HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-03-29 Planning & transportation commission Summary Minutes_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Planning & Transportation Commission 1
Action Agenda: March 29, 2017 2
Council Chambers 3
250 Hamilton Avenue 4
6:00 PM 5
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Call to Order / Roll Call 6:00pm 7
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Chair Alcheck: [Recording starts in progress] meeting now. Would you, Secretary would you 9
please do roll call? 10
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Yolanda Cervantes, Administrative Assistant: Chair Alcheck, Commissioner Gardias, 12
Commissioner Lauing, Commissioner Monk, Commissioner Rosenblum, Commissioner Summa, 13
and Vice-Chair Waldfogel. Everyone is present. 14
15
Chair Alcheck: Great. Before we begin with Oral Communications I want to acknowledge our 16
newest member Commissioner Sue Monk. This is actually very exciting meeting because I think 17
this is the first time in nearly two years that we've had seven people on this seven person 18
commission. So welcome and best of luck. The other thing I want to quickly acknowledge is 19
that their at least when I began this my membership on this Commission there is this long 20
standing tradition of our newest Commissioners being closest to the middle and our veterans 21
on the wings. And so in keeping with that tradition that I learned from my first Chair, Chair 22
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Martinez, that's how we have you set up. But hopefully in no time you will all be veterans and 1
we'll be banging out agendized items quickly. 2
3
Oral Communications 4
The public may speak to any item not on the agenda. Three (3) minutes per speaker.1,2 5
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Chair Alcheck: So with that do we have any Oral Communication cards? No, all right. 7
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Agenda Changes, Additions, and Deletions 9
The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management. 10
City Official Reports 11
1. Assistant Directors Report, Meeting Schedule and Assignments 12
13
Chair Alcheck: I turn to the Assistant Director for a report. 14
15
Jonathan Lait, Assistant Director: Great, thank you Chair. Two items to report; one is that the 16
City Council on Monday considered a considered the site and design application for 670 Los 17
Trancos. This was an application that the Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC) had 18
reviewed and the Council after a thoughtful discussion decided to move the project forward. I 19
believe it was unanimous at the end of the day with a couple of conditions including a condition 20
that Commissioner Gardias had requested about planting some plants in the beginning to help 21
screen the construction related activities associated with the development. 22
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
And then my only other announcement is to on behalf of the City Clerk's Office is to share with 2
the public that the City of Palo Alto is currently recruiting for the following commission 3
positions: the Human Relations Commission (HRC) has two terms ending on May 31, 2020, the 4
Public Art Commission (PAT) has four terms ending on May 31, 2020, that the Library Advisory 5
Commission (LAC) has three terms ending on that same date, and the Utilities Advisory 6
Commission (UAC) also has two terms that are ending on that same date. So if there is 7
members of the public that are interested in participating on these commissions the deadline 8
to file is April 4th at 4:30 p.m. And there's some information on the City's website too. So 9
thank you. 10
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Chair Alcheck: Ok, thank you. 12
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Action Items 14
Public Comment is Permitted. Applicants/Appellant Teams: Fifteen (15) minutes, plus three (3) minutes rebuttal. 15
All others: Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 16
2. Public Hearing: Review and Comment on the Supplemental Draft Environmental 17
Impact Report & Discussion of the Commission's Process for Reviewing the Revised 18
Draft Plan Following Review by the Citizens Advisory Committee and the City Council 19
20
Chair Alcheck: Why don't we get started with our public hearing, Item Number 2. 21
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Hillary Gitelman, Planning Director: Good evening, Commissioners. I'm Hillary Gitelman the 1
Planning Director and I'm joined by Elaine Costello to my right who's been helping us with the 2
Comp Plan update and Joanna Jansen our consultant from Placeworks who's been working on 3
the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) with us. Elena Lee is also in the audience for tonight's 4
hearing and will help if we get lost in some of the documents. 5
6
I brought them to display for you some of the critical documents that we’ll be mentioning this 7
evening. Of course we have the existing Comp Plan which was adopted in 1998 and was 8
originally intended to sunset in 2010. We have the Planning and Transportation Commission 9
(PTC) recommended revisions that were forwarded to the Council in early 2014. Then we have 10
the Housing Element that was adopted an updated Housing Element was adopted by the City in 11
the end of 2015 then we… was it 2015 or 2014? Sorry, one of those. Then we have the Draft 12
Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) that was published on the Comp Plan update in February 13
of 2016 and tonight we're discussing the supplement to the DEIR which was published in 14
February of 2017. So all of those are there, they're all available on our website in electronic 15
form, and we're happy to answer questions about any of those pieces along the way this 16
evening. 17
18
So let me get this PowerPoint up and running. There you are… So the purpose of tonight's 19
hearing is to conduct a public hearing to receive comments from the Commissioners and the 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
community on the supplement to the DEIR that's been prepared for the Comp Plan update. We 1
also are hoping to discuss the Commission's role and sort of what the Commission's process will 2
be for reviewing the Comp Plan update following its review by the Citizens Advisory Committee 3
(CAC) and its referral to the Commission by the City Council. We'll talk more about that in a 4
minute, but it's been a long process. 5
6
As I mentioned the PTC really started this process off although I know all of you weren't on the 7
Commission at that time. Chair Alcheck was on the Commission at that time so you can add 8
some information to this story, but it was really in 2008 that Placeworks the consultant was 9
retained, started work with the Commission, there was a bunch of community workshops, and 10
then the Commission spent a great deal of time working as a commission and in subcommittees 11
drafting a set of recommendations that was forwarded to the Council in early 2014. At that 12
time the Council said they wanted to go out to the community and get some more community 13
input. We had the Comp Plan Summit in 2015 and the CAC was formed and since then the 14
process has really been an exchange of ideas between the CAC and the City Council going back 15
and forth on the different chapters or elements of the Comp Plan. 16
17
We expect that the City Council will review all the pieces by the end of June or that's our hope 18
and at that time they will refer the revised document to the PTC for a review and 19
recommendation. All this while we've been conducting really since 2014 we've been 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
conducting California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in a parallel process and you all 1
understand that the CEQA requires that we assess the potential physical environmental impacts 2
of a possible action by the City, in this case adoption of the Comp Plan update. So we have a 3
short number of slides that summarizes the EIR and kind of where we are in the process. 4
Maybe I'll ask Joanna to jump in and take care of those and I'll come back and we'll talk more 5
about the Planning Commission’s process. 6
7
Joanna Jansen, Placeworks: Thank you Hillary. As Hillary said I’m Joanna Jansen. I’m an 8
Associate Principal with Placeworks. We’re the consultant assisting the City with the Comp Plan 9
process including the required EIR documents. So as Hilary mentioned the EIR is a requirement 10
under the California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA. And we have to disclose, analyze and 11
disclose the potential impacts of the Comp Plan and the way that we look at this at a Comp Plan 12
type of document is looking at the potential growth that the Comp Plan would be that would 13
allow as a well as the policies and programs that the Comp Plan would include to affect how 14
that growth happens. 15
16
In the case of this Palo Alto Comp Plan EIR we looked at multiple planning scenarios. We ended 17
up by the time we did the supplement we had a total of six different scenarios analyzing a range 18
of both residential and nonresidential growth really with the intention of helping decision 19
makers and the community understand the different possible choices and policy options that 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
are presented through the Comp Plan process and make a decision. So we've heard recently 1
from the Council at their meeting last week about their thoughts on a preferred scenario. 2
We're going to be taking that preferred scenario forward into the final EIR as well as responding 3
to all the comments received on both the original draft EIR from February 2016 and a 4
supplement to the DEIR in February 2017. 5
6
So just going on to the six planning scenarios we looked at four, the first four, one through four 7
in the February 2016 DEIR and that EIR was circulated between February and June in 2016. 8
Right around the time that EIR came out the Council I think based in part on some feedback 9
that it heard from the PTC decided that the range of four scenarios really wasn't quite broad 10
enough and they wanted to add some additional scenarios. So we added five and six and that's 11
what's analyzed in the supplement. The supplement was also an opportunity to make a few 12
tweaks mostly to the information provided in the EIR based on some of the comments that we 13
had received on the DEIR that was published in 2016. 14
15
So the next slide has all six scenarios presented side by side. And I don't want to read you every 16
cell on this table, but again the important thing here is a range of both housing and jobs as well 17
as nonresidential square footage expressed through these four scenarios ranging from kind of a 18
business as usual scenario all the way up to scenario six, the housing tested scenario, which 19
combined a combination of a higher number of residential units with a really pretty tightly 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
suppressed number of jobs and corresponding lower number of nonresidential square footage. 1
So playing with both levers of jobs and housing in different ways across six different scenarios 2
to try to find out the potential impacts of different ways of growth and a really important 3
metric I think for both the PTC in your past discussions as well as for the Council has been this 4
jobs to employee/residents ratio and a desire really to see that I think on the part of a lot of 5
people at least not get worse and possibly improve a little bit as one of the key factors that is 6
driving issues of traffic congestion and other issues related to quality of life in Palo Alto. So that 7
was one of the things that the scenarios touched on as well as the analysis in the EIR. 8
9
So again after looking at the first four in some detail and holding a hearing with the PTC and 10
with the Council last… in the first half of last year we then went on based on Council direction 11
to look in more detail at scenarios five and six. As I mentioned we updated existing conditions 12
and regulatory setting information to respond to some of the conditions that had changed in 13
between the publication of the two documents. This supplement was published on February 14
10th. The comment period, the 45 day, this one’s going to be a little bit more than 45 days 15
comment period is going to last through March 31st. So two days from now. We did have our 16
Council hearing as I mentioned last week on the 20th and we're having this hearing tonight. So 17
we welcome and encourage comments on either the supplement or the February 2016 DEIR at 18
this time. And again we will be responding to those comments in the next step of the process 19
which is preparing the final EIR. 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
So what did these two documents achieve? I think what we found out when we looked at five 2
and six is that the impacts were really not substantially different for those two additional 3
alternative or excuse me, scenarios beyond what we had already identified for scenarios one 4
through four. For all of the scenarios and for most of these types of programmatic 5
environmental reviews we really feel that the policies and programs that are in the Comp Plan 6
are the main source for mitigating or avoiding alternatives. So those, the mitigation measures 7
in the supplement to the EIR reflect an approach to the language that would ensure that we can 8
craft those policies in when we get to the as we nail down the Comp Plan here that we can craft 9
those policies to make sure that they maximize the effectiveness of the mitigation. 10
11
And then finally we did change some conclusions about the impacts in two sections. In the 12
Population and Housing section we had previously in the 2016 draft EIR identified a potential 13
mitigation measure for a Population and Housing impact that was actually less than significant. 14
So we weren't really required by CEQA to provide a mitigation measure since there was not a 15
significant impact. The draft EIR included one. By the time we got to doing the same kind of 16
analysis for the 2017 supplement we decided that's probably not a necessary approach and the 17
policies and the Comp Plan are really shaping up in a way that we think it's very defensible to 18
find that less than significant impact without needing to add a mitigation measure on top of 19
that. And then the greenhouse gas impact section that Council in the interim between these 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
two documents had approved the framework for the S Cap and really made a very strong and 1
public commitment to aggressive greenhouse gas reduction target. So taking that into account 2
we again decided that it's valid to conclude that there would be a not be a significant and 3
unavoidable greenhouse gas emissions target that's attributable to the Comp Plan. So that was 4
another change in between the draft and the supplement. 5
6
And I think the next slide is just briefly about the draft fiscal so you want me to just speak to 7
that? So alongside the CEQA environmental study the City also commissioned a fiscal study of 8
the scenarios and like the EIR that was expanded from the original four scenarios to cover 9
scenarios five and six as well as we took the opportunity to respond to some of the comments 10
that we heard from the Council Finance Committee when we presented that study to them last 11
year. The conclusion of that study was that all six scenarios would have slightly, but positive 12
fiscal impacts on the City. This it's important to understand that this study is very specific, the 13
fiscal study is very specifically focused on the revenues and cost attributable to new 14
development. So the fiscal study was not intended to be kind of a picture of Palo Alto’s overall 15
budget situation in 2030, but looking specifically at the component of costs and of revenues 16
that would be attributable to new workers and new residents. Under each one of these six 17
scenarios the fiscal impact would be positive rather than negative although it does not have an 18
extremely positive and it certainly doesn't have an extremely negative impact. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
So that study is published at the same time as the DEIR. And one outcome of this study and the 1
specific methodology that was used to really try to get at the questions about cost and 2
revenues attributed to the residents versus workers in response to specific Council concerns 3
when they provided direction on the study concluded that the expected fiscal benefit of a new 4
resident is greater than the expected fiscal benefit of a worker. And that's including when you 5
take into account things like not only sales taxes, but also other types of revenue that the City 6
collects and whether or not that revenue is really attributable to a resident versus a worker. 7
And when you look at that with some really pretty innovative methodology that was developed 8
specifically to respond to these questions in Palo Alto this was the conclusion of the fiscal study. 9
10
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Joanna. So just to wrap up on the supplemental the DEIR we think 11
that we got good direction from the Council on where they think the preferred scenario will 12
land and our hope is that will confirm some of that direction at our meeting, next meeting with 13
the Council on this subject on May 1st. Our intention is to describe the preferred scenario in 14
the final EIR and to do the test that's required just to make sure the final preferred scenario 15
falls within the range of impacts that we've identified with the six scenarios. Just to complete 16
our responsibilities under CEQA we have to be able to say and explain how the preferred 17
scenario falls within that range 18
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
So tonight is a public hearing, obviously we're looking for your comments and from any 1
interested member of the public who's here. Comments that would be appropriate would be 2
about the methodology or conclusions of the analysis. Anything about the mitigation measures 3
we proposed or other mitigation measures that you think might be appropriate. Anything 4
about the impacts both the impacts that are significant and mitigatable, but also the impacts 5
that are significant and unavoidable and those relate to air quality and traffic. And then any 6
other comments or questions you have. We don't really intend this to be an exchange. If you 7
have factual questions we can try and answer them, but on the whole our intention is to 8
receive your comments and questions tonight and then respond to them formally in the final 9
EIR when we respond to all of the public comments we receive. 10
11
So then just of few minutes on the PTC review process. As I indicated earlier the Commission's 12
work product in 2014 was really the basis that started the current planning effort with the CAC 13
and the Council. We expect the Council to conclude their review or at least get to a good 14
stopping point before their summer break so by the end of June and at that time make a 15
referral to the Planning Commission for your re-review and then we expect the Council to 16
request you to make a recommendation back to them. I think they'll probably give you some 17
direction, I don't know exactly what that will be. And they may give you a deadline, but I'm 18
hoping that this happens by June 30th so you will be faced this summer with the chore of really 19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
diving in deep to the plan as it's evolved since the PTC delivered it to the Council in 2014 and 1
crafting a recommendation back to the Council. 2
3
So in the staff report we talk about three possible ways that the Commission could go about 4
their job and I don't think you have to decide tonight. You could actually wait and get the 5
referral from the Council to make this decision, but we thought we'd offer you an opportunity 6
to talk about the some of the pros and cons of these different approaches. One idea was that 7
the Commission could form a subcommittee. I should mention that the prior Commission did a 8
lot of their work with subcommittees and there was a great deal of criticism in the end of that 9
process because subcommittees don't have to conduct their business at noticed public 10
meetings. So it was seen as some somehow not transparent. So while you could certainly 11
consider that I think there are some pluses and minuses and on that particular option there are 12
some minuses there to be aware of. Another option would be for each of the Commissioners 13
to take the lead on a certain piece of the document you receive and sort of take the lead role in 14
bringing back to the Commission some recommendations or issues for discussion. And then of 15
course the full body, the Commission as a whole could schedule a series of study sessions and 16
hearings to conduct your review in a public forum. We were talking earlier today about one 17
way that other jurisdictions have done this to have a series of two or three study sessions so 18
just freewheeling discussions of the different pieces of the plan and then once you go through a 19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
round of kind of just discussion sessions schedule the two or three public hearings to actually 1
do the work of crafting the recommendation and forwarding that on to the Council. 2
3
In all cases I think we're going to urge the Commission to focus on kind of a high level and we're 4
going to try to help you by outlining some key questions and issues for you to think of during 5
your review. I think we've all been at this for long enough and sort of the time for 6
wordsmithing is over. We're kind of at the issue, at the key issue phase. So we're confident 7
what we bring to you will need improvement. There will be opportunities for you to really 8
affect and make it a better work product, but we're hoping it is at that issue and policy level. 9
10
So in terms of next steps we are going back to the Council as I mentioned on May 1st. They 11
have one more session scheduled on the Land Use and Transportation Elements then they'll see 12
other elements of the plan in mid-May and in mid-June and that's at the point at which we 13
think they'll make their referral to the Commission or we're hoping that happens. And then you 14
would conduct your review over the summer months and the Council would hope to receive 15
your recommendation and conclude the process in the fall. All the while this is going on we're 16
going to continue the CEQA process and our hope is that we can get you the final EIR in time for 17
you to use it in the course of making your recommendation to the Council. It's we're going to 18
work to see if we can line that up, but that's our hope. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
So this evening our recommendation is to conduct a public hearing, receive comments from the 1
community and from the Commission, and then if you'd like to engage in a discussion and 2
identify a process for you to use once this document gets referred to you by Council. Happy to 3
answer any questions. 4
5
Chair Alcheck: Ok. We have a speaker. Before I open it up I just want to say a few things. This 6
is a very exciting part of a very big process. A lot of times this is referred to as the bible of the 7
work that we do. And so it's a very… this is our sort of the beginning of the last part of this 8
marathon and while we're talking tonight I want to suggest that in addition to our discussion 9
about the DEIR and the fiscal study this process discussion is a unique one. How we determine 10
how to do that is sort of an open ended question and Director Gitelman suggested that we 11
might get some direction from Council, but it would be I think wise to have if there are any 12
ideas among Commission Members about different ways we could go about this I certainly 13
would love to have them because I think there may be an opportunity to share some of that 14
insight with Council before they give direction. So keep that in mind when we're having this 15
discussion after you've made your comments about the EIR and the fiscal study if you have 16
some ideas. If you don't it's ok. Ok, so with that why don’t we open it up and invite our 17
speaker. 18
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_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Thank you. We just have one speaker card so far for Todd Collins. Five 1
minutes. 2
3
Todd Collins: Thank you. Hi, I’m Todd Collins. Thank you for hearing me. I'm a citizen of Palo 4
Alto. I'm also a member of the Palo Alto Unified School Board (PAUSD) though I'm not speaking 5
on behalf of the School Board tonight. 6
7
I had a chance to review the supplement to the DEIR and I really only want to talk to one part 8
the part about the schools. You all know Council Member Kniss; I campaigned with Council 9
Member Kniss last fall and heard her many times say no one moves to Palo Alto for the view, 10
but many people move here for the schools. And that has certainly been my experience so I 11
thought it was very important to attend to the impact of the schools of the proposed Comp 12
Plan. 13
14
I wanted to make a few observations, one is that the PAUSD Board and District had not had a 15
chance to weigh in to the extent that I think they would like, would have liked to by the time 16
the DEIR was submitted the supplement was submitted. I think that's now being addressed and 17
Ms. Gitelman and her staff are being very obliging at both meeting with Dr. McGee the 18
Superintendent, City Manager Keene and others this Friday to discuss it and then also 19
graciously extending the comment period to the District who I think will submit comments by 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
mid-April. But I think their comments will raise some issues that have not been addressed in 1
the supplement today so I think it's important to attend to them. 2
3
There are three important variables that impact how housing impacts school capacity. One is 4
the student generation rate from new housing, the second is students from existing housing, 5
and the third is the actual capacity of the schools. So let's talk about each one in turn. The 6
student generation rate for new housing in the DEIR was plugged at a very precise 0.5 students 7
per unit generated. So in each one of those scenarios where there were certain number of 8
housing units generated it was assumed that 0.5 student distributed pro rata across grades K 9
through 12 would eventually be in the system. I probably spent more time with the enrollment 10
forecasting data in Palo Alto Unified than anyone else and I wasn’t sure where that 0.5 came 11
from so I went and looked. It comes from this document which is called the Residential 12
Research Summary by a group called Decision Insight who are our demographer forecasters 13
over at the District. And if you look up and it's mentioned multifamily 0.5 it refers you to 14
Appendix B for the source of that. 15
16
This is Appendix B in its entirety. It's a list of six I'll be happy to give this to you guys. It's a list 17
of six housing developments since 2011 two of which are multifamily. One is Tree House, 18
student generation rate 0.03 per unit and Alma Housing which is 801 Alma, student generation 19
rate 0.7. I think it's a weighted average by which they get to the 0.5, but this is a good example 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
of where the a mean is not a great representative of the population especially when the 1
population consists of two data points. 2
3
So I think it would be wise to think more broadly about student generation rates. This is 4
something certainly we did in our enrollment planning where we looked at we developed and 5
this is by the way the list from 2009 from our former demographers, I'll give you this too, that 6
shows there really aren't the truth is there really are not many multifamily developments in 7
Palo Alto to look at to figure out what the student generation rates are. So there's definitely 8
guesswork here and I think what the District will recommend is that we that the City use 9
scenarios and or try to use a range of student generation rates to get a better sense of what 10
could happen here. The biggest fear I think it should be that if we guess low and more 11
students show up, significantly more students show up then forecast we will not know what to 12
do. The second piece is the student gen… and I guess just to put a number on it by my 13
calculations if you used the higher end of the actual data points that we saw the student 14
generation rates in the report are 30 to 40 percent lower than what we might actually see. 0.5 15
versus 0.7 is forty percent; forty percent higher. 16
17
Second is students from existing housing. This is incredibly hard to forecast because students 18
from existing housing we do 10 year forecasts from the same group called Decision Insight. We 19
don't look at it past five years because our experience is they have no idea, we have no idea, 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
and they are frequently wrong even within five years. So their ability to forecast out 10 years is 1
very speculative. So I would urge starting at where we are today rather than trying to guess 2
where we're going to be 10 years from now. 3
4
Finally the actual capacity of the schools, the capacity of schools is the capacity of the buildings 5
we already have which is pretty easily known. We've got a certain number of rooms and we 6
know how many kids are in each class, but there's also the amount of land that we have. 7
Because the gating factor in our ability to have schools is to have land to put them on. At our 8
existing schools it takes 5 acres to build an elementary school site, 25 acres to build a middle 9
school site, and 50 acres to build a high school site of the types that we have today. Now it's 10
funny because when I, we sat down with Ms. Gitelman I was pleased and mildly hopeful that 11
when we told her those numbers she was like wow that's a lot of land. And it is! It is very hard 12
when we think about where we can go get sites like that to build more schools if we had to do it 13
we do not know where to get it. We don't know where it will come from. 14
15
The School District does have an inventory of sites available to it that we've hoarded over the 16
years. As you guys probably all know a whole bunch was sold off, but we've also hoarded a 17
bunch. We have about five sites. One is good for an elementary school actually two are good 18
for elementary schools, one is good for a middle school, one is good for maybe a combination 19
of a middle school and elementary school, none of them are big enough for a high school that's 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
comparable to the high schools that we have today. So there's a finite capacity of both 1
classrooms and land where we can build the kind of schools that are of the size and type that 2
we have today. 3
4
We can always build different kinds of schools. I think this is worth considering, but I think it 5
shows how impactful these kind of things can become. As someone pointed out in San 6
Francisco you don't have to look very far to find a four-story, you can find many four-story 7
buildings all enclosed with playgrounds on the rooftops built on one or one and a half acre 8
sites. We could do that too. In Los Altos they were looking at doing that. They were going to 9
pay $50 million for a piece of land on El Camino to build a four-story school. They decided not 10
to do it because their next smallest site would be is nine acres, but if we wanted to go to a 11
different type of school site: multi-story, enclosed limited play area, limited open grounds we 12
could do that and we could accommodate virtually any number of kids as we build up and up. 13
So the question is, I mean this is the question for you guys, not for us, the schools will do 14
whatever they have to do. But I think the question for the planners and for the ultimately the 15
City Council is: is that within the vision of what you have for Palo Alto and how do you think 16
that affects the quality of life and the future of Palo Alto if we went to schools that look like 17
that? 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
So I think that there's some work to be done on the student generation rates. There's work to 1
be done in the existing housing, and there's work to be done to think about the capacity. There 2
are a couple other of considerations that I'll just mention quickly. One is what we call the 3
bubble effect and we are very sensitive to this because we've been living it. When students 4
show up from large developments they don't show up neatly spread out K through 12. They 5
show up in highly concentrated doses in the early grades and we're living this right now from 6
the from the growth of housing that was that came on line between 2008 and 2011 which we 7
officially now call the bubble years. Those students are right now in 7th through 10th grade 8
and they stretched the existing PAUSD capacity to the absolute limit beyond a 100 percent 9
actually for the grades that they're in. And what we've had to do is significantly expand our 10
capacity with portables and teachers moving around to accommodate those grades and then 11
when they leave we have lots of extra space afterwards. So it doesn't show up evenly 12
distributed, it shows up highly concentrated and that creates a real operational challenge for 13
the District. 14
15
The last thing is and I think I know the planners will incorporate this in their next draft is the 16
impact of Stanford expansion on the General Use Permit (GUP). We believe based on our 17
preliminary read of the GUP that the housing built at Stanford 550 single, 550 family housing 18
and over 900 graduate student housing will generate somewhere between 500 and 1,000 19
students for PAUSD. Just to put it in context 500 students is larger than the size of a single 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
elementary school. 1,000 students it's the size of an entire middle school. So that's a very large 1
population for us to swallow and that's above and beyond and separate from every number 2
that comes out of the EIR. So I think that's very important to take into consideration as you go 3
forward. 4
5
I've got lots more stuff. I can share information with you if you like. I've got the letter; I don't 6
know if you have the letter that I sent to Council last week, I'd be happy to send it to you. But I 7
just wanted to share those concerns and make sure you register them as you discuss this issue. 8
Thank you very much. 9
10
Chair Alcheck: Ok, thank you Mr. Collins. It may be appropriate for you to hang out in case 11
some Commissioners may have some specific questions and maybe we can keep the forum 12
open in case somebody wanted to address you. Ok, with that I'd like to start at this end and 13
make our way down. Commissioners feel free to talk, ask questions to staff or make comments 14
or do both and I think it's fair to assume we’ll do more than one round so… 15
16
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Did you want comments on both of these? 17
18
Chair Alcheck: Yeah. To the extent that you have an opinion about how we should do the 19
process. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: I didn’t know if you wanted to go through once on the first one and 2
[unintelligible]. 3
4
Chair Alcheck: Yeah. I'm going to leave it open so. 5
6
Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. So thank you very much Joanna and Elaine for preparing all 7
this and I was just wondering and I don't want to depart from the main topic, but there may be 8
a place in the City museum and I think that it would be interesting material for some others to 9
observe. But, but now seriously Mr. Collins thank you very much for coming. I hope that you 10
could I’d like to have all the materials that you're going to make available to the staff being 11
somehow forwarded [unintelligible] electronic form and also I was wondering on which page of 12
the EIR we may find that 0.5 student ratio if you have a second if you could just? 13
14
Mr. Collins: [Unintelligible] it is 414.12-3 I think? 15
16
Ms. Jansen: There's a couple of tables where the number appears. On Page 4.12-4, -5, -6, and -17
7 and I would just comment that that's I think what Mr. Collins is referring to is an aggregate of 18
the number for all grade levels which is 0.23 for elementary, 0.12 for middle, and 0.13 for high 19
school. So if you add that all together you have 0.5. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Mr. Collins: Yeah, it adds up to 0.5. So it’s these tables that have the and as she was saying, I’m 2
sorry, I don’t know your name? Joanne, thank you. If you add up those three numbers it adds 3
up to 0.5 and as it says in the little note down here this analysis assumes all new housing will be 4
multifamily housing and that's the multifamily housing student generation [unintelligible]. 5
6
Commissioner Gardias: Very good. Thank you very much for answering my question. Thank 7
you, I appreciate. So it’s just going back to this point that we have to answer I'd like to my first 8
question is about civic participation. So we have Mr. Collins who represents the School Board 9
so that's very important voice in our community, but I was wondering (interrupted) 10
11
Commissioner Rosenblum: Sorry, I think it it's important to be on the record. He’s not 12
representing the School Board, he’s representing himself. 13
14
Commissioner Gardias: Ok, thank you very much for catching this out. So I was wondering do 15
we plan actively reach out to some other groups within Palo Alto and proactively request their 16
input to the EIR? And then if yes what’s the calendar and if you could just provide us with 17
maybe not today, but maybe as a follow up item if you could just provide us with the list of 18
those either institutions or some lobby groups or some other interest groups and I think that 19
we should as opposed to wait for them we should proactively request their input, provide them 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
with the materials, and then just give them the deadline, give them either opportunity to come 1
to our follow up session or submit this in writing. 2
3
Ms. Gitelman: Well thank you for that question. We did publish a formal notice and send it to a 4
wide list of interested parties that we've collected during this process. So that was in February 5
we sent out a notice that and told people how to get this document, how to provide their 6
comments, and we're happy to receive any comments that come in before the end of the 7
comment period on the 31st. As Mr. Collins indicated we've allowed the School District an 8
extra couple weeks just because we've been having this exchange with them about the school 9
generation rates and some of the issues that Mr. Collins raised. I should say with regard to that 10
that we feel like we used the generation rate that the School District gave us when we were 11
preparing these documents, but that doesn't mean that we're not open to refining our 12
projections and looking carefully at the issues that Mr. Collins and others have raised. And in 13
fact we made a commitment to the City Council the other night at their hearing that we were 14
going to look particularly at this issue about the interaction between the school projections for 15
this set of scenarios we've come up with and for the GUP that Stanford is working on. So we're 16
going to explore all these issues much more in-depth in the final EIR. 17
18
Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. In terms of the of getting interest, getting response or input 19
from those groups I was also wondering are we going to just get and going back to the 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
proposed or preferred scenarios that Council decided to pursue last Monday are we going to 1
get the updated and slimmed down version of this report that will focus on the on those two 2
scenarios? Just as a practical manner I mean this is truly thick volume and some folks that are 3
not familiar with EIR process they might be lost with trying to analyze what's pertinent for their 4
use. So I thought that maybe it would be more practical to give them this Commission a truly 5
focused book that would address recent decision of the Council this way we would probably 6
have better chance of getting practical input. 7
8
Ms. Gitelman: Well thank you. As Joanna mentioned our next step is preparing a final EIR and 9
the final EIR will contain all of the comments we received on the draft and the supplement of 10
the draft as well as responses to those comments. So a written comment response and in 11
addition we are going to include a discussion of the preferred scenario and an analysis of how 12
that falls within the other planning scenarios. So in that sense we will be providing a kind of a 13
focus summary of the preferred scenario and where this process is ending up. And I hope it will 14
be an accessible document that people will be able to see really how their input throughout this 15
process has affected the ultimate plan that the Council adopts. 16
17
Commissioner Gardias: And also in terms of steering public interest I know it may add more 18
work, but would it be possible to when you're reaching out to different interest groups to reach 19
out to them again with the new slimmed down document and suggest that they may be 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
interested specifically in some selected area. Say that if you are sending out a letter to the 1
bikers which is one of the influential groups of this town there may some of the they may be 2
interested in some of the chapters not others. And maybe in that letter just to make this more 3
practical you may refer to just one of the chapters as this that would be within their interest. 4
5
Ms. Gitelman: Well again that's a little bit about the beauty of this process of comments and 6
response so if we get a comment letter that comments on a particular issue we will include a 7
response in the document to that issue. And so someone is going to be able to look in the 8
document for the comment they made and the response to that comment. So I think people 9
will find it accessible in that in terms of being able to focus on the specific questions and issues 10
that they felt were important enough to comment on. We’ve all been working on these 11
environmental documents for a long time and it's it is a kind of prescribed planning process, but 12
it tends to work out. It tends to flesh out the issues that are of real interest and people who are 13
engaged stay engaged and ultimately see how their issues track through the whole process. 14
15
Commissioner Gardias: Yes I agree with this, but then just to knowing how valuable the public's 16
input may be it may add value to identify those chapters or those paragraphs that truly impact 17
their activity or area of interest and just put it in front of their faces because otherwise as I 18
mentioned, right, this is really thick volume and even if with the narrowed down interest for 19
some it may be hard to swallow. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Ms. Gitelman: I'm agreeing with you. I'm saying that people will get responses to their 2
individual comments so they will get directed to a specific response to the issues that are of 3
concern to them. 4
5
Commissioner Gardias: Ok and the last item that I would like to mention is you were asking us 6
about the preference how we would like to approach this document. So I believe that from my 7
perspective I think that we need time and I'm sure that my colleagues will chime in to this 8
subject. We'll need time; however, it will be decided here I'm fine with this, but I think that we 9
need a couple of weeks with the final document or with the preferred document. So once the 10
preferred document is issued I would recommend that you give us a couple of weeks to digest 11
it and then provide you with either written comments that would be reconciled here within this 12
Commission or with a follow up session. Thank you. 13
14
Chair Alcheck: Ok just I forgot to mention that what I would like to do for our first round is I'm 15
keeping a timer so if Commissioners could attempt to speak I'm sort of loosely assigning 10 16
minutes for this first round. You don't need to use all 10 minutes, but let's I’ll give you a little 17
nudge if we if you're coming close to it, ok? Ok. Go ahead. 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Lauing: Ok, thanks. The actually the core issue that I wanted to drill down on is 1
what we've just been drilling down on was the educational aspect of things. For one thing I 2
noticed there were a lot of changes already and so that must mean that you had some new 3
data and I was going to ask how comfortable you are that that's the real data. The coupled 4
question has also just been brought up which is how comfortable are you that the Stanford 5
data is in there? It seems like that's a little bit still in question. So that's… 6
7
Ms. Gitelman: Well let me start the answer and maybe Joanna can chime in if I wander off in 8
the wrong direction, but between the draft and the supplement of the DEIR we contacted the 9
District for updated student generation rates and received them and that's why we adjusted 10
the analysis. And you see the strike out, the red lining in there. And we’ll continue that process 11
of consultation and if they need to change again we'll show the changes again. I'm sorry the 12
rest of your question was? 13
14
Commissioner Lauing: Stanford. 15
16
Ms. Gitelman: Oh, Stanford. We did not specifically analyze Stanford in this EIR. There's a 17
practice or a convention in the CEQA process that when you're doing a long EIR like this it takes 18
a long time you basically use as your baseline the world as it existed when you started, when 19
you issued the notice of preparation. That's the legal standard and so that's really what we've 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
done here although we've tried to acknowledge that a lot is going to happen in the world 1
between now and 2030 that we don't necessarily know about so we've tried to include a 2
cumulative impacts analysis that's pretty broad, but we didn't know about the Stanford GUP 3
when we wrote this. Now we do and we made a commitment to the Council when we met with 4
them last week that we will address that in the final EIR. We're not going to go back and rerun 5
all the numbers, but we're going to include a discussion of what it means, what the Stanford 6
GUP application could mean in terms of the future in 2030 that's analyzed in this book, and try 7
and provide sufficient information the Council feels comfortable that they've been informed 8
about the potential interaction of the two projects. 9
10
Commissioner Lauing: Ok. And then the preferred scenario certainly I think needs to shape our 11
review because a preferred scenario is now Council policy. So I don't know if that has any 12
impact on the rest of the EIR or not. 13
14
Ms. Gitelman: Oh well that's a good point. We’re as I mentioned we're going to try, we're going 15
to be working on the final EIR in parallel while you're reviewing the Comp Plan sections that the 16
Council refer to you and we're going to get you the final EIR with that discussion about the 17
preferred scenario before you finish your work. 18
19
Commissioner Lauing: Right. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Ms. Gitelman: So you will be able to be informed by that discussion, that analysis. Absolutely. 2
3
Commissioner Lauing: Yeah that makes sense. I don't know if it has any impact on what work 4
you do on six scenarios in the final EIR because they've now stated what the policy is which I 5
think will be helpful and get us through the process quicker. 6
7
Ms. Gitelman: Just one clarification on that too. The Council has given us direction so that we 8
can prepare the final EIR. They really haven't made any irrevocable decision. They've simply 9
provided direction. 10
11
Commissioner Lauing: And you made that clear in your written instructions even to Council I 12
noticed so I was going to mention that. I'm glad you did. I just want to make a quick comment 13
on the fiscal study. I think it was worthwhile because you ruled out wide swings. You found 14
out that one or the other wasn't horrifically bad or horrifically good. So you've ruled that out 15
and you've ruled out problems. The fact that all six are about the same kind of takes that whole 16
analysis out of it, but I thought that was very pertinent comment at the last Council meeting 17
that we can't be doing this thing about making Palo Alto livable for affordable housing and a 18
great place to live like we always have based on dollars per employee or dollars per resident. 19
So I thought that was quite pertinent and I also thought the City Manager’s comments were 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
quite pertinent that we don't have walls around our city so people come in here all the time 1
and we still have to cover the costs for that. So it's a bit of an artificial construct, but I still think 2
it was worthwhile because you ruled out potential wild swings. That’s all my comments on 3
that. 4
5
With respect to the process for reviewing I think that the best thing to do is to do 6
subcommittees. We call on the Parks Commission we just call those ad hocs. In this case I 7
don't think it would be helpful that one person study each thing because I don't think you get a 8
dialogue going. I don't think you get enough debate before it comes back to the PTC. I also 9
don't think that each ad hoc has, that an ad hoc has to take care of all of the elements so we 10
could have a few ad hocs that would take of two people or more that would take on one or 11
two. From our experience on Parks it worked fantastically well and we have just… I mean we've 12
got years of case studies now that for example the master plan would either not be done now 13
or it would be vanilla literally if it hadn't been for a lot of intensive work in the committees. 14
And the important thing is for everyone to know that nothing gets done in the ad hoc. 15
Everything has to come back to the body to make decisions on. The public needs to know that, 16
every Commissioner needs to know that, there's not a single decision. So as long as we're 17
completely transparent about that my experience is that that's worked quite well. That's all. 18
Thank you. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: I’ll hold my comments to the second round. 1
2
Chair Alcheck: Ok, alright. So I have a few questions that I'd like to ask about the evaluating EIR 3
with respect to a Comp Plan. So when we approach an EIR analysis for a specific project there's 4
a lot more knowns in the review. This is the project, this is the size of the project, these are the 5
likely traffic implicate… all of the elements of a typical study. And I appreciate that there is a 6
preferred scenario and then there is a sort of a variety of scenarios and really the preferred 7
scenario is a hybrid of the numerous scenarios. I guess my question is: is how do we really 8
evaluate a, how does an EIR serve us for example in a scenario where we say ok, we want to 9
grow... Well we don’t have the slide. Hold on. Ok, so we want to increase our housing let's say 10
in Scenario 5 by 3,546. That’s an additional 3,500 units in the thirty… in the time frame which is 11
roughly 13 years from now. Is there a likelihood of that possibility without sort of also an 12
analysis of what potential changes would have to take place in our code to make that possible? 13
14
I ask that question because I'm just curious we have a member of the public addressing, sort of 15
questioning an analysis of the anticipated growth of student population based on the number 16
of individuals who may move into the District based on estimates of housing growth. But unlike 17
a EIR for a specific project this is anticipatory of projects that may or may not get developed. 18
And the likelihood of us the same difficulty that we have in finding a location for a high school is 19
the same difficulty anybody will have trying to find a location for 4,000 housing units. And so 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
I'm just curious how we should approach when we get the EIR how do we approach that review 1
without really any specific projects? There are sort of it's a preferred scenario, but it's not with 2
it doesn't come with a project. So how does that… how do we grapple with that? 3
4
Ms. Jansen: Ok, thank you. Thank you, Chair, for that question. So just to back up a little bit 5
and talk a little bit more about how CEQA treats these planning documents they are the 6
adoption of a comprehensive plan or some other type of planning level regulation by a 7
jurisdiction is considered a project under CEQA, but of course it's not a specific development 8
proposal. So CEQA accommodates that through what's called a programmatic or a program EIR 9
and that's what your Comp Plan EIR is. And the statute understands that you're not going to be 10
able to have that same level of specificity. So it really either for a project level or for a 11
programmatic level EIR what we're asked to do is think about the reasonably foreseeable 12
outcomes of the project in this case the adoption of the Comp Plan. And it is difficult to know 13
and we have to make our best guess and we also have to kind of focus on what the City is 14
responsible for so we're not trying to predict everything about what everyone else around us 15
will do by 2030. But if the City takes the responsibility of adopting this Comp Plan or takes the 16
responsibility of adopting a Comp Plan that would reflect one of the six scenarios or the hybrid 17
preferred scenario what are their likely outcomes? 18
19
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And I just want to make a comment about two different ways that we try to answer that 1
question. One is through quantifying the development and we do look at the existing code and 2
what it would allow and we also looked at various types of projections of both housing and 3
nonresidential development both that the City has come up with and also what other agencies 4
like Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) have come up with. And each one of those 5
different projections kind of played into a different scenario so that we were sure to be 6
considering a different, the full range of perspectives that are out there on what might happen. 7
So we think, I think Hillary will speak a little bit more to what the specifics components of the 8
scenarios are. We do think that all of them represented a realistic a possible future for Palo 9
Alto so I think there are some of them would require policy changes. Scenario 1 was kind of if 10
we don't change policies so you could see the numbers that we might expect to occur there. 11
Others would clearly require some policy changes and the EIR project description talked about 12
some of the different policy options, some of the different transportation investments, some of 13
the different sustainability measures, etcetera that would be kind of both necessary and 14
desirable to make a scenario with a given configuration functional. So we do look at those 15
numbers based on what we think is in CEQA terminology reasonably foreseeable that's what 16
the law requires us to look at. 17
18
And then I just also want to make a comment that because some people get tripped up on it, 19
the numbers drive our quantitative analyses. So we need to think about these numbers of units 20
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or the numbers of jobs for things like the traffic analysis and the resulting air quality analysis 1
and the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, etcetera. But there are other types of analyses that 2
we do in the document that are really more qualitative or more spacial. So the analysis of 3
whether or not a new development would be exposed to wild fire hazards or flood zones or the 4
types of aesthetic impacts for example that might happen, those types of analyses really are 5
not as much tied to the numbers. Of course they are somewhat tied to the magnitude of 6
development, but they're really more about the location or the widespreadness kind of, of 7
development rather than specific numbers. So we do take a quantitative look in many of these 8
chapters, but I just want to point out that there are also kind of more qualitative questions that 9
the EIR answers that are not necessarily tied to specific numbers in the specific scenarios. Do 10
you want to say more about the scenarios? 11
12
Chair Alcheck: Ok, thank you for that answer. So correct me if I’m wrong, it's my impression 13
that all of the scenarios satisfy our sort of Housing Element or Housing Element compliance or 14
our allotment of “housing”? 15
16
Ms. Gitelman: That’s kind of a complicated question. It's complicated because the Housing 17
Element law is prescribes a shorter time period than this document covers. So we have a 18
Housing Element that runs to 2023 and this Comp Plan is envisioned as going to 2030. So I 19
think that the short answer to your question is yes, we think any of these scenarios would be in 20
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compliance with state housing law. I think many of us feel however that the next time we 1
update our Housing Element we're probably going to get higher numbers. 2
3
Chair Alcheck: Right. 4
5
Ms. Gitelman: And so it'll be a little bit of a scramble to identify sites unless we've selected one 6
of the higher housing scenarios here. 7
8
Chair Alcheck: Can you remind me our number was the 17 (interrupted) 9
10
Ms. Gitelman: About 2,000. 11
12
Chair Alcheck: 2000? 13
14
Ms. Gitelman: A little less. 15
16
Chair Alcheck: Ok, so that sort of raises my, that raises a similar question for me as well. Just 17
this notion that we consistently have this projection or I should say allotment that we 18
incorporate in our Housing Element, but we rarely if ever come close to satisfying the actual 19
development of that “number” or I don't want to call it an obligation, but the units we're 20
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supposed to zone for and that's one of the parts of this that I always think is difficult to 1
approach because we rarely meet that number. The all of these numbers represent an excess 2
of that number significantly, right? I mean maybe it's unlikely to think that 2,720 is the number 3
for the next thirteen years if our Housing Element’s going to be updated in 2023, but that 4
wouldn't be ter… it wouldn’t… it's not impossible for the next number to be slightly larger in 5
which case the other four scenarios are likely to be in line with our ABAG requirement. But we 6
never achieve that and so I don't know I guess what I'm trying to say is that I struggle with the 7
analysis of the growth because all of the numbers seem large. They seem aspirational, but they 8
all seem much larger than likely. And so it's not so much about what's the preferred scenario 9
from my perspective because we're going to review the EIR which is going to review a hybrid of 10
all of them. I think the bigger point for me is which red flags in the EIR or which highly sensitive 11
or significant impacts that are sort of identified in the EIR which of those should we really react 12
to because of the likely or unlikelihood of the actual result of these projections? That's sort of 13
what my question before was about. 14
15
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah if I understand where you're heading I think I would urge the Commission 16
to focus on the policy document. So when the Council refers the Comp Plan update to you it's 17
their feeling that they've included policies and programs that will result in a slightly higher 18
generation of housing than we have had historically. That's why their suggestion that the 19
preferred alternative scenario is somewhere between Scenarios 2 and… no, 3 and 4 when it 20
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comes to housing. So they feel that they and the CAC have been crafting a document that's a 1
little kind of up on housing more than and will stimulate more than we've seen historically and 2
more than in the business as usual scenario. So when you get the policy document I think it 3
would be a good issue for the Commission to focus on whether you agree with that. Do you see 4
policies in the Comp Plan update that address the need for housing, all different types of 5
housing? The CAC has been very eloquent on the need for different types of housing focusing 6
on small units, the need for additional housing for underserved and disadvantaged populations. 7
And so I think you'll see a lot of that in the Comp Plan update and then you'll get to tell us if you 8
think there should be more or if it should be handled slightly differently. 9
10
Chair Alcheck: So you couldn’t have set up my third and short final question better which is do 11
you believe that we our role is to judge the likelihood of achieving some of these preferred 12
scenarios with the policies and is there any staff prepared work product that will help us 13
ascertain the likelihood that the policies and programs will achieve these scenarios? 14
15
Ms. Gitelman: That's a very good question. Now that we know that's a specific question and 16
interest of yours we can try and frame the conversation accordingly. I think the work products 17
that are coming out of the CAC and the Council do address this issue. This is kind of one of the I 18
think if you look at the work products it's one of the inherent priorities that have been 19
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identified there and the so we will be talking about that with the Commission. You'll have an 1
opportunity to weigh in on that. 2
3
Chair Alcheck: Ok, great. Alright, I'll make a quick point about process for the rest of you to 4
reflect on. I was a part of the subcommittee process. I was a part of the blowback of the 5
subcommittee process. I'm not opposed to some element of subcommittee analysis. My hope 6
is that we all get to delve into these documents significantly. I imagine us scheduling meetings 7
over those three months where we essentially space the meetings on the Comp Plan a month 8
apart from each other and we do two or three elements at a time giving Commissioners an 9
opportunity to really read through the elements and then come to have an in-depth discussion. 10
There’s a little bit of a question of whether or not we'll have to have repeat or follow up 11
meetings and so I do think that some individual potentially subcommittee analysis might be 12
helpful, but I envision a process where we approach this review in a very sort of thorough way. 13
14
But for the most part I think it's really safe to assume that the public has spoken. I think the 15
CACs work represents a significant contribution from the public. And so I am looking forward to 16
as Director Gitelman suggested a fifty a 50,000 foot high review where we really we take, we 17
respect the process that's already taken place and we attempt to be efficient at the same time 18
as thoughtful. So that's sort of where I am, but again I think it would be really interesting to see 19
what other people think about how we should approach this. 20
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1
Commissioner Monk: So on Mr. Collins you had mentioned your concerns about the density of 2
housing that would result in an impact to the schools and I was just curious as to whether you 3
have knowledge as to what's going on in regards to general birth rates in the area, women of 4
childbearing age moving here, and what can substantiate those concerns about the impacts to 5
the schools. 6
7
Mr. Collins: I do know little about it, but I think it would be out of turn to present myself as an 8
expert on it. One of the things I can say authoritatively about birth rates is that no one can 9
predict them. As we looked historically at birth rates in… to try to as part of our enrollment 10
forecasting effort a couple of years ago we noticed that birth rates had dramatically gone down 11
during the recession which is actually typical and not unexpected. And what was amazing is 12
after the recovery to everyone's surprise they continued to go down. And when I say everyone 13
I mean like every demographer in the United States was like holy crap what's going on, the birth 14
rates keep going down. And I actually talked to the State Demographer in California at some 15
point two years ago maybe and asked him what his understanding of it or thoughts about it 16
were. And as he said demography is permanent employment because there are never any 17
authoritative answers to what will happen. So at this point birth rates are lower than they have 18
been historically whether they get… the forecast from the State Demographer is actually flat at 19
the current level which I interpret as meaning he has no idea, but the official forecast from the 20
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State Demographer of California is that birth rates in California will be flat at this point going 1
forward. That's what I know. 2
3
Commissioner Monk: I think that's interesting to know so appreciate that additional 4
information. Thank you. And the reason why I was curious about that was because of what 5
you reflected on in regards to the bubble years and a concern about having dense housing and 6
a lot of school age children going into the schools in the same period of time. To that I would 7
say is there a way to stagger the building of these units and make some sort of 8
accommodations if we're truly concerned about the impact of students coming in [in the 9
closed] and the age range. 10
11
In regards to the first item on the EIR or it's the same issue I wanted to look at Slide 6 where 12
you're talking about the ratios. Did you have an opportunity to look at what the jobs 13
employment ratio would be or the employment/residence ratio would be under these 14
scenarios? Under the preferred scenario that was presented on Monday. 15
16
Ms. Gitelman: You know I (interrupted) 17
18
Commissioner Monk: And I know there's a range. 19
20
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Ms. Gitelman: Yeah it is a range of actually four numbers and I did the math while we were 1
sitting there at the Council meeting, but it was like late and I don't remember where I put the 2
calculations and I wouldn't trust them really. So we'll have to do that as we prepare the final 3
EIR. We'll have to actually look further to find all of the characteristics of the preferred scenario 4
so that'll be top of the list. 5
6
Commissioner Monk: Ok, great. And then I guess jumping to [unintelligible] other notes. Ok, so 7
jumping to the process for review I agree that subcommittees make sense based on what 8
Commissioner Lauing had mentioned and Commissioner [Note-Chair] Alcheck. I would support 9
that approach. I wanted to ask a question on the California Government Code, Page 26 where 10
it’s talking about the procedure for the adoption of the master plan. So is that something that 11
would be our guiding document in how we approach this and does that have any impact on 12
how we should be looking at implementing our plan? 65500. Is everything incorporated or are 13
there any other outstanding… 14
15
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, you know what I think we’ll have to review this whole section. I'm not sure 16
I would single out that one paragraph in here. 17
18
Commissioner Monk: Ok. I just wasn't sure if that was instructive for us in particular. 19
20
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Ms. Gitelman: Certainly this need to hold at least two public hearings. 1
2
Commissioner Monk: There's a lot of requirements here. 3
4
Ms. Gitelman: It's really interesting. Actually this is a fascinating story that I don't know all of 5
the background to, but this old section from the Government Code from 1959 was adopted into 6
the municipal code by voter initiative at some point so it's what we have and we're trying to 7
follow this. So we will ask you to hold at least two hearings and make a kind of adopt 8
something and refer it to the Council. And then once the Council takes their action on the 9
Comp Plan update we're expecting that they will refer it back to you for a report on any 10
changes that have occurred. That's kind of the bottom line that we're getting from this, this old 11
provision. So we'll provide you more information on that whole process when we come back 12
and start your review. 13
14
Commissioner Monk: And do you think that something that could be accomplished by the end 15
of this calendar year or? 16
17
Ms. Gitelman: I think our hope is that you will make your recommendation to Council before 18
the fall. In the fall they'll finish their work and adopt something and then they'll make it their 19
adoption subject to your final report. 20
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1
Commissioner Monk: Ok. And then just one last question referring to Page 23 it says that we 2
shall annually review the general plan. Is that happening? Is that something that we need to… 3
4
Ms. Gitelman: You know that's a good question too. On an annual basis the as staff we send a 5
report into the housing, to the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) on 6
our Housing Element and to Office of Planning and Research (OPR) and it touches on the Comp 7
Plan, but it’s mostly focused on the Housing Element. I think it is incumbent on this 8
Commission to do an annual review. You review the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) on an 9
annual basis and in recent years I think the Commission has been using the occasion of their 10
joint meeting with the City Council as an opportunity to give the Council a report and have a 11
discussion with the Council about priorities, but it would be wise if we could maybe structure 12
your work this year to include this annual report which I think is fallen a lot (interrupted) 13
14
Commissioner Monk: This year I think we're probably covered so I wasn't sure if it was baked 15
into everything going forward. 16
17
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, I think it would be good to put some attention on this in the next few 18
months. 19
20
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Commissioner Monk: Ok, thank you. That's all I have. 1
2
Commissioner Summa: So thank you for the presentation and also for our member of the public 3
who spoke. A couple quick questions and I might know the answer to one of them. But at the 4
beginning of the land use section you talk about the [Cortese knock sack] and [Laugh Co] which 5
I'm not an expert on, but was there a significant update of that more recently and does that 6
change any of the information that you gave us about that? 7
8
Ms. Gitelman: Oh gosh, there haven't been significant updates to the [Cortese knocks] you 9
know the [Laugh Co] rules in the last couple years that would change our analysis. It's been 10
more than (interrupted) 11
12
Commissioner Summa: Ok, because (interrupted) 13
14
Ms. Gitelman: Three or four years since they did a major redo of that (interrupted) 15
16
Commissioner Summa: But you mentioned the date 1986, but I’m assuming that you mention 17
that they not because… because you're using the latest version you just mention that date to 18
give the historical context? 19
20
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Ms. Gitelman: That's right. 1
2
Commissioner Summa: Ok. 3
4
Ms. Gitelman: That's right. It has been certainly updated since ‘86. There was a big update 5
sometime in the ninety's I don't remember exactly when. 6
7
Commissioner Summa: Ok, I just wanted to make sure I knew that. And then I think I know the 8
answer to this because I think it probably falls in the same category of the Stanford GUP 9
consideration and that is the state Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) law and how that might affect 10
anything. So we can't have any… We can't look at that in the EIR because it wasn't there at the 11
beginning. Timing wise? 12
13
Ms. Gitelman: I actually think that's a different, that's a different answer. If you look at the 14
description of the scenarios in the project description of the EIR you'll find that some of them 15
assumed that we would liberalize policies and encourage ADUs. So while we didn't go into 16
depth on that particular component of any one of the scenarios that policy idea was included in 17
the package that was analyzed here. 18
19
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Commissioner Summa: Ok, and so this DEIR you feel will cover because of all the things it's 1
looking at in all the scenarios you feel it will also cover and you can make an applicable 2
determination on the hybrid scenario that the Council preferred? 3
4
Ms. Gitelman: Well that's exactly why we asked the Council to kind of narrow down so we could 5
do that analysis and answer that question with certainty. 6
7
Commissioner Summa: Ok. 8
9
Ms. Gitelman: And that will be done in the final EIR. 10
11
Commissioner Summa: Ok. And then just a few quick comments, I did find there were three 12
letters there was the one from School Board Member Collins, also one from Superintendent 13
McGee, and one from Penny Elson who's very involved, a citizen advocate with the school for 14
years. And they were all basically the same that they were concerned that the wrong 15
generation rates were being used, etcetera and that might be really lowballing. And that was a 16
concern for me. I'm glad that the staff is has entered in more a more of a conversation about 17
that. I just think we have to… I mean I think the school system is one of the jewels in Palo Alto’s 18
crown for sure and I don't think the public would be… I don't think to be palatable to the public 19
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to have a scenario that really diminished the quality of our schools. So I think that would really 1
get the room full. So that was one thing. 2
3
The other area where I had questions was in the transportation section and Table 4 point, I 4
mean Page 4.1346 and basically these are the assumptions that rely on Caltrain electrification 5
and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). I have a concern in general that too many cities up and down and 6
institutions up and down the whole Caltrain corridor are relying on a capacity that will never be 7
there even with electrification. In other words so many people are claiming, so many cities are 8
claiming we’ll get people out, we’ll give free passes, we’ll get people off and I'm just on the 9
train and out of their cars and I'm just really concerned that that capacity has been wildly 10
overestimated. So there's electrification who knows what the status is of that now because of 11
what's going on in Washington. My understanding is that electrification will only increase 12
capacity by about 20 percent and that lately the annual rate of ridership has been increasing 13
annually 10 percent so we're already kind of behind the eight ball even if electrification 14
happens. 15
16
And I'm also concerned about the uncertainties with regards to the blended system with high 17
speed rail and I know that Caltrain has already a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to 18
have that blended system work. And so is that actually going to then diminish the capacity for 19
Caltrain use? So the idea I think was to have in peak hours, rush hours was to have six, but who 20
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knows if this is ever going to happen and this is why I think relying on Caltrain is pretty overly 1
optimistic. So I think the peak hours it was understood in the blended system there'd be six 2
trains for Caltrain and four for high speed rail which might even be a reduction if high speed rail 3
ever comes up the Peninsula which might even be a reduction of our increase. I'm just very 4
concerned that there are too many unknowns and an oversubscribed, overly optimistic, 5
unrealistic dependence on a capacity that really doesn't exist in Caltrain. 6
7
The other thing on the same in the same page is about BRT. So I'm concerned about that too 8
because BRT to me so the City Council and maybe they'll be a change in the City Council's 9
opinion on this, but they said no to BRT in Palo Alto not too long ago. And I'm also concerned 10
that bus we don't I didn't see in here and I could have missed it because it's a pretty big 11
document. I didn't see ridership, Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) ridership 12
numbers in here and the VTA is currently cutting bus service to the north county because of a 13
lack of ridership. So I'm worried we’ll never get BRT and I'm also worried that the BRT does 14
what the 522 bus already does. It's an express system that goes in the same, on same exact, in 15
the same place. So I don't think that any additional capacity of transit has been added here and 16
I think what we're relying on to as improvements are very unreliable so that concerns me. 17
18
So it’s a schools and transportation oh, and in the hazardous materials area recently because of 19
a lot of the replacement of the original buildings in the Stanford Research Park (SRP) I think 20
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there's been a more complete understanding of the nature of the toxic plume under the 1
Research Park. Higher intensities have been found and it's even been found to be drifting off 2
into adjacent neighborhoods. All of that is very up in the air, but I would think it would be 3
appropriate for this EIR to recommend a real comprehensive study of the plume and where it's 4
going. I mean I know that you guys know this has come up in where I live in College Terrace 5
and some it's still under California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC). They're still 6
they haven't made a final determination, but it just seems like it would be good especially since 7
those old buildings are being torn down and repurposed in the Research Park to have a 8
understanding of where that toxic plume is really going and if and then follow up with 9
mitigations if necessary. 10
11
So I think that's it. Yeah, that's it for now. Oh, wait a second, the process. I think it would be 12
great if this body could go through the whole each element line by line, but I don't think we're 13
going to have the time for that. And I can't imagine that there was a problem with the 14
subcommittee process that happened with PTC earlier; however, it's the way the CAC 15
developed. CAC used subcommittees because we just needed to for time’s sake so I don't 16
know why the public would object to subcommittees on the PTC as long as every as 17
Commissioner Lauing said everything… nothing is decided at subcommittee level. It's only that 18
people get to delve in deeper at the subcommittee level and then we bring it to the whole 19
board for determination and decision making. I think since it's been so much part of the 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
process already with the CAC work that it would not be I don't know why the public would 1
object to the PTC following a similar sort of process. 2
3
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Commissioner. Those were all terrific comments that we will of 4
course respond to in the final EIR. I just wanted to clarify a couple things. One with regard to a 5
BRT it's actually included in a couple of the scenarios as an option that we so we could assess 6
the impacts or benefits of it and it wasn't included in the configuration that the Council 7
objected to and voted not to support. Instead it's assumed to be running along the curb with 8
designated platforms and queue jumping technology. So it's kind of how some of the 9
crosstown buses in Manhattan have been modified, very different than what was proposed 10
originally by VTA along El Camino. 11
12
Then on the toxics issue in the Research Park this is a subject where there is a whole regulatory 13
regime that applies. And for that reason we're not likely to end up to need a lot of mitigation in 14
the EIR, but this is an issue that when you look at the safety element of the Comp Plan you 15
might want to make sure that it's addressing as a policy matter the issue that you raised which I 16
think is a valid one and other members of the community have expressed it to us so far. 17
18
Commissioner Rosenblum: Great, so given that I'm going second to last I think a lot of people 19
have already made great comments and I think Commissioner Lauing expressed most of my 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
views pretty well. So first I think the fiscal analysis was a useful exercise, but the range of 1
budget impacts are 3 to 4 percent so sorry it’s like 2.7 versus 4 percent. It basically shows that 2
no scenario has much impact on the budget. They're all positive, but positive within a narrow 3
range. But I would extend the comment a little bit which is I think that's true of almost 4
everything in the EIRs. So we're now evaluating a range of scenarios that are quite narrow both 5
in terms of the additional population and in terms of the additional number of workers. And 6
therefore I think that the way the PTC could best interact at this point is around two areas. It's 7
really about mitigations because the numbers of people both workers and residents that you’re 8
bringing in will be similar. And so one thing that's core to what the PTC does, but may not 9
necessary be core to what the CAC worked on it's certainly core to at least one section is things 10
like Transportation Demand Management (TDM) and Transportation Management Association 11
(TMA) and how that might impact each scenario and what to prioritize. 12
13
And so the second area which is suggested by that is prioritization. So now the programs are all 14
back in sort of a sense for the PTC members of what we think should get prioritized and put as 15
high priorities for the Council once the plan is adopted. So where they really want to spend 16
their attention and make sure that staff resources are properly devoted and prioritized. 17
18
So in terms of the way I think we could interact well with this there have been several 19
suggestions for subcommittees. To be more specific I like that idea. There are seven of us. I 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
would love to see three groups of two. There are seven sections to the plan so each group of 1
two would take on two sections and that leaves one section out. I would say governance which 2
is a 12 page section as opposed to say 50 pages for land use and we’re part of the governance 3
section. So PTC is a big part of the governance of the implementation [unintelligible] so we're 4
all interested in that would be the floater meaning we would all weigh in and all study the 5
governance section and see what the PTC’s role is. So obviously we're not going to make a just 6
for the record my suggestion would be I think it's always dangerous to have one person be a 7
body in his or herself, but at the same time I think there's just not that many of us. I think 8
having groups of two will get through everything with and I actually liked working with 9
Commissioner [Note-Vice-Chair] Waldfogel when we did a little exercise. I thought having two 10
people it's very flexible, we have different sets we have different opinions and we could 11
challenge each other. It worked quite well. 12
13
Finally, there's been a lot of discussion around the school impacts and I wanted to understand a 14
little bit about our previous process with the schools. And I just as a side note I find this process 15
very odd. And so we have Mr. Collins come in and I do appreciate you coming in, but it is an 16
odd thing. He is a Board Member who is here acting as a as an individual, but it's quite difficult 17
to separate those roles because as he says he's the board member that spent a lot of time on 18
with a demographer working on committees around school population. So it's kind of an expert 19
opinion and so it's very difficult to separate his role as an individual and his opinion from that of 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
the Board. So I'm curious if you could talk a bit about the planning process. What was the 1
interaction with the previous demographers? How does staff feel about the level of attention 2
that was given to this thus far? And I appreciate their giving the school more time to formally 3
respond and work with you more closely, but just I'd like to understand a little bit about how 4
this went the first round. And in particular whether or not things have substantively changed 5
since I don't even know when those interactions took place exactly. I see it in the in the 6
footnote to the table that was being referenced about where the interactions took place, but 7
I'm not sure that represents the whole of the interaction. So could you just take a couple 8
minutes maybe and fill us in on how the scenarios were plugged into the school playing process 9
and vice versa where you got the generation rates and how that process worked. 10
11
Ms. Gitelman: Well I'm not sure there's a long story to tell. When we began preparing the 12
supplement to the DEIR we understood it as an opportunity to check back in with the School 13
District to see if our student generation rates were on target. We contacted them and 14
ultimately their consultant that prepares their projections and used the numbers provided by 15
that consultant. Now that doesn't mean those numbers are right, we just we got what they 16
gave us and we used it. So we think what we've provided is a fair analysis, but we're open to 17
refining it further and looking forward to a more in-depth conversation with representatives of 18
the School District at this meeting that Mr. Collins mentioned which is happening on Friday. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
It's a we had a discussion with the Council about this as well too. This is really a disclosure issue 1
in the EIR and the CEQA process identifies only identifies a significant impact when there is a 2
need for new school construction and that school construction itself causes significant 3
environmental impacts. So there's sort of a multi-step process in doing this schools analysis 4
and we'll have that conversation and delve deeper into that in our conversations with the 5
School District. And while I think the student generation rates could be adjusted further in the 6
final EIR as a result of these conversations I think Joanna and I feel similarly that it's unlikely 7
that the conclusion will change that the impacts would be less than significant at the end of the 8
day. 9
10
Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah and as we were just told that they’re random. So changing 11
them isn’t based on anything. That's it for me. As far as our involvement with the next step I 12
do think we just got this very weighty document. We’re really excited to get to it, but I would 13
suggest that we divide and conquer just because of the amount of work recognizing that there 14
were some community discomfort with having a subcommittee process that's not as 15
transparent as a fully agendized open meeting, but I think just the volume of work and just the 16
need to move swiftly would suggest to us breaking into smaller groups. Thank you. 17
18
Chair Alcheck: Would you like to participate in this discussion? 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Sure. 1
2
Chair Alcheck: Starting us off on the second round. 3
4
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Sure, yeah, just very briefly. Great, I appreciate all the comments that my 5
colleagues have made and the staff presentation, public input. I’d like to echo Commissioner 6
Monk's point that we need more clarity about where we are in the statutory process for 7
preparing the Comp Plan and what the PTC’s role is in that statutory process. I'm not looking 8
for feedback on that tonight, but it's an area where I have some concerns because review is not 9
one of the statutory obligations under the code. 10
11
I generally agree with the point several of my colleagues have made that subcommittees are an 12
efficient tool to work through sections of the Comp Plan. I think that it's an overwhelming task 13
to try to work through it with seven people and fairly large documents. I expect we will do that 14
as part of a public hearing, but I think that some preparatory work in subcommittees is a pretty 15
efficient way to at least work out where some of the hair balls are. 16
17
Before we choose a review process I would like to make a suggestion that it's important to 18
schedule a joint meeting with the City Council to clarify what kind of feedback that the City 19
Council is looking for and what kind of work product that they're expecting. Because I think 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
there's a potential for us to get slightly sidelined if we don't know what they're expecting to 1
receive. I know this process has gone on for a very long time so I think in the interest of 2
efficiency we should have some kind of meeting, some kind of fairly explicit direction on what 3
needs to happen to be to be productive. 4
5
Chair Alcheck: Ok, I have a few more comments, but does anybody else have something that 6
they would like to share? Ok, so I just first want to say thank you to everyone for sort of... I’ll 7
get, I’ll call you [right up]… sharing your thoughts on the process. In hearing you each suggest 8
that subcommittees was something you'd be interested in I had an opportunity to think a little 9
bit about the prior subcommittee process and I think it's worth acknowledging that one of the 10
issues with the prior subcommittee processes is that we actually authored the elements. And 11
it's a very different subcommittee process and why is that ripe with problems is because there 12
are sort of varying perspectives on these commissions naturally and when you author a 13
document and you give the Commission as a group only a meeting or so to review it rewriting it 14
is really unfeasible. And so what ends up happening is a tough discussion where change is hard 15
to come by. And so in that regard I don't think we're going to suffer from that problem because 16
my hope is that there isn't a significant if any amount of sort of re-authoring of the elements so 17
I actually don't think we're in reviewing it now that we're going to suffer from any sort of 18
criticism about the subcommittee approach. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
I also think it really makes sense to divide up into three groups and I don't know that City 1
Council, I don't know that we need direction from City Council on whether or not we approach 2
it through a subcommittee process or not. I think the big takeaway is will we be given either a 3
month or two months or three months to be able to do it? And I don't know that we need 4
three months, but I certainly think that one month would be a challenge. My hope would be 5
that we would be able to if we're going to have three groups then I think that the ideal scenario 6
where each group handles two elements would be to have one meeting for each of those 7
sessions, for each of those groups. And I hope that we'll have enough calendar time to be able 8
to accomplish that. And so at a minimum we’d need six weeks. 9
10
So my other comment I just want to sort of go back to what we said before and Commissioner 11
Rosenblum made a great point about the notion that our scenarios are now reflective of a 12
narrower range as demonstrated by the outcomes anticipated in the fiscal report. And it 13
highlights a similar problem that I or no I shouldn’t say a problem, but it's a similar issue I'm 14
grappling with which is somebody some and I think it's upon I think it will fall upon us it has to 15
evaluate the likelihood that the programs and policies that we will be reviewing will create this 16
preferred scenario. I don't think we need to work through the whether or not these preferred 17
scenarios are… whether the hybrid preferred scenario is appropriate. I think that 18
determination has been made. And I think we're prepared to work from those decisions and I 19
think the bigger question for me will be do the programs and policies will they likely affect that 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
outcome? And to me it's relevant that the economic study for example take a look at let's say 1
the last five years of housing development and say ok, well based on the last five years of 2
housing development we've added 400 units and so if we use that as our… if that regardless of 3
the preferred scenario if that were to occur what would the economic impact be? I think that 4
would have been profound. 5
6
One of my biggest concerns is that because our scenarios are now relatively a narrow range of 7
and the economic outcomes reflect that the variance isn't significant in some regard in terms of 8
the anticipated outcome well what happens if we don't if that growth doesn't come because 9
there isn't as much housing generated simply because it doesn't, not that isn't our goal, but 10
that it that the constraints, the supply, the process, and then I guess you could say the code 11
obstructed. And so I'm… I look forward to this understanding how we and how we evaluate the 12
likelihood of the anticipated or predict preferred result happening. 13
14
And I also think and I also I don't know how we would communicate to Council our or how I'm 15
not sure exactly how this process will work in terms of how much time we get, but how will we 16
communicate to Council that we hope to be given sufficient time. I certainly hope we're not 17
under the gun and it comes to us in late August and we only have a month to really perform. I 18
don't know how we can sort of communicate that to Council with I don't know that it's 19
appropriate to make a recommendation or anything at this meeting, but I hope that the 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Planning Department can do their best to sort of affect that result and give us as much time as 1
possible. I'd be delighted if we had a lot of time, but we beat the amount of time we were 2
given and… 3
4
Ms. Gitelman: We'd be happy to communicate to the Council your desire for sufficient time and 5
your request for a joint session at some point. 6
7
Chair Alcheck: And I'm, I may be speaking for everyone. I also think it's important that they 8
appreciate that we are at least I believe that the general position here is that we will be 9
approaching it from a high level review. The time isn't sought for the purposes of some 10
thorough rewrite. We are embracing the preferred scenario approach and our hope is to sort 11
of do a fifty… at least I think we're generally in agreement that this high level analysis is 12
appropriate. I don't want them to this assume anything otherwise. 13
14
Ok are there any other comments that we'd like to make on this agenda item? I saw 15
Commissioner Gardias had a comment. 16
17
Commissioner Gardias: Just very quickly that the idea of sub-commissions or focus groups 18
sounds practical. The only thing that I just wanted to add to it that giving the restrictions of the 19
Brown Act we can just divide ourselves and have three groups and two in each plus one group 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
would have three, but we can also consider making those groups larger somehow and maybe 1
expanding them to three maybe to four just based on this argument that three generates larger 2
brain power. We of course cannot bypass the Brown Act, but perhaps we could expand the 3
focus group of two with inviting some additional member either from other commission or 4
maybe from staff or maybe from an interest group that would participate in this small focus 5
group. Thank you. 6
7
Chair Alcheck: That actually raises a quick question I had. Would subcommittee meetings 8
involve a staff member? I should say they did the last time we did this. 9
10
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, I think we would definitely want to have staff at the meetings and work 11
with you to schedule them in a reasonable schedule and a reasonable number of them so we 12
could be sure to support them with our existing staff and budget. 13
14
Chair Alcheck: So that raises another sort of time constraint depending on staff’s availability. 15
Ok with that I think please, Commissioner Rosenblum. 16
17
Commissioner Rosenblum: Just a super narrow suggestion and it takes Commissioner Gardias’ 18
feedback. One thing I was thinking and to just throw this out there to use you as the Chair as 19
the floater so you're basically a member of all groups so everyone has a third member. You 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
probably wouldn’t be expected to dig as deep, but another set of eyes for every group. So two, 1
two, two with a third floating member that's our Chair and you also have the advantage of 2
having been part of the process from the beginning. So just again I'm not sure this is the place 3
where we’re going to smith this out, but just throwing that out that given the way the numbers 4
work and it sometimes is good to have someone who has some view over the way each team is 5
approaching things and has the longest tenure may work out to also take Commissioner 6
Gardias’ suggestion that three brains is often better than two anyway. But anyway I just want 7
to throw out as an additional possible twist to this. 8
9
Chair Alcheck: Ok. 10
11
Male Staff Member: So I would just comment as we were discussing possible subcommittee 12
arrangements that having one floater that works with multiple groups increases the risk of a 13
Brown Act violation just through a kind of spoken hub serial meaning. 14
15
Chair Alcheck: I think what we'll do is we will explore this more maybe in some of our pre-16
Commission meetings. I’ll delve into it. We'll figure out something efficient, but I think the real 17
takeaway here is we're going to hear in May it sounds like a lot of we're going to get the 18
documents in our well we're going to know what the documents are in May and then the 19
question is when they'll sort of come to us. And I think we have time to sort of figure this the 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
process part out. And I want before you sort of chime in I want to make one more comment 1
which is really important and it applies to all EIR processes in the City. Writing in is a very 2
effective way to comment on and to participate in an EIR process. And so if something comes 3
to you later emailing staff is very effective and just as effective as speaking at this hearing. And 4
so if there are other comments from not just the School Board, but from any group that's 5
interested in this fiscal analysis or the preparation the EIR please, I encourage you to write it up. 6
And then do you want to say something real quick? 7
8
Ms. Gitelman: No. Thank you all. 9
10
Chair Alcheck: Ok. Alright, thank you staff. Why don’t we take a… oh, sorry, Commissioner 11
Gardias why don’t you make one more comment. 12
13
Commissioner Gardias: Yeah, just from another comment from practicality perspective. So I 14
thought that we could just and that would not be violation of the Brown Act just open some 15
virtual rooms where pretty much those two or three or four members of the subcommittees 16
may just communicate pretty much daily or actively 27/7 and then just also creating record of 17
their participation with maybe some additional member of the staff that would be another way 18
of resolving this practically if possible. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
And I also thought that the way that we could structure ourselves and then we could observe 1
how this works would be a prelude for the farther analysis of this what's truly in front of us the 2
Comprehensive Plan itself. So it would to give us the training grounds the way that we will 3
approach EIR would give us a training ground for the future analysis of the Comprehensive Plan 4
itself. 5
6
Ms. Gitelman: If I can just offer a clarification? I think what we're talking about is how to 7
approach the Comprehensive Plan itself. The EIR process is very prescribed. The public 8
comment period included this public hearing tonight and ends on the 31st and then we'll be 9
working behind the scenes to prepare responses, but there won't be an opportunity or a need 10
for subcommittees to work further on the EIR. It's the Comp Plan itself and the elements of the 11
Comp Plan where we’ll be asking you to give us your energies in making a better and better 12
product as we get toward the finish line. 13
14
Commissioner Gardias: I understand. Thank you very much for the clarification, but it's my 15
understanding was that we would still be would still have a opportunity to provide comments 16
on the EIR. 17
18
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Ms. Gitelman: We’re in the comment period. If you have any comments we would appreciate 1
getting them in writing by the end of the close of business on the 31st, so by the end of the 2
week. 3
4
Chair Alcheck: Ok. 5
6
Ms. Gitelman: That would allow us time to prepare responses and a final EIR. 7
8
Chair Alcheck: Ok. Alright so I think that it’s safe to conclude this hearing on these two topics. 9
And why don't we take a quick five minute break and then begin with Agenda Item Number 3. 10
Thank you. 11
12
Action was not taken 13
14
The Commission took a break 15
16
Study Session 17
Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 18
3. Discussion and Comments for City Council Consideration Regarding Development of 19
an Ordinance to Perpetuate an Annual Limit on Office/R&D Development Following 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Expiration of Interim Ordinance #5357 Restricting Such Land Uses in Certain Parts of 1
the City to 50,000 Square Feet per Year. Environmental Analysis: This Discussion is 2
not a Project Pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). For More 3
Information, Please Contact Clare Campbell at clare.campbell@cityofpaloalto.org. 4
5
Chair Alcheck: To bring to order this meeting again and begin with Agenda Item 3. Staff would 6
you kick us off? 7
8
Commissioner Lauing: Chair can I just ask a procedural question? 9
10
Chair Alcheck: Yes (interrupted) 11
12
Commissioner Lauing: This is obviously characterized as a study session not an action item. 13
14
Chair Alcheck: That's correct. 15
16
Commissioner Lauing: Right, but I know that Council has already opined because they were 17
asked at the January 30th Council meeting to give their opinions on precisely this issue along 18
with a number of other large ones. So for us to come up with discussions that are just… our 19
only action item tonight is to come up with comments that are going to just be sent over to 20
Council. Wouldn’t it be more productive if we had a session, a subsequent sessions that 21
actually analyzed this issue in light of the Council direction apropos of Chair [Note-Vice-Chair] 22
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Waldfogel’s comment in the last item so that we could maybe wrestle with this and come up 1
with a recommendation if that's something the Council has an interest in or we do? Rather 2
than just discuss it and ask questions and just send over 30 random comments that may be not 3
be pertinent or that they're interested. So I'm not saying that there aren't questions that we 4
could ask about what's in your staff report, but it doesn't seem productive if we aren’t going to 5
get into a situation where we're going to recommend something. I don’t know if other 6
colleagues have comments on that, but... 7
8
Chair Alcheck: That's an interesting question. My perspective here… what I would like to do is I 9
would like to give staff the opportunity to present and 10
11
Commissioner Lauing: Certainly, certainly. 12
13
Chair Alcheck: I appreciate the sense that there's not really a defined objective here. And that 14
there's a lot of unknowns, but I let's follow protocol and then we why don’t you circle back to 15
this concept in our first round of comments. 16
17
Commissioner Lauing: Sure, no I look forward to that (interrupted) 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Alcheck: [Unintelligible] we can kind of determine to what extent that might be an 1
appropriate. And we don't have to go through it for two hours. You'll have a chance I think to 2
speak in the first half an hour and then we can kind of figure out (interrupted) 3
4
Commissioner Lauing: That was part of my point is I don't think we need to discuss this 5
necessarily for two hours if we're going to come back with an action item at some later point 6
and we don't need to go on for two hours because we don't know what Council concluded at 7
the end of January because we didn't get a separate staff report on that. 8
9
Hillary Gitelman, Planning Director: Maybe I can offer just a little (interrupted) 10
11
Chair Alcheck: Why don’t you? Yeah, would you? 12
13
Ms. Gitelman: Context on that. So the only question that the Council really weighed in on at 14
that meeting in January was whether they wanted to perpetuate an annual limit on office 15
Research and Development (R&D) and they said they did want to. They want a permanent 16
ordinance to replace the temporary ordinance and that's really all they decided. Each of the 17
Council Members offered their own thoughts, individual thoughts about what it would look like. 18
Some of them said oh, we don't want the beauty contest anymore, we want first come first 19
serve. Some said oh, we want the allocate, unused allocation to roll over, but there was no 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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action or unanimity about those characteristics of what the program would look like. And so 1
we thought before going back to Council we would seek the Commission's insights and input if 2
you have any. Again, we're not asking you to take any action, but we're interested in your 3
individual thoughts about how this program could be structured in the future and we will come 4
back to you for a more organized and formal action item at some point in the future. So I mean 5
I appreciate you might want to not want to spend a ton of time tonight, but I thought we 6
thought your comments would be useful (interrupted) 7
8
Chair Alcheck: And allow me just to also sort of suggest that our obligation, our I think chief 9
responsibility here is to review items and provide feedback on Council directed matters, but 10
also a lot of times we can provide insight and shape the discussions the Council has without 11
necessarily their direction and input in advance. And so I would encourage us to look at this 12
particular opportunity as a many of you were not on this Commission when we first dealt with 13
this cap. And it was a very interesting dialogue that we had last time we reviewed it. Here it's 14
coming to us again and there is a real opportunity here to figure out whether there are ways to 15
improve upon it. And I think we're all in a position to provide some insight and I think that that 16
will help this moving forward. And I know it's going to come back to us, but at least this way we 17
have an opportunity to see some of the questions that we might have get answered in that 18
follow up session, so. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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Ms. Gitelman: Yeah and I apologize there's one thing I forgot about the Council's dialogue. So 1
they talked about the their desire to adopt a permanent ordinance. They also talked about 2
their preference that the annual limit area that's included be extended from what it is currently 3
to the whole City minus the Research Park. So they actually I think they did include that in their 4
Motion, but they didn’t include anything else about the process or exemptions or any of the 5
other details that will have to be figured out during the rewrite. And we'd love your thoughts 6
on those things so that maybe we can get let staff go with the presentation and then hear from 7
you on those elements. 8
9
Clare Campbell, Senior Planner: Ok great, thank you; Clare Campbell, Senior Planner. So tonight 10
we're going to be talking about the Annual Office Limit Ordinance. The purpose of our 11
discussion today is we're going to provide you with an update of the office development since 12
the implementation of the interim ordinance and ask for feedback and comments for 13
developing the permanent ordinance. 14
15
So the interim ordinance was adopted in September 2015 and the intent was to meter the pace 16
of development in the City regarding office and R&D development. The City had been 17
experiencing substantial development of office and R&D projects and concerns and had 18
concerns about the rapid growth and how that may exacerbate traffic congestion and parking 19
conditions existing already in the City as well as some negative impacts potentially on existing 20
_______________________
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neighborhood character. So the ordinance established a 50,000 square foot limit for new office 1
R&D development and it focused its focus on the Downtown California Ave area and the El 2
Camino corridor. And the ordinance is due to expire in eight months on November 26, 2017. 3
So here's a map showing where the area applies, the area that the ordinance applies to. So we 4
have a section here in the Downtown including South of Forest Avenue (SOFA) I along the El 5
Camino corridor and this whole section here is called the California Avenue area. 6
7
So give you a brief summary of our ordinance. So basically it applies to five different land uses. 8
We have R&D, administrative office services, general business office, medical office, and 9
professional office. We have included some exempt projects from the ordinance and they're 10
basically small projects that are less than 2,000 square feet (sf), small medical office that's 11
5,000 sf or less, and self-mitigating projects. So those are projects where the housing 12
component provides more housing than the number of workers that would be employed by the 13
project. And also self-mitigating projects include projects that have a really strong robust 14
Transportation Demand Management (TDM) program that helps to improve the parking and 15
traffic conditions. 16
17
So the ordinance also established selection criteria for evaluating projects and we have five of 18
them here. So basically the first one is impacts and does the project include appropriate 19
development density, does it avoid or mitigate traffic and parking impacts. Design, does the 20
_______________________
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quality and is the design quality compatible, is the design quality good, and is it compatible with 1
the surrounding neighborhoods? The environmental quality, does the project have impacts as 2
determined by our California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) evaluation? And for public 3
benefits does the project include meaningful public benefits that the City can utilize and 4
appreciate? And the uses, so does the project include a mix of uses with substantial housing, 5
ground floor retail, and cultural amenities? 6
7
So to facilitate the implementation of the ordinance some administrative guidelines were 8
developed and this document basically reflects the ordinance requirements, but it includes 9
some more detailed procedures to streamline the implementation of the ordinance. It includes 10
the scoring process and the evaluation scorecard and that scorecard reflects the points which 11
we use for the ranking. The guidelines also reiterate the review timelines for projects and that 12
projects approved cannot roll over their square footage to another project. If you don't use it 13
you're going to lose it basically. 14
15
All right so I'm going to walk you through the basic steps of the existing process. So the first 16
thing is that it is based on a fiscal year and the projects as you know are submitted year round 17
for us to take a look at. During the time from July 1st through March 31st no qualifying projects 18
can be approved by the Planning Department. So the first step is we need to establish a project 19
list. So on March 31st staff will determine which office and R&D projects are ready for final 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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action. And ready means that they've been deemed complete, that we've done all the 1
environmental review, and all the boards and commissions except for Council have to have 2
done their review and all the required reviews have been completed and the project is ready 3
for action. The second step once we have our project list is to determine whether or not the 4
office square footage goes over the 50,000 sf. So on the bottom line here if the projects do not 5
go over 50,000 sf then those projects would get approved following the standard review 6
process. So for the other scenario if the projects do exceed the 50,000 sf those projects are 7
forwarded to Council for their review and determination of the project. So that kind of that 8
affects our first beauty contest review, but both scenarios must be completed by June 30th of 9
the year. So then after June 30th passes we start the process over again for the following fiscal 10
year. 11
12
Ok so in the two years that we've had our ordinance we have not yet had the opportunity to try 13
out or test our process that we've put in place. So we actually don't have any real information 14
to report back to you on the effectiveness of our process. So since the implementation of the 15
ordinance though there appears to be some conscious efforts made by some of the applicants 16
to avoid triggering this ordinance and what they've done is they've either just taken office out 17
of their project or they've reduced the amount of office in the project so it becomes exempt 18
and doesn't trigger any additional review. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
So here I'm going to go over our pending projects. So this is a list of all the projects that we 1
have currently on file that are open that have some office component to it. So the first two 2
3045 Park and 411 Lytton these two projects count towards the 50,000 square foot limit. The 3
next project 4115 El Camino I've included this even though it's a preliminary architectural 4
review just to illustrate what I had just mentioned that some projects really keep the square 5
footage down so they become exempt from the process. So this project is only proposing to 6
have 2,000 sf so then it's not part of the projects that we would review as part of the annual 7
office limit. The next one down is 3251 Hanover and this project is located in the Research Park 8
so the office limit doesn't apply for this particular project for two reasons: it's outside the 9
boundary that we've defined under the ordinance and it's also replacement square footage so it 10
doesn't account it doesn't count towards the limit. So the next one is 380 Cambridge and again 11
this one is exempt because it's less than 2,000 feet and 2600 El Camino is also exempt because 12
the 62,000 sf is replacement square footage. 13
14
So here you'll kind of get a sense that the total the figure at the very bottom here the 17,260 15
that's the number the square footage of projects that would count towards the 50,000 sf for 16
this ordinance. So even though you see several projects on our lists those would be the only 17
two that would count towards this ordinance. So for next year if it were just these two projects 18
that we're showing here to consider on March 31st then we would have left over square 19
footage. In this case it's approximately 32,000 thousand sf so that 32,000 sf can be approved 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
for other types of office projects long as it's done before June 30th. And again that's the hard 1
cutoff date for the process to start over again for the next fiscal year. 2
3
Ok so tonight we're looking to get your comments and basically they can be on any aspect of 4
this ordinance. It can be focused on the boundary, the square footage cap amount, the 5
selection process, first come first serve versus the competition, and the review process, but any 6
other part of this can be reviewed. We just know that we need to move forward with some 7
type of annual office limit. So next steps staff will continue with our public outreach and we 8
will forward your comments to Council for feedback and discussion and later of course this year 9
we’ll return with our draft ordinance for you to review. And the ordinance expires on 10
November 26th though Council action is needed by early October. And that concludes staff’s 11
presentation. Thank you. 12
13
Chair Alcheck: Thank you, staff. Ok I’d like to begin this oh, wait, we have a speaker card. Just a 14
minute, sorry. 15
16
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: [Unintelligible]. 17
18
Simon Cintz: Ok, thank you. My name is Simon Cintz. I'm actually going to decline to speak 19
now because I think what was pointed out before this is a study session and I would sort of also 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
be interested in seeing how you folks look at things and whatever and will reserve my 1
comments for later. So I've never been in here when I've been the only speaker in, but so but I 2
do want to thank the person from the City handling this for reaching out to the business 3
community. I did get an email. That was really important that we knew this was going on 4
although I didn't really quite understand what the details of it and look forward to hearing what 5
your comments are. Thank you. 6
7
Chair Alcheck: Ok. Yeah just so we're clear the next opportunity for public comment would be 8
the next time we see this item, not later tonight. Just in case. 9
10
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: [Unintelligible-off mic]. 11
12
Chair Alcheck: I suspect it is. Ok, so what I'd like to do right now is I hope we're comfortable 13
with 10 minutes? I’ll give everybody sort of hopefully it's less than 10 minutes and I'd like to 14
start at the other end of the table for this item so Commissioner Rosenblum will you kick us off? 15
Questions/comments. 16
17
Commissioner Rosenblum: Sure. 18
19
Chair Alcheck: However you’d like to start. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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1
Commissioner Rosenblum: First just want start with a question. So you made the statement 2
that regardless of what the discussion or comment is tonight we have to move forward with 3
some kind of office cap. And I want to just ask you why is that? My understanding was this 4
ordinance expired either two years from adoption or upon adoption of the new Comprehensive 5
Plan whichever is sooner. So we’re coming against the two year mark which is the sooner. 6
There's nothing in those says we have to have an office cap so I'm curious about that comment. 7
You seem to want us to continue this policy maybe with modifications, but I wonder if you 8
could respond to that. 9
10
Ms. Gitelman: Sure, I'd be happy to respond to that. When the Council had that meeting on 11
January 30th where it was talking about the Comp Plan one of the questions we asked in the 12
context of a discussion of land use policies was whether they wanted to include a policy about 13
metering the pace of growth or a program related to the office cap. And the response was well 14
we don't really need to put this in the Comp Plan, but we would like to update the ordinance 15
about the annual limit. Maybe make some changes to it, but we would like to continue that. 16
So as you point out the current ordinance expires either in two years or when the Comp Plan is 17
adopted whichever is sooner. There is a potential that we could simply just extend it if we need 18
more time until the Comp Plan is adopted, but we are thinking based on the Council's direction 19
on January 30th that they will want a replacement ordinance and so we thought it was wise to 20
_______________________
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start thinking about what that might look like and this was an obvious first stop to get some 1
input. 2
3
Commissioner Rosenblum: Ok, great. In that case I have two parts to this. So the first is should 4
this ordinance be continued with improvements or should we allow it to expire. And regardless 5
of which way we think as a body I think that we do have to answer Council’s question which are 6
what are the parts of this ordinance that you’d want to adjust. But I think it's worth weighing in 7
to them is it a good thing to have a cap and as you know from the Our Palo Alto Summit there 8
were three different modes considered. There was metering, there was a hard cap, and there 9
was mitigations. And our Council ultimately went with a cap. But I think it's worth our body as 10
an independent advisory body first weighing in do we think that's the right mechanism, but 11
second to answer their direct question which is let's if we assume they do want to continue 12
with this current mode what are the changes that one would make. 13
14
So in terms of using my slot I would say first in terms of whether or not this is the right 15
mechanism I would argue it's never been the right mechanism. Now we're two years into it and 16
we know it literally didn't do anything. We've never hit the 50,000 number. So it took a lot of 17
staff time, it took like four Council meetings, it took three Planning and Transportation 18
Commission (PTC) meetings, it's taken all of our time quite a lot, but it hasn't actually done 19
anything. And all that time I think could have been more valuable if we had worked on 20
_______________________
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mitigation measures and had really focused on making a Transportation Management 1
Association (TMA) more effective. Now part of the reason why I never thought this would, was 2
the right approach was it's kind of the horse is already out the barn. A lot of the problems 3
we’re trying to address have to do with buildings that were constructed even before the 4
Ninety's which were under parked. So working on new construction doesn't really address this 5
problem of traffic and indeed again despite put this measure into place I don't think that there's 6
been a corresponding reduction in traffic that we would have wanted from this measure. 7
8
So also finally when we did the Our Palo Alto Summit I think there were like 300 people in 9
attendance seventy percent of people in attendance voted to work on mitigations and only five 10
percent for hard caps. So even the people that were most involved always said this was the 11
wrong approach. So I would argue pretty strongly that people that citizens involved the process 12
said it was the wrong approach, the analysis would say it was the wrong approach, and 13
hindsight suggested it didn’t do anything. So it feels like a weird thing to continue. 14
15
Having said that if we are going to continue my observations based on the way we have it are 16
the following. I think the first big problem with it that Stanford Research Park (SRP) is left out 17
of it. I think SRP is the biggest source of traffic through our community. And the reason is they 18
have most of the large employers and it's very difficult for them to have any kind of transit 19
program. And so I think it's something like 73 percent of SRP employees still take Single 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Occupancy Vehicles (SOV) whereas the Downtown number I think was something like 57 1
percent and Stanford's number is something like 47 percent. And so whereas in other places 2
they've been able to get people out of their cars SRP has not and they have the big employers. 3
And so it's a bit of an odd thing that we have this program that exempts them from this. If 4
there's any place we want people to build it's actually here where people don't drive their car 5
as much it's not there, but this program as you saw in your pipeline the largest building I think 6
was 110,000 sf is not part of this because it's built there. And I think it would be much more 7
attractive now to build there because you’re not counting the cap. You don't have to go 8
through this beauty contest, etcetera. 9
10
Second, I do think there should be some mechanism for banking unused credit so if we build 11
very little this year, if there's a downturn and we stop building that upon recovery there is cap 12
relief. Now in terms of how many years the credit can be built based on the analysis that you 13
gave us it takes anywhere between two years and five years after recession for us to start 14
building again. But any rate Council can come up with their own mechanism, but I would be in 15
favor of somehow banking these credits on a go forward basis. 16
17
And my final comment around the ordinance itself is that some of the exceptions seem 18
counterintuitive. So there's a real kind of love small projects meaning they don't count against 19
the cap. So offices below 2,000 sf, medical offices below 5,000 sf and again if part of our point 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
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3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
is that we're trying to cap office space to mitigate traffic impact which was I think one the 1
drivers of this having multiple small places just seems like it's counter to the goal of trying to 2
get a more efficient use of space. Meaning given X number of employees you want to have 3
fewer cars and if you're subdividing into multiple small places it doesn't seem like there's a 4
public interest in that or at least it's counter to the goal of the whole ordinance. So that's on 5
the general ordinance. 6
7
The last couple comments I'll make are on the beauty contest itself. I love the idea of beauty 8
contest so if we’re going to have this again I hate this whole, this whole ordinance, but if we're 9
going to have it I do like the that if we do have it that the beauty contest idea is kind of cool. I 10
like that then Mayor Burt had proposed it. I’ve always been in the context of this a fan. The 11
heuristic is a bit odd. It's very skewed towards penalizing density. So there's 110 points I think 12
that are allocated of which about 50 are related to density or impacts of density and 20 are 13
related to use. So do you have housing or do you have mixed use, etcetera of which 10 of the 14
points are those that feature housing and I would personally think that in terms of if we're 15
using beauty as one of our criteria one of our great community needs is more housing. And so 16
the beauty contest is heavily skewed towards weight sort of density verses use. And so my 17
personal preference would be to skew towards those who are helping us to relieve our housing 18
crisis. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
So that's the sum of my comments. So just to sum it up first I'd say I would love this body to say 1
that this was the wrong mechanism we should go for a mitigations focus mechanism, A. But if 2
we're to go with this mechanism then my three big points are put SRP in as part of it, consider 3
banking credits, the exceptions we should not be skewed towards small. If anything if you're 4
trying to traffic mitigation normally having some kind of scale is better so you shouldn’t give 5
incentives to go smaller. And then finally the beauty contest should be skewed towards things 6
that we want and so I think housing is a big one. That’s it for me. 7
8
Commissioner Summa: So I actually don't think this is a bad ordinance I guess. I also I just don't 9
like the word beauty contest. I wish we could call it something else because it's kind of 10
offensive. But anyway I was going to ask couple questions and then I’ll make some comments. 11
Have we had any self-mitigating projects? No and ok, and then so couple of things. 12
13
There was a lot of talk at the Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC). I think this should be citywide 14
for sure and there was a lot of talk on the CAC about including the Research Park, but maybe 15
allowing the Research Park to roll over square footages annually that they don't use and the 16
idea was that because there's such bigger buildings there. So I would say I favor a citywide 17
program and I would encourage the Council to look at a way to include the Research Park that 18
lets the Research Park be the Research Park, but also we'd have more control. I have a concern 19
about replacement square footage not being included and maybe this is a legal issue it can't be. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
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3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
And one of the reasons is because replacement square footage is often replaced with a much 1
denser use which just has more people and more cars, more SOV trips, more greenhouse gas 2
emissions. So I would look at a way of maybe if it's legal including replacement square footage 3
with some, in some way. 4
5
And I was especially struck in the findings by Finding B about the huge, huge increase in Class B 6
office space. And I know we have a lot of concern about displacing those kind of uses so and 7
they've actually increased exponentially in price much more than Class A office rates. So that 8
was interesting to me. So I oh, and then I would like to give… I think it's interesting that this 9
ordinance not only… well, it did two things. It wanted to meter the pace of growth, office and 10
R&D growth, but it also wanted to give the Council a chance to look at projects and prioritize 11
them through the non-beauty contest, the merit contest, and it didn't do that. And I think that 12
was because 50,000 is too high a threshold. I think if we lower the threshold and I'm not sure 13
what the magic number would be we could get more projects into that prioritization and which 14
would also have the benefit of including projects that were better for the public. It may be 15
prioritized housing also so let's see… Yeah, so those are my comments for now. 16
17
Commissioner Monk: Ok so in looking at what the rationale was for creating the ordinance and 18
looking at the outcome of the ordinance I'm wondering why we would need to continue it 19
based on what the findings were on Page 33 and also in your presentation you were [sitting] 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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that in the end of the very first paragraph of the top of Page 33 that the projects really haven't 1
come forward and you believe that a lot of it was to avoid the potential of additional rigors 2
required by the interim [AOL] ordinance. I don't know if you wanted to provide any additional 3
input on that or feedback as to why the ordinance has reduced the amount of applications for 4
new office projects. 5
6
Ms. Campbell: I think basically applicants don't want to have to go through this additional 7
review. And it's very unsure for them to kind of go through this process and it can be very I’m 8
not finding the right word, but basically I think what's happening is that our review process is 9
well known. And it takes a lot to get through even a normal application process, but when we 10
have to add this additional contest for this evaluation I think it makes it much more 11
unpredictable for applicants to project forward and to invest time and energy to do something 12
here in Palo Alto. So I think that could definitely be something that adds to why we're not 13
seeing anything happen. 14
15
Commissioner Monk: Ok, so instead of it actually pacing growth it sounds like it's halting 16
growth. Does that sound correct under what we've seen in the last two years? 17
18
Ms. Campbell: I think honestly that the two year timeline might be a little bit short for us to 19
kind of make a full determination on that. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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1
Commissioner Monk: Ok. 2
3
Ms. Campbell: Certainly just based on the numbers that are coming in for applications we 4
definitely have seen a decline in applications. 5
6
Commissioner Monk: And has this ordinance had a benefit on traffic in any way? Have we seen 7
any changes in traffic as a result of this ordinance? 8
9
Ms. Campbell: Not that I'm aware of. 10
11
Commissioner Monk: OK. What was the reason to not have a rollover? And if you don't want 12
to answer that I would just say that I would support a rollover with some sort of oversight or 13
timeline for it to expire. 14
15
Ms. Gitelman: I think originally the discussion was about a mechanism to meter the pace of 16
growth and so in the original deliberations I think the Council felt like if the allocation could 17
rollover then you're really not having that effect of metering growth because you'll continue to 18
have the spikes. The leftover allocation will all be used in a future year. What they were trying 19
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to solve for was the spikes where some years you’d have a ton of growth and in the next year 1
you wouldn’t. 2
3
Commissioner Monk: Ok. Well I see that on Page 31 that you talk about the six years where 4
there was in excess of the 50,000 sf, but you didn't really detail how far the growth was beyond 5
the 50,000. So it's hard to know what those spikes were from just my reading of what was 6
presented in the packet. Is that information that you have or? 7
8
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah. We have a different data set that's a little harder to use that goes back 9
much further and it's we can represent it and really show the spikes. There are years in which 10
we see a lot of growth and we were trying to solve for that problem. 11
12
Ms. Campbell: And just to add to that in the staff report from September 21, 2015, when the 13
ordinance was adopted there was a hand out that was provided as an attachment that basically 14
showed all of the development over the last 15 years and it illustrated what the square footage 15
numbers were. 16
17
Commissioner Monk: That’s on this? 18
19
Ms. Campbell: No, in the September 21, 2015, Council report. 20
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1
Commissioner Monk: Ok. And when it I just have one more question and then I have a few 2
comments on to the ordinance itself. When it comes to mixed use does the square footage 3
that could be occupied by a retail or residential use go towards that cap or is that kept outside? 4
5
Ms. Campbell: No. It’s just office only. 6
7
Commissioner Monk: Ok. So I wanted to look at Page 36 where it's talking about any 8
contradictions between our Comp Plan and the ordinance in the event that the ordinance does 9
remain in effect I would advise to look at the last sentence and consider making a change that 10
the policy most instead of the policy most restrictive of growth shall apply that that be further 11
qualified to the policy most restrictive of R&D growth or office growth or whatever people 12
agree with on the Council. Or it could say the policy least restrictive of housing shall apply. 13
That would be a recommendation that I would make because it's broad the way it's written by 14
just saying growth in general. 15
16
And then in regards to the self-mitigating projects I did send an email to Jonathan Lait on this 17
one because I was curious about whether or not any of those had been accomplished and you 18
confirmed now that it would had not. Has there are any examples ever of this ever being 19
attainable any point in time? On that's on Subparagraph C on Page 37. 20
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1
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, I'm not aware of any although we have had inquiries from developers who 2
are interested in this concept. So I think people saw this in the ordinance and thought it was an 3
intriguing idea. So I've had at least one local developer talk to me about how they might go 4
about something like this. 5
6
Commissioner Monk: Ok so what I would love to see is some follow up from the developer and 7
whomever to find out what we can do to make it more attainable and encourage development 8
because I think that self-mitigating projects that would increase our housing stock are in 9
compliance with the City's objectives of increasing housing. So I don't know if it's putting a 10
percentage in there rather than saying that it has to be more than the number of workers or 11
something like that. So I would like to see that looked at in a deeper level. And I think that's 12
my last comment. Thank you. 13
14
Chair Alcheck: Ok before I dive in I there’s this allegory I'm sure most of you are familiar with. 15
This individual, two individuals come into work and one is always too hot, they open the 16
window and the other individual is annoyed because they're freezing and so they close the 17
window and it's the same thing every hour one opens it, one closes it, one opens it and finally 18
someone’s like hey why don’t you put a sweater on? And then I and don't sit next to the 19
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window and I'll sit next to the you know. That's not really how it goes, but you understand, you 1
appreciate my sentiment. 2
3
So I just want to acknowledge Commissioner Rosenblum’s comments. There is I always find 4
your analysis just to be incredibly valuable and it's not hard to understand how this ordinance 5
came about. It is it seems to just reek of a response that is politically driven. The overwhelming 6
growth that we experienced in Downtown the just the… we got the residential parking permit 7
program, we have so many, we have the difficulty these neighborhoods have in absorbing the 8
amount of office growth it's such a foreseeable sort of result, right? But we're capping office 9
growth that's it. Whether or not that actually achieves the goal of reducing so many of the 10
issues that the Downtown is suffering from is the sort of question that I think Commissioner 11
Rosenblum is highlighting tonight which is that at our at the Our Palo Alto event individuals 12
spent a great deal of time sort of evaluating options and the community felt that there were 13
some options that were more valuable than a cap. We currently have a cap in an area where 14
we the impacts are more mitigated than in areas that we don't have a cap which suggests a just 15
incredible iron, not I don't know if irony is the right, inconsistency with what are we actually 16
trying to do and what are we doing. 17
18
The best I should say the best or the only part of this ordinance that I like is that we get to re-19
review it because it's an interim. And I want to just commend staff and Council for operating in 20
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that framework. There's a real there's a wonderful reason for using interim ordinances like this 1
one. It gives us a chance to look at it a couple years later. I felt the same way about the 2
ordinance we reviewed a couple weeks ago. I feel the same way about this one. I would never 3
encourage as a Planning Commissioner this City Council to adopt this ordinance in any other 4
way but in an interim fashion. So even if they proceeded to adopt this ordinance I would 5
encourage them to do it for either another two years or if they were uncomfortable with that 6
limit for four years, but to not necessarily adopt it permanently because I personally share the 7
view that this is not the correct solution for the subset of problems that we are attempting to 8
address. 9
10
I have heard really what I would describe as strong arguments for why a beauty contest despite 11
potentially the challenge of that name being divisive, but I've heard positive arguments for it, 12
arguments that I can relate to. Why not have a process in this City where we have architects 13
compete for projects that really demonstrate just tremendous architecture. The problem is is 14
in who's eyes, right? Who makes that determination, right? And then we created a framework 15
and my main concern is that the application of the point system or the decision… I don't I would 16
suggest that I'm uncomfortable with the decision of or the judges of the beauty contest to be in 17
a political body. I'd be much more comfortable if the Architectural Review Board (ARB) for 18
example evaluated the judged the beauty contest then the City Council because it depends how 19
you feel your Council member reflects whether you think they're pro-growth or you think 20
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they’re a residentialist or however you feel they situate if you believe that they can be bought 1
or influenced in a political way then there's so there's it’s such a the system is sort of fraught 2
with potential problems. 3
4
So despite this beautiful, this I shouldn’t say beautiful. Despite this aspirational goal of having a 5
contest a system that pushes the best to the top I think the biggest problem with that is we’re 6
familiar with the saying you get what you pay for? I believe that applies in architecture and in 7
development. So if you're going to spend a significant amount of money developing a concept 8
for development and applying only to be slotted in with maybe 10 other projects that may or 9
may not that may exceed the thing and then to have absolutely no certainty as to whether or 10
not your project it we are discouraging individuals in my opinion from investing the sort of 11
money that would produce the best result because that's too much risk. Now if the goal of the 12
ordinance is to do just that we actually want to discourage developers from developing in this 13
town commercial office space not just literally with a cap, but also by creating a process that 14
involves so much ambiguity and uncertainty that developers won't even want to participate 15
then this is a great tool for that. And so from that perspective if that's the goal City Council's 16
within its right to make that determination and whether or not that's the right goal is a… but if 17
the goal is to discourage development because of ambiguity then I believe that this is the right 18
tool. So if that's the goal this is the right tool. I think that the lack the reason why we have not 19
hit the cap is not simply because there's been a slowdown in office. I believe it's already having 20
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an impact of discouraging applications in office space because of this I don't want to say 1
unintended outcome because it could be the intended consequence. 2
3
I we just had a discussion about the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and I wondered during 4
that discussion whether the office cap affects the economic analysis that was inherent to the 5
scenarios. And I guess there was a part of me that believed that our when we adopted this 6
interim ordinance that the Comp Plan would actually come before it expired and somehow it 7
would incorporate policies and programs that furthered the stated goals of this interim 8
ordinance. So I guess one of my suggestions to Council would be to evaluate whether or not 9
they really would like to accomplish their objectives whatever they may be in an ordinance like 10
this one or whether there is a way for us to incorporate them within the Comp Plan that 11
prioritize… I'm not sure. If they if the Council decides to expand this ordinance citywide I think 12
that there should be a consideration for rollover. 13
14
And finally if the Council determines that they want to continue this ordinance permanently I 15
would suggest my recommendation to Council would be to eliminate the beauty contest 16
entirely. Right now we choose March 31st as just an arbitrary date. So any project that got 17
let's say the office cap had been hit and just at the right amount that didn't trigger a beauty 18
contest because it was only 50,000 projects, but it got hit in May of 2017 then any applicant 19
who is ready to go after May 2017 would in essence have to wait till March 31st. They could be 20
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they could have spent two years getting through the process on May 1st, but they have to wait 1
till March 31st to participate in this process. And I would suggest that a much more investor 2
friendly or I should say maybe the right term is developer friendly way to do this would be to 3
treat it as a first come first serve process. Which is to say that no that you can't start you can’t 4
we can't green light your project on May 1st because you're in a calendar year where we've 5
exceeded the number of you exceed the cap, but come January one you're permitted to begin 6
your project. 7
8
And you may find that between May 1st of 2017 and November 1st of 2017 we already hit our 9
50,000. And so the projects that are slated for 2018 are all determined in those months 10
between May and November of the previous year, but at least there would be some ladder. 11
And if you were a if you were out in the community and you were and attempting to gauge 12
whether a development project was worth your time you could very easily say ok wow, there 13
are 11 projects before me. The earliest I could possibly go would be 2019. That is the sort of 14
certainty that would encourage developers to go ok if I can get in line for 2019 then I'm going to 15
hire the best architect I have. I'm going to get the best design I can. I'm going to throw 16
everything at this because I get one shot possibly every four years and I want it to be brilliant. 17
And I think that will encourage that sort of dollars that will create the sort of results that we 18
want. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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So again I would be in favor of eliminating the beauty contest and I'm not suggesting that we 1
don't create a framework that encourages the goals of the beauty contest, but we do in a way 2
that doesn't discourage investment. And I don't know what that is yet, but I know that this 3
doesn't accomplish that goal for me. Ok, that's those are my comments. 4
5
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: My turn? Thank you. I've heard some speculation both among my 6
colleagues and from staff that the cap produced office growth within the boundaries, but do 7
you have any interpretation on why we haven't seen significant net new office group growth 8
outside of the cap boundaries? 9
10
Ms. Gitelman: We don't really and I'm not sure as Clare indicated that we've had a long enough 11
test of this idea to really draw conclusions and I think we need to study not just our local 12
conditions, but regionally what's happening in the office market. I don't know whether we 13
adopted this ordinance just at the time that something was changing here. I think we should 14
hesitate to draw (interrupted) 15
16
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Ok, so yes so it's pretty speculative about cause and effect and I get that. 17
Also there's some discussion about traffic and was there ever any intent that the office cap 18
would remediate existing traffic? 19
20
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Ms. Gitelman: No. I think the Council was very clear when this was adopted that they were 1
attempting to address the pace of change in neighborhoods that people felt were changing 2
most rapidly. 3
4
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Ok, so we wouldn't expect to see traffic reductions over the last couple 5
years as an effect of this interim ordinance? 6
7
Ms. Gitelman: That’s right. 8
9
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Yeah, ok. Great. Yeah and I mean I've seen some speculation that it's 10
really higher office density that's above the code assumptions of four or five employees per 11
thousand that's really a causal factor. I’m going to… we all had anecdotes about this, but this 12
probably isn't the right place to share them. 13
14
So I support extending the cap at 50,000 feet. I feel like a bit of an odd man out here, but I 15
don't support extending it outside the current boundaries. I think that using mitigations in the 16
Research Park versus metering in the boundary districts gives us a really interesting local A/B 17
test on what works. And I think that both these approaches are valid and having a local running 18
a local experiment maybe making a decision in the future that one of the other is preferable 19
may be an interesting exercise. I don't support rollover although I could be persuaded that 20
_______________________
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rollover I mean well, if we only keep it within the current districts I don't support rollover. And 1
rollover isn't an issue outside of the current districts or in the office park. 2
3
I do support continuing I'll call the bake off process because I like the idea of the City having a 4
seat at the table to get good projects. I appreciate my colleague Commissioner [Note-Chair] 5
Alcheck’s comments about great architecture. I haven't seen great architecture regularly 6
committed in areas outside of the development cap boundaries. And I'm not too worried that a 7
bake off process will deter good design. I mean I think that we need to be cognizant that we 8
have to design processes as if our objective is to improve the quality of design we have to 9
design processes that will achieve that, but I'm not I'm not concerned that a the City having a 10
seat at the table will deter good design and will deter good projects. 11
12
Commissioner Lauing: I want to go back to that top of Page 33 again. Again if we’re going to 13
make decisions we like to have data and I think you're saying that we haven't had much time to 14
get much data in fact none so it's not indicative of anything really. So I just think we should all 15
kind of understand that. Were there any even anecdotal developers saying I don't like this 16
ordinance so I'm not going to submit or is this just sort of a presumption or speculation? 17
18
Ms. Campbell: I think so the project list that I gave you some examples we definitely saw some 19
projects where the applicant has reduced the amount of square footage and we had some 20
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projects that were already like under review when we first adopted the ordinance where 1
they've actually they had planned for office and they've switched it to retail or yeah and 2
housing, yeah. So we’ve… but again we haven't really seen this enough to really make any real 3
determinations on a trend. 4
5
Commissioner Lauing: That latter example might turn out to be a plus. 6
7
Ms. Campbell: Yeah. 8
9
Commissioner Lauing: If they’re putting in more housing and retail than office. 10
11
Ms. Gitelman: That’s right. I mean there’s only a few examples, but we have had projects that 12
were in our shop for review as office projects the cap was adopted and they have since changed 13
to be residential projects. 14
15
Commissioner Lauing: Ok. So I also appreciate Commissioner [Note-Vice-Chair] Waldfogel’s 16
point that there's not been sizable building anywhere, but there certainly hasn't been in the 17
restricted area so to that extent it's been “successful” given very little data. I also wanted to 18
get clarification on what is the real assignment here? The words you put in the front here is 19
that they made a Motion, Council made a Motion that directed staff to bring forward a 20
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permanent annual limit ordinance and it’s separate from the Comprehensive Plan update. Is 1
that separate in terms of timing? Because they want to get it done quickly by this date even if 2
the Comprehensive Plan is not available? I mean it certainly isn’t going to be in contradiction to 3
the Comprehensive Plan so I’m still looking kind of for clarity of what the assignment is. 4
5
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah I think they're there they meant separate to mean separate. That we were 6
asking them at that time whether they wanted to include a policy framework in the Comp Plan 7
for an annual process like this and they said no. We I mean obviously we don't want to 8
contradiction, but what we’d prefer is to refine this through an ordinance process. 9
10
Commissioner Lauing: Instead of a policy in the Comp Plan? 11
12
Ms. Gitelman: That's right. 13
14
Commissioner Lauing: Ok, that's helpful. Yeah I think we could use some more debate on if we 15
expanded to certain areas would they be just the office park or would they be other areas and I 16
don't know that tonight’s the night for that. So that's all. 17
18
Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. So I believe definitely that the room proper place for this 19
policy it's not a separate regulation, but the Comp Plan. And I'm not sure what's the 20
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mechanism here is this is it either a representative of this Commission should speak at the 1
meeting of the City Council or maybe we could ask the staff or the Director to recommend if 2
that would be agreement maybe among ourselves to put a recommend the Council to 3
reconsider their suggestion and include this regulation in the Comprehensive Plan. And there is 4
a the reason is that a Comprehensive Plan should address housing and office balance. And then 5
specifically here there is no greater topic then that. This policy addresses this balance in a 6
significant way. So excluding that from the Comprehensive Plan somehow negates the purpose 7
of the Comprehensive Plan. So it's not very logical for me for this reason I would like somebody 8
there to from this Commission to recommend the Council to reconsider or maybe staff would. 9
10
In terms of how this should work so 50,000 annual limit cap it is the number that doesn't 11
explain itself. It's like with any other numbers that we reviewed here at this Commission and 12
the impact fees was recent topic. We are given the numbers and we need to somehow which 13
are artificial they mean nothing. They are prescriptive as opposed to performance based and in 14
this way they just don't work with variety of other regulations. They are just pretty much 15
artificially created. We know why because at the time when this regulation was created there 16
was a pressure to limit the office cap and then for the time being it worked so there was 17
nothing wrong with this interim regulation that Council passed at this time, but now we are 18
approaching discussions on the Comprehensive Plan so maybe we can just approach it 19
differently. 20
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1
I think that the way to approach it is to define and to commit to a ratio which you already 2
presented to us when we were talking about EIR. Where we have jobs, employed, and resident 3
ratio of 3.3 and then this cap may be expressed with this ratio. We can maybe in the 4
Comprehensive Plan we can have a statement that this City that the vision of the City is to drive 5
towards a narrower or is to minimize the today’s differentiator or the ratio that is pretty much 6
high, it's very high maybe the objective of the City is to drive toward lowering this ratio. And 7
inclusion of the statement in the Comprehensive Plan would address this issue totally. We can 8
also assume that there is a variance that from the ratio, let's say 3.0. There can be variance 9
annual or quarterly variance of 0.05 which it would be a standard deviation from the mean and 10
then as long as the City marches with the development between those two parameters we’re 11
fine. So then we would not need to have any other review, any beauty contests or any other 12
first come [for self] as long as there is a metric and this metric should be naturally maintained. 13
14
This discussion would resolve itself, but of course we would have to have understanding and 15
agreement and then maybe the agreement that City Council is trying to express with the recent 16
discussion maybe it’s the target ratio that we should have. And then if we have it as I said, 17
right, we would not need to have this capital. As I said [$50,000] doesn't say anything to me, 18
right? I was trying just to do some numbers and then excluding I think we have 3.2 million sf 19
which are in the Comprehensive Plan out of this 1.3 million were already taken by the Stanford 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Medical Center which leaves us with 1.7 so give or take. Now there is a question how much of 1
this 1.7 will go to the toward the outside areas, how much will be left for the City and that 2
remainder should be pretty much allocated towards the 2030 horizon of the Comprehensive 3
Plan. So if you do if you discount the growth of the area outside of the… if you discount the 4
growth of the areas like SRP you are left with some office area that may be allocated toward 5
the City if you drive from 3.2 million sf number. Other ways to approach it as I said is to just 6
pretty much look around this ratio. One method or the other method it just give us the greater 7
direction and we don't need this regulation. 8
9
But however my colleagues talk about this that we need to answer this question what if we're 10
left out with this specific regulation so for this reason my propensity would be like this: I don't 11
believe that there should be any beauty contests because I don't really think that it serves 12
anything. I'm sure that it would not self-serve better architecture just knowing that higher is 13
the that higher burden of the regulation equates to a mediocre architecture. So architects are 14
busy with resolving the issues around the zoning and regulations and they don't design and we 15
know that. So I would be against the beauty contest. 16
17
I think that it should be on the first come and first serve basis and it should be within the rolling 18
timelines. So as long as there is a [12 ma or else there isn’t] a certain cap with the 12 months 19
and then if it just pretty much if that amount of the area, office area is developed within this 12 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
months it should keep, kept going. Of course there is a question that you may ask what's going 1
to happen if we going to if there's going to be a large project on the horizon that will 2
automatically go above this, right? So then of course we would have to just kick in some other 3
review, but then as long as this is below that cap that pretty much the applications should be 4
rolling in. That's how I think about this. I agree with colleagues of mine that suggested to 5
include all the office area regardless so I think that the medical offices all should be included 6
and then all the areas below 2,000 should be included in this cap as well. So those are my 7
comments. Thank you. 8
9
Chair Alcheck: Ok Commissioners our the light system does not really work right now because it 10
doesn't reflect the news, the addition of our newest member so just signal me if you have some 11
additional comments. Any order. 12
13
Commissioner Lauing: I was just going to circle back to what I said before we had this 14
conversation and I think the conversation illustrates there are a lot of different opinions. 15
There's a lot of different levels of knowledge about this because of when it came up. And if 16
Council wants us to do something besides just tweak this ordinance which we certainly can do 17
then I think it needs more study. Perhaps even a two or three person ad hoc committee in 18
advance of the next meeting with people that we know have maybe a different opinions so we 19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
get something done so we could reestablish the Waldfogel/Rosenblum couple there and see 1
what comes out of that one because there's various opinions that I heard up here so. 2
3
Chair Alcheck: It's an interesting idea. I think to what extent can we affect... So your tasked 4
with the process of bringing an ordinance to City, to the to us and then from us it will go to City 5
Council. So this is in essence like a study session before the development of an ordinance 6
which we’ll review and then either recommend or revise or theoretically recommend revisions 7
because it we may not see it twice on its way to Council, right? 8
9
Ms. Gitelman: Right. I think we'd like an opportunity to think a little further about the process 10
after tonight's discussion. We did hear a wide variety of opinions if we had to develop an 11
ordinance based on tonight's discussion I think we would be hard pressed to do that. So I think 12
we want to regroup a little and maybe we'll sit down with the City Manager and talk about his 13
impressions of how this fits into the Council work program this year. We do always have the 14
option with this ordinance to just extended it or let it lapse for a little while we take a little bit 15
longer. So I guess what I'm asking is let's if you have any further thoughts tonight that be 16
terrific and why don't you let us assimilate the input we've received and come back to you with 17
some suggestions and an updated process. 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Alcheck: Ok, I'm going to make a comment and I hope that it serves as a quick example of 1
I think some things that might work out for us. So I'm going to let all of you have an 2
opportunity, but I want to just make a quick comment. I think this will help further the process. 3
4
I think when we come back or in the in your next step this self-mitigating projects exclusion I 5
think it would be very helpful if you could demonstrate how this would be achieved in a 5,000 6
or 10,000 square foot office project. How many housing units would have to be built based on 7
our assumptions for how 10,000 sf of office space is allocated or 5,000 sf or actually 2,100 sf 8
because one of my concerns is that this paragraph about self-mitigating projects is completely 9
unattainable. There is no 2,500 square foot office that within five stories could house enough 10
people to mitigate the jobs/housing imbalance. And so one of the questions that I would like to 11
explore down the road is ok well what how much, how what is reasonable? Like a half, could a 12
project a accommodate half of the housing units versus jobs that it creates? Because otherwise 13
this paragraph is essentially a impossible feat, right? 14
15
That's basically one of the questions that I have. So when, if we explore this further and if the 16
next version of this or what however this works I'd love to sort of figure out whether there is 17
such a thing as a self-mitigating project. Alright, so that's one example of potentially something 18
that could inform this discussion later and I encourage all of you if you have questions since this 19
is a very open ended return to go ahead. Ok. Commissioner Summa. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Summa: So I mean it may not be a perfect ordinance I agree with that, but it 2
seems like it's been successful in doing something that was sort of a consensus moment on the 3
Comp Plan group and that is incentivizing mixed-use that's retail and housing. To respond to 4
people's concerns about housing and also address the jobs/housing imbalance or at least not 5
making it work. So I see it as having been sort of successful understanding that there's only 6
been a very short time to look at it. And yeah I think it’d be very interesting to have an example 7
of the self-mitigating project. Thanks. 8
9
Chair Alcheck: Commissioner Rosenblum. 10
11
Commissioner Rosenblum: Thanks. So a couple reactions; first, I don't think this is that well 12
suited for like an additional subcommittee and the reason is the history of it which is that 13
Council had many sessions on this. We had many sessions on this. And part of the reason I 14
think you sense passion at least on my part for this is that I never actually thought this would do 15
very much. My opposition to it is that it keeps us from doing things I think will do quite a lot. 16
And just to say well this at least accomplished something I don't think, I think the best thing you 17
can say is we don't know. There just hasn't been enough time or who knows, but after hours 18
and hours and hours of Council debate and hours and hours and hours of PTC debate and public 19
input I think we could have done something much better. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
And specifically I think what the community has always been interested in is the impacts of 2
office, the impacts of people. So where do people put their cars? How do they get into our 3
community? And there are effective ways of dealing with that. And so when I suggest to let 4
this ordinance lapse what I really mean is to choose one of the other options that were on the 5
table. So one of the options on the table was to work extensively on mitigation, so cap is not a 6
mitigation. To work on in our community that would be getting a funding source for our TMA, 7
getting proper leadership in place, getting proper oversight. So when I think of those however 8
many hours nine hours of Council meetings on this and all the hours that we had on this and 9
could have been spent productively trying to find a funding source for example for TMA I find it 10
kind of tragic. 11
12
But if we are going to do this again the thing that to me is one of the biggest examples of why 13
this is strange is that the place that leads to a lot of our traffic which is SRP in terms of the total 14
square footage of office and the fact that 73 percent of them drive alone. This is a known issue. 15
This has been an issue for years. They've been working on trying to get people out of their cars. 16
It's a difficult place for people not to drive to. That we've actually just flipped everything on its 17
head. The places where people are reducing their reliance on cars we've put a cap in place. In 18
a place where people can’t get out of their cars we’ve put no cap in place. It’s just the whole 19
thing is very strange. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
And so when I suggest we let this lapse I'm not saying not replace it with anything I'm saying to 2
work on something that we would feel good about which is a program to really reduce the 3
reliance on cars in the Downtown area where that ability exists. And to me again it would be 4
it’s the Stanford plan. Stanford did an amazing job over the last decade plus of getting people 5
out of their cars, but it’s by focusing on this and not just putting a cap in place. I think if they 6
had just put a cap in place and not focused on all the programming they did around the shuttle 7
program, the go pass program, the education program, the marking program. That took work 8
and they focused on that. If they had just said a cap will accomplish what we want I think they 9
would have been short changed. 10
11
So anyway so my suggestion given this process would be I think additional like subcommittees 12
in this case is probably not the best use, but I do hope that we at least come up with some 13
consensus. I have my view. I may be outvoted on this one. I expect I would be, but at least I 14
think we should give guidance to Council that we support this ordinance being extended or we 15
don't we think it should be replaced with something different. And then hopefully some 16
consolidation of our feedback if we decide that this ordinance is really well actually, either way; 17
even if we say we should replace it with something they can just ignore us. And then I think we 18
still owe them some pointers on things that we think should be changed. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Lauing: So a process wise would you say bring it back in a month and have 1
another debate and then vote on something? 2
3
Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah, something like that. I mean I may be strong of will on this 4
one, but I'd be willing to do that right now. But I'm also happy to bring it back if people feel like 5
they need more time to digest and again this is maybe something where this all came during my 6
tenure and so maybe I feel like (interrupted) 7
8
Commissioner Lauing: You’ve got a lot of history. 9
10
Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah. So it's possible that given the composition of this Commission 11
if people want more time to absorb and talk to folks then I'm open to that. But yeah I think we 12
should we owe Council some kind of direction and answer on this. 13
14
Commissioner Lauing: Yeah unless they've already told us otherwise. I'd like to see the exact 15
Motion actually if we could get that sent to us. 16
17
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah we'd be happy to do that and one of the things that we are talking about is 18
whether we should go to the Council and have this same kind of open ended discussion. We 19
really just scratched the surface because there were so many other issues on the agenda on 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
that June 30 that January 30th date. And so we're kind of figuring out can we fit a study session 1
into the Council schedule, should we just draft an ordinance and bring it to you and bring it to 2
them, we really have to strategize after hearing the wide variety of thoughts expressed this 3
evening. 4
5
Chair Alcheck: Look, I’ll say this: new, old, it doesn't really make a difference. I think everybody 6
on this Commission is sensitive to the impacts that have occurred as a result of the growth that 7
I think most of us have seen as residents. And I don't want to take away here to be Commission 8
split on whether to continue to develop office or not. I think or I at least I speak for myself 9
when I say this is not I'm not opposed to the office cap because I would like more office in our 10
City. I and one of the I think most valuable comments you're making is how much more time 11
are we going to spend on a potentially flawed approach? That is something that we need to 12
address. We can have another two meetings and debate office caps and I think one question is 13
are we continuing to waste time and I think there maybe even Commissioners that don't think 14
we would be and there's a lot of uncertainty involved here. So I don't know that we're ready to 15
even make a Motion to… I don't know. I shouldn’t say make a, I don't know that what we... 16
please. Why don’t? 17
18
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: So Commissioner Rosenbaum raises an interesting point that mitigation is 19
really at the bottom of this is the objective and maybe the way to split the difference is for the 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
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time being I really think we need to extend this office cap, but perhaps what we do is we sunset 1
it around demonstrably effective mitigation. That when we show that we have TDM that works 2
or other mitigations that work that we increase the cap or we relieve the restrictions, but I 3
mean for the time being I think this is the best tool that we have in our or the best tool that we 4
have in our tool kit. We don't have reliable funding sources for TMA yet and perhaps that 5
would be an incentive for the private sector to adequately fund TMA. Who knows, you know 6
that's pure speculation, but maybe we come up with some tool like that. I don't know is an 7
interesting? 8
9
Chair Alcheck: I guess my I'm sort of curious to know how you would respond to this exclusion 10
of the SRP. I mean that being potentially the largest generator of the impacts that the TDM 11
measures that you're waiting for would address. So why wouldn't you use the best tool that 12
you have to address an area that is creating the largest problem that you are hoping will be 13
solved? 14
15
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Well I partially because I think that the 73 percent and what is it, 54 16
percent numbers are slightly deceptive. Until we actually look at the occupancy per square foot 17
basically how many trips are generated per square foot of building in those districts. I don't 18
have those numbers, but at least historically the Research Park has had lower occupancy 19
density. So I think that if we knew that we could say something smarter about this. I mean we 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
know that for better for worse we know that Cal Ave. has more trips now than it had some time 1
in the past because we're seeing demand for Residential Preferential Parking (RPP), we're 2
seeing a serious discussion about a new parking ramp. So I mean we know that affects have 3
happened, but I don't know enough to agree or disagree that the Research Park is a bigger 4
causal issue than other districts. 5
6
Chair Alcheck: I just want to follow up, I'm curious. So let's assume for a minute the numbers 7
are the same. Let’s say it was 54 and 54. Still why wouldn't you include that area? What would 8
be the rationale to not… what would how would we encourage TDM measures in that area if 9
there was no cap? Or the development of [unintelligible]. I get (interrupted) 10
11
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Well I’m not sure what you're, are you arguing that the cap should be 12
extended to the Research Park? 13
14
Chair Alcheck: I'm trying to suggest that the exclusion in your mind, in your… you suggested 15
that you want to continue the office cap, but you want to exclude the… its expansion citywide 16
seems inconsistent and I was trying to I was trying to pick your brain as to how that made 17
sense. I appreciate that there's information that you're that you would like to obtain so. 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
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2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Well and I'd like to see mitigations in the Research Park. I mean I'm not 1
saying we shouldn't do anything in the Research Park. I'd like to see mitigations. I'd like to see 2
that perhaps as a local experiment on mitigations versus metering, but that but I'm trying to 3
suggest there may be a middle ground here which is this isn't a calendared interim item this is a 4
this is interim until we show that we can actually achieve what we say we want to achieve. And 5
we just haven't done that yet. So let's show that we can do it and let's create some incentives 6
for them for the private sector to respond. 7
8
Chair Alcheck: Commissioner Rosenblum. 9
10
Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah I guess it’s I think it's all well and good for us to say well it's not 11
ideal, but let's continue and then we also really care about mitigation so hopefully something 12
good happens there. To me it’s exactly the opposite which is what we really should care about 13
is mitigation. This is a program that has been shown to work by our neighbor at Stanford. It's 14
something that we've seen examples on individual building levels. So one building that really 15
struck me was this body presided over a proposal where the proposal was fully parked or they 16
offered Option 2 where they get rid of 10 spaces, but offer Caltrain Go Passes for every person 17
working in the building and it was near the Caltrain Cal Ave. station. And that really struck me. 18
They had something like a 10 percent reduction in number of spaces, but because it cost them 19
$60,000 per space that funded Caltrain passes for everyone. And we considered those two 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
options and one was they’re dramatically different. One you fit ten more cars in the other I 1
forget the number of people it was like 110 people work in the building would all get Go Passes. 2
3
And what I realize is we only have so much time and Council only has so much time and we do 4
what we spend time on and so this particular issue has taken up a lot of time and if we ranked 5
issues that in the last two years have taken Council time this would be a top five item talking 6
office cap, multiple sessions that went on for hours. And so my rejoinder to this is it hasn't 7
really done much. Removing it probably won't do much either. I actually like I said I don't 8
actually think this is that important a measure one way or the other, but I know it takes time 9
and it takes our focus off of what I think is the most important thing which is I think we right 10
now really ineffective TMA at the moment frankly. And I would love to see us and Council start 11
to spend a lot of time understanding why that is and all the different options we could have for 12
funding and staffing that body and doing it well. 13
14
Now the only objection I have to this again is I think it's a really blunt instrument, but at least if 15
we’re going to use the blunt instrument and let's apply it consistently so if we’re going to have 16
a blunt instrument then at least let's apply it to SRP, let's get rid of these exceptions that don't 17
make sense. But I think that we have much better instruments that we should spend our time 18
on. And so that’s it. I just feel sad that we keep discussing this cap which I don't think really 19
does much one way or the other. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Chair Alcheck: Is it, do, is there any baring other comment or go ahead. 2
3
Commissioner Monk: So looking first of all I just want to say that with what Commissioner 4
Rosenblum was saying I do agree that if it's about mitigation then the time should be spent on 5
doing the hard work to figure out how to really reduce the traffic and those things that impact 6
our quality of life. Although Director Gitelman said that this was more about the pace of 7
change and that's why it was enacted. So getting some clarity on that and addressing that 8
specific would be really important. And also looking at what our objective is tonight this is a 9
study session and as you mentioned you did hear of a variety of a range of opinions and I think 10
that is exactly what we were tasked to do tonight and I think we've successfully met our 11
objective for tonight. So I don't know what the additional conversation needs to continue on so 12
I just want to say that I think we've met our objective and I appreciate all of the interesting 13
commentary. 14
15
Chair Alcheck: Yeah I agree that I think we met our objective. I wonder if there is a way that I 16
can, we can and I'd love to hear if there is support for this empower staff to bring us an 17
agendized item this summer where we delve into TMA. Or if there is a way for us to begin a 18
discussion about effective TMA solutions that address the challenges that may or may not be 19
effectively addressed by this tool. I think that it would be we've talked about this a lot this 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
notion of proposing an item of interest on the Planning Commission that the staff would help 1
facilitate an opportunity to put it on the agenda. I mean I've had that conversation with 2
Assistant Director Lait a few times. And I don't know that I am following the right protocol 3
here, but I guess my question and I'd love if follow Commission Members feel strongly about 4
this I mean there is maybe an interest here in pursuing that. I'd much rather create a 5
subcommittee to talk about TMA than to talk about this ordinance. And is there a way we can 6
accomplish that goal in this calendar year? 7
8
Ms. Gitelman: I think we can find a way to do that. I should mention that we have scheduled a 9
discussion with the City Council on April 11th. So coming up in fact the packet goes out 10
tomorrow on parking management strategies Downtown which does offer some potential for 11
funding the TMA in the long term. And what and our recommendation to the Council on the 12
11th is not to take any action just to receive a study that we've been working on and basically 13
instruct us to go and get some additional input and potentially work with the Commission on a 14
further evolution of kind of an implementation strategy if they're interested in pursuing the 15
recommendations of the study. So I'd encourage you to pay attention to the Council meeting 16
on the 11th. It's a Tuesday meeting rather than a Monday meeting, but that may evolve into a 17
Commission agenda item just like the one you're saying you're suggesting and even if it doesn't 18
we can find a way to bring the TMA related issues back to the Commission this year. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Alcheck: Maybe one of the most constructive thing that we can do at this point would be 1
to encourage staff when they go for that meeting to communicate the passion and interest 2
among Commission Members to explore this and if they're so interested empower us that in 3
our discussion of the cap we had some discussion about delving into this further and if as part 4
of their review they consider that opportunity. Does anybody else have some? Commissioners 5
Summa. 6
7
Commissioner Summa: So I think it would be great to discuss a TMA, but unless TMA gets 8
significant funding that’s it's never going to get off the ground. It's a totally different thing than 9
Stanford’s academic success with reduction of trips because they own all the land. So it's very 10
different Downtown and that's why they have a harder time in the Research Park. Even though 11
they own the land there's these long term lease holders and they can't make all the rules. So I 12
appreciate my colleagues’ passion on the topic of the this item, but I think the fact that there 13
has been so much time spent on it is evidence of the passion on both sides around it. So I 14
would suggest it's perfectly appropriate for us to spend time on it because it just elicits a lot of 15
passionate responses. So yeah let's go for trying to improve the TMA, but we've got to figure 16
out who's going to pay for it because it needs professional people running it in my opinion. 17
Thanks. 18
19
Chair Alcheck: Any other comments? Commissioner Gardias. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Gardias: Does the light system work or? 2
3
Chair Alcheck: Not really. 4
5
Commissioner Gardias: I just wanted to make a comment about this what Director Gitelman 6
said. So you said you were wondering how to approach this ordinance with the City Council 7
and some other items. My general thought is like this that Comprehensive Plan that we would 8
be approaching very soon gives us this opportunity to comprehensively review all the 9
ordinances like this one. I think that once we're going to approach summer or the 10
Comprehensive Plan discussion we should just have the laundry list of all the ordinances and 11
then see if they can be incorporated into Comprehensive Plan. Or if a Comprehensive Plan 12
pretty much invalidates them or replaces them in some way. 13
14
Ms. Gitelman: Certainly your review of the Comprehensive Plan is going to be an opportunity 15
for you to review the land use policies that involve growth management strategies and other 16
approaches to growth in the City. And once the Comprehensive Plan is adopted we will have to 17
undertake some changes to our zoning ordinances to implement the new policies in the plan. 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Alcheck: Ok I want to make one more suggestion when this does come back to us in 1
whatever form it comes back to us. I think we've talked about this last time I think it would be 2
very instructive if we could review any other American city’s approach to an office cap that 3
potentially involved a beauty or bake sale or whatever you want to call it. I think we talked 4
about this last time and we were does anybody else do this and how are they doing it and how 5
if because we don't really have a lot of data maybe there's a way we can analyze their results. 6
So barring any other comments by Commissioners I think we can sort of complete (interrupted) 7
8
Commissioner Lauing: Do we want to agendize this for the next meeting? 9
10
Chair Alcheck: I don't know that it will be ready in time. 11
12
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah. I think we'd like some time to think about it maybe we prepare an 13
ordinance so you have something to react to, something more concrete, but maybe we have to 14
go to Council first. We just have to give it a little thought, but we'll keep working on this. We 15
do know there is some urgency to this because the expiration date of the current ordinance. 16
17
Chair Alcheck: Time is on our side and this is different than the last interim ordinance 18
(interrupted) 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Lauing: That’s what I was just going to say. 1
2
Chair Alcheck: We’ve got a few months here. 3
4
Commissioner Lauing: I’m happy to get a little bit more extra time on this one. 5
6
Chair Alcheck: Yeah. 7
8
Commissioner Lauing: It would be a great though if we could see the text of the Motion so that 9
we know what the direction is to you guys and effectively to us right now even if we want to 10
push back on that we’d like to know what the status is. Thank you. 11
12
Chair Alcheck: Ok. 13
14
Ms. Gitelman: Well thank you all for the input tonight. It's really helpful. 15
16
Chair Alcheck: Yeah this is really very effective. I'd like to close the study session now and move 17
to the approval of the minutes from the March 8th meaning. 18
19
MOTION: There was no Motion. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Approval of Minutes 1
Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 2
4. March 8, 2017 Planning & Transportation Commission Meeting Minutes 3
4
Chair Alcheck: Is there a Motion for approval? 5
6
MOTION 7
8
Commissioner Rosenblum: I move to approve the minutes. 9
10
Chair Alcheck: Is there a second? 11
12
SECOND, VOTE 13
14
Chair Alcheck: That was you? Commissioner Summa seconds. All in favor of approving the 15
minutes from March 8th please raise your hand. That is... all those opposed to? All those 16
abstaining? Ok, we have five in favor and two abstentions. Abstentions are Commissioner 17
[Note-Vice-Chair] Waldfogel and Commissioner Monk. 18
19
MOTION PASSED (5-0-2, Vice-Chair Waldfogel and Commissioner Monk abstained) 20
21
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
MOTION: Motion to approve March 8, 2017, minutes made by Commissioner 1
Rosenblum, seconded by Commissioner Summa. Motion passed 5-0-2, Vice-Chair 2
Waldfogel and Commissioner Monk abstained. 3
4
Committee Items 5
Commissioner Questions, Comments or Announcements 6
7
Chair Alcheck: Are there any committee items, Commissioner questions, comments or 8
announcements? Sure. 9
10
Commissioner Summa: The Citizen Advisory Committee (CAC) met I forget what the date was, 11
second Tuesday usually. And we after an update by staff we agreed to we had last final 12
comments on the Business Element and agreed that it would go back to staff for any more 13
tweaks. It won't come back to the CAC. And then we discussed the prioritization and 14
implementation plan which had gone to the subcommittee once. So we're getting there. 15
16
Chair Alcheck: I'm curious what is the what, how many more meetings does the CAC have do 17
you I think? 18
19
Commissioner Summa: I'm not 100 percent positive. 20
21
Chair Alcheck: Have they, have you provided final comments on all the sections or? 22
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Summa: I think we have a little bit left to do and for sure the implementation 2
and the prioritization section. We just have one subcommittee meeting and that's kind of a big 3
one. We just for the record there are some of us on the CAC that don't believe in prioritizing 4
the programs because there's a lot of feeling that all the programs have value to somebody 5
who put them in there. And there was a lot of since there was since it was a fairly polarized 6
group sometimes the policies were made more general than I think people might have liked on 7
both sides and the difference was made up in the programs. So and the programs have always 8
been kind of like that where I mean there's some that you don't have to prioritize because 9
they're ongoing and they're required they're just government business so, but in the end we did 10
do a giant dot exercise to prioritize them. So but there was a lot of feeling everyone, every 11
program had this had top priority for somebody who suggested it and so they all should have 12
an equal weight, but there… staff really wanted us to prioritize them because Council asked us 13
to. 14
15
Chair Alcheck: Do you, I'm curious do you anticipate the CAC sort of sending a representative to 16
each of our review meetings? 17
18
Commissioner Summa: That has not come up because I... that hasn't come up. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Alcheck: It might be something that would be interesting for you to raise at the next 1
meeting just how do they plan on participating in our reviews. I mean are we going have 16 2
speakers from the CAC or are there going to be (interrupted) 3
4
Commissioner Summa: There's some pretty opinionated people. 5
6
Chair Alcheck: You’re right. Yeah. 7
8
Commissioner Summa: So yeah I would I think we’ll be disbanded by then or maybe not and, 9
but I would imagine the CAC would be interested in coming. I mean it’s too bad Hillary left, but 10
she would know. But I don't there's been no discussion thus far of any official representation 11
for our review process. 12
13
Chair Alcheck: Ok. Any other comments/questions? 14
15
Commissioner Lauing: I just want to make one quick comment. In the Council meeting when 16
they went over the I just forgot the address now. Jonathan mentioned it. Yeah, Los Trancos. 17
Not only did they add low level bushes and so on, but they changed the trees beyond what we 18
asked for which I thought was pretty interesting. And that’s what I just was going to say. And 19
they shut down the kitchen entirely in the guest house. So we didn't require that of them, but 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
they went ahead and added that anyway and sent that letter to Council. So they were listening. 1
They were listening is my point. Yeah, so. 2
3
Chair Alcheck: Ok, great. Yeah. 4
5
Commissioner Gardias: So a couple of a couple of items. One very quickly Jonathan Lait if you 6
are listening so it's to you. We used to have the pipeline of the items for the future meetings 7
and then somehow it disappeared from our agenda. So you can see that there is only one the 8
agenda, April 12th on Packet Page Number 6. If you remember we used to have like a half year 9
forecast of different topics that were in the pipeline. Can we return to this good habit? 10
11
Jonathan Lait, Assistant Director: Yeah, I don't remember a that long of a projection. I think we 12
did it two or three months out at most, but yeah we can certainly add more to this. I don't 13
know that were was much more identified, but we can certainly add more as we have more 14
information available. 15
16
Commissioner Gardias: Yes, thank you. And so just to just coming back to the conversation that 17
about the Comprehensive Plan what was the Council's thinking behind request to prioritize 18
programs? What was rationale to prioritize them? Was there any rationale or? 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Summa: So I was one of the people that wasn't really interested in prioritizing. 1
In the end I was really swayed by some passionate members who spoke against it, but I think 2
the Council just felt like it there were so many that it made it really difficult. There were there 3
was a further analysis done by one CAC member that pointed out there was actually a greatly 4
reduced number of programs because so many were ongoing things. So I think it was just 5
Council wanted to have direction on what we the CAC thought were the more important things. 6
Quite simply that. 7
8
Commissioner Gardias: Yeah I'm asking because there should be some sort of thinking behind 9
this, right? If one policy item or program is at a higher priority would be then direction to the 10
staff? So… 11
12
Commissioner Summa: I cannot speculate on what the Council was really intending, but… 13
14
Commissioner Gardias: Fine. Thank you. 15
16
Chair Alcheck: Alright, we’re breaking my rule of trying to get out of here by 9:30. Alright with 17
that I'm going to adjourn tonight's meeting. The time is 9:35. 18
19
Adjournment 9:30pm 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Palo Alto Planning & Transportation Commission 1
Commissioner Biographies, Present and Archived Agendas and Reports are available online: 2
http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/boards/ptc/default.asp. The PTC Commission members are: 3
4
Chair Michael Alcheck 5
Vice Chair Asher Waldfogel 6
Commissioner Przemek Gardias 7
Commissioner Ed Lauing 8
Commissioner Susan Monk 9
Commissioner Eric Rosenblum 10
Commissioner Doria Summa 11
12
Get Informed and Be Engaged! 13
View online: http://midpenmedia.org/category/government/city-of-palo-alto or on Channel 26. 14
15
Show up and speak. Public comment is encouraged. Please complete a speaker request card 16
located on the table at the entrance to the Council Chambers and deliver it to the Commission 17
Secretary prior to discussion of the item. 18
19
Write to us. Email the PTC at: Planning.Commission@CityofPaloAlto.org. Letters can be 20
delivered to the Planning & Community Environment Department, 5th floor, City Hall, 250 21
Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301. Comments received by 2:00 PM two Tuesdays preceding 22
the meeting date will be included in the agenda packet. Comments received afterward through 23
2:00 PM the day of the meeting will be presented to the Commission at the dais. 24
25
Material related to an item on this agenda submitted to the PTC after distribution of the 26
agenda packet is available for public inspection at the address above. 27
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