybody wanting to play between 9:00 and 11:00. 12 Mr. Do: Yes, Commissioner Moss, you're absolutely right. There are times when the fees 13 are not as high. Just this evening, I went online and looked at—I forget whether it was for 14 tomorrow, Wednesday, or for Thursday. One could play at 12:54 for $27 walking. 15 Commissioner Moss: That's great. 16 Mr. Do: That is even lower than the twilight rate of $30, which doesn't start until 2:00. 17 With dynamic pricing, that's one of the ways that the current operator is trying to fill that 18 gap I talked about, the lull in course play. I don't think that rate for the quality of the course 19 is beatable anywhere. On a grander scale, I've discussed with the operator how do we 20 market the course better for those that are looking for other rates or those that are rate 21 conscious. One of the things they are looking to develop is a price finder on their website. 22 Don't like the rate you see? What's the rate you're comfortable with? Let us know. It'll 23 match with the tee times that are there. That's something that's being addressed. 24 Commissioner Moss: When are you going to do a survey? A lot of this is hearsay. Anne 25 had hearsay. I have hearsay. Do you plan to do a survey over the next couple of months 26 to see how we could improve and what things need to be dealt with? 27 Mr. Do: The operator currently does have a survey, but that doesn't necessarily mean that 28 the City itself wouldn't be able to start our own survey as well. We could look into that. 29 Commissioner Moss: The next question is really for Daren. It has to do with maintenance. 30 The front door I'm talking about is between the driving range and the clubhouse. There's 31 this triangle that's undeveloped, and there was a reason it's undeveloped because we were 32 pushing, pushing, pushing to get the construction done. Now that the construction is done, 33 there are a number of areas that could be improved with landscaping. It's not something 34 you can do all at once; it's something you're going to have to do piecemeal as far as 35 maintenance is concerned. Is there a plan to slowly build out the landscaping, keeping in 36 mind that it's Baylands? 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 42 Mr. Anderson: That's a great question and something we were cognizant of throughout the 1 project, in fact. There are different areas of focus, and it probably ties in a little bit to that 2 survey question you said. Where are the priorities? What makes the place really attractive? 3 Of course, the front door. We spent $60,000 or at least staff time equivalent to dress up 4 that entryway, not necessarily the spot you're talking about, from parking lot rather to pro 5 shop. That area was all replanted; the irrigation was all redone at great expense, time, and 6 effort, but there were areas where we sacrificed. The native areas on the course were one 7 where they didn't take the way we wanted. We're also bound by the project permitting 8 process to ensure that some of those native areas, the restoration areas, take. Some of that 9 even ahead of window dressing for the course itself are mandatory, that we put our time 10 and effort into landscaping in this case native plantings. It's going to be a hybrid. We're 11 looking at our limited budget and trying to allocate where it makes the most sense. It's not 12 so targeted as this will be the first priority, let's put all our money there. I think it is spread 13 out. 14 Commissioner Moss: The next question is you said that there's only 18 percent Palo Alto 15 residents, and you said that's an increase of 5 percent over the past. 16 Mr. Do: That's correct. 17 Commissioner Moss: The only way to improve that is really to lower the price for Palo 18 Alto residents probably. It's something you'll have to think about. 19 Mr. Do: Yes. Pricing at the golf course, there's sensitivity there. There are competing 20 influences on the price. The biggest influence is the course needs to achieve its financial 21 goals. At the same time, we do want to be able to make the course available to as many 22 residents as possible. 23 Commissioner Moss: I think you already covered that in the previous one, to push people 24 to the fringes especially price-conscious people, but maybe Palo Alto residents as well to 25 improve their percentage. Now that people have been playing it, they know it's fairly long. 26 Maybe they're going to do golf carts next time. Do you think it's just people are more 27 physically active? 28 Mr. Do: I don't have a response in particular to that. I think it's the former. Once someone 29 has played it more often, they'll realize that it's a different course, not a flat course like 30 before that you could easily walk the course. This is just me, not anything that's scientific 31 or anecdotal. I concur with your former thought. 32 Commissioner LaMere: You mentioned that it's playing at 65 percent right now utility, 33 roughly. 34 Mr. Do: Yes, utilization is about 65 percent. 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 43 Commissioner LaMere: What's the break even that we're shooting for? You mentioned 1 other courses are at 53 or 55. I realize there are other revenue streams. In general, what's 2 the utility percentage that they're shooting for that would be break even? 3 Mr. Do: Not speaking on behalf of the operator, I would say that it's not necessarily viewed 4 by utilization. It's viewed by hitting targets that the operator works with the City to achieve. 5 The profile of this course is different from other courses. We have two debt services 6 currently, and we'll retire one of the debt services soon. The second debt service has to be 7 taken into consideration. In addition to that, there's always been an expectation for the golf 8 course to financially recoup its costs. It's not necessarily a utilization factor. I think it's 9 more first and foremost we want to make sure that financial obligations of the golf course 10 are met from a perspective of how is the golf course performing. That doesn't necessarily 11 mean that there can't be other key factors that influence it. One area that we do want to 12 work on is rounds of play. Rounds of play could be beneficial for multiple reasons, and 13 it's also additional revenue, merchandise sales, and food and beverage sales. I wouldn't say 14 that a certain percentage of utilization is a target. I'm not necessarily trying to dissuade 15 from your thoughts of utilization is what we should be looking at, but I don't think that's 16 where the key factors are. 17 Commissioner LaMere: You mentioned that we're on the hook for the inventory of the 18 merchandise. Is that correct? 19 Mr. Do: Yes, we are. 20 Commissioner LaMere: Are there incentives within that contract with the merchant for 21 them to move that product? How are they selecting that product? Are we putting our full 22 trust into them that they're getting it right or is there an incentive for them to really move 23 this product? 24 Mr. Do: There is an incentive. The contract with them is both a—there's a flat base 25 management fee, which covers all aspects, managing course play, managing the golf shop, 26 managing the practice areas and driving range, and also course maintenance. There's a 27 management fee there. There are incentives added onto the base fee. The incentives are 28 not necessarily based on solely merchandise; it's based on overall revenues. The operator 29 at minimum has to achieve what's budgeted, and then there is an incentive for a share of 30 revenue that is beyond budgeted revenue. 31 Commissioner McCauley: Forgive me for perhaps not understanding this particular metric. 32 Our rounds of play are down or not where we want them to be at the moment; yet, our 33 green fees are up. Does that mean that we're collecting more on average for each round of 34 play than we expected? How does that disconnect get tied down? 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 44 Mr. Do: This ties into the dynamic pricing and the tiered pricing of the golf course. The 1 tiered pricing is based on residency, so there is the resident rate, the Bay Area rate, and the 2 visitor rate. Within that is a sliding scale through dynamic pricing. At present we are 3 experiencing the highest demand during the morning hours. With that, there seems to be a 4 willingness to play at higher rates. Because of that, the dynamic pricing has been able to 5 carry the fewer rounds. 6 Commissioner McCauley: It sounds as though you have a number of plans to try and 7 increase the number of rounds of play, which is great. I know that there was a lot of thought 8 put into carefully curating the image in connection with the launch and the opening. How 9 successful was that from your perspective? Do you have the right reputation that you were 10 aiming for in the marketplace at the moment? 11 Mr. Do: Just to clarify, you're referring not necessarily to the theming of the golf course. 12 Are you referring to the perception of the golf course? 13 Commissioner McCauley: Perception. 14 Mr. Do: With the redesign and the offering of a links course that is unique to the area, 15 we're there. The renovations, the maintenance factor, the customer service, and the play 16 experience we aimed for in working with the operator to be more than just a municipal 17 course, even though we are a municipal course, we aimed to find the spot that's between us 18 and premium courses in the region. I use the word value relatively. We're a value for the 19 price point that we're at, not necessarily an overall value because it wasn't the goal to be an 20 overall value. We're a value for the price point we're at and for the course play experience 21 that we're at. 22 Commissioner McCauley: Do you happen to have or keep metrics around unique number 23 of Palo Alto golfers as opposed to repeat players? When you talk about rounds, obviously 24 it might be one person playing 20 rounds a week or something like that. That would be a 25 lot of golf, but no less. Have you been keeping metrics around how many actual Palo Alto 26 golfers are utilizing the course? 27 Mr. Do: I do not believe we have been. 28 Commissioner McCauley: Thanks again for the presentation. 29 Chair McDougall: Thank you for the presentation. I just have two comments. I looked at 30 what I thought your current rounds of golf would be and then what it might be in the fall 31 and in the winter and so on and what that translated to in terms of dollars. Like you, I'm 32 convinced that you're going to be 10-15 percent over your revenue goal. That may be 10-33 15 percent under your number of rounds goal. On a first-year forecast like that, I would 34 commend you. I think that's spectacular performance and is very good. I do think you 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 45 should listen to Commissioner Moss' recommendation relative to older players. He said 1 that you should try and make it less expensive and easier. If you could just figure out a 2 way to make the course easier on the days that us old people would like to play, that would 3 be really good. 4 Mr. Do: If I could control the winds, I would. 5 Chair McDougall: Just flatten it a little bit or widen the fairways on those days. Your 6 presentation is well received and very detailed. The questions and comments were 7 representative of the good job you're doing. Thank you very much. 8 Mr. Do: Thank you, Commission. 9 Chair McDougall: We're now at 9:45. Do we want to make an effort at this point—can 10 we go faster, can we eliminate something from the agenda? We have a couple of things 11 we'd like to do. Daren, would you like to comment on that? 12 Mr. Anderson: I was just going to say for my next item, the Foothills trails, I think I can 13 go really quick. 14 Chair McDougall: I'm counting. 15 4. Foothills Park Trail Reroute Project 16 Mr. Anderson: Daren Anderson, Open Space, Parks, and Golf. I've discussed this project 17 with you for a while, so you're familiar with a lot of it. I've got some interesting new 18 information on the timeframes that I think is the most important thing you want to hear. 19 I'll gloss over a lot of the stuff you've seen before. You know there was a big storm in 20 2017. It shut down these trails, and they couldn't be repaired. We had hired a geologist 21 who confirmed our findings that using those same routes is impossible. You really need 22 to go to more stable soil platforms that are away from the creek, and that's what we did. 23 We followed all the recommendations to hire the appropriate people. Biologists from 24 AECOM came out twice to do cultural and biological assessments. Ultimately, there was 25 one plant that wasn't in bloom when we did the assessments, so we hired another biologist 26 to come out and check for chaparral ragwort. Here are some of those photos real quick that 27 you've seen. I'd just point out that I hiked this with the ad hoc committee, and it just 28 reaffirmed that the schism here, this break and slide on the trail, has grown. I think it's 29 dropped another foot at least. It just reaffirmed the idea of replacing that in kind was not 30 going to work. This map, although the scale is not very helpful, shows the two spots, one 31 at the Costanoan where this reroute is. This is the slide area, and the reroute happens within 32 that little spot. The Los Trancos, this is where we've got the reroute happening. This is 33 the close-up shot of Los Trancos with the—I realize I made a mistake here. The red is the 34 existing creek. The blue is the existing trail. This red polygon is the washout or one of the 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 46 more significant ones. This is the reroute going around. Connected to that is the same 1 thing for Costanoan. The blue is the existing pathway. We had this significant washout 2 here of the trail, and here's your reroute going around. One of the findings of that biological 3 survey that I mentioned is woodrat middens, which are nests, along this trail. We rerouted 4 the trail to avoid those. Likewise, I did the same thing with the City arborist, to walk 5 through and say "how can we best avoid these trees." It was a back-and-forth between our 6 trail builder and the arborist to avoid as much as we can. There are some impacts. There's 7 one tree on each of those trails that has to be removed, and there's about five, five or four, 8 that have impacts. What that means is there would be some downward cut as the trail is 9 placed in there, that could affect the roots in there. There are mitigations that we can take. 10 The first mitigation is for the trees that we take we'll do a two-for-one replacement. We've 11 actually already done so; we planted four new 24-inch box oak trees in Las Trampas Valley 12 just last week. We're taking action already. For the impacted trees, there are mitigations 13 of adding supplemental water prior to the cut and post-cut and mulching the root area to 14 give it its best chance to recover from any impacts that come. We're doing our due 15 diligence to try to make this as least impactful both on the trees and the wildlife as possible. 16 I guess the most important thing is we've gotten tentative approval from the Planning 17 Department and expecting final approval on the 7th of September, which would allow us 18 to start construction on Monday, the 10th. The trail contractor would begin on that day, 19 and we believe 45 days approximately to get both trails redone and opened. That concludes 20 my presentation. 21 Chair McDougall: Thank you. 22 Commissioner Moss: One comment. With the subcommittee, you mentioned that one of 23 the most important things is you have to stay now 100 feet from a creek. When it was first 24 designed, it was much closer to a creek and much more prone to this happening in the 25 future. 26 Mr. Anderson: Right. A big element of the project from Planning's perspective was they 27 wanted to know "are you moving further away from the creek," which we definitely are. 28 The setback requirement, which you're talking about, is development along creek edges. 29 That setback is 100 feet. In some situations, it may even be more. In both cases for 30 Costanoan and Los Trancos, we are moving further away from the creek to further stable 31 soils than what we would have had if we'd stayed there. 32 Chair McDougall: Are there any other ad hoc members who would like to comment? 33 Vice Chair Greenfield: It's a tremendous effort. I personally can't wait until the trails open. 34 The community's definitely looking forward to it. I applaud your efforts. It's unfortunate 35 it's taken so long. I appreciate that we are doing it the right way. I just have one question. 36 How much longer is Los Trancos Trail now? 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 47 Mr. Anderson: We've gained mileage; I'll have to adjust the maps. 1 Vice Chair Greenfield: We added 0.1 to the loop. 2 Chair McDougall: The question is, is that the good news or the bad news. Commissioner 3 Reckdahl. 4 Commissioner Reckdahl: The only thing I wanted to notice is that slide 3 had a nice 5 Freudian slip. Apart from that, I look forward—did you see that on slide 3? Anyway, I 6 also look forward to it. I miss the trails. 7 Commissioner McCauley: Daren, thank you again for your very diligent work on this. I'm 8 going to make one quick comment. Daren and I discussed this briefly yesterday. California 9 Highway 1 washed out around the same time that these trails washed out. We are now 10 getting these trails repaired less quickly than they repaired a very significant section of 11 California Highway 1. It is not at all because of Daren. Daren has been trying to move 12 literally heaven and earth to get this done. That said, there is probably—Daren, after you 13 have a chance to reflect on this more, I think it would benefit us and perhaps the City more 14 generally to have a bit of a conversation about how can we at a policy level help to 15 streamline some of these processes where appropriate. It's not always appropriate, but in 16 some cases it really is. I'd like to return to that conversation when we have an opportunity. 17 Chair McDougall: That's a really interesting comment. 18 Commissioner Moss: This is an incredibly fast construction, a month and a half to do both 19 trails. I thought it was going to take all winter to do one of the trails. I'm absolutely amazed 20 at how fast it's going to go. 21 Chair McDougall: I applaud the fact that you've already moved forward with replacing the 22 trees that you're taking out. That's an incredibly good example for the City and needs to 23 be remarked on. Thank you. Thank you for the quickness of the discussion. 24 5. Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates 25 Chair McDougall: The next thing on the agenda is other ad hoc committee and liaison 26 updates. I'll start at Commissioner McCauley's end. Do you have any updates? 27 Commissioner McCauley: The new ad hoc concerning park rules and regulations met 28 yesterday. I expect we'll have something for the group to consider and provide feedback 29 on in the next month or two. 30 Commissioner Moss: Because of the Cubberley Master Plan work that Kristen has been 31 driving, I've been actively recruiting people for the—they call them super delegates or 32 APPROVED Draft Minutes 48 whatever they are, from both Greenmeadow and Greendell. I'm hoping you're going to get 1 some people in that. I encourage everybody else to get some super delegates. 2 Ms. O'Kane: We have 12 people already, and so we're maxed out. We call them 3 community fellows. The bigger role is to come to the meetings and participate in the 4 process. I encourage people to come. 5 Commissioner Moss: Make sure you get your neighborhood person to spread the word. 6 One important thing is they had the Shockley Lab birthplace of Silicon Valley presentation 7 plaques and sculptures at the corner of San Antonio and California Street near the Milk 8 Pail. It was a fantastic event. Four hundred people came. It's all IEEE. I see that 9 happening when we do the ITT plaques and signage. We need to publicize it, and hopefully 10 we'll get a nice crowd. I wish they weren't tearing down the Ampex sign; I wish they had 11 something going for the Blue Cube that's gone. We need to be able to do something like 12 that when the time comes. For those trail improvements, I'm lax in that I don't know the 13 Friends of Foothills Park, and I'm supposed to be the liaison. I'm going to ask you for the 14 contact. When you open those trails, we should get the Friends of Foothills Park to be 15 there. That's all I have. 16 Vice Chair Greenfield: I have a number of updates. In the interest of time, I'll try to get 17 through these quickly. On the park dedication ad hoc, David, Don, and I met with Kristen 18 and Daren to talk about how to potentially move forward with dedicating identified City-19 owned and operated parks and also how to move forward with potentially dedicating park-20 like spaces such as Gamble Gardens and Winter Lodge. The next step will be to schedule 21 an ad hoc meeting with the City Attorney to consider dedication guidelines and constraints 22 for properties in three buckets: one, leased by the City, for example, Stanford soccer 23 complex and El Camino Park and understanding are we allowed to dedicate these as parks 24 for a property that we could have an expiring lease on it at some point; two, properties that 25 are leased from the City, for example, Gamble Gardens and Winter Lodge; and three, 26 planned community, PC, benefit spaces, the small parcels such as at Alma Village and Café 27 Riace. Ryan mentioned the park rules and regulation policy review. On community 28 gardens, I met with the—reviewed potential policy updates with staff and community 29 garden liaisons. At least one follow-up meeting will be needed before policy change 30 recommendations can be forwarded to the Commission for review. Discussions are 31 ongoing—they're pretty far along—regarding adding a new community garden at the 32 former location of the Common Ground Nursery. This is across the street from Gunn High 33 School at the Palo Alto Christian Reform Church. This is a great development. On the 34 turf management front, I met with the soccer stakeholders group, and a request for 35 temporary seasonal lighting again at Cubberley football field will be forthcoming from 36 Palo Alto Soccer Club. Significant news is that staff has scheduled Cubberley football turf 37 for replacement in July of next year, so the field reservations are blocked out now. The 38 community is very happy to hear this news. The field is in very poor shape I can report 39 APPROVED Draft Minutes 49 from firsthand experience. This will include a project study beforehand to assess what type 1 of turf to install because it's a constantly evolving field and also assess whether we have 2 the funding for adding an artificial track at Cubberley. 3 Commissioner Moss: This summer? Next summer? 4 Vice Chair Greenfield: Next July. Finally on the Safe Routes to School front, I attended 5 the annual Safe Routes to School report to City Council yesterday here in Chambers. Safe 6 Routes to School and the biking infrastructure within our community is really lauded 7 throughout the state and the nation. The proof is in the pudding. If you bike around town, 8 you can really appreciate how great it is. This is a great community effort. An interesting 9 discussion later on with Josh Mello, the Chief Transportation Official for the City, 10 considering how the Parks and Rec Commission may be able to help with community 11 engagement and socialization of future traffic-calming projects. Obviously the Ross Road 12 rollout didn't go as smoothly as many people had hoped, as anyone had hoped. Like to 13 consider how the Parks and Rec Commission may be able to assist in a smoother process 14 next time. That's all. 15 Chair McDougall: That was a lot. Thank you. Commissioner Cribbs. 16 Commissioner Cribbs: I just wanted to ask on that soccer field replacement, there are 17 grants available. Do you know about that from US Soccer Foundation? This one may 18 apply. I'll send you the link for that. 19 Mr. Anderson: That'd be very helpful. 20 Commissioner Cribbs: It's not a ton of money, but it's a little bit. 21 Mr. Anderson: Every little bit helps. We're doing it for sure. 22 Commissioner Cribbs: The timing is appropriate right now. Commissioner McCauley, 23 Daren, and I had a meeting early in August about park enhancements. Did you mention 24 that? 25 Commissioner McCauley: (inaudible) 26 Commissioner Cribbs: The purpose was to look at what the process will be in identifying 27 potential parks for restrooms. Daren has a little homework that he was going to reach out 28 and do. We felt like it was a very productive meeting. More on that later. 29 Commissioner Reckdahl: During the meeting—do you want to talk about the ad hoc for 30 the court usage and what's going forward on that, a path forward on that or will the ad hoc 31 work themselves and report back next month? 32 APPROVED Draft Minutes 50 Chair McDougall: It would seem to me that if the ad hoc took the first step and then came 1 back, that would be the right step. 2 Commissioner Reckdahl: I agree with that. Twelve days ago, I was at the City 3 Council/PAUSD combined meeting. I gave my little rant about … 4 Chair McDougall: My word, not his. 5 Commissioner Reckdahl: … the fact that the solar panels take up so much space at JLS. I 6 complained that there are other spots that they could have been on, rooftops, breezeways, 7 in parking lots. There are lot of spots where they could have done that and not taken so 8 much space. They took a half acre, which is a huge amount of land. Now that I've been 9 digging through the numbers, they're getting very little money out of this. Effectively, if 10 you look at the profits systemwide over the whole PAUSD, it's going to be $600,000. That 11 sounds like a lot, but that's over 25 years. A lot of those dollars are out 25 years where a 12 dollar is going to be worth a lot less. It really is not a very good return on the money. 13 Effectively, if you look at what they're earning on JLS, they're earning $5,000 a year in 14 today's dollars. That $5,000 is fixed over 25 years for a half acre of prime Silicon Valley 15 land. It's just ridiculous to the point where, if it would be 100 times more, it would be still 16 a questionable deal. 17 Chair McDougall: Commissioner Reckdahl, we're going to discuss that in just a minute. 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: I just want to set the table before we talk about the letter. From 19 our complaint as a Commission, that's outside our purview. They're wasting their money; 20 they're tying up their land. What really bothered us is there was no outreach. If there had 21 been outreach, we would have told them that this is a bad deal. The reason that they thought 22 this was a good deal was because they valued land as being free. For them, it was not an 23 asset that had to be protected. That attitude of not protecting land is very dangerous, and 24 we have to really work with the school district to ensure that they understand that land is 25 valuable. We have such a scarcity of land that we just can't give it away. That's exactly 26 what they did. There are very large penalties if they pull these out. They are stuck with 27 these panels for 25 years. It's a very sad thing. That dovetails into—Don, do you want to 28 talk about the letter that softened my rant a little bit? 29 Chair McDougall: What I'd like to do is one more comment on ad hoc committee and 30 liaisons. I continue to spend time with Friends of the Palo Alto Parks trying to encourage 31 them and coordinate what they're doing. I've actually talked to Kristen and Monique about 32 some effort that the City would make to provide training and education and support for 33 those organizations and will continue with that. 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 51 5A. Letter to City Council and PAUSD re: Solar Panels at JLS Middle School 1 Chair McDougall: With that, the next item, 5A, is to talk about the letter. Kristen has put 2 the letter up on the screen. There is one small change, basically a grammatical change, if 3 I can find it, where it says all solar panel installations. It says the locations chosen … is an 4 example. It should either say the locations chosen are an example or it should say the 5 location is an example. I'm proposing we simply change it to the locations chosen are an 6 example. Just make the grammar right. I guess what we need is a motion on this. It's an 7 action item. I would like to see this. I'd like to see if I could get a motion to … 8 Vice Chair Greenfield: (inaudible) 9 Chair McDougall: Do we want to discuss it before we create a motion or do we want to 10 create a motion and then discuss the motion? 11 Commissioner McCauley: I think the discussion (inaudible). 12 Chair McDougall: Let's proceed with discussion. That's fine. 13 Commissioner McCauley: I'm not opposed to the sentiment, but I have a couple of 14 concerns. One is the timing; this was only added to the agenda yesterday. One of my 15 concerns is that I appreciate staff's perspective. I appreciate folks on the Commission's 16 perspective. I have no idea what PAUSD's perspective is on this. Whether or not they 17 think they actually did reach out or something like that, that they had other processes in 18 mind, etc. That's number one. I'm a little bit concerned about the timing and the fact that 19 we're not actually hearing from PAUSD before we send this missive. Second, I certainly 20 would want to make sure that anything we send out emphasizes that we support 21 opportunities to install renewable energy platforms and that we want to support 22 sustainability. While we may not like where they placed these solar panels, we have an 23 overarching comment that we support the idea to make our government resources more 24 sustainable than they are presently. That's the second thought. The third is also timing 25 related. Keith was at the joint City/PAUSD meeting; that got covered by the Palo Alto 26 Weekly. It caught a little bit of press and probably caught some notice. In light of that, is 27 this something that's necessary at the moment in order to make a further point? I imagine 28 this will also be picked up probably by one of our local newspapers and will probably be 29 depicted as governmental infighting, which perhaps that's appropriate. Perhaps this is 30 something that merits us sending a missive to PAUSD in this form. I'm just not sure 31 whether that's a necessary step at this point. 32 Chair McDougall: Would anybody else like to comment? 33 Vice Chair Greenfield: I feel it is appropriate for the Commission to go on the record with 34 a statement. Keith did have an opportunity to speak in oral communications at the joint 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 52 meeting. There was one school board trustee at the meeting, if I understand correctly. I've 1 spoken with the trustee who was at the meeting and the other trustee who wasn't at the 2 meeting. I've talked about this issue. There is appreciation for our point of view. 3 Commissioner Reckdahl has also received email correspondence from someone within the 4 PAUSD staff. Based on that correspondence, if I interpreted it correctly, clarifying our 5 position in this statement would be appropriate. Do you have any further comment on that? 6 Commissioner Reckdahl: The one thing that made me uncomfortable is I was standing up 7 there as a Commission member expressing my opinion. It was my opinion. I did state that 8 some of the people on the Commission had similar opinions, but it was not a Commission 9 statement. If we are of one mind, it would be more appropriate for us to have a statement 10 to clarify that we are of one mind. If we're not of one mind, then that's another story. We 11 should clarify that one way or the other. We should make it clear that recreation space is 12 important, and they need to value that because there are other schools in the pipeline right 13 now. It may be not too late to modify those or slow roll those and not necessarily lose that 14 space. That's what seems to be the urgency, the fact that this is not just a JLS issue. This 15 is multiple schools, and they are looking at adding more of these big solar panels. 16 Commissioner Moss: Is this a legal issue? Does staff have normal working relationships 17 with PAUSD especially considering the utilities where we are required to give input? It 18 seems like we should have been. It seems like it should have been a normal City utilities 19 thing to give input to the school district. Do they basically just have carte blanche to do 20 whatever they want? 21 Ms. O'Kane: The City has a strong relationship with the school district. We work with 22 them on numerous programs, initiatives. It's a constant collaboration and partnership with 23 the school district to operate our City. With respect to the solar panels, the Utilities 24 Department was—this is my understanding. The Utilities Department was involved for 25 the—I don't know if it's a purchase agreement—connections from the panels to the utilities. 26 That's their involvement. I also understand—this is not by any sense a legal opinion at 27 all—that the school district does operate under different laws than say a developer would 28 because they're run by the State as opposed to the local jurisdiction, if that makes sense. 29 They can override the—this is my understanding again—Comprehensive Plan and zoning 30 restrictions. It's my understanding that's a State law. 31 Commissioner Cribbs: That's right. 32 Vice Chair Greenfield: I appreciate that the school district does have jurisdiction, and they 33 can make decisions to do what they want to do. The question at hand is should they make 34 these decisions without a more public due process. The issue that I feel strongly about—35 the question is, is there a consensus among the Commission that the role of the elected and 36 appointed officials and the City and school district employees, their civic obligation, to 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 53 serve as stewards for the community and as stewards over community resources in a shared 1 manner. I feel this is worth emphasizing. 2 Commissioner Cribbs: I would second that. One of the roles of the Commission is to 3 protect recreational land and sports opportunities. This seems to be taking away a big 4 chunk of that. It's our role to make that statement to the community. Maybe people didn't 5 think about the fact that the playing fields would be gone, so it's our opportunity to say in 6 the future we should think about these things. If we don't stand up for the kids and the 7 sports, there's not anybody else who's going to do it necessarily. 8 Commissioner LaMere: I just have a quick question. The utility commission knew that 9 this was happening. What would be our method of finding out about certain activities 10 within the school district that could have impact with our interests, that are aligned with 11 our interests? Is it just through having someone who is a liaison or is it something that 12 staff takes on? What would be a process of us gathering information about that? 13 Ms. O'Kane: That's a good question. I wasn't sure at the beginning if you said if the utilities 14 commission. 15 Commissioner LaMere: It's my understanding that the utilities commission knew this was 16 happening, correct, or that they gave input. 17 Ms. O'Kane: I don't know that. 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: The Utilities Department did, not necessarily the commission. 19 Commissioner LaMere: Sorry, the Utilities Department. The City … 20 Ms. O'Kane: I'm not sure how—if they're involved. I don't think they're involved in the 21 placement of the solar panels. They're just involved in the connection, the Utilities staff. 22 Commissioner Cribbs: Kristen, you have a City/school liaison committee that meets every 23 month? 24 Ms. O'Kane: Correct. It's two Council Members and two Board Members, and they meet 25 once a month. 26 Commissioner Cribbs: There's City staff that meets? 27 Ms. O'Kane: City staff attends and school district staff. 28 Commissioner Cribbs: This, as I understand it, didn't come up at that meeting, those 29 meetings. 30 APPROVED Draft Minutes 54 Ms. O'Kane: Not that I'm aware of, until the last meeting. 1 Commissioner Cribbs: After the placement was done. That's kind of the point. This has 2 to do with the City taking care of the school district fields and doing the maintenance on 3 them, but not having a conversation about what's going to happen on the fields seems odd 4 to me. 5 Vice Chair Greenfield: My understanding is that the school district did communicate the 6 plan to the Community Services Department in, I believe, May and received negative 7 feedback about the concept from the Community Services Department. The soccer 8 community was vaguely aware of plans. It seemed like wacky plans at the time to put solar 9 panels on the field at JLS. The general impression, as I understand it, is the Community 10 Services Department did not believe the school district was going to be moving forward 11 with the plan. There was also some consideration that—there were plans to put solar panels 12 at Paly as well, which were pushed out due to community complaints. There was some 13 understanding that if that plan didn't go forward, then the rest of the plan wouldn't go 14 forward as well. The City staff received information very late in the process after contracts 15 were already signed that this was happening. There was essentially a breakdown in 16 process, and that's really what we're trying to make a statement about. Daren, please feel 17 free to comment further. 18 Mr. Anderson: I think you nailed it. That's exactly right. 19 Commissioner LaMere: I would in some ways echo what Ryan began with. It seems we 20 should have complete information before we send something of this magnitude, whether 21 it's understanding the processes of who the PAUSD did reach out to. That's important. 22 Chair McDougall: Commissioner Reckdahl, do you want to comment on that based on the 23 letter that you received? 24 Commissioner Cribbs: Can we see the letter? 25 Chair McDougall: The letter simply expressed their appreciation of your concern. 26 Commissioner Reckdahl: And wanted to know details. I basically summarized what I'd 27 said at the committee meeting back to the PAUSD officers. If you read the letter, though, 28 I don't think we're saying anything—if you look at, for example, the takeaway, the final 29 paragraph down there. Elected officials, appointed commissioners, and City and school 30 district employees have a civic responsibility for stewardship of community resources. 31 This is in some ways motherhood and apple pie stuff, but it's motherhood and apple pie 32 that was not listened to a month ago or 6 months ago. It says the City of Palo Alto and the 33 PAUSD need to be active, progressive stewards of our park, open spaces, and recreation 34 facilities. To do this there must be robust community outreach, transparent and open 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 55 communication, and appropriate decision processes. We're not pointing fingers. We're 1 just saying going forward these are very important topics, very important principles, and 2 we really have to work hard to stay with them. I don't think it's anything controversial. 3 We're not blaming them. We're just saying going forward we really need to be stewards. 4 We don't think they were stewards. 5 Commissioner McCauley: Two thoughts, having listened now to the conversation. I'm a 6 little bit murkier frankly on what the outreach was, if any at all. It seems as though there 7 was some indication, some people had word or something like that. I'm a little bit murky 8 frankly on where that stands. I appreciate, Keith, your take on the letter. I don't expect 9 that this is going to be particularly well received. When this lands on someone's desk at 10 PAUSD, I imagine they're going to view this as something which is largely saying that 11 they're not being stewards of public resources. 12 Commissioner Reckdahl: I think they pretty much admit that. In retrospect, they say that 13 things could have been done better. They certainly think they were not as complete with 14 the outreach as they should have. 15 Commissioner McCauley: That also brings me back to the other question. Has the point 16 been made? 17 Commissioner Reckdahl: Has what? 18 Commissioner Moss: Do you need to send a letter? Have you woken them up and gotten 19 a contact within the PAUSD front office, reporting directly to the Superintendent, that you 20 can work with over the next month to make sure this never happens again? That way you're 21 getting to the solution. The letter does not give you a solution, does not tell you who was 22 to blame, or where the breakdown was. You need to get to that point, but do you have to 23 do it in public? Have you woken them up enough that we can find a contact, not necessarily 24 you but somebody on staff—maybe we should be there too—to move this forward over the 25 next month? Have you gotten their attention? 26 Commissioner Reckdahl: I think we've gotten their attention. I still don't think they 27 completely get it. Like Ryan said, people love green energy. We do not want to come off 28 as being opposed to green energy, but at what cost? They've taken a half acre of playing 29 fields. Try to buy a half acre of prime land right next to a park; that's really expensive land. 30 They've put solar panels on it for almost no return. 31 Commissioner Moss: It sounds like the anaerobic digester, where we had environmentalist 32 against environmentalist, and nobody wins. We lose the parkland and we didn't get the 33 anabolic [sic] digester. Can we do it a different way? 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 56 Vice Chair Greenfield: A closer parallel is the tree massacre on California Avenue in terms 1 of process run amok. I agree with Keith that a statement has been heard, but I don't think 2 it's been fully assimilated. It's important to go on the record with this. There was 3 communication between the school district and the City on this. If the communication had 4 been done in a more public venue on the record, there may have been a different result. 5 Beating around the bush, particularly given the timeliness of this in that future solar 6 expansion is under consideration right now, we have an obligation to make this statement. 7 Chair McDougall: Kristen, do you have any comments that you would like to make? 8 Ms. O'Kane: I will say it's a difficult decision to make. As I sit here, I understand the need 9 to make a formal statement from the Commission, but I also understand Commissioner 10 McCauley's point that maybe it's sitting down with them and trying to have a collaborative 11 discussion now that the point has been made. I am a little bit torn. I do recall at the 12 City/School meeting one of the Board Members—I think Board Member Dauber, I think—13 said he would look into it and investigate it a little bit more. I don't know if it's worth 14 giving them an opportunity to do that. It's a fine line, and I see both sides. It's the 15 Commission's decision on what you want to do. I tend to think of a face-to-face discussion 16 and trying to come up with solutions on moving forward. 17 Vice Chair Greenfield: I'm not sure it furthers the cause or not, but I will relate that I did 18 have a conversation with Trustee Dauber this weekend. He's actually out of town right 19 now. He said that he would have been interested to attend our meeting to hear what we 20 had to say. He was interested in the Parks and Rec Commission's feedback on the subject. 21 Commissioner Moss: Could you send him the letter alone? Could you say this is the kind 22 of letter we were thinking of sending you, but we don't want to send it, but could you work 23 with us? 24 Commissioner Reckdahl: Number one, this is a public meeting. He knows the letter 25 already. Anyone who is watching knows the letter. Anyone at the meeting heard basically 26 the same thing. I think this is important because we're saying—this is a very constructive 27 letter. We're saying that some mistakes were made, but the important thing is that 28 everyone, Commission, Council, school district has to be stewards of our recreation 29 resources. That's a very positive statement. I don't think we're throwing grenades here. 30 We're making a very positive statement, saying this is a challenge especially in Silicon 31 Valley, and we have to work together to maintain this. 32 Commissioner LaMere: I agree it's a positive statement. How confident are we in, for 33 example, lack of community outreach? Is that something that we can clearly state that 34 there was a lack of or do we have evidence of that or did they put things out and we missed 35 it? There are things that we put out ourselves as a Commission that isn't commented on. 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 57 Commissioner Reckdahl: They did have a couple of community meetings that were not 1 well publicized and only had one or two people. They did not publicize it to the neighbors 2 near Nixon. They didn't publicize it to the Commission; they did not publicize it to the 3 City apart from that discussion they had. If we had known that this was a real proposal, 4 Community Services would have acted differently as opposed to "we're thinking about 5 doing this, what do you think." 6 Chair McDougall: Could I interrupt for just a second? I agree with what Kristen said that 7 this is very difficult. I would like to suggest, based on what I've heard, that underneath 8 where it says solar panel installations, there should be a sentence added consistent with 9 what Commissioner McCauley was suggesting. It says something about the Commission 10 is really interested in making sure that we do take advantage of solar energy wherever 11 possible or some statement like that. I would suggest taking out the two all capital headings 12 to lessen the tone of it. Where it says local residents under lack of community outreach, 13 number one, it doesn't say lack of community outreach. That may soften it a bit. Maybe 14 we say instead of we're not informed or had no opportunity—I don't think anybody can 15 argue that there was not sufficient opportunity. If we change that to sufficient opportunity, 16 you're back to something that's a pretty reasonable communication that says "we're 17 interested in solar, we don't think this went as well as it could have, there wasn't sufficient." 18 Now, we're not guessing whether there was or wasn't. We're pretty confident that there 19 wasn't sufficient. Any other research into what did they really do, I don't know how we 20 would collect that information, and then we don't get the opportunity to speak out. 21 Commissioner Reckdahl: I don't think it's necessary to go back and regurgitate who exactly 22 was at fault, especially at JLS. The solar panels are up. Whether they were at fault or we 23 were at fault, they're up. We're just rehashing history then. 24 Chair McDougall: If I could ask the people at that end … 25 Commissioner LaMere: Why would we not have heard about this from the Community 26 Services Department? We need to ask questions amongst our own channel of 27 communications. 28 Commissioner Reckdahl: I think what Jeff said is we thought—the Community Services 29 Department thought it would not happen. They were asked, "What do you think of this 30 plan?" Community Services said, "It's terrible." There was no indication that the plan was 31 going forward. 32 Chair McDougall: I don't think the letter says anything other than the City and the school 33 district should both do a better job. It addresses what you're saying. 34 Commissioner Moss: This is the beginning of the process, not the end. This letter is going 35 to start a process of coming up with better communication. 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 58 Commissioner Reckdahl: That's our hope. 1 Chair McDougall: Commissioner McCauley, please. 2 Commissioner McCauley: Do you have a sense for when other solar installations will be 3 done? Is this something that really needs to be sent tomorrow or is this something that we 4 can think about and return to the topic next month? 5 Commissioner Reckdahl: My understanding is that the solar panels at the other schools 6 that have not been done are scheduled shortly. Whether they are put on hold or not is 7 another story. In the next month or two is when the next installations are coming. 8 Commissioner McCauley: Forgive me again. It sounds as though there were some 9 community meetings. They're weren't well attended, but they were actually … 10 Commissioner Reckdahl: In the newspapers, they've said that there were two community 11 meetings. One had one person, and one had three people or something like that. The 12 neighbors did not hear about it. I did not hear about it. My kids did not hear about it. It 13 was very poorly publicized. 14 Commissioner McCauley: I appreciate that. Personally, I would like to have a little bit 15 better sense for what was done before we say it was not done or even that it was insufficient. 16 That said, I appreciate the sentiment. I'm not disagreeing with the sentiment that everybody 17 should work well together, that they should have a good process around this. I do come 18 back to the point that it seems as though you've gotten folks' attention, which is good, which 19 is the right thing. I'm a little bit concerned about the collaborative environment that Kristen 20 and others in the City will have going forward when someone may not be too happy to 21 receive this particular letter. With that said, I don't want to prolong the discussion. I'm not 22 comfortable supporting this. If we vote on it, I'll vote against it with the reservation that I 23 would like to take time to think about how best to express this sentiment and return to it 24 next month. 25 Chair McDougall: In that case, can I table this item rather than voting on it? 26 Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah. You're never obliged to have—if it's an action item. 27 You'd have to … My opinion is that we, regardless of whether it's unanimous or not, should 28 at least address it. 29 Chair McDougall: Can we go with a round of comment where I would ask people to 30 comment on whether they would support this including the modifications that I've 31 suggested? The removal of all caps, the change that there may not have been sufficient 32 communication. 33 APPROVED Draft Minutes 59 Commissioner Reckdahl: I like the changes, and I think we should vote on it. I will support 1 it. 2 Commissioner Cribbs: I like the changes, and I will support it. 3 Vice Chair Greenfield: I like the changes. I feel a sense of immediacy, to answer your 4 question, that we should act on this. I will support this. 5 Commissioner Moss: I'd support it also. 6 Commissioner LaMere: I'm concerned about the lack of community outreach and the talk 7 about communication when it seems that there was communication. At this point, I would 8 not support sending it. 9 Commissioner Reckdahl: Don's change would get rid of the word lack and say insufficient. 10 It's clearer that there was insufficient. 11 Vice Chair Greenfield: I agree it's clear there was insufficient communication. The soccer 12 and other field stakeholders had no knowledge of this whatsoever and certainly should have 13 had an opportunity to comment as well as the residents backing up on the solar panels at 14 Nixon, for example. 15 Commissioner Reckdahl: How many times have we talked about pickleball? Ad nauseum. 16 How many times have we reached out to the pickleball people? Something of this 17 magnitude, they should have reached out multiple times to all the stakeholders and made 18 sure that they were in the loop. They didn't. It was insufficient outreach. 19 Chair McDougall: Jeff, does my change about not sufficient communication help you at 20 all? 21 Commissioner LaMere: I would still want to look at the communication issues. Some of 22 it for me is concerning that our Community Services Department didn't know about it. 23 What's our communication patterns? Some of this is on our area right here, understanding 24 that and addressing that. I don't know if there are better ways to word some of the outreach. 25 Certainly, I support the sentiment that we don't … 26 Commissioner Moss: If you took off the first sentence … 27 Commissioner LaMere: … want to lose recreation space. We do agree with green energy, 28 but there are better ways to do this solar panel installation. There are perhaps different 29 ways to write this to get our point across without being as—I don't know if it's accusatory 30 or confrontational. 31 APPROVED Draft Minutes 60 Commissioner Moss: What if you took the first sentence of that paragraph off, the lack of 1 community outreach? Took that first sentence off. 2 Chair McDougall: Commissioner McCauley, is there anything else you want to say? 3 Commissioner McCauley: I support the sentiment. I do think it would be appropriate to 4 table this for a month and come back to it. 5 Chair McDougall: I haven't commented. There's an urgency. The item will not have the 6 same impact later. We need to change the tone and make sure that we're not claiming 7 things that are absolute when we're not sure of them. I'm going to ask if somebody would 8 like to make a motion. 9 MOTION 10 Vice Chair Greenfield: I'll make a motion that we adopt this letter with the suggested 11 changes. I don't know if we need to clarify what these changes are in more detail before 12 we vote on the motion. 13 Ms. O'Kane: It would be helpful to know what the changes are. 14 Chair McDougall: The changes explicitly are the simple change where we changed "are 15 an example" earlier. We would take out the—we would add a sentence under solar panel 16 installations that says PRC is actively interested in any installation of green energy. If we 17 just simply said that. 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: Do you still want to say maybe more generically that PRC 19 encourages the use of renewable energy? 20 Chair McDougall: How about PRC actively encourages and supports any installation of 21 green energy? The locations chosen, take out the two headings. I would simply change it 22 to say local residents, school parents, users of the rec space, and the PRC were not 23 sufficiently informed and did not have sufficient opportunity for comment. 24 Commissioner Reckdahl: Kristen's editing here. Let's go back. Kristen, the loss of 25 valuable recreation space, take that line out. 26 Vice Chair Greenfield: Take out all … 27 Ms. O'Kane: My keyboard is slow; I don't know why. I'm trying to catch up. 28 Commissioner Reckdahl: Delete that and also the loss of value. 29 Ms. O'Kane: This one as well? Solar panel installations, do you want to delete that? 30 APPROVED Draft Minutes 61 Vice Chair Greenfield: I think so. 1 Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah. 2 Vice Chair Greenfield: We should reformat those indented paragraphs so they're similar 3 to the other paragraphs at some point. 4 Chair McDougall: I would also change where it says the district should consider 5 recommendations from the City's Community Services Department to the district; it could 6 suggest that they didn't listen. Let's simply suggest that they should ask. Are we clear now 7 on what the modifications are? 8 Vice Chair Greenfield: I think we wanted one more edit in the line that has sufficiently to 9 say "and had insufficient opportunity for comment" rather than no opportunity. Replace 10 no with insufficient. 11 Chair McDougall: Right. If we have a motion, do we have a seconder? 12 Commissioner Reckdahl: I second. 13 MOTION PASSED 5-2 14 Chair McDougall: All in favor raise your hand so we can make sure we are counting 15 properly. We have five. Those against? Two. I would like to thank all of the 16 Commissioners for a positive and candid conversation. What we have is improved from 17 what we had. I thank you for that. The next item is the comments. We're into comments 18 and announcements. 19 Vice Chair Greenfield: Excuse me. Before we move on, should we clarify and understand 20 what happens to this letter from this point on? It gets read into City Council and how is it 21 delivered to the school board? Is it something that we should deliver in person or in another 22 manner? 23 Chair McDougall: Kristen, I'm looking at you because I know you've talked to other 24 people. 25 Ms. O'Kane: It would be—we would deliver it to City Council through our channels. How 26 it gets delivered to the school board, I would need to look into that. 27 Chair McDougall: I would suggest, if possible, we should deliver it personally with 28 somebody actually speaking at the school board meeting in some appropriate fashion. 29 Vice Chair Greenfield: Perhaps read into oral communications at a school board meeting. 30 APPROVED Draft Minutes 62 Chair McDougall: I'll work with Kristen to investigate that and report back to make sure 1 we're doing it properly. 2 VI. COMMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 3 1. Hiking from Palo Alto to the Sea 4 Chair McDougall: The last thing that we want to do that's on the agenda here—I hate to 5 do this to David, to ask him if he would be interested in making his presentation at this 6 time of night. 7 Commissioner Moss: I can keep it to 4 minutes. 8 Chair McDougall: This is not a timely issue. I would favor putting it off. I know you're 9 away for the next meeting. You'll be back the meeting after that. I would rather do this at 10 a time when we can pay attention, put it early on the agenda. We can possibly (inaudible) 11 have other people have the opportunity to view it. I know you prepared it, but I really think 12 we should give it its due rather than rushing through it now. 13 Commissioner Reckdahl: I don't feel that I would have the bandwidth to enjoy it as much 14 as I should. 15 VII. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR SEPTEMBER 25, 2018 MEETING 16 Chair McDougall: The last item then is agenda topics for a September meeting. If anybody 17 has anything they would like to add or maybe I'll start with Kristen. 18 Ms. O'Kane: We're expecting to have a report on what we accomplished in the Parks, Open 19 Space, Recreation … 20 Chair McDougall: Relative to the Master Plan. 21 Ms. O'Kane: … Master Plan from fiscal year '18 and what we intend to accomplish in 22 fiscal year '19. We anticipate doing an annual report every year that talks about what we've 23 accomplished and what we'd like to accomplish. That's all we have so far. 24 Chair McDougall: We want Jazmin to come back with the discussion that we had. 25 Ms. O'Kane: That's correct. 26 Vice Chair Greenfield: Daren, do you think we'll be ready to come to the Commission 27 with recommendations based on the new policy ad hoc? 28 Mr. Anderson: On the park rules and regs? The only thing I had a question about was—I 29 imagine there are some changes coming for the garden rules as well, which are part of the 30 APPROVED Draft Minutes 63 park rules and regs. It seems to make sense to bring all the park rules and regs at once. I'm 1 open to what you think is best. Ultimately, both would have to go to Council 2 independently. It seems to make sense that they'd go in one bundle. 3 Vice Chair Greenfield: I'm not sure we should wait for the garden rules. That could be 4 multiple months out still. Also I do have concerns that there are changes I'd like to get into 5 the tennis courts to address the pickleball changes that have been addressed today to be 6 consistent. As it stands, in that rules and regulation document, there are some 7 inconsistencies from what we were just recommending change for today. 8 Chair McDougall: We'll add the park rules amendments in some fashion. 9 Mr. Anderson: It might be an update. 10 Chair McDougall: If we can get action, we should get action. Are there any other 11 suggestions? 12 Commissioner Cribbs: Yes, I have one. 13 Commissioner Moss: The 7.7 acres are going to open. Do you want to talk about that next 14 time? 15 Mr. Anderson: Yeah. It actually was in my ad hoc updates, but we were running rather 16 late. The long and short of it is that the fence work is happening right now. The additional 17 staff work to clean up around the entrance where the maintenance shop is, is also underway. 18 I would anticipate in approximately 4 weeks we'll be ready to open. We would do the 19 outreach that the ad hoc had talked about and the soft outreach, ribbon cutting, comparable 20 and in keeping with what we did for the dog park at Peers. 21 Commissioner Cribbs: Is it time yet to hear a report on the aquatics situation? There was 22 going to be a report coming back. Is it too early? 23 Chair McDougall: Can we just make note of it and then answer the question? 24 Ms. O'Kane: I'll look into it. 25 Chair McDougall: Keith, did you have something you wanted to suggest? 26 Commissioner Reckdahl: No. Adjournment. 27 Vice Chair Greenfield: One more quick question. I was wondering if there was any 28 expectation that we would have a joint session with City Council this year? 29 APPROVED Draft Minutes 64 Ms. O'Kane: That's likely. It's standard that we like to do that just to report on 1 accomplishments and hear what Council's priorities might be and the Commission's 2 priorities. I don't know when, but I'll look into scheduling that. 3 Vice Chair Greenfield: We're running out of months. 4 Commissioner Reckdahl: Last year we did have that two-on-two where we had the Chair 5 and the Vice Chair meet with the Mayor and Vice Mayor. That's something if we don't 6 push doesn't happen because it quite often slips through their crack. I found that useful. If 7 you guys think it's going to be useful, we should push for it. 8 VIII. ADJOURNMENT 9 Meeting adjourned on motion by Commissioner Reckdahl and second by Commissioner 10 Cribbs at 10:45 p.m. 11