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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2018-09-25 Parks & Recreation Summary MinutesAPPROVED Draft Minutes 1 1 2 3 4 MINUTES 5 PARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION 6 REGULAR MEETING 7 September 25, 2018 8 CITY HALL 9 250 Hamilton Avenue 10 Palo Alto, California 11 12 Commissioners Present: Anne Cribbs, Jeff Greenfield, Jeff LaMere, Don McDougall, and 13 Keith Reckdahl 14 Commissioners Absent: Ryan McCauley and David Moss 15 Others Present: 16 Staff Present: Daren Anderson, Kristen O'Kane, Natalie Khwaja 17 I. ROLL CALL 18 II. AGENDA CHANGES, REQUESTS, and DELETIONS 19 Chair McDougall: Are there any changes, deletions, and anything you want to add to the 20 agenda? If there are no agenda changes, additions, deletions, then we'd like to proceed to 21 Oral Communications. 22 III. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS 23 Chair McDougall: We have no visitors from the public tonight and no Oral 24 Communications. 25 IV. DEPARTMENT REPORT 26 Chair McDougall: I'd like to invite Kristen O'Kane to give us the Department staff 27 report. 28 Kristen O'Kane: Thank you. Kristen O'Kane, Community Services. I have a couple of 29 items, and then I'll turn it over to Daren, who has some additional items to report. First, I 30 wanted to remind everyone that this Thursday at 7:00 p.m. is our first Cubberley Master 31 Plan community meeting. This is, again, a collaborative with the School District and the 32 City and the community to re-imagine what Cubberley might look like in the future. As 33 APPROVED Draft Minutes 2 of yesterday, we had about 220 RSVPs. I'm hoping for 250; that's my personal goal. I 1 think it's going to be a fun, interactive meeting, different than most community meetings 2 that some people have seen in the past. I encourage you all to come out and participate. 3 Vice Chair Greenfield: Excuse me. Walk-up visitors are welcome as well even if they 4 don't RSVP? 5 Ms. O'Kane: Absolutely. Even if people didn't RSVP, they're welcome to just walk in. 6 We're not going to turn anyone away. It's at the Cubberley pavilion. We will be 7 providing childcare for children who are potty trained. That's our one requirement. The 8 item I just wanted to report is an update on pickleball because it's not on the agenda 9 today. I just wanted everyone to be confident that we are working on some alternatives 10 for potential dedicated pickleball courts at some point in the future. We're going to be 11 meeting with the pickleball ad hoc soon. Stephanie Douglas is going to send out a 12 request for different meeting times. We'll present the alternatives then, and then we will 13 also meet with the pickleball and the tennis community to share those alternatives before 14 coming back to the Commission. Finally, I just wanted to provide a very brief update on 15 the aquatics RFP. We did release the RFP, and it did close. Right now we are 16 negotiating with a provider. That's really all I can disclose at this time because we are 17 still in negotiations. We anticipate having that completed by the—we plan on coming 18 back in October to the PRC meeting. That contract would go to Council in November. 19 Commissioner Cribbs: Are we going to get a report from this last year's activities at 20 some point? Is that coming like in December? 21 Jazmin LeBlanc: It should be in November. 22 Commissioner Cribbs: Great. Thank you very much. I'll look forward to seeing it. 23 Ms. O'Kane: That's all that I had. Chair, did you have a question? 24 Chair McDougall: Before you turn it over to Daren, I do have one card. Maybe now 25 would be the appropriate time before we roll into Daren's. Monica, if you'd like to 26 address the Commission. 27 Monica Williams: Hello. Good evening. I'm Monica Williams, President of the Palo 28 Alto Pickleball Club. There were a couple of questions about pickleball from 29 Commissioners at the last meeting that I don't think were answered. I think it was 30 Commissioner McCauley who asked why do we play at Mitchell Park. The answer is 31 because we have no other choice. Pickleball is a noisy game, and the recommendation is 32 to not play within 300 feet of residences. Even though there are 45 tennis courts in Palo 33 Alto, Mitchell Park is the best facility to meet this requirement. Commissioner 34 Greenfield asked what are the requirements for membership in our club. There are no 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 3 requirements to join our club. Visitors and members are treated the same. These are 1 public courts, and everyone is welcome to play with us. Often people drop by out of 2 curiosity, and before they know it they have a paddle in their hand and they're learning 3 how to play from one of our volunteers. We are a nonprofit entity, and we keep our 4 membership fees low. It's $30 a year and $15 from July to the end of December. As of 5 today, we have 371 members and 147 are Palo Alto residents. We do have some 5.0 6 tennis players who have joined us. We've been teaching City pickleball classes since 7 spring of 2017. Currently, we're teaching on Tuesdays and Thursday mornings, and both 8 classes are full. We're looking forward to teaching a youth class in January. The number 9 of nets we've put up and taken down for the City classes to date number 873. In addition, 10 the number of nets we have put up and taken down for drop-in play for the past two years 11 is approximately 5,400. Given that a net weighs 23 pounds, in the past two years we've 12 moved a total of seven tons of nets. Thank you, Commissioner McCauley, for 13 questioning if we could leave a net up on a court. They do make nets on wheels, which 14 we could purchase. I'm in communication with Adam regarding this possibility. Palo 15 Alto needs to provide dedicated courts for the community. On behalf of all the Palo Alto 16 pickleball players, please consider dedicated courts to be an agenda item as soon as 17 possible. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. 18 Chair McDougall: Thank you. 19 Commissioner Reckdahl: I do have one question. What do other courts do where they 20 have mixed pickleball and tennis? Do you know what other places do? 21 Ms. Williams: What was your question? I'm sorry. 22 Commissioner Reckdahl: Other facilities that have courts that serve both tennis and 23 pickleball, do they have the nets sitting out there or do they not? 24 Ms. Williams: Some of them do—a lot of them do. A lot of the country clubs have nets 25 on wheels. They're just wheeled onto the courts. 26 Commissioner Reckdahl: Do you know of any cities that have both dual pickleball and 27 tennis on the same courts? 28 Ms. Williams: San Jose. Most cities do. They have both tennis and pickleball. A lot of 29 them are converting some of the tennis courts into pickleball courts, and then they can 30 play both tennis and pickleball. 31 Commissioner Reckdahl: Do you know what San Jose does for their nets? 32 APPROVED Draft Minutes 4 Ms. Williams: San Jose AVAC has six dedicated pickleball courts. Some of them they 1 do bring nets on with wheels because it's booming. There's never enough pickleball 2 courts. 3 Commissioner Reckdahl: Thank you. 4 Ms. Williams: Thank you. 5 Chair McDougall: Thank you. 6 Ms. O'Kane: That's all I had so I'll turn it over to Daren. 7 Daren Anderson: Good evening. Daren Anderson with Community Services 8 Department. Let me start with something you've seen in your email, but I'll just highlight 9 it. I don't guess there's anyone from the public interested. We recently completed, as of 10 Sunday afternoon, the Byxbee art project. This is the foraging habitat island. This is one 11 of the work days. You can see a number of different volunteers participated in this 12 process. We got all the wood from our own City Arborist from projects here in Palo 13 Alto. Lots of different people got involved. This is the end result, this beautiful 14 structure. We're going to be monitoring this to see how successful it is in incorporating 15 new prey species, different rodents and insects. What was remarkably cool is on the very 16 last day this burrowing owl flew in just as they were wrapping up in a bioswale that's not 17 more than 60, 70 feet away, which is really, really cool. This is one of the species we'd 18 hoped to provide prey species for. Hopefully, there's more of that to come. It was really 19 exciting. A couple of other updates. The preparation for the 7.7 acres to be opened to the 20 public is nearly complete. We're planning a tour for the ad hoc committee on 21 October 2nd. It should be ready for opening to the public not too much further after that. 22 It's exciting. The Foothills Park Costanoan and Los Trancos Trails, which were closed 23 from the storm damage, are being worked on right now. They should be open by the 24 third week of October, if not sooner. There's a possibility one of them might be done in 25 advance and ready for the public. That one might open a little bit earlier than the other. 26 The new Matadero Creek bridge at Mitchell Park has been installed. It's much safer and 27 much more accessible than the previous one. Lastly, I was going to mention that the—I 28 sent an email again on this one to the Commission. It relates to the pilot project, the Zero 29 Waste Public Works project, at Rinconada Park to condense the multitude of individual 30 trash cans down to four waste stations. You probably saw that in your email. What I 31 didn't have is when we're planning on starting that. That'll be around mid-November. 32 That concludes my report. 33 Chair McDougall: Does anybody have any questions for Daren? 34 Commissioner Cribbs: I do. Daren, what about the trash in the parks? Any update? I 35 know you guys were working really hard on that. 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 5 Mr. Anderson: I think this is the first step. This is a big one, to transform from that old 1 way of doing business where you had individual trash cans, on occasion there was a 2 recycling tote next to it, but not always, and getting away from that and saying "you're 3 going to have to walk a little ways to a station where it's a little cleaner; you have access 4 to all three, compost, recycling, and trash." If it's successful here, the game plan is to try 5 to implement that in other parks where feasible. In some of them, the layout of the park 6 itself is just not conducive to that. You can't either physically fit in that many or it can't 7 accommodate a big station. You still need to go with the smaller ones. They can't be 8 individual anymore. It's got to be grouped in three, that is compost, recycling, trash. It's 9 coming along. I think the other good thing that comes with this is improved enclosures 10 so we ensure there's no wildlife access, no water getting down in the trash. In a lot of our 11 parks, we've already done that, but not everything yet because it's rather expensive. 12 Some of these enclosures are rather pricey. That's definitely the way we're going, I think. 13 We'll get them all cleaned up and sorted better. 14 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you. 15 Vice Chair Greenfield: Hi, Daren. What about accommodating large capacity trash for 16 events like a soccer tournament? Palo Alto Soccer Club has a tournament this weekend, 17 and there's going to be people on the soccer fields all weekend long. My experience is 18 there's overflow, and there isn't sufficient capacity to accommodate the garbage for the 19 day. 20 Mr. Anderson: You're absolutely right. We brought this up to Zero Waste, who is not 21 particularly empathetic to our plight for the bigger events. We decided we're going to 22 have to bring out portable totes for those weekends and set them out in different areas. 23 These would be the Rubbermaid—just rubber ones. These aren't your $1,500 expensive 24 ones on concrete, but rather $25 from Home Depot. We'll just group them in three, and 25 then you have the option of doing trash, recycling, and compost, and just have an extra 26 one of those for events like that. 27 Vice Chair Greenfield: Any chance we can get something out at Mitchell Park and 28 Cubberley this weekend? 29 Mr. Anderson: It's possible, yeah. Let me make note of that. 30 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you. 31 Mr. Anderson: You bet. 32 Commissioner Reckdahl: I have a follow-up on that. Do they make dumpsters that 33 would be three-on-one dumpsters? You could just haul a single dumpster out there for 34 the big events. 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 6 Mr. Anderson: It's a mixed bag. As we started searching commercially what's available, 1 even ones we have—we have one that's kind of like that up at Foothills Park. 2 Apparently, they don't make it anymore. That often happens. We'll select a particular 3 trash enclosure type, and then five years later they don't make it. I have to choose a 4 different one, which is a little frustrating. Right now, we're looking at three different bins 5 that would do that rather than one that does all three. What we've added, though, is these 6 aren't the "lift the big, heavy edge of these containers." They've got a smaller, more 7 accessible pedestrian entrance to these larger enclosures. You're not lifting the entire 8 one, but rather a smaller one that could accommodate a pizza-size box and slightly 9 bigger, which is good and a little more accessible for folks. 10 Commissioner Reckdahl: Thank you. 11 Mr. Anderson: You bet. 12 Chair McDougall: Just a couple of follow-ups. I was curious that you said Zero Waste 13 wasn't particularly empathetic. If we're the customer, why can't we determine what they 14 should be sympathetic or empathetic to? 15 Mr. Anderson: The part they weren't empathetic towards was the—I still occasionally 16 need a single trash can. They're saying, "Sorry. That's not allowed anymore." I think we 17 just have to get creative with how we make it work. I'm sure we can. 18 Chair McDougall: I'm sure you can too. My other quick question was what 19 specifically—can you tell me what the plans were to monitor the art? 20 Mr. Anderson: It'll be the Rangers that come up there probably on a monthly basis, take 21 some photos, do some transects of the adjacent areas. You have a control area 22 everywhere around it because there are so few of those kind of things. What I'm 23 interested in looking at is our existing vegetated habitat islands where we've got all the 24 native plants, this foraging island, and the adjacent areas that have been either mowed or 25 we've left weeds and vegetation, coyote brush, that kind of thing, and juxtaposing all to 26 see which one provides the best habitat and which one in general provides more of those 27 kind of prey species. 28 Chair McDougall: We've done or somebody has done some bio blitzes up there, where 29 they've taken Saturday morning and taken three hours. It certainly shouldn't take three 30 hours to evaluate that one particular spot; although, it might if you included all of the 31 environments, habitats that you're talking about. I would encourage that we do 32 something more formal than that. I'm not doubting the veracity of the Rangers, but at 33 some point you're going to get a qualitative analysis as opposed to a quantitative analysis. 34 There are people who are really, really good at that bio blitz thing. I'm sure that we could 35 attract them. You could even set up an iNaturalist site that was specific to that so that it 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 7 wasn't just a monthly thing. If somebody sees something on Tuesday morning on a hike, 1 they could enter that, and then we'd be collecting the information all along. I think that 2 would be more effective. On the day I was up there and the artist responded to the 3 question of how you're going to monitor it, I really got the impression it was going to be 4 hearsay. I would be a lot more comfortable if we would be more deliberate. We could 5 do that with volunteers and bio blitzes and with iNaturalist. The tools are all there. 6 Mr. Anderson: The Rangers at the Baylands organize those bio blitzes. I think that's 7 definitely doable. 8 Chair McDougall: Get them to arrange it again so it's collected information. I think that 9 would be really good. 10 Mr. Anderson: I think it's probably both those techniques. The Rangers are there. I can 11 count on them. They're using the same style assessment each time. Whereas, as I get 12 volunteers, sometimes it's different each time. Continuity is important for that kind of 13 thing as well, the same methodology. Both make a lot of sense, and I'll follow up with 14 the suggestions. 15 Chair McDougall: As long as you've thought about it, I think something that was formal 16 and we could say there was 23 mice this week and 24 mice next week or something. 17 Thank you very much. Sorry, Jeff. Go ahead. 18 Vice Chair Greenfield: Just one quick follow-up on the overflow receptacles. Since we 19 haven't banned plastic water bottles in Palo Alto yet, there is plenty of need for extra blue 20 cans, recycling cans. It's not just waste. Certainly recycling and to a lesser degree 21 compost bins. If we can spread more out—that might make the Zero Waste people 22 more comfortable to understand it's increased capacity across the board that we're really 23 looking for. 24 Mr. Anderson: That's true. Just an FYI about that. I think the methodology—since we 25 can't do everything at once for all the parks in terms of this transferring, a lot of them will 26 just be new colored lids. We've got three enclosures spread out. We group them 27 together, and one gets a blue lid, one a black, and vice versa. For that short-term one, 28 unfortunately it's a little more difficult than you think getting these lids. It's going to take 29 me a while, and I might not have it for this weekend's event, but I can certainly get at 30 least some trash cans and probably some signs that say this one's recycling. Ultimately, 31 it'll need the right color lid too. 32 Chair McDougall: If there are no other questions and comments on the Department 33 Report, then we can go on with the regular business. 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 8 V. BUSINESS 1 1. Approval of Draft Minutes from the August 28, 2018 Parks and Recreation 2 Commission meeting. 3 Approval of the draft August 28, 2018 Minutes was moved by Commissioner LaMere 4 and seconded by Commissioner Reckdahl. Passed 5-0, McCauley and Moss absent 5 2. CSD Operating Budget: Follow-Up Report on Questions from July 27th 6 Meeting 7 Chair McDougall: The next item is the follow-up on the operating budget discussion that 8 we had from July 27th. Jazmin LeBlanc is back with us, and Kristen may want to 9 provide an introduction. 10 Ms. O'Kane: Thank you. Kristen O'Kane. Chair McDougall and Jazmin and I met 11 maybe last week to hear what he thought would be valuable information for the 12 Commission to know. That was a little bit more than what we provided last time, which 13 was the July meeting where Jazmin and Daren gave an update and some background on 14 our operating budget and our capital budget. There were a lot of questions at that 15 meeting. What this presentation does is provide a little bit more background, a little bit 16 more detailed information that might be helpful for the Commission to understand. 17 Unfortunately, Commissioner McCauley isn't here, and I know a lot of the questions were 18 his. We can follow up with him separately if he has additional questions. I'll turn it over 19 to Jazmin at this time to give the presentation. 20 Jazmin LeBlanc: Thanks, Kristen. Jazmin LeBlanc with the Community Services 21 Department. As Kristen said, this is a follow-up presentation, and this presentation 22 focuses mainly on the operating budget. I have a few answers to a few questions around 23 the capital budget and municipal fees. I will jump right in. This slide is intended to put 24 some context around the Community Services Department's budget and staffing. In fiscal 25 year 2019, which we're in, the total City operating budget is just over $700 million. The 26 General Fund budget is about $214 million. The remaining $500 million that's not in the 27 General Fund is comprised of funds that support the City's Utilities and Public Works 28 operations, including the airport, electric, fiber optics, gas, refuse, storm drainage, 29 wastewater collection, wastewater treatment, and water fund. That's a very big portion of 30 the total budget. Of that $214 million General Fund budget, the Community Services 31 Department is about $29 million, about 14 percent of the General Fund. The Citywide 32 staffing has a similar story, where nearly half of the Citywide staff, which is about 1,041 33 full-time equivalents, is supporting those special funds in Public Works and Utilities. 34 There's about 585 full-time equivalents in the General Fund, and about 129 of those are 35 in the Community Services Department, about 22 percent of the total staffing. There is a 36 notable difference between the total budget at 14 percent of General Fund and the staffing 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 9 at 22 percent of General Fund staffing. Our Department has quite a few part-time and 1 entry-level positions, so we skew on the lower cost side when it comes to staffing. It's 2 not on here, but to put all of this in context, there's about $221 million in the capital 3 budget for this fiscal year as well. This next slide comes from the Administrative 4 Services Department. It's part of the presentation they gave to City Council on the 5 budget and really just highlights the different sources of revenue that you'll find in the 6 General Fund. The main drivers are sales tax, property tax, transient occupancy tax 7 which is the hotel tax, utility taxes, and charges for services. The Community Services 8 Department's revenues that we bring in pretty much all fall into this charges for services 9 category. Again, here's a pie that highlights where the General Fund uses are going by 10 department. You can see that the Community Services Department is one of the larger 11 departments along with Police and Fire. Other comprises all of the smaller departments 12 that take up tiny slivers including the Attorney's Office, the Auditor's Office, the Clerk's 13 Office, and so on. Jumping ahead, this table is showing you the revenue and expense 14 associated by relatively high-level categories in our Department. This totals to about $26 15 million, so there's about $3 million that's not accounted for in this table. That $3 million 16 is the costs associated with the Think Fund, which has been previously called the Bryant 17 Street Garage Fund, Cubberley Community Center, Project Safety Net, and Public Art. 18 Those are relatively complicated programs. In some cases like Cubberley, the expenses 19 are captured in the Community Services Department, but the revenues are captured in the 20 Administrative Services Department. That's related to the agreement we have with the 21 School District. Those were a little bit complicated; I pulled them out of this table. What 22 you can see is the net General Fund impact of the majority of our programs. This shows 23 you the General Fund cost recovery level, again, at a very high level of these different 24 program areas. You can see the golf course has the highest cost recovery level at over 25 120 percent. Most of ours are falling in that medium cost recovery level. The Art Center 26 is at 41 percent, Junior Museum at 39 percent, Recreation 56 percent, and then we've got 27 lower cost recovery on what you would expect, Human Services, Parks and Open Space, 28 and Administration. There were some other questions around how the staffing breaks 29 down in the Department. As you can see, it's relatively evenly split between Recreation, 30 Open Space, Parks and Golf, and then Arts and Sciences with a relatively small amount 31 of staffing dedicated to Administration and Human Services. Again, this is a table. In 32 July, there were two tables on the cost recovery. This table tries to align the cost 33 recovery levels with the types of programs that we have in the Department and highlights 34 that the high category can be anywhere from 70 percent to as much as we can charge 35 essentially. There are very few programs that fall into that high category. We pretty 36 much have named all of them here with private lessons, facility rentals for private events, 37 and golf-related fees. There aren't a lot of program offerings that we have in the high 38 category because it's not core to our mission. Most of what we're offering is going to be 39 either low or medium cost recovery levels. I wanted to bring this up briefly just to 40 highlight—I know there were some questions around the capital budget—to give a sense 41 of what portion of the City's capital programming is dedicated towards Parks and Open 42 APPROVED Draft Minutes 10 Space. You can see it's actually a relatively small portion at 8 percent with a vast 1 majority going towards buildings and facilities in this five-year capital project span. That 2 is the presentation. I'm open for any questions. 3 Chair McDougall: Jazmin, thank you. I think you've addressed not only some of the 4 questions—I think all of the questions from last time, some of the conversation we had. I 5 appreciate the effort that you've put into this. I'll start with Commissioner Cribbs. 6 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you very much for doing this. I appreciate it. Could you 7 go back to the slide—a couple back. I was interested in the staffing, the FTEs for Open 8 Space, Parks and Golf. Does that include the people who are on contract as well or not? 9 Ms. LeBlanc: No, it doesn't. The golf course has only a little bit of staff, higher-level 10 administrative staff allocated to it. 11 Commissioner Cribbs: The new contract for parks maintenance aren't in this 12 determination, right? 13 Ms. LeBlanc: They don't show up in the staffing. I do have an extra slide that is small, 14 but hopefully you can see it. 15 Commissioner Cribbs: This is good. Thank you. This is good. 16 Ms. LeBlanc: This highlights what we've got by program. Daren could probably 17 remember this. I think that we previously had about 14 staff when Parks Maintenance 18 and Landscaping was not contracted out, that would have been in that Open Space, Parks 19 and Golf category. 20 Commissioner Cribbs: With the Sheeper contract for aquatics, how are we understanding 21 the revenue that we're getting from that, and also I guess that would decrease the number 22 of staff that Community Services has? 23 Ms. LeBlanc: Yeah. When we switched to the contract model, we reduced about 11.5 24 full-time-equivalent positions that were in the Recreation programming category. They 25 don't really show year-over-year because part-time positions just show up in that bottom 26 right-hand corner with the 50.56 hourly. That would have been about 11 FTE higher if 27 you looked at it last year to reflect that. 28 Commissioner Cribbs: How many part-time positions do we have that aren't benefited 29 positions so they're under that threshold number of hours? 30 Ms. LeBlanc: That I would have to get back to you in terms of how it breaks out in that 31 50 full-time equivalents. More of them are unbenefited than benefited, but I don't know 32 the exact breakdown. 33 APPROVED Draft Minutes 11 Commissioner Cribbs: There's no hurry. I'm just interested. Thank you very much. 1 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you for the last slide. This answers some of my questions 2 like what's the Arts and Sciences. I can see it's the Junior Museum and Zoo. That wasn't 3 intuitively obvious. Thank you for this information. It was very clearly presented and 4 very pertinent and helpful. How does the budget compare to the previous year's budget? 5 Maybe we went through this in July, if you could just refresh our memory. 6 Ms. LeBlanc: We reduced our expenses by a couple hundred thousand dollars, and we 7 grew the revenue very slightly, other than golf actually. Golf increased by almost $3 8 million. That hid other changes that we had in the budget because of this big change in 9 the golf course. If you exclude the golf course changes, we had some relatively small 10 changes, about $80,000, of non-personnel expenses that were cut across every division. 11 We tried to get a little more lean in the budget for supplies essentially. We cut a few 12 positions that were vacant, in Parks in particular. We also had some custodial positions 13 that were in Recreation and that we cut out. As I said, we grew revenue pretty 14 moderately in a couple of programs where we thought we could really achieve that, the 15 Art Center and Recreation in particular. You'll see the decrease in the part-time lifeguard 16 staff. Those are the main things. 17 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you. Looking forward to next year, are we anticipating 18 further reductions? Are we hopeful we might be able to add something back, the status 19 quo? Can you give us an idea where the glide path is heading? 20 Ms. LeBlanc: We are waiting to find out more. We are expecting that we'll be asked to 21 make more cuts, but we really have no direction at this point as to how much we would 22 need to cut and if there are any other criteria. We have no idea unfortunately. 23 Chair McDougall: Keith. 24 Commissioner Reckdahl: If we look at our workforce now compared to say five years 25 ago and you also take into account the fact that now some of these full-time workers are 26 now contractors, if you just count the total number of people who are working on the 27 parks and recreation, how has that changed in the last five years? 28 Ms. LeBlanc: I know when I've looked at the last ten years, we have dropped quite 29 dramatically, at least 10, maybe 20 percent. I could come back with a more specific 30 number. We've really slashed a lot I want to say around five years ago. If you looked 31 five years ago to today, you might not see a big difference. If you go back ten years, you 32 would see a big reduction in every program area. That is probably around the same time 33 that we started to try more contracting, but we also cut things that we used to have. For 34 instance, there were several full-time staff dedicated to helping operate the Stern 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 12 Community Theatre, which now is just pieces of people here and there. There have been 1 some service reductions. 2 Commissioner Reckdahl: Are we building up a maintenance debt in the sense that there's 3 a lot of to-dos that we haven't done and sooner or later we have to fix them or have we 4 just reduced the scope of what the City does? 5 Ms. LeBlanc: The maintenance, I would want to get more insight from Public Works 6 when we're talking about facilities. Daren might be able to answer some things when it 7 comes to Parks and Open Space. The facilities are actually all considered to be managed 8 in terms of their maintenance by Public Works. I unfortunately don't feel like I could 9 speak to any changes they've made. 10 Mr. Anderson: If it'd be helpful, I could explain the answer to at least the Parks and 11 Open Space and golf course. That big change in staffing—remember, the golf course 12 was fully staffed by City personnel. About a decade ago, we outsourced it to Bright 13 View and then most recently to OB Sports. That was ten positions that went away. 14 Some of them were pulled into the Parks Department to fill vacancies, but ultimately ten 15 staff positions went away. To your question of did we have a backlog of maintenance 16 due to that change, I'd say no. I don't think there was any loss in productivity. Maybe 17 some of the quality changed because we lost dedicated staff that were there year after 18 year. In terms of a backlog, I would say that's not the case. The same is true in Parks. 19 They did similar conversions. For example, when I came onboard with Parks, we had 20 City staff caring for both Mitchell and Rinconada, and those are the last couple of 21 regional parks that we still maintained and ultimately removed the staff. There were four 22 staff taken out of there. It was added to the existing Parks contract that already cared for 23 the vast majority of the non-athletic field parks in the City. Again, I would say that it 24 didn't result in a backlog of maintenance. 25 Commissioner Reckdahl: Things like trail maintenance, we still do that at the same 26 frequency? 27 Mr. Anderson: The trail maintenance is a little different. We used to have more bang for 28 our buck in terms of how much money we had allocated to seasonal staff in Open Space. 29 We have the same number of Rangers; that has not changed at all. Going way back, we 30 used to have more naturalist Rangers, and those went away long before I came to the 31 City. The seasonal staff has diminished in size. There is a little bit less work that we get 32 out of them. It wasn't all dedicated towards trails. It was spread evenly and still is 33 amongst all the maintenance needs in Open Space. However, we did add to the contract 34 dollars for trail work. It's hard to say if it's slipped a little, possibly. In some ways 35 maybe it's a little better, and in other ways maybe there are some deferred areas. I realize 36 that's a mixed answer, but I think it varies. 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 13 Commissioner Reckdahl: It's hard to quantify something like that. Thank you. 1 Chair McDougall: Jeff. 2 Commissioner LaMere: Jazmin, appreciate you putting this together. It's informative. If 3 you can get the last two slides distributed, it would be wonderful as well if you could 4 have those emailed to us. A quick question about revenue versus expenses. In terms of 5 expenses, I'm assuming the expenses include salaries and benefits. What's that 6 percentage of the budget? Just out of curiosity. You can get back to me on that as well. 7 That's not something I need this minute, but I was curious as far as how the expenses are 8 broken down, what portion is going to salaries and benefits and what portion is going to 9 the actual programs. 10 Ms. LeBlanc: We can probably pull that up right away. It's actually one of the main 11 breakouts in the budget book. It's just very slow to download. 12 Commissioner LaMere: You can email that to us or get back to us on that. Thank you. 13 Chair McDougall: Jazmin, I expect if you do that it would be relevant to do it by the 14 dozen or so cost centers that you have here. I suspect that would be a very different ratio 15 in different departments or programs. 16 Ms. LeBlanc: Yeah. Administration is mostly salaries and benefits. 17 Chair McDougall: I simply want to thank you for both the presentation tonight and for 18 putting up with me meeting with you to get this. I do want to say two things. The CSD 19 staffing that shows Administration and Human Services is an FTE, which is I assume 20 close to being real people, of 6 out of the 150 or whatever. I would applaud all of those 21 six for—they're just not overhead. In fact, I would say that's underhead in terms of the 22 management of all of this. That's impressive. The other thing that you and I did was 23 look at each of these programs by whether they were in the category of high, medium, or 24 low. Clearly, everyone of them was well within the range. On the medium ones where 25 they were lower in the range, your understanding is also impressive in terms of the 26 breakdown. It's not just theatres, and it's not just recreation, or it's not just the Art Center. 27 It's what goes on within the Art Center. You're aware of the difference between the 28 pottery and the painting or whatever and which ones have this percentage. I compliment 29 you on that as well. Thank you. Thank you for coming back. 30 Ms. O'Kane: Chair, I can answer Commissioner Reckdahl's question about the 31 percentage. For fiscal year '19's operating budget, $14.4 million is salaries and benefits 32 out of our overall budget. To your other question, in fiscal year '13 we had 75, almost 76 33 full-time employees and 50 full-time equivalent hourly employees. Not too different than 34 today as Jazmin said earlier. 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 14 Commissioner Reckdahl: Does that include the work that we've contracted out? 1 Ms. O'Kane: No, that's not contract work. 2 Commissioner Reckdahl: It's just employees? 3 Ms. O'Kane: Just employees. 4 Commissioner Reckdahl: That can distort that. It's hard to really answer that question 5 because there are so many ways that work can get done. Full-time, part-time, contractors. 6 Commissioner Cribbs: How many unfilled positions do we have right now? 7 Ms. LeBlanc: We can get back to you on that. It actually is going to be quite a few 8 because so many positions are only filled in the summer. If you're talking about our year-9 round employees, we're actually experiencing some vacancies at the moment. I'm just 10 thinking anecdotally about a number of announcements I can think of in a variety of 11 departments. We can get back to you with a percentage. 12 Commissioner Cribbs: Just a question about what do you three worry about when you 13 look at this budget. What keeps you up at night for the next year thinking about it? 14 Ms. LeBlanc: My biggest challenge is when we are asked to make cuts. As you can see 15 looking at all these different people and all these different programs, $29 million divided 16 by 100 different programs means that we have a lot of very small programs. To come up 17 with $0.5 million that we might want to cut, it's not easy. We don't have six $5 million 18 buckets. We really do have about 100 things. Some of them have $60,000 in there. It's a 19 challenge when we're having to make these choices. Another thing is so many of our 20 programs are tied to revenue. They're not huge revenue makers, but that tells us there are 21 people in the community that want to take advantage. If we cut, we're only cutting 22 maybe $60,000, but we might be impacting 1,000 people. That is a challenge that we 23 deliberate for hours any time we're given direction to cut. 24 Ms. O'Kane: We're a very community-facing Department. That's what we do, interact 25 with the community. We provide services and programs to the community. We all want 26 to make sure we're providing the best customer service we can. Sometimes it's difficult 27 when you have so many competing priorities and limited staff without the ability to 28 expand the staff or have the right amount of budget we would like to have to get some of 29 the work done. We do our best. 30 Chair McDougall: If there are no other questions, Jazmin, thank you very much. 31 APPROVED Draft Minutes 15 3. Baylands Comprehensive Conservation Plan—Former ITT Area Concepts 1 Chair McDougall: The next item is the Baylands Comprehensive Plan and the discussion 2 on that. I do have one speaker card, but I think it's appropriate that we have the staff 3 presentation and then the speaker comment. 4 Mr. Anderson: Good evening. Daren Anderson with Community Services. We're here 5 tonight to talk about the various conceptual plans that were developed for the former 6 ITT/Renzel Wetlands area; to get feedback from the Commission, which would help 7 guide the development of a preferred alternative conceptual plan. The agenda is really 8 brief. I want to focus the whole thing on these plans and talk through the nuances and 9 explain the feedback we've gotten so far and hopefully come to some consensus to help 10 provide our consultant with some guidance and ultimately to take that guidance, develop 11 that preferred alternative, and then provide us with a cost estimate for those 12 improvements. I'm going to gloss over the steps to date. We can come back to that if 13 you have questions. I'm going to gloss over that and get straight to the four options. We 14 used the feedback from the stakeholders to create these four conceptual plans, and each 15 one had a theme. Option 1 was called habitat restoration. Option 2 had a balanced 16 system. Option 3, the ITT park. Option 4, return to nature. The plans were sent to these 17 stakeholders that helped provide the input. Attachment B in your staff report has their 18 feedback. Although there were four options, we told the stakeholders to please think of it 19 as you're free to mix and match the different improvements to create whatever option you 20 want. Generally, they did. Generally, the stakeholders supported the elements that were 21 found in Options 1 and 4. My personal perspective is it was a little easier for me to think 22 about it rather than as options but to think about it in terms of generally they supported 23 these elements, generally they didn't support these. There were some gray areas where it 24 was mixed reactions and mixed feedback. What I intend to do is walk you through these 25 on Slide 10 and talk you through the elements. The restored hydrology and tidal 26 connections, the dendritic channels. Let me show you. That's these improvements here. 27 You see all the enhanced channels. There are already some channels in there, but the 28 tidal flow, which comes from across the road closer towards Byxbee, is very, very muted. 29 It flows through this area on the back side of the water treatment plant and between 30 Byxbee into this area. It's just very diminished flow. Ideally, you would have a large 31 tidal influx, which would bring lots of nutrients and help the habitat be a much higher 32 value. It's just been very, very muted since its origins. That was one that I would say 33 most the stakeholders supported and thought was a good idea. Another one is this yellow 34 dotted line. You can see this on this page. This is Faber Place. There's a paved bike path 35 that goes along East Bayshore Road, cuts into the preserve, and right now stops at Faber 36 Place. You'll have to go out along the roadside and then down Embarcadero Road to get 37 to the Baylands. For many years, people would say, "It would be great if you connect 38 this up to Byxbee." Right now, it's just salt marsh abutting with the landscaped area of 39 the various businesses that abut the preserve. That, I would say again, was generally well 40 APPROVED Draft Minutes 16 received. There was a little bit of feedback and concern that sometimes that corridor 1 could be used for wildlife, but they thought that could be mitigated if we were able to put 2 it on the other side of the landscaped area, meaning the developed side. We'd have to do 3 more investigations in that, but in general it was very well supported. The other one that 4 was pretty universally accepted was this connection to the remnant marsh. This is a little 5 parcel here that's landlocked, had once been connected to the tidal action. Many, many 6 years ago when the City built the landfill, it changed the area. It was isolated. The 7 concept is can you have flow that would go from the Renzel Wetlands through the marsh 8 here and into the flood basin. That again was well received. Moving down to the next 9 one, this got mixed feedback or mixed opinions. I'll start with the brown dotted line. 10 This is the road that goes out to the existing ITT building. That's an existing maintenance 11 road that was once used by the people that worked at the building. It still exists. It was 12 badly broken-up asphalt. It's since been pulverized and turned into a fairly good-13 condition base rock trail suitable for vehicles to go in and out. There were various 14 iterations. One that stops right at the freshwater marsh end right here. Another one that 15 goes all the way out to the building. I think a third option that stopped right back here. 16 That one got mixed feedback. Different people wanted different things. That would be a 17 great one for the Commission to weigh in with their thoughts. The next one was the 18 purple dotted lines on three different iterations. This line is really about access around 19 that freshwater pond and whether it should just be on the frontage road here, on East 20 Bayshore Road; whether it should be all the way around it or just on the back side. Those 21 were the three various iterations. Again, conflicting opinions on that. The ones that 22 didn't have a lot of support were expanding the freshwater marsh. You saw the previous 23 bulb-out here where they pushed out the boundary of the freshwater marsh. That was not 24 well received. I think by and large people did not support that. In my notes I sent to 25 stakeholders, we mentioned it doesn't have to be that configuration. That was a starter for 26 the conversation. It could be smaller, or it could be in a different location. If people 27 thought it may be more suited for this area over here, that was another option. In talking 28 to the water treatment quality staff, it's not essential that they have more area to discharge 29 water. If it's something the community wants and if it's something that enhances the 30 habitat, it's an option. I'll just speak briefly. When I met with the ad hoc yesterday, they 31 raised a lot of good questions, saying what are the environmental benefits or pros and 32 cons of expanding the freshwater wetland. Without that knowledge, it's hard to say if 33 we're making a net positive, are we helping certain species that otherwise wouldn't be 34 there. I took their good questions to the consultant working on the plan, and they got 35 back to me rather quickly. I'll just summarize it like this. They said expanding the pond 36 and the associated vegetation could increase the nesting habitat for certain species like 37 red-winged blackbirds and marsh wrens. They listed other species that use the freshwater 38 pond, ducks, stilts, avocets, etc. Those species, however, also use the vast majority of 39 time the salt marsh. I wouldn't say it's exclusive to the freshwater marsh. The other 40 poignant thing they mentioned is the con of expanding the freshwater pond; you'd have 41 very low vegetation diversity. The species would be fairly limited, primarily cattails and 42 APPROVED Draft Minutes 17 common reed for the most part, especially given what we know about the maintenance of 1 that pond. The intent is not to let it grow in densely with vegetation, hence decreasing 2 the capacity of that and the intent of that, which is to allow recycled water to go back 3 through the system. We raised the question in general, what kind of balance do we want 4 to seek in terms of freshwater marsh to saltwater marsh. Their response was there isn't 5 really an ideal ratio, to say it should be ideally 80 percent this, and that doesn't really 6 exist in their opinion. They pointed out, however, that ecologically the salt marsh would 7 be higher quality habitat mainly because of the history of that site, the presence of 8 existing plant species, the existing soil that's got salt in it. The original marsh for this 9 area went all the way to 101. That once was historic salt marsh and still is. It's just not 10 functioning well because we have very poor tidal inundation. To summarize the context, 11 at least what I took—perhaps the ad hoc can chime in as soon as I finish my 12 presentation—was that perhaps the salt marsh, especially if we could enhance it, would 13 be of greater habitat value. Expanding the freshwater wetlands might not be that 14 beneficial. The other one that we thought the stakeholders largely didn't support would 15 be maintaining and keeping that potentially historic building, the ITT building. Three of 16 the 11 folks that commented on this wanted to keep it, and the others for the most part 17 wanted it gone. I should note, however, that we've contacted the Planning staff and 18 discussed this and understand that the Historical Resource Board is interested in 19 maintaining and restoring the building. It's likely that the outcome of the plan we put 20 together might not take a strong stance on what happens to the building. I think we've 21 captured the feedback of all our stakeholders. We captured the feedback of the 22 Commission, and that's part of the document. The end result might not be a plan that 23 says the building is gone. That one bears further discussion with the HRB and with 24 Council before we take a stance on that one. At least, that was the strong opinion of our 25 Planning Department. I don't think it interferes by and large with the suggestions we've 26 gotten from our stakeholders. Everything they've talked about, restoration all around that 27 building, stopping access to it if that's the preferred design, is all doable while still 28 keeping the building there for future discussions on what might come of it. There were a 29 couple of other things that didn't quite get much feedback, and that was the ITT-Byxbee 30 connection. This is the one where they had a crossing that we said would get you all the 31 way through. There was some feedback saying definitely don't do that. You're 32 bifurcating the habitat and breaking it into smaller zones, which in some people's 33 opinions depreciates the value by separating the habitat into distinct areas. Others have 34 argued that it wouldn't stop the wildlife from using it. That one was one we either didn't 35 get a lot of feedback or it was a small minority that said in general they weren't in favor 36 for it. I didn't get a lot of people saying it was a great idea, not much of that. The last 37 one I'd hoped to get a little feedback on is—I'd say we also got mixed responses on the 38 overlook areas. We talked about doing some interpretive signage and some overlook 39 areas around the Renzel Wetlands. It was a mixed bag, so that would be another one I'd 40 look to the Commission to help us get some clarity on. Again, my hope is that we can get 41 some feedback to build a little consensus around the desired elements for that preferred 42 APPROVED Draft Minutes 18 alternative. I had a really good meeting with the ad hoc. I don't know if the ad hoc 1 committee would like to share their thoughts before we open it up to the full discussion. 2 Chair McDougall: Keith, would you like to make any comments? 3 Commissioner Reckdahl: Nothing specific. I thought it was a good meeting also. We 4 talked a lot about going forward. There are a lot of options here that we're not going to 5 rehash tonight because it's too far in the future. We want to know what roadmap are we 6 going in the near future, what are we looking into, not necessarily what the conclusion is 7 going to be. 8 Chair McDougall: I particularly like what Daren did to move it from the four options 9 into the likes and dislikes, the mixed opinions, mostly supported, and mostly didn't 10 support. This gives us a much better way of looking at the future or at least what 11 proposals need to be investigated. I like that approach a lot. I would mention something 12 else I mentioned in the meeting. We have initial contact, I would say, with the Audi-13 Mercedes dealership that backs onto the wetland to become a stakeholder and participate 14 in the conversations. They've offered to try and make the back end of their facility 15 consistent with what we do. That's a positive comment. That's valuable. Before we go 16 into open discussion, I'd like to invite public comments. I would start with Shani 17 Kleinhaus. 18 Shani Kleinhaus: (inaudible) 19 Chair McDougall: In the meantime, I'll whistle or something. 20 Ms. Kleinhaus: Good evening. I'm Shani Kleinhaus with Santa Clara Valley Audubon 21 Society. Together with the Sierra Club we have a lot of members in Palo Alto. We sent 22 a letter. It's summarized in number 10 on the summaries that you have. I wanted to 23 explain why we are opposed to keeping the building or bifurcating as Daren said the 24 habitat. I put a picture of what it would look like if it's only habitat. We have the 25 freshwater marsh, and the green is just general habitat. Now, we put in the building, 26 which is here, and we put trails around. That means that we have a buffer area where 27 birds and other sensitive species will not nest. That takes out somewhere between 100 to 28 600 feet depending on what species we're dealing with. If this became activated with 29 trails through, then we're taking additional area here and here. What we had before, 30 which is a huge area, which is undisturbed and birds and other animals can breed and 31 actually have some area that's not disturbed in the area. It's very rare to have that, upland 32 habitat, marshland, which is still not so disturbed. Instead of having all of that now, they 33 only have two pockets. This is why we supported removing the building, not activating, 34 and not keeping trails into it and instead allowing trails around and allowing people to 35 look in but not from inside out and not to cross it just for the sake of connectivity. When 36 we connect something for the people, we disconnect something for wildlife. In this area, 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 19 that's important. The other reason I wanted to explain why we didn't support the 1 freshwater marsh expansion. Mostly we've seen what it takes to maintain it. We don't 2 have to have that disturbance come in every few years to the Baylands. We've seen what 3 happened recently, so we thought it's easier and less expensive to support the saltwater 4 marsh than the freshwater marsh. We thought that should be the best solution. That's 5 what I have. I do hope you will recommend not keeping that building. The building is 6 only historical because the wetlands were used to broadcast or to reflect the radio waves. 7 Now the wetlands are gone, and we're keeping the building as the important thing and not 8 the wetlands. To me it's an absurd kind of theme, to try and keep the building when the 9 wetlands are no longer there. The building, we can put a plaque and explain what it was 10 like and what it was used for and how it connected to (inaudible) and all of that, and 11 people will probably read it. To keep the building for the purpose of having a building in 12 the middle of where it doesn't belong anymore doesn't make sense. Thank you. 13 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Herb Borock. 14 Herb Borock: Chair McDougall and Commissioners, I support the comments that Shani 15 Kleinhaus and the environmental organizations have made. I also don't believe it makes 16 sense to keep the building or trail to the interior of the property. The idea is to restore the 17 habitat. The way to do that is to not have anything in the interior or access into the 18 interior. As long as there is something there, it will be a nuisance. Even if you fence it 19 off, people will still want to find a way to get around it. Having a plaque that describes 20 the history on the perimeter of the site would be a good thing. Just last week, the City 21 Council, the Mayor, presented a Proclamation to Mary Gordon, who took the leadership 22 over 50 years ago in changing the Baylands from a place that was to be developed to 23 restoring it to open space. Palo Alto took leadership in doing that, and we're lucky to 24 have all that open area. The placed named after Byxbee who was a City engineer who 25 wanted to develop all kinds of buildings and other things there. In fact, it's the 26 community's interest in having that open space. It'd be a mistake at this time to keep the 27 building while the Planning Department or someone else is trying to make up their mind 28 what to do with it. The City Council and this Commission are perfectly capable of 29 making a recommendation and decision about that at this time. Thank you. 30 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Now, I'll open it up to questions and comments from the 31 Commission. I'll start with Jeff, at your end. 32 Commissioner LaMere: Daren, thank you so much for all this work. One initial question 33 I would have is what sort of budgets and timelines are we looking at in terms of trying to 34 do this? How does that impact some of the decision-making process or things we want or 35 don't want? 36 Mr. Anderson: Great question. I don't have a great answer, and I apologize. The next 37 step as we talk about what we want—it is prudent to be thinking in general about the 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 20 costs associated with these things. That's smart because we don't have an identified 1 funding source, which makes it a challenge. The next steps would be the cost estimate 2 based on what you think is best for the site. We get support for that from the Council, 3 and we'd start seeking funding. I'm guessing grants, honestly, would probably be our 4 most likely bet. A lot go towards restoration areas like that and would be available for 5 that kind of project. Especially the wetlands and improvements and the hydrologic 6 improvements and even some of the limited trail access could be funded through grants. 7 We don't have an identified source for that just yet. 8 Commissioner LaMere: For me personally in looking at things, I came into this favoring 9 the building and connectivity. After listening to our speakers, I'm also wondering what is 10 our purpose of restoring the wetlands and what sort of mission are we looking at as a 11 Commission. We may all have different opinions, but is it complete restoration or 12 providing people more access to be in there? It's an interesting question. As someone 13 who likes connectivity and likes to be able to go from one place to another, I do like 14 being able to go all the way through the ITT property to Byxbee Park. I like the yellow 15 line along the trail that abuts the car dealerships. At the same time, do we have enough 16 trails in Byxbee that the wetlands should really be left undisturbed? I would say I don't 17 have a firm answer or opinion but would also defer to some people who are much more 18 vested and have studied this a lot closer. When I look at the building—you took me on a 19 tour there a while ago. I thought it was a great building that had tremendous potential. I 20 thought it could be an event space or an wonderful museum. That's thinking a lot of 21 human uses, but maybe there are other spaces that can accommodate those things. 22 Initially for me it's about connectivity. Now, I would favor deferring to the rest of our 23 Commission and hearing what they have to say. I do want to thank you for all the work 24 that you've put in and the different plans. If we do expand the freshwater pond and 25 marsh, is that getting cleaned up by grants or when the maintenance has to happen? 26 Would that be something out of the City budget? 27 Mr. Anderson: That would be done with the City budget. 28 Commissioner LaMere: One thing I would have a specific opinion on is to keep the 29 freshwater pond and marsh as is. Again, thank you so much. 30 Mr. Anderson: Thank you. 31 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you. Thank you again, Daren, for both the report that's 32 put together thoughtfully and for all the outreach that's been done in the community, and 33 to the Commission regarding the plan. The increased outreach and communication is 34 really appreciated. My first comment is we should be prioritizing habitat restoration and 35 the natural environment. This is a natural open space. It's the intuitive approach. With 36 that said, it's also important to find balance to allow non-obtrusive, appropriate public 37 access. I guess the devil's in the details there in terms of determining what is the 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 21 appropriate balance. From a parks and recreation perspective, I am not in favor of 1 maintaining the ITT building. It would be nice to figure out some way to honor the 2 legacy of it with some interpretive signage somewhere outside the area, from the base of 3 the pond and marsh or something like that. I don't think there's anything sacrosanct about 4 the land itself. Some way of maintaining the legacy and the history of the site can be 5 done while also allowing the natural habitat to restore itself. That's my opinion. It goes 6 without saying that I wouldn't be in favor of the through access from Byxbee Park. I do 7 really like the idea of figuring out some way to have walking loops within the Baylands 8 in general. Simple recreation paths for people to walk different distances, whether it's a 9 half mile or a mile or multiple miles ideally without having to backtrack. People like 10 that. I see the yellow dotted path as a real useful addition to create a loop around the 11 Renzel Wetlands whether it goes between the pond and the wetlands or on the outside of 12 the pond near Highway 101 and Bayshore. It's important to get the path off Bayshore. 13 For someone who's walking the 3.5 miles or whatever it is around the entire Baylands 14 right now, the endpoints or the part where you're walking Bayshore is in great 15 juxtaposition to the rest of the walk. It's not so fun. From a holistic standpoint, anything 16 we can work towards to be able to provide a loop path off Bayshore for the entire span of 17 that section would be great. Something going behind the Municipal Services Center, for 18 example, further down. I know that's not in the purview of this specific discussion here. 19 In the big picture, that would be great. In the immediate focus, being able to have a loop 20 around the Renzel Wetlands seems like a great opportunity for the people working in the 21 vicinity to take a quick 30-minute walk or whatever it is. We're trying to get people out 22 in nature. At the same time, be as unobtrusive as possible in doing so. I appreciate 23 Shani's remarks. The visual was effective; thank you. Whether or not we can include a 24 path, as I mentioned before, between the pond and the wetlands, that's open for further 25 discussion and investigation. To respond to a couple of questions, as far as the overlooks 26 go, overlooks are great. People like that. Again, in balance with what's the right number 27 to provide people meaningful overlook points without disturbing nature unduly. I'm not 28 in favor of increasing the size of the freshwater pond. I think that summarizes my 29 comments pretty well. Thank you. 30 Commissioner Cribbs: Daren, I really like the way you presented this plan. It's really 31 great. It was very helpful to hear the stakeholder. I'm not in favor of saving that 32 building. It's way too much cost to the City ultimately and something that probably won't 33 be as useful as we could do something someplace else. I love the access, and I love the 34 loops, and I also love getting from here to Byxbee Park. I think it'll be really exciting to 35 see what comes out of this. I am concerned about the budget and the cost and when we're 36 going to start to get numbers for that. It would be great if there was some way to start 37 looking for potential grants because I'm sure they're out there for this kind of thing. 38 Finally, on the list of the next steps and timelines, could you check on the ones at the 39 bottom? That might be 2019, just to change those. 40 APPROVED Draft Minutes 22 Mr. Anderson: I've corrected it. 1 Commissioner Cribbs: Otherwise, it's great. Thank you very much. 2 Mr. Anderson: Thank you. 3 Chair McDougall: If there are no other comments, I'll quickly close. First off, Daren, I 4 totally agree that we should leave the freshwater pond small. The conversation we had, 5 by the way—reminding myself, not you—is that we did come to the conclusion we 6 should not be talking about ponds and wetlands. We should be talking about habitats. 7 When you look at all of this as habitats, you change your attitude towards what you're 8 doing. A pond may be something to view, but a habitat is something for somebody to 9 live in, even if it's the animals. In terms of the public access and the loop around, you 10 remember the drawings we scribbled on yesterday. Part of that would have to do—I 11 appreciate what Shani showed on her visual about the encroachment that you would get 12 from having a path around. There may be something we can do in terms of how far back 13 you can put the path or a way to deal with that. The other thing that you pointed out, that 14 needs to be remembered here, is it's not just public versus wildlife, it's work access. 15 Whatever we do, there still will be an access for trucks and whatnot to get in and out at 16 various times to do the work. That needs to be taken into account. I do have a question. 17 At the time of the landfill being built, did the part of what would have been the initial 18 wetlands associated with the ITT facility shrink? If we look at the map that you've got 19 right in front of you, instead of it being a straight line between the gray and the green, 20 would the green expand into what's now the landfill? 21 Mr. Anderson: My understanding is this was all green, all the way up to the freeway. 22 Chair McDougall: At the time that the facility was being used—that also needs to be 23 remembered. We've already taken two-thirds of it. Maybe we should try and save it. 24 The one other thing that I've been thinking about since our meeting is that pipe. I have 25 two questions about the inflow. There is a pipe, a 27-inch pipe. It's big enough to get a 26 decent flow of water. I'm not sure, if we're interested in maintaining the wetlands as a 27 habitat, how animals or whatever get into the habitat if their only access is through the 28 pipe. That may speak to—I have to say that Commissioner Reckdahl had a good idea. 29 That may speak to the idea that maybe there should be a canal of some sort there that 30 would allow that access. The other thing I heard just a couple of hours ago was 31 somebody saying they had talked to Public Works about the kind of water that was 32 coming into the freshwater habitat. To call it freshwater was a misnomer. It may limit 33 what could exist in there. I'm not sure I'm asking a question as opposed to saying, "Are 34 you"—you probably understand that. 35 Mr. Anderson: Yeah. 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 23 Chair McDougall: That was a good enough answer. If nobody has any other questions, I 1 guess the next question is can we agree on—you had that slide up that had the next steps. 2 Can we confirm or agree that what preparation we need to do or what we should expect 3 in terms of the next step. I want to repeat what I said at the beginning. The fact that you 4 divided it into things we agree on, things we disagree on, or whatever, if in fact you didn't 5 look at it that way, if you looked at it as things that seem to be in the category of habitat 6 restoration and, therefore, to Anne's point may be grantable, they seem to be in that 7 category, maybe we should start investigating that now. The things that are in that 8 bottom category of we seem to have disagreement on the building, maybe that's the only 9 one that needs some back-of-the-envelope estimation. I wouldn't encourage you to cost 10 out one, two, three, and four or even cost out all the pieces. Maybe that's the one that's 11 going to have the most discussion. If you're HRB and—we should probably change it. I 12 didn't catch it yesterday. It says Human Resources; it should probably say Historic 13 Resources. If we change it, that might be the important discussion with HRB. That 14 would be my … 15 Commissioner Reckdahl: The one comment I'd want to say is I'm not a big fan of the 16 building either. Ideally, we would tear it down and not have anything left there. If it's 17 too expensive to tear it down, we may just have to secure it and leave it as-is. If we have 18 a limited pot, put more money into the restoration portion and not into knocking down 19 buildings. It would be nice to price that out to say how much would it cost to get rid of it. 20 Mr. Anderson: I have a few points that I need a little more clarity on, if you don't mind 21 and if you would indulge me. It's specifically around the preferred access around the 22 pond. I understand loops in general are good, but I could interpret that as the broader 23 loop going all the way around via the yellow trail. You could make this the loop. Do 24 you want and do you support a full loop around the freshwater pond, a limited one on just 25 one side, either the Bayshore side or the marsh side? Your feedback on that would be 26 good. One I forgot to point out was the antennas. One concept was maintaining two 27 antennas as a legacy to what had been there. Some of the arguments against that had 28 been the well-known and established impacts to birds from having wires and striking into 29 those. It's a good reason for not having any wires coming down. The other is they often 30 are used as perches for birds of prey. This is over a salt marsh wetland where you've got 31 saltmarsh harvest mice that they could potentially feed on. Maybe there's a couple that 32 are lower. Any interest in saving those? It'd be great to have some feedback on that as 33 well. That's the two I really could use, feedback on the freshwater pond access points 34 and the antenna. 35 Chair McDougall: Who would like to comment on that? Keith. 36 Commissioner Reckdahl: First about the loops, I agree with Commissioner Greenfield. 37 Walking along Bayshore doesn't feel like you're in nature. I would want some access on 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 24 the Bay side of that freshwater marsh, ideally trying to keep the saltwater marsh as 1 contiguous as possible. Probably right along the border of that freshwater marsh to get to 2 … 3 Mr. Anderson: Right in here? 4 Commissioner Reckdahl: No, on the Bay side of that. 5 Mr. Anderson: On this side. 6 Commissioner Reckdahl: Yes. If you're walking there, you're going to get a much better 7 user experience than if you're walking on Bayshore. The sad part is that will have some 8 impact on wildlife. I think the glass is half full. If you look at all the green area, we're 9 just impacting a small portion of it. We do have to balance both nature and human use. I 10 think that's a reasonable way of getting some human use in there, having a much better 11 human experience than walking on Bayshore, and having minimal impact to the wildlife. 12 Vice Chair Greenfield: Regarding the loop question, I don't perceive a specific need to 13 have a path all the way around the pond. Either on the Bayshore side or on the Bay side 14 of the pond would be sufficient. If there's a way to put it on the Bayshore side and there 15 are tall grasses and you're up on the berm of the pond, there's a perceived feeling that 16 you're in nature and away from the road. That would be great if we could pull it off. I 17 don't know the answer to that. If it's possible to do that in order to preserve the boundary 18 area between the wetlands and the marsh of this habitat area, then that would be great. 19 Basically I'm looking for a—my thought is to have a larger loop around the entire 20 wetlands habitat, whichever path it may take. 21 Chair McDougall: Daren, that reminds me. I think it was Phil who, in talking about the 22 future of all this, talked about those artificial slopes that they were going to put in. We 23 should probably explore that a bit more because that may inform the decision about 24 where should you or could you do anything. There was something else that went with 25 that, but it just went away. I don't think we answered your second question. We 26 answered your loop around the freshwater habitat. 27 Mr. Anderson: In general, just one side, on the Bay side, would probably work for most 28 folks here, if I got that right. The antennas. 29 Chair McDougall: Does anybody have any comments on the antenna? Keith, do you 30 have any comment on the antenna? 31 Commissioner Reckdahl: I think a nice picture of antennas is going to be sufficient. I 32 would rather see the whole area restored with no antennas than keep the antennas up. 33 That's my opinion. 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 25 Vice Chair Greenfield: I would need to hear highly compelling arguments in favor of 1 why we need to keep the antenna. 2 Mr. Anderson: Excellent. Thank you so much for all that feedback. To something 3 Commissioner LaMere pointed out and to this comment about the antennas, when we 4 look at the Baylands Master Plan the feedback from the Council when they made this 5 policy, which was many years ago, was very simple. They said restore it and remove the 6 antenna field and incorporate it into the rest of—they called it Byxbee Park but meaning 7 all of the Baylands Preserve. It's in keeping with every bit of guidance you've provided. 8 I think we're in a good spot to come up with a preferred alternative, which I'll be bringing 9 back to you or sending to you relatively soon I hope. 10 Chair McDougall: The only problem with that is the way it was written said to remove 11 the antennas. It didn't say what to do with the building in the way they wrote it. I assume 12 by saying antenna field they implied everything and restore it. Jeff. 13 Vice Chair Greenfield: Perhaps an antenna could be relocated to the perimeter and be 14 located along with some interpretive signage. 15 Mr. Anderson: Yeah. There's one that's blocks of concrete with a date stamp that 16 perhaps could be moved (crosstalk). 17 Chair McDougall: And made a lot shorter. 18 Mr. Anderson: Yes, much shorter. 19 Chair McDougall: Like a 3-foot high remnant of the antenna. I don't think I have 20 anything else. If anybody else has anything else? This is great progress. Can we go 21 back to the question of what do we need to do next or what should we expect next? 22 Mr. Anderson: Thank you. The next steps are—we still have two community meetings 23 that we will hold. Dates to be determined on that, coming soon. One of the core things 24 that that will need to go over is this conceptual plan for Byxbee Park, which will be 25 coming soon. It's such a big area and we did the interim plan and we've learned some 26 things. It just behooves us to talk to the stakeholders throughout there and care about this 27 place to learn from them of what they want, explain what's worked and what maybe 28 should change. That should be coming soon. I'll have the conceptual plan, which of 29 course I'll share, and then we'll hold that public meeting and talk it over as a team. We'll 30 finalize the ITT concepts very soon and these chapters. For example, the opportunities, 31 limitations, and best management practices, the sea level rise and climate change. Once 32 we get those going, we'll send them out and bring them to you for a discussion. The 33 other big step will be the action plan. Those are specific details on what we should be 34 doing, your to-do list if you will for the plan, which is very, very important. That one 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 26 we'll incorporate into one of those public meetings with the community, either with 1 Byxbee or perhaps the follow-up. Those are the two key ones that really need an in-2 depth discussion. Then, we get into finalizing drafts for the plan itself. In the 3 neighborhood of January, I hope to be bringing you the draft plan. It's ambitious 4 especially when we talk about holding two community meetings in that timeframe and 5 getting this all through. I'll be pushing hard to try to get that to you by January. Finalize 6 this in February and March will be the game plan. 7 Commissioner Cribbs: How much money is there right now in the kitty for this kind of 8 thing? 9 Mr. Anderson: I have no money allocated for implementing … 10 Commissioner Cribbs: No money. 11 Mr. Anderson: I take that back. With the exception for the Byxbee plan. There is a CIP 12 in place to finalize Byxbee. The intent is this project creates the conceptual plan, and 13 then we would come in with the Byxbee money and do construction plans based on that. 14 Probably another round, of course, of the usual bring in the stakeholders, hold a 15 community meeting, that kind of thing. Then, we would take that and implement it using 16 the CIP in place. That one is the one funded. Fortunately, it's a large project. That one is 17 in place. The other action items that you'll see for the rest of the preserve including the 18 ITT is not funded. 19 Chair McDougall: Can you go back to the previous slide? Step number 3, maybe even 20 step number 2. That should be prepare final Renzel Wetlands habitat proposal or 21 concepts. 22 Mr. Anderson: You're absolutely right. The whole area—soon we'll be abandoning the 23 ITT name altogether. It's a misnomer but, if I reference Renzel, to some people it doesn't 24 mean the area around the ITT building. For clarity purposes, I've been using former 25 ITT/Renzel Wetlands. 26 Chair McDougall: Sooner rather than later. 27 Mr. Anderson: Yeah. Sooner rather than later we'll abandon that. 28 Chair McDougall: That's incredibly ambitious. We will be bringing that schedule back 29 to each Commission meeting to remind you. It's incredibly ambitious. I don't know that 30 there's a lot we can do to help. If in any way we could help with the community meetings 31 or anything else, you should insist that the Commission participate. 32 Mr. Anderson: Thank you. 33 APPROVED Draft Minutes 27 Commissioner Reckdahl: I have one question. At the end of this, we'll have a plan, but 1 it's unlikely that we'll have any money for the plan. 2 Mr. Anderson: With the exception of the Byxbee part that I referenced, that's correct. 3 Commissioner Reckdahl: We'll have the plan and, at that point, we'll apply for grants and 4 ask the City Council and try to drip, drip the plan through. Is the plan going to have 5 staged steps that you could have discrete funding for or is it going to be this is the whole 6 plan? If somebody gave you a chunk of money, you could do the whole thing. That'd be 7 a lot simpler than doing piecemeal, but I think our funding is going to be piecemeal, 8 which may affect our planning. 9 Mr. Anderson: My hunch is it would be the latter. That would be piecemeal CIPs for 10 individual things. Some of the action items may be small enough to fund through either 11 existing capital programs or our operating budget. For example, if they're recommending 12 restoration of a given area that maybe we haven't worked on in the past, we'll do that in-13 house with volunteers in our existing budget. It'll be phased in over time. Others like the 14 ITT improvements would be stand-alone CIPs and fairly large ones and probably over 15 several years. 16 Chair McDougall: I'm going to suggest that that would be a really interesting topic for an 17 ad hoc conversation, particularly the idea of are there things that could be granted and 18 how do we subdivide this in such a way that it facilitates that. Unless there are any other 19 really desperate questions, I'd like to thank Daren very much and move on to any other ad 20 hoc committee or liaison updates. Thank you, Daren. Once again, really good. 21 4. Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates 22 Chair McDougall: I'll start with Anne. You can say nothing. 23 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you. I will say something. Daren, when we last met for 24 the dog park or the parks committee, there were a couple of things we were going to 25 investigate in terms of the two potential communities for dog parks. 26 Mr. Anderson: I think we were talking about bathrooms. Is that right? 27 Commissioner Cribbs: Yeah, we were, bathrooms. 28 Mr. Anderson: I was just talking to Howard Hoffman the other day. I ran into him in the 29 City, and he said he would love to talk about the future dog park. I've got an email 30 drafted and ready to send to you and Commissioner McCauley about getting together to 31 talk about dog parks as well, just to plan it. The first iteration, because it's funded for this 32 fiscal year, is the restrooms. What we talked about was that I would reach out to the 33 community on the three top-tier sites that we were looking at. I've reached out to some of 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 28 the stakeholders for Bol Park. I'm waiting to hear back from them. The initial feedback 1 wasn't "oh, my gosh, no." It was more like "that could be interesting." They were going 2 to take it back to their committee and get back to me. I haven't heard back yet. I still 3 have to reach out to the other two sites, Pardee and—forgive me, I'm forgetting the third 4 location. I'll follow up with that. 5 Vice Chair Greenfield: I have a few comments. The first one regarding Safe Routes to 6 School is an announcement that Sunday, September 30th, is Bike Palo Alto. This is from 7 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. at Fairmeadow School. It's celebrating Safe Routes in our community. 8 It's also honoring former Council Member Ellen Fletcher, who paved the way to make 9 our community more bike friendly, both figuratively and literally. It kicks off the fall 10 Walk and Roll Week in the PAUSD schools. Regarding park dedication, we're still 11 waiting to arrange a meeting with the City Attorney. Hopefully, we can do that between 12 now and the next meeting to consider dedication guidelines and constraints for properties. 13 The park rules and regulations ad hoc's going to meet with Daren tomorrow to review 14 potential policy updates. Hopefully, we can be ready to come to the Commission next 15 month with an action. Community gardens, there's an agreement for the new garden at 16 the former location of the Common Ground Nursery across the street from Gunn. It's 17 under review within the City, and we remain optimistic that we'll have some positive 18 news soon. Regarding turf management, I met with the City and school staff at JLS to 19 review field layout considerations. I'm working with the soccer stakeholders on field 20 layout and goal storage. Hopefully, we'll make some progress there. I had some 21 comments regarding the letters. I don't know if this is the right time to talk about that. 22 Chair McDougall: I'll bring it back. 23 Commissioner Reckdahl: I go back to Anne's comment about dog parks. In the letters 24 this month, there's a whole bunch of Heritage Park people. What's the next schedule—25 when do we get the next dog park? 26 Mr. Anderson: Next fiscal year (inaudible). 27 Commissioner Reckdahl: FY '20, which starts in the middle of 2019. 28 Mr. Anderson: July (inaudible). 29 Commissioner Reckdahl: Out plan is to have something—to have the planning done 30 ahead of time, so as soon as we get the money we start or is that money going to also pay 31 for the outreach? 32 Mr. Anderson: That's a good question. In the ideal case, we would be doing exactly that. 33 The truth of the matter is we're overburdened with projects right now. I don't think we're 34 going to be able to do that. I don't think we'll have preplanned it. I think we'll be 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 29 working very hard to get the park restroom in place, and even that may drag into the next 1 fiscal year before we're actually ready to have community meetings wrapped up, gone 2 through the Park Improvement Ordinance process, through Council. I have a feeling it'll 3 take a while. I would like to—I mentioned I'll set up that meeting soon for the ad hoc 4 who works on that particular topic to meet and at least be discussing it, so we won't be 5 hitting it cold. I can do somewhat concurrent. When it comes to the hard staff-heavy 6 work to really get things going, it might be deferred a little bit. 7 Commissioner Reckdahl: Mid-2020 would be when … 8 Mr. Anderson: I think so. 9 Commissioner Cribbs: We also discussed a little bit about looking at the existing dog 10 parks at Mitchell and Greer and Hoover and seeing what we could do to increase them 11 and add maybe some improvements to them as soon as possible, as soon as there's 12 money. 13 Commissioner LaMere: No updates at this time. Although, maybe I can get with you, 14 Daren, or Kristen. I will be meeting with someone from Stanford in the next week or 15 two. If there's any knowledge we have of current arrangements with any field use or field 16 sharing, it would be a great update as I go speak with them and try to sort things out. 17 Probably in the next month or two, it'd probably be good, Kristen, if we had a Master 18 Plan check-in to talk more about it, keep it on our minds. 19 Chair McDougall: In the category of liaison updates, the thing that I would like to add is 20 comments about the letter we so painstakingly and late at night crafted the last time. The 21 first thing I want to say—the reason I asked if I could talk about this rather than either 22 Keith or Jeff is I really want to thank both of them for their initiative and aggressiveness 23 in bringing this forward. Jeff, I know you had some question about the urgency and 24 whether that was important. The three of us met with the joint Council and School Board 25 Commission or meeting that they have. The outcome of that was preempted by the good 26 work that Kristen had done to set up already meetings with the School Board liaison. It 27 also resulted in conversations about whether outreach was sufficient or not. It made a 28 difference to how quickly things were happening. It was a good effort. Everybody 29 worked together on it. I'd like to thank everybody, particularly Jeff and Keith, for their 30 initiative of getting it done, and invite them to add any comments that they would like to 31 add to that. 32 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you. I think it was a productive meeting. Part of what we 33 were trying to convey was asking how the Parks and Rec Commission can be more 34 directly involved in the process or what assistance we can offer. There's discussion of 35 having quarterly meetings between Kristen and a counterpart within PAUSD. I'm 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 30 hopeful that this will be a public meeting that the Parks and Rec Commission could have 1 a liaison attend. 2 Commissioner Reckdahl: This has been a very unfortunate event. Hopefully, something 3 good comes out of this. Perhaps better communication with PAUSD will be a good 4 thing. 5 Chair McDougall: The other thing that came out of it was a belief and understanding or a 6 reinforcement of, number one, the Parks and Rec Commission position as stewards of 7 nature; number two, the fact that getting all of those PAUSD students out into nature is 8 another important part of their education, and we provide them that opportunity. 9 Probably enough on that. 10 VI. COMMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 11 Chair McDougall: I don't know if there are any other comments and announcements that 12 staff would like to make. If not, then maybe we could talk about the tentative agenda for 13 the October meeting. 14 VII. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR OCTOBER 23, 2018 MEETING 15 Ms. O'Kane: As was discussed, the amendments to the park rules and regulations would 16 be on the agenda as an action. We had intended to discuss the Master Plan update 17 accomplishments and what's planned for the current fiscal year tonight, but in the interest 18 of time I feel like that might be a long discussion. We're hoping to move that to October. 19 That being said, October is now getting full. We also still need to hear Commissioner 20 Moss' presentation on his hike to the sea. We intend to do an aquatics update. Either in 21 October or November, probably a pickleball update. We have an additional item in 22 November, which is an update on the Renzel marsh work, and a presentation on a 23 conceptual horizontal levee design. I wanted to also bring up that in December we need 24 to pick an alternate meeting date if we're going to have a meeting in December because it 25 does fall on December 25th. Something to consider. That's what I have for the next two 26 months. 27 Chair McDougall: Is everybody okay with that? Is there any additional items that people 28 would like to see us squeeze in? Once again, we've created a couple of 29 October/November agendas that might be longer than we'd like. 30 Vice Chair Greenfield: Did you mention the park rules and regulations review for next 31 month? I wasn't sure if I missed it. 32 Ms. O'Kane: Yes. 33 APPROVED Draft Minutes 31 Commissioner Cribbs: In the Department Report, if you could give a quick update on the 1 golf course and how they're doing in terms of the rounds of golf. I would encourage 2 everybody to go to the restaurant because they have a new menu again. Parking is really 3 easy. It's a lovely place to have a meeting or have lunch. I think we should all support it. 4 I was there today. 5 Chair McDougall: The only thing I see that's not there is the 7.7 acres. Would that be 6 covered in the staff report, Department Report, whatever? Similar with the aquatics, I 7 think we can do that in the staff report. I think that gives us a good outline of future 8 meetings. The next on the agenda would be adjournment. Below adjournment on the 9 agenda is public letters. I wonder if we could add either a separate line item, maybe 10 number 4 or number 3 and change 3 to 4, or make it oral communications and public 11 letters. If Commission members have read the letters and have particular things that have 12 reminded them or stuck out that they can be commented on rather than down here, just as 13 a reminder that those public letters are coming in and are as important to us as oral 14 communications, I would think. 15 Ms. O'Kane: We can look at revising the agenda. Some of the other Commissions 16 include all of the emails that have been received from the past month in one batch. 17 Natalie does send them to you as they come in. It's good to have them included in the 18 agenda, so the public and you can see them altogether. We can look to see where they 19 might fit. 20 Chair McDougall: I applaud that. I applaud the fact that the letters are all there. 21 Whenever we receive a letter, it's really hard to keep track. It's really hard to measure an 22 awful lot of momentum on a particular topic or severity. When you get letter after letter 23 in there that's on one topic, then you get a lot more to it. If we could just be—I think I'm 24 asking that we be given a reminder further up in the agenda that those letters are there 25 and we should have read them and be willing to say "by the way, does everybody agree 26 these letters are important." We need to give those letters a voice. 27 Ms. O'Kane: That sounds good. 28 Vice Chair Greenfield: I have one more question. Last month, I raised the question 29 regarding the annual meeting with City Council. Chair McDougall also mentioned the 30 two-on-two meeting. I wanted to see if there's any progress on that or if we can work 31 towards that. 32 Ms. O'Kane: This is the PRC/Council study session. I can work with the Clerk to 33 schedule that. I'm trying to recall when we had it last year. 34 Chair McDougall: I'll confirm that. I made several notes tonight about some ideas that 35 rather than just a meeting we would have some interesting message. I'm going to suggest 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 32 that I meet with Commissioner Greenfield and then maybe come to you with some topics. 1 If you could in the meantime investigate with the Clerk when we might be allowed to do 2 that? I know their agenda is a long way out. 3 Ms. O'Kane: Sure. Typically, the intent is to discuss what accomplishments have been 4 made the previous year and what the Commission would like to focus on for the 5 upcoming year. We can keep that in mind as we look to schedule. 6 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you. I know the previous meeting was over 12 months 7 ago, 12-16 months ago, something like that. 8 VIII. ADJOURNMENT 9 Meeting adjourned on motion by Commissioner Reckdahl and second by Vice Chair 10 Greenfield at 8:51 p.m. 11