Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-05-23 Policy & Services Committee Summary Minutes POLICY AND SERVICES COMMITTEE TRANSCRIPT Page 1 of 56 Special Meeting Tuesday, May 23, 2017 Chairperson Wolbach called the meeting to order at 6:14 P.M. in the Community Meeting Room, 250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, California. Present: DuBois, Kou, Wolbach (Chair) Absent: Kniss Agenda Items 1. Discuss the Topic of Aircraft Noise, Review Federal Legislative Updates and Recommend That City Council Reaffirm City's Positions to Reduce Aircraft Noise and Make Other Recommendations as Needed to Advance City’s Goals to Reduce Aircraft Noise Over the Skies of Palo Alto Chair Wolbach: Thank you. So, our first item tonight is going to be a discussion of – topic of aircraft noise but we before that, do we have any speakers for oral communications on items which are not on the agenda? Ok and also, I heard from the City Manager and just an opportunity for Staff, would it be ok, just given the full agenda tonight, if we delayed item three until the next meeting? James Keene, City Manager: Yes, Mr. Mayor – not, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Chairmen. You know, typically we try to accomplish the Policy and Services Committee business in about three hours. It’s 6:15 now so that would be 9:15 and so we have the three items, aircraft noise, the second item is the recommendation from the Utilities Advisory Commission and Staff related to or fiber to the potentially our fiber initiative. I know that the Committee has been anxiously been waiting to see that and that will be an involved discussion so we can move off item three relating to relation related to recreational medical Marijuana. Your next meeting will be on June 13th and the City Attorney advises that we would need to have that item scheduled at that particular time. That being said, anybody who is here for Item Number 3, medical marijuana, that will be removed and rescheduled until June 13th. Chair Wolbach: Let me just ask, was anyone here to speak to Item 3? Ok. In that case, if it’s alright with the fellow Members of the Committee, we’ll table item three until the next meeting. That way, also the Staff who is here to TRANSCRIPT Page 2 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 work on that item is free to take off for the evening. With that, let’s move on to item number one. Again, this is to discuss the topic of aircraft noise, review federal legislative updates and recommend that City Council reaffirms the City’s positions to reduce aircraft noise and make other recommendations as needed to advance the City’s goals to reduce aircraft noise over the skies of Palo Alto. We do have a number of public speakers. We will give each person three minutes to speak. You don’t have to use all three minutes. If you simply want to concur with somebody else, feel free to do that. Our first speaker is Jon Zweig, to be followed by Jennifer Landesmann. So, we’ll start with Jon and Jennifer, you will be on deck. Jon Zweig: Hello. Yeah, as you probably know, the next gen. has had the result of concentrating the aircraft flight route into a very narrow path, which happens to be over Palo Alto. This is a feature because it reduces the number of people who are exposed to airplane noise; good. This is a bug if you happen to be one of the (inaudible) who lives under that path. It’s a big enough issue for people who live in Palo Alto that – we’re really grateful that the City has devoted resources to it over the last few years. The bottom line is that Palo Alto shouldn’t bear an unfair burden – disproportionate burden of the noise. The noise should be shared in some way and this is a – one of the bottom lines of we’re I think we ought to be headed with this. I’m thinking that it’s an active enough issue that it might be worth considering an ongoing Committee. Perhaps a Citizens Advisory Committee or having it be a standing item – standing agenda item of one of the Committees of the City Council to keep the momentum going on this because we’ve made some progress but the airplanes are still flying pretty much the way that they were. Bottom of line is some kind of ongoing body that considers this at a regular interval. Thanks. Chair Wolbach: Thank you. Next speaker is Jennifer Landesmann, to be followed by Jay Whaley. I hope I pronounced that right. Jennifer. Jennifer Landesmann: Thank you. Committee Members there are (inaudible) interest who will work very hard to keep the concentration of low flying jets over our City as is. When the FAA responses, this discussion will advance for better or for worse. I urge the City to establish a high-level goal of getting a more equable distribution of traffic and to do so by first, eliminating noise with routes which can enter the bay at the highest altitudes. I believe that the FAA can assist with this because designing optimal routes, if doable, is not contrary to their interest to have a sustainable system. They would not be working on this if it hardly mattered to their agency. To negotiate the path to solutions, the City must engage a lead advisory and high specialized FAA experts. I ask that you investigate also what other Cities are doing. For TRANSCRIPT Page 3 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 example, Clover City retained Barbara Lichman, a renown environmental aviation attorney in the outreach to the FAA on behalf of her client. If Ms. Lichman needs a noise analysis, she retains a noise expert and when she needs an expert to engage with the FAA on procedures and routes, she engaged the firm; for example, Williams Aviation, which has at the helm former aircraft organization senior executives. The firm Williams also has extensive experience in bringing communities together on projects and is very knowledgeable of Bay Area air space from past projects. [Mr. Tom Kaman] at Williams has been at FAA meetings on the current Bay Area and there should of as well, advising Portola Valley. Moreover, these air traffic organization experts are on record that assessments of the route that enters the bay at higher altitudes farther south are the only way to get real solutions for the mid-peninsula. Neither you, Staff or our (inaudible) citizens can replace the highly specialized expertise required in deep discussions with the FAA, which are necessary to determine and implement the right solutions. Thank you. Chair Wolbach: Alright, we’re off to a good start. Both the first two speakers didn’t use all of their time so we’re moving along. Jay Whaley, I hope I… Jay Whaley: Jay Whaley. Chair Wolbach: ...Whaley, thank you for correcting me and the next… Jay Whaley: My wife Sally and I lived in the Crescent Park area – neighborhood now for a number of years and we’ve reported our concerns about low-flying air crafts. I understand that there have now been 3.2 million reports in one year and we’ve been part of that reporting. I won’t go over the details of what we said except that I invite you to come over to our home on Sunday evenings and sit outside with our barbecue and you’ll see how often our conversation is interrupted but we can also wave to the people as they are landing in San Francisco. I would like to comment on this report that you have tonight and that I got off the internet that you are using about your recommendation – the recommendations. It’s report number ID81423 and that’s a part of that 112-page packet. I just have two comments to make that I would like to recommend that you continue because I totally agree with what you say. It says that Staff recommends that the City Council reaffirm its position and seek a seat on the Select Committee’s proposed AD HAC Committee. When the Select Committee met and gave their recommendations, the Committee was made up of 12 members and 12 alternates. Palo Alto has one alternate and had no one on the – as a member. Santa Cruz had four people as members and four as alternates. That’s eight and Palo Alto had one and that’s how this TRANSCRIPT Page 4 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 recommendation came by. I think it’s very important that we understand that because the recommendation that is in your report on page three, says that the City’s position align with number four and that is to design an entirely new route that takes advantage of non-residential areas. The southerly arrivals, as it’s been reported, -- there’s northerly, westerly and southerly arrival and the southern route that is proposed here, which came out of the Select Committee, comes right over the Menlo Way Point. Which is exactly almost where we live and so I would recommend that you strongly push for what you say here. That the City position aligns itself with number four of this recommendation. Thank you. I have also submitted my report in a letter which you have got sent to. Chair Wolbach: Thank you. Our next speaker is Mark Landesmann to be followed by Andy Robin. So, Mark? Mark Landesmann: (Inaudible) Thank you for your effort in writing the Staff report which however contains several critical factual errors and misleading statements, which is unfortunate and uncharacteristic. Because of the short speaking time, I will only give one example. In regard to westerly arrives, which accounts for the majority of noise and emissions which are bestowed on us in the middle of the night. The report states that City Staff is effectively aligned with a position, which essentially says that Asian flights have to fly at low attitudes in the middle of the night over Palo Alto because they could otherwise run out of fuel. This is quite simply not true. The central element of the deployment of the new gen system of the FAA is to allow planes, as much as possible, to fly on the most direct path from origin to the destination while they are at cruising altitude. The direct path from Beijing and from other leading Asian points of origin to (inaudible) such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. is such that the shortest path and the most direct path these origins approach (inaudible) from the northwest. No airline flight has ever run out of fuel while crossing the Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific Ocean. Rain or shine, the airlines had made the trip from Asia to the US have plenty of fuel reserved but if for some strange reason that they would run out of fuel or be close to be running out of fuel on the way to SFO, the very last thing that they would do as they approach the airport from the northwest, is to take a sightseeing trip down the peninsula and over Palo Alto. This makes no sense. In defense of the City Staff, the statement and flights from Asia have to cross Palo Alto does not come from the Staff itself but rather has been given to Staff of various unnamed speakers. But here in lies the rub, Palo Alto has been spoon feed similar non-sequential excuses for why SFO noise and emissions has to be move to our City for more than 17-years. Strangely, no reason was ever found to transferring to us any SFO’s $800 million dollars in annual revenues. The reason we retained in an excellent consulting team is that we should stop TRANSCRIPT Page 5 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 excepting such nonsense. In this instance and for the report as a whole, a single phone call to [Jack Krytac] would suffice to unveil the truth. Several of the other statements in the City Staff report had equally or even more salient to an understanding of our current situation and the need to an urgent action for which we repeatedly press. Sky Policy will also provide a more comprehensive response to the City Staff report and to Council by the beginning of next week. Thank you. Chair Wolbach: Thank you. Our next speaker is Andy Robin, to be followed by Joel Hayflick. Andy Robin: Good evening. Thanks for the opportunity to speak. I’ve been living here for 31-years and an assertion that flights have to fly 747s over my house at 12:30-1 o’clock and 1:30 in the morning are obviously wrong because they haven’t been doing that for 30-years. I do know that they are extremely annoying. My wife often has a hard time sleeping through it, she wakes up and then is awake for a couple hours trying to go back to sleep. We entertain in our backyard and as another person said, we don’t do that anymore because it’s too noisy out there. Jets are going over all the time and so it just seems like an abusive thing that’s been done to our City by the FAA. I guess – I noticed that the Council took a huge amount of action over High Speed Rail and over the notion that the trusses would be running along Alma Street to elevate the trains and the Council went crazy and there have been all kinds of action and with other Cities. Yeah, I’d ask you to do something like that on this issue too because this is another terrible quality of life disruption. It’s really pretty awful for our whole City. So, please redouble your efforts and put more into it. You know, if you don’t squeak loud, it ain’t going to happen. Everybody is going to have to hear lots of loud complaints everywhere and as one person suggested, bring on the experts like that was done with High Speed Rail and fight; fight hard. Thanks for your help and commitment. Chair Wolbach: Next speaker is Joel Hayflick, to be followed by Toni Rath. I should have mentioned it early. We generally do have a policy of not encouraging applause, cheers, boos etc. just to make sure that no matter what somebodies perspective is, they don’t feel uncomfortable. It’s just a standard practice of decorum for the Council and Committees. Just wanted to mention that. Joel Hayflick: Hello. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. My name is Joel Hayflick. My wife and I live in mid-town Palo Alto. We’ve lived here for 10-years. I grew up in this area, moved to Seattle and then came back 10-years ago. Every day, over 300 jets over my house that are low and TRANSCRIPT Page 6 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 loud. Every single day. That’s only the ones to San Francisco. There’s also jets flying in and out to San Jose. They fly out to La Jolla over the house from San Jose. They also fly out of Oakland and go – and turn west to Hawaii as well. That’s an under representation the 300 jets in that diagram right there. Anyway, the chronic, long-term effect of aircraft noise from low and loud jet aircraft on humans is well documented. This is not a problem that we can just continue to work on day after day after year after year. This is a negative impact on the chronic well-being – on the well-being of the population. Not only in Palo Alto but in the rest of the area. I concur with some of the comments and suggestions that were made by Jennifer and Sky Pose group in terms of bringing in the experts, getting involved in not only the SFO round table but also the San Jose proposed Roundtable, which I’ve heard is also being looked at as a means to get local civic groups involved, regional communities involved and become a component of a regional solution. Be on the forefront of a regional solution for Palo Alto and the region. Thank you. Chair Wolbach: Thank you. Our next speaker is Toni Rath. If I am mispronouncing any of these names, please feel free to correct me. Followed by Darlene Yapleetvick. Toni Rath: Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Toni. I am a long-time resident of Mountain View and I am concerned about some parts of the proposal regarding airplane noise that are being put forth here. Specifically, the parts about directing airplane traffic around Palo Alto and instead of having it pass over Los Altos and Mountain View, your neighbors. These are basically the same perimeters that annoy residents here so they are going to be ok in Mountain View and in Los Altos? I don’t think so. The repeated claim that traffic over Los Altos and Mountain View would travel at much higher altitudes is simply not true. It’s baloney. It’s much the same perimeters. I would like to ask that you instead work with neighboring communities instead of against them so that together we can bring change that will actually improve the situation for everyone. Yes, everyone. The usual physics of airplane noise means that how airplanes fly, the speed and the use of flats and flaps and so on makes a bigger difference than tweaks on the altitude. You should consider that. These changes – these things have changed a few years ago and the FAA is working on them as a result of the Select Committee’s work. Let’s see what those improvements are before we start pushing things to our neighbors. The Committee could also suggest that SFO levy landing fees scaled to airplane noise and that could address things like the Airbus whine. The Committee should ask Congress to give the FAA a general mandate to reduce noise. This is sorely lacking and that could also address things like the Airbus whine. The Committee could ask Congress to ask the FAA to establish a Residents Advisory Board to Next TRANSCRIPT Page 7 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Gen. to parallel the Industry Advisory Board so that residents have a voice in airplane noise concerns. Working against your neighbor is not a one-way street. Communities south of Palo Alto are already experiencing high levels of airplane noise. Palo Alto could easily find itself in a receiving position if Sunny Vale and Mountain View start advocating to send south (inaudible) traffic that is currently going to San Jose over Palo Alto. In a situation where everyone works against everyone, nobody wins. Let’s not go there. Mountain View and Palo Alto have a history of working well together so let’s keep doing it. We are stronger together. Thank you. Chair Wolbach: Thank you for your comments and Darlene Yapleetvick, to be followed by Vicky Reich. Darlene Yapleetvick: First, thank you to the Policy and Services Committee and Staff for your leadership to help remediate airplane noise for our City. We appreciate your attention to this important topic. I would like to build a little bit on the report that was done. We are positive towards reaffirming the City’s position to reduce airplane noise. I’d like to build on that with that we would like it to be updated to feature the highest priority items from the Select Committee and Roundtable reports. Second, to include community feedback as you will be hearing tonight and that everything is reviewed for technical accuracy by experts. Another piece of that is that we should address the misperception that Palo Alto wants to move noise to other Cities and focus on a region solution. We believe that this reaffirmation of the City’s positions should be updated before the FAA’s response is made public and before Council goes on summer break so that we are ready for any response that does come. My colleague Vicky will add on some additional items. Chair Wolbach: Well, actually we could just – we’ll finish three minutes for you and then we will go on to Vicky. Darlene Yapleetvick: We’re good, we’re good. We’re a team. Chair Wolbach: Then we will go onto Vicky. Next speaker. Vicky Reich: We’re good. Chair Wolbach: Go ahead, Vicky. Vicky Reich: So, continuing on, I’m going to talk about representation, noise monitors, the City’s respond to the FAA, FAA timing and one last tiny little TRANSCRIPT Page 8 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 request. With regard to our presentation, with professional advice and I stress that let’s seek representation on any airplane noise body whose actions could impact Palo Alto including any – those recommended by the Select Committee either AD HAC or permanent or both, and please reach out to NSU. The SFO Round Table and the new group San Jose airport might be forming to address reverse flow and arrivals. With regards to noise monitors, let’s get professional advice again, about installing noise monitors. Noise data properly defined, gathered and analyzed seems like a good idea. The City’s respond to the FAA. Once the FAA’s response is publicly available, we ask Policy and services to respond quickly and effectively via a document created with both community input and expert advice so the City can act. Timing, we ask that these items be moved forward before you recess for the summer. Last, we ask the City to host a working session with citizens and experts to answer questions and to foster policy alignment and thank you all three. Really appreciate it. Chair Wolbach: Thank you Vicky and our next speaker is Karen Porter, to be followed by George Block. Karen Porter: Thank you. I echo the comments that everybody has made about the importance of addressing the noise that has seemed to invaded our community and the adverse health consequences that result from that. I do want to emphasize that I think the adverse health consequences that are associated with emissions from the jet exhaust that I think are being overlooked. Particulate matter from plan exhaust is recognized as arguably posting perhaps the most serious health risk according to a 2015 report published by the airport corporative research program, which was sponsored by the FAA. Particulate matter is associated with serious respiratory, cardiovascular illnesses and premature mortality. Oh, sorry. Well, historically the FAA has only looked at emissions that are in what’s known as the landing and the takeoff cycle which is 3,000-feet above ground level and closer to airports but other modeling studies have shown health impacts farther from airports and at higher altitudes of between 3,000 and 5,000- feet. So, of course, which are most of the flights impacting Palo Alto these days. I think it’s important – I would ask the Committee to include in our statement that it’s important to emphasize the FAA to focus on the health effects of emission. The FAA has tools that can model these effects as part of its – it’s called the AEDT tool that can easily model emission and we encourage the City to require this testing. Thanks so much. Chair Wolbach: Thank you Karen and our next speaker is George Block to be followed by Robert Finn. TRANSCRIPT Page 9 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 George Block: Thank you, Mr. Chair and Council Members. I’m here basically to support what’s been said already and ask the Council to continue its support of trying to resolve this issue. I can say little other expect that maybe number three, Medical Marijuana would become a high priority should the noise continue. Chair Wolbach: George Block. Oh, I’m sorry, that was George. My mistake. Robert Finn to be followed by Robert Holbrook. Robert Finn: Thank you. My wife and I have lived here since 1982. For 32-years we treasured our home for it’s quite and convenient location. Airplane noise didn’t exist for us. Then suddenly in 2014, we found ourselves besieged by planes flying loudly over us at low altitudes and clearly indifferent to any personal needs of residents. No explanation came from any official source but we somehow learned that a new landing pattern for SFO labeled Next Gen. had just been instituted. There could be no other plausible explanation. We were not the only ones affected and appeals and hearings and sued and then sued and then sued. With not step taken toward any elevation. In a draft report from a major Committee issued last October, I found the paragraph and I quote precisely. “Some have proposed returning to pre-Next Gen procedures. The draft report rejects that option so merely for the reason that FAA was required by law to adopt new and advanced technology.’ This seems to say that Congress required FAA to make things new, even if doing so would make them disastrously worse. I’m dubious that even our present Congress would accept such a demand. Should I disregard my simple kitchen can opener, which works falsely and replaces it by an elaborate device that makes a lot of noise but won’t open my cans. If the system really has to be new and expensive, please at least get it changed from Next Gen. Thank you. Chair Wolbach: Thank you for your comments. Robert Holbrook, to be followed by Kerry Yarkin. Robert Holbrook: My name is Robert Holbrook. I am a resident of Mountain View. I use to live in Palo Alto. Like one of the previous speakers, I moved up to Seattle. Had a very bad experience with airplanes there. I rented a house a lovely sunny day, a week later the weather shifted and stayed shifted for 9-months and I had airplanes over my house for 9-months straight. I moved back and I resolved that I am not going to do that again. I did the research and prioritized airplane noise as number one and I moved to Mountain View. I didn’t move to Palo Alto because there are airplanes up here. I believe that people making the most important decision of their lives should have a reasonable assurance that a flight path is not going to be TRANSCRIPT Page 10 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 moved over them and that is what you are being asked to endorse today. Your proposal – the proposal before you are to create more points for aircraft used while entering SFO. There’s currently one point and this point centralizes all arrival aircraft noise over Palo Alto. It also suggests redirecting flights from the south to the east. What these translate to when you peel the onion on these proposals is a suggestion to introduce a new waypoint called DUMBA and another waypoint called rock me. Your consultants did an analysis on this based on their own analysis and there’s going to be a 6 to 15 decidable increase in air traffic over Mountain View City Hall where I live. A 6-decidable increase – the way that this is measured would translate to the same noise generated by four times as many airplanes as we have now. With Next Gen, these airplanes are likely to be concentrated into a corridor as some folks have said and this is clearly shifting noise away from Palo Alto to a new area in Mountain View. That’s the rock me DUMBA approach. There’s another approach which is called faith and that would involve moving airplanes over Milpitas. The idea of using the length of the Bay is a great idea except for the catch that airplanes have to great to the Bay and we need to be figuring out how the airplanes are going to get to the Bay and what impact that’s going to have on the communities underneath them and the impact that your folks have come up with for Mountain View is very significant. Airplane noise is caused by several factors and I think it’s one of the least intuitive things in the physical universe. The power laws associated with the airplane and the sound energy generated by airplane means that is scales at the 6th power or the 8th power of the speed of airplanes. Meaning that a slight decrease in the speed of an airplane can cause as much reduction in the sound of the airplane as 1,000-feet of altitude. The FAA is now starting to pay attention to this as a result of the Select Committees actions. I’m hopeful that by changing the way the airplanes fly and how airplanes fly, we’re going to see a significant reduction in the noise that’s being generated by them. Probably a bigger – perhaps a bigger reduction than where the airplanes are flying and the short – the small changes in the ground path that they cover. In some areas, there have been big changes. Los Altos saw a big change. Capital of Santa Cruz a big change. Over Palo Alto, as you approach the Menlo Way Point, the change gets vanishingly small. Let’s give the FAA a chance to address the issues as they lead us to believe that they will and see where we are before we talk about moving the noise to another community. Thank you. Chair Wolbach: Thank you for your comments. Kerry Yarkin to be followed by Amy Adams. Kerry Yarkin: Good evening Council Members. I want to contrast what he just said that you are Palo Alto City Council Members. My parents would not have moved here 65-years ago – as you know I am native Palo Alton. They TRANSCRIPT Page 11 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 would never have moved here. We would never have put our stake in the ground here if there was going to be the arrival zone into SFO. I am considering moving. I have three siblings in town and it’s horrible. Lydia Kou, I just wanted to remind you that I went with you to coffee and the planes were flying over. Tom DuBois, 3-years ago when you ran, you came to my house for coffee. The planes were flying over. You could not hear Eric Filseth speak. There are only 20 of us in that small contained room and that was 3-years ago. I’m pretty sure 3-years ago. Ok, so I don’t have to go on and on but I would like so peace. I would really, really would like to be able to sit in our beautiful landscaped back yard and enjoy the sun and be able to sit there. I cannot do that now. That is a bottom line livability issue for me and my neighbors. We live in mid-town but it’s Palo Alto. You can listen to Mountain View, you can listen to Los Altos, you can listen to the East Palo Alto. You are Palo Alto City Council Members. Another issue that I am a little concerned about is the fine particulate matter. I have two teenagers and I do not like to see the planes over my house doing their turn. I’m right directly under them think about the fine particulate matter affecting their health. For chronic health problems, I went to the sleep apnea clinic because now I have sleep apnea and my doctor said – that I went to for this said oh, I just had someone else from Palo Alto this week. It is affecting us, particularly Palo Altons. I also have some cardiac arrhythmias which I think stress – all of this is contributed to it. My recommendations to you are don’t let (inaudible) off the hook. I saw what she’s – saw her statement with Bill Johnson and she was saying on no, it was a new administration. I think you have to read very carefully into or work very carefully with her and don’t let her off the hook. Have her meet with Nancy Pelosi to get lots of things through Congress or at least get their voices heard. She can speak with Dianne Feinstein, the Mayor of San Francisco. They are not that far away. The airport director, she’s a block away. I don’t know, I’ve been sending her letters as many people here have been doing and I’ve been calling her. Nothing – we’re still where we were 3-years ago or worse. Also, I agree with the Standing Committee. This is not just come here one time. You’ve got a lot of experts here and I would also agree with what Jennifer Landesmann said about that we need legal expertise in this aviation area. I wrote to the City Attorney and I invited her to some of the Select Committee meetings. I had a conversation, I think back and forth through email. I don’t think our City Attorney, to be honest with you, or our City has that expertise that we’re going to need because the noise has been moved onto us. Now everyone else doesn’t want the noise, I agree with them but we are the recipients of the noise. The seat on the Select Committee, the whole last Select Committee was a complete wash for Palo Alto and to have one alternate. It was stacked from the beginning against us. We are the ones who are suffering. We have the four lines coming over our homes; 300 planes a day. Thank you. TRANSCRIPT Page 12 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Chair Wolbach: Thank you for your comments. Again, we encourage – regardless of your feelings about a speaker, we do encourage modest response if anything. Amy Adams to be followed by Bill Murphy. Amy Adams: My name is Amy Adams (inaudible) Meyer and despite family’s connection to this Chamber, I come fairly infrequently to these types of meetings. I came to opposed taser. I came to the discussion about basement dewatering and I’m here for this issue. The reason is that I feel passionate about all of those issues personally and I feel that they affect the quality of life in our community. You might be interested to know that I’ve actually never reported airplanes over my house despite the fact that they are coming over on average about every 3-minutes. The reason this is because I am actually extremely busy. I work as a physician. I’m usually at work from 7 AM to 7 PM. I get up very early and I actually go to bed pretty late. I have a young child. My husband is very busy. We have a lot of extracurricular activities going on. I need to sleep with ear plugs when I go to bed. I am woken up frequently after 1 AM and I am awakening again before – around 5 – 6 AM. It’s intolerable to me. I am gone most of the day. I actually live with my mother who is here in the front row. Her great passion is actually gardening. She has no passion for that right and she’s actually pretty depressed about it. She literally is sitting outside and there’s maybe a minute where there is no noise. I absolutely agree that we need to do unto others as we have them do unto you. I don’t think that a narrow path of airplanes over one community should just be shifted five or ten miles to another community. I don’t think anybody really in this room really advocates that. I think what they would like to do is have the quality of life that they purchased in our community. I happen to live in a craftsmen’s home. I happened to have more air conditioning. I don’t think people really need that in California and so the noise is just that much loud of us because there are open windows and because of insulation and all of that. I’m sure many, many other people have those type of old fashion California homes. I think that the people in my family who live in rural Michigan and paid about $100,000 for their home, if they were to come visit me in my tiny little house on this little lot and look up and see that it looks like I live next to the airport would think that I am insane to live here. Is that what we want for our community? For people to laugh at us and go what a joke you snob. You live there and it’s shitty. Sorry, to be rude but that’s how I feel right now and like I said, I come very infrequently but it’s really disturbing my ability to even work because I can’t get any sleep. Chair Wolbach: Thank you for your comments and the next speaker is Bill Murphy, to be followed by Mary Jo Freemont. TRANSCRIPT Page 13 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Bill Murphy: I live currently about five blocks into Mountain View Past San Antonio Road but I grew up in Palo Alto and I lived here from 1959 until buying my house in Mountain View in 1988. I can tell people here who believe – I’ll get to why the change happen in a moment but Palo Alto never had airplane noise and it got moved onto Palo Alto. That’s not true and it’s never been true. The airplane noise has been roughly equal of what I am experiencing now in Mountain View and I have 100s of overflights over my house every day. What changed? I’m in that swooping green line there. See the sharp orange line coming up from the south, Next Gen didn’t move sound – didn’t move airplanes over you but what it did was it concentrated them over a narrow corridor and to stay in a narrow corridor, they started gunning their engines to conform with the corridor. Gunning your engines calling – that’s a very noisy thing. They hit their speed brakes, that’s noisy thing. They fly low. They weren’t behaving nice but the nature of this problem is you have this bright orange line. I’m in the big scatter of the green line and I have constant buzzing of mosquito like airplanes over my house 24/7. It’s always been since 1988. Not change and then during Next. Gen or reverse flow for five months every year, I get extraordinary noise like Palo Altons and I feel your pain because it’s real but experience what that orange like that’s going over Churchill and Rinconada Park. The reverse flow is flying underneath – it’s a San Jose arrival that goes up in a horseshoe, flips a U-turn at Mountain View – sometimes it gets as far north as Palo Alto but it flies underneath these SFO arrivals. You’re getting 3,000-footer but for five months out of the year, Mountain View gets 2,000-footers and they are really making a turn so they are always gunning their engines. The problem is that Next Gen. created this conforming line. It consolidated it and it made – in a much more painful non-dispersed way what you are experiencing. See how I get dispersal – dispersion, of that orange line – actually, it turns out – you see 30%, about a 4th or about 8% vectors right and it’s hiding in that green swoop because they have to kill time to get to the bay. I actually get about a 4th of your traffic, killing time, vectoring right. You can almost see it. See that little bit of orange on that outside edge of the green swoosh; like that? The solution is somehow dispersion. Nobody moved planes over you. They consolidated or made in a concatenative fashion noise over you. Your pain is really and you’ve always had tons of airplanes here. I grew up here. I grew up when the P3s were flying out of Moffit with nuclear death charges waiting to drop them on Russian subs that were off the coast because there was a 6-minute launch time. That’s my point. Don’t beggar thy neighbor by presuming to put any of one neighbor’s problem onto Mountain View and Los Altos, which suffers significantly already. Chair Wolbach: Thank you for your comments and I just wanted to ask if there are another speaker cards, please get them in now. We are getting some more in late. We’ll allow those speakers to make their comments but TRANSCRIPT Page 14 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 after this speaker, we’ll close comment submissions. Mary Jo Freemont is the next speaker and just so you’re ready is Mark Millet. Mary Jo Freemont: Thank you for giving me another opportunity to talk about the airplane noise. First, I think it’s a great positive step to see the Policy and Services Committee involved so thank you to the City for stepping it up. You need to keep going. It’s not just one meeting so I hope you will continue to be engaged. We are all waiting for these FAA responses. It has been six months and in any place that I know of, I think people would have been fired on not to provide any response to the public that involves hundreds of thousands of citizens. Six months in total silence from the FAA and this I think is unacceptable but what the City should do is that I don’t think to send another letter to the FAA but better to prepare each response to that FAA response. I have three suggestions for that. First, you each need to understand what is important for Palo Alto. What are the really critical issues and what the positions of the City are on these issues? It’s like in any negotiation, you should know your trade off and you should know your walk away positions. This is no different here. The second suggestion is use data. There is so much misinformation and so many fake news and so many misperceptions. Palo Alto has never – I can’t speak for the City but I’ll speak as a resident, Palo Alto has never said that we move (inaudible) to another City. These narrow corridors should never exist but the fact that now 60% of the SFO arrivals are within 2-miles of the Menlo Way Point, that’s data that can be proven with all the flight data information. By the way, it’s not Palo Alto’s traffic, it’s SFO traffic so we don’t own that airplane traffic. It just happened that over time and especially with Next Gen., it came to Palo Alto. So, use the data and use the facts. The good news is that the problem is well documented because all this flight data information exists so don’t rely on opinions. Then the third recommendation is to engage with others. Engage with other Cities, engage as many educated citizens who have spent thousands of hours to try to really understand the problem and I think many of them are very talented. Engage with the San Francisco Round Table. The fact that 60% of the arrivals are within 2-miles of the Menlo Way Point but there is not one monitoring noise station from SFO around this 2-miles. It’s unbelievable to me. That’s data, not an opinion so thank you for your help but I really believe that now is the time to really work on what Palo Alto matters and engaging with others as well. By the way, engage with the San Francisco Air Port. They are designing their new landing system, which will be GPS based and yet again, the Cities that are most effective are not even consulted. This is another data point. That’s not an opinion. The reality is if you design a new landing system, you need to talk to people who are going to be affected with arrivals. Thank you. Chair Wolbach: Mark Millet, to be followed by Beth Ericksen. TRANSCRIPT Page 15 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Mark Millet: Thank you for your time today. I would like to echo everything that has said earlier today but one thing that hasn’t been brought up is the property values in places that have been historically been flight path concentrated. Those are 10 percent-15 percent lower than they are in other neighborhoods and if we allow the FAA to continue flying over our houses -- I’m in Mountain View/Los Altos border. I’ve got San Francisco and San Jose flying simultaneously over my house. If we allow that to happen, people are going to move out and that’s going to reduce the value of the property. If we reduce the value of the property, that effects City budgets permanently. This is not small things. This is 10 percent value on an average $2 million dollar house in Palo Alto, it’s $200,000 of evaluation so this is a lot of economic effect long term on people’s assets, people’s retirements and the City. I also have terrible problems sleeping and woken up at all hours. There is just not justification for what’s happened other than the FAA has chosen to punish us. We’ve all been here for this tremendous effort that everyone put in; Joe Simitian put in to run this whole Round Table in this room, all the complaints, yet a 2-3-week response period has come back with nothing. Thank you so much. Chair Wolbach: Next speaker is Beth Ericksen, to be followed by our final speaker Nelson Ng. Beth Ericksen: Hi, I’m Beth Ericksen and I’m your neighbor from Mountain View. Chair Wolbach: Oh, could you speak into the mic? I want to make sure that we can hear you. You can move it down if you need to or whatever is comfortable for you. Beth Ericksen: I’m Beth Erickesen and I’m short. Ok, I’m your neighbor and a lot of people think that San Antonio divided Mountain View from Palo Alto and that’s not quite true because some of Palo Alto is on the other side of San Antonio like the Toyota dealer. We are kind of like really meshed together so we’re talking about airplane noise so it doesn’t just disappear at the border. Currently, I live in the [Matalowmen] neighborhood, which is right next to Google X. I have Surfer, Bodega, and San Jose Reverse Flow. We have the surf little planes. We have Oceanic. We have San Jose departures going to Japan and so these are some of the same things that you have and so it’s really a regional problem. I see all these Cities spending big bucks to get all their consultants and things like that to fix it in their own little providence but we’re all in this together. I really, really, really would hope that you would reach out to the other Cities. Reach out to Mountain View, even if they don’t reach out to you. I don’t know my City Council TRANSCRIPT Page 16 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 sometimes but we’ve got to solve this together because this is a regional problem. I mean, if we could get these vortex mufflers on the planes and the A320s, that would help significantly. I just came back from my daughter’s graduation and I was embarrassed to realize I was on an A320 and I thought, oh my gosh! Who am I bothering because these go over my house and this whine just drives me nuts. It wakes me up at night and I’m like, I know that part is $3,000 and Congress can’t tell them that they have to put this part on. In certain Cities in Europe, you can’t land a plane unless you have the vortex muffler. As a regional thing, if you get together with other Cities and you’re going to spend money on consultants, pool it. Do it together and don’t reinvent the wheel for each City. Please work together. Thank you. Chair Wolbach: Alright, and it looks like we have our last speaker unless – was there one final speaker card on this topic, we’ll be happy to hear it. I just want to make sure that nobody else is going to put in a speaker card. Everybody set? Great. Nelson Ng? Nelson Ng: Hi. My name is Nelson Ng and I like at 1260 (inaudible) Street for the last 20-years with my family. During the course over the last 20- years, I have noticed that these plane noises have significantly increased in our area. It’s to a point where it’s unbearable. Echoing some of the speakers on what they said. I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night; sometimes 1 or 2 AM in the morning. Then also, as some of you guys know that I also like to practice my Tai Chi meditation in the garden. A lot of times in the morning like 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning, the planes are constantly coming. Not one after another between 5 and 7 AM and this is just not – just really impacting our quality of life and this is not just happening to me but then also, many of the people that I spoke with in Palo Alto. I have not been set involved in the issues on getting all the data but then I have lived through a lot of this pain for the last number of years. I really think that Palo Alto needs to step up and get a see on the table. Discuss with other Cities around us to figure out what is the right course of action that we need to do. This is just not expectable the way we are doing it right now. I tried to make it quick and hopefully, I will listen to you guys on what you guys have planned for us. Chair Wolbach: Thank you very much for your comment and our very last speaker is Juan Alonso. Juan Alonso: Thank you for listening to my comments. My name is Juan Alonso. I’m a neighbor to Stanford in Palo Alto and I’m a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University. I’ve also served at the TRANSCRIPT Page 17 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 FAA Advisory Council and I current service on the FAA Advisory Council for research, engineering and the development for the alphas for Energy and Environment. I’m pretty well informed in all matters related to aviation and environmental impact, aircraft design and all those other things. I’ve heard lots of interesting things today and sometimes you hear facts that are sort of misleading and somewhat incorrect so I warn you against listening to everything that’s here but rather talk to experts who actually know the answer to some of these topics. I think Jennifer Landesmann had mentioned this topic. The first step in solving the situation that’s affecting Palo Alto and neighboring communities is to minimize the noise that is emitted and that reaches the ground wherever it is; whether its Palo Alto or other communities. Once you have chosen the proper routes that are safe, that increase capacity to our airport but at the same time minimize the noise on the environmental impact. You have to equative distribute the noise that remains and there will be some noise that actually remains so don’t be fooled into believing that there’s an actual solution that allows us to fly in and out of the San Francisco airport with zero noise to of the neighboring communities. That’s not engineering and physically feasible today but the equative distribution of the noise is something that should be achieved and no single communities – not a single community or parts of a single community should burden or should shoulder the entire burden of having the entire noise footprint. The FAA has to burden do discovered new methods and new approaches that in addition to increasing safety and minimizing fuel burn, which typically their mandate, decrease the noise over the neighboring communities. Particulate matter is also a concern that some people have mentioned. Now with that said, we have no choice but to work with the FAA because ultimately, they are going to be the ones implementing the solutions that may benefit our community. I am sorry if I go over time but the … Chair Wolbach: You still have about a minute left. Juan Alonso: Ok. Working with the FAA is really critical so you have to engage on all levels. Round Tables, SFO, FAA, political and community activism in order to keep the pressure on the FAA in order to do the right thing. It is important that we not only as Palo Altons work with the FAA but also with the neighboring communities because the FAA will never come back and implement a different that satisfies Palo Alto but makes the same issue arise in a different community and they are back to square zero. They said it very clearly and it’s not something that they are going to be doing. We have to work with the other communities to come up with not a local solution but a regional solution that is satisfactory to all. Everybody will have to shoulder a little bit of pain but certainly, the situation can be improved for TRANSCRIPT Page 18 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 many of the communities that have the large burden at the moment. Then, I think last – sorry. Chair Wolbach: You can go ahead and finish your last statement. Juan Alonso: If you don’t mind, just 30 more seconds. Last but not least, I think you can see that the problem is actually real. You know, we may have had a number of airplanes flying over Palo Alto in the past. Their routes were much more dispersed such that no small section of the population of Palo Alto was being impacted disproportionality. The problem is very real. The citizens of Palo Alto obviously are voting with their feet by coming here to let you know that this is a very important issue. I do agree with some of the speakers that even though the wheels of government move very slowly and I’m talking about the FAA now. You have the ability through various different means to pressure in various different points in order to achieve some results more quickly. I do think that ensuring that the City of Palo Alto is properly advised by experts who know about these things is a very important issue and I encourage you to make sure that you do input from these sources. Thank you very much. Chair Wolbach: Thank you for your comments and thank you, everybody, who came to speak. All those opinions that you’ve shared, I think are well heard and many points well taken and so we’ll try and make sure that all of those thoughts and opinions are respected and taken into consideration. I’ll turn now to Staff and if you have a presentation or any introduction beyond that for… Mr. Keene: Thank you, Mr. Chair. No, the Staff does not have a formal presentation. I would just if – with your indulgence, just restate a couple of things. So, first of all, really thanks to everybody who came out tonight. This item really came onto the Committee’s agenda because Council Members asked me to place it on the Policy and Services Committee agenda for the express purpose of not losing site of all of the work and the conversations and the concerns that have been expressed and building up in the community over the past two, three years. Not to let the Select Committee’s work just sort of fade into the background. Even though we’ve been in this kind of awkward interregnum here between the Select Committee finishing its report and it is being sent off to the FAA and Washington and where are things. I do think that your desire to – not in a token sense at all but to reaffirm the City’s commitment and the Council’s commitment to staying focused on this issue, to restate the City’s position and obviously, you’ve heard enough comments that both say that we’re – no pun intended, all over the map a little bit in some our recommendations. I guess we should have a TRANSCRIPT Page 19 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Next Gen. strategy for our own positions that focus them a little bit more clearly; no pun intended there either. To be effective ultimately, we’re going to have to be as clear as possible and that’s one of the things that you wanted to accomplish. You also wanted to have the opportunity to make it clear that our Council very much understands that this is a regional issue and we have to work collaboratively with others. That the City’s positions are not and has never been about pushing everything away from Palo Alto. I just would lastly like to say that a number of things that people said were really great. I thought that the handout that you got was very helpful. I thought that the last speaker’s points – some of the things that were sort of the most simply stated, I think are guideposts that we ought to use as we revisit this with both the Committee and the Council. I mean about just being clear, minimize the noise, equitably distribute the noise, acknowledge that the problem is real and that the – being realistic about the role of the FAA and that we’ve got to work with the FAA. I would say we’re here to listen to the Committee. To what extent that you wanted to sharpen or refine any of the position points that the City has. Some of that I think you could do tonight. Others I would think you need to direct us to take some of the comments and find a way to come back. I know that there are recommendations about getting some of this done really before Council goes on break and I think that that’s important but I don’t think we should lose sight of the fact that almost no matter what we do, once the FAA report comes out, we’re going to be responding to that report and positioning and looking at our or reposition our positions and stuff to be most effective. Those are our comments and I look forward to at least your conversation and then where you want to go from here tonight. Chair Wolbach: Thank you, City Manager for that. Before I turn it over to my Colleagues on the Committee, I just wanted to offer a couple of framing thoughts about this. Pick up on what the City Manager has just said. Several of us on Council did say that we really want to see this some to the Policy and Services Committee because there’s been this holding pattern. Again, sorry for another pun but there’s been this waiting and what’s going on? Where a lot of people in the community of Palo Alto and in other communities haven’t really seen clarity about what is the City’s position and in that vacuum, some people are concerned about is the City still being proactive on this issue? Is the City still listening to us and in neighboring Cities, there’s also a perception often and I think we’ve heard some of it tonight, that Palo Alto is interested in taking our problem and simply shifting its other communities. Which I – I agree with the City Manager that I don’t think that’s ever been our position and so for our own residents and for residents and City leaders and neighboring communities, we felt that it was very important to be clear in the context of the ongoing work in light of the reports from the Round Table and also from the Selection Committee. To be TRANSCRIPT Page 20 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 clear about what are position is so that’s very transparent and very open and that there’s not just a vacuum with which we – where we can speculate about where does Palo Alto stand. We felt that that was important so I hope that that’s part of what we really try to clarify tonight. Is where is the City’s position in the current context? I think we can maybe talk about a few audiences that we want to be clear too. As I just mentioned, one is our own residents, another is neighboring communities, and also our representatives. Specifically, our representative Anna Eshoo and the FAA itself and so I hope that over the course of our discussion tonight we can work as a Committee and working with Staff to clarify what next steps that we want to take as a city and what we want to recommend to the Council for next steps to take as a City to communicate effectively with the residents, neighboring Cities, Representative Eshoo and with the FAA. With that, I’ll turn it over to my colleagues if they want to kick off the conversation about where we should go. Council Member Kou: My understanding is that when you and – Chair, as well as Council – Vice Mayor and Council Member Fine, went to Washington, can you – you met with the FAA and it would be really nice to hear what came out from that and what you can bring home so that we – so the audience – I mean our citizens here are aware. Also, I see in the audience San Francisco air port’s noise complaint manager. I was wondering if he was supposed to speak also today? Was that something that was – I read it in here somewhere. Khashayar Alaee, Management Analyst: We invited Burt and thank you so much for coming but he is only here to respond to Council questions and concerns. Council Member Kou: So, can we first hear from you and then maybe I will have some other questions. Chair Wolbach: Sure. I’ll mention a couple things about our trip to Washington. As Lydia Kou just pointed out that several of us from the City, with Staff, our paid lobbyist for the City and several of us on Council went to Washington in March. We sat down with the FAA who – I will say that the members of the FAA that we met with were quite generous with their time on a snowy day in D.C. They came in even when most people in the office were not there because of the snow. What we heard from them was that they are working on responding to both the SFO Round Table recommendations and they are also working on responding to the regional Select Committee recommendations. They’ve taken the combined 108 recommendations from those two bodies and they are preparing a report. TRANSCRIPT Page 21 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Hopefully, we will have that report, they said, by the summer. Now it’s looking like we might have it within the next few weeks. Originally, we were hoping to have it some time ago but at least we heard that they are working on it. As it was mentioned early, the gears of government do sometimes work slowly. They also mentioned a couple of other things, that they are creating kind of a working group within the FAA to discuss how to deal with airplane noise differently. How do deal with noise differently because there hasn’t really been a modernization of how they deal with noise in a very long time and we’ve seen the results of that? of course, one of the recommendations from the Select Committee was to really change the process by which noise is evaluated by the FAA because the current system is really inadequate. So those where a couple of the thing that we heard from the FAA so they said basically, that we’re working on it but of course, as a community and as a region and as we heard from Mr. Alonso, we need to continue to apply pressure and provide clarity. Council Member Kou: Thank you so much. So, I totally agree that – I think one of the first things that we really should be looking at is creating that baseline for what is our noise – actual noise that we’re experiencing over here. I attended a San Francisco Round Table meeting as a liaison a couple of months ago and it really kind of showed how outside we are and a lot of the noise has been diverted and the flights have been diverted for whatever reason it is. It was just a little bit eye opening and I think throughout this time that I’ve been talking to a lot of the citizens and the residents here in Palo Alto, I hear you. I know noise is a big factor and I’ve been experiencing myself now with my windows open at night when I go to sleep but I think the thing that was most apparent to me was when I met a family and the family was just so beaten down by the noise. Just so distraught and just so distressed and it was really hard to even talk to them knowing that they are going through this. I see it tonight here in some of your faces, whether you’re a neighbor or you’re a resident over here. I see it in all of it so I think that we really have to come up with some concrete ideas in moving forward and not to just sit back. I realize that we are all waiting for the FAA to come back with their Select Committee recommendations but I think that we still need to keep on pushing and ensure that they are hearing us. That we are waiting and we can’t just be silent and wait for them to come back when they are ready to. I do like some of the suggestions, especially the one about that we need to have experts in this because as a City, we do not have the experts on our Staff in order to push forth our recommendations. I would really like to see that we do have the experts and I would really like to have a legal advice on this to that is in the field. So, they can recommend to us what we need to put forth. I would like for Staff to also explore reaching out to Mountain View and the Cities surrounding us to understanding and recognizing and acknowledging that we’re working on this as a region. So, TRANSCRIPT Page 22 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 we’re not trying to shift noise to somebody else but we’re asking for equitable distribution. More so, noise is not just the only factor. There are also admissions so I think as a responsibility, the FAA also needs to take that into consideration and measure our – the emissions from the air crafts that go through our City. You know, I know a lot of you have been using your apps to complain and you know, what came out at me as the last San Francisco Round Table meeting was that it seemed to appear at night time, we don’t have that many flights that go through because there are not that many complaints but really, I’ve to try to do this at night and it means that I have to wake up at 12, 1, 1:30, 2:30, in order to go find my phone because you won’t get me. It’s not right next to me, it’s somewhere else in another room. I’m not going to get up and get out and go and do a click on my phone in order to register a complaint. I really make to make sure that San Francisco under FAA recognize that this is not saying that we don’t have complaints. We do but it’s just in the middle of the night and we’re just trying to get back to sleep. You know, I’ll hold off with the rest for now. Chair Wolbach: Tom? Council Member DuBois: Yeah, so as many speakers stated, I mean the noise started several years ago. I think it was 2-years ago that Policy and Services really started the City’s involvement by recommending that we hire a consultant and start to analyze the issue. I do believe that we’ve seen a huge increase in noise with Next Gen. I am sorry to say that we haven’t seen an improvement yet. I know it’s taking a long time but I do hope that we are making progress with the Select Committee. Do we have any idea – have we heard anything about when we expect a response? Mr. Keene: I think that some of the speakers acknowledge this right off and I mean I would say that it’s actually the last Packet Page in your Packet; 118. Which is really the – I guess it’s sort of a press release from Congress Women Eshoo, that the draft FAA report is out internally and as it says, their notice that the FAA will send their completed document to DOT within a month for fine review and authorization. Then, when does it come out? I mean, you know to be honest with you, other people here would know better than we are on how much of a black box the DOT process is and when that really means it but I do think it says that we should be getting our ducks in a row. To be prepared to not only look at but to respond or engage whatever experts we need to in responding to that report. So, it sounds like sometime this summer to fall. Council Member DuBois: Yeah and is Staff recommending that something go to Council before that report comes out or do we wait? TRANSCRIPT Page 23 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Mr. Keene: I don’t want to be precipitate but I did have a couple recommendations. They were sort of statements of the Staff report a little bit based on the public comment tonight and if I could just throw those out to you and I think that they could be useful. Trying to be practical also about the process issues related to getting to the Council and those sorts of things so I think that they need to be realistic. A couple of things is one is that I think the main one is that you should entrust us and if you add to it, to take the comments that we heard today. I think that they are clearly aligned enough that we could sort of meld with some of the statements that we put in the Staff report. Sort of correct and clarify and where appropriate, reaffirm the Cities positions and our posture towards this goal of minimizing noise and equability distributing the impacts. I do think that we could get that to the Council without coming back to the Committee in this time frame. Then the Council could have the chance to sort of act on that at that meeting. I would also suggest that we pursue the recommendation of – and the Council should endorse an assertive and active effort to get a seat on the SFO Round Table and be – to advocate a push for getting a seat on the AD HAC Committee, if and when that is formed. Finally, this issue of the noise monitoring, we’ve certainly have gotten feedback that we could get temporary noise monitoring. I know that this is something that Council Member Kou asked us specifically about after one of your recent meetings at, I think the SFO Round Table. Our sense is the real important thing is to sort of permanent monitoring definition because it sounds like that’s the only approach that really directly connects to the FAA or the airport actually making adjustments based upon the data. I’m sort of outside of my area of expertise but my sense of that is really saying it. We could get some temporary monitors but they're – the value of that is diluted in relation to permanent monitors. I think Mary Jo’s comment were really good in that we have the data. Let’s make a strong push to advocate that we get the kind of monitoring that actually feeds into the potential for having recommended changes if we’ve got, as she said, sixty percent. Then lastly, I think we just need to share with the Council that we need to be ready for the FAA’s response and I would say this, that -- and I don’t mean to be disagreeable about this. I don’t think that more data at the moment is necessary. What’s necessary is clarifying and aligning our position clearly to realize that this is a communication and has a campaign aspect and there’s a political element to this in a big way and that’s why the issues of outreach and collaboration. Lastly, I would suggest that while we had some degree of inter-jurisdictional communication and information sharing, the Council is well aware of the success we had with the North County collation on the Measure B funding of us actively working together at both the elected and City Manager level of trying to align our positions as it related to funding. It seems to me that we should be going to Council and talking directly about how we work closely at that level and also with the right other jurisdictions because if it’s -- if we’re TRANSCRIPT Page 24 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 in a fragmented and divide and conquer kind of environment – I’m from Washington D.C originally. I mean, I grew up in this whole environment. This is the easiest way to just leave the status quo so we’ve got to make a shift there I think on that level to ultimately be effective. It’s not just being smart and just having data in and of itself, I don’t think is going to get us where we need to go all the way. Council Member DuBois: The Staff report said that there are some concerns about noise monitor effectiveness so what are those concerns? Mr. Keene: I think we can speak to it but I don’t know if this is something that our friend from SFO can be a little more literate on. I don’t mean to put him on the spot but… Chair Wolbach: I’d be happy to hear from the representative from SFO. If you have anything to add. Burt Ganoung, SFO Aircraft Noise Abatement Manager: Good Evening. My name is Burt Ganoung. I am the Aircraft Noise Abatement Manager for San Francisco Airport. Your question, please? Council Member DuBois: The question was that the Staff report indicated that there were some concerns about installing noise monitors. I don’t know if it was – what are those concerns? Mr. Ganoung: Well, some of the questions I noted in the Staff report ranged from noise metrics, all the way to when, how many, what? We did agree with the Select Committee to preemptive implantation monitoring for them – for the FAA. Basically, we do the monitoring and then turn the data over to the FAA and the citizens. As far as the program that we do, we typically – on areas outside of the noise contour, which is typically the local airport (inaudible) and that’s what the FAA has mandated our job be. Monitor the local airport evidence. Well, gosh, with Surfer, it suddenly became 60 odd miles away; almost 80. We did do a report for them and I brought a couple of them. I’ll leave them with you so we have both the report, as well as a frequently asks questions regarding noise monitoring. The – it was a portable program. We went down there for two weeks which under the State of California Title 21 Noise Monitoring Standards, is adequate. If you want to do it for what they call permanent portable, you can go once a quarter. The same period each time and you lay out the monitor in the same location, record the data and report it. You can actually come up with an annual CNEL or Community Noise Equivalent Level and it’s an average noise level. Similar to the FAA Standard of Day/Night Level or DNL, which is used all over the TRANSCRIPT Page 25 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 United States. California had to be a little bit different. The typical for the day time between 7 AM to 7 PM in California is the straight value of the noise. Between 7 PM and 10 PM, there’s a five-decibel penalty to it and then at night, there’s a ten-decibel penalty so… Council Member DuBois: Is that still an average or is that a… Mr. Ganoung: It is an average but what you’re doing is you’re adding a plentily because those are the times where people are getting home, quieting down, getting ready to go to sleep. California added in that evening component. The day/night level is 7-10 and then 10-7, without the evening component. Council Member DuBois: So, it’s averaged over like the entire night, even though if there are one or two peak flights that are very noisy, they will average out? Mr. Ganoung: Well, yes and no. You can also have a loud flight at night that will drive your noise contour or drive your average up due to the ten-time penalty to it. As far as the quarterly monitoring which I was speaking about, if you do it once a quarter in the same location in the same period, then you do it four times a year. It’s considered to be an average, a CNEL acceptable to the State of California. Council Member DuBois: And what’s – is there an advantage to a permanent monitor versus this sampling? Mr. Ganoung: They’re costly. Doing a portable program is not near as costly and I can speak with the director but I believe he would back me on that we would be willing to do that with the City of Palo Alto. We would have to again, schedule it and work it into the program to do this. Council Member DuBois: But what is the benefit of a permanent monitor? Does it give different numbers? Mr. Ganoung: No. Well, you may have slightly different numbers and I say slightly. The period – if we monitored during say Reverse Flow, we’d be looking at a different time period. We also – as the data comes from SFO, if it was fed to us, we would be reporting on SFO noise as a primary aircraft source. Others would be secondary so San Jose, Palo Alto, Oakland airports would be second noise sources; not the primary. All of our reports focus typically on primary aircraft noise which is SFO. TRANSCRIPT Page 26 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Council Member DuBois: Thanks for answering all these questions. You said your noise abatement area is right around the airport? Mr. Ganoung: It typically is. I don’t know if you have seen the San Francisco airport noise contour. A rough description of it is it’s somewhat of an upside- down angle, with the head being right there at 101, the wings going out through the gap towards the west, and then towards Foster City and then the skirt being over the bay. It’s A-weighted decibel contour. The A- weighted decibels are what the human ear is – it's calibrated to what the human ear hears. Council Member DuBois: But with the concentration over the Menlo Low Way Point, has there been any discussion about including Way Points as part of the abatement areas, I guess? Mr. Ganoung: As far as the abatement area goes, no. It’s the noise contour right around the airport as opposed mitigated over 15,000 homes nearby. As far as what noise levels down here are, we have monitored down here as part of the Oceanic Tailored Arrival Program and the noise levels were below 65 decibels, which is the threshold for mitigation. Council Member DuBois: Right and so the temporary monitoring, is there a cost to the City to do that? Mr. Ganoung: I believe and I can’t speak solely without the airport directors backing but my belief that definitely on the one time, which we agree to do for Santa Clara – for Santa Cruz and Palo Alto at the same time many years ago, we would do it gratis. As far as an ongoing program, we will talk to the director and see what his recommendations are. Council Member DuBois: Is there any – last question on the monitoring. Are there any changes in terms of the types of monitors? I mean they are all state of the art? Mr. Ganoung: Yes, we’re actually in process of purchasing new ones right now but they are state of the art. Council Member DuBois: Ok, thank you. Mr. Ganoung: Sure. TRANSCRIPT Page 27 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Council Member DuBois: I – you know, so there is a question about are we going to hit the average threshold and I mean, having data would be good. I’d be interested and if there is a way for us to capture peak noise as well as average. The other thing that I really think we should discuss is the pros and cons of joining the SFO Round Table. You know, we would be one member. I’m not sure – I certainly think the AD HAC Committee makes sense but I’m not sure about the Round Table itself. I don’t know if Staff know but I mean, the SFO Round Table doesn’t really – does it have any actual input into the FAA itself or is it just about operations around the airport? Mr. Alaee: They do FAA stuff. They attend the meetings as well as SFO Round Table – SFO noise abatement stuff as well. Certainly, the FAA gives more weight to the Round Table than any non-existing group. Council Member DuBois: But if we formed this new – what’s it called? The Ad hoc group, I mean would that essentially be an equivalent – more relevant to us? Mr. Alaee: I don’t think it would be equivalent – similar to the SFO Round Table. I think there are rules and statutes that set up round tables for airports but the Ad hoc Committee proposal by the Select Committee is different than a permanent ongoing recommendation that the Select Committee made. There were two recommendations that the Select Committee made. That secondary one, the perinate recommendation, could be equivalent to the Round Table based on what the – how the three congressional representatives from that and in relation with SFO and the FAA. Council Member DuBois: Do you guys see any cons to joining the SFO Round Table? Mr. Alaee: I mean I think the only con is – well, Congress Women Eshoo noted too is that we would be the only City from Santa Clara County on the Round Table and so I think we should just consider that as you peruse conversations with the Round Table. Mr. Keene: Well, I think that’s an obstacle but I think your question is more if we were able to participate, are there cons? My basic thinking is that it’s better to be inside the tent than outside the tent but the one concern that I would have is that in the near term, would the Ad hoc Committee, for example, have more influence or effectiveness in the next stage of the decision making. Do we diminish our opportunities say to be part of that if we pursued the SFO Round Table? I have no – I don’t know about that but TRANSCRIPT Page 28 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 there’s somebody who always says well, gosh, we made an acceptation and we put you on the SFO Round Table. Now you want to be on AD HAC Committee. What’s going on? So, I do think that we want to assess what would be most effective and not diminish our voice. Council Member DuBois: Yeah, I think that’s part of my concern is if the Ad hoc Committees the next step, let’s focus on that. I guess I also have a little bit of a concern that if we’re part of the SFO Round Table we make our points but we’re also in the minority and then they say well, these are the decisions of the Round Table and Palo Alto is part of that. Have we kind of compromised ourselves? I do think we need to wait for the response but I agree with several of the speakers that say that we need to be ready to take a more aggressive stance. I think we tried working within the system and we’ve given it some time. Other Cities like Newport Beach and Phoenix have sued and gotten changes so I do think that we need to be ready to ramp it up and kind of depending on which way the recommendations come out. I think we need to be ready to ramp up the pressure. For myself, I definitely agree with some of the City Manager’s recommendations that we take some of these public comments to clarify our position and posture. I think personal I would recommend that we focus on the Ad hoc Committee for now. I would like to hear more of an expert opinion on the noise monitoring and maybe we do an initial monitoring similar to, I guess what Santa Cruz did but whether – you know, we should have some kind of ongoing program and what that means for us. Then the last thing I think is really again, to be working to be prepared to respond to the Select Committee and have some options and maybe bring those options to Council. (Inaudible) of, if it goes this way we should do this and if it goes that way, we should do this. Thanks. Chair Wolbach: I’ve got a whole lot and comments as well before the conversation wraps up but Lydia, if you had more that you wanted to add? Council Member Kou: Just a couple more. Chair Wolbach: Yeah, please. Absolutely. It’s a conversation so we can go back and forth. Council Member Kou: Thanks. I tend to – I wanted to find out from Burt if possibly, that the San Francisco contour – the San Francisco airport contour, did it expand as the flight routes expanded further? Mr. Ganoung: Right now, the noise contour we evaluate it quarterly and it’s pretty much staying the same. As louder, noisier aircraft are traded out and TRANSCRIPT Page 29 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 we have more frequent aircraft, there is a balance and that’s what this average does. It looks at the amount of aircraft, how heavy they are, how far they are going and it balances the whole thing out. So, right now the noise contour is pretty much staying where it’s been. Little ebbs and flows here and there but nothing drastic. We’re looking for 1.5 DB (decibels) change in the local area, at which point we would need to go back through and redo our noise contour. Right now, we haven’t seen that. It’s just been little ebbs and flows but nothing serious. We’ve been analyzing this since 1983 and that was our largest and greatest contour to date and since then it shrunk. Council Member Kou: The contour as shrunk? Mr. Ganoung: Yes, since 1983. Obviously, in 1983 we had the older, louder stage two aircraft; 747 200, 737 200, 727s, those aircraft don’t operate here anymore. In fact, United is actually phasing out their 747s by the end of this year. All those loud aircraft – really loud aircraft are going away. Many aircraft operators have phased out 747 already in favor of aircraft like the newer Boeing 787, the triple 7s, and things like that. Council Member Kou: So, the louder aircraft have gone away. However, the aircraft used now are flying slightly lower right or a lot lower so doesn’t that balance out in noise equivalence? Mr. Ganoung: I’m not going to say a lot lower. Just a little bit lower, yes. In relation to what we were able to achieve. You have to consider the previous visual approach altitude was requested at 5,000-feet. Right now, they are under instrument approach and we’re doing that at approximately 4,000- feet. Council Member Kou: I think – yeah, I think that’s why we kind of need the monitors. In order to kind of really determine that because the way that I look at it, it doesn’t balance out for me but I really appreciate the explanation Burt. Thank you so much. You know, I think also for us, we’re kind of at a – for the City of Palo Alto as well as Mountain View and Los Altos, we’re kind of at the border of San Mateo and I think being at the boundary and also – so experiencing San Francisco flow, as well as San Jose reverse flow, I think we’re kind of in an impact point and I think as these border Cities, we really need to be included in discussions and in the know with San Francisco’s Round Table, as well as the Ad hoc when we do have it. Yes, I can agree with Council Member Tom – DuBois about that we have to weigh our chances of getting into Ad hoc but I’ve also see the Select Committee having their members in there – in the San Francisco Round TRANSCRIPT Page 30 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Table too. I think it’s a matter of advocacy and also insisting on being on something or having maybe more of the residences and citizens right into the Congress folks to get us in there. You know I’m reading this staff report and the letter that was sent from the San Francisco Round Table on Page 69. It really does not address Palo Alto what so ever so we need a representative on these teams over here in order to have our voice heard. Given this shot on the screen, it’s quite huge, you know where it covers almost the entire Palo Alto. You know we can pane our windows and completely insulate our houses but like many of the members said, you can’t even enjoy your backyard so I don’t think that is something that we can do. I do agree with some of the recommendations on Page 3 but when I – when it’s time, if I might add some more for consideration, I would really appreciate it. Thank you. Chair Wolbach: Absolutely. So, I will add some more of my own thoughts after having heard from my colleagues and then we’ll go to motions. I do want to really emphasize that I think it’s really important that we do communicate with neighboring Cities and collaborate with neighboring Cities. I forgot to mention early when we were at the table – literally at the table with senior people who direct air space for the FAA. The Mayor of Menlo Park was right there with us. Working collaboratively, sharing our message, supporting each other and I hope that as we continue this discussion, that we can do the same with Mountain View and with Sunnyvale and who knows if we are really lucky maybe even Santa Cruz and other cities in the area. This really is about finding an equitable and fair solution. There clearly has been a change over the last few years. What we experience here in Palo Alto and some other communities, not just in our area but around the country, the experiences have changed for residents around the country as result of Next Gen. It’s been particularly acute in Palo Alto but we’re certainly not alone and sharing that experience and sharing our strategy – our political strategy with our neighbors. As the City Manager mentioned, we’ve worked very closely with our neighbors on other issues. Such as transportation funding and we worked very closely with a couple other neighbors on flooding issues. We do have pretty good working collaborations ongoing for many years with neighboring cities on many issues and there’s no reason this can’t be the same. This is why we asked for this meeting to start moving in that direction because there has been – as I mentioned before, there’s been kind of this vacuum and there has been some – even organizing -- community organizing in other communities. I have a friend who lives in Mountain View where somebody knocks on her door and say sign this petition to oppose what Palo Alto is trying to do and that misrepresented what Palo Alto is trying to do. That’s happened I heard in a couple different communities and I think it’s important – I’ve heard even from counterparts in other Cities that they don’t want to just have Palo Alto’s nimby’s fighting TRANSCRIPT Page 31 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 their nimby’s and I think that was a really unfortunate depiction of the issue that we are facing as a region together. Only as a region, as we’ve heard residents from Palo Alto and Mountain View and the experts and Staff say that only working collaboratively as a region, can we share our voices and get the FAA to listen. So, again, the question is how do we do that? Given the timeline that we’re at, getting a letter to the FAA before they write their next report is probably not going to happen. They probably have already done most of it. It’s supposed to be coming out in the next couple of weeks so I was hoping that we would be able to get that in but now that we – since we’ve scheduled this meeting, we’ve or at least internally, we’ve tried to get this on the books and talked about it at our last meeting of this Committee. We’ve heard that report might be coming to us pretty soon. I don’t think it’s ever too late to tell our residences to tell neighboring cities and to tell Anna Eshoo that hears where we stand as a City right now. Here are our priorities, here are how our priorities work with your priorities and let’s really team up. I think that’s the goal. I do think that the recommendation that we heard from some people in the community and also from Staff about – I want to make sure that I’m not miss representing of what Staff suggested but said that we should be ready, right? What we can at least do is clarify our positions. Even if we do send something to the FAA, it might not be influential in the report that they are working on right now but just say hey FAA, thanks for listening to us. Thanks for meeting with us in March. We’re still engaged. You’ve said that you’re going to engage with the community again. You’re going to do more community engagement after your report. Here’s a preview of where we stand. It’s not some radical departure from where we’ve been in the past and that can give them kind of a heads up that we’re still trying to be at the table with them directly Then when the report does come out from the FAA, I think that will set us up for continuing conversations with the FAA. I do think that we should recommend to the Council really aggressive but – aggressively and in the sense of time commitment, not in the sense of tone, aggressively reaching out to our neighboring Cities to collaborate positively. That can be done at the Staff level, at the Mayor level and possible Council Member level as well because I think that the competition between Cities really just holds us all back from effectively advocating to the FAA. On the question of noise monitoring, I am open to that. I’m still kind of on the fence about what the best way to move forward with that and on the question of where we should try and get a see on the table. I think the answer is always. Always try to have a seat at the table. You can be on multiple Committees but the City Manager’s point is noted that essentially, we might – we don’t want to blow our political capital trying to get on the SFO Round Table and then when an Ad hoc or permanent Committee is created, have SFO say well, we put you on the Round Table so we don’t want to put you on this new one. I think we should be thoughtful about that. Maybe the way to approach that is to say look, we TRANSCRIPT Page 32 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 want to be on the Round Table because we don’t know if these other Committees are going to be created. It’s a recommendation but that doesn’t mean they will happen. We don’t know when they are going to happen. We can say look, we want to be on those future Committees but in the meantime, we think we deserve a spot on the SFO Round Table. Whether it’s the Ad hoc Committee, the permanent entity, which is incredibly vague or as it’s also been discussed Reverse Flow into AJC discussion. That’s another place where we should try to have a seat at the table but again, I think doing the outreach now – so going to City Council, having City Council authorize the City Manager to do that outreach and the Mayor to do that outreach to neighboring Cities now, will really help us set that up. We don’t want to end up where FAA report comes out and then we’re scrambling to figure out what to do. I think that’s kind of – that’s where we should really focus is getting ready for that FAA report and the way to do that is to get City Staff, City Council, our residences and neighboring Cities all on the same page as much as possible. I don’t know if either of my colleagues wanted to take a hand at starting a motion. I’m sure we might have a couple amendments or changes. Anyone want to give it a shot? Mr. Keene: Mr. Chair, if I might make a request to the Committee is perhaps the motion formation could be a little more informal than it is when we are with the large body of the Council. I think the important thing is that we get the general directive so that we can get a Staff report back on the Council’s agenda before you go on break and knowing that you will, at the Council meeting, make some refinements and corrections anyway. Chair Wolbach: I think that’s reasonable and acceptable but I’ll… Council Member DuBois: So, I guess I’ll – I kind of outlined my Motion already but I’ll just restate it, which would be for Staff to take public comments tonight to clarify the City’s position and posture. Second, to recommend that Council endorses and advocate for a seat on the Ad hoc Committee and any perinate entity actions that will impact Palo Alto and communicate that interest to Representative Eshoo. The third one would be to get an expert opinion on the noise monitoring strategy and make a recommendation to Council. The fourth one would probably be some discussion but I would say reach out to Portola Valley, Woodside, Menlo Park, Mountain View and Los Altos about a regional position through the City Managers and elected officials. Then the last point would be prepared to respond to the Select Committee report. MOTION: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Chair Wolbach to recommend the following: TRANSCRIPT Page 33 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 A. Staff take the comments made tonight into account and reaffirm the City’s positions to reduce aircraft noise over the skies of Palo Alto; and B. Endorse and advocate a seat on the Select Committee's proposed Ad- Hoc Committee, SFO’s Community Roundtable and any new permanent entity created to address aircraft noise and communicate that interest to; and C. Get an expert opinion on aircraft noise and retain an attorney that specializes in aviation; and D. Reach out to neighboring communities on a regional position; and E. Be prepared to respond to the FAA report in the form of legal or professional representation; and F. Focus on minimizing noise, the equitable dispersion of noise and improved technology and methods for reducing noise; and G. Ask FAA to consider emissions from aircraft Chair Wolbach: I’ll second that. Would you – first thing off the top of my head before I forget but would you be willing to add Sunnyvale and East Palo Alto that list of cities and then leave it open ended if there are other cities. Council Member DuBois: Yeah, I guess we could leave it open for Staff but the point is not to be too broad and you know, the ones really impacted by the Menlo Way Point I think are the ones that we want to include. Chair Wolbach: The reason why I mentioned those two is that we have a very close relationship with East Palo Alto and also, I think that the local diplomacy with Sunnyvale is going to be really critical because I think that’s where a lot of the tension may exist right now. So, the outreach there is going to be really important in order to come to a regional consensus. Council Member DuBois: Why don’t we just say that Staff will come back with a list of cities. Mr. Keene: So, I’m very supportive of the Motion with one disqualification that really deals with the anticipation of the FAA report. (Inaudible) say one TRANSCRIPT Page 34 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 that might be a little bit complicated for us to figure out and two, it might not be in our best interest to articulate in advance what – I mean, I just think we just need to think about that. Council Member DuBois: So, just to clarify. I think what I mean by being prepared to respond is if we need to hire any consultants… Mr. Keene: Ok, thank you. Alright. Council Member DuBois: …or things, have those lined up. Mr. Keene: Ok, thank you. That’s fine. Chair Wolbach: I had a couple more thoughts as well but Lydia, if you would like to – I’ll differ to you first. Council Member Kou: Thank you. If I might also add that we do want to put on the motion that we have – we engage some aviation consultant expert, as well as a – retain an attorney that specializes in aviation. So, we would need to have a budget line item in there since I think it was very appropriate when the City Manager said that we’re not here with knowing how to… Council Member DuBois: Do we already have those? Do we have an existing contract? Mr. Alaee: We do still have an existing contract with our consultants for ATAG & Associates. There’s money left in that contract and we could repurpose those funds as well to bring on another small contract if we wanted a different noise consultant. Then we would need to look at the legal outside Council. Mr. Keene: (Inaudible) Mr. Alaee: We do have a contract with Peter [Kursh] as well. Council Member Kou: You do? Mr. Alaee: Yeah. TRANSCRIPT Page 35 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Council Member Kou: Super, thank you. I lost my train of thought. That was very exciting news so thank you so much. Let me see here. I think that was my main point. Thank you. Chair Wolbach: I guess I am open to whether it needs to go into the Motion in an official way but I did want to clarify a couple of things that I think we should emphasize as priorities, right? I think it was stated by the City Manager earlier, stated by community members from both Palo Alto and Mountain View and our resident expert from Stanford that we should really focus on minimizing noise, equitable dispersion of noise, improving technology and fly methods to minimize the noise in general because this will have a benefit, not just of Palo Alto but for other cities in the region. Then in particular, that we’ll be looking for those priorities to be highlighted in the FAA report and if they are not, we’ll be ready to say here’s what we think was underplayed or missed in the FAA’s report. As well as things like creating an Ad hoc and/or an ongoing entity, recognizing that on the ground noise matters, even if it’s outside of the immediate vicinity of an airport. Clarifying that noise is a concern under 7,000-feet but that over 7,000-feet or at whatever – have some objective standard. At what elevation or – combined with what flight methods does noise become a problem so that we can – rather than rely on opinion, we can have some objective standard. We can say at this altitude, this kind of airplane hitting its air brakes is going to create a noise impact because that’s not, in my understanding, something the FAA really has as clear standards right now outside of the immediate vicinity of an airport. I think we should also clarify that night is from 10 PM to 7 AM. We should encourage the FAA to define noise shifting and I do think that we should encourage the FAA to study – so that we can have an objective third party analysis because they have been controversial, of alternative Way Points such as Faith or DUMBA. So, we can have clarity about what the impacts would be. I don’t know if all those things need to be in the motion but I think they’ve been heard by City Staff. City Staff has received verbal and written comments from the public and I know you are looking at those. So, I guess – I think that it was in the motion – let me just double check Tom, that you had in the motion to incorporate public input received in writing and verbally this evening and ongoing communication with resident experts and our consultants as we develop this before it comes back to Council. I would also add, of course, weighing in with your – checking in with our lobbyist in Washington D.C as well. Mr. Keene: Alright, that’s enough. Our agenda is packed to the end of June. It’s going to be a shoe horn to get this in there and I’m sure you’ll discuss this for a while at the Council meeting itself. TRANSCRIPT Page 36 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Chair Wolbach: I think so and Lydia, I wanted to hear what else that you wanted to say. Council Member Kou: I just wanted to add in one more thing which I had lost a thought on. Emissions, the particulates, can we add that into it for FAA to consider along with the noise. What are the emissions that come out from flights going overhead? Also, I know we still have that contract with Fray Tag but is there any way to also consult with the Portola Valley person or the Portola Valley’s consultant as well? Just so that we’re all talking together. All the consultants are consulting and coming up with the correct thing to push forth. Thank you so much. Chair Wolbach: I actually just want to mention about the particulate matter. This is something that I am actually really, really, concerned about but I’m also sensitive to how we message that and here’s my concern. My concern is that if we’re not careful about how we message that, we could be accused of moving the goal posts or mission drift or some other metaphorical dismissal, right? I don’t want the FAA – when they hear from us each time to say oh, Palo Alto’s got some other new thing and then roll their eyes at us. I want to make sure that as we raise additional issues, that we can be clear that this is a separate issue. There is a nexus because it does relate to flight paths and it does relate to how much fuel burn that you are doing and things like that but I do want to make sure that we’re careful to say that this a distinct issue from airplane noise. Anything else to add on to the Christmas tree? Ok, I think that’s pretty good direction for Staff and we’ll look forward to it coming to Council. Mr. Keene: Did you vote on that? Chair Wolbach: And let’s take a vote, that’s right. All in favor of the Motion? Alright, it’s unanimous and I just want to thank Staff. Thank also Burt from SFO coming to provide that clarity and everybody else who’s come to speak for Palo Alto or neighboring communities. Your input was heard. Alright, well take a 3-5-minute break while people who were involved in this filter out and we’ll reset Staff. MOTION PASSED: 3-0 Kniss absent The Committee took a break from 8:09 P.M. to 8:18 P.M. 2. Staff and Utilities Advisory Commission Recommendation That the Policy and Services Committee Make a Recommendation That Council TRANSCRIPT Page 37 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Recommend: (1) Option 2 for the Municipal Fiber-to-the-Node Network (FTTN) for Fiber and Broadband Expansion; and (2) Expand Wi-Fi to Unserved City Facilities and Discontinue Consideration of City-Provided Wi-Fi in Commercial Areas Chair Wolbach: …which is Item 2 of the evening, Staff and Utilities Advisory Commission recommendation that the Policy and Services Committee make a recommendation that Council recommend option two for the municipal Fiber-To-The-Node Network (FTTN) for fiber and broadband expansion and expand Wi-Fi to unserved City facilities and discontinue consideration of City-provided Wi-Fi in commercial areas. I’ll kick it off over to the City Manager to take it from here. James Keene, City Manager: Thank you Mr. Chairman and Committee Members. I would implore that I really hope we could do this in an hour. I don’t think it’s actually it's – one, all that complicated the options and two we are not going to be able to get to Council until after the break on the recommendations from the Committee here. Three, this is not time sensitive in a crucial way but I would just say that only in a sense that one, I know there’s a lot of interest on the Council. Two, I think it is fast to say that we’ve been discussing this actually, even longer than we’ve been working on the Comp. Plan update but not quite as long as we have been talking about what to do about the Public Safety Building. Actually, on both of those other things, we actually – the Council has made decisions and we’re nearing the end of the Comp. Plan and we have a way forward on the Public Safety Buildings. So, we’re hoping tonight the Committee can help move us ahead in a positive way. So, with that, Jonathan, you guys want to… Jonathan Reichental, Chief Information Officer: We’re ready. We’re good. Yes, thank you City Manager, Jim Keene. It’s great to be here Chair Wolbach and Council Members. I’m Jonathan Reichental, the City’s Chief Information Officer and we’re going to start off with just a few updates to bring you up to speed on some of the thing we’ve been sharing with you over the last couple of years. Including some perspective on some emerging tech that I think is very important in the context of this larger discussion. I want to – just a few points on the vendor space. We have AT&T announced last year as you know, that they were going to bring their gigabit service to Palo Alto called AT&T Fiber and as far as we know, they still are committed to doing that. I attempted to reach out to them in the last few days but I was not able to get an update of this week but as of my last update just a month or two ago, they were still in the planning phase to begin an initial roll out in Palo Alto and then more broader later on. We heard from Comcast that they still intend to come to Palo Alto with their upgrade – their box upgrade – their TRANSCRIPT Page 38 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 technology upgrade on their existing system to bring gigabit to – at Comcast offering. As you know, they enabled this through a new version of a particular technology called Docsis 3.1. Not terribly important but that’s the jus the technology they used to enable it. When we last met with them just a couple months back, they notified us that they would do a soft launch in Palo Alto in 2017 and then later on a more formal, highly marketed implementation. Ok, so I did have a piece that I was just going to read that I did share with the – with our Community Advisory Committee and with the UAC prior to this because I think there’s some developments that are contextually important. I consider one of my most important roles to be an advisory to the Council and the City Manager, even if it’s unpopular so I am going to do one of those today. It’s worth noting that even in the short time that I’ve been involved in this project, how much the landscape has changed. Just in about 3-years, -- just three years ago, there was no AT&T fiber, no DOCSIS 3.1, no Google fiber to the extent that it is today. No Facebook, Terragraph, no Millimeter Wave, and no 5G and all of those things are just a set of new technologies and new considerations that are on the list that weren’t there before. It’s becoming very clear now to me that as we look out at the future and we see developments, that the future is going to be wireless intensive. Now, when I say that, I know people are ready to really push back strongly on it. By say that the future is wireless, that doesn’t discount the enormous importance of fiber backbone. In fact, as we move more towards a wireless world, we will require more fiber to bring the information back to the providers of the data centers around the world. Just to give you a sense of this and I kind of want to talk you through it. In the United States in 2013, one in ten households were exclusively wireless connected to the internet for their access. In 2016, that had increased to one in five, effectively twenty percent of US households are now mobile-only access to the internet. In 3-years, the number doubled. Part of those numbers are definitely people with lower income because it’s cheaper to have mobile access but the most current data shows that the speed of dropping wired for wireless axis from home is now equivalent in all income ranges. Why is the future wireless, because whether it’s smart homes, smart Cities, wearable technology, connected cars, self-driving cars, the internet of things or even next generation health care, it will all be powered by wireless technology. In fact, there is now a fifth generation of cellular technology, which is called 5G for fifth generation, that we see beginning to emerge as a specification and we think by 2020 it will be in the mainstream. Now that sounds like a long time ago but it’s just a couple of years. There is lots of experimentation happening. When we talk about 5G, we’re not just talking about cellular phones or smartphones that have fast connectivity. We’re actually saying fixed wireless, which is 5G connectivity from your home and so this is how people have the potential to connect to the internet. That’s the strategy that the big (inaudible) will be taking. I’ll give you a sense of the TRANSCRIPT Page 39 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 speed, 5G – excuse me, 4G LTE, which is typically what a lot of us use on our smartphones, that’s approximately about a 5 to 12-megabit download, 2 to 5-megabit upload. To put that in comparison, the International Telecom Union has specified or suggested the final specifications for 5G. At a minimum, it should be 20 gigabits for download, peak data rate and 10 gigabits uplink. I am going to do the math for you so if you round 4G to an average of 10 megabits, 5G is going to be 2,000 times faster. The average US broadband in the US today to the average home is 50 megabits – 50 megabits is the average, 5G will be 400 times the current speed. When I was in Dubai last year, [phonetic] [Etiy Salat], who is the local telecom company, they experimented with 5G and they reach 36 gigabits – excuse me, 36 gigabits per second. That’s very, very fast; very fast. Ok. What is required for this? There is going to a lot of City construction. All Cities that adopt this will need put in a lot more cells towers than we have today and just cell units; small cells. They would have to be at high volume density. Just to give you a sense of the space, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile are in current tests. Of course, as you know from my last update, Google is looking at a wireless solution that uses similar technology, 5G, to bring fiber to the home or fiber to the neighborhood and then to the home. Verizon has a 5G fixed wireless technology test in eleven geographies and different environments in the US and they want to launch something in 2018, which is next year. Just a couple other tidbits on this. AT&T is experimenting in Houston and Indianapolis with 5G and Terrone in Italy has committed to being one hundred percent 5G in the entire City by 2020. In this year’s Mobile World Congress, which is the big telecom event. The entire event was about 5G. Big players like Qualcomm, Erickson, Intel, Nokia, and other mobile leaders are all betting their future on it. That was just a contextual item and that’s an emerging technology that we anticipate or I certainly anticipate will be a very significant player here in just a few years. Two more items just real quick? We wanted to make you aware that one of the items that was on the Council list of action items was to get a – to build out a network for our public safety professional and that’s going to hit the streets – it’s scheduled to be on the streets this week. So, a lot of good work went into that and we should be getting responses to that pretty soon for being able to come back and ask for – to get a decision from Council on whether we should pursue that. One other item that I just wanted to share just to put things in context. There are – there is quite a lot of activity in the region around high-speed internet. I want to just mention that San Jose and San Francisco, so in San Jose, the Mayor did sponsor – is sponsoring a project that price word (inaudible) or PDBC’s is doing to develop a broadband and digital inclusion vision for the City. That’s just really kicked off and will take many months to see where that goes. Then in San Francisco there is – the Mayor also of San Francisco spun up an Advisory Council made up of industry experts and academics to explore high-speed internet for all of San TRANSCRIPT Page 40 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Francisco. We should be seeing a series of reports over the next few months. A report of last year on a potential cause came in at little over a billion dollars to build fiber to the home network in San Francisco and it would operate at a deficit. Their conclusion was some sort of partnership to get there. In both San Jose and San Francisco examples, much of the focus is on people who just don’t have internet. There still is large population – thousands of people who don’t have any type of access and the there’s also a group of people who have only access to very slower, bad internet. That concludes my update so I am now going to now, I think – yeah, I’ll – we don’t need to spend time on this. Today we will be presenting you with Staff and the UAC is making recommendations to you to recommend to Council three potential pathways around the question of fiber. Then we will have a recommendation around the two wireless items that we’ve been carrying for a few months to come back to you and make a recommendation. Jim Fleming is going to talk us through the different options. Jim Fleming, Senior Management Analyst: Chair Wolbach and Council Members, my name is Jim Fleming and I am a Senior Management Analyst with Palo Alto Utilities Department. As Jonathan said, tonight we are going to review the three options for fiber and wireless expansions as described in the Staff report. Option one is to explore potential funding models to build a municipally owned ubiquitous fiber to the premises network based on an open axis model. To prove some background, the 2015 fiber to the premises Master Plan indicated that assuming the network achieved the seventy-two percent take rate required to positively cash flow the enterprise, the City will require an estimated overall capital investment of approximately $78 million dollars to build and operate a City-wide fiber to the premises network. Take rate is defined as the number of home or businesses that actually use the network. The Master Plan also stated that if approximately $20 million dollars from the fiber optic fund resource was used to help finance the network, then the take rate required would be about fifty-seven percent. Annual operations and maintenance cost would be about $8 million dollars. The City’s key objectives for network ownership include ubiquitous cover, local authority and open access and open access network or model is defined as an arrangement in which a network is owned by the City but would be open to multiple internet service providers to offer gigabit-speed broadband and other services. In terms of potential funding models, a key consideration for network for implementation is how to fund both capital construction cost and ongoing operational expenses. Acknowledging that capital and operating costs associated with full scale City-wide build out would be significant. The City will likely have to seek outside funding and/or internally subsidies to support construction and the fiber to the premises network startup costs. Potential financing models include bond issues instances such as general obligation of revenue bonds, use of the fiber optic fund reserve and ongoing internal subsidies. At this point we are going to discuss fiber to the node, TRANSCRIPT Page 41 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 which is Option Number 2. Fiber to the Node is a municipally owned network that can provide infrastructure to neighborhoods for private last mile connections to provision services to homes and businesses. Fiber to the node would be an incremental step to fiber to the premises. The recommended action item for option two is to develop a business case for a fiber to the node network to prove a platform for public safety and utilities wireless communication in the field, smart grid and Smart City applications and new dark fiber licensing opportunities. The business case would determine the benefits to the City and also quantify the return on investment. This option also includes a recommendation to engage an engineering consultant to prepare a preliminary design of the City-wide fiber to the premises network. In addition to identifying potential partners and/or service providers and last mile funding models. The estimated one-time fiber to the node costs are in the range of $12 to $15 million dollars but on-going operation of maintenance costs are unknown at this time. In regard to business case development, a number of approaches can be considered as Staff requests the Committee’s feedback on next steps. Preliminarily, Staff would recommend with proceeding with the following four steps if Council directs proceedings with option two. The first step is to engage an engineering consultant to initiate a preliminary design for fiber to the premises and fiber to the node. This design will need to make certain assumption driven by business case models, public and private partnership opportunities and potential technologies for last mile service delivery. The components of developing a fiber to the premises network design includes identifying the types of services, which would be carried over the network and cost estimates for the geographic layout of fiber routes, an outside plant, neighborhood nodes and integration of electronic transmission equipment. Upon competition of the design and confirmation of the business model, the consultants scope of services will be structured to enable full City-wide fiber to the premises design but with the expectation that authorization for proceed will occur in phases based on cost estimation, community interest, and /or partnership agreements before incremental last mile development. The second step involves utility Staff developing a public outreach project to solicit neighborhood interest and participating and verifying the business case for fiber to the premises. Residents will be advised that as envisioned, the City would fund extinction of the fiber network to the neighborhood with the understanding that residents may be responsible for some or all of the costs to reach individual homes. An upfront cost estimate per home would be communicated with cost estimated to be refined as the evaluation proceeds. Residents will also advise that decisions have not been made regarding service providers. Also, depending on the level of interest expressed, a handful of neighborhoods may be selected to proceed with primarily network design. The third step involved IT Staff exploring market place interest in two ways. The first is establishing the level of interest in TRANSCRIPT Page 42 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 financial participation of the last mile build out and second is the level of interest in providing gigabit service to neighborhood residents. Participation in both these efforts could be described as integrated or separable levels of involvement. The fourth step and this would be subject to positive responses to the first three steps, Staff would engage community stakeholders and identify priority characteristics of prospective service providers. Topic would likely include characteristics such as services to be provided, customer service expectations and policies on issues such as data privacy. Potential funding models for last mile include user financing. User financing is an approach that relies on homeowners to pay on voluntary basis for some or all the cost to build out the Cities existing nerve fiber backbone network into residential neighborhoods. Homeowners and businesses would voluntarily finance system build up across by paying a onetime upfront connection fee that can range from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. Another potential funding model is the creation of an assessment district which may be used to finance new public improvements or other additions to the community. Generally speaking, an assessment district is formed with property owner ballot – excuse me, with property owner mail ballot proceedings involving each property that will be assessed in the district. Owners vote yes or no and are waited by the assessed. It’s important to note that under the Mello Rouse Community Facilities Act of 1982, City and other local government agencies can form a community facilities district to finance certain facilities and services. These districts can level a special tax and issue bonds secured by that tax upon approval by two-thirds of the registered voters or property owners within the district. Another last mile approach is to explore the potential for a public-private partnership with a City and a private entity that would work together to achieve mutual goals for a fiber to the premises network. Option three is to pause municipal fiber to the premises development efforts and increase transparency and predictability for the third-party providers for their network expansions. In light of the anticipated up (inaudible) play as Jonathan referred to a few moments ago, the cable and telecom (inaudible) as another option is pausing any further municipal fiber to the premises development at this time. As previously noted, obtaining sufficient market share and acquiring new customers as necessary to financially sustain a City fiber to the premises offering. This would be a major challenge under present market conditions. In the interest of improving broadband in Palo Alto, the City would identify resources and improve coordination of City policies and processes to facilitate that work upgrade by the incumbency and other independent internet service providers. To that end, the objective of this recommendation is to enhance transparency and predictability, excuse me, for a third-party provider. Axis by third party providers to infrastructure data and assets such as poles, conduits and public rights-of-ways is essential to encouraging broadband improvements. Ensure efficient and predictable TRANSCRIPT Page 43 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 processes that enhance deployment is equally important as with any public project. In order to implement this strategy, Staff will need to identify additional internal and/or external resources to better facilitate planning approval, environmental reviews, permitting inspections and legal reviews. It’s important to note that the work to identify these resources and the associated agreements were well under way when Staff was working Google fiber from 2014-2016, to manage the anticipated large volume of activities to build their fiber network in Palo Alto. We’re going to move along to wireless recommendations. There are two Staff recommendations for wireless. The first recommendation is to expand wi-fi to unserved City facilities. The expansions of wi-fi technology at unserved City facilities and public areas was evaluated with the Community Services Department. Most City facilities already have wi-fi access. The plan is to expand that coverage to common areas in the Cubberley Community Center, Lucie Stern, the golf course pro shop and café and Lytton Plaza. A high-level cost estimate for the recommended sites is $165,000 for installation and approximately $6,200 for month recurring charges. Funding for this project is recommended to come out of the fiber fund and the monthly recurring charges would be allocated to the respected departments consistent with the City’s existing chargeback model. The second wireless recommendation is to discontinue consideration of City Wi-Fi in commercial areas. There are already widespread commercial wi-fi coverage in high traffic commercial areas and there is a lack of demand for City branded wi-fi serves. To recap in terms of the recommendation, Staff and the Utilities Advisory Commission recommendations are as follows. For fiber optic expansions, Staff and the UAC recommend option two, which includes developing a fiber to the node business case, engaging a consulting firm for fiber to the node and fiber to the premises design and identifying potential partners and last mile funding models. For wireless, Staff recommends expanding wi-fi to unserved City facilities including the golf course cafe and the pro shop. The UAC did not recommend expansions to the golf course facilities but Staff is recommending that. Also, again, to discontinue consideration of commercial wi-fi in high traffic areas such as University Ave. and California Ave. That concludes my remarks and presentation. Chair Wolbach: Thank you, Staff and I just want to confirm with the City Clerk that we have not yet received any public comment cards. If there are any members of the public that would like to speak to this item, turn your cards in right away. It looks like we do not. Alright, I’ll turn it my colleagues for any questions, comments, motions. Go for it and I told the City Manager that we would try to be out of here by 9 o’clock for Staff. Council Member DuBois: Hopefully we have more than 15-minutes. TRANSCRIPT Page 44 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Chair Wolbach: If we need to go slightly over for important questions, I’m sure that’s fine. Council Member DuBois: It’s been a while since we have seen you guys. Thanks for coming back. If I understood in terms of competitive landscape, we’re still -- AT&T and Comcast are still in the planning stages. Mr. Reichental: That’s correct. Council Member DuBois: Is the intent with the fiber to the Node option to make it attractive to private companies to offer service and lease the fiber from us? Mr. Reichental: I’ll just introduce is and maybe Jim can add to it. Part of it is – to kind of go a little higher level, we definitely want to support the different business cases before we make the financial commitment to it and that’s what we are proposing. One of them certainly would be that if the City builds it out right to the neighborhood, that a partner would be incentivized to bring it to the last mile. If could be any combination of a third party coming in and owning it completely depending on the customer. Interest to the City to continuing to partner on that piece, including looking for other funding models but certainly I think it’s – we would highly recommend exploring it with a range of potential participants. Council Member DuBois: You talked about that we’re potentially facing a lot of microcell construction. I just wondered if one of the goals of the fiber to the node is to make it available to multiple providers so that, again, when people are putting up say cell antennas, they would just lease the fiber from us. Is that a design goal for the network? Not to just reach homes but… Mr. Reichental: That’s a great question for Jim. Mr. Fleming: That would be. One of the cornerstones of the fiber to the Node concept is to push more fiber out into the community and in parallel with that, you’ll have the wireless carriers like Verizon and AT&T Mobility and others building more small cells closer to residential areas. Those small cells will need fiber for a backhaul in their networks. That is one possibility in terms of fiber expansion. Whether they would be interested in licensing that dark fiber from the City is to be determined. TRANSCRIPT Page 45 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Council Member DuBois: I would say that we should think of that as a goal to design an attractive network and to have multiple kinds of uses. Why is it hard to estimate the operating or maintenance cost for FTTN at a high level? Mr. Fleming: It would really be based on the business model and what is the network going to serve if it was built and the use of it was for public safety, utilities, communications in the field, smart grid and Smart City applications, and licensing fiber for backhaul purposes to the wireless carriers. The maintenance cost would be different as opposed to if the network did attract a last mile provider that would build out to the home. It’s really difficult to estimate what the annual operating costs would be. Apart of the business case would include trying to determine what that number is. We just don’t have enough information at this point. Council Member DuBois: Ok. I mean I guess I’m picturing it as an extension of that dark fiber network and if we treated it that way. Where the City was managing kind of the infrastructure on a physical level, could we at least estimate in terms of kind of looking at maintenance cost for our dark fiber network? This would just be more and more miles of fiber that would have similar costs. Mr. Fleming: The maintenance of just a pure dark fiber network is fairly low. Again, it would what’s actually going to be delivered over that network and if it went beyond just licensing dark fiber – with dark fiber, we are essentially just providing a pipe, so to speak, to a user. Council Member DuBois: So, you’re saying that we may – again, I kind of thought that was the proposal here. That a private company would take on expenses beyond that but you’re saying that we might consider other business models that incur other expenses beyond just the dark fiber. Mr. Fleming: Yes. Council Member DuBois: Ok. When you talk about a consultant, are you envisioning a person or like a network management firm? Mr. Fleming: I’m sorry I missed your question. Council Member DuBois: When you are talking about hiring a consultant to work on the business case, are we talking about a company that specializes in this or are we thinking of an individual? TRANSCRIPT Page 46 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Ed Shikada, General Manager of Utilities: Thank you Chair and Members of the Committee. Ed Shikada wearing my Utilities General Manager hat here. Our Staff discussion really hasn’t gotten that specific as to how the business case would be developed and who would be responsible for it. The recommendation, I think you’ve got at this point really are focused on the step of hiring the design consultant as one of the keys next procurements that we would do since that would conceivably be a pretty significant design effort. Council Member DuBois: Yeah, the reason I ask is that I would be interested in kind of a one-stop shop. If we could find one that could do design and then consult us on the build out and not just be an individual that does one piece and then goes away. Mr. Shikada: Good point. As we have flushed out the dimensions of moving forward with option two. It’s clear that it will be a multi-disciplinary effort include both the design. The business case evaluation, as you pointed you, as well as the community outreach to identify the neighborhood interest in pursuing the various approaches that have been discussed. As well as Jonathan had pointed out, the touch points with the industry to see what would be viable there. So, yeah, it really does call for multi-disciplinary approach and to the extent that we can get an individual that can manage that for us. That would really help simplify the effort of bringing it back together. Council Member DuBois: I just wanted to understand that reading the report and you mentioned it to, let’s talk about a user financing model and potentially communicating that fairly early to residents. What is the thinking in terms of talking about potential prices before we identify a partner or business model? I was just trying to understand why we would even through that out to the public? You might pay $5,000 for some undefined service. Mr. Shikada: Good point and it is clearly one that we’ve had some debate about. You know, how – and I use the term an iterative approach in that we need to gauge interest among neighbors. Ultimately, if we were to go with that assessment district approach as Jim pointed out, it requires a two-third vote, which is effectively very similar to the market take rate that had been discussed previously. In some way, it would be taking a step toward assessing whether there’s that level of interest among residents. How to best gage that? There’s been ideas of everything from the website that allows people to just express interest without any indication of potential cost, to doing some time of upfront costing so that we don’t head down a path of soliciting a lot of interest up front but only to have residents say TRANSCRIPT Page 47 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 well, if you had told us it was going be thousands as opposed to hundreds. I wouldn’t have said yes and so it’s that balancing act. Council Member DuBois: Right so that’s why I think the type of consultant – if we could find somebody who is managed to kind of design community outreach and the whole business plan pieces; a consulting organization. I think that might be really useful. I mean it seems similar to other kinds of infrastructure project with the community. Mr. Shikada: I dare say that no one can do it as well as Palo Alto quite frankly. I’m not sure that corporate world has done a whole lot more successfully than we have when it comes to this kind of outreach. Council Member DuBois: Well, ok. Mr. Shikada: Google fiber being a perfect example of it quite frankly. Council Member DuBois: I think cities have hired communication experts. I’ve been talking to City Supervisor Mark Farrell in San Francisco and they budgeted like 5 million dollars just for the communication piece. Knowing that AT&T and Comcast are going to have a reaction. They are really thinking about communicating the user benefits up front so that it’s really clear why somebody would want this. I just think we need to think about it and be careful about how we ask questions. I also just think – I mean I think the fiber to the node approach is interesting. I think we need to be really clear on what our goals are and what we are trying to accomplish. You know, if part of it’s going to be used for smart grid, part of it could be used for small cell antennas and part of it could be used for home service. I mean we really have multiple funding sources here and multiple customers. I think that’s going to drive the design of the network and I’d be really interested in, when it comes to Council, maybe seeing a little more detail. Again, I know this is early but just estimating how many homes would be passed? We talk about last mile but are we talking about going down residential streets where it’s really the last 50-feet or are we literally talking about going by 1,000 homes and the home is a mile away? I think it would be useful to understand that and that might make it more or less attractive to some of these other potential customers. Again, I think we should really articulate measurable goals and I guess kind of sooner rather than later too – I know it’s kind of the point of a business plan but understand if any – what kind of partners might be interested in working with us because I think they would – depending – they might want to get involved in the actual design as well. The other thing is that we have some cost estimates but we have no revenue estimates. I think it would be really useful if there was more of an ROI indication when it comes to Council. I mean $70 million TRANSCRIPT Page 48 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 dollars sounds like a lot of money but if it had a great return, great, right? I’m not saying that’s the one but I’m just saying that without any indication of what the return is, it’s really hard to evaluate. It would be good to see if there’s an expected contribution from the Utilities Department or the utility funds if we do use this for smart grid. I think that would help, again, with the funding. I am glad to see kind of the discussion shift away from just wireless versus fiber to kind of how they work together. There was a little bit of talk about a pilot and I would just say that my initial reaction was that I don’t really want to see us do another pilot. We’ve done pilots in the past and I think it would be better – it would be – the question is what are we trying to learn? I would much rather seek some kind of roll out plan with maybe an opportunity to stop the roll out if things are going wrong but not do a pilot; analysis – kind of stop an analysis it and then restart again. I was wondering – we did approve money for consultants a couple years ago. Is that money still allocated or does it have to be reallocated? Mr. Reichental: I think – my understanding is that you still have the ability to use it. Council Member DuBois: Good, ok. Then I would really like to see a deeper understanding of what other Cities are doing. I think all the Cities that were waiting on Google are now scrambling to come up with their own plans. It seems like a really good opportunity to share knowledge and share funding models. I mean, San Francisco is shifting to a model that is not dependent on take rate. They are really shifting to kind of a franchise model, where the [SEALUC] would pick up some of that risk, I guess. I’d be interested, again, in understanding if some kind of franchise license model would work for us. Closer to kind of a dark fiber model and then again, if we are going that direction, I don’t see any reason to ask residents to pay thousands of dollars. It would be really -- it would be more of a partnering strategy. I guess the other thing that I would say about San Francisco and San Jose is that San Francisco had some high-cost estimates. They passed some laws to drive the cost down. They passed a micro trenching law and they passed multi-family access law. We keep talking about cost but it would be really useful to understand what impact we would have on our cost if we changed our rules a little bit. Should we consider a micro-trenching ordinance? If that cuts the cost in half, then maybe it’s something that we need to look at more seriously. I think publicly San Francisco is talking about people without internet access but honestly, I think they are really interested in high quality, kind of world class fiber and they are using that as part of the message but it’s really about getting everybody high-quality broadband. There was a little bit of mention about the dig once ordinance and that kind of ties back to the – how can we reduce construction costs? Is that work going to be completed? I know it’s being worked and we had a little update TRANSCRIPT Page 49 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 on that a while go but does anybody have an update on the dig once ordinance? Mr. Fleming: Yes, we’re continuing to do the evaluation in terms of reaching out to third parties, specifically AT&T and Comcast, to develop an ordinance. Many Cities have developed ordinances that require dig once but it takes a lot of coordination to enforce a dig once policy and one of the key things that we went or discovered early on, is that street conditions are very important so which would encourage a dig once policy. Getting corporation from third parties as they do their expansions is difficult sometimes. We had that issue when we did underground districts for example and it’s getting AT&T and Comcast to fully corporate on it. Yes, the work is proceeding in terms of dig once and we’ve had ongoing meetings with AT&T and Comcast. Council Member DuBois: I mean, I would really like to see us think about kind of string once as well. Whether it’s aerial or underground but again, if we are looking at a lot of construction in residential neighborhoods to put up their wireless access points, it seems like now it the time to get that in a place where it would really help the neighborhoods not to get – have their streets dug up multiple times. Then kind of the string once ordinance, I mean we own our poles and I’d definitely would like to see the City kind of extract the value of those poles to the extent that we can under the law. A couple quick questions on the wi-fi portion. The lifetime cost, how long does that equipment last? When you say there’s a one-time cost and an operating cost, is it like a 5 or 6-year lifecycle? Mr. Reichental: I don’t know a good answer that question. That would be something that we need to look into. The current wi-fi that the City uses is still – the equipment is still good. The signals are still good and that’s about 5-years so I think we still have a few more years out of it, for sure so that emanate – replacement is not emanate on that. Council Member DuBois: Then Cubberley is mentioned and I just wondered if – I don’t know, maybe this more for the City Manager for making investments at Cubberley or if that’s one – if we are going to redevelop it if we would wait on that one. Same thing, I think recently we had the parks plan with the golf course. This is something where we would put in golf course wi-fi now or would – is there redevelopment emanate? Mr. Keene: Would wi-fi help my drives at the golf course by any chance? No, I think those are good points. Good things to think about really, right? I don’t see why not. Council Member DuBois: Yeah, I just… TRANSCRIPT Page 50 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Mr. Reichental: May Jim could clarify, some of the course is the fiber, which regardless of the building that were there, that would be useful. If there was a new building, the fiber would still be (inaudible) (crosstalk). Council Member DuBois: The idea that would go over City fiber for these facilities? Mr. Reichental: To bring the wi-fi to it, yes. Council Member DuBois: Ok, good. I don’t know if my Colleagues will want but I could throw out an early Motion, if you want and that you could react to or you could talk first? Chair Wolbach: Well, Lydia, do you want to say anything before we move to motions? Well, before we do, whatever the motion is but I was hoping that we start actually with the Staff recommendation. Council Member DuBois: It’s pretty close. Chair Wolbach: Go for it. Give it a try. Council Member DuBois: I mean, it’s kind of summarizing my comments. I am essentially moving your recommendation to focus on the fiber to the node but I’d like to see a few changes before it comes to Council in terms of defining more clearly what the goals are with the fiber to the node. To reach out to other Cities on approaches that are kind of post-Google and share funding models if we can. To include some ROI estimates and to present maybe a high-level idea of what a roll out strategy would be with an estimate of how many homes would be passed. To flush out a little bit more the communication strategies so like what would we be asking residents and when and the second part is to expand the wi-fi to the unserved City facilities but look – consider I guess, if any of those facilities are going to be rebuilt in the near future. That’s it. Chair Wolbach: I’ll second that. MOTION: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Chair Wolbach to recommend the City Council: A. Approve Option 2 for the Municipal Fiber-to-the-Node Network (FTTN) for fiber and broadband expansion (expand wording on Option 2 here); and TRANSCRIPT Page 51 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 B. To define more clearly the goals of FTTN and reach out to other communities, include ROI estimates and present a high level idea of a roll out strategy and affected homes as well as a communication strategy; and (refer to Motion from Tom DuBois) C. Expand Wi-Fi to unserved City facilities; and D. Discontinue consideration of City-provided Wi-Fi in commercial areas. Council Member DuBois: Was that clear to you guys? Mr. Reichental: That was very clear to me, yes. Maybe (inaudible) Mr. Shikada: Perhaps – maybe just to give a quick reaction. I think it’s clear. It does present a bit of a dilemma to the extent that estimating or even necessarily getting a feel for homes passed, presumes some of the work that we anticipate doing as a next step; now, for example, the preliminary design. I’ll turn to Staff that if they see other ways to get there. Council Member DuBois: Maybe I could word it different -- I’m really interested in are we just talking about going down Middlefield Road and nothing else or is this really – again, is it really the last 50-feet that we are talking about or literally the last mile kind of connections? Mr. Shikada: If you don’t mind, maybe perhaps a little more informal in the conversation of the – I think the challenge is that it depends on which neighborhood we are referring to and that’s where the initial assessment or even identification of a few handful of neighborhoods that we think might be interested in pursuing this could be a good starting point. To be able to say that if it is Crescent Park or whatever, that the – here’s where the network currently is. Here’s where the extensions and the likely order of magnitude on homes passed versus it would be a collection of streets and the like. I think from the Staff perspective, we’ve got no particular preference as to which neighborhoods would be and/or – to your other point on the communications strategy, how best to approach it. I think we’re somewhat blank slate in the way to best approach it. We’re certainly open to the pointers from the Committee as to where you think we ought to go with that and we’d be happy to follow up. In the absences of that, we may be shooting in the dark a bit. Council Member DuBois: It kind of tied back to the goals. I mean if we reach out to some of those cell companies and potential customers and TRANSCRIPT Page 52 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 there were areas in the City that they were willing to pay – to get access to. Also, on part of the business model, I think might be the density of homes. If there are certain areas where we could roll out more cheaply. Again, that’s where I really think somebody who’s built out a network as a consultant to us might be able to offer some strategy about how to roll it out, right? I’m a little bit – I don’t want to do just like a survey – Survey Monkey and pick a neighborhood. Chair Wolbach: I guess I just want to kind of follow up on this and see if we need to amend the motion at all. As worded, the additions beyond the Staff recommendation, do see that – besides not being clear enough, do you anticipate that would cause substantial delay in this coming back to Council? I know we do have a tendency to add new things at every meeting and we’re doing that a little bit here but at the same time, I support the motion because I think the points are good ones. I’d guess I’d be open to having them be requested but we can continue to reiterate that they can still come to Council, even if you haven’t fully answered every single one of those question but to the degree, reasonable by the time it comes to Council to start to look into those issues. That was my – what I was envisioning with the motion as secondar. Mr. Reichental: I was going to have a little stab at answering and then Ed can add. My – the way that I kind of heard the response a little bit was that the actual motion that we are asking for will have an answer that will answer Council Member DuBois questions. So, we have to do the work to get those answers. Some of them we just wouldn’t be able to – the ROI estimates, for example, would depend on the business case and so coming back on August 14th without actually doing the business case work, it’s difficult. It’s like chicken and the egg situation. There is some guessing that we could do but it wouldn’t be as well informed as it will be when we do that actual business case work. Chair Wolbach: I guess maybe, do we want to change the Motion to make it a little bit more flexible for the Staff? Council Member DuBois: I’m asking for estimates. Call them guesses but I mean – yeah, I would just – also, I think it’s kind of maybe how you present it to Council. If it’s just presented as per cost with no benefit – if there is some way you can quantify the benefit and understand that the models may change but hopefully, we’re starting to hone in a little bit on a model as well. Even though we still need to do the actual work. TRANSCRIPT Page 53 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 Chair Wolbach: I guess what I would add is just if it’s truly not possible to provide any of those things that we’ve asked for as the additional requests. If it truly is burdensome, bring those back as they become clear. That we – these are things that we want to eventually be able to answer and these are the kinds of question that we are thinking about and as it becomes clear and possible to answer those question, to bring those back to Council. Mr. Shikada: Given that clarification, perhaps what we can do between now and when we get to Council or what we would present to Council would have some qualitative perspectives on each one of those issues without putting numbers behind them. I think we can, perhaps, advance the discussion by identifying what we would hope to get out of the next steps and again, maybe some pro-typical applications of things like – begin the network approach that we would take, as well as some of the goals that we would hope to see that would ultimately be flushed out based upon the further work in next steps. Chair Wolbach: If I could actually just ask a couple other questions. Actually, Council Member Kou, do you have questions as well? I’ll differ to you. Council Member Kou: Thank you. Just a question, so it’s going to go to Council next? Not so much coming back to Policy and Services, right? Is the goal, when it goes to Council, that we have most of the answers so we don’t send it back for another study? Chair Wolbach: It sounds like this is – I’ll let Staff weigh in but it sounds like this is a – it’s going to be a long-term project and very iterative and so it will be checking in with UAC again, I’m guessing and it will be coming back to Committees. We’re talking about a potentially multi-years project, right? Mr. Shikada: Yes, and so based on the Motion as currently stated. I would imagine that our next step would be to Council with some additional information as just described. We would definitely think that that’s an important step because our step after that will be to procure several of these professional services. In order to ensure that Council is giving us clear direction to proceed with that. That would be the next items for us to bring forward. Council Member Kou: Thank you. Chair Wolbach: Yeah, so I guess my next couple questions are one is – sorry if I missed or didn’t hear but is the options still available if we do this, would TRANSCRIPT Page 54 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 there be a level of option in the future for the City to run that last mile itself as a potential – rather than going private? If we did decide to do public – basically, if we -- can fiber to the node be a stepping stone to fiber to the premises? Mr. Shikada: Yes. Chair Wolbach: Great. Mr. Shikada: Clearly it could. Chair Wolbach: That was my understanding and I wanted (inaudible) (crosstalk) Mr. Reichental: (Inaudible) Chair Wolbach: I just want to be really explicated about that. That was my understanding and thank you for confirming. I saw some of the public question and stuff during the – in the minutes of the UAC meeting. Also, on the question of parks (inaudible) – looking at Page 14 of the report. I guess there was a determination made for policy reason not to explore more expansions to parks. That it would diminish the safety or even the quality of the experience of going to a park. I guess I would probably have a different take on that from a policy perspective that being able to check your email if you want while you are sitting on a park bench doesn’t hurt. What I didn’t see was and again, I might have missed it, the costs for expanding to different parks. You know, per park or something like that. If – I don’t know if there is any more thought about that or any more information about that. Mr. Reichental: We did do – in our prep work we did do – we know the (inaudible) level parks but the Community Services Director in consultation with the community group for park really ruled it out. I will give you one example. We – broadly Staff wanted to support wi-fi at the Magical Playground so my team was asked to provide it. We went over there and provided it and there was a very strong reaction to it and we had to immediately take it away. Parents and advisors to the Community Services Director said this is – you can’t have that here and so we had to take it away. Just as one example. Chair Wolbach: That’s very interesting. I guess I wonder if that would still be true at all other parks. Would that be true at Greer Park where you might have people there for quite a while they are watching – with a lot of other TRANSCRIPT Page 55 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 parents around you but watching their kids play team sport or over at – even say Foothills Park at the Baylands where you want to check your email while you are at the visitor center and then go for hike and check it again when you come back. I guess I’m not sure this is the end of the line for that discussion or would we still again have the option to revisit that in the future, I suppose. Mr. Reichental: I mean, the ability to revisit it, absolutely. One hundred percent is the answer. Chair Wolbach: Ok, thank you. Any other discussion? Council Member DuBois: I just had another question. Have we seriously looked at running fiber in some of our utility infrastructures? Whether waste water pipes or gas lines. Is that something that we’ve rolled out? Mr. Fleming: We already have fiber to critical facilities like substations for examples. There are other more remote locations where monitoring may be done with the – an old pack bell or copper line. It doesn't require fiber necessarily to that location because it would be overkill. Council Member DuBois: I’m talking about running fiber to neighborhoods but putting it through the gas line or through the waste water. Mr. Fleming: Oh, ok. I’m sorry. I misunderstood your question. I’m going to defer to Dean Bachelor on that. Council Member DuBois: You haven’t looked at it at all, ok. I think some Cities are doing that in typically Asia, I believe. I’m just curious. Should we vote on the motion then? Chair Wolbach: Yeah, let’s, if that’s it? Alright, all in favor of the Motion say aye? Alright, that seems to be unanimous. Yeah, and that included – the motion did include the wireless as well. Thank you, everybody. MOTION PASSED: 3-0 Kniss absent 3. Recreational and Medical Marijuana: Review and Discussion of State Law Developments and Input to Staff on Next Steps, Including Possible Ordinance Adopting Local Regulations Regarding Commercial Marijuana Activity, Outdoor Cultivation, and Marijuana Dispensaries. TRANSCRIPT Page 56 of 56 Policy and Services Committee Special Meeting Action Minutes 05/23/17 This Action is Exempt Under Section 15061(b)(3) of the California Environmental Quality Act. Future Meetings and Agendas Chair Wolbach: Last item or excuse me, post item. Future meetings and agendas. At our next meeting in June, we will be talking about the Marijuana item that we pushed forward from this meeting. As well as privacy and surveillance and I can’t remember off the top of my head what else will be coming back. James Keene, City Manager: We also potentially have Cubberley Master Plan RFP. We’ll have to see where the School Board is in there and the consideration of it so that it’s most timely. We also have two audits in utilities. One on contract oversight, trenching, and insulation of electrical substructure and the hydromax cross spore contract audit. They may or may not be ready and they are not time sensitive so I would work with the auditor to probably remove one or two of those items if Cubberley and data collection would still stay on there because you’ve got marijuana then also. Chair Wolbach: Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. The date that we are looking at for that is still the 13th of June. Mr. Keene: That’s correct. Chair Wolbach: Ok, any other thoughts from Committee members? Just a chance to check in about future agendas. No obligation, I just want to make sure that you are included in that conversation; always. Alright, great. Well, we are adjourned. Thank you very much. ADJOURNMENT: Meeting was adjourned at 9:19 P.M.