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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-04-12 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: April 12, 2017 2 Council Chambers 3 250 Hamilton Avenue 4 6:00 PM 5 6 Call to Order / Roll Call 6:05pm 7 Chair Alcheck Arrived at 6:14pm 8 9 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: [Note-starts in progress] get through. I'm sure he'll be here in time for 10 the scoping meeting. So let's start with roll call. 11 12 Jonathan Lait, Assistant Director: Chair Alcheck is momentarily delayed. Commissioner Gardias, 13 Commissioner Lauing, Commissioner Monk, Commissioner Rosenblum, Commissioner Summa, 14 and Vice-Chair Waldfogel. 15 16 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Great. 17 18 Oral Communications 19 The public may speak to any item not on the agenda. Three (3) minutes per speaker.1,2 20 21 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Do we have any Oral Communications cards? This is just general Oral 22 Communications, not for an agenda item. Ok, great. Three minutes please. 23 24 _______________________ 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. Rita Vrhel: Ok so I’m Rita Vrhel from Channing Avenue and thank you for letting me speak. You 1 had Castilleja come before you about a month ago and there was quite a lively discussion 2 regarding the issues. That was a scoping meeting and my understanding is that all the public 3 comments on the scoping meeting for the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) are due on the 4 15th of this month. That's a Saturday so I'm not sure if that's a legal date to end public 5 comment. 6 7 And the other thing that is disturbing is I have heard from some of the people at Castilleja that 8 according to Amy French the additional documents will be submitted to Amy French on March 9 17th. Castilleja indicate, Castilleja the people that are against the expansion at Castilleja 10 indicated that they wrote a letter and were denied a two week extension during which time 11 they could review the documents that were submitted on 4/2017. So I don't know where to go 12 with this, but I thought that since I felt that the meeting that you conducted the other day on 13 Castilleja which was very emotionally charged among the people you did a great job, you were 14 very fair, and I guess I would ask you if there is anything that you as a body could do to make it 15 so that the residents opposing the expansion at least have the opportunity to review the 16 documents that are going to be submitted on the 17th so that if any other issues come out 17 which should be included in the EIR they have the opportunity to comment on that. Thank you. 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. Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Thank you for the comments. As I'm sure you know we can't comment 1 on Oral Communications, but appreciate the comment. Any other Oral Communications 2 tonight? 3 4 Agenda Changes, Additions, and Deletions 5 The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management. 6 7 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Ok then let's move on… agenda we're moving forward as it, as published? 8 Great, thanks. 9 10 City Official Reports 11 1. Assistant Directors Report, Meeting Schedule and Assignments 12 13 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: So we'll move on to the Directors Report. 14 15 Jonathan Lait, Assistant Director: Great, thank you. Just a couple of announcements; first, the 16 City Council and the Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC) you should have all 17 received an email that we're have a meeting scheduled for May 8th to have that meeting 18 between the two bodies. There will be a meeting between the Chair and Vice-Chair and the 19 Mayor and Vice-Mayor scheduled we're shooting for some time next week to help refine what 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. that agenda will be and when we have some information on that I’ll send an email to the rest of 1 the Commission so you have a sense for what that meeting will entail. 2 3 Last night the City Council directed staff and the PTC along with the Finance Committee to 4 refine the recommendations related to the introduction of a paid parking program, paid parking 5 in Downtown Palo Alto and to return with a phasing and implementation plan for the Council's 6 consideration in the fall of 2017. We will begin this discussion with the PTC in May and we 7 hope to conclude with a final meeting in August. 8 9 The agenda packet has a enhanced future agenda calendar in Tab 1 in response to 10 Commissioner comments and you'll also note on that agenda that future agenda that we've 11 identified some tentative subcommittee, ad hoc subcommittee topics and some meeting dates. 12 The Commission may recall that we started a dialogue about how we would approach going 13 through the different Comprehensive Plan elements and so we're that's a ongoing conversation 14 that we can continue to address probably after the joint Planning Commission and City Council 15 meeting. We can come back and revisit the subcommittee and see how that list is coming 16 together. 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. And the last item to report is that the Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) ordinance is going to go to 1 the City Council for a first reading on April 17th. It's on the Consent Calendar. And we'll keep 2 you posted on that particular project. And that concludes the Director Report. 3 4 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Great, thank you. And just a suggestion, let me make sure this is 5 appropriate, but if any of my fellow Commissioners have suggestions for agenda topics for the 6 joint meeting with the Council I think you could forward them to… you can forward them to 7 Assistant Director or to Jonathan or to Hillary and we can bring those into the discussion. 8 9 Study Session 10 Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 11 Action Items 12 Public Comment is Permitted. Applicants/Appellant Teams: Fifteen (15) minutes, plus three (3) minutes rebuttal. 13 All others: Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 14 2. SCOPING MEETING. 250 and 350 Sherman Avenue: The Planning and Transportation 15 Commission Will Hold a Public Scoping Meeting on the Notice of Preparation for an 16 Environmental Impact Report for the Replacement of Surface Parking Lots with a 17 Public Safety Building and Parking Structure. Public Input is Encouraged. For More 18 Information, Please Contact Matt Raschke at matt.raschke@cityofpaloalto.org 19 20 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Ok, no study session items so we’ll move on to the first action item which 21 is a scoping meeting for the 250/350 Sherman Avenue two projects. So I believe we’ll start with 22 a staff presentation. 23 24 _______________________ 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. Colette Chew, Engineer: Good evening, I'm Colette Chew, Engineer with Public Works. We are 1 here tonight to conduct the scoping meeting for the Public Safety Building (PSB) and California 2 Avenue parking garage projects. This is to allow the public to comment on the topics that the 3 Environmental Impact Report (EIR) will explore. [Speaking off microphone to set up computer]. 4 5 Ok, alright. Just quickly going over the scoping meeting format my presentation will cover the 6 project overview, our environmental consultant sitting to my right here is [Ray Pendrill] from 7 MIG and he will present the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process and the study 8 topics for the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR). Then we’ll listen to public speakers 9 who submitted a card and comment issues to be studied for the EIR and PTC members 10 comments. It's important to note that the scoping session is not intended as a forum for 11 dialogue about the merits of the project, the project alternatives, or the EIR conclusions. Staff 12 is not prepared to answer questions on the project itself. We are here to receive input on what 13 is to be studied in the EIR. 14 15 So the project overview is a construction of a new PSB and California Avenue parking garage in 16 the California Avenue Business Districts on Parking Lot C6 and C7. Parking Lot C6 is about 1.2 17 acres. Parking Lot C7 is 1 acre. The PSB will be located on Parking Lot C6. The parking garage 18 will be located on Lot C7. The parking garage will be completed before the construction of the 19 PSB begins. This is the project location off of California Avenue Parking Lot C6 and C7. The site 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. is bordered by Sherman Avenue, Park Boulevard, and Ash streets. Alma is diagonally up on the 1 map. El Camino Real is diagonally down. Some of the neighborhoods surrounding the site are 2 Evergreen Park, Southgate, College Terrace, and Ventura. 3 4 This is an enlarged view of the site showing Lot C6 to the right and Lot C7 to the left. The site is 5 on Sherman Avenue. You can see Park Boulevard, Birch Street, and Ash Street. Across the 6 street to the bottom right is the County Courthouse building and on the bottom left is 385 7 Sherman which is the Visa building. 8 9 So the PSB will house the Police Department, the 911 Emergency Dispatch Center, Emergency 10 Operation Center, the Office of Emergency Services, and Fire Department Administration. So 11 the PSB is planned to be three stories tall ranging in size from 45,500 square feet (sf) to about 12 50,000 sf over two levels of an operational basement and below grade parking for the Police 13 Department. There will be about 170 to 190 secure parking spaces below the building. 14 15 And the Cal Ave. parking garage was on Lot C7. On April 3rd, recently the parking garage 16 options were presented to City Council. Council directed staff to begin design for a parking 17 garage with four above ground levels and two basement levels without retail space. And we 18 estimate there would be approximately 636 parking stalls in the new garage. 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. The conceptual site plan here showing the PSB to the right here between Park Boulevard and 1 Birch Street and the garage between Birch Street and Ash Street. Sherman Avenue is the 2 entrance for both buildings. California Avenue is up to the top of the site and Jacaranda Lane is 3 between Sherman and California Avenue. This is an aerial view of the project showing the 4 parking garage and the PSB building. And these are just massing models. They don't depict any 5 final design concept yet. And also this is a view looking down Birch Street from California 6 Avenue. Also this is it's this is for massing only and the view doesn't depict actual garage 7 design. So now I'm going to turn it over to Ray from MIG to go over the EIR process. 8 9 [Ray Pendrill], MIG: Good evening, my name's [Ray Pendrill] from MIG and we’ll be preparing 10 the EIR and the remaining slides are an introduction to CEQA, the California Environmental 11 Quality Act, and the EIR. Just press that or scroll it? There we go. And as Colette mentioned 12 we're taking notes tonight because we're interested in your and the public's ideas on what 13 should be included in the EIR. CEQA is a state law. There's plenty of guidance on how to write 14 an EIR, but of course every EIR is a local product of the local jurisdiction and of the community’s 15 interests as well. So the EIR has not been written. That will be available in the summer and 16 there will be a 45 day review period and other public meetings to discuss the content of that 17 once it's written and available to the public. 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. These are some of the key thresholds or points in the EIR process. We've completed an initial 1 study. It's on file at the State Clearinghouse in Sacramento. Copies of it are on the back table 2 attached to the staff report and also online. The initial study is a checklist that goes through 3 the CEQA required topics and gives summary or introductory information about each of those 4 topics up to this point before the real deep analysis is begun. The notice of preparation goes 5 with the initial study. It just says we're beginning to write an EIR. Tonight's the scoping 6 meeting. The DEIR will as I mentioned have a 45 day review period in the summer and a at 7 least one public hearing and then there will be a Final EIR where we will answer in writing all 8 comments received on the DEIR and that will be a separate document so that each person that 9 comments on the DEIR that's released in the summer will have a written response for their 10 comments. 11 12 I'm going backwards again. Ok. These are the required contents of an EIR: detailed description 13 of project that will be Chapter 3, potential impacts to the physical environment we have to 14 write down the physical environment because that's the limits of CEQA. I know the public and 15 the Commission and others could be interested in many other topics that will be important to 16 the decision making on this project, but the CEQA law limits the discussion in that EIR to 17 physical impacts, changes on the environment. If we find physical impacts the EIR would 18 suggest mitigation measures. They're called to avoid, reduce, or compensate for those 19 significant impacts. There are other chapters in the EIR that summarize and cover different 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. topics, but they're all related to physical impacts on the environment. A chapter called 1 alternatives will discuss not as much detail as the actual project, but different alternatives that 2 you might consider or the City might consider in making a decision on this project like a smaller 3 project, fewer parking spaces, things like that just to catalyze some public thought and decision 4 making. 5 6 Ok, the initial study has identified these topics for the focus of the EIR. There will be a separate 7 chapter in the EIR named for each of these topics. And this is a good guide for tonight since this 8 is a scoping meeting that if you do have comments about what should be in the EIR choosing 9 one of these topics will help organize the information that we put in the EIR if you relay which 10 item you're interested in. There will be separate technical studies by technical engineers and 11 firms on these topics. There is a separate chapter on air pollution, a separate chapter in the EIR 12 on Greenhouse Gases (GHG), the arborist’s report goes in the Biology Chapter. The 13 geotechnical report is in a chapter called Soils and Geology. Phase 1 and Phase 2 14 environmental site assessments are in a chapter called Hazards. Noise analysis has its own 15 chapter, Traffic has its own chapter, and Tribal/Cultural Resource Evaluation this is related 16 especially to a new law that went into effect less than two years ago called Assembly Bill (AB) 17 52 and that will have its own section in the EIR. 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. To decide if an impact is significant we compare the physical effect on the environment with 1 standards from the City General Plan, your municipal code, and other regulations that apply to 2 the site. Another set of regulations for example might be the Air Quality Management District 3 thresholds for air pollution. I will eventually get those slides correct now that I have about two 4 more. 5 6 So this… what we will do tonight the public has until April 24th and I hope that's not a Saturday 7 to submit written comments and to send them to Amy either email or in the mail. All 8 comments will be received, must be received by April 24th and those comments will be sent to 9 us and discussed with Amy about where they belong in which chapters of the EIR. And here's 10 the timeline. And there are many opportunities for public input on the project within this 11 timeline. There will be more than one Architectural Review Board (ARB) meeting on the 12 project. As I mentioned the DEIR will be released this summer, 45 day review period after 13 that's released. The Final EIR is intended to be certified in December. That's after we respond 14 to all the public comments. And then these are construction dates, estimates, which would 15 occur of course after the EIR is, if it is certified. It's also important to note that an EIR is 16 certified separately from approving a project. The EIR only the Council would decide if the EIR 17 has the accurate and enough information in it to help you with your decision. The EIR does not 18 promote the project or even say it should, if it should be adopted. 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. Next steps as I mentioned several architectural reviews of the project. We are preparing the 1 DEIR now or the project description. And these are other steps will be taken during this process 2 between now and December. That's my, that's the end of the presentation and I'm going to 3 move this back just to show topics that might help people organize their comments tonight. 4 Thank you. 5 6 Chair Alcheck: Ok, thank you staff. I just want to acknowledge that I’ve arrived. I apologize for 7 being late. We have one speaker card. I would like to invite that individual up now, Rita Vrhel. 8 You will have five minutes to speak. If anybody wants to comment on this item and hasn't filled 9 out a speaker card, please do so. 10 11 Rita Vrhel: Thank you again. I'm amazed that there are so few people here given the impact 12 that this project is going to have on the residents of California Avenue particularly those people 13 that are living in the condominiums that are right down the street. I understand that under 14 parking office space continues to be a huge problem. This was mentioned when this topic came 15 before the City Council. Examples given were the Visa building, the Olive Garden project, and 16 also there used to be a law firm on the corner of I think it's Park and where you go into the 17 condominiums that is also under parked. So I guess people know that I attend meetings and so 18 they'll ask me to say things for them, but in actuality it would be better if everybody showed up 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. and said their own concerns. I'm glad that the comment period is April 24th; hopefully some 1 people will read about this in the paper and make their concerns known. 2 3 I was at the City Council meeting when this was discussed and Bob Moss who I think you 4 probably all know made the comment that he thought that the EIR report should have been 5 submitted prior to the City Council discussing how many stories above or below the ground the 6 parking garage should be given that there is concern about groundwater extraction and a toxic 7 plume that may or may not impact the building. I believe Moss, Mr. Moss indicated yesterday 8 that he felt the toxic plume would not be a problem, but that certainly should be considered in 9 the EIR report. 10 11 At the Council meeting many people were concerned about just the sheer mass of this parking 12 garage and it's easy to understand why the merchants would like maximum parking particularly 13 since the office building projects which are flourishing in that area are consistently being under 14 parked. I hope that since the City Council saw basically a concrete box with no definition that 15 you will do your best to guide an attractive garage that doesn't loom above the rest of the 16 cityscape for the next hundred years. Thank you very much. 17 18 Chair Alcheck: Ok, thank you. At this time I will open it up to the Commission to give 19 Commissioners an opportunity to identify any areas that the Planning Department should study 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. in addition to the ones that they’ve already identified. Ok, why don’t I begin on my right with 1 Commissioner Gardias and then we’ll just go down the line. 2 3 Commissioner Gardias: Sure. So thanks very much for your report and coming and spending 4 time with us. There is number of the of some observations they have and you when in your 5 opening statement you just made it clear that certain a issues are off the table, but and I noted 6 that. But I think that things needs to be set while we are where we are. So I think that there is 7 a because there is no precise plan on of California Avenue neighborhood so this project of the 8 parking garage is just a it's not embedded in the larger thinking of this area. And I can tell you a 9 couple of arguments why I think it's not so, but before I say so you may understand that pretty 10 much had we have we had opportunity or the PTC had opportunity to pretty much act in the 11 larger purview and just consider the precise plan of this area probably things maybe happened 12 in a different order. So for example when you look at those two lots there isn’t that many 13 empty lots in Palo Alto. So those two lots offer some opportunity so the question is what are 14 we going to do with this opportunity? And we decided, City Council just decided to go with the 15 PSB and also with the needed garage and I totally agree that both those constituents they have 16 their needs and we need to support them, but the question is how we may support them. 17 18 And so one possibility is to consider underground structure for parking garages, but then 19 what's on the ground that's a second a different set of opportunity because cars may be parked 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. underground, but then what's on the ground gives us opportunity example for housing 1 development. Once we fill up those lots with the garages then pretty much this opportunity 2 would be lost. And just for the record I just want to note that. 3 4 There is also an item that is off the table which is economic aspect of how those garages would 5 be built. So there is always an opportunity of just having an economically sound development 6 and maybe entrust certain development to P3 partnerships as opposed to fund with the public 7 money and then just pretty much leave our constituents with the question is the money that's 8 collected from the taxation or from some other revenue is it directed to the right goal. Have 9 this parking being funded with the private/public partnership that would be a different story 10 because there would be a true economic benefit behind the reason to build the structure. And 11 this would look totally different, the management of the parking there would be no funding 12 that would be at stake here. So I just wanted to note those two aspects that certain 13 opportunity might be lost for those that are interested with the with more housing in Palo Alto I 14 think they should take a notice of those. 15 16 There is also another aspect which I think you can just put in the under the section of GHG 17 emissions is that pretty much that this is the pedestrian oriented neighborhood district and 18 what we are doing with building, with directing a spending toward the largest large parking 19 structure we are may be automatically underfunding some opportunity to get to this district 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. others by different forms of transportation. And then a some other opportunities is just to 1 pretty much is to allow the neighbors from the eastern part of Palo Alto to either bike or to 2 walk to California Avenue. As you may know there is only one access to California that's from 3 the North California side, but then from the other adjacent neighborhoods you pretty much 4 have to either just go to California you just cannot come to the other edges and areas 5 diagonally because there are no connectors. And if I can remind you when we talk about 6 crosstown connector along Matadero Creek then we were discussing here this Commission 7 opportunity to cross Alma somewhere around this area. So that’s I just wanted to mention this 8 that pretty much that we are, that there should be to generate revenue for the merchants we 9 may find some other means to access California, not necessarily allowing number of the vehicle 10 travels by pretty much designing this huge structure. So saying this the impact would be on the 11 GHG emission that's how I see it. So those are my comments for now. Thank you very much. 12 13 Commissioner Lauing: Ok, thank you. The merchants are certainly persuasive on the size of this 14 parking lot that they want there and they were persuasive to Council, but somewhat similar to 15 your last comment the effectively the goal here is to bring more traffic into the California 16 Avenue area. So I think we have to be realistic about that. That doesn't mean we have, 17 shouldn't study the impacts which we certainly should, but it does seem like a one off kind of 18 solution at least in this demarcation here of let's just bring more people in so that they can 19 shop and eat and park them there and then move them out. So it's kind of a yin/yang. So I'm 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. sure you'll… there will be big impacts and you're studying those and they're checked the box. 1 So I just wanted to kind of emphasize that. 2 3 I think generally you've checked the boxes that are appropriate in a way that as I went through 4 all of them looked pretty good to the limits of my own knowledge. One comment that I wanted 5 to make is that at the bottom of Page 4 you comment on landscaping that there will be a partial 6 replacement of trees removed from the existing lots onsite and then plant landscape for both 7 sides; also note street level roof deck of the PSB basement garage will be landscape, which is a 8 nice touch. However, when we get over to Page 7 where I think this fits is in aesthetics and I 9 think it's Aesthetics B, maybe. You have no impact on damaging scenic resources including but 10 not limited to trees, etcetera. So that seems to be an omission so that it's going to be more 11 than no impact. At the least it maybe should say less than significant impact on your check 12 boxes there. 13 14 Mr. [Pendrill]: I know I'm not supposed to answer questions, but this might help. 15 16 Commissioner Lauing: I think you can. 17 18 Mr. [Pendrill]: There's a similar question under biological resources about tree ordinance, so on. 19 And that's where we introduced that topic. 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 Lauing: Ok. 2 3 Mr. [Pendrill]: So you're correct and that is a topic of discussion. 4 5 Commissioner Lauing: Ok, I looked at both and I thought it fit in aesthetics, but that's fine. 6 7 Mr. [Pendrill]: Ok. 8 9 Commissioner Lauing: Because we're taking out trees so we should be looking. And then the 10 third thing that is related to my third comment which is a second one related to aesthetics is 11 that this is a big building. This is a very big building. So to the extent that you could be even 12 more aggressive about landscaping around it where appropriate relative to the architecture so 13 that it doesn't become I’m not suggesting it will, but so that it doesn't become an isolated 14 eyesore because of its huge size and mass. Last night of Council there was that discussion 15 about the Hamilton garage right near here and again five stories where most buildings around 16 that are two and well, two really and a post office that’s a story and a half so the aesthetics of 17 that I think are really important for us to take into consideration on the EIR. Thank you. 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. Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Thank you. I agree with my colleague’s comments. I think it's good news 1 that we finally found a track to start the PSB work after what is it now, 17 years of discussion? 2 So that's good news. Also I would generally echo the view and I'll use the word it’s lamentable 3 that we need this parking. I think better planning in the district could have avoided getting us 4 here, but here we are. We do need the parking in the district so I guess let's get on with it in 5 some fashion. 6 7 Two requests for the EIR scope. One as under Category 10, Land Use; if possible let's take one 8 final look whether ground floor retail is more consistent with land use in the district. I know 9 that the Council has expressed views on that, but I think it's consistent with the EIR scope to 10 take one last look at that and at least study and report out on it. Under the Category 16 of 11 traffic it would be great if there's some way to include construction parking impact. We’re 12 looking at a least five years of construction and lost parking for the duration of the project. This 13 could be very negative to the adjacent neighborhoods and we need some analysis that can help 14 lead us to a mitigation plan. I don't know exactly what that would look like, but I would stress I 15 would very much appreciate if we could include that in some fashion. Thank you. 16 17 Commissioner Monk: So I've got a few areas that I wanted to go over and I might be jumping 18 around a little bit so apologies in advance. With regard to the parking that you are citing 636 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. total estimated does that account for the 310 that is being displaced? Or are we just only giving 1 comments and I’m not able to ask questions? Comments only? 2 3 Jonathan Lait, Assistant Director: Yeah so kind of like what we did with Castilleja we’re here to 4 mostly receive comments, but if there’s some clarification items that are relatively easy to 5 address we’re happy to answer that. And the 637 I think does include the displaced parking 6 spaces. 7 8 Commissioner Monk: Ok, right. 9 10 Mr. [Pendrill]: So it's a (interrupted) 11 12 Commissioner Monk: So it’s really an additional? 13 14 Mr. [Pendrill]: It's a net gain of 300 and plus. 15 16 Commissioner Monk: And they can you explain a little bit about what's happening with 17 Jacaranda and the egress and ingress of the emergency vehicles and how that's going to work? 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. Mr. [Pendrill]: I can tell you that I'm not with the architecture firm designing the project. So I'm 1 writing the EIR meaning I will be asking the same questions to analyze them in the EIR. 2 3 Commissioner Monk: Ok, so (interrupted) 4 5 Mr. [Pendrill]: So I can't answer that. 6 7 Commissioner Monk: Alright then I'll try to just request that these things be looked at. That 8 would be one of them because I was concerned about the location of the plazas that I'm seeing 9 listed and whether or not emergency vehicles are going to be going through where there is a 10 location of a plaza. There’s supposed to be a public plaza on both properties from what I see. 11 Also with regard to the parking totals and that plaza or sorry rather on referring to the garage 12 at 350 there's also supposed to be a retail component. So in the EIR we'd want to see what 13 that would encompass and how that would impact the number of parking. 14 15 Mr. Lait: So just a clarification on that. I think we heard from the Council when this went to 16 yesterday I guess it was or two weeks ago (interrupted) 17 18 Commissioner Monk: Is that coming out? 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. Mr. Lait: It's all a bit of a blur, but so the retail component is not something that we're pursuing 1 with respect to the parking garage at least as that we understand the direction from Council at 2 this time. 3 4 Commissioner Monk: Ok, thank you for the update. I wanted to request a study be conducted 5 on the 135 foot communications tower, what impact that will have visibly and also with any 6 other safety concerns that it might that would need to be addressed. Also looking at the safety 7 of the public plazas which I'm had mentioned in regards to that Jacaranda Road. I'm also 8 concerned about displacing 150 spaces during the construction. Is there a feasibility of a 9 remote parking something that's an option we can look into with a shuttle service because it's a 10 highly congested area and those lots are full every day and parking is really difficult. So what 11 are we doing to mitigate the demand for parking while we're doing the construction? I didn’t 12 see anything in that regard on the EIR. I don't know if that's within the scope of the EIR or not. 13 14 Mr. [Pendrill]: Usually not, but it's definitely part of the project design process because those 15 phases of construction have to be scheduled appropriately so that information would be 16 available the details may not show up in the EIR, but it’ll be part of the project plans. 17 18 Commissioner Monk: Ok and then also with the issue that was brought up with regard to 19 displacement of the groundwater and going down one or two levels. Obviously that's going to 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 studied in detail. Is there a possibility to study having a larger garage that goes underneath 1 Birch Street so that it's one large structure, is that something that could be studied in the EIR as 2 opposed to two separate structures and then maybe it can just go down one level instead of 3 two. I don't know if that would be a solution in any capacity, but I think Los Gatos for example 4 has a larger underground area and it doesn't go as deep. 5 6 Mr. Lait: Yeah I think we can take that comment and see if that fits into one of the alternatives. 7 I do think there's a reason why we're not doing that and it has something to do with the secure 8 parking underneath the PSB. 9 10 Commissioner Monk: That's what I figured. 11 12 Mr. Lait: Yeah, keeping those separated. 13 14 Commissioner Monk: Yeah, you want to keep it separated. I’m sure there's ways to keep it 15 separated, but I understand. 16 17 Mr. Lait: Yeah and so we can take a look at that and if there’s (interrupted) 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 Monk: Well at least utilize some of Birch Street as opposed to just the area 1 immediately below and if that’s part of the EIR. 2 3 Mr. Lait: Great. 4 5 Commissioner Monk: Also with regard to the entry and exit points I understand that the project 6 at three… the PSB has two entry and exit points yet this humongous parking structure has one 7 and they're both coming out on to Sherman Avenue. I don't know if the EIR could look at any 8 way to mitigate the backup that cars would have entering the garage and also waiting and 9 causing environmental degradation by having their cars running waiting to exit because if 10 there's only one exit for several hundred cars they would be sitting there idling I would imagine. 11 So if there's a possibility to just study whether or not two exits would be more beneficial from 12 the garage. Currently there's about a dozen ways to get in and out of the parking at 350 so 13 that's just something I was thinking about. And also just to help with the general traffic flow. 14 15 I don't know if this [unintelligible] in the scope of the EIR, but would you study any sort of 16 impact in regards to having parking allocated for the electrical vehicles and bicycles and things 17 like that and if that would have any sort of mitigating factors on the building itself? Ok. I think 18 that's all that I have. 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. Mr. [Pendrill]: The brief comment I can make is there will be City standards if they are having 1 the project supply electrical vehicle parking and so on those will be described in the EIR as 2 standards applied by the City. 3 4 Commissioner Monk: Ok, thank you. I actually thought of one last thing it was on the 5 transportation component which is on Page 47. The Levels of Service (LOS) and I think that 6 might fall under that and with the egress and ingress of the one driveway and also just looking 7 at Page 48 of our report I was concerned and it's also referenced when you're on your photo of 8 Birch Street because the bicycle traffic is directed onto Birch Street. That is a very crucial or 9 sorry, not Birch, on Park so I would hope that the EIR makes sure to study what's going on with 10 the bicycle lanes and the safety component that's related. 11 12 Mr. [Pendrill]: The Traffic Chapter will have sections on pedestrian and bicycle (interrupted) 13 14 Commissioner Monk: Yeah, it was just kind of vague in here here so I didn’t know how detailed, 15 but I'm assuming it’ll get pretty detailed. So thank you. 16 17 Commissioner Summa: So thank you to everyone tonight and also a member of the public who 18 spoke. In general I think you ticked off a lot of the boxes that had concerns for me. There's a 19 couple specific ones I think could be added that is one on 1b Aesthetics it says no impact to 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. substantially damage scenic resources including but not limited to trees, rocks, outcroppings, 1 and historic buildings with state scenic highway. To me I think just that these are such big 2 buildings for the area and to me a scenic resource is the sky and the skyline and the trees so I 3 think you could check that one and look there. And with regards to 9b also substantially 4 deplete groundwater supplies, etcetera; I think that one could be added and I think that would 5 address some of the concerns of members of the community about groundwater depletion. 6 Not just because we're going to use it ever as well water, but the fact that we don't have a very 7 clear understanding of the removal of such massive amounts of ground water especially at one 8 time. 9 10 So those two I think you could add and then the other serious things for me traffic, response 11 time for the emergency vehicles I think has been addressed which I was concerned about in this 12 location because of the congestion that's been referenced by my colleagues. I also think it's 13 kind of interesting this is our Pedestrian Transportation Oriented District (PTOD) and putting a 14 giant parking structure in it does seem inconsistent, but I understand that's what the City 15 Council wanted so… And we've never had a plan for the California area that was accepted so I 16 think it would be good to have a larger plan for the whole area for this and for everything else 17 that we're planning on doing there. Because so much is being planned putting into this one 18 small area. 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 then I think there's going to be a lot of construction happening simultaneously in an area 1 that is completely congested with very little parking available especially during mid-day. So I 2 was wondering if the other parking lots, existing parking lots and structures in the area could be 3 optimized during this time maybe with valet parking to help out and that a very careful 4 construction logistic plan would be formed because having gone through two construction sites 5 right around where I live in College Terrace it's there's just no place for all the workers to put 6 their cars and these are big projects. And that area will not be able to absorb them. So yes, 7 those are my comments from now. Thank you. 8 9 Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah, again thank you for coming. And I think everyone's covered 10 everything so I'll just underline a couple of things in the interest of time. I think the community 11 will be generally concerned with traffic and aesthetics although clearly the entire scope of the 12 EIR will probably come under someone's comments so in particular treatment groundwater, 13 etcetera. But if the purpose of this meeting is for us to get feedback on elements of the EIR 14 that we'd like to see paid special attention to or items that you hadn't included I'd say that 15 really understanding how this project is going to be phased will be important. So you’re going 16 to lose 150 spaces while you build parking, the first parking lot after which the PSB will be built. 17 So it would be some period of time where there's a negative 150 space impact or some impact. 18 And so as several colleagues mentioned having a plan in place or having the EIR reference what 19 will be done in the meantime because the area really is filled to capacity I think will alleviate a 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. lot of the fears of the neighborhood or perhaps there's nothing can be done in which case the 1 neighborhood will be rightfully indignant. 2 3 The second area is to understand the aesthetics in a way that I'm not sure… well, maybe you 4 can answer this question. At the time of the drafting of the EIR how much of the aesthetics will 5 actually be known? So at that point will… what is the stage of architectural renderings that you 6 can give beyond the massing of what is currently in the packages? 7 8 Mr. [Pendrill]: I know that the design will have gone through more than one architectural 9 review submittal. 10 11 Commissioner Rosenblum: Ok. 12 13 Mr. [Pendrill]: And there will be [unintelligible-someone speaking off microphone] right and it’s 14 so the CEQA document will have graphics, illustrations, and visual simulations of before and 15 after of the project design up to that point of how many architectural review meetings they’ve 16 been through. 17 18 Commissioner Rosenblum: Ok. I (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. Mr. [Pendrill]: So it won't be as simplistic as tonight's slide. 1 2 Commissioner Rosenblum: Ok, that's great. So that was my, so the areas where to the extent 3 that you're going to put more weight than on other comparable EIRs I would emphasize 4 Commissioner Monk's request for understand staging and the intermediate period for what 5 happens when we go down under 50 spaces and Commissioner Summa’s concern of the 6 massing basically of the sky and understanding that from different vantage points in a way that 7 perhaps might not be as extensive as you would do for a comparable EIR, but that those are the 8 two areas. They’ve already been brought up, but those are the ones that I would sort of double 9 underline and say this area really needs to be fleshed out for the community to feel like they 10 have had a full hearing. Thank you. That's all for me. 11 12 Chair Alcheck: Ok, thank you Commissioners. I think you have a, you heard (interrupted) 13 14 Mr. Lait: So if we can't sorry Chair to interrupt, but I'm going to ask Albert maybe to just clarify 15 a point so that we're have clarity as to what we're looking at with respect to the aesthetics 16 discussion in the EIR. 17 18 Albert ________________: So the EIR is not going to be focused on the aesthetics of the 19 building itself, it's going to be about its impact on the aesthetic environment. And so 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. issues like view or scenic resources or it could also the one place where the building does come 1 more into play is things like light and reflection, but we're it's not really a document that looks 2 at the architectural design in the way that we might otherwise. 3 4 Chair Alcheck: Yeah. 5 6 Mr. [Pendrill]: Yeah to the… 7 8 Commissioner Rosenblum: I understand it’s not architecture review. 9 10 Mr. [Pendrill]: That's correct. 11 12 Commissioner Rosenblum: I think that Commissioner Summa made the key point which is 13 basically how does it change our perception? So the environmental impact is, are things that 14 you mentioned. So including blocking the view of the vista or the sky, glare reflection that 15 would be the impact that we would be assessing in the EIR. Is that correct? It's not really 16 judging the quality of the architecture of the building. 17 18 Mr. [Pendrill]: Correct. 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 Rosenblum: But I would say that the architecture of the building affects things 1 like will there be a glare? Will it be perceived as massive or will it be perceived as blending in; 2 that sort of thing. So to the extent that can be available I again just having sat through many 3 public comments to the extent that the purpose of all of this is to say can we anticipate what 4 the public will be concerned about in an EIR and so how can you predict that and make sure 5 that you've answered this to the extent possible? I'd say more that kind of shows the impact of 6 the actual building itself on the surrounding environment from aesthetic and from a really the 7 comment came out several times, it’s a massive building. What is it going to look like relative to 8 its surroundings? What will its impact be on your views and on the glare and on the perception 9 of the environment? 10 11 Mr. [Pendrill]: You've introduced the one of the most interesting topics in CEQA. Aesthetics is 12 the most subjective chapter in any EIR and that's why we read the questions carefully on the 13 checklist so that as I mentioned earlier the EIR is an attempt to give you information without 14 promoting the project. So you're correct it's not an architectural critique, but there will be 15 illustrations, visual simulations, and for this topic it's just the way it is that some people will like 16 or will not like, but the EIR won't answer or change their opinion on some of those details. 17 18 Commissioner Monk: Just really quickly thank you for that clarification. I was also thinking 19 about the people even a year it says substantially adverse effect on scenic vista. So when 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. think about the very top, the pretty tall apartment building that's already there I think about 1 those people looking out their windows and I don't I'm not I didn't mean the aesthetics of the 2 building at all. I wouldn't expect that CEQA would look into that, but I do think A and B could be 3 checked to look into and I think then people who especially people who live in that area and 4 have lunch outside in that area and stuff would feel better about our environmental review. 5 6 Chair Alcheck: Ok, sure. Commissioner Gardias. 7 8 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you; just one more comment. This is of course highly judgmental 9 topic, but also a there will be impact on the look and the feel of California itself, right? And 10 then this slide that's included here that shows perspective of the I think it's a Birch Street the 11 where the parking be would be adjacent to the wide building that's on the east side of Birch it 12 was obvious exactly. This is the three-story building. It's it provides a good excuse for the 13 parking, but then in reality California Avenue up to Birch it's pretty much one-story. And 14 although there were some buildings toward the, closer to Mollie Stone that are larger in mass 15 it's still one-story neighborhood. So pretty much that has many penetrations because there are 16 some alleys that cut through the buildings so when you have the three-story parking garage 17 right behind the facades of those buildings pretty much the way that you experience California 18 it would be totally different. Because it will just change the way that you feel, right? 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. Today we all like California Avenue because as opposed to the Downtown it is more secluded, it 1 is more secret, right? It used to be Mayfield. So it was totally it against Palo Alto culture, those 2 are the guys that drink and just do different things, right? And we know that, right? And so it 3 has a charm, right? So now with this massive structure we're going to change this 4 neighborhood so those are concerns from the aesthetics perspective. Thank you. 5 6 Chair Alcheck: Ok. I’ve sort of thought a lot about how to ask this question. I've heard in 7 presentations in the recent past about the impact a parking garage can have on a retail area 8 especially one that occupies like a whole block in separating retail stores from other retail 9 stores. Essentially interrupting the opportunity for pedestrians to continue to walk along I 10 guess a retail assortment of retail locations. I'm wondering I know that Council has directed, 11 has given direction to sort of put aside the retail component of this project. I understand that 12 from the meeting this week. I'm just curious if and this is coming off the amount of time we've 13 spent evaluating the enforcement of sort of ground floor retail across the entire City; so my 14 question is: is there a category inside of this EIR where you think it's possible to evaluate the 15 impact that the garage will have on I'm not sure if you would call it walkability or somehow 16 alienation of the retail area adjacent to it from the retail area behind it? Or what could 17 eventually be a retail because right now we essentially have a pedestrian oriented district and 18 we have an ordinance that essentially encourages ground floor retail and I'm curious how the 19 properties around it will further develop if in fact they do develop. 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. [Pendrill]: Here's one way to look at it, make the retail one of the alternatives, an EIR 2 alternatives chapter and then there is a section EIR on land use policy and programs that the 3 City’s adopted or like you mentioned there’s an ordinance so that the projects consistency with 4 City policies and ordinances is a topic in CEQA. So if you put the retail alternative it would be 5 like Chapter 20 that was one of the bullet points in the slide. If that were one of the 6 alternatives then the comparison would have that option compared with Downtown policies. 7 8 Chair Alcheck: Yeah. 9 10 Mr. [Pendrill]: And that issue would arise within that context. 11 12 Chair Alcheck: That's exactly the, we, I had a conversation just yesterday and that was one of 13 the solutions that was suggested and I think that would I would like to see that. And this isn’t 14 an effort essentially to push back on Council direction, it's just I would like to I would like us in 15 this EIR process to be able to evaluate these options. I would like Counsel primarily to be able 16 to see what the pros and cons are for the various benefits. You get more parking or you 17 potentially have an interconnected retail district and I think those are two important 18 considerations. 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. Ok, I’m going… [oh right] before I pass it on to Commissioner Gardias I want to suggest I think 1 it's going to be very interesting EIR. I think and I think I am particularly interested in seeing how 2 the groundwater situation is going to be evaluated because it's not clear to me yet that we've 3 had sort of a final conclusion on what happens when you pump out so much groundwater. I 4 don't know that you'll be able to arrive at that conclusion and with certainty, but I think it will 5 inform sort of the greater debate in Palo Alto is because of the size of the project. So I do think 6 that will probably be one of the most highly focused areas from members of the public even if 7 they're not particularly concerned about this project just in general your findings as they relate 8 to pumping all over. Ok, why don’t… if I'm hoping why don’t you make your last final comment 9 and then I'll close this session. 10 11 Commissioner Gardias: Yeah, this is just very quick. Just for the record in the section of 12 alternatives which I of course I know that we already pin pointed those sites as the 13 development for those two services. I was just always wondering why there was no location on 14 Park Avenue considered for the security building that's pretty much empty lot that is between… 15 I’m just looking at the map. Just give me a moment… that is between Sheridan and parking 16 garage on Sherman. That’s a empty area that is over Oregon Expressway, but has a very easy 17 access to Oregon and better egress for the police cars. So I would just for the record I would 18 like to note that there was an empty lot in that area that could have been utilized for the police 19 station. Thank 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. 1 Chair Alcheck: Ok, I'm going to close the public hearing and I'm going to suggest that we move 2 onto Agenda Item Number 3. Thank you very much. Why don't we take a two minute break, 3 give staff a chance to swap seats and if anybody needs to go to the bathroom. 4 5 Commission Action: The Commission Provided Comments to Staff 6 7 The Commission took a break 8 9 3. Review Draft Comment Letters to the City of Menlo Park and Mountain View for 10 projects located at 500 El Camino Real (Middle Plaza Project) and North Bayshore 11 Precise Plan Amendment, Mountain View. 12 13 Chair Alcheck: Please. 14 15 Jonathan Lait, Assistant Director: Great. Thank you, Commission. I'm joined by [Meg Monroe] 16 a consultant working with our department. She's been invaluable in helping us handle some of 17 these additional projects that we threw at her including sort of tracking these regional 18 developments that are taking place outside of the Palo Alto boundaries. We recently had a 19 conversation with the Council on a another matter that involved a comment letter to another 20 jurisdiction and the Council had asked that where there was not an opportunity for a major 21 development project to be reviewed by the City Council at its regular meetings that we at least 22 run it by the Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC) to look at the letters and have a 23 _______________________ 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. general understanding of what the projects were and review the comment letters that we’re 1 preparing. These comment letters are intended to memorialize the City's interests where 2 regional projects may have an impact on our streets or park resources or any number of 3 matters that you had just considered on that last item, the checklist issues. We try to highlight 4 those and we recognize that we work with other jurisdictions review our documents and we try 5 to maintain a respectful and professional relationship with these other jurisdictions, but we do 6 want to highlight areas where we have some areas of interest and we note those in the staff 7 report so that their consultants could explore those and evaluate that further. 8 9 And so we're presenting these two letters one has to do with the Bayshore Precise Plan in 10 Mountain View and a project specific item in Menlo Park. And Meg has coordinated with a 11 number of other City departments to review these draft documents and has come up with the 12 what we think are the critical issues that we think need to be addressed or at least further 13 studied or highlighted. And so we're presenting that you to look at. Is the tone right? Did we 14 highlight the what you believe to be possibly the key issues understanding of course that you 15 probably have not had the time to delve into the detail as Meg has, but just from a gut check 16 does this seem like we're headed in the right direction. And so that's the purpose here and if 17 you have any specific edits or questions about sentence structure or grammar we're happy to 18 take those comments offline if you want to give those to us, but [unintelligible] specific 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. questions about the letters Meg can help us guide us through that discussion. Thank you. So at 1 this point we'll just take any questions that you may have regarding the letters. 2 3 Chair Alcheck: Ok, well thank you for your hard work on this. This is a interesting and sort of 4 unique endeavor and during our pre-Commission meeting I inquired about whether we've 5 received letters like this before and we haven't in the memorable past, but I think the fact that 6 we're preparing [him] sort of speaks to our level of engagement. So it’s a… I'm excited to 7 review this. So why don't we if we don't mind start on the other end? 8 9 Mr. Lait: [Unintelligible] preface any comments that you have if you want to speak to which 10 letter you're referring (interrupted) 11 12 Chair Alcheck: Yeah (interrupted) 13 14 Mr. Lait: If there’s a specific comment. 15 16 Chair Alcheck: Yeah, I think it's ok to do both at the same time. There are very, they are 17 interlinked in the sense that it’s a project within the area of the amendment, right? 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. [Meg Monroe]: Oh, sorry. Given your earlier scoping meeting this is the next step in the 1 environmental process and the Menlo Park letter is interesting because they did a program 2 Environmental Impact Report (EIR) on their plan and now they're doing a project within the 3 scope of that and have identified certain focused areas that are exceed what they're expected 4 in their program EIR. The North Bayshore Precise Plan one is a program EIR looking at a 5 broader project. 6 7 Chair Alcheck: Ok, please. 8 9 Commissioner Rosenblum: Great. Thanks for again, this I think this is great and obviously we're 10 not an island so it's good to see the projects that take place to the north and the south and 11 what they might do. So a couple of well first a very small issue, Jonathan Lait’s email name is, 12 are misspelled in the Mountain View letter. So you get the wrong email. So that should just be 13 fixed. 14 15 Mr. Lait: That’s how I avoid getting more emails. 16 17 Commissioner Rosenblum: I thought it was part of your cleaver scheme. 18 19 [Ms. Monroe]: Gee, shucks, caught Jon. 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 Rosenblum: [So I was going to remind that.] I think this this is the case in both, 2 but I think that both of their studies focus on Level of Service (LOS) instead of Vehicle Miles 3 Traveled (VMT). And so I think we should emphasize that we'd like to see VMT as a primary 4 indicator. I don't necessarily object to LOS standards, but I think it does lead to sprawl. The 5 best way to improve LOS is to make roads wider, people sparser and in the case of the 6 Mountain View project in particular this is critical. Mountain View is building a huge number of 7 units and to the extent that they can densify and make this a place that does not require Single 8 Occupancy Vehicles (SOV) that would be favorable. So we should get them to adopt a VMT 9 standard and that should be what they do anyway that’s according their own that should be 10 California wide now, but certainly it's it would be favorable for Mountain View to do so. 11 12 [Ms. Monroe]: Well we could request them to do so. 13 14 Commissioner Rosenblum: Yes. They're using so this refers to Mountain View. They seem to be 15 using a parking ratio that's inconsistent. So they are using 1.2 parking spaces per unit as their 16 standard and this also relates to the earlier comment the use of LOS, the use of a large parking 17 ratio creates more sprawl and I think is antithetical to the goals of the project. If you look at the 18 North Bayshore guidelines it seems to come out with a recommendation of 0.6 weighted 19 average. Meaning if you look at their micro apartment units, single units, etcetera and take 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. weighted average you should come out with something like 0.6 so approximately half of the 1 parking ratio they're currently using. So as input I would say the city should look at more 2 closely the parking ratios they're using and see if it's consistent the way Palo Alto would 3 approach such a project. 4 5 They're also assuming a very high SOV rate for those who are not working in North Bayshore. 6 And I think they assume that 73 percent of people will not be working in North Bayshore and 7 that 77 percent of those will be driving alone. And so again to the extent that Mountain View 8 Planning can try to increase the one ratio which is the percentage of people working locally and 9 I don't know how that's done. I don't know if it's leaning on Google to subsidize units or but it 10 seems odd that you have a huge housing complex being built in the middle of Google's campus 11 and yet the assumption is that only 1/5th of the units will be taken up by Googlers or people 12 working locally. I think if I just look at the average city block in Mountain View it seems like it's 13 more than 1/5th Googlers so it's a bit odd that you're putting a micro unit focused apartment 14 compound in the middle of their campus and they’re if they really do think it's about that ratio 15 then something is off. 16 17 To the extent possible we want something like this to reduce our traffic load you want to get 18 people off the road that are driving to these campuses and have them live locally. And I guess I 19 would pose this as a question. What planning levers are available? Because certainly as a Palo 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. Alto resident I would prefer that it not just be more people driving on 101 coming from this 1 giant new compound. If it is the case that this giant new compound or series of… these 2 neighborhoods are adding people who are just biking to work at Google I'm very much in favor 3 of that. I think that that would be a wonderful outcome for both the people working and living 4 in that area, but also on our for us and our traffic conditions. Are there tools available or is this 5 under consideration? Is so as a Palo Alto resident the thing we are concerned about is the 6 traffic impact on our community and so to the extent that they can increase the ratio of people 7 working in Bayshore the better for us and really the better for them. So my question is are 8 there planning tools available or is this something that can be addressed? 9 10 [Ms. Monroe]: Well it's obviously a local, excuse me, it’s a local decision. It’s a Mountain View 11 decision. 12 13 Commissioner Rosenblum: Yes. 14 15 [Ms. Monroe]: They talk about a Transportation Demand Management (TDM) program. 16 17 Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah. 18 19 [Ms. Monroe]: They do not define that program. 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 Rosenblum: Yeah. 2 3 [Ms. Monroe]: So I think that what we could do in our comments is to suggest that in their TDM 4 program they look at how to add methods by which you get people to live and work in the 5 same place. 6 7 Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah. 8 9 [Ms. Monroe]: I mean I… we don't we can't give them a program or force them into a program. 10 11 Commissioner Rosenblum: Right, yeah. And I see that that seems to be the intent of the plan 12 when it skewed towards very small units you're looking for rental units of people that would 13 move closer to their work. So they are, but then the assumption that they used in terms of 14 what proportion of them would actually be working locally is inconsistent, you see what I'm 15 saying? 16 17 [Ms. Monroe]: Yeah, I understand what you’re saying. Yeah. 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 Rosenblum: Either [unintelligible] plan is that, but then the numbers they use for 1 their traffic calculators are that 73 percent of people be working outside of North Bayshore and 2 so I think I would call into question that. They should have a goal to have a greater percentage 3 working locally. 4 5 [Ms. Monroe]: Ok. 6 7 Commissioner Rosenblum: On the Menlo Park submission I'm in full agreement with the staff 8 letter. I think that it's excellent. In particular you've called out around the TDM and traffic 9 reduction measures and you’ve specifically asked about the status of a proposed bicycle and 10 pedestrian underpass and I think that that is perfect. Putting in the kind of development that 11 they are putting in having a underpass at that point would be great for the traffic situation. I'm 12 not sure if this is something or if this appropriate for us as a City to comment upon whether 13 Stanford should be asked to foot a portion of that bill and make it happen or the City's letter 14 just simply says are you accounting for the space that would be needed for this? As a I want my 15 understanding based on asking people in Menlo Park is this really going to happen is that they 16 do want Stanford to help support their construction of an underpass (interrupted) 17 18 [Ms. Monroe]: So is your question how the underpass would be funded? 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 Rosenblum: Yeah. 1 2 [Ms. Monroe]: Well I guess we can ask that question. How's the pass, underpass (interrupted) 3 4 Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah, is actually going to happen? I and so your letter asks is space 5 being allocated for and what I would ask is, is it going to be done? Is this already in the works? 6 Is it budgeted, is it going to be done, and is the space being provided for it? 7 8 [Ms. Monroe]: In addition to space how's it going to be funded? 9 10 Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah. And the concern as you've probably was the intent of this 11 section of the letter is that at that point around on abutting Caltrain in order to get there even 12 if you live in the neighborhood you’d have to drive all the way around and so it would make 13 everyone living nearby actually get into a car and actually having a better pedestrian and 14 bicycle infrastructure goes right there would just like we have with the Veterans Affairs (VA) 15 Hospital I think would be or with the a with Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) would be 16 very helpful. But anyway the letter for Menlo Park I had no real comments. I thought I was 17 fully aligned with all the points (interrupted) 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. [Ms. Monroe]: Yes, we can thank Jared for the traffic work there. He’s very good. He's sitting 1 here. 2 3 Commissioner Rosenblum: Oh, great. Thank you. 4 5 Commissioner Summa: So yes, thank you for the letters and I'm going to start with the easier 6 one which is Menlo Park. And I agree that it seemed mostly to ask about the things we'd be 7 interested in. I will say that I do worry about the constant and I've said this before so I hate to 8 be a broken record, but the constant sort of theory that Caltrain has an endless capacity. It's at 9 capacity now. Electrification and its future are really up in the air. The shared blended system 10 with high speed rail would have effects and I just think it's hard to rely on that and we need a 11 lot more comprehensive TDM measures. 12 13 And I'm concerned about those four curb cuts in a row on El Camino and the traffic impacts. 14 And I think it's interesting to ask if Stanford could be part of the funding for the underpass 15 which takes me into a similar situation as I think the Google contribution to the bridge is could 16 be expanded or maybe the City of Mountain View would have an interest in sharing in some of 17 the funding of the bridge at Adobe Creek. So that's my segue way to the Mountain View 18 project. 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. [Ms. Monroe]: [Unintelligible] let me make a note of that. So the bridge over Google assist? 1 2 Commissioner Summa: Yeah, if there is if it was reasonable for Palo Alto to pursue a larger 3 Google contribution to the bridge funding and/or a City of Mountain View participation. And 4 then with such a massive project I… once again I think that even more so obviously because of 5 the size of the project and because there are so few services in the Bayshore area I really worry 6 about how it's going to work out in the end and if the if Commissioner Rosenblum brings up a 7 good point. Is, are really 73 percent of the people going to drive off of the campus? It was my 8 understanding and maybe I'm wrong about this, that Google owns the land. So they have a lot 9 of control. 10 11 [Ms. Monroe]: They have a presence there. I don't know that they own all the land. 12 13 Commissioner Summa: Ok, but they own a lot of land. 14 15 [Ms. Monroe]: And the idea was that each of these three neighborhoods they were going to 16 create would be self-sustaining in the sense that they'd have their own retail. They'd build their 17 little villages so to speak. 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 Summa: I think that's… Yeah, that's great, but people are still going to have cars 1 to take their families and kids to other services and it's not served by transit in any way that I 2 can see. And it may take a long time to ramp up and have a really healthy community feel 3 there in terms of the retail services. So I wouldn't want people to feel isolated in kind of a 4 halfway built kind of new town. 5 6 I was also very concerned about the potential impacts on our open spaces and parks and trails 7 from that project and our precious resources in the Baylands, but just on the recreational 8 facilities in parks and trails I suppose this is probably a bit of a twee thing to say, but if they're 9 really going to be 15 story buildings and maybe this is not something CEQA mitigate, but I think 10 that is a major part of the Western flyway for migrating birds and I'm just not sure… I'm not 11 sure how fully CEQA can address that, but I did want to mention it because I think it's very 12 important resource. And yeah I think one of the things that should be considered really is as 13 part of a TDM measure they there should be a healthy private bus and comprehensive bus 14 service required for this area. 15 16 [Ms. Monroe]: In fact they are planning one. 17 18 Commissioner Summa: Ok. Ok, well thank you (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. [Ms. Monroe]: Yeah. That was included. 1 2 Commissioner Summa: Yes. Thank you very much. 3 4 Commissioner Monk: Hi. Thank you for the letters together. 5 6 [Ms. Monroe]: Hi, sure. 7 8 Commissioner Monk: I think without having the benefit of reviewing either of the EIRs I'm sure 9 they reference everything that's important so I’m happy to see that these were done. I in just 10 generally comparing the two as far as tone goes I think the first one is a little bit more 11 straightforward. You identify an area issue and you give them a plan of action at the end of 12 each paragraph. I'm not seeing that as much in the Mountain View letter and I know you have 13 a couple more days on the Mountain View letter so that might be something you can finesse a 14 little bit. And going back to the letter that's I believe due tomorrow which is the Menlo Park 15 letter. 16 17 [Ms. Monroe]: Yes. 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 Monk: I wasn't quite clear on Number 6 on the first page and what you're asking 1 if anything. And that has to do with the percentages with the trips. 2 3 [Ms. Monroe]: I'm sorry. 4 5 Commissioner Monk: If you’re looking at the first page on the Menlo letter. If there's an ask 6 that you have (interrupted) 7 8 [Ms. Monroe]: Trip distribution. [Unintelligible] Could Jared address that? It’s his item. Jared? 9 It’s number, you have the letter? 10 11 [Jared Mullin], Transportation Division: [Jared Mullin] with the Transportation Division. So that 12 was in reference to the trip distribution basically where the traffic engineers or planners think 13 all of the car vehicle trips will go to generally is it going north, south, east, west and the 14 comment was we were a little surprised because they only assumed seven percent of all vehicle 15 trips headed to the south whereas many of our destinations in Downtown Palo Alto which is 16 very close to this project you get more like 35 percent of vehicle trips are headed to or from the 17 South Bay like San Jose area. So we felt seven percent was really low and that can affect how 18 many vehicle trips go through intersections in the City of Palo Alto because you can really only 19 approach this site from the south by using the Palo Alto street network. So I we could 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. potentially revise the comment to ask them to check or provide additional models or 1 assumptions they used. 2 3 Commissioner Monk: Yeah, maybe could put a footnote in about that 35 percent that you 4 referenced here. Just something to give it a little bit more context so they’ll know what you 5 want them to do as a result of that finding. 6 7 [Mr. Mullin]: Ok. 8 9 Commissioner Monk: If that helps I don't know. 10 11 [Mr. Mullin]: [Unintelligible] sounds good. 12 13 Commissioner Monk: And then there isn't only a definition for the Transportation Division. I'm 14 assuming that's the Palo Alto Transportation Division because the letter is coming from the City 15 of Palo Alto so that is referenced it might be more of a… 16 17 [Ms. Monroe]: Yeah, Palo Alto [sure]. 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 Monk: And then just also going back now to the Mountain View letter. Is this 1 listed in any particular order of priority area? 2 3 [Ms. Monroe]: No. 4 5 Commissioner Monk: And if not you might want to put the higher level priority areas towards 6 the front of the letter. To me there's areas that look a little bit more important than others and 7 I (interrupted) 8 9 [Ms. Monroe]: Oh, no they’re… 10 11 Commissioner Monk: Or are you referencing (interrupted) 12 13 [Ms. Monroe]: But typically you just do them in the order that they were in the report. 14 15 Commissioner Monk: Ok. 16 17 [Ms. Monroe]: So if you want to move the transportation things up I can, I could take the block 18 and move it up it's (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 Monk: Yeah I don't know that when they read the letter they're going to actually 1 note that it's corresponding to the EIR. They if it's very, if it's very obvious (interrupted) 2 3 [Ms. Monroe]: It makes no difference. If you’d rather put, you want to put the transportation 4 things first? 5 6 Commissioner Monk: I think that's (interrupted) 7 8 [Ms. Monroe]: That’s probably the biggest issue. 9 10 Commissioner Monk: I think that's the biggest issue. 11 12 [Ms. Monroe]: Alright, sure. No problem. 13 14 Commissioner Monk: I don't know what avigation is, but I'm sure that's a word. 15 16 [Ms. Monroe]: Avigation is indeed a word and my spell checker hates it. 17 18 Commissioner Monk: And yeah, just review it to maybe tighten up a little bit and make a clear 19 ask at the end of each section. 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. Monroe]: Sure, can do that. 2 3 Commissioner Monk: I think and then at noise and vibration section (interrupted) 4 5 [Ms. Monroe]: Yes. 6 7 Commissioner Monk: Which is Page 2 of your letter. It says more study is needed at the end of 8 that. 9 10 [Ms. Monroe]: Yes. 11 12 Commissioner Monk: You might want to clarify what you're looking for. I noticed in the 13 previous letter that we used please a lot and we want to be very conciliatory and friendly with 14 our neighbors and if there's a way to soften the request. 15 16 [Ms. Monroe]: To say at the (interrupted) 17 18 Commissioner Monk: To the extent you can and just be consistent with it. 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. [Ms. Monroe]: Yeah, I think in this case the (interrupted) 1 2 Commissioner Monk: It doesn't read in a harsh tone in any way. 3 4 [Ms. Monroe]: Alright, so I can be I can make it clear what we need for a study. 5 6 Commissioner Monk: Thank you 7 8 [Ms. Monroe]: Sure. 9 10 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Thank you. Just a clarification on the Mountain View project; is this 11 intended to be a Google company town project or is it intended to be generally available to the 12 general public? 13 14 [Ms. Monroe]: It's intended to be available to the general public as I understand it, but Google 15 is a major presence in this area. 16 17 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Right. Yeah and so just given that in Silicon Valley people tend to stay in 18 jobs for three years or switch jobs every three years it's probably not unreasonable to assume 19 that over the life of the project that there will be more commuting unless we assume or 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. there will be commuting as they show here unless we believe that people will just move every 1 move when they change jobs which tends to not be the pattern people follow. So I think we 2 should just be careful in how we think about that. 3 4 [Ms. Monroe]: This is referring to the 70 the…? 5 6 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Yeah, yeah I mean it's just that it may turn out to be more plausible than 7 it looks on the surface. I mean it at inception it may be lower and then later it may go up just 8 because people are shifting jobs. And it's this is just something that's hard to plan for. Anyway 9 that's the only comment that I have. 10 11 [Ms. Monroe]: Yeah generally in these kinds of studies they look at typical similar areas for the 12 trip generation. I mean it influences them so we can ask that they do that. That they 13 (interrupted) 14 15 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: So it’s… yeah I mean it feels like Redwood Shores and Foster City might 16 be the most comparable. I don't know what you've looked at as comps, but those feel 17 somewhat similar in character. 18 19 [Ms. Monroe]: Sure. Thank 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. 1 Commissioner Lauing: Ok, thanks for your hard work. Just one quick process issue, I just feel a 2 bit disappointed it's coming to us so late and that therefore you have to stay up all night. 3 4 [Ms. Monroe]: That’s all right. It’s my job. 5 6 Commissioner Lauing: To get our comments in by morning when this has to get into the mail or 7 hand delivered or whatever so it’s a frustrating. I felt sort of semi defeated (interrupted) 8 9 [Ms. Monroe]: Oh, no. I’m sorry about that. 10 11 Commissioner Lauing: I couldn't spend all the time that I wanted to on digging into those the 12 EIRs with the few days that we that we got it, but taking the direction I would like to make a 13 couple comments. First of all if we ever needed any evidence and I think we do, but if we ever 14 needed any evidence that all these issues are regional, they are regional. 15 16 [Ms. Monroe]: Yes, you're right. 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. Commissioner Lauing: Which is what this tells us time and time and time again. Those 10,000 1 people that are going to live in those or 10,000 units, more people than that if they’re going to 2 live out there are not all going to have lunch on Castro Street in Mountain View. 3 4 [Ms. Monroe]: Nope. 5 6 Commissioner Lauing: So we're going to be hosting them in our town. So that traffic is coming 7 our direction. So I think the tone which is one of your questions I think is, is and should be 8 actually quite different for the two. I think the Menlo Park one is very well done. You itemized 9 the number one point I won't go into what my colleagues have said on that. It’s very 10 straightforward. Footnote aesthetically that's going to be an improvement to put new buildings 11 up there so I think that's inevitable and manageable. I think on the tone relative to the Menlo 12 Park letter I don't want to overreact, but I'd almost say that our tone should be a little bit 13 almost alarming because of some of these impacts that are going to hit us (interrupted) 14 15 [Ms. Monroe]: For Menlo Park or for Mountain View? 16 17 Commissioner Lauing: For Mountain View, excuse me. Yeah, I misspoke. Thank you. And I 18 don't want to be non-conciliatory as Commissioner Monk suggests we should be conciliatory, 19 but I think we've got some real impacts here. So to the extent that we can get nice friendly 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. cooperation to look at these issues and perhaps mitigate some very specifically I think would be 1 very appropriate. You run through a bunch of them which are right on point. I mean we've got 2 airport safety here. We've got birds that are going to be crashing into buildings out in the 3 Bayland's. The noise and vibration is absolutely true. It's not always bad, but I can hear those 4 concerts in Professorville some nights. And sometimes I think that's good because I'm getting 5 free admission, but I think that's just very well researched and good a good point. And the 6 gridlock is the gridlock. I mean it's already gridlock many times when you're out there in the 7 shoreline area that that's going to be there. The transit service again it’s been brought up. 8 Caltrain is Caltrain. It is what it is and it's very limited right now. So I would not be shy about 9 saying really we need some help here. Work with us on some of these areas that you've 10 itemized and thanks for your efforts in getting these in to the deadlines that that you need to 11 meet. 12 13 [Ms. Monroe]: Thank you. 14 15 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. So I just I think that my colleagues exhausted all the 16 interesting comments. I just I can only say two things that definitely there is an impact on us 17 and looking at the recent, pointing at the recent approval by Architectural Review Board (ARB) 18 of the I believe five-story hotel that happened a couple of days ago it's in the context it's by San 19 Antonio Road so it’s in the context of San Antonio and we have Mountain View on 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. side on the south side of San Antonio which impacts us considerably. Pretty much it changes 1 our perception of this where we are. So I think that this will be development this significant 2 development will add to the change a long 101 corridor when you go toward when you leave 3 Palo Alto and when you're passing Menlo Park there are already very tall buildings on the east 4 side of 101. So it just puts unbelievable pressure on the on Palo Alto in general. 5 6 And then one minor technical comment I think that in terms of the VMT I think that we are in 7 that period of the acceptance. So not all municipalities may be accepted VMT. 8 9 [Ms. Monroe]: Oh, the VMT. Oh, yes. 10 11 Commissioner Gardias: It's and we ourselves when we had a discussion we pretty much we 12 decided just to have I think two years period during which we would be reporting on the VMT 13 as well as the LOS. So I think that that it's fair of course to ask them about VMT along with LOS 14 which would be along our standard. Thank you. 15 16 [Ms. Monroe]: Yeah, right. 17 18 Chair Alcheck: Ok, a lot of firsts this calendar year. This is the first time in my tenure that we've 19 had a chance to present a letter like this to a neighboring city. I think that I agree with 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 Monk. The tone of the letter is positive and appropriate. Particularly for the 1 Mountain View letter I wonder if there is a place in our communication where we could 2 articulate a… I don't know, a respect for the effort to accommodate so much housing in the Bay 3 Area. Something like we are and I don't know that I can speak for us all, but this is an 4 impressive effort to provide infill housing in a community that struggles so tremendously with 5 providing housing considering the shortage and despite this we’d like you to consider some of 6 these concerns that we have. Particularly because this is the one our neighbors are making a 7 huge effort. 8 9 [Ms. Monroe]: Yeah. 10 11 Chair Alcheck: I mean this is a plan amendment so in some parts this is the city sort of creating 12 an opportunity to address that shortage and I think at least from my perspective we should 13 acknowledge that tremendous effort. Yeah. I just want to acknowledge I thought the same 14 thing about the 70, the number of unit, the percentage and I there was this moment where I 15 thought maybe the Google buses were going to transport individuals to Sanford like this like 16 they were going to bring people in, but they would also take people out and there would be this 17 amazing network of get to work transportation and… 18 19 [Ms. Monroe]: In the document they talk about adding a bus fleet of 45 to 75 buses a day. 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: To accommodate the residents (interrupted) 2 3 [Ms. Monroe]: Yeah to accommodate (interrupted) 4 5 Chair Alcheck: Who are travelling in all directions. 6 7 [Ms. Monroe]: Yeah. And these were buses I think principally by companies in the area. So I 8 think Google brings a lot of people in and out now right. 9 10 Chair Alcheck: Right. No, I know that and I (interrupted) 11 12 [Ms. Monroe]: So they expect that to expand. 13 14 Chair Alcheck: Yeah I know. I was wondering if the Google if Google's got a bus coming at 8:00 15 a.m. from San Francisco and then it makes… 16 17 [Ms. Monroe]: Does it go back? 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: It goes back to San Francisco maybe to pick up people at 9:00 a.m. or I wondered 1 if there was if the return trip would be an opportunity for residents to travel. You see what I’m 2 saying. 3 4 [Ms. Monroe]: Oh, good question. Yeah. 5 6 Chair Alcheck: We had a comment about sort of the lack of public transportation and I imagine 7 that I'm not the first person to think that there's an opportunity to fill those seats on their way 8 out. 9 10 [Ms. Monroe]: Non-Google people? 11 12 Chair Alcheck: Yeah. I imagine those buses are parked at Google overnight. I mean I'm just 13 they might even be running 24 hours a day for all I know, but essentially those are 14 opportunities. Those are seats and I wonder if there's a connection in there. Ok, does anybody 15 else have any other comments they'd like to share? Sure. Commissioner Summa. 16 17 Commissioner Summa: Just a quick question on the last page of the Mountain View letter it's 18 talking about the bridge and it says however it's noted that this and another overpass bridges 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. should be designed to later accommodate extension of light rail. Is our bridge being designed 1 to do that? Our bridge over Adobe Creek? I've never heard that. 2 3 [Mr. Mullin]: The City's bridge over Adobe Creek that is currently under design is not being 4 designed for light rail. So we may need to I think we need to clarify that comment and thank 5 you for bring it bringing it to our attention. I have an idea of what it may be referring to in the 6 EIR for North Bayshore. There was some consideration of building a bridge over Stevens Creek 7 between North Bayshore, the North Bayshore area and kind of the Moffett Field area. Stevens 8 Creek is that kind of boundary between North Bayshore and Moffett Field and then light rail 9 does go into Moffett Field area. So you could conceivably build a light rail connection over 10 there. And there was a there was discussions of building a bridge there for buses in the past so 11 maybe we mixed up our creek crossings in the comment letter. 12 13 Commissioner Summa: Ok. 14 15 [Mr. Mullin]: But the Palo Alto, City of Palo Alto bridge at Adobe Creek is a bicycle and a 16 pedestrian (interrupted) 17 18 Commissioner Summa: That’s what I thought. Ok, thanks. 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: Ok, I want to thank you both for being here tonight and for assisting us and 1 especially to Meg. This is a tremendous effort and I hope we didn't take up too much of your 2 time tonight so that you can get back to sort of completing the letter. 3 4 [Ms. Monroe]: No, thank you. 5 6 Chair Alcheck: But it’s been a pleasure working with you. Ok, that concludes Agenda Item 3. 7 8 Commission Action: The Commission Provided Comments to Staff 9 10 Approval of Minutes 11 Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 12 13 Chair Alcheck: I want to just address the in our sort of conclusion of our meeting I want to 14 address that we have a on Page 6 a tentative future agenda has been added to our packet. And 15 I think in response to some of the comments we were we made last meeting and I want to take 16 this time do we do we have a minutes to approve? Do we have minutes to approve? Ok. 17 18 Committee Items 19 20 Chair Alcheck: So why don't we quickly take this time are there any committee items? I should 21 be more specific. Do you have anything to report from your participation? Ok. 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 Questions, Comments or Announcements 2 3 Chair Alcheck: And are there any Commissioner comments, questions or announcements? 4 5 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: I would just comment very briefly that I attended the Council meeting 6 last night and this item on Downtown parking management is extremely well organized by the 7 consultant and well received and as Jonathan said we have direction now to work on that. 8 That's going to be a big item and fun to work on. It’ll be very constructive. 9 10 Chair Alcheck: Great, thank you. Is there anything else? Ok at then I will adjourn this meeting 11 at 7:47 p.m., thank you. 12 13 Adjournment 7:26pm 14 _______________________ 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 Americans with Disability Act (ADA) 28 It is the policy of the City of Palo Alto to offer its public programs, services and meetings in a 29 manner that is readily accessible to all. Persons with disabilities who require materials in an 30 appropriate alternative format or who require auxiliary aids to access City meetings, programs, 31 or services may contact the City’s ADA Coordinator at (650) 329-2550 (voice) or by emailing 32 ada@cityofpaloalto.org. Requests for assistance or accommodations must be submitted at least 33 24 hours in advance of the meeting, program, or service. 34