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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016-03-22 Policy & Services Committee Summary MinutesPOLICY AND SERVICES COMMITTEE TRANSCRIPT Page 1 of 56 Special Meeting March 22, 2016 Chairperson DuBois called the meeting to order at 6:05 P.M. in the Community Meeting Room, 250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, California. Present: Berman arrived at 6:06 P.M., DuBois (Chair), Kniss, Scharff Absent: Council Member Kniss: As I told the Chair, I need to leave at 7:30 for a family thing. I'm glad for starting with us. Oral Communications Chair DuBois: The first thing is Oral Communications. We do have a member of the public who'd like to speak, Maria-Jo Fremont. Marie-Jo Fremont: Yes. Good evening. My name is Marie-Jo Fremont. I'm a Palo Alto resident, but I'm here tonight as a Sky Posse Palo Alto member. First, for people who don't know what Sky Posse is, it's a group of concerned neighbors who are working for the reduction and equitable distribution of aircraft noise in the Bay Area. First, on behalf of Sky Posse, I want to thank the City and especially Cash who is here, who has accommodated our needs to hold community meetings in the past when we needed it. As you know, because you're from the City, the City has committed resources to this effort of reducing aircraft noise. We are now working very closely with the City to support these efforts. Community engagement is going to be really important to be supporting the City effectively. For us, we will need to be able to hold regular community meetings to be successful in our community outreach efforts. We know how to garner the support of our 2,000 members of Sky Posse, but we need to be able to hold face-to-face meetings, and we need to update them on the progress that is being made and also tell the people what they can do to support the City. My request would be that we would very much appreciate if we could have your support in getting access to free meeting rooms to hold community meetings for Sky Posse on a regular basis. That's all I wanted to say tonight. Thank you. Chair DuBois: Thank you very much. Ms. Fremont: Thank you, Cash. TRANSCRIPT Page 2 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Chair DuBois: That's actually Item 1 on the agenda, but that's fine that you went ahead and spoke. Ms. Fremont: It was on the agenda? I didn't (inaudible). Chair DuBois: That's okay. Agenda Items 1. Continue Discussion Regarding City's Neighborhood Engagement Initiative Including the Ongoing Structure for Town Hall Meetings, Updates to the Co-Sponsorship Agreement and Definition and Standards for Neighborhood Associations Chair DuBois: Item 1 is a discussion about neighbor engagement. We actually had two or three discussions already in Policy and Services last year. It was triggered by a Colleagues Memo that had several parts. Marc has joined us now. Council Member Berman: Sorry I'm late. Chair DuBois: No problem. I guess one thing I would say, it covered a lot of different areas. It covered Town Halls, which we held two last year, the neighborhood grant program, free use of meeting rooms. There was also discussion about listing neighborhood associations on the City website and a potential ombudsman concept. I would just say that we did hear from the members of the public last time. I think there was some concern both in the Committee and in the public about getting too formal in terms of defining what a neighborhood association is. I think as we go through this tonight, we might want to think about does the City really want to arbitrate if there are two associations in one neighborhood, different kinds of situations like that. I think there was also a little bit of discussion about the ombudsman. I think some members of the public felt like they had access to City staff. There was a question about were we going to add another layer of bureaucracy and was that needed. We do have a couple of members of the public who put in cards. I've also talked to Cash about making this more of a discussion with members of the public tonight. Would you guys like to speak first, the people who have put in cards? James Keene, City Manager: Could I just .. Female: (inaudible) Chair DuBois: Sure. TRANSCRIPT Page 3 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Mr. Keene: ... suggest one thing? I don't know if there's any orientation just very quickly Cash needs to do, make sure everybody has all the materials that you have in front of you. I just want to make sure that everybody's on the same page. Council Member Kniss: Also another, as we say, clarifying question. I have a map in front of me. Does everyone agree with the map? Female: No. Council Member Kniss: No. I wondered. I looked at this and I thought, "I'm not sure if I agree with the map." Is this ... Female: Here's a formal list of neighborhoods that PAN (crosstalk). Chair DuBois: Sorry, Cash. Did you have a summary that you wanted to ... Khashayar Alaee, Senior Management Analyst: I think it'd be helpful if I— it's on Packet Page 32 of the staff Report. I think it'd be good to put a couple of things in context, but it's certainly up to you, Chair. As the Chair talked about, the item has come before the Committee several times. It ultimately led to some recommendations that the Council made on September 15. Those are listed on Packet Page 2 of the staff Report. In essence it was that we hold two Town Hall meetings in 2015, which we did. The second recommendation was to add money and broaden the definition of the Know Your Neighbors grant, which we did. The third recommendation was to come back to Policy and Services Committee with a discussion about the use of City facilities, waiving insurance. Also, when we did that—that was through the updating of the Co-Sponsorship Agreement. When we did that, to also have further discussions about the definition of association, support models, communication, conflict resolution, the ombudsman concept, and then the website and social media. That's a little bit of the formal action Council took. On page 1 of the staff Report, we have tried to narrow some recommendations for the Committee tonight to be able to advance to Council. At any point of the conversation, if we go different places, those might help you. The staff Report itself, under the discussion section, we've lumped the specific topics in categories, such as the Town Halls, neighborhood association definition, the use of City facilities, the ombudsman program, updates on the Know Your Neighbors grant program, and then generally communication. Certainly up to the Chair and the City Manager, but it might be a good process to just go through each of those sections, have a discussion about it, and then move to the next section. Again, that's up to the Chair. With that, the only other addition is you do have an at-places memo. In the staff Report, there was two outstanding items that we were not able to finalize by the printing of the staff Report. TRANSCRIPT Page 4 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 That was that we had done a survey of neighborhood associations, asking them about six questions. We have provided you those questions as well as the survey results. I do want to recognize Sheri for taking those results and creating a summary guide on the next two pages. The actual survey responses are also there. Finally, as part of the City facilities discussion, there was two options of waiving insurance. One was to have them be a part of the City's self-insured policy or purchasing the specific insurance policy. Our recommendation is that we buy a specific policy which costs about $5,000 a year. With that, I turn it back to the Chair and the City Manager. We can take the discussion in whatever pieces. Mr. Keene: Thank you, Tom. Chair DuBois: I have two speaker cards. Why don't we go ahead and hear from the speakers. The first one is Annette Glanckopf. If you could come up to the microphone. Annette Glanckopf: This is 3 minutes exactly. Council Member Berman: No more, no less. Ms. Glanckopf: I timed it twice. Good evening. Thank you very much for the recognition that neighborhood associations are a vital part of our community and for taking steps to improve connections between the City and neighborhood associations. Know Your Neighbor grants and Town Hall meetings have been very successful. As one of the cofounders of Palo Alto Neighborhoods, PAN, I'd like to add my perspective. PAN is an umbrella organization of neighborhood associations that came together in the late '90s when there only were just a few neighborhood associations. I was a neighborhood leader and wanted to learn from others about politics, land use, City structures, etc. We started to meet to help support each other and learn from each other. Now, PAN is a robust organization of over two dozen neighborhoods. Neighborhood associations are a vital part of our democracy. They build community by bringing neighbors together in a nonthreatening way at information meetings and social. It's a perfect training ground to draw residents into the community and get them involved. Many Council Members and many more Commissioners have come out of neighborhood associations. Pat Burt, Karen Holman, Yoriko Kishimoto, to name a few. Neighborhood associations are not PACs and are neutral on issues since they're diverse views in our neighborhoods. Occasionally we will take a stake on a central issue to our neighborhood, like parking, large houses, traffic or the need for retail. Neighborhoods can be large; they can be small; they can be old; they can be new. Some charge dues mainly for newsletters and social events, while others do not. Some TRANSCRIPT Page 5 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 have electronic news or Yahoo groups, while others rely on Nextdoor. The issue that really has sparked this discussion was the request of neighborhood associations to use community facilities free for meeting rooms. What a better use of City money, community members talking about community issues and building community. The staff Report recommendations are overly cumbersome and onerous. All we wanted was to use City facilities at no charge with no administrative nor janitorial fees. The process suggested will dis-incent neighborhoods from signing up. A month's notice, paper forms, committing only to discussing items that are congruent with City policy, too much. What we want is: (1) to recognize all 33 neighborhoods on the PAN site with their self-identified boundaries and not try to craft artificially new ones; (2) no tiered neighborhoods; treat all neighborhoods equally. No long period to apply for a room. If one's available at the time of the request, grant it. Additionally, having a specific neighborhood contact, ombudsman or whatever for each association is an unnecessary, bureaucratic layer. The process for sharing information from the City has worked very, very well, and don't overcomplicate this. Currently information is sent to the PAN chair, Sheri, and myself because of backup and vacations, etc., and it's immediately distributed. In closing, thank you for considering this, and please keep it simple. Chair DuBois: Thank you. The next speaker is Doria Summa. Doria Summa: I want to start out by thanking Staff and the City Council very much for the Colleagues Memo and bringing this important topic forward. I also wanted to acknowledge that I am on the College Terrace Residents Association Board, and that we were the beneficiaries of a neighborhood grant last year. We had a kicking party, so that was really swell. I also want to say that I really appreciate this. I think it's great that we are going to have meeting rooms. It's really hard unless there's a neighborhood church usually that you can use to find meeting places. Sometimes, they don't have big enough meeting rooms. Having meeting rooms without cumbersome, extra, added-on fees is very important to neighborhood associations. I do have a slight worry that some of this has become a little bit overly complicated, and that will keep it from achieving its original goal of recognizing and empowering neighborhood associations. I'd like to include important, nonspecific neighborhoods, but advocacy groups for all of Palo Alto such as PAAS and PAN and Sky Posse and Path who I know that the City has already cosponsored at least one event last August, I think. I just want to say just keep it simple and thank you very much for doing this. Chair DuBois: Thank you. If it's okay with ... TRANSCRIPT Page 6 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Female: We have one more. Chair DuBois: I'm sorry. (crosstalk) Becky Sanders would like to speak. Becky Sanders: Hi, my name is Becky Sanders. I'm a leader in training. If it weren't for PAN, and Sheri in particular, I would not have been empowered or trained or been nurtured to found the Ventura Neighborhood Association. We used to have one. I've talked to those leaders; they have all kind of grayed out of activism, but they were really excited to know that somebody was picking up that thread. I just want to say thank you for the infrastructure provided by the City supporting neighborhood associations. We did get a social grant last year, and we were able to use that to kickoff a sign-up for the Ventura Neighborhood Association. We've been in business for 8 months; we have a ListServ of 65 people. Regularly we have about 12 people come to meetings. I just want to say thank you for the support and to encourage you to keep it as simple with no barriers as possible. Thank you. Chair DuBois: Thank you. Sheri Furman would like to speak. Sheri Furman: Hi. I wasn't going to speak, because I figured we'd be having this discussion, but I just wanted to reiterate all the things that Annette said. As the founder, I was there within a year of the founding of PAN. As Becky pointed out, one of the things that we do in neighborhoods is mentor other neighborhoods. When Palo Verde was reforming, we provided advice to them on how to run a neighborhood association. As others have said, what we really just need is somewhere to meet. Not all neighborhoods have a church or somebody that can offer them space to meet. Also, PAN has been organized, I think it's about 18 years now. Once in a while, a new neighborhood comes up. For the most part, the neighborhoods listed on the PAN website have been in existence quite a while. What you see on the maps and the one included in your packet are really real estate divisions. For example, south of Midtown, St. Claire Gardens are a part of the Midtown Residents Association. Professorville doesn't have its own association; they're part of University South's. Should anybody ever step up and want to form that association, great. It doesn't exist as one right now. The people that live in it are part of University South. I think it's important to recognize that, because the City's emergency preparation organization has used the PAN's neighborhood maps as their organization as well of where we deploy NPCs and BPCs and everything. I look forward to having an actual discussion and answering specific questions. I'll stop now. Thank you. Chair DuBois: Thank you, Sheri. If it's all right with the Committee, I think we should just go down through these issues one at a time. TRANSCRIPT Page 7 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Vice Mayor Scharff: You're on page ... Chair DuBois: I'm on Page 2. Council Member Kniss: Let me ask a question before you do that. Are all the neighborhood associations accessible from our website? Ms. Furman: Not yours, but mine. I'm on yours; I mean, PAN is under community partners. (crosstalk) ... Council Member Kniss: I can go on ours and find ... Ms. Furman: ... gave you lists all the website (crosstalk) ... Council Member Kniss: Thanks. Ms. Furman: ... neighborhoods and leaders. Council Member Kniss: Thank you. Chair DuBois: We'll get there. We'll get to the web and social, but let's start with Town Halls. I think the Staff recommendation is we do one a quarter. Mr. Alaee: Correct. Mr. Keene: No more than one a quarter. Vice Mayor Scharff: Up to. We don't have to. Mr. Keene: Yes, you don't have to. Chair DuBois: Also approve $8,000. It's about $2,000 a Town Hall. Should we just have a short discussion? Vice Mayor Scharff: Sure. I have a question. Chair DuBois: Sure. Sorry. Vice Mayor Scharff: We did two last year. Do we think that four is too many? One a quarter is a lot. Council Member Berman: Can I ... Vice Mayor Scharff: Do we think that—how are we going to make that decision? (crosstalk) basically based on staff's time or what are we going to do? I'm asking (crosstalk). TRANSCRIPT Page 8 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Mr. Keene: Me? Vice Mayor Scharff: You are City Staff. Mr. Keene: It's a little hard to say. We have the experience of two meetings so far. Of course, those were collapsed into a very short period of time. The idea of spacing them out is important. That being said, I mean, just my kind of gut reaction is four is a lot in the course of a year. If you're thinking about just year after year, in the sense of ensuring that the meeting is meaningful enough, whether it's enough content or are there topic issues clearly in the location that we go to. I don't mean to be judgmental about it, but I felt that the first meeting that we had over in Crescent Park—one had a lot more turnout than the second meeting we had over at Cubberley. The discussion seemed to be more topical. I mean, there was a lot of angst about the intrusion on the parking issues. There was a lot of concern at that particular meeting about airplane noise. That meeting could have gone on for 4 hours of discussion. In one sense, people probably—I think to some extent sometimes people felt frustrated that 2 hours wasn't enough. Again, my impression of the meeting we had at Cubberley was filling the 2 hours was ... Vice Mayor Scharff: Was tough. Mr. Keene: ... a little—yeah, was a little difficult. Vice Mayor Scharff: That was the 20-person meeting. It was like 23. Mr. Keene: Again, that was getting close to the holidays and all of those things. Chair DuBois: Was it raining that night? Mr. Keene: It was a rainy night. Unidentified: What were the ... Ms. Furman: (crosstalk) neighborhoods included. Council Member Berman: That was part of the strategy. When we talked about this last year, we talked about let's try one and then establish—in an area that has a really established neighborhood organization. Crescent Park was that. Then let's try one in an area that doesn't. Sorry, Greg, to ... Vice Mayor Scharff: That's fine. TRANSCRIPT Page 9 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Council Member Berman: ... jump in. I mean, it'd be great to get some sense from Staff, which we're kind of getting now. I think we were all just speculating on Policy and Services about how much time it'll take; we can just kind of set it up, and then three Council Members will go and they'll do all the work; it'll be easy on staff, and staff won't have to answer questions. I wasn't able to make the meetings unfortunately, and so I don't know if that played out. I read the reports in the press. From Staff's perspective, kind of is it necessary to have the head of each department at these meetings? Was a handful of staff able to cover or did Council play a bigger role? How did this play out? Chair DuBois: I went to the second one. Again, we talked about this last year, and not really wanting to have a highly structured meeting with a lot of presentation materials. Really to have Council take more of the lead. The other thing we talked about was how long will it take us to get through the entire City. I think that's where kind of one per quarter can hit largely the whole City in about 2 years, 2 1/2 years. Some portion of the City's not going to have a Town Hall every 2 1/2 years. Council Member Berman: I guess my question is did that work. Were the meetings fairly unstructured? Did SStaff have to spend a lot of time putting together presentations on certain items? Mr. Keene: I don't think in either one we felt we had to put together presentations. We didn't want to do that, because it was really about the Council being upfront. We were there to support and answer technical questions at times. Council Member Berman: That's how it kind of ... Vice Mayor Scharff: My general feeling is that we should start these things small. We did two last year I think we should do three the next year. I don't think we should plan on four. Mr. Keene: That's why we (crosstalk) one per quarter, so it was three this year, so we didn't have to jam four in. We were already three (crosstalk). Vice Mayor Scharff: If that works well—we can always revisit this later. One every four months seems reasonable to me. We have a break in—we basically take 6 weeks off in July, so there's less of that. December is a dead month; you're not going to be holding one in December. In fact, anything after November 25th is a disaster. I really think that trying to jam four in is difficult. I think actually you might even find that having some broader areas where you do two neighborhood associations at a time sometimes. I think it can be flexible. It may work really well. TRANSCRIPT Page 10 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Council Member Kniss: (crosstalk) in line for questions. Vice Mayor Scharff: I guess I lean towards at least starting with three on this. Chair DuBois: Liz. Council Member Kniss: My question is back to you all. You meet on a regular basis. What this does is the Town Hall meeting is access to the City staff and so forth, which is a different kind of structure, I realize. I think each neighborhood has a very different robustness to it, if that's such a word. Some of you come together on a regular basis. I know Midtown's very active. You do a number of things. I don't know how often you meet. Ms. Furman: First of all, as far as PAN, that's the neighborhood leaders, and we meet monthly. Usually we have anywhere from 15 to 20 neighborhood leaders there, which is a decent turnout. Council Member Kniss: You meet once a month? Ms. Furman: We meet once a month. In the case of Midtown, we have a steering committee that meets monthly. We have an ice cream social, and then we have two or three general meetings a year. Council Member Kniss: A year? You meet pretty often. Ms. Furman: College Terrace, you guys meet monthly. Ms. Summa: The Board meets monthly, and the public is invited. We usually have maybe 10, sometimes 15, sometimes more. We actually kind of gave birth to Sky Posse at one of our meetings. We had like people from all over the City—it was great—at that. That's facilitated by Nextdoor. It's easier to advertise these things. We have three meetings, two picnics and an annual meeting. Typically, we invite the Mayor or the City Manager or somebody like that. That's another opportunity for College Terrace to meet City people. Ms. Furman: Just like you've all come to our ice cream social. Council Member Kniss: We'll continue to come. Vice Mayor Scharff: That's my favorite event. Barron Park has a really robust organization. Ms. Summa: Barron Park is robust. College Terrace is robust, and it's very organized. We have bylaws, and we like to stick (crosstalk). TRANSCRIPT Page 11 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Mr. Keene: (crosstalk) I'm projecting a little bit. I think if you're a citizen and you go to a meeting, you want the meeting to be meaningful and Council's at the meeting. I feel responsible that it's at least meaningful for you guys or there's an exchange that's worthwhile. It does seem that the role of the neighborhood is really important in the meeting in the sense of getting people to the meeting and/or helping identify really issues of concern and some way to get that out in advance a little bit more so there may be a sense. In that sense, there's a stronger role for the Council, for you as elected representatives, to be speaking to how you see the issues. To me, that seems more interesting a lot of times to people than just us telling everybody where we are on the schedule on the Comprehensive Plan (Comp Plan) or something like that. Two hours of that gets, I think, kind of boring to people. We really may have focused on what the neighborhood wants with more advanced time. Of course, the last time it was whatever, November. We said, "Let's set a meeting in 2 weeks, and let's have another one 2 weeks later." There wasn't much opportunity for ... Ms. Furman: As I recall—if I can butt in—the neighborhoods you invited were not some of the neighborhoods with more active issues. Obviously Crescent Park and Downtown North, University South are always going to be buzzing with issues. The southwest corner of Palo Alto tends to be pretty quiet. Palo Alto Orchards, Greenacres, those areas. Mr. Keene: (crosstalk) buzzing down there in the Orchards? Ms. Furman: They are. They're hiding it. That's what I'm saying. It depends on how you group ... Chair DuBois: That one was a smaller one. What I thought was interesting was a bunch of people from the Greenhouse showed up. They don't usually come to events, that I've seen. Again, I think there's a high correlation with neighborhood associations with the idea of a Town Hall. I don't think it replaces association events or picnics. It's a different kind of event. I think the idea is to rotate among parts of the City and ideally work with multiple associations to get (crosstalk). Ms. Furman: Remember this was your idea to us. This was not our idea to you. It's not something we were planning for. In all honesty, if we wanted you at a meeting to come (crosstalk) ... Vice Mayor Scharff: You'd invite us. Ms. Furman: .... a talk, we usually invited you. You've been to our meetings. All of you have been to PAN. TRANSCRIPT Page 12 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Chair DuBois: I want to keep this moving. We've got a bunch of other topics. Council Member Kniss: I want to make one suggestion, though. We are supposedly not supposed to meet on the fourth Monday of the month. It would seem as though if you were trying to find a time to meet, you might select some of those Mondays as the time to have your town meeting, and do it then instead of having an official City meeting. Vice Mayor Scharff: Good luck with that. Mr. Keene: Sounds like a winner to me. Council Member Kniss: It's a try. It's a try. Council Member Berman: I'm onboard. Ms. Glanckopf: Tom, can I (crosstalk)? Chair DuBois: Yes. Ms. Glanckopf: First of all, Midtown would like to invite you to have your next Town Hall meeting (crosstalk) as I said in the letter that I wrote you. The one interesting thing I have seen with bringing people out, it depends on the topic. Probably the highest number of folks we've had is when we did technology, fiber to the home. Just absolutely we could not have enough seats for everyone. Even though we've had fabulous speakers, emergency (inaudible) and crime safety always brings a big crowd out. Some of the areas that we think would be really, really interesting, we've had very small turnout. It really does depend on the ... Vice Mayor Scharff: Topic. Ms. Glanckopf: ... topic. We push things out in newsletters, Nextdoor, electronic news every week. People know about it; it's just can they come. The day of the week is really, really important. Vice Mayor Scharff: What's a good day of the week, Annette? Ms. Glanckopf: We usually do it, because we have room availability, on Tuesday nights. We have done a survey of our neighborhoods, and people do like weekends also. Of course, it's very challenging for Staff and Council. Chair DuBois: Do we have any Motion around Town Halls? Vice Mayor Scharff: I'll move that we do it three times a year. TRANSCRIPT Page 13 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Chair DuBois: Can we approve the budget as well? Vice Mayor Scharff: Yeah, we can approve the $8,000. Chair DuBois: Do I hear a second? Council Member Kniss: I second. MOTION: Vice Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Kniss to recommend the City Council continue Town Hall meetings with three meetings per year on an ongoing basis supported by an annual budget appropriation of $8,000. Chair DuBois: Other discussion? Council Member Kniss: No. Vice Mayor Scharff: No. Chair DuBois: All in favor. MOTION PASSED: 4-0 Chair DuBois: The next topic was this idea of neighborhood association definition. As you can see, part of that was the survey in terms of who has bylaws, how formal are associations. Just taking a quick look myself, it's all over the map, I think. Vice Mayor Scharff: All over. Chair DuBois: There's quite a few that do have bylaws and a board, and several that don't. (inaudible) open it up for discussion. Vice Mayor Scharff: First of all, I'd like to thank Sheri for doing this. You did this, right, put the survey together? No? Ms. Furman: Just the tables. No. Vice Mayor Scharff: Just the table. Ms. Furman: Cash did the survey. I just put it ... Mr. Keene: Put it in simple form. Vice Mayor Scharff: I thought this was really helpful. Ms. Furman: (crosstalk) understandable. TRANSCRIPT Page 14 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Vice Mayor Scharff: It's understandable; it's easy to look at. I read a little bit of your meeting last time. I don't think we should be in the business of deciding what's a City association or who gets to go on the website. I think if three of my neighbors get together and want to call themselves the City association and they want to go on the website, it's not like there's a shortage of space. They can all go on the website. That's sort of my view of it. I just don't think we want to be making those decisions. Was that the issue, Tom, just in this part? Chair DuBois: I think there's ... Vice Mayor Scharff: The ombudsman, is that separate? Chair DuBois: That's separate, I think. There's kind of the question of when you use the definition. We might have one definition for insurance purposes versus being on the website. Do you want to have two of your neighbors in the City be responsible for (crosstalk)? Vice Mayor Scharff: Yeah, basically I am. I think I fall in the just go under the City's insurance policy. Ms. Furman: It's not like we have lots of people clamoring to form new neighborhoods, frankly. Vice Mayor Scharff: I think the City ... Mr. Keene: I think as long as you keep it to neighborhoods, that's a little easier than (crosstalk) the access. Vice Mayor Scharff: No, I think you have to be a neighborhood association. You have to call yourselves and be a neighborhood. I actually would add one thing that you couldn't do. I don't think you can endorse—in fact, I'd put that in a motion when we get to it. I would say you couldn't endorse candidates or oppose ballot measures or have the—basically, I want to have it ... Female: (inaudible) Vice Mayor Scharff: I know you don't. I just want it to be a—I don't want it to become where political action groups decide that they are calling themselves to get the free meeting space and to be doing, frankly, political business. I don't want to say you can't do political business, because I want you to be able to advocate to the City Council and come speak and take positions if you want to. I just don't think you should be out there electioneering. That's all. TRANSCRIPT Page 15 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Ms. Furman: Most associations—I know MRA has a policy that you can endorse a candidate, but you can't use your title. No neighborhood that I know of ... Vice Mayor Scharff: I meant the association; I didn't mean the members. The members, of course, could ... Ms. Furman: I don't know any associations that actually ... Vice Mayor Scharff: I'm thinking if we're going to make it loose, that’s what you worry about is what other people will do to abuse the system. Ms. Furman: Can I say on that topic—I know Tom and I discussed this a bit. This thing we're talking about is concerning neighborhood associations. It's an initiative about neighborhoods. When you start talking about Palo Alto Forward and PAAS and ... Vice Mayor Scharff: I don't think they're a neighborhood association. Ms. Furman: ... and Sky Posse, I would prefer that whatever arrangements you make for giving them rooms is a separate item from the neighborhoods. They're going to have different definitions. Some of them are PACs; some of them ... Vice Mayor Scharff: I'm very sympathetic to Sky Posse, to be honest. Ms. Furman: I am too. Vice Mayor Scharff: I think Sky Posse should have ... Ms. Furman: No, I am too. I have ... Vice Mayor Scharff: I actually do. What I don't want is political organizations. I view Sky Posse as an issue-oriented association for a particular concern like that. I don't know how to work that in, frankly. I guess I haven't given it enough thought. I would like people like Sky Posse to be able to get free meetings. Ms. Furman: I would too, but they're not a neighborhood association. Vice Mayor Scharff: They're not a neighborhood association. Ms. Furman: I'd say keep those issues separate. Mr. Keene: Maybe we could settle on the neighborhood piece (crosstalk) ... TRANSCRIPT Page 16 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Vice Mayor Scharff: Then later talk about that. Mr. Keene: ... want to expand it. Chair DuBois: On the survey I noticed you had Palo Altans Protecting Open Space. To me, that's not a neighborhood association. Ms. Furman: No, we moved them from a neighborhood association to an affiliated organization on our—I just updated the website. Chair DuBois: Right. We immediately jump to, it seems like, a very slippery slope. Advocating for a policy, we have CARRD, and so we have Palo Alto residents who are coming together Citywide to advocate for certain things. Vice Mayor Scharff: I think you're correct, Tom. Chair DuBois: I'm not sure how we slice that. We've also had neighborhood associations advocate for certain policies, parking or other issues. I don't think we want to necessarily restrict that either. Vice Mayor Scharff: We don't. Ms. Furman: That's different than election stuff. Chair DuBois: If it's on the ballot, it's not different. Is it really different? Ms. Furman: I guess it depends on what you're—if I come before you representing Midtown, saying we're concerned about Matadero Creek and what's going on there, then that is a neighborhood issue. That's not a ballot issue. It's not endorsing a ... Ms. Sanders: That's not exclusively what we do. I mean, we're not all about the Matadero Creek. Chair DuBois: At the same time, if by some way Matadero Creek ended up on the ballot and we said, "You can no longer be a neighborhood association, because you're"—we get in weird situations, I think. Ms. Furman: As I recall, I haven't come before Council with a stand on that other than personally. This is where I think we're getting ... Vice Mayor Scharff: I don't think the neighborhood association should take stands. I don't. Ms. Furman: On what? On ballot issues. TRANSCRIPT Page 17 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Vice Mayor Scharff: Yeah, on ballot issues or on—right, on ballot issues or on candidates. Ms. Furman: I think most (crosstalk). Vice Mayor Scharff: I've never heard of you doing it. Ms. Furman: No. Vice Mayor Scharff: I've never heard of you ... Council Member Kniss: Could I give a different viewpoint? Vice Mayor Scharff: Sure. Chair DuBois: Sure, Liz. Council Member Kniss: Unless you want this much oversight ... Ms. Furman: No, we don't. Council Member Kniss: ... I think your neighborhood association knows what a neighborhood association is. I've lived here a long time. I know what a neighborhood association looks like. I'm in Old Palo Alto. Good for Nadia, but we seldom come together. You're very organized, and you know how you come together. Ms. Furman: It depends on the dedication of the leaders, frankly. Council Member Kniss: I think sometimes it's the interest of just the people who are there and whether or not they want to do that. I just looked at this. Thirteen of these have identified leaders. They were willing to step up and say, "Yes, I'm a leader." The rest of them, though, I question especially those to Ventura where it sounds as though they were delighted to have some help, some mentoring, something like that, that really made them come together. Have others ... Ms. Sanders: I felt that we were vetted—not vetted, but I kind of came up through the rank, got help from these leaders. I think the fact that they put Ventura on the PAN website, it's some kind of a guaranty, a Good Housekeeping seal of approval. I don't know if that is a process. For me, if it's on the PAN website and has gone through this vetting process, maybe that is how you define a neighborhood association, that PAN recognizes it. Is that too official? Ms. Furman: These are recognized neighborhoods. I pretty much ... TRANSCRIPT Page 18 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Council Member Kniss: Yes, I recognize them all. Ms. Furman: Some of them—until recently, everybody knew Ventura neighborhood, but it didn't have the formal organization until Becky came along. Others of these, like Greenacres II, once Betsy Allen passed, that organization—but it's still a neighborhood. Ms. Glanckopf: Can I say something about this? It's very interesting to me, just taking Ventura as an example since Becky took over the leadership. One of the other very key definitions that's sort of connected with neighborhoods is emergency preparedness that we do by neighborhoods. Almost immediately when Becky started this, the emergency prep organization just blossomed. They had a leader just in no time at all. Maybe 20 or 30 people, off the top of their head, people out there protecting our City. When you look at other organizations, for example like Liz's neighborhood, Old Palo Alto, they have a very strong, very good emergency prep. That's true in Greenacres as well. It's one of the key things that our neighborhoods do; that's one of our big committees. In some cases, the strong thing in the neighborhoods is the emergency prep organization. Ms. Sanders: I think actually that's number one. I want to second that. That is actually the whole reason we started it. When I asked Annette how many certs and BPCs and NPCs do we have, she's like none. We were actually being served by the Barron Park neighborhood protection—what is it? Neighborhood Preparedness Coordinator. That was actually the number one thing (crosstalk) flipped out when I heard that. That was the thing that tipped me over. Chair DuBois: City Manager. Mr. Keene: I'm loving it. We wanted to keep it simple. I would suggest the first piece is—this isn't about use of City facilities. This is free use of City facilities, that we're talking about right now. In one sense, we're saying let's take taxpayer dollars from one group of people in the community and say, "We think this is a good enough public good that we would, in a sense, subsidize being able to use the space." To be able to use the space could preclude somebody else from using that space that night. (crosstalk) if we could sort of say, "Could you get clear on the neighborhood piece of it first?" You start going down other definitions of groups, it will get a lot more complicated. You already started hitting some issues like political action committees (inaudible). I haven't heard you definitely say yet as a Committee, whatever, you want a simple approach to allowing neighborhoods, and you would extend the recommendations here on to City insurance coverage being extended and the free use with some limitations TRANSCRIPT Page 19 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 as to the volume of use that anybody can use in the course of a year, so that there's a chance to distribute the access fairly. That would seem good that you at least take care of that before we start talking about other groups. Chair DuBois: I think we started—I think Council Member Scharff started by saying any two or three people can be a neighborhood group. Then he started to think how could that be a loophole potentially. I'm wondering if we should address this question of definition separately from meeting rooms so it's really the question of who gets free insurance that we're trying to define. Vice Mayor Scharff: Maybe what we should do is let Staff make the decision. We should—if it's a bona fide neighborhood group, you should just be liberal in your interpretation. I mean if there's some clear group that's not a neighborhood association that says they are for some weird reason, that may be the simplest. Chair DuBois: I do think we have a couple of neighborhoods where perhaps there's a group that's kind of an online group and not a—do we have any neighborhoods where you have kind of two groups? Council Member Kniss: That are vying for your attention? Chair DuBois: Not even caring about PAN, but they're just groups. Ms. Furman: Not really. I mean, Nextdoor talks about "I have this for sale" and "has anybody seen my lost dog" and stuff. Separate out ... Council Member Berman: There's no structure or leadership. Ms. Furman: Some neighborhoods—we have a website. Annette sends out email every week. We have meetings. We're very organized. Others are small and may have a nominal leader but just don't have issues or people aren't all that interested in what's going on in the neighborhood. However, I point out again that these neighborhoods listed here have been recognized neighborhoods in Palo Alto. They are not the real estate neighborhoods. They are what the neighbors think of their neighborhoods. I maintain that this is a valid list to use when somebody calls up and says, "I'm from this association." Council Member Kniss: A quick question about your bylaws. I noticed that just a few have bylaws. Bylaws or dues, does that start to define activity or does that start to define validity? What does that do? TRANSCRIPT Page 20 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Ms. Furman: No. If you're an active neighborhood and you put on a lot of events and you send out newsletters and stuff, you need a little bit of income for the newsletters and things. Council Member Kniss: Yeah, you do. Ms. Furman: For other neighborhoods, they're small. If you have 300 houses in your neighborhood versus the 4,000-plus in Midtown, it's easier to communicate just by going door to door. Did you want to say something, Doria? Ms. Summa: If I can. I think that sometimes—it's just kind of like government. I think that College Terrace—probably I wasn't part of the neighborhood association birth, but I think it probably evolved in a neighborhood that needed that structure, because there was more contention and there were big issues. I think some neighborhoods haven't got those problems yet, so they don't need that kind of order to conduct meetings. I really think that's part of it. Mr. Keene: I'd rather suggest—I mean, I think this is important, because I think there's some philosophical basis for this. We're saying right now in one sense in most cases almost any citizen could rent space in the City. They'd have to provide insurance, and they would have to pay the rent. In this case, we're saying we're going to do that for free. There must be some public good that the Council wants to achieve. In the case of saying, "We believe in neighborhoods. We'd like to see organized and/or strong neighborhoods, in a sense." Therefore, one thing we'd do to facilitate that would be able to say we would have a kind of exception for that group of citizens to be able to use free space. Therefore, that seems that there ought to be some at least minimal definition of what a neighborhood is to be able to justify that. There are many cities that do this. Some do it quite extensively. Rob's process is ultimately for people to apply. I don't want to say you get a blanket okay to be able to access, but it's not like every time somebody wants to use a room, they've got to go through this whole process of having their bylaws and all of that. I'm not saying bylaws should be the test, but I think there should be something that you could say easily this is why we have this policy for neighborhoods, and this group meets whatever this test is. It can be a simple test, but there's that piece of it. For that, you get a benefit that is different than some other groups that kind of come together. Council Member Kniss: Is there big demand? You all must meet someplace right now that you know about, because you meet often. TRANSCRIPT Page 21 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Ms. Furman: For us (crosstalk) Friends have been very kind about us using their meeting hall for neighborhood meetings. If we need a 100-people type of meeting, then we run into something, or if we do a forum or something like that, then some neighborhoods just don't have that benefit of a church. Barron Park a lot of times has used the Creekside Inn and all of that. I guess I'm unclear as why PAN's list is not adequate. Ms. Glanckopf: What's going on with that? Ms. Furman: To define what a neighborhood is and ... Mr. Keene: What does it take to be in PAN? Ms. Furman: PAN is an umbrella organization of the neighborhood leaders. Ms. Glanckopf: I think a lot of people were sort of lazy about filling out the survey actually. A couple of years ago we actually did a similar survey. It was a little bit more extensive, and we do have records. I think that when you come to a PAN, the monthly meetings do usually have 15 to 20 people there. I would say over three-fourths of the people on the list are regular attendees. We get bigger attendance when we have someone like Jim Keene that comes to our meetings. Mr. Keene: You guys never invite me anymore. (crosstalk). Ms. Glanckopf: We invited you. Vice Mayor Scharff: I've asked to come and been rejected. Mr. Furman: If you would stop hiring new people that we have to introduce the (crosstalk). Chair DuBois: I'd like to see if we could ... Ms. Glanckopf: I think the neighborhoods really are fairly active. There are other emerging neighborhoods; Fairmeadow is really trying to build their organization. Even though they might not have bylaws and they might not have everything—they don't do dues—they are coming, they are learning, they are developing the neighborhood. I would also advocate for using those (crosstalk). Vice Mayor Scharff: Just so I'm clear, you're advocating for this list? Ms. Furman: No, this list. Ms. Glanckopf: This list. TRANSCRIPT Page 22 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Vice Mayor Scharff: Do I have that list? Chair DuBois: No. Vice Mayor Scharff: Is that list different than this list? Ms. Furman: This is the website; this is webpage. Ms. Glanckopf: If there are neighborhoods on the list that aren't organized and they're informal, by the way they're probably not going to be asking for rooms. Ms. Furman: Yeah. Female: Probably not. They might be academics. Chair DuBois: There are two things here. There's potentially a neighborhood association and whether they are listed. That could be two people on a street. Then there's who gets free insurance. I think those are actually two different ... Vice Mayor Scharff: Questions. Chair DuBois: ... potential levels. Ms. Furman: There's not ... Chair DuBois: There could be a more ... Ms. Furman: There's not a neighborhood association where there's two people on a street. Chair DuBois: What if somebody wanted to be? Again, I'm not sure—again, in terms of people saying they're a neighborhood association, does the City want to have a role in it? Ms. Furman: Actually we've run into this when there was a North Middlefield Road neighborhood association. That's what they called themselves. PAN never really recognized them, because they were a pop-up thing regarding the traffic there. That's just a name they chose. Chair DuBois: Right. If they wanted to be listed on the City's website, why not? If they want ... Ms. Furman: Why not send them through PAN? Chair DuBois: Because, I guess ... TRANSCRIPT Page 23 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Vice Mayor Scharff: Do all neighborhoods—I'm not sure I agree with this. Do all neighborhoods have to go through PAN? What if you had a neighborhood that didn't want to be part of PAN? Do we say that ... Ms. Furman: Then they don't come to meetings is really what happens. Ms. Summa: They're still a neighborhood. Ms. Furman: They're still a neighborhood. They're just a neighborhood that doesn't attend the meetings. Greenmeadow hardly ever comes to a meeting, but they're one of the oldest neighborhoods, and they're recognized. I think you're worrying about things that are not really likely to be happening. Vice Mayor Scharff: That's probably true. Ms. Furman: Should that arise, then ... Council Member Kniss: I think you've just listed neighborhoods. I'm not sure that any one of these has said, "We really want to be part of PAN, and that's important to us. Otherwise, we won't exist." You've listed ... Ms. Furman: Those are the neighborhoods. We have PAN meetings ... Council Member Kniss: These are ... Ms. Furman: ... and if they want to come, they come. If they don't, they don't. Council Member Kniss: They're pretty recognized throughout the City. The only one I didn't see was Miranda Neighbors. Who are Miranda Neighbors? Ms. Furman: That's what they call Greater Miranda. Ms. Glanckopf: It's out by the high school, Gunn High School. It's very small. Chair DuBois: Jim. Mr. Keene: I have a suggestion about this, trying to keep it simple. If you were to be—again, treating this as an experiment over the first year, I don't think it'll be that complicated if it's restricted to neighborhoods. There would be some expectation that we would have a conversation with folks when they apply to get—what is it, Rob, that they get? Ms. Alaee: Co-Sponsorship Agreement. TRANSCRIPT Page 24 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Mr. Keene: A Co-Sponsorship Agreement. There's some sense that there's a neighborhood, some test. I don't care what. They have a board or maybe they have bylaws or they're a member of PAN. I mean, we've talked to you about that. I don't think we can just say they have to be a member of PAN, because there could be a neighborhood group that, for whatever reason—I don't know that it's true—would say they don't want to join PAN. We can't be in a position of saying, "You're not viable." But something. There may be every now and then an occasion where it's a startup group with a thing, and we'd have to have an exception. (inaudible) say, "We really don't have anything going, but I want to get my neighborhood organized, and I'd really like to have this meeting." We could say, "That's good, but then we'd like to hear back from you just 'we're up and going.' There's more than two people in a neighborhood association," or something like that. I think we could do that relatively simply without having to make some really rigid hierarchy of things that have (inaudible) there's something that says, "I'm more than just one person filling out a form" and it's neighborhood based in some way. If you'd be ... Chair DuBois: On Page 7, there's the eligibility in the co-sponsorship policy. I guess the question is do we want to change that or add anything to that. Mr. Alaee: You're talking about Packet Page 7, Number 1B, right? Chair DuBois: Number 1. Council Member Berman: Number 1. Council Member Kniss: Number 1, the whole thing. Mr. Keene: 1A. Mr. Alaee: 1A. If you look at 1B, it says "or neighborhood associations." That's where we address that. Mr. Keene: 1B is an edit of 1A. Council Member Berman: There's no definition of neighborhood organizations necessarily. Mr. Alaee: 1B, we added the words "neighborhood association" to allow them to be eligible. Ms. Glanckopf: This is a little bit complicated. Ms. Sanders: This is existing policy right now for people who want to use, like, Mitchell Park. TRANSCRIPT Page 25 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Mr. Keene: Which one, 1A or 1B? Ms. Glanckopf: The whole, this is really—I mean ... Ms. Sanders: This is existing policy that a nonprofit might use to benefit. It doesn't—making this fit the neighborhood model is really awkward. (inaudible) association model. Ms. Furman: You've taken out some things, but not enough. There are things in here that ... Mr. Alaee: Let me just put this in context. Certainly, Rob can chime in. We have to have some vehicle where staff at community centers and people are following some sort of policy or guideline or some sort of application that comes through some review channel up to the Director of Community Services or Library Director or City Manager. My assessment is that we have to have some vehicle that addresses that. Now, the co-sponsorship policy and agreement needs to only be filled out once. Once that's on file with the City, that's it. If you look at the actual application, which starts on Page 17 of the Packet and goes on to Page 18, 19, 20 and 21, frankly I don't think it's that complicated to fill out 12 one time ... Chair DuBois: Basically you would say, "I'm a neighborhood association." That would be your qualifying criteria. Robert de Geus, Director of Community Services: Rob de Geus, Director of Community Services. One thing we could do (inaudible) neighborhood association is if they're a neighborhood association, we can say to check this box and go to Question 12 which is what we really want to know. Otherwise, how many people are you expecting, how many chairs, tables, that kind of thing, the date, we need to know that information, (inaudible) mission, purpose and all that, I think, can be skipped. Council Member Kniss: Is this what you and I were discussing today? Mr. de Geus: Yeah. Ms. Furman: There are some things in there I didn't—I should look at the real packet. We have to be in sync with the City basically. Whatever we're discussing at our meeting has to support the City. Frankly, some of the meetings are going to be because we disagree with the City. I'm not sure we should be not allowed to have a meeting just because there's a policy you're promoting and some of us are disagreeing with it. I want to be careful in the wording in this. TRANSCRIPT Page 26 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Chair DuBois: Back to Number 1 here. It says, "You must meet the following criteria," and then it lists all those things. When you read it, it looks like you have to meet all the criteria. Female: Where is that? Mr. Keene: We're on 1B, correct? Chair DuBois: No. I'm looking at all of 1. I'm saying ... Mr. de Geus: That's A through F, is it? Chair DuBois: Number 1 says, "You must meet the following eligibility," then A through F. I think what Sheri is saying is it has things like C, organization's goals must be defined with the City of Palo Alto. Mr. Keene: Cash, put us all on the same page please. Mr. Alaee: You want to go to Packet Page 7, is where we are. This is the revised proposed policy for the Committee to forward to City Council. Mr. Keene: That is revised from 1B which is the marked up copy. Mr. Alaee: Correct. That is revised from the marked up copy. Council Member Berman: You're saying Attachment 1B, when you say 1B? Mr. Alaee: Yes. Council Member Berman: When I hear 1B, I look at Eligibility Clause B. Vice Mayor Scharff: (crosstalk) Packet Page 11. Mr. Alaee: You're jumping between Packet Page 7 and Packet Page 11. Mr. Keene: Seven is the accept changes version of the document on page 11. Vice Mayor Scharff: I could just look at page ... Mr. Keene: What Tom was saying is you must meet the following eligibility, which would say you've got to meet all those, is the way that says that? Male: That's right. Vice Mayor Scharff: (crosstalk) says that. TRANSCRIPT Page 27 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Chair DuBois: What was meant was either meet these or you're a neighborhood association? Mr. Alaee: Redlining policies is always a task. We must have missed that sentence on ... Vice Mayor Scharff: Why can't we just do what Tom just said? You either meet this or you're a recognized neighborhood association. Mr. de Geus: I think that's fine. Vice Mayor Scharff: I'd just say that by recognized we mean the ones on the PAN website basically. Does anyone have a problem with that? Mr. Alaee: Just add an "or neighborhood association" after criteria? Vice Mayor Scharff: I would say "recognized." Mr. Keene: How would you feel about saying "a neighborhood association recognized by the City" without spelling out the criteria for recognition? There's just some sense that we have a conversation when you fill this stuff out. If there's a dispute, somebody can—we know somebody's, we have it ... Council Member Berman: If you're on the PAN website, essentially that's a default approval. If there's somebody else who isn't, then they can make a case for themselves as to why they should be considered. Ms. Furman: Again, the PAN website is on the community partners page. In a sense, you're already recognizing ... Mr. Keene: We would say you're also recognized when you fill out this Co- Sponsorship Agreement, and we say okay. That's way, from our point of view, sets recognition. Council Member Kniss: When did you last add a neighborhood? Ms. Furman: An actual neighborhood? Vice Mayor Scharff: Old Palo Alto. You didn't used to have Old Palo Alto. Ms. Furman: I don't think I've actually added a neighborhood in a while. I usually change who the leaders are. Council Member Kniss: These are recognized. I don't think it's rocket science. TRANSCRIPT Page 28 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Council Member Berman: I agree. Can I ask one question? Eligibility F, organizations must reapply annually for co-sponsorship, and renewal of an existing co-sponsorship for 2 additional years may be requested. What is the purpose behind that? It almost makes it sound like you can only be registered for 3 years, and then something else happens. I mean, I don't understand exactly what that's saying or requesting, requiring. Mr. de Geus: This isn't really written specifically for neighborhood associations. It's for other organizations that want to come in and partner. I remember what you're talking about, Liz. Council Member Kniss: I wondered if ... Mr. de Geus: It is that. Council Member Kniss: I think this is the same. Council Member Berman: That wouldn't apply though to the neighborhood associations? Mr. de Geus: No. We can make that more clear here. I think that'd be appropriate. Mr. Keene: One thing we could add is a G or something right at the end that just sort of says under eligibility that neighborhood associations recognized by the (inaudible) be an exception to these eligibility requirements. Then you go to the other stuff, and we have that. D already also has a language change under 2D, actually, in the body of this, co-sponsor organization, except for neighborhood associations must provide all the insurance coverage required by the City. Council Member Berman: You have that out. Chair DuBois: Do you guys ... Ms. Furman: "E" bothers me. I mean, if we go to the trouble of reserving a room, 2E, it said the City wants your room ... Council Member Kniss: We need that room. Mr. Keene: We can't go meet in people's houses and stuff. Ms. Sanders: How about a couple of weeks in the ... TRANSCRIPT Page 29 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Mr. Keene: We would be judicious also. I don't think I'd like to get a lot of letters to the Council that we kept bumping you guys out of your space. That wouldn't be very good. Ms. Sanders: (inaudible) written notification within 3 weeks or something if something came up. You could do—I don't know. It seems not horrible, but if you did it all the time ... Ms. Furman: It would need to be timely. If the neighborhood planned ... Council Member Berman: It can't be the day before. Ms. Furman: ... an event ... Female: How many did we have? If it's a big party like our ice cream social or something, that would be a bummer. Mr. de Geus: The idea behind this is not that we would book a space for a neighborhood association and then later go back and say, "Sorry, you have to move out because we have something else." It's that the City has lots of programs and activities that are scheduled well in advance. When they're scheduled, the room's not available. Chair DuBois: Can we ... Council Member Kniss: Do you have lots of rooms that you have access to that the neighborhood association would as well? Mr. de Geus: We have lots of rooms from Cubberley to Mitchell Park to Lucie Stern to Ventura. Council Member Kniss: I think we've got good choices. Mr. Keene: We rearrange rooms sometimes. A small group can rent a bigger room than they need, and then a different group will come along and they have a big group. We'll say, "We have another conference. Could you use that one ... Council Member Berman: Be efficient. Mr. Keene: ... and let this bigger group use it?" Ms. Furman: That's understandable. It's just if you get bumped completely. Chair DuBois: Back to the Committee here. Are we good with this definition of neighborhood association? TRANSCRIPT Page 30 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Council Member Kniss: Mm-hmm. I think we're fine. Vice Mayor Scharff: I think so. Chair DuBois: Let's move on to the talk about using the meeting space. There's two issues, I think, maybe more. Vice Mayor Scharff: Is Staff good enough to have a—let's have a Motion on it quickly, because then we can ... Chair DuBois: I'd move that you'll come back with redlines to make it clear that to be eligible you either have to meet this criteria or you're a neighborhood association. Vice Mayor Scharff: Why don't you just phrase it a little differently? I don't really want to deal with this again in Committee. Mr. Alaee: Do you want to reiterate what we have so far? Male: Yeah. Vice Mayor Scharff: Why don't you reiterate? Mr. Alaee: It would be under 1, eligibility, after criteria we would say "or recognized neighborhood association by the City." Enter a G with ... Mr. Keene: No, G is "or a neighborhood association recognized by the City." You just make (crosstalk). Mr. Alaee: Just make a G. Chair DuBois: I actually think ... Mr. Keene: Do you like it that way? Chair DuBois: It should be up at the top, I think. Mr. Alaee: Then just not do a G? Mr. Keene: Then it's "organizations other than the neighborhood association." Vice Mayor Scharff: (crosstalk) organizations other than a recognized ... Mr. Keene: Recognized neighborhood association. Vice Mayor Scharff: Just leave it at that? TRANSCRIPT Page 31 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Mr. Keene: Yeah. Vice Mayor Scharff: Are you good with that, Tom? Council Member Kniss: Keep it there. Chair DuBois Yeah. Vice Mayor Scharff: I would support a motion where you move that we make those changes and recommend it to Council. Council Member Berman: Second. MOTION: Vice Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Berman to recommend Staff change the Eligibility Requirements in the Co- Sponsorship Agreement to also include the wording “organizations other than neighborhood associations as recognized by the City.” Chair DuBois: All in favor. MOTION PASSED: 4-0 Chair DuBois: Thank you. We've started this discussion, but I think we should just break it up. The use of facilities by neighborhood associations. There's the question of insurance. I think we haven't talked about it yet, but there's a question of frequency. There's a question about reserving it 30 days in advance. Let's try to have a quick discussion. I think there were two recommendations. I think Staff was recommending that the City buy additional insurance. Mr. Alaee: Correct. If you're all supportive of that, you can make a recommendation for us to purchase that. We'll forward it to Council, and then we'll do that. Vice Mayor Scharff: That's $5,000 a year, right? Mr. Alaee: Yeah, annually ongoing. Chair DuBois: Otherwise, the City would be self-insured up to $1 million? Mr. Alaee: We do not recommend that option. Chair DuBois: I know, but I was (inaudible). This would only apply to neighborhood associations. Mr. Alaee: Correct. TRANSCRIPT Page 32 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Council Member Kniss: Do you want us to move that forward? Chair DuBois: Do we need to talk about frequency? We are renting these rooms. We talked about there could be conflict, saying any association can rent monthly or quarterly. Mr. De Geus: It's hard to know how much demand there really will be. I'd try and accommodate. Vice Mayor Scharff: Why don't we just leave it open. If there's a problem, they can come back to us. Mr. Keene: Right now you do have some limitation, I thought, which is actually pretty generous, 40 hours a year or something. Mr. de Geus: That's a pretty generous offer. Council Member Berman: Does anybody ... Mr. Keene: That's a lot. Ms. Furman: There's different—I mean, some like probably in Becky's neighborhood, you would need maybe a monthly or agree with their monthly meeting for maybe 20 or 30 people, a small neighborhood meeting. Once in a while, you might need a room for a big event. For the most part, they're going to be smaller (crosstalk). Chair DuBois: The proposal is 40 hours a year given to the association to figure out how they want to split that up. Council Member Berman: That should be pretty doable. Mr. Keene: No, no. I'd like to argue against that. I actually think that's very generous. We have lots of groups that want to rent space also. If somebody said, "I've got every Thursday every month for 4 hours whether I have a meeting or not," it's complicated. I liked what Greg was saying which is why don't we leave it open-ended now with this understanding that we're going to see how it works. If we run into some issues and problems, we'll figure out a way to sit down with PAN and say, "It's kind of not working. We're getting a bunch complaints that (crosstalk) ... Council Member Berman: There's no availability or ... Mr. Keene: ... availability or whatever." It's probably a problem you don't have to design (crosstalk). TRANSCRIPT Page 33 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Ms. Sanders: That's a problem we want to have (crosstalk). Chair DuBois: Can I ask a question? Would it be likely that a neighborhood association would say, "We want the fourth Tuesday every month for 2 hours. It'd be our standing meeting."? Ms. Furman: Yes, sure, that's possible if you're having your—if an organization is having a monthly general meeting. I would think usually board meetings are at someone's home. Mr. de Geus: My experience with neighborhood associations is they're great and very flexible with us. If they need something more regular for a period of time, as long as you're willing to work with us and take the space that we have available—if you want a specific space at a specific location, more lead time to be able to get it. Council Member Kniss: Frequently, it's easier to be in somebody's house rather than traveling across town to use the City room, unless you've got a huge meeting. Ms. Sanders: How often does the Ventura Community Center get rented as well? (crosstalk) item for you, right? Mr. Keene: In February, it's in such demand. Ms. Sanders: (inaudible) I think it would work. Chair DuBois: Just to be clear, is the expectation that these are public meetings when they're neighborhood association meetings? Mr. de Geus: I think so, yeah. Council Member Berman: I would think you all's meetings are probably open to the public. Right? Ms. Furman: Yeah. Frankly, we don't usually invite people—Anne Marie doesn't invite people to the board meeting just because ... Council Member Kniss: It's the Board meeting. Mr. Furman: ... it's a Board meeting. Continuity is important. Council Member Berman: You wouldn't kick anybody out of the ... TRANSCRIPT Page 34 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Ms. Furman: If somebody comes to one of our general meetings—yeah, those are always open. Certainly our ice cream socials. Not that we want the whole City showing up. Council Member Berman: There's always a run for more ice cream. Mr. Keene: I think you would be—would they actually be adopting the rest of this draft as you have language changes in it about insurance and stuff? Mr. de Geus: Right. We have a number of edits, because it hadn't been updated in quite some time. Mr. Keene: A Motion to that effect if you're okay with that. Council Member Kniss: I would move that, if you're ready for it. Chair DuBois: Sure, except ... Vice Mayor Scharff: I'll second it. Chair DuBois: ... this has the 40 hours in it. Right? Mr. Alaee: Yes. Chair DuBois: You need to change that to ... Council Member Kniss: I thought we said 40 hours was ... Council Member Berman: Undefined. Mr. de Geus: We didn't agree on a different (inaudible). Council Member Kniss: I thought we agreed on 40 hours. Chair DuBois: I think the City Manager was suggesting that we ... Council Member Berman: Have it be more open. Chair DuBois: ... give it a trial without a set amount. Council Member Kniss: Do you need that (inaudible) that it's a trial for a year? Mr. Keene: You may want it as it relates to some other organizations. Some limit. All I was just saying is why don't you leave it the way it is and we'll just see how it goes with the neighborhood associations. I can't imagine that we're going to run into the limit problem. TRANSCRIPT Page 35 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Vice Mayor Scharff: Why don't you add language in there that deals with the fact that for neighborhood associations it's at the discretion of the City. Why don't we just do that? You'll work with them. Ms. Furman: Are we still talking about Item 2 here or did we go past that requirement of accounts? Council Member Kniss: No. This one is ... Mr. Alaee: We were talking about ... Council Member Kniss: Let me find the page again. Mr. Alaee: ... Packet Page 9 in the box in the bottom where it says "Level A facility." There is a thing there that says it. We can add language in there that talks about discretion of the City. Female: (inaudible) told me that was B. Mr. Keene: Are you capturing that? Mr. Alaee: Yeah, I got it. Chair DuBois: This A level, B level doesn't apply to neighborhood associations, right? Mr. Alaee: No. Vice Mayor Scharff: Right, that would be the plan. Ms. Furman: I was looking at G and H under 2 where it says the cosponsored organization must request facility usage through their designated City staff liaison. What does that mean? Mr. de Geus: That, again, is not related to neighborhood associations. It's other nonprofit groups that are cosponsored. Chair DuBois: We had a ... Council Member Kniss: I made a Motion. I'm not quite ... Vice Mayor Scharff: I seconded it. Council Member Kniss: ... sure where it is at this point. Vice Mayor Scharff: I seconded it. TRANSCRIPT Page 36 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Chair DuBois: Just restate it. Council Member Kniss: I think the restatement is just what we have said. Continuing with the 40 hours, correct? Vice Mayor Scharff: No. Council Member Kniss: You want to take out the 40 hours. That's right. Who said that? We're saying limited to the discretion of ... Mr. Keene: For neighborhood associations, the usage will be ... Mr. de Geus: Subject to availability. Mr. Keene: ... subject to availability and at the discretion of the City. The rest of it, you would be saying you're adopting the rest of the language in 1A, the whole Packet 1A, the new co-sponsorship policy. You already approved those other changes (inaudible). Council Member Kniss: We did, yes. Wherever we are ... Mr. Keene: Is that a Motion (crosstalk). Council Member Kniss: ... at this point, I'm glad to move it. I'm not quite sure where we are on the 40 hours. Council Member Berman: Scratched. Council Member Kniss: I guess it's scratched, and we're saying as available. Vice Mayor Scharff: Correct. MOTION: Council Member Kniss moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Scharff to recommend Staff change the Facility Usage benefit to state that it will be “subject to availability at the discretion of the City” and to recommend City Council approve the Co-Sponsorship Agreement with the changes made at this meeting. Chair DuBois: Any further discussion? All in favor. MOTION PASSED: 4-0 Chair DuBois: Thank you. The next point ... Mr. Alaee: Just real quick. I hate to bring it up. We're recommending that we keep the custodial fees. That was something somebody discussed. TRANSCRIPT Page 37 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Chair DuBois: There were two fees, custodial and equipment. Ms. Furman: Can we get a clarification on that? For example, does 1 apply if we do something at Cubberley because the custodial staff is there until 10:00? Mr. de Geus: Midnight. Ms. Furman: If we have a meeting that runs from 7:00 to maybe a little after 9:00 ... Mr. de Geus: You're fine. It's only when, say, you wanted to use Lucie Stern Community Center, and there was no other use in the center and it's a Sunday morning. Now the City has to pay for a custodian to be there and open up just for the neighborhood association. Ms. Furman: At most facilities such as the Art Center, Lucie Stern, Cubberley, Mitchell Park, we have custodial fees (crosstalk). Council Member Berman: During normal hours. Mr. de Geus: Organize your meetings when the facility is open generally, and there's lots of time available for that type of (crosstalk). Council Member Berman: They can ask you guys for what those hours would be and that kind of thing to make sure. Mr. Alaee: The one facility that came up before is the Alma Plaza one. That one, you would have (crosstalk) ... Female: That's haunted. Council Member Berman: That's haunted. Mr. Alaee: ... custodial fee to use. Chair DuBois: Because nobody's there ever? Mr. Alaee: Because nobody's ever, yeah. Council Member Berman: Ever. Ms. Furman: I'm just trying to find who has the key for it. Mr. de Geus: They key's at Mitchell Park Community Center. You can pick it up there (inaudible). TRANSCRIPT Page 38 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Chair DuBois: The next topic was the ombudsman program. Cash, you spoke (inaudible). Mr. Alaee: Yeah. This one, when we brought it up at the Policy and Services Committee ... Mr. Keene: What page? Mr. Alaee: ... last time, we discussed—we're on Packet Page 5. We discussed how we have the 311 app which ... Council Member Kniss: Top of 5. Mr. Alaee: Yeah, top of 5. That we have the mediation program. The Committee mentioned that we had looked at this the wrong way. It was actually the conflict between—the (inaudible) recommendation was not much for the day-to-day feedback from citizens or conflicts between neighbor to neighbor, but rather citizen/neighborhood conflicts with City initiatives. Then it was referred to discuss here tonight. We know that when we do have conflicts or issues between neighborhoods or groups, we do tend to hire facilitation or technical consultants as directed by Council to help resolve some of those. We generally think there is no action needed with this concept or with this program. We're a little bit in tune when get into a jam and we need help. Certainly if City Manager or Committee has discussion points, we can talk about it. Mr. Keene: I'm just saying we have a lot of position requests in this year's budget that we're just going to have to say no to. This would be another one. In our environment, most of the time the ombudsperson would have to find somebody with more specialized expertise on the particular topic and pull them in anyway. You know what I mean? We have an issue with the Police Department versus trash collection or zoning issues, whatever. We really have to engage the people who can help solve the problem. I think we're pretty good. Actually I think we're pretty good at responding to the public. Council Member Kniss: You're actually, I think, very—since I frequently am sending you messages to take care of something all weekend. Mr. Keene: By the way, the thing you gave us is taken care of. Council Member Kniss: Thank you. Vice Mayor Scharff: You're sure you're not advocating for this, right? TRANSCRIPT Page 39 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Chair DuBois: No. When we discussed this last year, I think we had—if I recall correctly—some members of the public show up and speak against this actually. Council Member Berman: I think that's right. Vice Mayor Scharff: I'll move we don't do it. Council Member Berman: Second. Vice Mayor Scharff: No ombudsman. Chair DuBois: Know Your Neighbor grants. Vice Mayor Scharff: Wait, we have to take a vote. Council Member Berman: I think I know how he's going to vote. Chair DuBois: Basically you're saying no action. Council Member Berman: Yeah. Vice Mayor Scharff: (crosstalk) to Council we don't do it. Council Member Berman: We haven't done it. I don't think we need to reject it (crosstalk). Vice Mayor Scharff: That's fine. We need to just move on then. Council Member Kniss: It is not recommended. Council Member Berman: We're not encouraging (crosstalk) it. Mr. Alaee: The Know Your Neighbors grant, the Council ... Mr. Keene: Page? Mr. Alaee: Page 5, same, top of Page 5. Council has already taken action, so this is just more of an update for you. Same concept with the communication elements. We consider this item closed out. Council Member Berman: I thought Sheri was supporting this one. Ms. Furman: I am the communications officer. Vice Mayor Scharff: No action on that (crosstalk). TRANSCRIPT Page 40 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Mr. Alaee: No action on that either. Chair DuBois: I think we basically have gotten through this item. Mr. Alaee: We have gotten through the item. Chair DuBois: Thank you, guys, from the neighborhood associations for coming tonight. Ms. Furman: Thank you. Chair DuBois: The one issue we didn't really address was groups like Sky Posse has requested meeting space. Vice Mayor Scharff: Was that on the agenda? Chair DuBois: It's a neighborhood group. Council Member Kniss: This is ... Ms. Furman: No, it's not a neighborhood group. Chair DuBois: It is a City group. I think what we've decided tonight is neighborhood associations, they have the meeting space. Is there any interest in the Committee in continuing it further? Vice Mayor Scharff: I'll just move the Sky Posse gets it. I'll make it that simple. Mr. Keene: First of all, in the nearer term right now, I think we're doing a really good job of having Sky Posse meetings here in this building and on the seventh floor, and that sort of thing. I just think that this opens up a much larger conversation about groups and everything. Council Member Berman: That we should have another night. Mr. Keene: Nothing about Sky Posse, but about lots of other groups, yeah. Ms. Furman: Thank you. I just wanted to (crosstalk). Mr. Keene: Something our City Attorney doesn't want to have to get into. We may have freedom of speech issues, all sorts of things, if we start ... Council Member Berman: We can say just these guys and not other people. That's doesn't ... TRANSCRIPT Page 41 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Chair DuBois: Basically, I think (crosstalk) we get beyond neighborhood associations, then we basically could never charge rent to anybody again. Mr. Keene: Might get hard. Chair DuBois: Thank you. We're going to close this item. Ms. Furman: Thank you very much for ... Mr. Keene: Thank you. Council Member Kniss: Thank you, guys, for coming. Mr. Keene: Harriet and (inaudible). Council Member Kniss: I'm going to excuse myself rather than doing it in 5 minutes. Council Member Kniss left the meeting at 7:24 P.M. 2. Staff Recommendation That the Policy and Services Committee Recommend the City Council Accept the Description of the Status of Audits for Fleet Utilization and Replacement Audit and the Animal Services Audit Chair DuBois: Item Number 2, revised its look at the recommendations for audits for the Fleet Utilization and the Animal Services Audit. Suzanne Mason, Assistant City Manager: Chair DuBois and Council Members, City Manager's Office has been working with the City Auditor in trying to tighten up procedures. We continue to work together and are actually meeting tomorrow to review the process we've been utilizing to review with you open audit recommendations. Our goal has been to bring back to you on a regular basis any updates and trying to set 6-month intervals for those updates to the Committee and then to the Council. Tonight we have a review of the Animal Services Audit and Fleet Utilization Audit. I will turn it over to Cash to provide a high-level update. You have a summary in your packet. Harriet, did you want to say anything further? Harriet Richardson, City Auditor: I'll let them get the update, and then we can do questions after that. Khashayar Alaee, Senior Management Analyst: If I can turn your attention to the table in the back of this packet. Does it have Packet Pages on it? Mine ... TRANSCRIPT Page 42 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Chair DuBois: Just Item 2 (crosstalk). Mr. Alaee: Yeah, Item 2. It's the last table. Page 1 of the Animal Services Audit. It's up to the Chair and the Committee's preference on how we do this. The high-level overview is that all of these recommendations are generally tied to our RFP which closed on Friday. We had three responses. One from the Humane Society of Silicon Valley, one for Pets in Need, and the other one from the County of Santa Clara. I can't really get into much more detail than that, because it's an active RFP. We are working closely with the Palo Alto Humane Society as well as the Friends of the Palo Alto Animal Shelter and certainly a staff team across the whole City to review these proposals. We hope to come back to the Council with a recommendation as soon as possible. Do want to caution you and the community that if we do get into negotiations with some of these entities, it might take a little bit of time. This is not a conventional RFP that we did. It's a series of discussions and negotiations. That's the overall arching theme about this audit. Certainly, if you'd like us to go through each one of these points, we can. If the City Auditor would like us to do that, we could do that too. Chair DuBois: We skipped the Fleet Utilization. Ms. Mason: I'm sorry. Chair DuBois: Generally the Auditor presents this portion, no? Ms. Richardson: No. Ms. Mason: I'm sorry. You know what? You're right. Fleet Utilization was listed first. I apologize. Jon, I'm sorry. I did jump to Animal Services first, because Cash was sitting right there. I think that's what prompted me. James Keene, City Manager: Could I say something in that regard? I apologize for being out. I know that we're here. Sorry, Jon. I think Jon's the only one here for Fleet Utilization. We've got a whole bunch of folks here for Animal Services. Chair DuBois: That's fine. Vice Mayor Scharff: Do you want to do Animal Services first? Chair DuBois: That's fine. Mr. Keene: I think we should (inaudible). Ms. Mason: Just do the Fleet Utilization first. I'm sorry. TRANSCRIPT Page 43 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Council Member Berman: No. Ms. Mason: That's why I ... Staff has been presenting their updates on the overview which you have attached. The Auditor's been commenting. This has been really shifted more to staff providing an update to you on what they've done in response to the Auditor's recommendations. Chair DuBois: Do you want to make comments or should we go to questions? Ms. Richardson: We can go to questions. Mr. Keene: Can I say something just in advance? My recollection was that the conclusions that we were reaching in advance of the budget decisions and everything last year were, I think, very much in line with the thinking that the Auditor's audit—I mean, the issues that were identified in the Auditor's audit. The challenge we have at Animal Services, I think we can give you the update on that now. Mr. Alaee: I did. When you were out, I gave an overview. I'm sorry. I didn't want to interrupt you. Mr. Keene: I felt this was a situation where there wasn't a lot of variance at all sort of with management's focus and direction on what we needed to do and where we needed to go. I think this is something where there's not an audit where you would have a lot of disagreement. It's just where are we in the process. Mr. Alaee: Correct. I did mention that the RFP closed on Friday, and we had three bidders and who those bidders were. That overview. Chair DuBois: Marc, (inaudible) questions? Vice Mayor Scharff: I'm still actually processing. I only saw this at places today. Mr. Keene: We have staff here from Animal Services. Vice Mayor Scharff: Do we have speakers? No. Chair DuBois: I'll ask a couple of questions. There have been different formats, different reports. Typically, didn't we have the date when the recommendations were made? Ms. Richardson: At the top of each of these, we have the title. The process that we have is when we issue an audit report, we issue it with the first TRANSCRIPT Page 44 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 three columns. As the departments develop their updates for the status reports, they fill in the last two columns. If you look at the top up there, you'll see that this report was issued in April 2015. Chair DuBois: (inaudible) see that? Ms. Richardson: Right here, in the header. Chair DuBois: In the title, okay. Ms. Richardson: That's the standard format that we'll see on each of these. Chair DuBois: I was remembering the Fleet one which was in 2010. We finally completed those. Vice Mayor Scharff: I have a question. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I thought you were done. Chair DuBois: No, I wasn't. I guess Number 2 is this one about management skills. I guess it says there's agreement, but we're waiting on the RFP. Could somebody explain that one? Mr. Alaee: Connie's here, our Superintendent. Connie continues to work and run the shelter. We have Staff operating the shelter. In this time of assessment, we have allocated my time, Ed Shikada's time, Jim's time. We're continuing to work on the assessment, continuing to run the operations. We're waiting for the RFP to close. It closed on Friday, and now we're moving to assess the potential new service models and bring the recommendation back to the Committee. Does that answer your question? Chair DuBois: Having you guys fill in part-time wasn't really the same thing, but we're just saying we're not going to make a decision until we know what's happening in the RFP. Mr. Alaee: Yeah. Ms. Richardson: I'll add something to that. When we wrote this recommendation, the understanding was that Connie was going to be retiring at the end of the year. She didn't; she's continued on which is good for the ... Council Member Berman: Thanks, Connie. Chair DuBois: Yeah. Connie Urbanski, Animal Services: I have put my papers in. TRANSCRIPT Page 45 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Ms. Richardson: We thought there was going to be a gap sooner than there was. Council Member Berman: For next year. Mr. Keene: Welcome to our world. Vice Mayor Scharff: Actually that was pretty much my question. I'm glad you're here, Connie. Ms. Urbanski: Thank you. Vice Mayor Scharff: I was confused. You were going to retire earlier, and that's what you were thinking of. You decided to wait. Ms. Urbanski: I was waiting for the RFP to be done, so that I would be with Staff through the transition. Vice Mayor Scharff: That's very kind of you. Ms. Urbanski: It's taking longer than I (inaudible) stay. I'm leaving July 8th. Council Member Berman: That's still a while. Vice Mayor Scharff: You're leaving July 8th. Got it. This now makes sense. I guess I just wanted to ask the City Auditor. It says that management concurs. Do they concur? Mr. Keene: Which one are we on, Greg? Vice Mayor Scharff: All of them. It says they concur. I mean, is it just papering over it or do they actually concur? Ms. Richardson: I think they concur. Vice Mayor Scharff: Remember you work for us, not them. Ms. Richardson: Correct. I think they concur. I think as we see how the recommendations get implemented, we'll know if they really do or not. Vice Mayor Scharff: So far the only recommendations they've sort of implemented is going out for the RFP? Ms. Richardson: Right. TRANSCRIPT Page 46 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Vice Mayor Scharff: We're really in early days on this, right? Isn't that really where we are? We're going to wait and see what the RFP responses are. You've gotten them; you've looked at them, but you haven't shared them yet. You're going to go through them and come back to Council with them. Mr. Keene: We've gone out—this is the second time we've gone out. Vice Mayor Scharff: I know. The first time it failed. Chair DuBois: These are all in process, though. This will come back to Policy and Services again. Ms. Richardson: It should be back in 6 months. Vice Mayor Scharff: Why so long? He has the ... Mr. Alaee: Unless we finish the RFP and take the results to Council for approval, we could see at that time that we do finish the audit. We could potentially bring the audit to Council at the same time as well. Ms. Mason: We've been preparing updates otherwise as well. Cash, right? Mr. Alaee: Oh, yeah. Ms. Mason: (crosstalk) the only way you can update the status. I thought you were doing monthly updates. Mr. Alaee: We may have missed a month or two given workload issues. Vice Mayor Scharff: What's the timeline now, Cash? Mr. Alaee: I can give you some specifics. I can't forecast the end date. We hope that—next week we're having our first staff review meeting. We hope to have some sort of themes and ideas from the staff review as well as some stakeholder reviews. Hopefully meet with the City Manager the following week, and then really proceed with some probably interviews and reviews with the bidders. That's probably 2 weeks out there. My initial assessment is that by somewhere in mid-April to end of April we'll have some sense of who the top candidate could be, or candidates. Then we'll need to discuss the path to Council. Mr. Keene: Let me—Cash probably sounds like he's qualifying stuff here a lot. The reason for that is we're not going out to buy concrete or something. We're trying to solve a problem of a debilitated City Animal Shelter and replace it with, one, a small number of providers in the marketplace. I TRANSCRIPT Page 47 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 mean, this is geographically based. Secondly, you'll be surprised to hear this, but not all the world sees the world the way we see it in Palo Alto on any issue. Like this one, which is operating a small shelter in a location like this ... Council Member Berman: Is a great opportunity. Mr. Keene: It is a small market, niche kind of operation and, therefore, it's not like everybody who could possibly even provide a service would say, "That's a model for us." To go to your earlier question, Greg. One, there was a lot of work with the stakeholder groups in the design of the RFP, engagement with potential responders of even kind of out there beating the bushes to encourage folks to think about submitting proposals. Again, very different than if we were going to hire a planning firm or something like that. Then the failed response; then both kind of regrouping, working through reformatting the proposal in some ways to potentially appeal to more folks. Again, doing some outreach to try to encourage people to really put in a response so that we could use the review process to see if we could hammer out some more details and negotiate stuff. It's been challenging because of the stakeholders, because of the problem we're trying to solve and because of the marketplace. I think we're in a position—let me put it this way. If we have a viable solution, that we can get to, out of the three respondents we have, we're in a solution to be able to get to the Council before the end of this fiscal year. If we don't, I'll be honest with you. I apologize. I don't know what the answer is. Vice Mayor Scharff: If you don't—I'm just really trying to figure out the path from a procedural way. As Policy and Services, we sort of have oversight on the audit. What you're really saying is—I mean, it seems like it's early days on the audit. That's why it makes sense to come back in 6 months on this. Maybe we've closed out the audit then, if this comes out. If not, then I guess we're going to have to talk about next steps. Are you going to go to Council and talk about next steps? I don't know. It's a little unclear to me the procedure. Maybe it's unclear to you too. Mr. Keene: Mm-hmm. Vice Mayor Scharff: It's okay. Mr. Keene: I haven't seen the proposals yet, so I'm sort of flying blind on this. Ms. Richardson: I think if you look at the first recommendation, if the RFP process isn't successful, it would be going back to that recommendation and revisiting ... TRANSCRIPT Page 48 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Vice Mayor Scharff: Which number is that? Ms. Richardson: Recommendation 1. I think it would be revisiting that recommendation with a new proposal. Mr. Alaee: Concurrent to the recommendation that comes from an audit—if you recall when we started this assessment period last fiscal year, we worked really hard with the Auditor's Office to have an audit done, because we thought it was good public policy. Public administration is the time when we address this to tackle this. Council also directed us in the budget hearings to retain the shelter in Palo Alto, retain Animal Control and return back with a potential new service model. We have kind of two concurrent directions going at the same time. What the audit is asking for and what the audit protocols require, but then at the same time the Council direction. If the RFP does finish and we have a viable option and we can bring it to Council, we'd bring it back and, at that point, work with the Auditor's Office to align it with the audit protocols. Vice Mayor Scharff: I would just request that when you go to Council, you include all three in the packet so we can actually look at them. Mr. Alaee: The Auditor's (crosstalk). Vice Mayor Scharff: You'll obviously have a recommendation. Mr. Keene: Not the audit, the ... Vice Mayor Scharff: The RFP results. Mr. Keene: The RFP results. Vice Mayor Scharff: It would be nice to see all three of the responses. I think Council should see all of them. I think you guys are going to have to decide what you want to do, but it'd sure be nice to actually see what other people said and where we ended up with that. Chair DuBois: Marc, do you have any questions? I have a question about the Animal Control. Since you want to split that out, why aren't we just going ahead and doing that regardless of the RFP? Mr. Alaee: I'm sorry, what was—I don't (crosstalk). Chair DuBois: Animal Control, why aren't we splitting that out to the Police now? Why is that tied to the RFP? Mr. Keene: We're working on it. It's in Police now. TRANSCRIPT Page 49 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Mr. Alaee: Animal Control is in Police. Mr. Keene: What we're really saying is we would retain it in Police if we were to bring in a third party to run the shelter. That's what it says. We would not outsource Animal Control. Chair DuBois: It says this will be done, we support the recommendation, but it didn't sound like it happened yet. You're saying it has happened? Mr. Keene: Yeah, it's there. The point is we would be saying if we outsource the Animal Shelter, we would—at that point clearly this recommendation of continuing to maintain the service as an in-house service would—that's when we would really hit that point. We're doing it now, but we would hold onto it once the split took place. Chair DuBois: Got it. Any other questions on this audit? Could we go to the Fleet results? Ms. Mason: I will turn this over to Jon; he will provide a summary. Mr. Keene: We're done, you guys. Chair DuBois: Thank you. Vice Mayor Scharff: Enjoy your retirement. Chair DuBois: Congratulations on your retirement. Ms. Urbanski: I haven't gone now. Vice Mayor Scharff: We may not see you before you go. Ms. Urbanski: Yes, you will. Thank you. Ms. Mason: The Fleet Utilization and Replacement Audit. All recommendations in your summary have been completed. Jon, will just provide a brief overview. It's been a long work in progress. Jon Hospitalier, Public Works Assistant Director: Good evening. Jon Hospitalier, Assistant Director of Public Works for Public Services Division. I oversee fleet. Unfortunately, the Fleet Manager wasn't able to attend, so you'll have to bear with me. Basically there was several recommendations for finding the one in the list of recommendations, Section 8, we really wrote the vehicle and equipment use and maintenance policy. Of course, as you know, it was submitted to the City Manager and approved and adopted as City policy now in Section 4-1/PWD. Finding 1 in Section 8, just briefly TRANSCRIPT Page 50 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 going over the policy. In the policy statement, in the first three paragraphs—I don't know if you've looked at the new policy yet. We gave a brief overview of the Fleet Manager's authority. Basically the responsibility was given to him to operate and manage the City's fleet and share optimized use of the resources given the fleet. He has the authority to manage the day-to-day operation of the City's fleet. The next paragraph below that, the Fleet Review Committee is identified as the overseeing executive body of fleet. Essentially ensures that the Fleet Manager is implementing the policy to its full extent. The FRC, Fleet Review Committee, is comprised of two Assistant City Managers and the Directors of Administrative Services and the Public Works Department. For Finding 1, Section 10, what we did is we revised the general use policy. Just briefly giving you an overview, it basically addresses the issue as to who will take home vehicles overnight. After much debate back and forth with all the departments in the City, it was decided upon that only the persons assigned vehicles as part of the exclusive use category or on standby would be authorized to take home the vehicles. As we go to Section 13, Finding 1, Page 10 of the policy in Section D of the replacement program, briefly we rewrote that section to include language that creates a criteria for how you evaluate the use of vehicles and equipment and rolling stock in the fleet. Rolling stock being things like tractors, rollers, generators, those types of things that aren't actually used for transporting passengers or cargo over the highway. The language we added was to the effect that vehicles and equipment must be operated either a minimum of 2,500 miles or 50 hours at 75 percent of the annual work days which equates to 220 work days. That's the revised criteria that we'll follow on rolling stock. I think we had one other category in Finding 3, Section 21. In the vehicle policy, it'll be under Section 1 under safety. The issue of securing vehicles and equipment within the fleet, revising the policy to bolster that language. Again, giving you kind of a high-level view of this. Basically we added language to infer that employees are responsible for securing City vehicles and equipment at all times. It needed to make sure that locking the doors and also making sure toolboxes are locked and auxiliary equipment is locked and secured at all times when the vehicle is left on City facilities or off City facilities for whatever reason. I think that's essentially it. Chair DuBois: Thank you. Do you have any questions? Council Member Berman: To confirm, this is closing out the audit. We're saying that—is the Auditor's Office content that the items are being addressed to your satisfaction? Ms. Richardson: We agreed with those items, yes. We reviewed the status and agreed with them. TRANSCRIPT Page 51 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Vice Mayor Scharff: I can say I have one question. How many people actually get to take home vehicles? Who are these people and why? Mr. Hospitalier: I have a list here. Chair DuBois: That's two questions. Council Member Berman: It was three? It might have been three. Vice Mayor Scharff: It's got subparts. It's one with subparts. Council Member Berman: (crosstalk). Mr. Hospitalier: It's under (crosstalk) of the policy, if you look at the policy. Vice Mayor Scharff: I don't think we have the policy. Ms. Mason: I think the summary was—no, you're thinking of a different item. Mr. Hospitalier: The positions authorized—it's based on position, not ... Vice Mayor Scharff: Not person. Mr. Hospitalier: ... a particular vehicle or person. In the Fire Department, it would be the Fire Chief, Deputy Fire Chief. For support services, the Deputy Fire Chief for operations, the Fire Marshal. In the Police Department, it would be the Police Chief, Assistant Chief, Captain. Vice Mayor Scharff: Outside of Public Safety. Mr. Hospitalier: No other ... Vice Mayor Scharff: No one outside of Public Safety. Mr. Hospitalier: No other Staff. That was a big change for us if you recall the old policy. Vice Mayor Scharff: I do. That's why I was really asking the question. Chair DuBois: I have one question. You said you updated all the manuals, the documentation. Was there any training or people just started following these policies? Mr. Hospitalier: My understanding is that this has been introduced to the Executive Leadership. Each department head's been asked to go back to their staff and brief them on this new policy. Public Works, I can speak for TRANSCRIPT Page 52 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 our section. We're in the process of doing that. Yes, they will be made aware of it, about the new policy. Just unofficially, since we took over— since the transition from fleet being its own silo and it being a part of Public Services, the old Public Works operations during our reorganization, we've essentially been following this policy We've had various drafts floating around. As soon as we got the new Fleet Manager about a year and a half ago, we just started steering things in that direction unofficially. Been telling people over that year and a half period this is going to be the new policy. We're just practicing it now, get used to it. Most of the folks that are ordering vehicles that we know have to be replaced or ordering vehicles that they want to add to the fleet, they've already been brought up to speed for the most part on how they're supposed to go about this stuff. Chair DuBois: Thank you very much. I think we need a Motion on this item. I guess we recommend that this goes to City Council. Council Member Berman: Is this informational? Ms. Mason: It's actually you recommend ... Chair DuBois: We accept it. Council Member Berman: We accept it, that's right. Vice Mayor Scharff: We just accept it. Council Member Berman: I move that we accept the description of the status of audits for the Fleet Utilization and Replacement Audit and the Animal Services Audit. Chair DuBois: I will second. MOTION: Council Member Berman moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to recommend the City Council accept the Status of Audit Recommendations for the Fleet Utilization and Replacement Audit and the Animal Services Audit. Chair DuBois: All in favor. MOTION PASSED: 3-0 Kniss absent Future Meetings and Agendas Chair DuBois: The last item is Future Meetings and Agendas. We have this at places. TRANSCRIPT Page 53 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 James Keene, City Manager: Right now, you've got your meeting on the 12th. You've got the results ... Vice Mayor Scharff: All we have is the cable fees? Chair DuBois: That's not really a full meeting, is it? Mr. Keene: I think it'll be a pretty ... Harriet Richardson, City Auditor: It may be. Mr. Keene: ... involved audit. Ms. Richardson: It's a pretty complex audit. It will take some time. Mr. Keene: I haven't had a chance to talk with the Chair about this. I don't know if Cash did, about the other meetings. Number 5, this Stanford Development Agreement Health and Safety Funds, that was a—I don't say complicated, but there was a lot of sort of stakeholder interest in that the last time we talked about it. It's $2 million out of the $4 million potentially available for other health and safety funds. Under the Stanford Development Agreement, we have to and are required to confer with Stanford on use of those funds even though their use is entirely discretionary. Just seeing this here, the reason I'm bringing this up is that we've spent a lot of the existing $2 million on Project Safety Net, particularly as it relates to the Track Watch and the work we've done with fencing. The Finance Committee has—when they were doing their review on the midyear budget, there was a suggestion about—one or more Council Members has brought up the question about the General Fund repaying the funds we've used for the sort of means restriction at Track Watch. Finance, I think, rightfully said, "Let's wait and look at that in the course of the budget, because that could be close to $1 1/2 million out of the General Fund." As we get into this year's budget, it's going to be kind of complicated as to the choices and everything that we're going to have to make. If we got into a situation—if we didn't repay this money, we're going to need additional funding for the programming aspects of Project Safety Net, even funding the deployment of technology. It might be good to be thinking about some review and recommendation about this other $2 million in Stanford funds. You may not want to; you may want to just keep it out there. On the other hand, either when Finance talks about it at the budget, I could just see it kind of coming up as one of these outstanding issues, how we're going to balance this, should we revisit this. Chair DuBois: Are you suggesting we should talk about it before then? TRANSCRIPT Page 54 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Mr. Keene: I was thinking we should—maybe if I could talk with the Finance Chair to sort of see where they are on this. It may be something we'd want to do so that when we come to the Council in June with a budget recommendation, maybe the Finance Committee's been informed by your discussion on this a little bit. Vice Mayor Scharff: I think that'd be a good idea. There's been all this stuff about Track Watch and the guards in the media and stuff. We haven't really addressed the issue, at least it doesn't seem like it. Chair DuBois: The other issue, that $4 million was for all kinds of community programs, not just Project Safety Net. Mr. Keene: Exactly. It was potentially for anything. Lucile Packard not only had ideas, I think, even when we negotiated the Development Agreement. They've been active. (inaudible) it's come to the Council. The Track Watch guard approach is not sustainable financially. Vice Mayor Scharff: It doesn't seem to be working well either. Mr. Keene: (inaudible) Council Member Berman: I'd like to get a report on that. Vice Mayor Scharff: I would too. Council Member Berman: I think some things haven't been working well. I hear some things have. I think it might be a little bit more. Mr. Keene: Let me put it this way. If this (crosstalk) technology approach that we're looking at can work ... Council Member Berman: Then it can (crosstalk). Mr. Keene: ... one, it's long term, more cost effective; two, it should be more viable, because the range of visibility that this would have is way, way greater than just the couple of guards standing at the (crosstalk). Vice Mayor Scharff: I think we have to have a technological solution. Mr. Keene: That's where we are. I could work with you and see whether or not we could get that one going. I'm trying to look at the things that maybe have some time ... Chair DuBois: You're talking about May ... TRANSCRIPT Page 55 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Mr. Keene: ... sensitivity. Chair DuBois: ... for that one. Mr. Keene: Yeah. Chair DuBois: I'm still curious of the Franchise Audit. Can we get in another short item in April? The Revolving Door Policy came to us last year. I thought we were almost done. I think there were redlines that were supposed to come back. Mr. Keene: You're probably not up to speed on that. Terence Howzell, Principal Attorney: I'm not up to speed on that one. Chair DuBois: I don't know if the ... Mr. Keene: I'll visit with Molly on that. Chair DuBois: ... discussion on EV charging stations—is that going to be a quick item or do you think it would be ... Mr. Keene: I've been pushing this. I might be able to shake it loose. I'll see. Chair DuBois: This Number 6, I'm not familiar with that one. I thought we'd already have a policy for (crosstalk). Vice Mayor Scharff: We don't. That came before you. We just never got to it. Chair DuBois: I thought it was when we started the public part of going into Closed Session. Is this something different? Vice Mayor Scharff: It is something different. It's the notion of—there are a lot of labor ... Council Member Berman: (crosstalk) discuss those issues and ... Vice Mayor Scharff: There's a lot of labor stuff you could discuss in public. We thought we should have the discussion. Council Member Berman: Given where we are with pretty much all labor negotiations, does it make sense to ... Mr. Keene: It wouldn't have a lot of bearing on any nearer-term practices (crosstalk). TRANSCRIPT Page 56 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Transcript 3/22/16 Vice Mayor Scharff: Which is the time you want to discuss it. You want to discuss it after you have resolved all of your labor issues. Council Member Berman: Agreed. Vice Mayor Scharff: It's not when you're in the middle of negotiations. If we're going to have this discussion, I think we should schedule this discussion for after we've dealt with ... Chair DuBois: June or September or something. Vice Mayor Scharff: That's what I'm thinking. Council Member Berman: Yeah, totally onboard. Just refer to it as no rush to do it. Vice Mayor Scharff: Right. I wasn't suggesting we do it next week. Chair DuBois: I guess we're set. Thank you. Meeting adjourned. ADJOURNMENT: The meeting was adjourned at 7:57 P.M.