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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2018-12-18 Parks & Recreation Summary MinutesAPPROVED Draft Minutes 1 1 2 3 4 MINUTES 5 PARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION 6 SPECIAL MEETING 7 December 18, 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: None 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: The agenda is available to everybody. Are there any changes, additions, 20 requests, deletions? We don't seem to have a large audience of people that would cause 21 me to want to change any of the order. If not, we'll continue with the agenda as published. 22 III. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS 23 Chair McDougall: That gives us a chance for Oral Communications. I think there are 24 people here with interests, but I don't have any cards for Oral Communications. 25 IV. DEPARTMENT REPORT 26 Chair McDougall: I would invite the Department Report. 27 Kristen O'Kane: Thank you, Chair. Kristen O'Kane, Community Services. I have a couple 28 of things to announce. First, I wanted to let the Commissioners know that last night the 29 City Council did approve our contract amendment for the Cubberley Master Plan. That is 30 to include Greendell School and 525 San Antonio properties into the Cubberley Master 31 Plan scope. The School District Board of Education will be voting on the same item 32 tonight, not the contract but the cost sharing agreement between the School District and 33 APPROVED Draft Minutes 2 the City for that amendment. Last week, as I'm assuming everyone knows, Council did 1 approve the contract with Team Sheeper for operation of Rinconada Pool for a five-year 2 term. That includes subcontracts with PASA, Palo Alto/Stanford Aquatics youth swim 3 team, and Rinconada Masters. Finally, I wanted to mention that Friday, December 28th, 4 is our annual senior New Year's Eve Brunch from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at Mitchell Park 5 Community Center. The Tenth Avenue Band will be playing. They're an awesome band 6 that has a great following. They're really fun. Tickets are on sale now for $10 at the three 7 community centers and Avenidas and also online at Eventbrite. That's all we have today. 8 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Are there any questions or comments? 9 Vice Chair Greenfield: Could you repeat the time of the lunch please? 10 Ms. O'Kane: It's 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Friday, December 28th, which I understand is 11 not New Year's Eve. We find we have a better turnout if we don't do it in the middle of 12 the craziness of New Year's Eve. 13 V. BUSINESS 14 1. Approval of Draft Minutes from the November 27, 2018 Parks and Recreation 15 Commission meeting. 16 Approval of the draft November 27, 2018 Minutes was moved by Vice Chair Greenfield 17 and seconded by Commissioner Reckdahl. Passed 7-0 18 2. Aquatics Annual Report 19 Chair McDougall: Next, I'd like to invite Stephanie Douglas to provide the annual aquatics 20 report. I'll let her introduce her guest. 21 Stephanie Douglas: Good evening. Stephanie Douglas, Superintendent of Recreation. I'm 22 joined tonight by Tim Sheeper, CEO of Palo Alto Swim and Sport. I'm here tonight to 23 present on the 2018 annual report, which is required to be submitted by Palo Alto Swim 24 and Sport on an annual basis based on their contract. We started working with Tim Sheeper 25 back in 2015 when we had a crisis with staffing and we needed some assistance with getting 26 lifeguards. That's when we first created a partnership with Tim Sheeper. In 2017, we 27 furthered that agreement by having Tim Sheeper take over all of our aquatic operations 28 including lessons, swim camps, and lap swim. They offer swim lessons, aquatic camps, 29 lap swim, open swim, and oversees contracts with Rinconada Masters and PASA. To make 30 it easier to digest the information that was provided in the annual report, I took a snapshot 31 of the data between 2017 and 2018. That time period is August through October. In the 32 2017 report, that was the information that was provided. In 2017, there were 146 resident 33 monthly memberships. In 2018, there were 212 resident monthly memberships. That is a 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 3 45-percent increase. In 2017, there were 2,771 resident drop-ins. In 2018, that number 1 increased to 4,873, a 161-percent overall increase in drop-ins. In 2017, 1,297 nonresidents 2 dropped in, and 5,748 nonresidents dropped in 2018. Altogether that's an increase of 161 3 percent with both residents and nonresidents. Four thousand two hundred seventeen 4 enrolled in swim lessons in 2017. That number did decrease a little bit to 3,205 in 2018, 5 but there were more enrollments in the aquatic camps, which might be the reason why we 6 had a decrease in the swim lessons. The decrease in swim lessons was about 23 percent, 7 but the increase in summer camp enrollments was 233 percent, a substantial increase in the 8 camp enrollment. Overall, 84 percent of swim lessons respondents reported that they were 9 extremely satisfied or satisfied with the swim lessons, and 96 percent of lap swimmers also 10 reported they were satisfied or extremely satisfied with their lap swim experience. 11 Chair McDougall: Stephanie, have you moved to a new slide? 12 Ms. Douglas: No. That information is just a side note; it's also in the report. For 2019, 13 Palo Alto Swim and Sport does have some goals that they'd like to achieve. Overall, they 14 do want to increase lap swim, swim lessons, and swim camp opportunities. They want to 15 add water exercise classes for adults, spring board diving for youth, and scuba diving 16 certification for adults, some new, innovative programs that we haven't offered in the past. 17 They also want to expand operating hours and limit facility closures. Facility closures can 18 happen for a number of reasons. Right now, we do have the JMZ construction happening, 19 and that's required a couple of unexpected closures. We're hoping to curtail those in 2019. 20 Most importantly, ensure continued safety of all programs including subcontracted 21 programs. You do have a copy of the report. I also have Tim Sheeper, who can answer 22 any questions you may have pertaining to specific programs. 23 Chair McDougall: Before we go to Commission questions, I do have one speaker card 24 relative to this. I'd like to give Jan Colee [phonetic] an opportunity to speak if she'd like. 25 Jan, you'll have three minutes. 26 Jan Colee: Hi there. I'm a Palo Alto resident and a lap swimmer. I just have three questions 27 that I wanted to ask since the City will be the go-between with Tim and the lap swimmers. 28 On the proposed schedule starting next January—on Saturday and Sunday the lap 29 swimmers currently swim on Saturday from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30, on Sunday from 7:00 a.m. 30 to 9:30. The proposed schedule for January has 8:00 to 9:00 closed to lap swimmers and 31 all 14 lanes are given to Masters. This was a proposed schedule prior to Carol 32 Macpherson's Masters being agreed upon. It may have been when Tim Sheeper was going 33 to bring his own Masters in. We have not seen the new schedule, so we'd like to know as 34 lap swimmers whether we'll be continuing to get our primetime hour of 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. 35 both Saturday and Sunday rather than handing that over to Masters. We understand that 36 the City has the final say with the schedule and the fees. We see that fees are going up 37 again in January. They went up when Tim took over the pool in August 2017. For the 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 4 seniors, they went up 66 percent and, I believe, for the non-senior swimmers 50 percent. 1 We're wondering why an increase again when the pool starts in January. I'm putting in a 2 plug that every time work has been done in the last few years on the pool, it's been done in 3 December. This week we have lost the warm showers when it's 40 degrees out in the 4 morning. I'd just love it if they could do the maintenance work in November or March or 5 February when the pool is still not at maximum use. If we could have any kind of locker 6 room closure not at the coldest time of the year, that's my one big question. 7 Chair McDougall: Jan, thank you for speaking. I'm going to now go to Commission 8 members to ask questions. Through the process of that, questions that were asked during 9 Jan's questions and comments might come up. Otherwise, I'll encourage her to find a way 10 to work with staff and Tim to get those. I'd like to start with questions from anybody up 11 here. Anne. 12 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you. I see there will be diving offered. Is that new? We 13 used to have diving, and we haven't had diving, so we're going to have diving again. 14 Ms. Douglas: That would be new for our programs. We haven't had it in the last few years. 15 That's something that Palo Alto Swim and Sport is proposing to try in 2019. 16 Commissioner Cribbs: That's great that you're doing it. I was wondering about the 17 insurance. 18 Tim Sheeper: Those are our target programs for 2019. That's what we'd like to do and 19 introduce to the community. We're still working on that. 20 Commissioner Cribbs: For a long time, it's been a great part of the program. It'd be good 21 if it could come back again. 22 Mr. Sheeper: There are wonderful diving boards, just refinished and redone. We want to 23 put them into use other than just for open swimmers who come in on the weekends. We 24 want to get programs involved. 25 Commissioner Cribbs: We've increased the swimming lessons and increased the people 26 dropping in and increased the programs, which is great. The numbers look really good. 27 What about reaching children for sure but adults as well who would like to learn to swim 28 but can't afford the lessons? What kind of scholarship plan do we have? What do we do 29 to make sure that we're taking care of everybody? 30 Ms. Douglas: The City does have a financial plan, a scholarship plan. If anybody's 31 interested in that, they can contact me directly. There's an application form to fill out. We 32 do work with Palo Alto Swim and Sport to make sure those scholarships are honored 33 through their programs. 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 5 Commissioner Cribbs: Is it easy to find out? 1 Ms. Douglas: It is online. If you go to the Palo Alto website and then the Recreation 2 website, you'll find a tab that states financial aid. 3 Commissioner Cribbs: Is it mobile—able to do … 4 Ms. Douglas: You would need to fill out a paper application and turn it in. 5 Commissioner Cribbs: No, no. I was wondering if the access was mobile, because some 6 of the population may not have a computer but would have a cell phone. 7 Ms. Douglas: If they come to any of our community centers, they can also pick up a form. 8 Commissioner Cribbs: I'm happy to see the contract going forward, happy to see the 9 modifications that were made. I appreciate everybody working together for the swimmers 10 in Palo Alto. I look forward to hearing more about it in the future. Thank you very much. 11 Ms. O'Kane: Tim Sheeper has secured a certain dollar amount of scholarships through the 12 Beyond Barriers program, which provides scholarships for youth in the community. He 13 has secured that funding. We really appreciate that to provide a deeper level of assistance 14 to the community. 15 Commissioner Cribbs: That's a really wonderful program. Is it specific to Palo Alto or for 16 all of your venues? 17 Mr. Sheeper: Beyond Barriers was started five or six years ago. It has grown. Beyond 18 Barriers is able to offer scholarship lessons in Menlo Park, specifically at Belle Haven 19 Pool. This year will be the first year at Rinconada Pool. We're pretty excited about that. 20 It's going to be a lot of lessons that we're able to give. People just come into the pool, and 21 there will be information about the scholarship and posters and flyers. They'll be able to 22 ask. It'll be on the website as well, like Stephanie mentioned. A lot of it will be people 23 coming in and asking about it. It's not a typical thing to come to a swimming pool and get 24 a scholarship for a swim lesson. It's quite unique, and we're really pleased that we've been 25 able to start this program six years ago and that it has expanded. It's been well funded by 26 the swimming community in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and the Atherton area. It's mostly 27 funded by Masters swimmers. They're giving back to the community. I think they have a 28 limit of over $20,000 this year, $25,000 in scholarships. It's quite substantial. 29 Commissioner Cribbs: Are either of you in touch with the U.S. Swimming Foundation. 30 Their program is learn to swim, and they do have some resources and some publicity 31 resources. If you're not, I'm happy to make an introduction. Thank you. 32 Mr. Sheeper: Is that the make a splash? 33 APPROVED Draft Minutes 6 Commissioner Cribbs: Yeah. 1 Mr. Sheeper: We've looked into that before, lovely program, wonderful. I think we've 2 found a way to fast-track it and get the lessons right away. We could process and give 3 lessons the same day a lot of the time with the system that we have in place and that we've 4 refined over six years. 5 Commissioner Cribbs: Whatever works. It's so good to take advantage of all the resources 6 our there because teenage and kid drowning is critical now, and adults as well. That's great. 7 Thank you. 8 Ms. O'Kane: That program also provides scholarships for kids to become certified 9 lifeguards. Kids are also learning a skill that they can use for employment. 10 Mr. Sheeper: It's a hurdle for a lot of youth, to become certified. It's anywhere from $150 11 to $300 for the certification through the Red Cross, depending on where you get the service. 12 Beyond Barriers funds 75 percent of that cost whether we do the certification in Palo Alto 13 or Menlo Park. 14 Commissioner Moss: I want to echo Anne's comments. I am so happy that the growth has 15 been so successful. I'm also very happy that you were able to make an agreement to keep 16 Rinconada Masters and keep the lap swimmers' schedule as close to what they've had in 17 the past as possible. I don't want to see this stellar growth in lessons if it's going to impact 18 those two very valuable stakeholder groups. You have about eight stakeholder groups, but 19 they are two of those eight. I want to make sure everybody gets equal support. I really 20 appreciate everything that you've done. I look forward to a great year this year. Thanks. 21 Vice Chair Greenfield: I want to echo the appreciation the whole Commission and the 22 plurality of the whole community feels about the contract success that we've had and 23 keeping Rinconada Masters. Thank you. I'm glad we were able to make progress on that. 24 In looking at the survey and the usage comparisons, very positive and successful numbers. 25 I observed that PASA and Palo Alto Masters weren't included in this. I understand that 26 they're subcontractors, but we're missing a part of the story by not having data for those 27 programs. I'm wondering if it'd be possible in the future and perhaps retroactively to get a 28 similar survey to users from those subcontractors and to have comparison numbers 29 available. I'm wondering if we've had this in the past. 30 Mr. Sheeper: We'll have to reach out to both PASA and the Rinconada Masters and have 31 them send out the survey link to their memberships. We don't have access to their 32 membership lists because they're private entities. We have flyers at the pool, so people can 33 answer the survey. For 2019, we can send out or we can … 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 7 Vice Chair Greenfield: I understand you're providing qualitative and quantitative data on 1 the programs which you administer. That makes perfect sense. It'd be great to get those 2 numbers for the complete picture. The last time the pool discussion came before the 3 Commission, the only schedule we saw was January, and there were questions about lane 4 usage and comparisons of what exists now versus what's coming. I share the concerns we 5 heard from the speaker to understand the changes or the status quo that is going to be 6 maintained. 7 Mr. Sheeper: What we're trying to do is open the pool more and prevent closures and 8 provide more service to the community. We are moving in that direction with this schedule 9 we put out. We are hoping and planning to open every day at 6:00 a.m. and keep the pool 10 open until 4:00 p.m. without any closures. After PASA uses the pool, we plan to open the 11 pool for a few nights a week. Prior to operation, the pool had three openings and three 12 closures per day. It's difficult for the community to get a good handle on the schedule 13 without looking at the schedule, so it's not intuitive. It's also difficult to staff the schedule 14 because we have to find a workforce who will work in short blocks of time, 3 hours or 2 15 1/2 hours. There are a lot of individuals who need a full-day shift. We've moving in that 16 direction, and we hope at one point in time to keep the pool open from 6:00 a.m. until 8:00, 17 8:30, 9:00 p.m. if the demand is there. That's where we want to move. We put the January 18 schedule out because that was the request, and it seemed to cause a lot of concern that we're 19 all of a sudden going to change the schedule or shorten the schedule. I think that's the 20 assumption. Contrary to that, we want to open the pool a lot more. The concept is shared 21 usage as much of the time as possible rather than exclusive usage of the pool because it's 22 large, 14 lanes. We're moving in that direction. That was one of the big changes with the 23 Rinconada Masters. Their leadership team was able to see and align with our values on 24 that. There's going to be a shared usage that will take care of a lot of the concerns that 25 we've had in the past. 26 Vice Chair Greenfield: I do appreciate the desire to open the pool to more of the 27 community and increase usage as much as possible. I do remember commenting 28 previously that the mornings showed shared usage, which is a change from exclusive usage 29 from one group to another. My recommendation is that the staff continue to oversee the 30 schedule. A lot of the groups seem to be happy with the exclusive usage model. It seems 31 like there are benefits going either way. The shared usage model means there should be 32 availability for all. In the case of the speaker's question, it would suggest if there's shared 33 usage, there should be access during these hours that the speaker was concerned about. 34 Would that be the case or am I missing something? 35 Mr. Sheeper: There's going to be shared access at that time. 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 8 Vice Chair Greenfield: Staff is happy with this schedule? How far out will you be posting 1 the schedule? Obviously, January is right around the corner, so we want to make sure that's 2 … 3 Mr. Sheeper: The goal is to have two schedules a year, a summer and a non-summer 4 schedule. The non-summer schedule is 42 weeks. The summer schedule is a specific ten 5 weeks. That's our model of operation and has been for a dozen years in the pools that we've 6 operated. 7 Vice Chair Greenfield: The schedule that's posted for January is likely to continue until 8 June? 9 Mr. Sheeper: Correct, yes. 10 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you for that clarification. 11 Mr. Sheeper: The community gets used to it; the staff gets used to it. 12 Vice Chair Greenfield: Glad that the Rinconada Masters are included with the program 13 right now. I know this is a trial basis essentially. I would like to know what the 14 Commission can do to help increase the likelihood of success, whether it's Commissioner 15 Cribbs serving some sort of role as the Commission liaison to the pool program or what 16 we can do. That's a question for staff or for you, Tim. 17 Mr. Sheeper: Hopefully, we never get to the point where we're meeting with Ms. Cribbs. 18 We had a great discussion meeting a few weeks about. It was about alignment of values 19 and what our company values are. Once we're able to get both entities to see the values 20 and the importance of them, we're going to turn the corner. They've changed a little bit of 21 their leadership model, so we have a point of contact. It's going to help us work through 22 any challenges or any issues that may arise. I don't foresee any issues. 23 Ms. O'Kane: From staff's perspective, if you hear anything in the community, if you notice 24 something related to aquatics, just let staff know. I'm fairly confident that between Tim 25 and his great staff and our staff everything will run smoothly. We welcome any feedback 26 and comments that you hear from the community. 27 Commissioner Cribbs: It feels like, seems like all of the parties are well on their way to 28 making the agreements work. I don't think there's any need for me to be a liaison; although, 29 I appreciate your suggestion. Everybody is going to adhere to the contract. I suspect the 30 next time you come back it'll be great and will continue to be great. Everybody loves 31 swimming, and everybody wants to see the pool utilized and open and lifeguarded and safe 32 and have enough room for everybody. That's how I'm thinking at this point. 33 APPROVED Draft Minutes 9 Commissioner Reckdahl: The speaker said one of the weekend days all the lanes are 1 dedicated for the Masters swimmers. You're saying that's not the case. It's going to be 2 split 50/50? 3 Mr. Sheeper: I'm trying to recall the schedule. We put it together, and it was proposed a 4 while ago. When the Rinconada Masters are in the pool right now, they'll be using half of 5 the pool. The other half of the pool will be open to the lap swim community. That will 6 allow us to provide the safety staff, the lifeguarding, for both the Masters and the lap 7 swimmers. 8 Commissioner Reckdahl: That's very good. That is a good strategy. I like the idea of 9 splitting it 50/50. If it's 100 percent Masters, the lap swimmers are kicked out of the pool. 10 I'd rather have them 50/50. That's more convenient for everybody. Stephanie, can we go 11 back a couple of slides to those numbers? Those are impressive. The resident drop-ins on 12 the second bullet are a big increase. Do we know why that occurred? Did we do better 13 marketing? Did people just fall in love with swimming? 14 Mr. Sheeper: We're opening the pool more. 15 Commissioner Reckdahl: It's longer hours. 16 Mr. Sheeper: There's more availability. 17 Commissioner Reckdahl: If you look at the numbers, we about doubled residents and 18 tripled or maybe a factor of four for nonresidents. Do you know why that is? 19 Mr. Sheeper: Your competition pool is used mainly by residents, lap swimmers and 20 Masters swimmers. Your play pool is used mostly by nonresidents. 21 Commissioner Reckdahl: Do we know where these nonresidents are coming from, Menlo 22 or EPA? 23 Mr. Sheeper: I would say they're not coming from Menlo. I don't know where they are 24 exactly coming from. My assumption is … 25 Female: From San Francisco to San Jose. 26 Commissioner Reckdahl: Everywhere. The swim lessons went down. Did we offer less 27 swim lessons or we didn't get as much enrollment in swim lessons? 28 Mr. Sheeper: Those 354 kids in camps also get one swim lesson per day, so that's an 29 additional 1,800 swim lessons that were given. If you put that into the total, we're reaching 30 up to 11,000 lessons provided this past year. That's not shown in that, but it's within that 31 354 campers. 32 APPROVED Draft Minutes 10 Commissioner Reckdahl: You think the aquatics camps cannibalized some of the swim 1 lessons? Is that why … 2 Mr. Sheeper: You could look at it that way or it embellished the swim lessons. 3 Commissioner Reckdahl: When we offered the swim lessons, did we have empty spots or 4 were they pretty well full? 5 Mr. Sheeper: In my opinion, the swim lessons will never fill. We just try to hire and staff 6 and train more instructors so that we can meet the demand. 7 Commissioner Reckdahl: This last year, you were happy with the offerings? Did we pare 8 back the offerings or did we find … 9 Mr. Sheeper: We didn't pare back, no. 10 Commissioner Reckdahl: I'm just looking at the difference in the 42 and 32. Was that 11 unexpected that we would see that decrease? 12 Mr. Sheeper: There have been some changes in the community. These are just 13 assumptions, being a social scientist and an operator. There was a decline in swim schools 14 in general in the area. We had a decline of 10-15 percent in Menlo Park, our first decline 15 in a dozen years. There's been a decline in enrollment in schools. There are other factors 16 going on the community. That's one thing. Another thing is this was the first year where 17 the swim lessons were not subsidized by the City so the lessons went to market rate. One 18 of those three or a portion of all those three went into the numbers. 19 Commissioner Reckdahl: The speaker also mentioned that they had a price increase or 20 we'll have another price increase in January. How do our lap swim rates compare to other 21 cities? Are we higher, lower, the same? 22 Mr. Sheeper: We try to keep it—it's right in the same sweet spot. It doesn't really move. 23 I would like to talk to the speaker to see how it's raised 66 percent. I'm not sure if that's a 24 number that I remember her saying. We've changed the whole fee structure of how they 25 pay to come and use the facility. It really benefits frequent and consistent users because 26 they're paying a fixed monthly cost. The more times you use the pool, the lower the cost. 27 Commissioner Reckdahl: It could be apples and oranges if you're talking about paying per 28 swim as opposed to paying a monthly fee. 29 Mr. Sheeper: Right. There's still that fee to come in and use the pool. We're not changing 30 that; we haven't changed that. 31 APPROVED Draft Minutes 11 Commissioner Reckdahl: I would really encourage, Stephanie, the next time you come 1 back to have a comparison of our prices for lap swimming and swim lessons, etc., to some 2 other cities around. It'd be a nice sanity check for us. 3 Ms. Douglas: Definitely. We do have those numbers, and we can pass them on. I'll make 4 sure next year's report will have that included. 5 Commissioner Reckdahl: In the staff report, we looked at the survey responses, and 85 6 percent said they were satisfied or extremely satisfied. Is the glass 84-percent full or 16-7 percent empty? Sixteen percent of people being unsatisfied seems kind of high to me. Do 8 we know why they were unsatisfied? 9 Mr. Sheeper: In which … 10 Commissioner Reckdahl: This is swim lessons. Do we know why people were unsatisfied? 11 Mr. Sheeper: There are five categories they can go in. 12 Chair McDougall: Less than 16 percent are unsatisfied because there's a middle category. 13 All they did in the staff report was put the top two. There's satisfied and less satisfied and 14 then totally unsatisfied. This doesn't include the middle category that was satisfied. 15 Commissioner Reckdahl: This is extremely satisfied or satisfied. 16 Chair McDougall: If you look at the detail of the report, you'll find … 17 Commissioner Reckdahl: There's a middle. That would make me feel happier that most 18 of those were neutral. Thank you. 19 Ms. Douglas: There are some comments in the report from the survey. Some of the 20 comments do speak about the water being too cold or the children not learning very specific 21 swim strokes and things of that nature. That may impact some of the survey results, that 22 feedback. 23 Commissioner Reckdahl: That's the kind of thing I'd want to know, that it's something 24 outside our control. 25 Chair McDougall: It is Palo Alto after all, number one. Number two, whatever the number 26 is, it is an important number to look at. If it's 3 percent unsatisfied, you still want to know 27 why the 3 percent. That's a good question. Commissioner McCauley. 28 Commissioner McCauley: Staying on the topic of the surveys. I thought there were a 29 pretty low number of actual survey respondents based on the number of people who are 30 using the pool. What's the method for collecting the surveys? 31 APPROVED Draft Minutes 12 Mr. Sheeper: It's a broadcast email that goes out with a link to the survey. That's sent out 1 several times. There are also surveys that can be filled out at the pool. What was it, 61 2 respondents? 3 Commissioner McCauley: It was something like that. I expected it to be thousands. I 4 appreciate that people are busy. I would just plant the seed of is there a way to in a 5 systematic way get additional feedback that's going to be helpful to you. I'm sure you're 6 already thinking about. You don't need to answer on the spot. I'm just suggesting that 7 maybe there's something you could do to augment or supplement the survey process at the 8 moment. 9 Mr. Sheeper: In all the years that we've been doing it, it's usually in that range. It's never 10 really come up into triple digits as far as people responding. When people are satisfied and 11 happy, they really don't let you know. It's usually the converse of that. 12 Commissioner McCauley: Understood. There are a couple of comments that seem to 13 repeat. I don't know that there's really a trend that you see as you look through those 14 comments, at least that I don't see, that stands out to me. Is there something that stands out 15 to you? From those survey responses, are there takeaways that you would say "these are 16 the top three things that we think we need to do"? For example, one of the things I saw 17 repeated a couple of times was the locker rooms need to be significantly upgraded. That's 18 obviously not on you; it's on the City. Are there other things? What are your top three 19 items from the survey responses that stand out to you as priorities? 20 Mr. Sheeper: My top one is always in the swim school. This is a constant challenge in any 21 swim school. It's about the consistency of the swim instructor. The end user wants to come 22 in and get that same swim instructor each and every lesson that they have. As a parent, I 23 want the same thing. On the other side of it, that's an extreme challenge for us, to give that 24 service because of all the changes in the workforce through the summer or through that 25 period of time with moving classes, illnesses within the workforce. That's the number one 26 thing that always gets me. The second thing is ease of registration. We're constantly 27 working on streamlining what it takes the end user to, first, engage with us, learn the 28 program and what we're offering, and then get them registered into a class. It's this really 29 complex puzzle that we're trying to simplify and make quick and easy for the end user. 30 We're constantly working on that. Those are the top two things. 31 Commissioner McCauley: On the revenue numbers, I think this is a question for Stephanie. 32 Can you give us a comparison of net impact to the City from when the City was running 33 the pool to now with Team Sheeper? This year we're going to have going to the City as of 34 October 31st $6,422. I think it was the case when the City was running the pool that we 35 were in the red rather than being in the black at all. Maybe you can put a little color on 36 what that circumstances … 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 13 Ms. Douglas: You mean from a financial standpoint between Palo Alto Swim and Sport 1 versus when the City was doing it? 2 Commissioner McCauley: Right. 3 Ms. Douglas: I don't have exact figures. Since we're not paying labor costs, overhead, 4 really the only cost to the City is maintaining the pool. I don't have the exact figures, but 5 it is substantially less. There is significant savings for the City. Kristen, I don't know if 6 you have any other … 7 Ms. O'Kane: We included that in our presentation to Council last Monday. I can try and 8 pull it up or forward the Commission … 9 Mr. Sheeper: It was a savings of $140,000 for the City of Palo Alto. 10 Chair McDougall: That's the number that I was going to use from that report. 11 Commissioner McCauley: That's helpful to know. It's probably always important when 12 you think about these reports to include the comparison for the City. Obviously, there's 13 lots of different considerations going into a public-private partnership like this one, but the 14 bottom-line cost is one of the things to have in mind and consider, particularly when it's 15 CSD's unanimous view that we have better service today than we did when we were trying 16 to operate it ourselves. On the note of potential improvements for this sort of report in the 17 future, I appreciate the checklist that's in the contract for what Tim's annual report should 18 look like. I also appreciate very much your doing the year-over-year comparison. We're 19 going to continue to compile more and more data. It's helpful in this report to see those 20 year-over-year comparisons and hopefully growth in programs year-over-year. Where 21 there isn't growth, we can quickly identify it and understand where there might be areas for 22 rethinking a program or perhaps rededicating resources towards an initiative that we think 23 is important. It would also be important to include, to the extent we have data that is 24 comparable, information about when the City operated the pool so that we have a complete 25 perspective. If you had numbers from 2015 or 2016 when the City was operating the pool, 26 we can see the continuum. Everyone here is telling us that things are much better than they 27 used to be, which is great, but it would be helpful and put everything in context to have 28 those numbers laid out. Everyone else has noted this, and congratulations again on the new 29 contract with the City. Congratulations as well on the favorable resolution of the issue 30 with Rinconada Masters. To be very candid, there's a little bit of dissonance between what 31 I've heard and the other Commission members have heard in the past two months about the 32 situation with the contract versus what we're hearing tonight, which is everything is going 33 really well. Chair McDougall touched on this at the October Parks and Recreation 34 Commission meeting. There's probably a lot of work to do in order to rebuild trust within 35 the Masters community. I hope you would continue to do that. I don't know if there's any 36 particular mechanism, but this goes to the speaker's comment as well. If there were a 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 14 mechanism for regular feedback—I don't know if you have an advisory committee that 1 includes PASA and Rinconada Masters and a representative or two from the lap swim 2 community. That would be great. It would be hopefully a means by which you can both 3 promote communication on a very regular basis and also have something tangible to say 4 that you're working hard to rebuild that trust with these different constituencies. I don't 5 know if you have thoughts on that, but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. 6 Mr. Sheeper: Those mechanisms are put into the agreement that we have with them. Just 7 to reiterate what I said earlier, it has been a realignment of the principles that we've laid 8 out and of our values. What we have been able to do is work together with the group so 9 that we can hit one of our number one company core values, which is safety. We have now 10 taken on the role as the safety provider when the Masters are in the pool, which was the 11 big challenge and the hurdle that we were unable to overcome. Moving forward, we have 12 a point of contact, a single point of contact, with the Rinconada Masters where we can 13 work through any issues that may arise as we work towards the long-term agreement. 14 Commissioner McCauley: I appreciate that you have appointed folks to help in the 15 communication realm when an issue arises. I guess what I'm suggesting is it would be 16 helpful if you were proactively meeting once a month or every other month with your 17 different constituencies so that it's not only issues that you always hear about or problems 18 and trying to put out fires but rather that there's hopefully good will generated through that 19 regular communication, folks feeling as though they're kept in the loop and people aren't 20 surprised by changes and adjustments that happen. If you already have that, that's great. 21 If not, then I would … 22 Mr. Sheeper: One hundred percent agree, yes. 23 Commissioner LaMere: I appreciate all of the previous comments by Commissioners. I 24 just have a couple of questions. In regard to the open swim drop-in that's more for the 25 younger kids, is that impacted or has there been a problem with lines and people getting in 26 or does it seem—obviously, it seems like it's fairly high usage. Is that correct? 27 Mr. Sheeper: Yeah, it's very high usage. There's a challenge on some warm days in the 28 summer to get everybody into the pool that wants to get into the pool. We've worked 29 through wait lists. We've worked on putting as many guards in the swimming pool as 30 possible and still keep it safe. 31 Commissioner LaMere: I don't remember the fee structure as far as drop-in. Is there much 32 of a price difference between a resident and a nonresident user? 33 Mr. Sheeper: It's a $1 difference. 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 15 Commissioner LaMere: In your calculations, you base things off family drop-in counting 1 as four visits. What's the range of a family pass? It could be anywhere from two or three 2 people up to six or seven? What's your limit? 3 Mr. Sheeper: Five. 4 Commissioner LaMere: The calculations for drop-in for July for the nonresidents is not 5 correct. The nonresident number should be higher in your July calculations. 6 Mr. Sheeper: There's a mistake? 7 Commissioner LaMere: You didn't multiply the family by four. It's a significant difference 8 in your report, just as a note. I would echo what Commissioner McCauley stated about 9 working with Masters and working with these other stakeholders, specifically Masters. I 10 feel optimistic where things are going and appreciate the efforts that you're making and 11 also appreciate the core value of safety. That's something where I do see the idea of shared 12 usage and how that can benefit a lot of different stakeholders, where it allows you to staff 13 it and allows you to have continuation with keeping the pool open. Really appreciate those 14 aims, those goals. Hopefully continue the improvements that we've seen in the pool. 15 Chair McDougall: I'm going to do something unusual. We did start this session a little 16 early. I got one card that was late. I'm going to allow Linda Fletcher to talk for two 17 minutes. Understand, Linda, this isn't a dialog. We won't be answering questions or 18 whatever. 19 Linda Fletcher: I just wanted to take a minute. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm 20 sorry I'm late. I've been going through this process since the beginning and recognize 21 everybody that's worked on this. Appreciate the effort that's gone into it. I just want to 22 make sure that we're checking in. I am a lap swimmer and have been a lap swimmer for 23 my entire life. There needs to be continued conversations about the scheduling because 24 sharing lanes—it sounds great adding hours, but those hours aren't necessarily times when 25 people are able to use the pool. A Masters program is a synchronized program; it's a 26 workout. A lap swimming program is completely different. There needs to be dialog. I 27 appreciate what you said. I agree wholeheartedly that stakeholders need to be in an open 28 conversation. One of the continued comments that's come up through this process has been 29 communication. One person has really helped with the pool, and that's Marla. She has 30 been an outstanding contact person that the lap swimmers have been able to go to. We tell 31 her things, and she is on it immediately. I just want to make sure that she's recognized 32 tonight. Really appreciate that. I'm hoping that the communication continues and the hard 33 work that has gone into this whole process pays off with us being able to continually use 34 this community gem. Thank you for your time. Thank you again for doing that. 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 16 Chair McDougall: Linda, thank you. I'd like to wrap up with some comments. It seems 1 that as much as any Commission or division within the City we're dealing in what I have 2 described before as a scarce and valuable resource and the allocation and protection of that 3 scarce and valuable resource. I think we've come to learn that when you're doing that you 4 can't make everybody happy. You can do your best to make sure you're using that resource 5 appropriately, and that does involve trust that's been mentioned here. I think real progress 6 has been made in that direction, and I thank you for that. In terms of the report, you've 7 heard all sorts of comments about the granularity, including PASA, including Masters. I 8 would encourage staff and Team Sheeper in making any kind of report or thinking about it 9 to exercise their own curiosity. If you were sitting here or on the City Council, what 10 questions would you ask as opposed to here's the form I'm supposed to fill out and I've 11 filled it out. Of course, everybody has thanked Tim Sheeper for doing this. I'd like to make 12 sure we thank Stephanie for her full participation in this. What's been missing is to thank 13 the Rinconada Masters. They're not here, but they should be thanked for their part of the 14 agreement that was come to and whatever accommodations they made. I'd like to also 15 make sure we thank both Jazmin and Kristen. I think Kristen lost a couple of weeks of her 16 life in working on this. It's important we recognize that City staff and management has 17 worked really hard to make all this work. Good effort on team swim here that involves 18 everybody. Thank you very much. Tim, if you'd like to make a last comment, you can or 19 you can escape. 20 Mr. Sheeper: Can't top that. That was good. 21 3. Pickleball Update 22 Chair McDougall: Speaking of scarce and valuable resources, here's Adam Howard, who 23 is one of our scarce and valuable resources. 24 Adam Howard: Good evening. Adam Howard, Senior Community Services Manager with 25 the Community Services Department. I'm here to obtain some feedback from you about 26 the preliminary design of designated pickleball space. As you are all aware at this point, 27 the City of Palo Alto has seen an increase in the number of pickleball players and requests 28 for pickleball space. The Palo Alto Pickleball Club, formerly Silicon Valley Pickleball 29 Club, has been very active in Palo Alto. The club was using Mitchell Park tennis courts 5, 30 6, and 7 on a first-come-first-serve basis primarily on weekends but also during the week. 31 At the time they were doing that, that wasn't supported by our Court Use Policy. As staff 32 began to see the increase, we figured it was important to legitimize that play, so we created 33 a new policy we brought to the Commission on August 29th. You all supported it, and it 34 was approved by City Council on October 15th. In that time, we have also made some 35 changes to the small paddleboard courts in Mitchell Park and made them designated 36 pickleball courts, which were actually changes to the height of the net. That area is fenced 37 in, so there's not a lot of changes we could make. The community seems pretty happy with 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 17 it. The area in the top left was small paddleboard courts that are now designated pickleball 1 courts. They're not official size by some inches, but the net now is a proper height. The 2 pickleball community seems to be enjoying those. We have Mitchell Park tennis courts 1-3 4; these are 5, 6, and 7. This space up here is the space we'll be talking about in terms of 4 new space. The change to the policy legitimized the pickleball space. It also provided 5 some designated pickleball time as well as tennis time on courts 5, 6, and 7. That's great 6 and has been working pretty well. However, we recognize that there is not enough 7 designated space. As Palo Alto Pickleball Club used that space, volunteers have to bring 8 out their own nets. They have to set up their own nets and tear them down when they're 9 done. They've purchased all of those nets. We feel it's time to put a little bit of resources 10 into this and allow the pickleball community to continue to grow in Palo Alto. When we 11 first made a recommendation, it was to turn Mitchell Park 5, 6, and 7 into designated 12 pickleball courts. We got a pretty big pushback on that primarily around the loss of three 13 lit tennis courts. Staff heard that and took that into consideration and came up with what 14 we think is a good combination of joint-use space, new space, and lit tennis courts. This 15 is our recommendation for dedicated pickleball courts. The proposal would be to turn court 16 5 into four designated pickleball courts, to leave 6 and 7 as multiuse courts, which would 17 be either two tennis courts or seven pickleball courts, and then bump out the area outside 18 court 5 and put two more designated pickleball courts. We hoped that space would be 19 more, but as we started to look at the dimensions, it just wasn't going to work. This would 20 result in eight designated pickleball courts in Mitchell Park, which includes the two 21 paddleboard courts, four of which would be lit, four designated tennis courts, and two 22 multiuse courts, which could be either two tennis courts or seven pickleball courts. What 23 we do like about the joint-use space is the high demand of these two sports don't necessarily 24 happen at the same time. Pickleball is in high demand during the day and in the mornings. 25 The high demand for tennis is in the evenings mostly because we don't have as many lit 26 courts. By using joint-use space, we feel like we've reached a good accommodation. If 27 pickleball continues to grow, we might not have enough designated space. This plan also 28 allows for growth if we need to do that. That's our proposal. It's important to suggest here 29 that this is all great, but it does need to be approved by Santa Clara Valley Water District. 30 We've talked with them. We know our measurements from the creek are okay, but 31 ultimately they have the final say with the permit. Although we think it's a great idea, 32 there's one sticking point that's out of our control. We don't think it'll be a problem, but I 33 do want to put that out there. I'll open it up for comment. 34 Chair McDougall: Before we go to the Commission for comment, we have two cards. The 35 first one is Andie Reed. 36 Andie Reed: Hi. My name is Andie Reed, and I live on Melville Avenue in Palo Alto. 37 Thank you for your service as Park and Rec Commissioners. A friend got me to try 38 pickleball a few years ago, and I actually got the ball over the net, which was a revelation. 39 I have never played ball sports before, but once I got started I never looked back. When I 40 APPROVED Draft Minutes 18 heard there were pickup pickleball games at Mitchell Park a couple of years ago, I ran over 1 there. It was an opportunity to walk on the court. Monica, Eric, Marie, and many others 2 would help us out by giving us pointers and then throw you into a game and see how it 3 goes. If you stuck around long enough, you got to learn how to set up the nets and tear 4 them down. A couple of years have gone by. Pickleball can be learned very quickly, at 5 least enough to have a good time. It's really hard to get good at, which makes it the perfect 6 sport. It's fun and challenging. As the sport has grown, we've continued to buy nets and 7 set them up and tear them down, which is quite an operation. I'm currently on injured 8 reserve, which means I can't play for a while, and I really miss the socializing, the physical 9 exercise, the challenge, and the pure fun. As I'm sure staff has determined—I appreciate 10 your hard work—the sport is already very popular and still growing. Weekday mornings, 11 we're there, as many as 20 or 30 players. On the weekends, it's many more. Monica has 12 even been teaching classes for the City of Palo Alto, so anyone can pop in and learn. It 13 would benefit the City of Palo Alto to provide permanent courts for our pickleball players. 14 Thank you for finding a way to share the courts and consider permanent courts for 15 pickleball. Thanks. 16 Chair McDougall: Thank you, Andie. Monica. 17 Monica Williams: Good evening, Chair McDougall and Commissioners. I'm Monica 18 Williams, President of the Palo Alto Pickleball Club. On behalf of the more than 400 19 members of the club—I'm sure you've heard from many of them because they couldn't 20 come tonight—we strongly encourage you to go ahead with Adam's proposal to install six 21 permanent pickleball courts at Mitchell Park. We appreciate all the hard work and staff 22 time that's gone into this project. Thank you very much. 23 Chair McDougall: Thank you. I would add, by the way, that Monica's correct. My inbox 24 is full. There were well over 20, 25 letters that were supportive of the proposal. To be fair, 25 there was one proposal that simply suggested we stripe and set up to share all the courts as 26 a different proposal. I'll entertain and encourage questions, comments. I think I'll start 27 with Commissioner LaMere this time. 28 Commissioner LaMere: Just a couple of quick questions, Adam. Appreciate all your hard 29 work with this. In regard to the paddleboard courts, what is the difference between the 30 paddleboard court and the pickleball? Is it the size of the net or … 31 Mr. Howard: The height of the net is a difference, and the spacing that they currently have 32 isn't as wide as they would need to be an official court. We went with 6 inches between 33 the two and 6 inches to the fences. Ideally, you would be much further than that. 34 Commissioner LaMere: It's still usable for a paddleball court? I don't know how many 35 paddleball users we have. 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 19 Mr. Howard: They would still be able to use it. Before we did this, I put signage out for a 1 month and a half, saying if these changes would impact your current use, let us know. No 2 one contacted us. 3 Commissioner LaMere: With putting a permanent space at Mitchell Park and doing new 4 construction, have we studied other parks? Is this something that, through the fact that the 5 pickleball players have been there, this is the best place for them? Is it the best place for 6 the City and the best use of all of our parks to do this new construction and to make these 7 courts permanent at Mitchell Park as opposed to another park? 8 Mr. Howard: Thank you for that because I should have clarified. We started at Mitchell 9 because they were there, but I really opened it to every park. There are some unique factors. 10 One, it is a very social game, and 100 people will show up to play. There are only so many 11 places that we have that could handle the parking for that. It is a little bit noisier than 12 tennis, so keeping it away from residents. I looked at all the parks. I looked at blank 13 spaces. I looked at other tennis courts. We just keep coming back to this as being the best 14 location for the City and for the pickleballers. 15 Commissioner LaMere: I did speak to someone who lives on my street, and he is a tennis 16 player. Previously, he had been very outspoken against the pickleball players. He likes to 17 play in the morning, and apparently he struck up a friendship with someone in the pickleball 18 community. They have figured out how to share the space and get along. I was very 19 heartened by that and thought I would share that with you and with the people here. If 20 people can communicate and talk and figure things out, hopefully we can figure out better 21 ways to use our facilities and to share all of our facilities so that everyone can use them. 22 Commissioner McCauley: To dovetail on Jeff's question just a little bit. I appreciate that 23 you did an audit of all the different parks and places where you might put in pickleball 24 courts. I also totally appreciate your point that this is a very social game and folks want to 25 be together. You want to have critical mass, so you wouldn't necessarily have a pickleball 26 court in every park or every place where you have tennis courts. That said, I think one of 27 our Comprehensive Plan goals is to make sure we have park resources and amenities 28 distributed throughout the park system, not only so that it is convenient for people but also 29 so that we reduce commute trips to different locations and things of that nature. 30 Appreciating that this is the right solution for the moment—I think you're probably right 31 that it is—I would definitely encourage you to continue thinking about other places. If it 32 is the case that you have to have so many pickleball courts in order to have any pickleball 33 courts, that would be self-defeating in a sense for the pickleball community. It would be 34 great if we had neighborhood pickleball communities instead of having just one at Mitchell 35 Park for example. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. 36 Mr. Howard: I agree with you. I started those conversations because I had the same 37 thought process of should we be spreading our resources around. What I heard is that the 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 20 social aspect of this game is really important to the pickleball players. Two courts in a 1 park might not get used because ultimately it's a group gathering activity. Maybe it would 2 get used, but it wouldn't get used the way pickleball is designed to be used. That was the 3 feedback I received. 4 Ms. O'Kane: Could I add a little bit to that? There are other factors like noise. Pickleball 5 is a bit of a noisy sport compared to tennis. It requires different things than tennis courts. 6 To put it in a neighborhood park where there are houses around probably would be too 7 disruptive. 8 Commissioner McCauley: With respect to the timeline for converting some of the courts 9 to be dedicated to pickleball and conversion of courts 6 and 7 so that they have the ability 10 for mixed-use and then the expansion into that new area along the creek, what do you have 11 in mind? What is your expected timing? 12 Mr. Howard: We'd have to look into it a little further. The restriping and the designation 13 of court 5 and 5, 6, and 7 and all that work could be done really quickly because we were 14 waiting to resurface the courts to make sure we knew what we were doing. That could 15 happen in weeks, months maybe, because we'd have to schedule it. What we don't know 16 is whether whoever we bid this out to would rather do it all at once or do the three courts 17 separately. If they need to do it altogether, that pushes it out a little bit. I'm not going to 18 say years, six months or something of that nature. We don't know if someone's going to 19 need to bid that together or could do it separately. Our ideal situation would be to move 20 forward with court 5 and do the construction separately, but we don't know if that would 21 be a big hassle for the construction company. If that makes it greatly more expensive, we 22 wouldn't want to do that. 23 Commissioner McCauley: I presume that you already have the funding secured for all of 24 this work. Is that right? 25 Mr. Howard: We actually feel pretty strongly that this basic design could be absorbed into 26 the contract that we already have in place, through savings that we've already incurred and 27 because the other courts were already going to get done. This basic design, we do feel like 28 we would already have the funding. I say basic design because there is conversation with 29 the pickleball community that they'd love to see some bleachers or some storage. The 30 conversation has been that they're willing to fundraise to do those things so we wouldn't 31 necessarily be the one paying for it, but we still have to finalize the plans a little bit. 32 Commissioner Reckdahl: Can you move to the next page on the path forward, the next 33 steps? These all look reasonable. When you have stakeholders involved and create public 34 outreach, that could be real time sinks. You talked about talking with the construction 35 people and figuring out how long to schedule them. How much would those other tasks 36 slow down the process? 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 21 Mr. Howard: Not much. Two is the finish—that's been done. It just wasn't at the time 1 that I had to turn it in. What we were looking for is in writing that we knew the setback 2 from the creek. Technically, 2 is already completed. One is an ongoing thing. Since we 3 changed the policy, I want to see how that's working. The finished design is pretty basic, 4 the idea of a social gathering spot, storage, what direction they actually want the courts to 5 face, which is more of a preference than anything else. Daren might be able to help me 6 with the Santa Clara Valley Water. I don't know how long that approval would take to get 7 from the District. The outreach would be more about informing what we've done. This 8 plan has come from the outreach we've already done. I don't know that we'd want to be 9 doing a lot more about getting input as much as communicating to the public what we've 10 decided on. 11 Commissioner Reckdahl: When I look at this list, I think there's no way we're doing to get 12 it done in six months. Is there anything that we can do speed up the process? 13 Daren Anderson: To our favor, we've had two recent projects in that same area. I say that 14 relative to the Water District permit requirements, both the Magical Bridge Playground and 15 the bridge replacement in the last three years. There was almost no process where we 16 needed to reach out to them. Wanting to make sure nothing popped up at the last moment, 17 we reached out to the District and they said we'd probably need this permit. It's not 18 guaranteed we need it, but I feel like it'll be a faster process than our normal golf course or 19 other permits that you're thinking about. I do not believe it'll be along those scales; I think 20 it'll go faster. One thing this is missing—unfortunately it adds to the list rather than taking 21 away—is we'll need a Park Improvement Ordinance. We'll have to have drawings to share. 22 The Attorney puts that together; we come back to the Parks and Recreation Commission. 23 They recommend that to Council, and Council adopts that PIO, Park Improvement 24 Ordinance. In that ordinance, it would not only have all the amendments we're making to 25 the courts themselves and that new area but also if we're going to do a little meeting area, 26 that would have to be drawn out and specified exactly what we're putting there since it'd 27 be a change in the use of the park. Typically, the PIO process, since we already have a 28 good deal of this already drawn up, the public process is fairly evolved. I'm thinking if we 29 get fortunate timing with the City Attorney's Office and they're available, we'll probably 30 get a three-month turn-around on that. Maybe six months to nine months on the fast end 31 is viable. 32 Commissioner Reckdahl: When we did the batting cages down at the Baylands, the 33 planning process from the time they submitted it to the Planning Division and had them 34 churn through it—they had some objections and they had to iterate on that—it took forever. 35 Mr. Anderson: That's true. We'll have to check with Planning to see if they foresee an 36 architectural or staff-level review from the ARB, the Architectural Review Board. That 37 one's sort of an unknown. We'll have to do a little more outreach; you're right. It's probably 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 22 prudent—six to nine months is the fast route and potentially, as you know from prior 1 experience, it can go longer depending on where we get hung up. Both Adam and I and 2 Kristen are savvy now with enough experience that we can help shepherd it through a little 3 faster. At least, we'll give it our best effort. 4 Commissioner Reckdahl: The PIO, we have to vote on, and then it goes to Council. We 5 can't start construction until the second reading. 6 Mr. Anderson: Thirty days after the second reading. 7 Commissioner Reckdahl: Third days after the second reading. 8 Mr. Anderson: That's right. 9 Commissioner Reckdahl: From the time we see it to the time we can start construction is 10 probably three months. 11 Mr. Anderson: Kristen just pulled me aside to say, "Can we get to work on this soon?" 12 We understand that could be a logjam. I'll work with Adam to expedite that process. 13 Commissioner Reckdahl: In particular the stakeholder input, we should try to do as much 14 in parallel because we have a pretty good idea what it is. We certainly could talk to the 15 stakeholders tomorrow for that matter. We don't have to wait for these—the hoops don't 16 have to be a series. 17 Commissioner Reckdahl: That's correct. 18 Mr. Howard: That conversation has actually already started. I've sat down with the 19 pickleballers, and they've seen this plan. We've gone a good distance with that already. 20 We just have some final touches that we want to work out the details to, which we didn't 21 get into because we wanted to move one step at a time. That process can be finished 22 quickly. 23 Commissioner Reckdahl: I trust that you guys can do it, but I've been burned too many 24 times by a long schedule. The last time pickleball was here, there were some questions 25 about the safety on the paddleball courts, about the fence and the posts not being in the 26 optimal position. Are we going to do anything about that or are we going to say good 27 enough? 28 Mr. Howard: When we resurfaced, we relocated the poles. That's no longer an issue. 29 They're still closer to the fence than they'd like to be. By moving the poles, we've alleviated 30 some of that concern. 31 APPROVED Draft Minutes 23 Commissioner Reckdahl: We don't have any plans on moving the fences at all or that's just 1 not … 2 Mr. Howard: There are too many restrictions in the area that wouldn't allow us to do it. 3 There's electrical and something else that runs all along those areas. 4 Vice Chair Greenfield: I want to thank Adam and staff for all the hard work they've done 5 on this. I appreciate the reasonable compromise that you're proposing. It is very viable 6 and is the best choice that we can come up with. I also appreciate the comments and 7 questions from Commissioners LaMere and McCauley. Adam's had practice answering 8 these questions, having spent a lot of time with him in the Park and Facility Use Policy Ad 9 Hoc. We've asked these questions and many more. I want to reassure the Commission 10 that this has been well vetted. I do like the plan for just adding two courts. I know we 11 were trying to squeeze three in. I like the availability of increasing the green space that 12 will be surrounding the courts for a gathering place, potentially for tables or storage as has 13 been discussed. As we reach out to the Water District, I don't know if there's any discussion 14 about tree placement and species. That would be appropriate to discuss with them in that 15 strip, but it'd be nice to shade that. We'd probably want deciduous trees to limit the leaves 16 that go on the courts and into the creek area. It seems like that would be an opportunity. I 17 don't know if it's something that needs to be vetted with the Water District. As we dedicate 18 court 5, take it away from being a tennis court, we need to consider how to renumber the 19 courts to maintain some sanity. Maybe we have a "t" for tennis court and a "p" for 20 pickleball court and "m" for mixed-use court. It's something we should consider, and now 21 is probably the time to be moving on that. I know the pickleball community will be hoping 22 that the contractor will be okay with a two-step process so we can get court 5 converted as 23 quickly as possible. Keep up the great work. 24 Commissioner Moss: I want to echo some of the other Commissioners in saying that this 25 is a great opportunity. I was wondering more specifically what was wrong with the 26 Cubberley tennis courts. Was it because they are too close to the house? You could put 27 up a sound wall on two sides if that was necessary. 28 Mr. Howard: There's a couple of issues with Cubberley. One is it is much closer to the 29 residents, so the noise issue was a concern. I know it's a long way away, but the future of 30 Cubberley is still not perfectly clear. It's hard to push forward with changes and plans like 31 this without going through the Master Plan process, which is taking place. It felt like we 32 might be skipping around a little bit too much. The other issue is ultimately to give them 33 even the space that they have at Mitchell we'd have to provide four tennis courts there, only 34 leaving two, which is a lot less attractive to the tennis community. I think we'd be having 35 a bigger impact on the tennis community by moving them there. Plus the residents and the 36 future of Cubberley. 37 Commissioner Moss: There's plenty of parking. 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 24 Mr. Howard: That was one of the locations that could handle the parking. 1 Commissioner Moss: I thought the Cubberley Master Plan was not going to disturb the 2 fields. I assumed that the tennis courts were part of the fields. Is that true? 3 Ms. O'Kane: They're part of the outdoor recreation area. Pickleball is something that we've 4 been hearing through the master planning process, so there is a possibility for finding the 5 right space within the Master Plan. It's still being discussed, and it's something we have 6 heard. 7 Commissioner Moss: At the same time, looking at lighting some of those courts, you don't 8 want to do that until you know more about the Master Plan. It certainly would be nice to 9 light every single tennis court in the City. Someday I hope that'll happen. 10 Mr. Howard: Okay with me. 11 Commissioner Moss: This item number 4, approval by Valley Water District, I was also 12 looking—I go by there almost every day. There's room on the right if you move the path 13 over further to the right. You can't see it here. On the picture at the bottom of the last 14 page, there is a path on the right and some eucalyptus trees. You could conceivably put 15 those two courts to the right instead of to the left if there's an issue with the Water District, 16 if you can't come to an agreement. To the right of court 7, there's quite a bit of space there 17 if you move the path. There's nothing really there except for some eucalyptus trees. If 18 push came to shove and you couldn't get an agreement in a timely fashion with the Water 19 District, you might want to look at that to the right of court 7. 20 Mr. Howard: We can keep it in mind, but I don't think any of us have looked at that area. 21 Commissioner Moss: Let's just hope you can get an approval from the Water District 22 quickly. Going back to Jeff's comment about trees, I know that a problem with those three 23 courts, 5, 6, and 7, is the eucalyptus trees raining down a lot of stuff on the courts. If there's 24 any way that those trees could be pruned so that there's not so much stuff—I'd be very wary 25 about using trees to shade the new pickleball courts if they're going to rain down a lot of 26 leaves onto the court and cause maintenance issues. 27 Mr. Howard: I can tell you that those trees were recently cut back, but they are rapidly 28 growing. That is an ongoing challenge with where those trees are. 29 Commissioner Moss: The delay of six to nine months, I'm wondering if there's some way 30 that you could do a trial basis and take over court 5 now and just give it to them 31 permanently, while you're waiting for all of the approvals, to permanently stripe. Couldn't 32 you give it to them while you're waiting instead of waiting to do anything for nine months? 33 Mr. Anderson: That's a very good question. We can look into it. 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 25 Commissioner Moss: The tennis community really appreciated 5, 6, and 7 because of the 1 lights. How much usage does the pickleballers use at night? If the tennis players had those 2 courts at night—I'm talking about 6 and 7—and the pickleballers didn't need it, really 3 there's no issue for the tennis players. Do the pickleballers play at night? 4 Mr. Howard: Some. It's kind of based on the weather. Basically if no one wants to play, 5 no one's out there. It's not like you'll see one sport and not the other. Giving them the 6 opportunity to play at night, especially when it's warmer, they will. 7 Commissioner Moss: I've never seen them out there at night, but maybe I don't go there 8 enough. 9 Ms. O'Kane: If we do have dedicated courts, it opens those courts up to the entire 10 community not just people who have nets and set up the nets on their own. It provides 11 more of an opportunity for people who are learning the sport or who want to explore it on 12 their own to just show up and start playing. 13 Commissioner Cribbs: I think we're making great progress. Adam, thank you very much. 14 Thanks to everybody on the ad hoc committee, the staff. Has it been 18 months or two 15 years since we've been doing this? For sure, the pickleball community and your leadership 16 and the tennis community as well. I love the story about the pickleball player and the tennis 17 player who are now talking about pickleball and tennis at the same time. That's really 18 encouraging. I am totally dismayed about the number of hours and days it's going to take 19 for us to get dedicated courts and reports back from people. Adam, is it possible that you 20 could—there have been a lot of months bandied around here—do an approximate schedule, 21 like three months for this and four months for this, and put it on that one, two, three, four 22 thing? That would help us to understand. It would also help all of the communities who 23 are interested to understand that we don't have a dedicated court tomorrow. If we could 24 hear that, that would be great. I would definitely encourage everybody to see if we can't 25 get court 5 to be dedicated right away and resurfaced. I think that's the court that has the 26 safety thing or am I—we talked about that a little bit. 27 Mr. Howard: I think the safety concerns were for what was the paddleball courts. 28 Commissioner Cribbs: This was something about the resurfacing. I'll find out. 29 Mr. Howard: There was a pretty big crack right down the middle of those paddleball courts 30 that was not very smooth. We're welcome to hearing if I'm wrong. 31 Commissioner Cribbs: If we could figure out that one court, that would be fabulous. 32 Congrats to everybody because it's a long time coming. We're making some progress. 33 APPROVED Draft Minutes 26 Chair McDougall: The idea of getting 5 in their hands sooner rather than later is worth 1 merit. Commissioner Cribbs' idea of having a schedule printed or published so that we 2 control the expectations is worthwhile. The comment about naming the courts, with all the 3 trouble we have with funding we should consider selling the naming rights and raise money 4 that way. Relative to Cubberley, the group that I was in at the last Cubberley thing was 5 actually quite excited about the idea of putting pickleball courts on the roofs of the 6 buildings there. I know you'll take that into full consideration. This has been long to get 7 to this point. I told you earlier I was going to show up and tell you I had a whole new idea; 8 I just couldn't do that to you. This is great. The recognition that one of the things about 9 pickleball is it's a gathering. I'm all keen on, whether it's water rafting or pickleball players, 10 the idea of gathering is really positive and a real contribution to our City. 11 Commissioner McCauley: Forgive me. I need to depart. Happy holidays to everyone. 12 For all of our friends at Grassroots Ecology, thank you for all the work that you do. 13 Commissioner McCauley left the meeting at approximately 8:37 p.m. 14 4. Presentation from Grassroots Ecology 15 Chair McDougall: Next on the agenda is Grassroots Ecology. I'm sorry that we're later 16 than you might have expected on the agenda. Thank you for your patience. 17 Mr. Anderson: Chair McDougall, if I may introduce my colleagues, longstanding partners, 18 wonderful to work with in Open Space for many, many years, Alex Von Feldt, the 19 Grassroots Ecology Executive Director, and Jerry Hearn, the Board Vice President, and 20 another colleague that I haven't met yet. 21 Alex Von Feldt: This is Kristen Williams; she's our Habitat Restoration Director. If you 22 ask any technical questions, I'll be deferring to her. Thank you very much. What I was 23 planning to do tonight is give you an overview of our relationship with the City of Palo 24 Alto and what we've been doing with your open spaces and creeks and parks and all the 25 different people we've been working with. Grassroots Ecology has been around for a while, 26 but you might have known us under a different name. We were part of Acterra for quite a 27 long time. About three years ago, we spun off and formed our own organization. Basically, 28 all of our staff and all of our projects went with us to form the new organization. We have 29 a new Board, of which Jerry was one of our founding members. You might know Jerry 30 Hearn. He's been a longstanding member of the community and was part of Acterra's 31 Board for a very long time. He knows a lot about these open spaces. Our mission is to 32 involve and educate the public to restore local ecosystems. Our programs are lumped into 33 several categories but are somewhat overlapping. Habitat restoration is mainly what we're 34 known for. We also bring some of those techniques into the urban setting, and we call that 35 urban ecology. We provide a lot of education in the field and in the classroom with a real 36 focus on middle and high schools students. We also have our native plant nursery that 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 27 grows the plants for our projects as well as a few other partners like the Santa Clara Valley 1 Water District, that you were referring to earlier. Our model is basically engaging the 2 community to do all that. We do have about 27 staff, but the staff is mainly there for the 3 technical expertise as well as the volunteer engagement. Most of the labor comes from our 4 volunteers. Part of that model is that, when we're getting people into the community to 5 help do something for your local environment not only are you meeting people and having 6 fun, but you're learning a little bit of something about your open space, and hopefully you 7 can bring some of those behaviors back into your own garden and into your own home. 8 Finally, we can't do what we do without great partnerships. The partnership that we've had 9 with the City of Palo Alto extends back to 1996. We've leveraged that to also get additional 10 funding from other agencies such as the Coastal Conservancy, Santa Clara Valley Water 11 District, and many family foundations that want to support environmental education. I've 12 put up a map of our current sites because we often get that question. We've grown quite a 13 bit over the years. Arastradero was our first open space site that we started to steward. 14 We've now extended so that basically we go from Redwood City down to Los Gatos and 15 from the Baylands up to Skyline. It's a combination of habitation restoration sites as well 16 as some water quality monitoring sites along creeks and even some rain gardens and rain 17 barrel systems that we've installed throughout. An important thing to note is our annual 18 participation. You can see how many volunteers we work with a year. We are able to 19 engage almost 13,000 people. As you can see, most of them are youth and young adults. 20 Whenever people have to get community service hours, usually they're calling us. We also 21 have a lot of partnerships with the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts, all sorts of AP 22 environmental science, other community groups. We're very appreciative. I was going to 23 go through the sites that we work in within the City of Palo Alto to explain some history 24 and what we're doing. The first one is Enid Pearson Arastradero Preserve. We've been 25 stewarding it since 1996. We engage about 1,000 people a year at 80 different events. That 26 means more than one volunteer event a week we're running at Arastradero Preserve. It's a 27 620-acre preserve, so we can't cover all the ground. We prioritize what we do. From an 28 ecological perspective, controlling the invasive species and introducing locally native 29 species to improve biodiversity has been a key strategy of ours. We've been spending a lot 30 of time restoring natural watershed functions. One of the project highlights is Mayfly 31 Creek. That was part of the Bressler property that burned down in the fires of the '80s. 32 When the City took over the land, there was a creek buried in a pipe. We worked with the 33 City and Coastal Conservancy to open up the creek—it's called daylighting—and let it run 34 free. Mayfly Creek is a tributary to Matadero Creek. It was able to recharge the 35 groundwater up there and help with some of the downstream flows. We have another 36 project we call berms and swales. That's doing the same thing as using some permaculture 37 techniques to help slow down the water that was causing some erosion into the creek and 38 sink it into the groundwater while also improving biodiversity. I just wanted to point out 39 one of our afterschool programs, Arastradero Stewards. Local high school students, 40 primarily from Paly but also Gunn, come almost every week and learn about local ecology 41 as well as provide a community service element there. If you're familiar with Lynn Hori 42 APPROVED Draft Minutes 28 [phonetic], she is the retired teacher from Paly. She's been working with us for years there. 1 San Francisquito Creek is the border between Palo Alto and Menlo Park. It's a really 2 important steelhead stream and is one of the few that has not been altered with concrete. It 3 was also one that the community really engaged in. Some of Jerry's early days were helping 4 with that. We continue to help restore the habitat along the creek by controlling invasives 5 and planting trees, doing a lot of trash cleanup. One of the sites we work at is El Palo Alto 6 Park, where the tree is. We have school children come and visit El Palo Alto. We also are 7 partners to remove what's called Bonde weir, which is a fish passage barrier. We do some 8 willow staking there. The San Francisquito Joint Powers Authority is doing their big 9 project downstream, so we coordinate with them to help with debris removal in the creek 10 and to mitigate downstream tree removal. We have been stewarding Foothills Park more 11 recently compared to the other ones, since 2013. That is such a beautiful site I'm sure many 12 of you have visited. Our strategy there is a little different. It's already pretty biodiverse, 13 so it's really about controlling some of the areas where invasives have gotten a foothold 14 and letting the native biodiversity restore itself. We call that passive restoration. One of 15 the important aspects of this site, as you probably know, is the Friends of Foothills, a group 16 that's been taking care of that park for years. When we first started the contract with the 17 City, all of their maps and their projects were passed onto us, and we helped coordinate the 18 volunteers. The Friends remained active in it. We tried to partner with them to bring the 19 volunteer labor to take care of the areas that they were passionate about. There's also the 20 area in the back called the 7.7-acre parcel. I think a working title for it is Buckeye Flats, 21 but I understand that is not set in stone yet. Something about Doe's Meadow is another 22 option. That's where our nursery is. We've been doing a little bit of maintenance on it over 23 time, but we're stepping up some of our restoration work there. We also monitor water 24 quality in all the creeks in Palo Alto. We do that with community volunteers. We actually 25 have a few dedicated volunteers—you might call them streamkeepers—that basically 26 monitor the same sites every month. It's really helpful to have that extra pair of eyes on 27 the local creeks. We also get a lot of Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts that want to come and 28 do. They have a badge for water quality, so this is an important element. We also have 29 this other project, Greening Urban Watersheds. This project was funded almost entirely 30 through a Santa Clara Valley Water District grant. In all the previous projects, the 31 Arastradero Preserve, San Francisquito, Foothills Park, we augmented some of the City 32 money with grants over the years from the Water District and Coastal Conservancy and 33 various foundations, so that we're able to get 2X and oftentimes 3X the City's investment 34 and value. A lot of government agencies really like that combination of public-private 35 partnership as well as engaging volunteers. The Greening Urban Watershed project is 36 installing rain barrels and rain gardens throughout the City of Palo Alto to provide 37 demonstrations for people. In a storm event, rather than having all the water go straight 38 into the storm drains and into our creeks without being cleaned, the idea is to get the 39 rainwater into the ground so that it naturally cleans it before it gets to the creek. We have 40 done a few of these and just last Saturday finished one at Bol Park. Our nursery has been 41 there since 2003. We grow locally native species from seed collected in the watershed. 42 APPROVED Draft Minutes 29 We even grow some rare and endangered species as well. We primarily provide plants for 1 our own projects and Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District and Santa Clara Valley 2 Water District. Once a year, we do a joint plant sale with the California Native Plant 3 Society at Hidden Villa, but that's mainly our one opportunity for people to buy our plants 4 in a retail setting. For the most part, the nursery is more for growing plants. We do have 5 some long-term volunteers, some of which have been there before 2003 when we were in 6 a backyard. Those volunteers have helped us over the years to take care of these plants. If 7 you'd like more information, we have a newsletter. You can sign up for it on our website. 8 Every week we send out a list of all the volunteer opportunities, and they're typically five 9 to ten. It's helpful so people can see what sort of sites you can volunteer at. If you're 10 looking for community service hours, you can get those as well. We have a monthly 11 newsletter that highlights our programs and some of our volunteers. With that, I'll take any 12 questions you have. 13 Chair McDougall: We'll start at your end, Commissioner Cribbs. 14 Commissioner Cribbs: I don't have any questions. I enjoyed the presentation. It's great to 15 know about all this. Thank you very much for everything you're doing. 16 Commissioner Moss: I want to thank your organization for all the decades of work that 17 you've done. Two of my kids were your volunteers in the early 2000s and went on to 18 careers in ecology and teaching. It's a fantastic organization, and I really appreciate your 19 education aspects and the volunteer opportunities for kids. Friends of Foothills Park is 20 very important for us. I want to make sure that your partnership with them continues to 21 grow and you take full advantage of them to help you prioritize projects that you need. 22 You have your own fundraising arm, but I want to make sure they can raise funds as well. 23 I want to make sure they get some credit for some of the things that they work on with you 24 or help you with. Anything you can do to strengthen that partnership would be really 25 advantageous to both. 26 Ms. Von Feldt: I'm always pleased to hear about people that went into a field in ecology. 27 I might ask Kristen, my colleague who works more closely with Friends of Foothills Park, 28 to describe some of the things they've been doing recently. 29 Kristen Williams: We work with the Friends, and they're such a huge wealth of knowledge. 30 We're really fortunate to have them as a resource. We do meet with them monthly. We 31 have scheduled it so that we have volunteers come out on Sunday mornings, which is their 32 normal day. We are able to do it every Sunday, but we try to meet with them before the 33 workday every Sunday and talk about what we're going to work on, what they're going to 34 work on. Often, we'll even work together. For example, a couple of weeks ago they had a 35 patch of French broom that they wanted to get to. We brought our volunteers; they showed 36 us the patch; and we all worked together. Definitely working together. At times, we've 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 30 had harder times communicating, but recently it's been really strong and great. They have 1 so much knowledge that we're fortunate to get to work with them. 2 Vice Chair Greenfield: I want to thank your organization for all the dedication to our 3 community and the awesome volunteer engagement and the environmental stewardship 4 and education. You're a valued resource within our community, and we appreciate it. 5 Thank you to you and all of your staff. I've had a few opportunities to volunteer with your 6 group including working with some Gunn service days at Cooley Landing and the 7 Baylands. It's always been a great experience for everyone involved. With the opening of 8 the 7.7 acres or Buckeye Flats, I'm very happy that your nursery has been preserved. I 9 know that has been prioritized within all the discussions of the Foothills Park ad hoc and 10 the Commission itself. We value the restorative work you're able to do with the nursery 11 both in Palo Alto and in surrounding communities. As part of the opening of Buckeye 12 Flats—I'm not really fond of the name. I was proposing to call it Dunn Flats in honor of 13 the longest-serving Ranger at Foothills Park. I know you have some restoration plots, some 14 trial plots, in that area. I see this as a great education opportunity. I don't know if you've 15 worked with the Foothills Park summer camps, but it seems like a great opportunity to have 16 some sort of daytrip or a half-day session with Grassroots Ecology to educate the students 17 to the ongoing restoration attempts or trials and general nursery education. You're very 18 careful about management of pests and whatnot in the nursery area. If there's a way to 19 include these summer camps on an ongoing basis, that'd be a great feeder for your 20 organization and education for the community overall. If we can ever get anywhere with 21 the overall Buckeye Creek restoration project and reclaiming some riparian environment, 22 it's a rare and wonderful opportunity for our community. I'm sure you share that view. 23 That would be another way to include education even more dramatically as the process 24 goes over years to share with the summer camp groups and the community at large. Again, 25 I thank you for your contributions and look forward to our continued relationship. 26 Anything the Commission can do to help further your cause, please let us know. 27 Commissioner Reckdahl: Your group does such good work; we really do appreciate it. 28 Especially in tight budgets these days, we can't get by without volunteers, so we appreciate 29 that. Can you talk about the rain gardens? I've not been up to Bol Park to see the rain 30 garden. Are these just mini swales or is there a more complex design than that? 31 Ms. Von Feldt: We use the term rain gardens because they're not technically green 32 stormwater infrastructure, but they're pretty close to it. If you're going to get the permit for 33 a bioswale or things where you have to have the grate raised up a certain amount and certain 34 bioengineered material, most of our gardens have most of that. It depends on where they 35 are. Some are more naturalistic than others. The one at Gamble Garden has this huge 36 cistern that collects all the water from the roof. The overflow goes into this swale area so 37 that the overflow can recharge the groundwater. Gamble Garden can use the rainwater for 38 other things as well. At Bol Park, we just installed it Saturday. You can see how it works 39 APPROVED Draft Minutes 31 there. It's right next to the native garden that the neighbors have done. It's taking some of 1 that water before it gets to the street and infiltrating it in there. There is a big grate in there, 2 but the grate has to be a little bit higher than the plants around it. 3 Commissioner Reckdahl: Are you taking runoff from that back unincorporated area or is 4 it just water that falls on the grass? 5 Ms. Von Feldt: It's basically between the garden and the road where it would puddle. 6 We're trying to help with that situation. 7 Commissioner Reckdahl: I'll take a look. Where in Hoover Park is the rain garden? 8 Ms. Williams: I know where it is, but I don't know how to describe it. 9 Ms. Von Feldt: There are bathrooms near it. We can go back to the picture. The one on 10 the right is Hoover garden. 11 Commissioner Reckdahl: I'll have to check that out. When you have a project, do you end 12 up with too many volunteers or not enough? 13 Ms. Von Feldt: We actually have too many volunteers, more than we have capacity to 14 deliver quality experiences for. Obviously, we have to have an appropriate ratio for safety 15 reasons and for the value. We like to have a 1:10 ratio. Typically, our workdays are about 16 two staff and 20 or so volunteers. We do actually have to turn a lot of groups away. 17 Commissioner Reckdahl: It's a good problem to have. 18 Ms. Von Feldt: At certain times of the year, like when students have to get their community 19 service hours in, December and May can get a little squirrely with people showing up. 20 Commissioner Reckdahl: Do you coordinate with any other nonprofits to help guide 21 volunteers over to them? 22 Ms. Von Feldt: We do a lot with other nonprofits, like joint things, especially Canopy. 23 They're in our building, so we do joint workdays especially in East Palo Alto and on the 24 Bay Trail. We just did one last week in conjunction with the opening of Friendship Bridge. 25 They are in the same boat with more volunteers than they have the capacity to deliver 26 workdays because of the required staffing. We're trying to get some things like having 27 corporate groups donate to help offset the cost so we can continue to offer volunteer days 28 for students and things like that. 29 Commissioner Reckdahl: That's interesting. If you talk about nonnatives at Byxbee, you 30 could spend your life up there. We have too much work to do and too many volunteers, 31 but the problem is we don't have enough staff between that. 32 APPROVED Draft Minutes 32 Ms. Von Feldt: The problem is the cost associated with the staff and the tools to actually 1 deliver those workdays. That's the constrained resource. 2 Commissioner Reckdahl: I wish I had the answer. 3 Ms. Von Feldt: We keep cracking away at it. 4 Commissioner LaMere: Appreciate everything your organization does. It's new to me in 5 terms of learning what you guys do. Could you walk me through, just briefly, your process 6 of identifying projects? Is it mostly municipalities reaching out to you? Do you identify 7 projects and then some of the process of permitting or how you're able to do what you guys 8 do at the different parks and the different places? I was curious about other pain points; 9 you mentioned the staffing. What else ends up being something that stops you from doing 10 more or finishing some projects that you'd like to do? 11 Ms. Von Feldt: I'll take a crack at it, but then I'll ask my colleagues to pitch in. When it 12 comes to how you figure out where to work, we often get that question. There's a 13 philosophical discussion from an ecological perspective of where is the best place to work, 14 like where is the habitat most rich so that you can remove a few of the invasive species and 15 the native habitat comes back. There's also the community aspect. Since half our mission 16 is to engage people because we feel like that will lead to true behavior change, you also 17 want to have something that provides ecological benefit but is close to an engaged 18 volunteer base. The third part of that is resources. For a long time, we were really working 19 just in the City of Palo Alto, and we branched to Los Altos and Los Altos Hills. Those 20 three cities all have something in common, an ability to help fund some of these activities. 21 Over the last five years, we've really made a concerted effort to work in other communities 22 that don't have that ability, such as East Palo Alto and Redwood City, but then the onus is 23 really on us as the organization to get 100 percent of the funding. That's a constant effort 24 and requires some of our time, but we think it's important. There are some really nice parks 25 like Cooley Landing. Anything to add to that, especially from a habitat perspective? Pain 26 points. We were just talking about in the audience our vehicles are breaking down. We've 27 been looking for grants to help get vehicles. They're very hard to find. Another big one 28 that we've been dealing with for years is how do you retain high-quality staff in a very 29 expensive place like this when our salaries are just a fraction of what's around here. 30 Everybody has creative living experiences. They're mission driven, and they really love it, 31 but it's hard to stay here long-term unless you have somebody else supporting you. 32 Anything to add? 33 Jerry Hearn: If I can just add a few things regarding the history of this. Originally, the 34 Watershed Council and Arastradero were things planned by a bunch of people and then 35 brought to the City to ask for support. As you've said, it's the municipalities, the cities, the 36 Midpen, who are coming to us because we have a proven record. As part of our strategic 37 outreach as we're looking at our DEI stuff, we are trying to move into some other areas that 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 33 don't have the same kind of support, primarily in East Palo Alto. That proves to be 1 challenging in terms of paying for it. Yet, that's where it's needed, and there are a lot of 2 requests out there. As a board member who raises money for that, it hasn't proved lately 3 to be that easy to raise money for those things. Almost all the staff are out in the field, so 4 the high cost of insurance is another thing. About 10 percent of our budget goes to 5 insurance, but that's something you have to have. 6 Commissioner LaMere: Thank you for all the work you guys do. It's very much 7 appreciated. 8 Ms. Von Feldt: Thank you all for supporting this work over the years. Palo Alto was really 9 the leader in this. A lot of times when we're talking to other people in other cities, they'll 10 say, "How does Palo Alto do it? Why are they doing this?" It's helpful to cite your support 11 over the years. Staff's great to work with too. 12 Chair McDougall: It's always nice to have Daren's best friends attend the meeting. Thank 13 you very much for being here, for answering the questions, and for everything you do. We 14 all appreciate it and want to know, as people asked, what else we can do to help. 15 5. Baylands Comprehensive Conservation Plan Update 16 Chair McDougall: Our last major attraction for the evening is an update on the Baylands 17 Comprehensive Plan with Mr. Anderson. 18 Mr. Anderson: Good evening. Daren Anderson, Community Services Department. As 19 you noted, I am here to talk about the Baylands Conservation Plan, specifically to get your 20 feedback on the Byxbee concept plan. That'll be the focus of tonight's presentation, to get 21 your feedback, if we got it right, what are we missing, here are your thoughts. I'll also 22 touch on the former ITT/Emily Renzel Wetlands area. This one you had weighed in on. 23 We made the adjustments, and your staff report should reflect the feedback from both you 24 and the community. I want to make sure we got that right, so I'll walk through the 25 highlights of that and then briefly cover the next steps. Let me walk through the highlights 26 of the Renzel Wetlands plan. Some of the chief or key things were we have two new trail 27 sections. The first is the North Trail. It's towards the top of the screen. The Freshwater 28 Pond Trail in that section. I'm going to pause at that point to talk about one key part. There 29 are a number of other features, but one unique one is this area was limited to just pedestrians 30 and maintenance vehicles. The consultant had added on this end and the other end a 31 maintenance gate with the idea that that would stop bicycles from coming through and/or 32 dogs. That is not my understanding or my belief. Gates don't stop bikes. Anywhere 33 pedestrians can get through, bikes can get through. The gate seems superfluous to me and 34 a hindrance. I put that out for Commission feedback. Frankly, it could be easily achieved 35 by a sign. You'll get the same efficacy in terms of control that you'd get with a gate because 36 it's not going to stop bikes and it certainly wouldn't stop someone from walking with their 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 34 dog. Putting a sign that says "pedestrians only" is what the stakeholders and, if I understand 1 correctly, the Commission advocated for. We'd only have access to the backside of that 2 freshwater pond and again pedestrian access only. Rather than a gate, I put it to you to 3 weigh in if you think signage would do it. In addition to the two signs, we've also got the 4 restored hydrology, which is a big environmental component of this. Dendritic channels 5 would be enhanced. We have very limited ones. On the map, though it's a little hard to 6 see, you can see there are existing ones. We would enhance it by adding new ones where 7 the tidal flow could come further into the area and essentially restore the habitat by itself. 8 You'll see one of the recommendations is to enhance those areas around the dendritic 9 channels. Another element of the restoration is the remnant marsh connection. Currently, 10 this little area here is isolated entirely from hydrologic connection; though, it was once 11 historically a tidal salt marsh. It hasn't been for many, many years. This concept that we 12 talked about before was connecting it through the Renzel Wetlands and into the flood basin. 13 During our outreach to the community, our stakeholders, there was some interesting 14 feedback on that. I hadn't heard it from anyone else. There was concern that perhaps 15 there'd be too much salinity moving into this isolated area and that perhaps some wildlife 16 might be impacted negatively from that. In talking to the consultant more, their thought 17 was it's already very high salinity and it would only be beneficial to have tidal water flow 18 through. It's still a good point, and the consultant advised that before you could move 19 forward, there would have to be extensive study to see if there'd be any impacts from 20 connecting that area to tidal influence. A couple of other features in this are we've got 21 interpretive signage. There would be three interpretive signs and three park benches, all 22 right next to the interpretive signs. That would be on the Pond Trail, the ITT Trail, and the 23 North Trail. There'd be a dog waste station. I think that covers the highlights of the 24 ITT/Renzel Wetlands plan. Chair, if you'd like me to continue to the Byxbee portion or if 25 you'd like to comment and take questions or comments on this part? 26 Chair McDougall: It would be useful to stop and do questions just on this part. I'll start 27 with Commissioner LaMere. 28 Commissioner LaMere: Daren, I appreciate all the hard work you've put toward this. I 29 agree with you about the gate being superfluous. If someone's on a bike and wanted to go 30 there, they would go there. I also like what's been drawn in terms of the trail system and 31 being able to connect all the way from one side to the other. I do appreciate that. I do not 32 have any questions for you. 33 Commissioner Reckdahl: I agree about the gate. Signage is sufficient. I am not thrilled 34 about the fact that we have a flow through this as opposed to making it tidal. In the long 35 run, I really would like to see flow come in and then go back out that same way. If we had 36 a trench or something at the top right, that would allow the tidal water to come in. Instead 37 of flowing through this and going out, it would go up and back with the tide. That would 38 be much more natural and might be less maintenance in the long run. 39 APPROVED Draft Minutes 35 Mr. Anderson: That would be ideal, and it may be possible. Like most of this, this is very 1 conceptual. As we dig deeper, we flesh out more things like that. There might be even 2 ideas our consultant hasn't thought of yet to maximize hydrologic flow. Maybe even a 3 pump to move more water in, for all I know. More analysis is necessary. The main 4 principle we wanted to make sure we got by him is there's habitat here that's not being 5 maximized, and it can be if we get a better tidal connection. 6 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you, Daren, for all of your work and all of the work with 7 the stakeholder group. Echoing the comments of the other Commissioners, it's great to see 8 the loop access trail. Just to confirm, the North Trail does connect to roughly the northwest 9 corner of Byxbee Park. 10 Mr. Anderson: That's correct. 11 Vice Chair Greenfield: That's great. As far as the gate goes, I don't have strong feelings, 12 but it seems like we should be able to remove it. 13 Commissioner Moss: I'm wondering if instead of a gate, that stretch of big rocks that you 14 have right now that keeps bikes out, maybe we could put those rocks so that maintenance 15 vehicles could go over it but bikes not. It might be more effective than gates. I'd like to 16 have something to discourage bikes and dogs, people commuting through there, rather than 17 having it wide open and a sign. If that's a possibility, I'd like you to look at that. 18 Mr. Anderson: I might be able to address some of that. One of the challenges we have is 19 anything we put to block or limit bike access makes it very unfriendly for ADA access for 20 pedestrians, which is rough. Even where I've got gates, where we tried to configure it to 21 limit access that we didn't want, they're really intended to stop vehicle access. Motorcycles 22 can get through the same ADA access that pedestrians can. It happens all the time or had 23 in the past when I worked at the Baylands. It's a real challenge to find that solution. We 24 haven't found it yet, nor have I visited a place that had it and was still accessible to 25 pedestrians. 26 Commissioner Moss: The only example that I know of is at the end of San Antonio Road 27 at Terminal Road, where the bathroom is. There's a gate there. In order to get around the 28 gate, you have to go through this maze. In some places, there's even a step up. There's a 29 piece of wood at the end of Alpine Road when you go up to Windy Hill. All of these things 30 discourage ADA. I'm not sure if you have to make the entire thing ADA. I just don't know 31 what to suggest. I thought we were going to have some kind of an ADA-accessible 32 overlook, a place where you could go up and look around, where you didn't have to go on 33 that path but you could get a good look at either of those two endpoints of that road. That 34 way, they don't necessarily have to go all the way. They could still get a nice view and 35 also be close enough to the lake and to the outside of the marsh. It's something to think 36 about. 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 36 Mr. Anderson: I should point out there is one overlook. I didn't call it out specifically. It's 1 right up at the top near the North Trail. 2 Commissioner Moss: That would be good. I'd like to see an additional one somewhere 3 near the pond, maybe on the 101 side but closer to the bathroom and closer to the marsh so 4 you get it looking both directions. I agree with Commissioner Reckdahl about the 5 enhanced channel to get inflow and outflow. That would be great. It's fantastic if we can 6 also include that remnant marsh. I hadn't even thought about that. That would be a super 7 idea. There was general agreement that the building should go away. I wish it were closer 8 to 101 or someway to preserve it. Having it in the very center of the marsh is not the best 9 place. I would want to make sure there is terrific signage, not just in the middle but perhaps 10 next to 101, next to the bathroom at the bottom of the picture, discussing in-depth the 11 historical significance of the building and more importantly the bouncing of the signal off 12 the marsh and all that kind of stuff. I would love to see some of the antennas left up, maybe 13 not as high as they are today, but some symbol of the history. That's a critical part of this 14 marsh. 15 Mr. Anderson: We discussed that at the Commission meeting when we went in-depth on 16 the ITT, and it didn't have support. We got almost unanimous support from the 17 Commissioners that were in attendance that night to remove all the antennas. Most of the 18 stakeholders felt the same way. Their concern for the antennas was largely the impacts as 19 roosting for birds of prey. That was their argument for getting rid of it. By and large, it's 20 the marsh or wetland that has the historical significance, less so the antennas was some of 21 the feedback we got on that topic. 22 Commissioner Moss: I understand. There is one antenna that's lower, that has the 1921 23 on it, if we could keep that one. To have none, I don't know. 24 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you, Daren. This is great. I appreciate the comments from 25 the stakeholders. Everybody was pretty thoughtful about it. It seems like everything is 26 moving in the right direction. Could you clarify for me how many vehicles go down the 27 pedestrian path on a daily basis or a weekly basis? 28 Mr. Anderson: Perhaps historically is the better one to look at. Commissioner Cribbs, are 29 we talking about the fresh … 30 Commissioner Cribbs: Wherever we're talking about the gate and the signage and 31 maintenance vehicles going down that. 32 Mr. Anderson: Specifically, we're talking about around the freshwater pond. In the past, 33 I would say it was exceedingly rare. Maybe it'll increase now that they've got it built. Their 34 intent is to prevent certain areas from growing in with cattails, which would mean you'd 35 bring up a backhoe and scoop out. You'd only do that once the plant material had grown 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 37 4-5 feet. It would be a year kind of thing. Aside from other inspections, I would think it's 1 fairly infrequent, maybe—I can't say for sure because it's not my team doing it. The 2 Rangers will not be regularly driving that. It would be very atypical for Open Space staff 3 to do that. It'd be the Public Works' team who is managing that as a release of treated 4 water. I can ask more specifically, and when I come back have a better answer. 5 Commissioner Cribbs: I'd just be interested to see if that's the right way for them to go or 6 if there's another way they could go. 7 Mr. Anderson: They'll have to at some point. We'll certainly have them take, as much as 8 possible, the route where it's not a trail, the area closest to 101 where we're asking people 9 not to walk. I would guess it would be relatively infrequent. 10 Commissioner Cribbs: It was disconcerting to see that big old whatever it was, machinery, 11 out there doing what it's supposed to be doing. 12 Mr. Anderson: It is. Hopefully we will not have that for a very long time. 13 Commissioner Cribbs: On your list of when things are going to happen and when meetings 14 are going to be held, is it possible for the second part of the list to put some approximate 15 times? 16 Mr. Anderson: Approximate times for … 17 Commissioner Cribbs: Not times of day, but when things are going to happen. Fill out 18 that list. 19 Mr. Anderson: Sure. Let me double check, Commissioner Cribbs. Do you mean in terms 20 of some of the work happening or next meetings? 21 Commissioner Cribbs: Some of the work happening, the next meeting, the stakeholder 22 meetings. If you know at this point, that would be great to fill that out. 23 Chair McDougall: Before we go on, we do have one visitor, who's not paying attention. I 24 know everybody knows who he is. He may have interest in this part or some other part. 25 He may wish to comment. I'm going to give him the opportunity now or later. If you want 26 to comment on this part, you could feel free or you could wait until later. 27 Elliott Wright: I'll jump in a little bit later. 28 Chair McDougall: When I look at the map that we have here, Daren, there's a "p" for 29 parking down at the bottom. At the moment, there's also a space that you could put as 30 many cars where you're putting that "p" right at the very top of the freshwater pond, where 31 the access road now is. I don't know if we want to designate that as parking and properly 32 APPROVED Draft Minutes 38 mark it so that you don't have whatever. I would suggest that we do that. This implies that 1 I could walk along the berm, along the freshwater, and cross over and get onto the path that 2 goes all the way around. Right? 3 Mr. Anderson: Yes. 4 Chair McDougall: That means that the bridge would be updated beyond what it is now? 5 Mr. Anderson: That's correct. 6 Chair McDougall: That's a lot of fun to walk across that bridge today. I like the fact that 7 you tease me by telling me you're going to put signage in. I like the idea of the open trench. 8 I know we've had presentations that worried about how much dog access there was relative 9 to how close you're getting to the marshland that we're trying to rehabilitate and create as 10 an interesting habitat. I don't think I need an answer now. If there's an effort to say "we 11 know there are lots of parks that are not dog parks but have lots of off-leash dogs in it," at 12 least discouraging people would be worthwhile. I'm in the group that believes the antennas 13 should come down for ecological purposes. As Commissioner Moss was speaking, it 14 occurred to me that there are portions of this, like the redline that goes directly to the 15 existing building and that is relatively straight, where you could take one of those poles 16 and lay it down and label it and describe it there. It doesn't have to be standing in order to 17 be part of the history of the place. You could actually maintain it. 18 Commissioner Moss: With a picture on a sign. 19 Chair McDougall: I mean describe it in a way that says "here's what this pole was and 20 here's where it came from" and with a note that says "it's not still standing because we don't 21 want raptors to be sitting on it and eating our" … 22 Mr. Anderson: That's a great idea. 23 Chair McDougall: Other than that, thank you. Next. 24 Commissioner Moss: Regarding the raptors, in every shopping mall they put things on the 25 top of places to discourage birds from landing. If there was a chance to keep one of the 26 poles, maybe that 1921 antenna, and have some kind of barrier to keep the raptors off, that 27 would be preferable than having no antennas up. That's my personal comment. I didn't 28 have my glasses on and, when I looked at the bottom left-hand corner where it has the black 29 dot, I thought that was a restroom. It's really parking. I was wondering do we need to have 30 a restroom like we have at the end of Terminal Road. Do we need a restroom either there 31 or over at the end of the road at the top of the pond? It's a long way from there to the single 32 restroom in the entire Baylands at Byxbee Park. Do we need a bathroom? 33 APPROVED Draft Minutes 39 Mr. Anderson: I hadn't heard that from any other stakeholders nor in the time I've worked 1 with the City have I heard anyone request one for that area. The requests are always to 2 enhance the ones we have. We have three, one at the Sailing Station, a portable restroom, 3 one at the duck pond, a portable one, and one at Byxbee that's a permanent structure, and 4 one inside the Nature Center. It hasn't been a request there in the past. It really depends 5 on what kind of use. Aside from hiking through, there's not a lot of sit and stay in this 6 particular design, like a picnic area. We could monitor it and see, but my initial reaction 7 is I probably wouldn't recommend adding one now, at least in my perspective. 8 Commissioner Reckdahl: One possibility would be on East Bayshore, on the southside of 9 Matadero Creek at the Service Center. If you did it on that side of the creek, you could tie 10 into the sewage and water from the Service Center. It would be a lot cheaper. If it was 11 right on that trail, there's a lot of bike traffic that would probably use it. If it was right by 12 Matadero Creek, it would be a two-for. You'd get the people that would be on that end of 13 the wetlands and the traffic going through. If down the road we can get the Matadero Creek 14 underpass to be pedestrian, that would be a third stream of people. 15 Mr. Anderson: The consultant used the feedback from the Commission and the 16 stakeholders to create a conceptual design for Byxbee Park, which includes two options for 17 the parking lot. The plans were reviewed by the stakeholder group at the November 29th 18 community meeting. We've circulated that to a wider stakeholder advisory group via email. 19 I'm going to walk you through some of the key design features. There are proposed 20 vegetation management zones throughout Byxbee. They've got four. There's the coastal 21 scrub, which is the upper part or lighter green. There's the tidal marsh area, the remnant 22 marsh piece, especially once we connect that hydrologically to have more saltwater flowing 23 through. Currently, it already has pickleweed, an indicator that it's pretty heavy in terms 24 of salt content. We've got the coastal prairie in what I call the Phase 2C area, which is this 25 darker green area. Some of that's predicated on the cap. Byxbee, a former landfill, has a 26 clay cap with 2 feet of soil placed on it, largely on this lighter green area. Because of that, 27 they're recommending a certain habitat type for that. The darker green has a different kind 28 of cap, which is 5 feet of engineered soil. It can accommodate different vegetation types 29 because of that depth. The remnant marsh for the tidal one, and another one for the areas 30 on the trail. Some other key features. The consultants looped in some of the trails to create 31 loops to aid walkers, hikers, and bikers. We increased the number of benches. There are 32 21 existing benches on the perimeter and the top of Byxbee Park. They proposed adding 33 11 benches, eight of which would be like the ones you see elsewhere in the preserve with 34 a back and three without backs. One of the benefits is you'll have views going both ways, 35 which in certain areas would be really beneficial. Another one that we brought up in the 36 stakeholder meeting is something I'm seeing on top of Byxbee. The backed benches are 37 covered with guano. It's a good sign in that we've got bird life up there and a bad sign in 38 that it makes it less welcoming for people. There are already 21 benches around Byxbee; 39 you can imagine the rest of the 2,000-acre preserve. We have almost 100 more. Right 40 APPROVED Draft Minutes 40 now, I have just one Ranger in the Baylands. I'm working on filling that up. They don't 1 get around to cleaning that on a regular basis. The idea of trying a backless bench at least 2 in a couple places might make sense. In the past when I worked as a Ranger at the 3 Baylands, a lot of people would say, "We need backs. We do not want a bunch of flat 4 ones." Historically that had been the art bench that was placed around the perimeter of 5 Byxbee. When it was first put in as an art park, they put in this ironing-board-shaped 6 bench. This is trying something new. We could see how it goes and go with three backless 7 benches. They added two interpretive signs. There are already five in the park, and only 8 two of them were installed. The other three had to be redesigned, and we should be getting 9 those signs tomorrow. They'll be installed before the end of the calendar year. This would 10 be two additional ones that would come into the preserve. They recommended expanding 11 the vegetative islands, which were very well received from our stakeholders and even our 12 regular park visitors who haven't really weighed in. As the Rangers talk to people coming 13 to the park, they love that. Expanding that makes a lot of sense. At one point, we proposed 14 a shade structure. You will not see it on the design in front of you because it was not cared 15 for by the stakeholder group, which was the same group that proposed it. Over time, 16 apparently they changed their mind. There wasn't a single person who thought that would 17 be appropriate. They wanted it out and recommended wind protection in lieu of shade. 18 We've got ideas in this revised concept that allow for that. The two parking lot layouts. 19 Here are some examples of those plant communities. That's very crude in terms of what 20 you'll see at Byxbee right away. That's not what it'll look like right away. It gives you an 21 idea of some of the plants that fall into those community groups. Here are two concepts, 22 the first of which we call Concept 1. This one allows for 61 parking stalls. The existing 23 parking at Byxbee allows for 20. There's a little overflow area that allows for nine, so a 24 total of 29. We dramatically expand it in both these scenarios. It was almost unanimous 25 in terms of Concept 1 and Concept 2 for our stakeholders to prefer the second concept. 26 One, it's a little more parking. Mainly it was the ease of use, having that roundabout access. 27 One of the Rangers present at the meeting talked about how historically we've had issues 28 with vehicles backing up and hitting things, either bollards or other cars. This makes it a 29 lot easier for users to come in and out. Another bit of feedback we got during that 30 stakeholder meeting is "this looks great, we unanimously support Concept 2, but one thing 31 you're missing is a spot for longer vehicles like a school bus." The consultants and staff 32 agreed that that made good sense. They said they could incorporate it into this design. I'll 33 take every bit of feedback you've got. That'll be one of the elements they also incorporate. 34 We reached out to the community on November 29th. The parking lot was a real clear one. 35 There was a suggestion to leave—some of the comments from our stakeholder group 36 veered back to the Renzel Wetland, so I'll echo something Commissioner Moss mentioned. 37 One stakeholder said it'd be great to leave some of the antenna poles. In fact, they were 38 suggesting that it could be nesting habitat for snowy egrets and the like. Unfortunately, 39 when I talked to the consultant, if you put it for snowy egrets, it'll also be used for those 40 birds of prey and maybe exclusively by them. They countered with there might be a better 41 location for that. In fact, we recently had a heronry by the duck pond. We had three or 42 APPROVED Draft Minutes 41 four different kinds of birds nesting in that area. If we were going to add ones, in their 1 estimation that made the better site. In fact, the habitat around there would be better for 2 them too. Some stakeholders wanted additional seating to what was originally proposed. 3 This area between Byxbee and the Renzel Wetlands is an area where we started with a 4 couple of park benches. They said, "This is a major wildlife corridor, and we would like 5 to limit the amount of prolonged activity in the area. If possible, we'd like you to remove 6 those benches, move them elsewhere in the park, and beef up the vegetation in here, hiding 7 places for these animals that are using it as a corridor." You'll see that reflected on this 8 design, where you've got enhanced planting throughout this area here. Also, there was a 9 request for stairs for exercise, something we discussed during the interim plan for Byxbee 10 so many years ago. Unfortunately, the same answer was it's very difficult to maintain them 11 because of the settlement issue. As a former landfill, you can have a 6-foot drop in some 12 areas. It seems to move around, and it doesn't seem to stop over decades. It's very 13 frustrating. When I reached out to the Public Works staff to make sure, their answer was 14 we could not do it safely. Another bit of feedback was another element from the interim 15 plan, if possible to pile extra soil in certain sections of the preserve that would allow ground 16 squirrels and burrowing owls to thrive. We identified three locations. There are regulatory 17 agencies that govern former landfills, and there are certain rules we must abide by. One is 18 they won't allow burrowing animals on that, so ground squirrels are a no-no. We thought 19 if we got enough soil, they wouldn't hit the clay cap, and we'd protect it, but we have not 20 gotten approval from that regulatory agency. When I talk to the stakeholders, they always 21 want to keep pushing. It's absolutely right, and it belongs on this plan. Eventually, with 22 the right influence and maybe the right person in that regulatory agency, we'll get approval 23 and move forward with this and maybe encourage our owl habitat. 24 Commissioner Reckdahl: Are they worried about the squirrels actually going through the 25 cap or are they worried about them drilling holes that cause erosion and eventually the 26 erosion goes through the cap? 27 Mr. Anderson: That's exactly right. In the areas where we add soil, some ground squirrels 28 can in theory go very deep. That's possible but unlikely if you build it right. More likely 29 is the problem of causing leachate. I think that is one of the predominant concerns of the 30 regulatory agency. 31 Commissioner Reckdahl: That's harder to argue against. 32 Mr. Anderson: I don't think it's insurmountable. We added vegetation islands around the 33 seating areas for shade. Put a mound of earth, and plant it with some native vegetation, 34 and you've got an attractive place to sit that hopefully will shield some of the wind coming 35 through. Again, we added some shrubs on that ecological corridor between Byxbee and 36 the Renzel Wetlands and removed the seating area in that area. We added wayfinding maps 37 to the plan. It's such a big area and not a lot of features that the stakeholders felt it would 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 42 be beneficial to have more of those wayfinding signs. It's "you are here" maps. That 1 concludes my presentation. I'm available for questions. 2 Commissioner Cribbs: The addition of a place for buses is great. How are the individual 3 stalls for cars marked? When I was out there—I don't remember how long ago it was, but 4 the last six months or something—it just felt like cars parked wherever they wanted to park. 5 Mr. Anderson: That's an excellent question, one that frustrated some of our users to no end 6 and our Rangers. They park wherever they want because it's not striped. It wasn't striped 7 intentionally because our stakeholders when we redid the parking lot did not want stripes. 8 It felt too urban to them. On a bad day, you get somebody that puts it just wrong, and you 9 lose parking. 10 Commissioner Cribbs: Does the consultant have some wonderful idea about how we could 11 do it in keeping with the environmental tone of the park? 12 Mr. Anderson: I think it's the right colors. I would stripe it; that's my recommendation. I 13 think that'll be transportation's recommendation when we reach out to them. You won't 14 see it reflected necessarily on this design or a comment. 15 Commissioner Cribbs: It's the little things. 16 Mr. Anderson: We could certainly pitch it. I feel like you would maximize the spot by 17 putting in identifiable stall markers. As a Ranger, I put the little concrete—forgive me, I 18 don't know the term. I thought that would help, but it did not encourage people to park in 19 straight lines and match up perfect there. I know that's not the solution. I think it would 20 be putting down some sort of marker to show exactly where to park. Maybe with the color, 21 we don't want a glowing white. 22 Commissioner Cribbs: Green? Rust? 23 Mr. Anderson: Yeah, I think so, a muted gray maybe. A Baylands gray that we use 24 elsewhere might be feasible. That'd be my recommendation. 25 Chair McDougall: You're not going to go into the sloping construction in the Baylands 26 itself tonight, are you? 27 Mr. Anderson: The settlement? 28 Chair McDougall: Right. 29 Mr. Anderson: No, I wasn't planning on it. 30 APPROVED Draft Minutes 43 Chair McDougall: Elliott, do you have any comments you'd like to make on what you've 1 heard tonight? 2 Mr. Wright: Thank you, Don. For me, just hearing everything and playing a part in the 3 29th and reading up has been very informative. My name is Elliott Wright. I'm ED of 4 Environmental Volunteers. We've had a couple of great volunteer teams on Byxbee as 5 well as Grassroots Ecology doing some habitat restoration. We look forward to doing more 6 to support our parks. One of the thoughts I had while you were speaking was we're down 7 to one Ranger at the Baylands. It's clear to me how essential that person is to the 8 management of this 2,500-acre preserve. If there's anything that we can do to help with 9 that through our team or through providing a welcoming experience for the public, that 10 would be wonderful. Of course, I see a lot of cars turning right when they get to the end 11 of the "T," like 90 percent. That parking lot that you just described is absolutely full to the 12 brim. If folks turned left and headed to the 300 parking sites to the left, not only could they 13 begin their walk on a nice padded, dirt, beautiful trail, but they have access to bathrooms 14 and fun welcoming people at the EcoCenter. In addition to that, you could pick up a 15 sandbag if you needed to. Thanks so much, Don. That's all I had. 16 Chair McDougall: Thank you. 17 Commissioner Moss: I have one big concern. When I look at this picture, there are so 18 many paths. I'm worried that there's not enough open space. This is supposed to be natural 19 open space. I'm most concerned about burrowing owls because they need a certain amount 20 of open space, especially away from dogs. There are so many paths and so many benches 21 and so many places to congregate and so many circular routes that you're never going to 22 get another burrowing owl. I know that Shani Kleinhaus has made this argument several 23 times with the Emily Renzel Wetlands. I'm worried that you're going to have a similar 24 situation here. I love the surrounding ones, the circular ones that go around. Maybe the 25 one that goes to the very top, that comes from the lower left up to the right to the very top. 26 The rest of them, get rid of half or more. On those that remain, you have your benches. 27 I'm a little bit worried about that. The burrowing owls are most successful near Permanente 28 Creek near Google. There's a huge hill there. The other place that they're most successful 29 is on the south side of Shoreline near the Shoreline overflow parking lot. That whole area 30 behind there is where they are. They're not near paths. They're certainly not near dogs. 31 Mr. Anderson: Can I address that one before you move on if you don't mind? 32 Commissioner Moss: Yes. 33 Mr. Anderson: Excuse me. I forgot to mention that in anticipation of that feedback—I've 34 heard that too for many years, the will of a lot of stakeholders not to bifurcate habitat too 35 much. In lieu of that, we said two of these areas, this area and this one here, would be 36 maintenance only. It would not be an open trail. However, every trail you see on there is 37 APPROVED Draft Minutes 44 a maintenance trail. We couldn't take anything out. You could label it "not a trail" if you 1 want. Everything on there is necessary for the Public Works team to service the leachate 2 wells that are part of having a former landfill. They'll need those areas. We haven't had 3 any superfluous trails; these are all dual-purpose maintenance roads. We certainly can and 4 have proposed at least in these two right here to label them as not a trail. It doesn't mean 5 people won't sometimes use them, but maybe it limits it. 6 Commissioner Moss: Concentrate the benches in areas that we want people to focus on, 7 like the perimeter, and maybe one at the top of the hill and not everywhere. I think that's 8 important. As far as seniors, if there are a few benches in strategic places, that's great. 9 They don't need a bench every 100 feet. Your comment about the burrowing owl and the 10 ground squirrels and putting mounds of dirt. You should be able to put a concrete cap over 11 certain areas of the hill that you could put dirt on top so that when the ground squirrels go 12 down 5 feet and reach the concrete cap, they won't go any further down, but they'll go out. 13 If the cap is in such a way that it's sloped down, then any water or leaching won't go through 14 the cap but will go down the hill somewhere else. The leaching may be less. If there's 15 some way we could find out how other people have done it, I would do anything we can to 16 encourage the ground squirrels and the burrowing owls. 17 Vice Chair Greenfield: Daren, I want to thank you for all the thoughtful work you've 18 spearheaded with staff and the stakeholder group in arriving at the plan that's in front of us. 19 I definitely agree with Concept 2, the roundabout parking idea. It seems like a no-brainer 20 in adding the bus parking. It's certainly necessary and straightforward. Thank you for the 21 continued push for the burrowing areas. I know you appreciate the need for that. It sounds 22 like if push comes to shove, we'll get there one of these days. Other than that, I have no 23 specific comments. Great stuff. 24 Commissioner Reckdahl: I am pro squirrel, so anything we can do—except in my 25 backyard. In Byxbee, I love the squirrels. Anything we can do to get more ground squirrel 26 area is going to be helpful for the habitat and helpful for the owls. I think it's a good thing. 27 When Byxbee was first laid out, they had trails going by every leachate pump, so there 28 were twice as many trails. Deirdre just hated that, so we worked. They had to work very 29 hard to minimize these trails. They're stretching it because sometimes they have to move 30 off the trail. They'll park the truck and walk out there 20 or 30 feet or so. They really have 31 stretched just to get to this point. I think I mentioned this to Daren. Sunnyvale has a 32 Byxbee-type park that, I think, is ten years older. They recently put in stairs. It'll be 33 interesting to see. Looking at the settling we have at Byxbee, I don't see how we can have 34 stairs right now. We'll find out if the stairs break down in Sunnyvale. If it works in 35 Sunnyvale, then maybe ten years from now we can start thinking about stairs at Byxbee. 36 When I go up there, I get disoriented. It's just a flat moonscape. Having a group meeting 37 area helps it, gives one landmark. It would be nice to have more landmarks in there. Could 38 APPROVED Draft Minutes 45 you have a big rock pile or big wood pile that would double as habitat and landmark? That 1 would at least give you something to put on the map and something to guide yourself. 2 Mr. Anderson: Would something like additional foraging islands help? It's not 3 humongous. 4 Commissioner Reckdahl: I would want something vertical so you could see it from a ways 5 away. That would give you a reference point. Anything that would get a little elevation 6 and have some type of habitat might be a good double duty. 7 Commissioner LaMere: With the loops, I see you have mileage listed. Is that something 8 you'd normally do at the start of different trails or in the parking lot? Would you put a 9 legend so people would know distances of the different trails? 10 Mr. Anderson: Not typically. We accomplish it in two ways, one is on our trail maps. It'll 11 show markers and the distance between the two so you can piece together your own route. 12 Sometimes we have 6x6 redwood posts that say x number of miles to the Nature Center 13 and x number to Byxbee. One concept the consultant was pitching for those loops was 14 perhaps color coding something on the park bench itself. I'm not quite sure how that's 15 going to work yet. They're just kicking around ideas. It may be only reflected in the map, 16 but we might find something more creative and interesting. 17 Commissioner LaMere: As far as parking goes, I've not driven my car out there. I've run 18 out there and been on a bike. The parking is quite impacted. 19 Mr. Anderson: Every day in the mornings and in the afternoons and all day on weekends. 20 Commissioner LaMere: Will they make places for bike racks and so forth? Is that in the 21 plans? 22 Mr. Anderson: I don't know if it's on this plan. I think we have one small one existing, 23 and it needs to be expanded. 24 Chair McDougall: If it's all about exercise with the stairs, you could make an incremental 25 path that is relatively steep. One already exists, as you know, from the parking lot. It's a 26 user-made path to get the exercise running up. I'm in favor of segment distances, so you 27 can figure out how to go 20 miles or 1 mile. There's a limited number of loops, and they're 28 not short enough to identify the loops. Let's make sure we make a big point of bike racks 29 right from the start. Your interaction and involvement with the stakeholder group and the 30 quality of that interaction is really impressive. Thank you for that. If there are no other 31 questions, we can go on to one of the final items on the agenda. 32 Mr. Anderson: Chair McDougall, I had one other comment. I forgot to mention that the 33 existing habitat islands are irrigated in a very unique way. We put in-ground tanks and 34 APPROVED Draft Minutes 46 bring recycled water up by truck to fill those up, which was great when we had one or two 1 or three small ones. To properly vegetate Byxbee, that will not suffice. What I propose 2 and what you'll see reflected in the action plan is that we do a recycled water line from the 3 back side of the treatment plant to the top of Byxbee. That's the only way we're going to 4 viably establish healthy native vegetation. I just want you to know that's part of the plan 5 too. 6 Chair McDougall: That was a great addition. Thank you. 7 6. Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates 8 Chair McDougall: Item 6 would be Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates. 9 Commissioner LaMere, do you have anything you want to add? Commissioner Reckdahl? 10 Commissioner Reckdahl: David will want to say a few words about two things that we 11 went to this week. 12 Commissioner Moss: This past week has been a busy week for biking in the Baylands. 13 We had a completion ceremony for the bike path that goes from the Baylands Athletic 14 Center to East Palo Alto across the Friendship Bridge. The Friendship Bridge has been 15 doubled in length with this San Francisquito Creek flood control project completion. This 16 is Phase I. It's a monumental achievement. It's about nine years' worth of work. Our part 17 of it is really that it goes through the Baylands. It'll continue through the Baylands to the 18 north, and that's Phase II. Phase II will include some of the bridges upstream from San 19 Francisquito Creek. The part that involves us is the part that is adjacent to the marshes. It 20 turns out that the marsh just north of San Francisquito Creek has the highest population of 21 Ridgway rails in the whole South Bay area. It's very important that we play our role to 22 make sure bike accessibility is enhanced but we also protect the marsh. Yesterday, they 23 kicked off the 101 bike bridge project over Lefkowitz underpass. Google paid a significant 24 amount of the project. We've talked about that at length in this Commission. That kickoff 25 is a big deal. That will take several years to complete. 26 Chair McDougall: Commissioner Cribbs, do you have anything? 27 Commissioner Cribbs: Only the pickleball moving forward for our ad hoc meeting a 28 couple of weeks ago. That was all good. There was to be a conversation with Peter Jensen 29 about the grass in our new dog park that is not doing well. They're trying to achieve some 30 sort of solution. He was ill, so that didn't happen. Ryan and I were going to go to that and 31 listen to potential solutions. I guess they knew that was going to happen because of the 32 trees, but it's happening more quickly than it should be happening. Something to watch. I 33 had one final question; I don't know if it's appropriate now. I wondered how we were doing 34 with the new vendor with our park maintenance and the trash in the parks on the weekends. 35 APPROVED Draft Minutes 47 Chair McDougall: That was also a question that Commissioner McCauley kept asking. 1 Why don't we make sure that isn't agendized but asked for in the staff report for the next 2 meeting? 3 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you. However, we need to do it would be great. 4 Vice Chair Greenfield: The bike bridge ceremony was well attended by the Parks and Rec 5 Commission with four Commissioners there. That was great. The Lefkowitz family was 6 present at the ceremony. I'm wondering if the Lefkowitz name will be maintained with the 7 new bike bridge. The underpass is going away. I wonder if Council or staff has any 8 recommendations. 9 Ms. O'Kane: I don't know the answer, but I can find out tomorrow. 10 Vice Chair Greenfield: On the park dedication front, the ad hoc met. We're working to 11 research public benefit park-like spaces to understand where they exist and how to better 12 publicize these spaces for use within the community. We haven't made much progress on 13 dedication. Staff has communicated the staff resources issues in various departments, 14 which is one of the inhibiting factors, but we continue to consider how to proceed 15 productively. On the turf management front, I've been out at the Cubberley turf field 16 refereeing some soccer games. The seasonal lights, which Palo Alto Soccer Club has in 17 place for practicing, look great. It's another win-win on the win-win project, where the 18 positioning is not obtrusive. The full track is now accessible for joggers. The Palo Alto 19 Soccer Club is happy with it as well. On community gardens, we're still waiting for the 20 green light as this ripples through various departments. I understand that we have legal 21 approval, and it's now in planning. It's not clear if it will need to go to the Council, but 22 we're continuing to push forward in opening a new community garden. A few months 23 back, I talked about updates to the rules and regulations for the community gardens. It's 24 become more complex than initially perceived. There are individualized plans or variances 25 being worked out for each garden. I think we'll have a general set of guidelines and specific 26 variances as appropriate for the various gardens. That's something we can look forward to 27 sometime next year. In the discussion of pickleball, I meant to say we don't want to have 28 deciduous trees nearby; we want to have evergreen trees. 29 Chair McDougall: It's interesting that you said it's become more complex. Isn't that the 30 line they attach to everything we get involved in? If there aren't any other updates on ad 31 hocs … 32 Commissioner Moss: One more thing. Can you give an update on the Cubberley Master 33 Plan? When was the last meeting that we had? 34 Ms. O'Kane: The last meeting was November 1st. The next meeting is Thursday, 35 January 24th or 23rd. It'll be at 7:00 p.m. again at Cubberley. A little bit more time 36 APPROVED Draft Minutes 48 between the two meetings this time to give the consultant an opportunity to process and 1 digest everything that we've heard from the community and put something together that's 2 substantive. The final meeting will be in May. 3 Commissioner Moss: Can we have the offsite planned earlier than last year? 4 Chair McDougall: I was going to go to agenda items next. On the Cubberley thing, I really 5 like the progress and the structure that the consultant is using. It's another case of getting 6 strong community engagement. That's been really effective. 7 Commissioner Reckdahl: Congratulations goes out to Commissioners Cribbs, Moss, and 8 Greenfield, who have been reappointed. They will be with us for a while. 9 Chair McDougall: Thank you for doing that. It never occurred to me that anything had 10 changed. 11 VI. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR JANUARY 22, 2019 MEETING 12 Chair McDougall: In terms of tentative agenda items, I would like to suggest that relative 13 to a retreat we should have a discussion of the topics and the planning at the next meeting. 14 Kristen, maybe you and Commissioner Greenfield and I could get together as the executive 15 and come back with some proposed dates and proposed content and proposed approaches. 16 The idea that we should hold it sooner rather than later is useful. We still have outstanding 17 a meeting with the Council representatives or Mayor and Vice Mayor. We should try and 18 plan that. We had our guest speaker, Monique, on the original agenda for tonight to talk 19 about the Palo Alto Dialog report. I'd like to make sure that we're not just talking about 20 parks all the time, but we're also talking about Community Services activities. I'd like to 21 see that. Are there any other suggestions for topics for the next meeting? 22 Vice Chair Greenfield: CIP. 23 Chair McDougall: An update on the CIP and the analysis and discussions the ad hoc has 24 had would be useful. 25 Ms. O'Kane: That's planned for January. It was supposed to be tonight, but it got bumped. 26 We may have something on pickleball in January. If possible, we would have the PIO. 27 Chair McDougall: That would be really nice if we could move that fast. 28 Commissioner Cribbs: That would be really nice if we could move that along. In the same 29 vein, I would like to see once a quarter for the next year some sort of quick report on how 30 the aquatics situation is doing and how the communication is going. It doesn't have to be 31 a long staff report, but just a quick mention. 32 APPROVED Draft Minutes 49 Ms. O'Kane: Sure. With respect to the retreat, maybe Natalie could poll everyone on 1 potential dates to get that on the calendar. The only downside to that is we don't have our 2 Council liaison assigned yet. We can't factor in that person's schedule, but we should start 3 scheduling that anyway. 4 Vice Chair Greenfield: I'd like to suggest that we make the trek up to Foothills Park for 5 the next retreat. We haven't done that since I've been on the Commission. 6 Chair McDougall: Any other comments, questions? Jeff, you and I will meet with Kristen 7 to come up with the full agenda. I think we've got some good input relative to the agenda. 8 If that's it, I would like to ask if there are any other comments, announcements from staff. 9 VII. COMMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 10 Ms. O'Kane: I have one. We've produced our calendar again. This serves two functions. 11 It's our annual report. The end of the calendar shows what we've accomplished this past 12 year as a department. It also highlights everything that our department provides to the 13 community. The calendar lists our special events, theatre productions, important Enjoy! 14 catalog registration dates. This is our third year producing this. I love it, so I hope you all 15 do to. In the age where people use electronic calendars, I hope you all still find it useful. 16 Chair McDougall: If we give these away, can we get more? 17 Ms. O'Kane: You can. There are more here if you'd like to take more now. 18 Commissioner Moss: We're famous. The San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge 19 has a quarterly newsletter, and we're on page 11 where they talk about the Baylands 20 Conservation Committee. It's written by Emily Renzel and talks about Byxbee Park and 21 the Renzel Wetlands. There are six other cities that are represented in that view. 22 VIII. ADJOURNMENT 23 Meeting adjourned on motion by Commissioner Cribbs and second by Commissioner Moss 24 at 10:16 p.m. 25