HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-07-26 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 Meeting Agenda: July 26, 2017 2
Council Conference Room 3
250 Hamilton Avenue 4
6:00 PM 5
6
Call to Order / Roll Call-6:03 PM 7
8
Acting Chair Waldfogel: So let's call the order the July 26th meeting of the Planning and 9
Transportation Commission (PTC). Could we get a roll call, please? 10
11
Yolanda Cervantes, Administrative Assistant: Chair Alcheck, Commissioner Gardias, 12
Commissioner Lauing, Commissioner Monk, Commissioner Rosenblum, Commissioner Summa, 13
and Vice-Chair Waldfogel. We have five present and two absences. 14
15
Chair Alcheck and Commissioner Lauing absent 16
Oral Communications 17
The public may speak to any item not on the agenda. Three (3) minutes per speaker.1,2 18
19
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Ok, no Oral Communications. 20
21
Agenda Changes, Additions, and Deletions 22
The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management. 23
24
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Agenda changes, I believe we're postponing Item 2. Any other 1
changes? 2
3
Hillary Gitelman, Planning Director: We’re postponing that till August 30th. 4
5
Acting Chair Waldfogel: That's the only change? Great. 6
7
City Official Reports 8
1. Assistant Directors Report, Meeting Schedule and Assignments 9
10
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Ok, move on to City Official Reports; we’ve agendized this as the 11
Assistant Directors Report, but we’ll accept a substitute. 12
13
Hillary Gitelman, Planning Director: Yeah, well it's my pleasure. Again, I'm Hillary Gitelman the 14
Planning Director. My pleasure to sit in for Jonathan again who's thankfully coming back from 15
his vacation next week. Anyway, it's a pleasure to be here. As you as the Chair or the Acting 16
Chair noted there's one change to the agenda. We're going to do that Stanford General Use 17
Permit (GUP) traffic discussion August 30th. We had hoped that the County would publish their 18
traffic study in time for tonight, but it didn't happen. So the County Planning Director has 19
offered to come and give a summary of the methodology in the findings August 30th and we’ll 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
all look forward to that. That's a couple weeks in advance of when the draft Environmental 1
Impact Report (EIR) is going to be published. 2
3
The other thing I’d note on the upcoming items on your future agenda this is packet Page 6 4
there was one other change in addition to adding that item on August 30th the downtown 5
parking management item that was planned for next, the next meeting is going to be moving to 6
September 13th. So at your next meeting we're going to talk about the Comp Plan again and 7
we're going to talk about the rail program and the current status of the planning for grade 8
separations. That's really all I have to report this evening. 9
10
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, thank you. 11
12
Study Session 13
Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 14
2. Presentation from Santa Clara County and Discussion Regarding Initial Traffic Study 15
Findings Related to the Stanford General Use Permit (GUP) 2018 Application-16
Deferred to August 30th 17
Action Items 18
Public Comment is Permitted. Applicants/Appellant Teams: Fifteen (15) minutes, plus three (3) minutes rebuttal. 19
All others: Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 20
2. PUBLIC HEARING / QUASI-JUDICIAL. 4157 El Camino Way, Unit C-3 & C-4 [17PLN-21
00051]: Request for a Hearing on the Director’s Tentative Approval of a Conditional 22
Use Permit (CUP) for Medical Office use (Dentist). Environmental Assessment: 23
Exempt from the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) per 24
Guidelines Section 15301. Zoning District: Neighborhood Commercial (CN). For More 25
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Information Contact the Project Planner Phillip Brennan at 1
phillip.brennan@cityofpaloalto.org. 2
3
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Ok, so let's move on to Agenda Item 3, the public hearing, quasi-judicial 4
for 4157 El Camino Way. I believe there’s a short staff report on this? 5
6
Phillip Brennan, Project Planner: Correct. 7
8
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Yes, please. 9
10
Mr. Brennan: Good evening to the Members of the Commission. My name is Phillip Brennan. 11
I’m the Project Planner for this Conditional Use Permit (CUP) application. As we begin I'd like to 12
provide just a brief overview of the hamlet mixed-use development and the pertinent issues as 13
it relates to this application. This is a mixed-use development that was approved in 1983. At 14
the time it was approved with the prescribed 70 to 30 ground floor to or ground floor office to 15
retail square foot ratio. We know this through correspondence, post approval correspondence 16
between the Zoning Administrator and the builder. Construction commenced in May 1984 and 17
this is important to note because during around that time the City was adopting an ordinance 18
which placed a cap on the maximum amount of office space in the CN zoning district. The 19
developer provided evidence that demonstrated significant construction had taken place prior 20
to the adoption of that ordinance and as a result the approved conditions were maintained. 21
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Oh, I’m so sorry. I apologize. There we go… As a result of that vesting the excess square 1
footage which was close to 9,000 square feet (sf) of commercial office space the excess over 2
5,000, the 5,000 square foot cap was designated legal non-conforming. 3
4
A bit about the application timeline; the application was submitted in February 2017 requesting 5
a CUP filed by Dr. Kathy Lee requesting a medical office use for condo units C3 and C4 located 6
at 4157 El Camino Way. The application was reviewed by staff to ensure the applicable zoning 7
codes were complied with. Part of that review included a request from the applicant to provide 8
a parking analysis to ensure that adequate parking provision could accommodate the medical 9
office use. In addition because this was a medical office use request the tenant history was 10
requested and the applicant provided documentation identifying the previous four tenants that 11
were concurrently co-occupying this space. And that was they were occupying the space within 12
12 months, within the previous 12 months, and using the space in a capacity that could be 13
defined as medical office use. As such staff moved the application forward and in May the 14
Director of Planning and Community Environment tentatively approved the CUP request. In 15
June of 2017 the Request for Hearing was submitted by Mr. Ivan [Kochnevaz]. 16
17
As stated Mr. [Kochnevaz] requested a Request for Hearing and provided six primary points of 18
contention which I've paraphrased here. Staff reviewed these contentions and responded to 19
them in detail in the staff report. I won't go through every point, but I'll be happy to address 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
any specifics of these points. Many of these points of contention are resolved with just an 1
understanding and application of the existing municipal code in terms of continuance of non-2
conforming use and the retail preservation ordinance. Others such as the lack of accessible 3
parking space is not the responsibility of the applicant because the applicant is not, the scope of 4
work proposed is not increasing the square footage of the unit nor are they proposing to 5
modify the parking layout and so they cannot be held responsible for bringing the accessible 6
parking count up to code. That will, can be addressed at a later date through a separate 7
building permit with the Commercial Association. 8
9
The one point we do feel has some merit is point Number 6, the medical and dental office ratio 10
exceeding the zoning code. It is true that the existing uses at the hamlet do not meet the 11
prescribed ratio as the current tenants are utilizing the commercial spaces for non-retail land 12
uses. For many years the City did not do a good job of record keeping and monitoring the use 13
and occupancy permits over the past 30 years which has resulted in a commercial complex of 14
predominantly medical and health practices because these are individually owned placed or 15
excuse me, spaces with no record or documentation identifying which spaces were designated 16
for retail or office use it's difficult for the City to enforce the prescribed ratio equitably to both 17
the existing tenants and commercial condo owners. 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
The City is trying to resolve this issue fairly through the provisions that are outlined in the 1
municipal code in terms of allowing the continuance of nonconforming uses, prohibiting the 2
conversion of any existing retail to non-retail, and being more vigilant in terms of researching 3
tenant improvement requests and tracking [U and O] history of commercial spaces. As such, 4
excuse me, with that said staff is determined to determine the subject application for medical 5
office use would be consistent with the land use types the suites were previously operating as 6
and that space had not been vacant for more than 12 months and therefore would not be in 7
conflict with municipal code. As such staff is recommending the Planning and Transportation 8
Committee, excuse me, the staff is recommending Planning and Transportation Committee 9
[Note-Commission] (PTC) recommend this CUP to the City Council. Thank you. 10
11
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, thank you. Do we have any speaker cards for this? I did not 12
receive any... Nothing. Any members of the public planning to speak on this because this would 13
be the point to do so. Ok. 14
15
Albert Yang, Senior Deputy City Attorney: Chair can I ask for any Commissioner disclosures if 16
there are any to be made? 17
18
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Absolutely. Any Commission… No, I don't think anybody is within the 19
rate. You would have told us if anyone was in the 500 foot radius, correct? 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Mr. Yang: Right, yeah. This would be about ex-parte communications, but if there are none 2
that’s great. 3
4
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great. Ok, let's open up, let’s open this up. You want to start [Art] do 5
you have anything you want to say? 6
7
Commissioner Rosenblum: I don't have much. I feel like this one is fairly straight forward and 8
that staff did a good job to answer the concerns of the petitioner for this hearing. So I'm not to 9
take up more time when if my other fellow Commissioners wanted to have their round I'm 10
happy to make a Motion at the end of that. 11
12
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Please, Commissioner Summa. 13
14
Commissioner Summa: So I do have a few questions. So I appreciate the applicant coming 15
forward and bringing us medical use which we need places to put medical uses, but I do have a 16
kind of a problem with the 30/70 split and I understand that that ratio was lost over the years. 17
And that is something I don't think that we can it can be explained through grandfathering. And 18
I understand that it might not be possible for staff to go back and investigate it, though we have 19
had in the past really good historic investigations in the staff reports. My concern is that we 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
also have a very strong need to retain retail in the City so I would is there any idea when all 1
these conversions to medical that violated the 30/70 split happened? Was or when it became a 2
condo? It seemed like from the letters that staff provided that it was originally a for lease built, 3
the whole complex was for lease by the developer. Is that correct? 4
5
Mr. Brennan: As I, I believe that's correct. 6
7
Commissioner Summa: So do we have any idea when it became a condo? And my concern is 8
the original is the violation of the original condition of approval which I assume was specific to 9
this development and not a citywide requirement at that time. Is that right? 10
11
Mr. Brennan: The prescribed ratio was a condition. 12
13
Commissioner Summa: Special condition (interrupted) 14
15
Mr. Brennan: Special condition, yes. 16
17
Commissioner Summa: Ok. Because there's already a lot of medical there and there's only 555 18
sf of retail so it would be really nice to get some retail back in especially since the CN zone is the 19
zone the little C as I call them zones: the CS, [CC, and CC] that are the most neighborhood 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
oriented medical being sort of a secondary use to retail. And also there was some discussion in 1
the staff report about the difficulty because it's a multiparty owned building and indeed the 2
whole complex is, but I wonder I mean there are many, many, many buildings that are 3
multiparty owned so I wonder if this sets a precedent that that's kind of unusual to me that if 4
you have more than one owner of a given property or parcel that it gives you more access to 5
not following the zoning which in this case is a special condition. And I think that's kind of a 6
difficult thing for me to contemplate becoming a precedent. So those are really my concerns. 7
So do we know when it became condo-ized? 8
9
Mr. Brennan: Well I'd like to walk back the I may have misspoken. I'm not sure if it was ever as 10
described [unintelligible] you were describing as for lease and then converted it to condo. 11
12
Commissioner Summa: Well I think the letter Exhibit H maybe, the letter from the developer 13
says the he’ll keep the leasing agreement it's I forget which… It's Exhibit G that he'll keep the 14
lease agreement I think is where I came up with that. 15
16
Hillary Gitelman, Planning Director: While Philip is looking up that information maybe I can hop 17
in on this issue of just kind of how do you deal with ownership situations. These are 18
commercial condominiums so each one are owned by a separate entity. I don't think first of all 19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
that if we had this project to do over again and approved it today we would be vague about 1
where the retail was supposed to be (interrupted) 2
3
Commissioner Summa: Right, I understand that. 4
5
Ms. Gitelman: Where the commercial was going to be, but in this case we think the records 6
were vague at the time of approval. And our thought is that it just wouldn't be fair to tell this 7
particular owner who purchased a space that had been in use as medical office that now 8
because of some record keeping problem they couldn't use it for the use that it has been used 9
for when they purchased it. 10
11
Commissioner Summa: Right. 12
13
Ms. Gitelman: So that's why our recommendation to approve the CUP and if any of the units 14
ever become vacant for more than 12 months and lose their kind of non-conforming status 15
then we would have more leverage to ask for the retail use again. But as long as they're kind of 16
in continuous use as medical office it's hard to I mean it just wouldn’t be fair to the property 17
owner in this case the commercial condo owner to force a change in use. 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Summa: I was thinking maybe I understand there’s a commercial condo 1
association. I was thinking maybe the fair thing to do would be to give them an opportunity to 2
discuss how they wanted to handle this in the future. It may have been the case that this didn't 3
come up for years because people didn't apply for CUPs necessarily which I think has kind of 4
been common. And so maybe this is a question for our attorney. Is this creating a precedent 5
for properties that are owned by multiple parties which is very common? 6
7
Mr. Yang: Yeah. I mean I think the problem that's created here is a result of the City's lack of 8
any record. I mean we don't even have the originally approved plans. So I think it's the lack of 9
records in this case that's creating the issue and I don't think that we would necessarily be 10
creating a precedent for any other uses. 11
12
Commissioner Summa: But we do have clear records that state there was a condition of 13
approval that was a 30/70 percent split with 30 percent being retail. And I note at this location 14
what's needed is retail more than medical especially since there's already I think three or four 15
dentists, dental practitioners. 16
17
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, again if we had the project plans and they showed that it was this space 18
that was supposed to be retail we would be able to force retail at this location, but we don't 19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
have an approved set of plans. We don't have anything from the time that this condition was 1
applied that shows that this was one of the spaces that was in the 30 percent. 2
3
Commissioner Summa: Ok, but isn't the whole CN portion zone of this supposed to have that 4
split? That's what I'm not kind of comprehending. 5
6
Mr. Brennan: There's five buildings that contain ground floor commercial space which is all 7
located in the CN district. As Hillary is stating we know the split what we don't know are which 8
spaces are designated strictly for retail, which were designated for commercial which is why 9
we're having the problem of trying to resolve this fairly. 10
11
Mr. Yang: Just to clarify the CN zone has a limit of 5,000 sf per parcel. It's not a 70/30 split in 12
the CN zone; 70/30 was just the (interrupted) 13
14
Commissioner Summa: It was a condition of approval for this project, the entire project. 15
16
Mr. Yang: Right. I guess I want to clarify also that we don't have records necessarily showing 17
that it was a condition of approval. It was certainly the way that the project was intended to be 18
used when it was constructed, but we don't have the conditions of approval from the approval 19
either. 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
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Thank you. We have one speaker card. Do you mind if I let Mr. Moss… 2
Bob Moss do you want to come speak on this? 3
4
Robert Moss: Thank you. [It was] interested in your comments so let me give you some history 5
on that site. Forty years ago there was a commercial area. It was basically a garden shop and 6
we rezoned it CN with the intent of making it ground floor retail with housing up above. And at 7
the same time condos were being built along East Meadow between El Camino Way and Wilkie. 8
And so we wanted to have retail to serve those condos, Ventura, and Barron Park. When the 9
property was developed the ground floor was built as a retail site, but retail at that time 10
included medical not just shops if you will. And the developer held almost all the properties off 11
the market for over a year. And then he said oh, I can't rent these to retail. This is a bad area 12
for retail because it's not on El Camino and it's doesn't have adequate parking and I can't get 13
people to move in there so I'm going to put medical in there. Putting in offices because they're 14
willing to go in there and that's why we got the medical in. And once the medical went in it 15
basically eliminated any retail vitality because there were only a few parcels left for retail and 16
retail businesses weren’t going to go in where they were the only one or there were only a 17
couple of others along with them. So that's why it's been office for almost 40 years. That's 18
where the money was and that’s what the developer wanted. And the public had no right to 19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
say you can't do it. It’s your property. So that's why we have offices medical on the ground 1
floor. 2
3
Now in theory you could prohibit offices from reentering. An office leaves you can say no, retail 4
has to go in there not an office to replace it. That's in theory. In practice I think that would be 5
very difficult to do. You can talk to Legal staff and you can talk to the Planning staff and see if 6
they think it's practical. I have my doubts, but that's why we have that facility being used in 7
that way as it is today. The developer did not do what he was supposed to do and what the 8
public and what originally the Planning Commission and the City Council wanted which was to 9
have a retail area along El Camino Way. So we're stuck. 10
11
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Thank you for the historical perspective; let's move on to Commissioner 12
Monk. 13
14
Commissioner Monk: Just briefly aside from the hearing request from Mr. [Kochnevaz] and 15
from what we just heard from Mr. Moss I didn’t see any other contentions brought up with 16
regard to the CUP. I felt as though all the issues that he brought up in his appeal were 17
sufficiently addressed by the staff. And the analysis that followed addressed all of those 18
concerns so I would support moving forward with a Motion when we're ready to do so. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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.
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Thank you. Commissioner Gardias. 1
2
Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. So just Mr. Moss thank you very much for interesting 3
perspective and by the way it's always nice to have you here. So what is the plan? Do we have 4
any is there a possibility to have a plan to really just regain the retail in there? I know that you 5
may just tell me that this is not scope of today's meeting, but we should pretty much 6
prospectively think about converting some of that space into retail in the future. Was it a 7
subject of your conversations and? 8
9
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, again anything that's currently in ground floor retail would have to 10
maintain that retail. If one of these spaces were to become vacant for 12 months or more then 11
also they would lose a non-conforming status and we could potentially ask for retail. We’d 12
have it’s the same challenge which is the records aren't super clear about where in the 13
development retail is required, but we would have certainly a better leg to stand on then we do 14
right now. 15
16
Commissioner Gardias: Yes and this is exactly what you said was in the staff report, right? I was 17
thinking if there is something else some other perspective that you can offer to us. Maybe we 18
can when we are working on the Comprehensive Plan maybe we can look into this as an 19
example and adjust one of our policy. 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Ms. Gitelman: I think we all recognize the retail preservation policies we have a very strong. 2
This is a situation where it's really about the property right and the individual ownership of this 3
unit and their expectation that it can continue to be used for the purpose that it's been used 4
most recently. So I'm not sure it's something we could address in the Comprehensive Plan, but 5
I certainly recognize that the Commission at least a couple of the Commissioners are concerned 6
about this and we certainly have to do a better job today than we did in the past with 7
documenting spaces that are required to maintain their retail function. 8
9
Commissioner Gardias: So what was the purpose of the construction that was taking place? I 10
don't remember this being explicitly stated in the staff report. I remember reading about this, 11
but I was wondering what work was being conducted without the permits? 12
13
Mr. Brennan: Could you clarify what you mean when you're asking what was the purpose of the 14
construction? 15
16
Commissioner Gardias: What was the scope of the work, of the construction work that was 17
taking place before conditional permit was, before the preliminary permit was issued? 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Brennan: They were… right, right, right, right. They were pouring the subgrade parking 1
garage. Is a… 2
3
Commissioner Gardias: They were pouring? 4
5
Mr. Brennan: Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah, they were doing interior remodeling of the space. 6
7
Commissioner Gardias: Of that very space? 8
9
Mr. Brennan: Yeah. 10
11
Commissioner Gardias: That they would be remodeling once we grant them the permit. 12
13
Mr. Brennan: Right. 14
15
Commissioner Gardias: From the perspective of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) would 16
they be required to with remodeling of the space itself would they be requiring to comply with 17
California ADA? 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Ms. Gitelman: Again Commissioners we indicated in the report we don't feel like the City can 1
force them to bring the garage up to ADA based on the tenant improvements that are 2
proposed. You know ADA is a federal law. I think the condo association would be wise to 3
consider that, but we don't feel like it's the City's position at this point to force it. 4
5
Commissioner Gardias: Yes it is. I remember reading about this, but I'm asking about the space. 6
The parking garage it's a different story, but then when they're remodeling the space it should 7
be still compliant with California ADA. 8
9
Ms. Gitelman: The tenant’s space itself, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. 10
11
Commissioner Gardias: Ok. So now let's talk about ADA for the garage, right? So it's the law 12
was enacted by George Bush in 1999, 1991. So it's been 26 years. What is the how what is the 13
timeline of the of compliance of those grandfathered spaces, parking spaces to ADA laws? 14
Would they be would this association and this collection of separate owners be able to pretty 15
much keep grandfathering this space for ever until let's say unless somebody brings litigation 16
and sues them for noncompliance based on some accident? 17
18
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, I think we could consult with the Chief Building Official on that. I don't 19
know that we have an answer for you on the spot. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Gardias: Yes, I was asking this being concerned because giving the ownership 2
structure I can hardly see any changes for this building in there from retail perspective or from 3
compliance with ADA. Thank you. 4
5
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Thank you. Let's see, so just my comments I plan to support the CUP 6
based on the recent previous use argument. I do want to flag something maybe echo 7
something that Commissioner Gardias just said that as we look at code updates maybe we 8
should look at this as an example of lessons learned. I'm sure that at the time when the permit 9
was originally issued that the planning officials at that time thought that they were the 10
requirements were completely clear and that everything was stored in a permanent record 11
somewhere. I'm sure they believed that and I'm sure that we believe that about everything 12
that we do, but maybe the lesson we should take away is that some of these complicated 13
conditions that require constant monitoring and surveillance and good record keeping may not 14
be great ideas to capture and code. So anyway I would just like us to take note that maybe 15
there's a lesson to learn here, but I don't my view is I don't want to hold out that lesson as an 16
obstacle for this applicant. 17
18
Ms. Gitelman: If I can add one thing and just piggyback on that. In the category of best 19
practices Commissioner Monk noted that we have an error in the Record of Land Use Action 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.
here in the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) finding and so if the Commission is 1
ready to make a Motion we would ask that you forward your recommendation with the 2
direction for us to correct that deficiency in the Draft Record of Land Use Action. 3
4
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, thank you for the clarification. Anyone ready to make a Motion? 5
One, one further comment. 6
7
Commissioner Summa: Very, very quickly. Is the appellant not here? Does that affect the 8
status of this hearing at all or not? 9
10
Ms. Gitelman: No not unless he actively withdrew the request for hearing. 11
12
Commissioner Summa: Ok. And I had one last comment and that is my understanding of 13
grandfathering in legal nonconformity is that it had to be legal when built and so I'm just having 14
a hard time seeing how the commercial portion of this could be the 30/70 split which is clearly 15
referred to in the letter how that could be considered legally nonconforming at this time since 16
there's no proof that it was legal when a law changed. So I just and that being said I'm very 17
supportive and do not wish to be appear to be not supportive of the dental group that wishes 18
to go in. So I just wanted to make that clear. 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.
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Ok, great. Any further comments or do we have a Motion? 1
2
Commissioner Monk: Yeah as far as the changes that need to happen also at the top it says 3
North California Avenue conditional use so I don't know if that's appropriate language. 4
5
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah we’ll do a scrub through the Record of Land Use Action and make sure it 6
matches the staff report. Thank you. 7
8
Commissioner Monk: Ok. Great, thanks. 9
10
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, please. 11
12
MOTION 13
14
Commissioner Rosenblum: So like to make a Motion that we approve the Council's 15
recommendation of the CUP to allow the medical office use for this property. 16
17
SECOND 18
19
Commissioner Monk: Second. 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
VOTE 2
3
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. 4
Opposed? 4-1, Commissioner Summa voting against. The Motion carries. Great, thank you. 5
6
MOTION PASSED (4-1-2, Commissioner Summa against, Chair Alcheck and Commissioner Lauing 7
absent) 8
9
Commission Action: Motion to Approve Staff Recommendation of CUP to Allow Medical 10
Office use for property (Motion: Commissioner Rosenblum, Second Commissioner 11
Monk) Motion Passed 4-1 (Summa Against, Chair Alcheck/Commissioner Lauing 12
Absent) 13
4. PUBLIC HEARING. Recommendation to the City Council Regarding an Extension of 14
Interim Ordinance 5357 Imposing an Annual Limit of 50,000 Net New Square Feet of 15
Office/R&D Uses in Designated Areas of City to June 30, 2018 and Finding That the 16
Proposed Ordinance is Exempt From the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) 17
in Accordance with CEQA Guidelines Section 15061(b)(3). For More Information, 18
Contact Clare Campbell at clare.campbell@cityofpaloalto.org. 19
20
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Ok, let's move on to Item Number 4, public hearing. I’d just like to 21
remind everybody that we have taken up this issue of the office cap several times previously. 22
Tonight we're discussing a short extension to give the Council time to sort out what they want 23
to do. That said if anybody feels strongly about debating it tonight we can do that, but if we 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.
don't then we can move it along, perhaps move it along quickly. So let’s just see what, where 1
the sentiment is. 2
3
Hillary Gitelman, Planning Director: Thank you, Chair [Note-Acting] Waldfogel. Clare Campbell 4
is here to give the brief presentation. This is a public hearing so we'd invite any public 5
comments after staff presentation and then we're interested in any comments from the 6
Commission. We're hoping you will recommend adoption of this extension. 7
8
Clare Campbell, Senior Planner: Thank you, good evening Commissioners; Clare Campbell, 9
Senior Planner. The Planning Commission as you've just mentioned has reviewed this annual 10
office ordinance just recently in a study session in March. So since this was relatively recent 11
and for the purposes of managing our time tonight I’ll just provide a very high level overview of 12
the ordinance in my present presentation. And I can answer any specific questions you may 13
have afterwards. 14
15
So the ordinance was adopted in 2015, October 2015, and it applies to two fiscal years 2016 16
and 2017. And it will expire later this year in November. The interim ordinance affects all office 17
and Research and Development (R&D) development within defined areas in the City and that 18
includes the Downtown area, the El Camino corridor, and the California Avenue area. So earlier 19
this year Council gave directions specifically to staff to prepare a permanent annual office limit 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.
ordinance and this effort was to be separate from the Comprehensive Plan update. So staff is 1
proposing an extension of the interim ordinance to give staff the time needed to prepare the 2
permanent ordinance and to assure there's no lapse in the regulations. And so no current, 3
currently no changes are being proposed to this existing ordinance. The proposed extension 4
would be for seven months with the expiration to coincide with the end of fiscal year 2018. 5
6
So as mentioned earlier the Commission did conduct a study session in March where staff 7
received a range of comments on the permanent annual office limit regulations and your 8
comments will be forwarded to Council in September when they will provide direction to staff 9
on the permanent ordinance. So this slide here gives you an overview of the next steps and 10
general timeline of the office limit. So tonight we're reviewing with you the interim office 11
extension. In September we're going to go back to Council to review the extension, take action 12
on the extension of the interim ordinance, and then get comments back from them on the 13
permanent ordinance. And then in early spring next year we're going to come back to you with 14
a draft ordinance for the permanent language and then shortly after that in the late spring 15
we're going to go to Council for review of that ordinance. So with all of his efforts we should be 16
on track to have a permanent ordinance in place no later than June 30, 2018, when the interim 17
ordinance expires. So this concludes my presentation and we're available to answer any 18
questions. 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.
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, thank you very much. I have two speaker cards so let's go to the 1
public speakers before we move on to Commissioner discussion. The two are Hamilton 2
Hitchings and Bob Moss. So let's take a Mr. Hitchings first. 3
4
Hamilton Hitchings: Good evening, my name is Hamilton Hitchings and I was one of the 5
members of the Citizen Advisory Committee (CAC) for the Comprehensive Plan update although 6
these comments are my own. In order to reduce greenhouse gases and traffic congestion the 7
State of California is trying to reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) and so should Palo Alto. 8
This means placing housing near jobs to reduce and ideally eliminate commutes thus taking 9
vehicles off the road. Palo Alto has some unique opportunities to do this such as by building 10
housing targeted for local workers such as those Downtown at Stanford Research Park (SRP), 11
Stanford Hospital, and Stanford. While Palo Alto may not be able to legislate a housing 12
requirement for local workers in many cases the [property] owners can deed restrict them as 13
an incentive to receive permits for zoning extensions. A perfect example could be SRP which is 14
considering adding housing along El Camino, but if that housing was limited to SRP employees 15
and Stanford employees not only would it provide more housing, but it would eliminate many 16
commuters and take cars off the road during rush hour. 17
18
Over the last decade Downtown [unintelligible] added numerous build office buildings. I'm not 19
sure the exact count, but I think it's around 20 versus almost no if not 0 office, I mean 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.
apartment buildings. This is because the profit per square foot is higher for office buildings. It 1
means that every job, every new job added will likely mean a new commuter into Palo Alto for 2
the next 50 to 100 years and possibly beyond that. Thus, we have had an over development of 3
office buildings and under development of new housing Downtown. Furthermore, many of 4
these office buildings have been under parked and the result has now we now have 1,500 5
Downtown workers parking in nearby residential neighborhoods. Almost no other city in the 6
Bay Area has this. 7
8
Palo Alto has a 3:1 housing to working adult ratio which is one of the highest in the nation 9
versus Santa Clara’s 1:1 ratio. That means if we do not build any additional housing, any 10
additional office space for the next 50 years we would still have a major imbalance and a large 11
number of commuters coming into the City. Every square foot of office space added is one less 12
square foot of housing built. Since the office cap ordinance was put in place applications for 13
new office development have slowed considerably and multi-unit housing applications and 14
projects including housing have increased. The office cap for Palo Alto except SRP is a critical 15
component to addressing our housing shortage and reducing VMT. 16
17
While I do see the value in a one year carry over so projects are not rushed anything beyond 18
that is just watering it down and reducing housing further and increasing the total number of 19
VMT daily. Also the limit needs to be low enough to be material and I feel that 50,000 sf is too 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.
high when you add in the current exceptions. The misnamed beauty contest portion of the 1
office cap should be called highest quality project selection criteria rather than first come first 2
serve that can result in projects with worse parking, traffic, and environmental projects impacts 3
being approved. It has never been used, so has not yet been a significant burden to staff, but 4
should a large amount of new additional office space be requested in a single year then 5
buildings which have the least parking, traffic, and environmental and neighborhood impacts 6
would be selected. I also believe that when you consider November the and many of the other 7
folks on the CAC also believe this that the area of coverage for the office cap should be citywide 8
minus SRP thus if you are truly committed to increasing housing and reducing VMT you'll 9
support a meaningful office cap. Thank you. 10
11
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Thank you very much for the comments. Mr. Moss? 12
13
Robert Moss: Thank you, Chairman [Note-Acting] Walfogel: First I agree with the comments of 14
the speaker and would like to elaborate on a few of them. We've had a jobs/housing imbalance 15
in Palo Alto for over 40 years. It’s ranged from 2.8 to 3 jobs per housing unit. I went back in my 16
files since 1978 and it's created some really major problems. 17
18
Currently one of the problems we have because of State ordinances are that we're being asked 19
to build more housing in order to reduce the jobs/housing imbalance. And we have a problem 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.
where we're going to fit them in. And then one of the things that people don't want to talk 1
about is a fact that every housing unit costs the City about $2,800 a year more for services than 2
pays in taxes. So you put in 10,000 more housing units and you increase the City's deficit by 3
about $2 [unintelligible] million a year. That can be a problem. And that doesn't even attack 4
the problem we have with the schools if you add that many housing units. We’re not a school 5
board so we don't have to address it directly, but it is still an issue and as citizens we worry 6
about it. 7
8
So the first thing I'd like to suggest is that we make the cap citywide not just on specific zones. 9
Second, I think it should be reduced [from] 50,000 to perhaps 30,000 or 40,000. Because one of 10
the things that has been happening over the last 10 years is the number of the employees 11
crammed into an office is been increasing significantly. Years ago the rule of thumb was 250 12
square feet (sf) per employee. Currently it's closer to 100 to 125 and when you have high cost 13
office space like you do in Palo Alto which is one of the highest cost per square foot per month 14
in the country it is a real incentive for the people who are there to cram as many people in as 15
they can because they are paying a lot for the space. That creates traffic problems, parking 16
problems, jobs/housing imbalance problems and it makes it harder for the City to be successful. 17
18
So I think it would pay to limit the amount of office space [we’re allowed to develop] in the 19
future and because if you're only limit it to certain areas I can guarantee you you’re 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.
have more offices developed along Bayshore, along Fabian, along San Antonio because where 1
there isn't a limit that's where they will build. So the simple and also it's a lot easier to enforce 2
if it’s just citywide. You don't have to worry about is he putting it in exactly where it's 3
prohibited or limited or is he one or two parcels over. So simplify it, reduce the amount that's 4
allowed, and take another look at it in a year or two and see what our job/housing imbalance 5
looks like then and if it's not getting better we should scale it down again, but we have to 6
address this problem. We've been letting it go for decades and we should have to stop that, 7
grit our teeth, and make it harder to increase the jobs/housing imbalance. We haven’t been 8
doing that for years. It's time we did. 9
10
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Thank you. Those are all the speakers cards that I have. Let's move on 11
to Commissioner discussion. Commissioner Gardias. 12
13
Commissioner Gardias: Thank you very much for your report and thank you very much for the 14
comments. So I understand that today's discussion is going to be about the extension of this 15
ordinance. We discussed this ordinance it was like over a year ago or so I remember the 16
comments I can even cite them. 17
18
Ms. Campbell: It was March. 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 Gardias: It was March. Ok, thank you very much you. Yeah, so over a year ago. 1
So a personally I just I mean first of all I think that the discussion over the ordinance is on the 2
table today, right? I will reiterate the point the main point of this what I said in March that 3
pretty much I just disagree with the whole notion of the separate ordinance, but I understand 4
it's not the subject of our discussion today. However, I'd like to just make one point; typically if 5
we regulate something it has some other unintended consequences. So my question to the 6
staff is like this, have you observed some other imbalances that would be growing up as a result 7
of this ordinance? 8
9
Ms. Gitelman: Well we can certainly go into this when we come back with a recommendation 10
on a permanent ordinance. I think our feeling is that this has been really successful at what it 11
originally intended to do which was to slow the pace of office development in these three areas 12
that are covered by the by the current ordinance. It has certainly done that. I don't know that 13
there are other unintended consequences. [Unintelligible] give that some thought, but none of 14
them nothing occurs to me off the top my head. 15
16
Commissioner Gardias: The other question would be of course I mean if they are not building 17
offices what are they building instead? And since we don't have the whole [unintelligible] to all 18
the buildings because it's mainly within Architectural Review Board (ARB) purview I would like 19
to understand this. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah. I think we've seen fewer large applications since this ordinance was 2
adopted then in the couple years preceding it. 3
4
Commissioner Gardias: Ok. I rest with this, thank you. 5
6
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, thank you. Commissioner Monk. 7
8
Commissioner Monk: What's the effect if the ordinance expires? 9
10
Ms. Gitelman: Well, when the clock runs out on the ordinance any applications we receive 11
would have to be processed without regard to this limit or the time frame that it sets up for our 12
reviews. 13
14
Commissioner Monk: Have there been applications received this year? 15
16
Ms. Campbell: Yep. We do have there's a few pending applications that we do have on file. 17
And right now they're still going through the review… well, there's at least one and it's going 18
through the review process. So if by March 18, March 30th of 2018… well, if it expires in 19
November then it would just be the standard review process, but if we do an extension then 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.
would take a look at whatever projects we have in March of next year and then we would make 1
a determination whether or not we have to go through the additional evaluation for the 2
contest. 3
4
Commissioner Monk: Do you expect to have a new ordinance before then even though this will 5
be in effect until then? 6
7
Ms. Campbell: So this existing interim ordinance is due to expire in November of this year. So 8
what we're asking tonight is to extend it from November of this year to June of next year. So 9
that way it will cover fiscal year 2018. 10
11
Monk: Right. So when are you going to come back to us or Council with the new ordinance? 12
13
Ms. Campbell: Oh. Yes, so in my timeline that I was explaining we're going to come back in 14
early spring to the Planning Commission with a draft ordinance and then soon after that we 15
would go to Council for their action on it. So we definitely our schedule is in line to have 16
everything completed before the expiration of the interim ordinance. 17
18
Ms. Gitelman: If I can offer one addition to that which is we had a great conversation with the 19
Commission on sort of pros and cons, what are the options for modifications to this in March. 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.
We haven't had that conversation with the Council. So when we bring the Council this 1
extension we're going to have that kind of brainstorming session that will inform development 2
of a draft ordinance which we’ll get to you as soon as we can probably after the first of the year 3
and then to the Council. Just so we have it in place by the end of the fiscal year. 4
5
Commissioner Monk: Thank you for clarifying and just to confirm that you will be presenting 6
the findings from our March hearing to Council so that we're not rehashing it again tonight 7
because I do, I was involved with that meeting and did weigh in on it, on my concerns. Thank 8
you. 9
10
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Thank you. Commissioner Summa. 11
12
Commissioner Summa: Thank you to staff for the presentation and also to members of the 13
public. It's always great to see you and I really appreciate your comments. So I think since we 14
discussed this at some length so recently I just want to be very brief and I wholeheartedly 15
approve the extension. I would be very interested in the Council I would be very interested in 16
looking at reducing the annual limit to make it even more effective potentially in bringing, 17
trying to bring some a better balance of the to the house, jobs/housing imbalance. I have 18
always thought it should be citywide. And I like Hamilton's idea of changing the name of the so-19
called beauty contest which I think I opined about in March that it’s just kind of embarrassing 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.
sounding. I'm not sure highest quality projects selection criteria is perfect. It might be a little 1
bit wordy, but I think we should change the name of that. And yeah, so I think those are my 2
comments. Thank you very much. 3
4
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, thank you. Commissioner Rosenblum. 5
6
Commissioner Rosenblum: So I'm in favor of staff’s recommendation to extend this until they 7
can give a proper proposal. When we started reviewing this project though this proposal and 8
every time it's come I've disagreed with the whole ordinance. I think it's a poor ordinance. And 9
specifically the comment that it's worked because it's just slowed down applications I don't 10
think is very good. I think the reason why we're concerned about office buildings are the 11
effects of office buildings and the imbalance between housing and office which is traffic and 12
congestion and it's a regional problem. I think in using this tool what you do is put a chilling 13
effect on development of offices and clearly that's the goal of some people and maybe the goal 14
of this ordinance, but really what we want to work on is reducing the number of people who 15
have to travel by car to their offices. And I think in going for this kind of blunt instrument we've 16
taken our eye off that ball. I think that's the most important ball. 17
18
Notably a lot of people that are really excited about this ordinance are also it against many 19
housing projects. So the same people are not working to say let's build more housing then to as 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.
a lever to reduce this imbalance. So I'm skeptical of the good will of those that are pushing for 1
this, but the motivations of them doesn't really matter. In the end it's the effect. And I think 2
what we're doing in this kind of ordinance is we're not getting anything good. We are putting a 3
chilling effect on development to the extent that you think less development is good then 4
great, you win, but the extent that what we really want to do is have a smarter city where we 5
invest in mitigations so different ways for people to get in out of town, different ways for 6
people to live and work then I think we lose. And I think long term as a community we do want 7
to invest in better ways of getting in and out, better ways of living. 8
9
And the last comment I'll make this came up after we had the Our Palo Alto Summit which was 10
as many people here know an off-site, had 300 plus citizens that gave up their Saturday to 11
discuss this, and this question was specifically asked: how do you want to account for the 12
jobs/housing imbalance? What tools would you use to meter growth? And there was three 13
choices. There was metering, there was a hard cap, and there was a project by project 14
mitigations through Transportation Demand Management (TDM) measures. And 15
overwhelmingly the people there had this what we actually adopted as the worst option. The 16
Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC) at that time in discussing it also didn't like this 17
option, but Council adopted it because their notion was I think that they want to have that they 18
want to reduce the number of offices being built. And so as Director Gitelman said that if that's 19
the intention then it succeeded, but the will of the citizens that had precipitated in this process 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
was that we should be smarter about this and we should come up with ways that individual 1
office projects have to be smarter about the way they handle the impacts. 2
3
So long winded way of saying I don't like this ordinance. I respect staff’s request during this 4
period when we're trying to get the Comp Plan over the line, etcetera for more time to have a 5
comprehensive proposal and I think that's completely rational. I also think the concerns of 6
people like Bob Moss and Hamilton Hitchings are completely rational. And in fact talking about 7
how we address the jobs/housing imbalance is one of the challenges we have. I think that this 8
tool does accomplish something, but I think it’s the wrong way that we're going about doing 9
this. It’s certainly not the smartest thing we could do. So at any rate I agree with the staff’s 10
recommendation for tonight, but I'd like to go on the record again in I saying I just don't think 11
this is a great, this is not the smartest thing we could have done around this problem. 12
13
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, thank you. I also plan to support staff’s recommendation. I'm 14
not as convinced that this is a terrible tool. I mean the problem in our [unintelligible] situation 15
where it's hard to find tools that work. And I think we have to be very pragmatic about finding 16
tools that do actually work on addressing traffic and congestion issues. I mean I think that 17
we've seen it's very difficult to set up Transportation Management Association (TMA) and TDM 18
in a in diverse districts. So we do need to be fairly pragmatic and I hope that we are considering 19
that as we look at permanent ordnances. I'd also comment that I think it's very hard to tell 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.
direction of causality on the slowdown in office development. It could be caused by this. It 1
could be caused by general economic conditions, secular economic conditions, the election, 2
who knows. Very it's always very hard to tell. Anyway I think we should just move on to a 3
Motion if we are ready for that. Yes. 4
5
Commissioner Rosenblum: I forgot to make I have a request though in this time that staff is 6
going to take to make their permanent recommendation there was a letter from Neilson 7
Buchanan which I admire around his ask for data collection. I don't agree with the actual data 8
that he's looking to collect, but I think that this time needs to be used for data collection that 9
prompted me to think what would I want to see as a Commissioner? And there are a couple 10
things I would really like to see. So I would like to see the parking utilization and employee 11
Single Occupancy Vehicle (SOV) rate at a couple of key locations around town; so in particular 12
the University Ave. core and the California Ave. core, and SRP. And this some of this data exists. 13
Some of it probably needs to get collected. 14
15
I would also like to see to the extent possible employee density. Mr. Moss made a gave some 16
data. He said that employees are now at 100 sf per employee or 150 sf per employee. I helped 17
conduct a survey of our company Downtown and we found the opposite. We found actually 18
kind of low density utilization because of our work pattern where we have a lot of cafes and 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.
common spaces, etcetera. And we found that actually our utilization was quite un-dense which 1
I think surprised us. 2
3
Now I think that staff should actually get this data and whichever way it goes I think all of us 4
would breathe a sigh of relief that we're not just making up numbers. So basically how many 5
people are working in our Downtown core per square foot and then how many of them are 6
using cars. I know that some of this data has been collected in the past, but that should be part 7
of this presentation that goes to us because I think that then it would help us come to grips 8
with is new construction adding this problem? Is it old construction that was under parked? Is 9
it increasing employee density that is causing more of a problem? So I have an ask for data 10
collection as part of our next package and not just do we want to extend this ordinance or not, 11
but as part of that it should be a pretty well constructed data package. 12
13
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, thank you. So we’re ready for a Motion? Do you want to make 14
a Motion on this? 15
16
Commissioner Gardias: I can make a [unintelligible] 17
18
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Yeah, please. 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.
MOTION 1
2
Commissioner Gardias: Yeah, so agreeing with the whole discussion, but recognizing the reality 3
and being ready for the Comprehensive Plan I'd like to propose a Motion to accept staff 4
recommendation and recommend to the City Council of adoption, extend… recommend to the 5
City Council extension of this ordinance through June the 30th of 2018. 6
7
SECOND, VOTE 8
9
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Who’s the second? Commissioner Summa. Let’s toss one. Any further 10
discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Five to nothing in favor. Thank you. And for Mr. 11
Moss and Mr. Hitchings thank you for coming and please come back in the spring when we 12
discuss the permanent ordinance. Ok, are we ready to move on or should we take three 13
minutes or what do we want to do? Ok, we'll take three minutes. 14
15
MOTION PASSED (5-0, Chair Alcheck and Commissioner Lauing absent) 16
17
[The Commission took a break] 18
19
Commission Action: Motion to Accept Staff Recommendation and Recommend to the 20
City Council the Extension of the Ordinance Through June 30, 2018 (Motion: 21
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Gardias, Second Commissioner Summa) Motion Passed 5-0 (Chair 1
Alcheck/Commissioner Lauing Absent). 2
5. Comprehensive Plan Update: Review of and Recommendation on Draft 3
Transportation and Land Use Elements 4
5
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Ok, let's move on to Item Number 4, no, I’m sorry, Item Number 5. We 6
just finished Item Number 4. Item Number 5, Comprehensive Plan update, Transportation and 7
Land Use Elements, please. 8
9
Elaine Costello, [_______________]: My name is Elaine Costello and I've been working with the 10
City on the Comp Plan update and tonight as you decided at your July 12th meeting we shifted 11
around and we're going to work on Transportation tonight with the idea that that will give us so 12
that will give us three meetings to work on Land Use which has some more complicated issues. 13
So that was a decision of Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC) at the last meeting so 14
we'll work tonight on the Transportation Element and its implementation table. And then on 15
August 9th we'll work on Goals 1 through 4. We’re actually going to someone asked at the 12th 16
that we advertise Goals 1 through 5 in case you really get very efficient and want to be ahead of 17
the game, but I think Goals 1 through 4 have some of the most complex issues and on growths 18
management and housing so I think they will end up taking that meeting. We’ll then finish up 19
the rest of the goals at the August 30th meeting and if we need, if we you feel that we need an 20
additional meeting we are kind of tentatively you mentioned at the last meeting kind of 21
tentatively hold August 23rd in case that's needed. And then at the September 13th meeting 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.
we'll do the Land Use anything that's left over in Land Use and the Land Use section 1
implementation table and then on the 27th we’ll do the final review and [add] the report to the 2
Council on Land Use and Transportation and the final Environmental Impact Report (EIR). You 3
will get the final EIR at the beginning of September so that you have a couple of weeks to [do 4
just] that document. 5
6
And what the goal of the PTC is really given this opportunity to look at the end of multi-year 7
process to look at these two elements, Land Use and Transportation starting with 8
Transportation tonight at a really high level and look at the is it really doing a good job of 9
addressing the policy issues. And also and identify any changes that would make it more usable 10
to the PTC because you'll be using, you will be major users of this document. So things that 11
make it more usable to you are very important. 12
13
We've talked we had a meeting the pre-meeting yesterday about the logistics for tonight and 14
what we have is Elena Lee, I forgot to introduce the rest of the staff. Elena Lee from the 15
planning staff is here and of course Hillary and Rafael Prius… 16
17
Rafael Ruiz, [___________]: Ruiz. 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. Costello: Ok, is here from the engineering staff. He's the Traffic Engineering Lead so that if 1
he can give us more background on some of the technical issues in tonight's items. So Elena 2
will take notes as you have a discussion of the Transportation Element and the issues and 3
concerns that you may have and then we will take a break, organize those, and what we talked 4
about yesterday was that you will then go through them and discover where there’s broad 5
consensus amongst all of you and where there's differences of opinion and forward the intent is 6
to forward that as a report all of your comments organized in that fashion as a report to the 7
City Council. And we will also be sending the entire record of tonight's hearing so that the 8
Council has the benefit of everything that’s said. So even if they will have everything. 9
10
So one of the things about this update is it's real it's an update of the 1998 plan and we have on 11
Pages 221 to 224 of your report for tonight a list of issues that we identified at a staff level 12
[where we're] the really major issues and major concerns were and updates as the Citizen 13
Advisory Committee (CAC) and the Council worked on the Transportation Element. And there's 14
just a sort of summary of that list up here. If you look at the bottom I think of Page 221 or 15
220… you'll see it. It starts with I think it starts with the list of… infrastructure improvements. 16
And that was a way that we tried to help you kind of look at what changed in this Element that 17
you would want to consider and what are the big issues? I would say just a couple to give you a 18
couple of highlights. 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.
One of the big changes since the 1998 Element is this idea that the 1998 Element did talk about 1
reducing the number of Single Occupancy Vehicles (SOV). This update has a much more well 2
developed and robust approach. It note, it notes that you have to involve existing and new 3
residents and existing and new businesses. It has a formalized, calls for a formalized 4
Transportation Demand Management (TDM) program with specific percentage reductions such 5
as 50 percent reductions in peak hour trips Downtown. It has much more on alternative fuel 6
vehicles, shuttles, mobility as a service; trying to bring in all the changes it's interesting to read 7
the 1998 because it starts talking about encouraging deliveries to home to reduce trips. I don't 8
think we need to do that anymore. There's been a lot of change and there you can see this one 9
of the big things in this update was to catch up with the technological changes that have been 10
taking place in transportation since 1998. 11
12
But also it tries to also make sure that the it was important to not lose what may have been 13
that what has proven to many the members of the CAC and the Council to be valuable in what 14
Palo Alto’s been doing for years like looking at Level of Service (LOS) when it looks at the 15
impacts on new traffic. And the Element adds Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) because one of the 16
things that overlays all of this work is much more focus on sustainability and reducing 17
greenhouse gases. So both are incorporated into this Element and that's kind of parking is 18
another example where we at a staff level kind of called it poised for change where the 19
approach in parking is for example for new development to ask that new development continue 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.
to meet the standards that are currently in the City's ordinances without using any on street 1
parking. That was kept in there. There's also language that says though as there's evidence 2
that the need for parking is going down those that approach to parking can be changed. So 3
there's this idea that as change has demonstrated that it's effective there is a willingness in the 4
Comp Plan to change the traditional approaches, but it… we didn't just jump in and change 5
them right now. So there's this phased approach to reducing parking requirements over time. 6
And there's also language in there about pricing and charging for parking. That's a big change 7
from 1998 and other big change is a focus on the transit dependent community. That was not 8
in the 1998 version. There was some discussion of people with special needs, but that was 9
really important to the CAC and the Council that the whole transit dependent community needs 10
be looked at and that there be policies to meet those needs. 11
12
So that kind of that list is in the staff report and I hope that it helps you figure out what are the 13
kinds of issues that are in the Transportation Element and what was the approach to the 14
update to that Element. And again I know there was a question earlier we did provide some 15
information in the staff report, some additional information that had been requested about the 16
extension of Geng Road and the VMT versus LOS if Council, if you as members of the PTC have 17
questions and issues you want to make sure we cover in Land Use let us know at the end of the 18
meeting and we'll make sure there's some time for that and because we will be back. Our goal 19
is to finish transportation tonight and to start on Land Use at the next meeting. We did want 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.
add one thing. We are supposed to, we are asking you if you have any comments on the 1
implementation table as it applies to Transportation that you also bring those up tonight. So 2
that completes the staff report. 3
4
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, so just to clarify the process we will discuss items, staff will take 5
notes, we'll take a short break, and then we'll just try to develop we’ll see whether we have 6
consensus, agreement/disagreement about each of the items so we're not trying to negotiate 7
to (interrupted) 8
9
Ms. Costello: That’s right. 10
11
Acting Chair Waldfogel: We're not trying to negotiate to a single unified point of view tonight. 12
We're just trying to communicate general sentiment. We do have one speaker card before we 13
move into the Commissioner discussion, Mr. Hitchings. 14
15
Hamilton Hitchings: Thank you; my name is Hamilton Hitchings. I was a member of the CAC, 16
but these comments are my own and the focus of these comments is on the Transportation 17
Element and the challenges and opportunities for transportation that face our City. The 18
Transportation Element was approved by all members of the CAC which was a major 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.
accomplishment. At a high level it was not controversial. Getting 20 people in Palo Alto to 1
agree on anything is a small miracle. 2
3
One of the major challenges with Palo Alto is we have fairly constrained corridors in and out of 4
the City. For example, University Ave. between 101 and Downtown is not getting any wider. 5
Caltrain is the primary way to improve commuters in and out, but the reality is there’re just not 6
that many good opportunities to move commuters in and out of the City. That's why 7
continuing to focus on prioritizing housing for local workers remains import. Besides Caltrains 8
there's another major opportunity that would immensely benefit Stanford Research Park (SRP) 9
which is has a particularly high SOV rate. That is adding a high occupancy lane to Page Mill for 10
carpoolers and busses. You'll get significantly higher number of SRP workers carpooling and 11
taking the bus if you reduce their commute time relative to driving alone. 12
13
While I think improvements to Downtown parking such as a new garage, way finding, and 14
elimination of [unintelligible] zones are great improvements to parking I do not support two 15
hour paid parking as it will negatively impact retail businesses especially for short errands such 16
as dropping off and picking up. And also it is inconvenient to residents. In general the 17
Transportation Element had a lot of thought put into it, was well written and represents broad 18
community support. 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.
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, thank you very much. So [Gwen] just one other point; you in our 1
pre-meeting you had pointed to one of the tables at the back of the packet as a focal point for 2
some of the discussions. Do you want to just say anything about that maybe I hope I didn't miss 3
that when your introductory comments. 4
5
Ms. Costello [Unless there is someone named Gwen in the room I am not aware of]: Let me 6
just… sometimes it’s helpful to show. It is what on pages it’s those, the list that starts here at 7
the bottom of Page 222 which is the major issues and updates that were undertaken by the 8
CAC and the Council on transportation. And that may… we put that in there to help guide you 9
to help facilitate your thinking about the transportation issues and what has changed and kind 10
of the conceptual basis for the Element. 11
12
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, I'm not suggesting that that's what… that that needs to be the 13
focus of our discussion, but this does at least give some key issues to discuss. So let me just 14
open this up now to Commissioner comments. Commissioner Gardias do you want to kick off? 15
16
Commissioner Gardias: Sure. Thank you very much for presentation and for coming to work 17
with us. Just before I start the I thought that we were going to just do it differently that we're 18
going to go through each policy and program point by point. So I understand that there is the 19
proposal that was proposed already, but I didn't believe that this was a consensus from our side 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.
to do it differently. So it's just from the formal side. I can do it either way. It doesn't matter for 1
me, but I thought that systematically we can go from the top to bottom. 2
3
Acting Chair Waldfogel: I think it's up to you how you want to tackle this. 4
5
Commissioner Gardias: Well here my proposal would be just to go through all the policies and 6
programs and if somebody could moderate and just to verify if there is a position or some 7
proposal to change if there is none then we can just move on and focus on those that have 8
some comments from the Commissioners. At least this is how I approach it, but I can speak 9
either way. 10
11
Ms. Costello: I think it's entirely up to the Commission how you would like to organize 12
yourselves. 13
14
Hillary Gitelman, Planning Director: Yeah, if I can just add I think it is up to you. Our thought 15
was that the CAC and the Council both have already labored on this. That the as Elaine 16
indicated the Commission is going to use this document that you might want to focus on kind of 17
high level issues, what's most important to you as you review projects and ordinances that 18
come to the Commission. If it makes sense for you to go goal by goal, ok and Goal Number 1 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.
does anybody have any issues? You can do that, but we'll leave it up to you. We do want to try 1
and keep this at a higher level and not get into wordsmithing policies and programs. 2
3
Commissioner Gardias: Very good. Let me just then kick it off. If we need to change we’ll 4
change, right? I don't mind. So, but so I would like to just take your attention to Policy L-1.8 on 5
the booklet on the Comprehensive Plan draft it’s Page L28 that's a Policy again L-1.8 which says 6
“participate in original strategies to address the interaction of jobs/housing balance and 7
transportation issues.” It's a new policy. 8
9
Ms. Costello: Excuse me; you know we're working on Transportation tonight which is T. 10
11
Commissioner Gardias: Oh, yes. I'm sorry. 12
13
Ms. Costello: Yeah. 14
15
Commissioner Gardias: I'm sorry. Yes, you're right. I opened on the wrong page. It's a big loss 16
because this was interesting comment. Yeah so let me just maybe let me start with the least of 17
the improvements because from perspective of the Transportation Element it's at the 18
beginning of the document so it talks about different improvements… Oh yeah, it's Page T-12. 19
There is a list of proposed projects which are here and one of those caught my attention and I 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
was hoping that you could clarify this for me. I already gave you a head’s up that I will ask this 1
question. It's about pretty much extending Geng Road to extend to Laura Lane where Post 2
Office currently has its facilities I would like to understand how this would be possible. 3
4
Ms. Costello: I’m going to ask Rafael to answer that question. Can we put that overhead up? 5
Thank you. If you just give us a second. Thanks so much Elena. Oh, I need to do it? Ok. 6
7
Rafael Ruiz, Traffic Engineering Lead: Hi, I’m Rafael Ruiz. I’m Traffic Engineering Lead and just 8
to give a little background on this particular improvement how it would actually be done would 9
need to be analyzed in more detail, but the idea stemmed from mainly the intersection of East 10
Bayshore and Embarcadero Road is one of the most congested in the City and there's limited 11
room for widening and expansion and mitigation even though we've tried to look into various 12
mitigation options for that intersection. A lot of the congestion occurs for various reasons 13
including East Bayshore being one of the main entry gateways for East Palo Alto. So there's a 14
lot of traffic coming from the northbound 101 ramp trying to shift over to the left lane and 15
make a quick left onto East Bayshore oftentimes blocking Embarcadero Road. And then also 16
from the other direction there's a lot of traffic coming from some of the office areas east of East 17
Bayshore trying to get to the Dumbarton Bridge or alternative ways parallel to 101. And this 18
was an idea that came up we thought of it at a very high level of a way of maybe eliminating the 19
complicated weave from the freeway ramp to the left turn lane and trying to provide an 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.
alternative route to get to East Bayshore with destinations to East Palo Alto or Dumbarton 1
Bridge just being really constrained and limited to the amount of mitigation or the possible 2
mitigations for that intersection. 3
4
Commissioner Gardias: I’m sorry. I understand, but how would you practically do it? I mean 5
the idea may be interesting to discuss, but pretty much there is a United States Postal Service 6
facility over there the so I don't know how you plan to deal with that with them. That's number 7
one. And number two is that that Geng Road pretty much leads to the recreational facilities 8
which I don't attend myself during the working hours, but there may be some events or some 9
use that may be training over there. So pretty much it’s bringing traffic to that area which is 10
pretty much a which is the space of gathering of some sporting teams, of dads and sons that 11
play baseball, and runners, you name it. So from my perspective if you were going just to 12
introduce this bypass you would maybe address some trucking congestion which I'm not really 13
sure if you really would, but you would risk pretty much intrusion to this to the sporting area. 14
15
Ms. Gitelman: If I can respond to that? I think we tried to make this clear in the staff report this 16
we included this on the list as an idea, but it clearly needs more analysis and it would require 17
right away acquisition. I mean there are a lot of issues that we would have to resolve to pursue 18
this as a real proposal. As you know one of the primary uses of the Comprehensive Plan is your 19
review of the Capital Improvement Project (CIP), the capital improvements, every time every 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.
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year in the budget. And so we wanted to at least have a placeholder for this improvement in 1
case the intersection at East Bayshore just someday gets so bad that we put the time and 2
energy in to analyze this and come up with a solution that looks like this in some way, but I 3
completely take your point. It would need a lot more work. One thing you could recommend, 4
you could include in your recommendation is a policy in the Element that goes along with this 5
just to outline what some of the constraints and issues are that would have to be resolved to 6
pursue this investment. That might be one way to handle your I don't know, your anxiety that 7
that there's still a lot of issues to resolve here. 8
9
Commissioner Gardias: Sure. I mean I think that pretty much I was looking into this from a 10
different perspective that it just looks so unreal and it's distractive in its form and pretty much 11
it just takes away our energy into asking question about something that may not be real to 12
deliver based on the land ownership and then some other zoning that we have in this area. I’d 13
rather just focus on some other wins just to focus our energy somewhere else. 14
15
Ms. Gitelman: Well in terms of our note keeping why don't we put on our list your comment 16
that you would recommend removing this from the list of investments and maybe an 17
alternative which would be to leave it on the list, but include a policy that has some discussion 18
of all that would be needed to be resolved before this could be implemented. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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Commissioner Gardias: Yeah, I understand that you're trying to resolve the problem of the 1
traffic congestion at this particular intersection. I totally agree with this because I was stuck 2
there for a half an hour just to make it there and then I had it's a real problem. 3
4
So let me now just go to other pages. I'd like to just talk about some other bigger items that 5
should be recognized on this plan and I'm going to direct you to Page T-4 where and actually to 6
the map which is on the Page T-5 which is has, which is not numbered. So when you look at 7
this conceptually and I would like to just spend a few minutes on this that the backbone 8
Transportation backbone today it's pretty much is it's Caltrain and El Camino. And then of 9
course there are two other backbones, but this those are pretty much the freeways that are 10
outside of the traffic that's going through the town. So in terms of this diagram and just larger 11
thinking about Transportation Element I would like to propose that we recognize 280 and 101 12
as perspective trans… public transportation lines or public transportation routes and then we 13
also recognize that the Page Mill Road from Oregon that extends to through to Page Mill Road 14
pretty much connects those two proposed backbones as a tie that would allow the commuters 15
that would allow to bring commuters from one side of the town to the other side of the town. 16
17
So and I can tell you the reason behind this. So the reason is behind is that today there is no 18
public transportation along 280 and 101. It's a private transportation. So if we somehow 19
discuss with the higher authority of allowing public or some other forms of busses to commute 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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and then bring passengers and commuters to some areas like intersection with Page Mill Road 1
or intersection with El Camino then we pretty much what we can do we can relieve the areas 2
that are between those two from some other public transportation. We can pretty much add 3
two more public transportation routes on the boundaries of not only our City, but also other 4
cities. So that's a major proposal that I have on that on the table. So with this I have bunch of 5
other ones, but I'd like to just as an opening just allow my colleagues to speak further. Thank 6
you. 7
8
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, thank you very much. You have more for later? 9
10
Commissioner Gardias: I have more, but I have to respect your time too so. 11
12
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Oh, well thank you. Ok, Commissioner Monk. 13
14
Commissioner Monk: What I have done was basically review the Comp Plan and come up with 15
several key issues that I just wanted to discuss. The first one would be referring to Page T-28 16
and that is the policy regarding shuttle service, ride sharing, first and last mile connections. I 17
think a new policy needs to be developed that would support the introduction of 18
Transportation Network Companies (TNC) such as Lyft, Uber, Waze, CarPal, etc. We can refer 19
to a Policy T-1.5 to come up with some language such as collaborating with or striving to create 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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innovative partnerships that enhance transportation opportunities for first and last mile 1
connections with the goal of reducing traffic demand or rather parking demand and costs to 2
access University Ave and Cal Ave, something along those lines. So such a program that would 3
support that is included in T-1 13.1 and I would just say that I would support having discounted 4
rates when people are getting dropped off in commercial centers such as University Avenue or 5
near transit. I really like the idea of subsidizing those types of TNC type programs. 6
7
Next issue is looking at Page T-33 and Goal T-2. This one is not really clear to me. I felt the way 8
that this goal was drafted either needs to be more specific or higher level. The way it's written 9
it’s just not completely clear to me. So just wanted to have you reconsider how it's what the 10
message is of this goal. 11
12
Looking at the following Policy T-2.1 we're talking about the Cities Association for San Mateo 13
County. Why isn't Santa Clara County Cities Association included? Does it need to be? That's 14
our County. Oh, outside our county? 15
16
Elena Lee, [_______]: Just to clarify that Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) is our 17
congestion management association so that's our alternative of, that’s our version of the San 18
Mateo [CCAG?]. Thank you. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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Commissioner Monk: So you feel like it’s covered? Ok. I saw it written differently in other 1
places so I wasn’t sure if it was covered. And then in regards to the policy to support Goal T-2 2
decreasing delaying congestion and the VMT all of that, that still confuses me. Looking at a 3
Policy T-2.3 I’m imaging this one might lead to some debate here tonight. I understand that 4
LOS is what's familiar and a metric that Council wanted us to preserve, but I think the policy 5
needs to be a little bit more fluid to allow for new trends and the new legislation that's evolving 6
away from the traditional LOS metric and moving more towards the motile the more towards 7
the VMT which it's also discussed on Page T-17. I would recommend that this new policy 8
acknowledge that we're in a transition period and to include some sort of a sunset provision for 9
LOS after staff works to apply this new threshold. 10
11
Following up on that looking at the next page on Policy T-2 3.1 which talks about California 12
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) thresholds it looks to me that the plan is attempting to kind 13
of circumvent those thresholds by advocating using LOS alongside VMT. According to CEQA 14
LOS is no longer considered a environmental impact so I would recommend removing that 15
program or otherwise modifying it. 16
17
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, just to clarify our intention there was not to circumvent the law. I think we 18
all understand that SB 743 means that in CEQA, in the CEQA context we're going to have to 19
transition to VMT and the Council will have to adopt CEQA significance standards by resolution. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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We're just saying that when they do that we think they should could also set some policy or 1
parameter about LOS. It wouldn’t be for CEQA purposes, it would be for consistency with this 2
program. But I take your point we could make this more clear. 3
4
Commissioner Monk: Ok, thank you. Looking at goal… actually just looking at Goal T-1 and Goal 5
T-8 they look a little bit redundant to me when you just read the goals themselves. They're 6
both trying to create sustainable transportation systems aimed at reducing emissions. I know 7
one is… I know they're slightly different focus, but I would just request looking at those for 8
redundancies. And specifically with regard to Goal T-8 there are just too many policies there. I 9
would recommend that staff take a look at it and see if it can be tightened up or if any policies 10
can be removed that they find redundant or otherwise inapplicable. Specifically also in that 11
section on Policy 8.1 has there been any discussion about possibly reactivation of the 12
Dumbarton rail bridge? And or is that something that we could advocate to include? 13
14
Ms. Gitelman: I'm looking to see if it's I thought it was in here somewhere. I know there's 15
(interrupted) 16
17
Commissioner Monk: It talks about the Dumbarton Express Service so I just would like to 18
(interrupted) 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
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Ms. Gitelman: I think it’s T-8.8. 1
2
Commissioner Monk: It’s on Page T-8.1 where we talk about Dumbarton Express Service. So I 3
think a lot of the congestion and parking issues here are because of employees coming in from 4
the East Bay and we're not having sufficient transportation so if it's possible to look at 5
expanding rail service. 6
7
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah. I think I would direct your attention to Policy T-8.8 on Page T-50. This also 8
gets to the (interrupted) 9
10
Commissioner Monk: The Dumbarton Bridge, ok. 11
12
Ms. Gitelman: Issue that Commissioner Gardias raised about transit on the freeways. This 13
policy talks about high-occupancy toll lanes (HOT lane). That’s kind of this idea of making lanes 14
on the freeways usable for transit. 15
16
Commissioner Monk: And I appreciated what Commissioner Gardias spoke to on that. If there's 17
a way to move that forward with setting up appropriate meetings or discussions down the road 18
I would absolutely love to get that going. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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Ms. Gitelman: Ok, well let us make sure that that's reflected on our list of comments here that 1
you want to look at the Dumbarton Bridge from a rail perspective. 2
3
Commissioner Monk: Great. I just want to talk a couple seconds here about the Transportation 4
Management Association (TMA) and I see that it's listed up front on Goal 1 on Page T-33. 5
Perhaps it’s sufficiently covered and I know that they just received funding which is terrific. I 6
just wanted to perhaps propose some language that would further protect and expand our 7
TMA. So looking at Page T-30… [unintelligible] where am I at? T-23. So looking at Program T-1 8
2.2 on Page T-23 at the very bottom it talks about allowing property owners to achieve 9
reductions by contributing to shuttles and programs. I'd like to see after the word programs 10
“such as TMA” if that's something that sounds amenable just to consider that. And then also 11
looking at Page T-24 kind of similar, along those similar lines it's in the same program that's 12
quite a long program. There's a lot of carrots in that program. It's actually the longest program 13
that I've seen. I don't know if organizationally you want to keep it that way, but in any event it 14
talks about fees collected could be used for capital improvements. So is TMA considered a 15
capital improvement? I don't know if that's… And I know capital improvements would include 16
shuttles and things of that nature already. 17
18
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, just for clarification this program grew out of a mitigation measure in the 19
draft EIR. The idea is to require new developments to reduce their trips through programmatic 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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measures. So TDM plans, contributions to the TMA and the shuttle and the like, and then to 1
require that they pay a fee, an impact fee for any trips that they can't reduce through those 2
programmatic means. And the fee would have to be used for capital improvements which are 3
not (interrupted) 4
5
Commissioner Monk: Ok, so we can't assign it to anything other than capital improvements? 6
7
Ms. Gitelman: That’s right. 8
9
Commissioner Monk: Ok. Thanks for letting me know. Not sure if this is the appropriate time 10
to bring it up, but if our TMA turns out to prove results that are successful I would like to see it 11
expanded to Cal Ave. like it is already mentioned in here perhaps regionally or to other cities as 12
a model might be something to consider with each city bearing its own costs. Now I just have a 13
couple of minor things on Page T-25 that policy talks about Electric Vehicle (EV) charging 14
infrastructure. Perhaps this isn't necessary, but it's talking about on the two programs that 15
follow on 4.1 and 4.2 about EV infrastructure requirements I was going to suggest maybe 16
adding electric bicycles (eBikes) or related electric modes of transport, something along those 17
lines. Something with also [following] plug in vehicle infrastructure. It might not be necessary, 18
but it looks like there's a policy set forth that covers it, but then the programs are just limited to 19
vehicles that are electric. Might not really make a difference, but just wanted to point that out. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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1
So just big picture comment; I understand a lot of programs are routine and some are in 2
progress and so, but even taking those off the table there's still a lot of programs in here. So if 3
staff could take a look to see if there are any programs that are redundant or otherwise 4
addressed I would recommend that they do that. I prefer to set this document up for us for 5
staff to succeed in achieving the programs and I think if there's less programs or make it more 6
directed that they’ll be more likely that we’ll get them accomplished. So what I would propose 7
is that staff might pull out some programs that they think don't need to be that are already 8
covered elsewhere or don't need to be in here, present this to us and when we revisit this in 9
December and then we can decide if we want to remove them. So just as a proposal measure. 10
11
Kind of related if a program is completed do we have any processes in place to acknowledge 12
having successfully completed the programs? I think having something like that would be nice 13
to roll out in some capacity. If there's accomplishments that are achieved by completing a 14
program it’d be nice. 15
16
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, I think our (interrupted) 17
18
Commissioner Monk: The community to be aware of 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,
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Ms. Gitelman: Thought is that every December the Commission would review the plan and the 1
implementation programs and that's the point at which you could say hey, these have been 2
completed and these need to be reprioritized, these are no longer relevant. That would be 3
your opportunity each year. 4
5
Commissioner Monk: It looks like I have one more issue. One, this one's a little bit minor as 6
well so Page T-38 this has to do with Goal T-24 that's protecting our local streets. So looking at 7
Policy T-4.4 it says that we should prioritize traffic calming measures for safety over congestion 8
management. And I'm just a little concerned about how that language can be interpreted by 9
staff. I think it could be problematic. It could lead to a lot of interpretations that might hold 10
staff up on decision making and I think that roads are inherently unsafe and so of course we're 11
going to prioritize safety anyway. I don't know that it needs to be set forth in here because 12
what it’s essentially doing is giving more weight to safety over congestion management. So I 13
would just advise that there be a balance or that staff would work in partnership with safety 14
and congestion management together. That's it for now thank you. 15
16
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, thank you. Commissioner Summa. 17
18
Commissioner Summa: So thank you to staff and thank you Hamilton for coming. And I agree 19
with Hamilton that this was sort of it's it was very important Element for everyone in the 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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Comprehensive Plan, but it was one where we had a lot of consensus so that was very nice. So I 1
was very happy with the version that we forwarded to Council and would so I think would have 2
been great if they just had adopted it, but I do think there's some merit… I do think there is 3
some redundancy having read it over and I think it is about shuttle programs and last mile stuff. 4
And all of that stuff is really important and good, but I think it exists in like too many places 5
maybe. So I would agree with that. 6
7
And then at a high level my disappointment which is not like I said I think it's a pretty good 8
document, but at a high level in reading it again I thought there was too much emphasis on the 9
future and not solving the problems we have presently and not enough weight was given to 10
solving neighborhood parking congestion and neighborhood parking problems and current 11
traffic problems including current construction problems which traffic construction issues which 12
I find frustrating. So I wish there had been more of an emphasis on some of those things and I 13
maybe think that the as a whole it relies too much and emphasizes too much future 14
technologies. I mean honestly we have other than electric cars we have no idea what's coming 15
down the pipe. Could be hyper loops, could be and now I hear today giant air what do they call 16
like…? No, dirigibles. Giant I forget what it's called his, Elon Musk's newest thing, but anyway 17
oh no, Sergei… Anyway, I think we all know about it, but they're like giant dirigibles, but this 18
one is massive. So we really don't know how what's coming down the pikes other than electric 19
cars so I wouldn't want to rely too much on aspirational technology that may never materialize. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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1
And once again I think there's too much hope that the capacity of Caltrain once it’s electrified 2
will be able to solve a lot of problems. Once again I don't think Caltrain has come up very 3
clearly with statements about the capacity increase with electrification and it seems pretty 4
minimal to me. And once and if high speed rail comes it’ll also be a diminishment of that any 5
increase because of the blended system. And so I'll leave that at that and then I'll comment on 6
some of my colleagues comments thus far. 7
8
So I also I think the Geng Road thing it's not very clear to me how it would be achieved right 9
now. And I think we have a lot more things that I would prioritize a lot higher than that. I think 10
the idea of trying to use have public transportation on State highways is kind of interesting. 11
That being said 280 is a recognized scenic highways so I'm not sure what the possibilities are 12
there. I have great hopes for Dumbarton rail. Let's see, as for discounted rates for Uber and 13
Lyft drivers I'm not sure about that and I hope my husband's not watching, but since he works 14
at Uber, but and the reason is because they're still putting cars on the road there's a lot of 15
evidence that Uber in San Francisco has increased congestion because more people are opting 16
for single occupancy Ubers and Lyfts. I don't mean to pick on Uber, but any what are they 17
called? Share… TNCs. Any of those people are opting for those rather than public 18
transportation and when public transportation isn't used public transportation agencies tend to 19
want to cut the lines. So it's kind of a self-defeating process I think. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
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2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
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1
Let’s see… I think we've got very clear, clear message to retain LOS both at the CAC and by 2
Council. So I wouldn't want to question that. Let’s see… that’s that. Dumbarton rail... I would 3
like to see the TMA be successful and I think for the TMA to be successful we're going to need a 4
lot more financial support probably from corporations and so I would approve of any 5
development kind of fees to support it. And I think we need to monitor it, it's kind of gotten a 6
slow start unfortunately I think. And as to the T-2.4 the neighborhood stuff I think it's really 7
important to retain a notion of having neighborhood streets that are safe and pleasant for 8
children and pets and residents so I'm in support of that. I'll leave it at that for now. 9
10
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, thank you. Commissioner Rosenblum. 11
12
Commissioner Rosenblum: Thanks for preparing this. It’s exciting to dig into the Comp Plan. 13
It’s my first of these meetings so thank you. 14
15
So I'm going to just also go down the list first in the transportation infrastructure investments I 16
think Geng Road to Laura Lane just isn't like the others meaning this is a Comp Plan, it's a bit 17
weird to have a specific road improvement plan as a like a special point of emphasis. In the 18
Council's report to us I mean the way this should be stated if you're trying to achieve the goal is 19
to reduce traffic on East Bayshore and that this is one of the things that may be considered of 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
course there may be other ways to do that, but it's a bit weird that we have a top line item that 1
is a what appears to be a 700 meter cut through behind a baseball field. It just doesn't feel like 2
it's a Comp Plan item. 3
4
I had a question around one of these items which is the full grade separations. So I see for 5
Caltrain crossings and so this is under Policy T-3.15 I think. Pursue grade separations of all rail 6
crossings along the rail corridor as a City priority. So what does this entail? This could be 7
trenching or this could be elevating, but that the City policy is going to be that all Caltrain 8
crossings should be grade separated. Is that correct? [So I] understand this. Ok. And so that 9
the Program T-3.15.1 is that studies will begin to for each of these projects. Is that right? Ok. 10
11
The next section around SOV use, I like the goals that are already established by area. So I do 12
think the key goals are SOV rate by sections so I appreciate that being in the plan. The shuttle 13
program though I'm sorry to jump from SOV to shuttle because in the same area in supporting a 14
reduction in SOVs. I just think should also be subject to specific goals of ridership and 15
frequency. I think it’s an area that lends itself well to this. There's a lot of transportation 16
studies that were brought to us when the shuttle program came forward around at what level 17
of frequency do people start to see a shuttle as a reliable option. And so I'm not expert in this 18
area, but there are a lot of cities are cited. The Big Blue Bus in Santa Monica is often cited that 19
at some point the frequency of buses reached a tipping point where if you live in Santa Monica 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
it's an obvious thing to jump on the Big Blue Bus. And we're just not there. It's something that 1
is seems to be relevant for school kids and people who have no other option, but it's not 2
something that most people think of as the way to get around Palo Alto and so I think it would 3
be good to have goals in both ridership and frequency as part of the Comp Plan similar to what 4
you've done with the SOV goals. 5
6
TDM requirements and goals; so I think there's a couple things that should be around the TMA 7
and TDM. I echo Commissioner Summa’s note on we should include a goal for a stable funding 8
source for the TMA. As far as the sources for that funding I'm in favor of everything from 9
development fees to having the fees from our parking programs be fall into that, but I don't 10
think right now is the time to be prescriptive on this. But I do think that not having mention of 11
the funding sources in our Comp Plan is a mistake and we could tonight if people want to talk 12
about the preferred funding sources I suppose that's up for discussion, but I'm just more 13
concerned that the only thing that is mentioned is that it's a nonprofit. It makes it feel like it's 14
not the City's business, someone else will take care of it, and I want it to be clear that this 15
should really be the City's business. We need to find and help fund this program if it's 16
important. 17
18
On TDM we talk about so Program T-1.2.2 formalize TDM requirements by ordinance and 19
require new developments above a certain size threshold to repair and implement a TDM plan 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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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 meet performance standards. I agree with this language and I think it's important; however, 1
I also think that we should include a quid pro quo on TDM. I think that developers who do in 2
good faith offer aggressive TDM programs should be subject to lower parking requirements and 3
I would like to see that be part of our Comprehensive Plan. It suggests in other parts of the 4
Comprehensive Plan for example that the CAC recognize that over time parking requirements 5
may change and so there's language in there about periodically evaluating parking needs, but I 6
would like to see this linked to successful TDM implementation on a building level. 7
8
In terms of the discussion on VMT and LOS one thing I would like to see I agree with 9
Commissioner Summa that we're not abandoning LOS, but like to see some the negative 10
consequences of LOS diminished. And I sent around an article that was sent around to the PTC 11
about the unintended consequences of LOS and what it's happened in terms of making every 12
city just try to maximize car throughput. I would like to see us get rid of the grades A through F 13
and we get people here during every meeting that look at LOS and say now it's an F. Like how 14
could we be happy with an F? We’re Palo Alto, we don't get F's. Our kids don't get F’s. This is 15
unacceptable. And the A through F is fairly arbitrary. It's linked to a number of seconds delay 16
per car and I think that if we have the number of seconds delay per car that is sufficient. If 17
people feel like a 10 second delay is unacceptable then so be it, but I don't think it should be 18
subject to an arbitrary grade that we then link to school performance. 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.
For parking this is more a general comment. I think this is one of those areas and we had 1
discussed this in the pre-meeting, I'll bring it up now, that lends itself well to a statement of 2
goals. And in general I think the Transportation Element could benefit from a good statement 3
of goals. Here's what we're trying to achieve as a city and here are the changes that we are 4
adopting versus our last Comp Plan. But this one in particular I think really does lend itself so I 5
would suggest that we as a city recognize that there is a cost to parking. That as a free good be 6
it to a two hour free parking or others we are incentivizing people to over use that asset. 7
Second, that as a city we want to eliminate incentives for over parking so buildings that built 8
too much parking and that many cities are now having parking maximums to eliminate 9
incentives or eliminate possibility that we will invest more in parking than other useful things 10
for our city. And third that where possible we want to have liquidity for parking, meaning 11
pockets of parking are now we force every building to park itself. Ideally we have central 12
resources that can be shared by many buildings and many other cities and our neighbors have 13
adopted this approach where you have a large shared parking garage. Palo Alto seems to have 14
more than other cities, hodgepodges of bits and pieces, sometimes undersized garages, 15
sometimes scale garages, lots of little garages under buildings that are underused because no 16
one else can use them. No one else can access them. So as a principle three I would say 17
liquidity. We want to make it so that we don't have pockets of unused inventory; that we use 18
this valuable asset appropriately. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
So I’m bringing this up I realize it's somewhat outside of individual policies and programs, but I 1
think in general it's easy for people to engage with the principle if these are the principles that 2
we have then people can accept them or resist them, but at least we have some principles that 3
can be linked to the specific policies. Those are all of my items on the Transportation Element 4
and so at the end maybe if we want talk about land use and what we're proposing for the next 5
meeting I'm happy to discuss that at a second round. 6
7
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Thank you. Let me just weigh in with a couple of comments and then 8
we’ll… should, do we have other comments you want to make before we take the break or… 9
yeah. And we have a speaker card. Ok, let me make my comments first and then I will invite 10
Ms. Ellson to come speak. 11
12
So the word that comes to my mind as I review this is Sisyphean. I mean that's the effort that 13
we're taking on on transportation and it’s endless and I'm not sure we're going to get there. 14
But my [unintelligible] concern with all this is that we’re a small village with less than one 15
percent of the regional population pretending we can have an effective standalone 16
transportation policy. And some of the discussions that I've heard tonight, some of the 17
discussions that are in the policy or they’re in the packet would make sense if they were 18
regional policies, but some of these are just unilateral disarmament. If we do them and the rest 19
of the region doesn't I mean like some a discussion about parking. We're in a region that relies 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.
on cars. I mean unfortunately we have a giant probably a $100 billion deficit in regional transit 1
spending to catch up to have an actual reasonably good regional transit grid. And I think what's 2
also lost here is this is Silicon Valley. We all change jobs every couple years in Silicon Valley. I 3
mean I've lived in the same town for 25 years and over the course of that time I've worked in 4
just about every town from San Jose to Belmont. I mean if I’m more ambitious I might go all 5
the way to San Francisco, but that commute looks to me has looked untenable. So I think it's 6
really, really hard to build out on the local plan especially for such a small town in the middle of 7
such a big region that effectively aligns housing and job locations. I just think it's a difficult lift. 8
I mean it’s something you can do on a transitory basis, but it's not something that you can 9
really… you can't really get to a long term stable equilibrium on that just because of this pattern 10
of people changing jobs and people basically don't want to move every time they change jobs. 11
They don't want to yank their kids out of school and it's just the way that people live their lives. 12
13
We do need effective regional transportation. I don't know how to capture that here because 14
most of those most of that spending most of that investment is upstream from us. But without 15
that a lot of these goals turn us into this little island that may or may not be able to function in 16
a self-sufficient way. So I think we should align our a lot of our goals with regional transit 17
investments that as a regional transit improves I know that Caltrain electrification is part of this, 18
but I think that that's just a drop in the bucket. We don't have very good lateral east/west 19
connections. Caltrain takes you to a part of San Francisco when someday when they build out 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.
little more transit in San Francisco it may take you to other parts but, I mean from experience if 1
I need to get to any other part of San Francisco than what served by Caltrain it’s a giant project. 2
I mean the connectivity isn't very good. Connectivity to the East Bay is not very good and we 3
just have to be cognizant that that is something that won't change, but we should build our 4
plan out around tracking what we can do as that connectivity improves. And honestly I don't 5
think it will improve very much between now and 2030. I mean just haven't seen the funding 6
lined up, but hey, I’d love to be wrong on that one. 7
8
I also think that we need to be very rigorous on the Transportation Element about capturing 9
quality of life and user experience. I think LOS is a tool that I mean I somewhat agree that the A 10
through F ratings are not as meaningful as they could be. I mean I've heard other people say 11
that delay variances are more significant than absolute delays. So I'm sure there are quality 12
metrics out there, but we do have to capture quality from a local user experience perspective. 13
I'm not sure VMT captures local user experience at all. So I think it's a useful tool for other 14
objectives, but it's not a useful tool for how we as citizens perceive our interaction with or how 15
we perceive our movement through the transportation network. 16
17
You know VMT actually has some other issues. It's interesting I mean I did a little bit of 18
searching on this. I mean there’s actually some evidence that TNCs are increasing VMT rather 19
than reducing it. We're actually tackling greenhouse gases principally through electrification. 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's a trend that is here. It's moving along pretty fast, but that said I will agree with 1
Commissioner Summa we probably shouldn't build policies around specific technologies 2
because they move so fast. I mean in 1998 hybrids were the hot deal, electric cars were dead. 3
This is the… what it is the Chevy EV1 or something? You know who killed the electric car? 4
Electric cars are hot now, but I mean in 2030 who knows what'll be hot. It could be fuel cells 5
will be hot. TNCs could be hot. We have no way of knowing today if TNCs will kill private car 6
ownership or if they'll kill transit systems. I've heard people say both and I think all we can do is 7
really pay attention and figure this out. No one really knows the adoption pace for 8
autonomous and when it comes if it comes when it comes there is no way to know as of today 9
whether that'll shorten or lengthen average commutes. I've seen some studies that say that 10
when autonomous comes people will commute farther because it's no effort to get in your 11
handy autonomous car and work while you're driving in from Merced or something, some really 12
long distance. So again we these are just things that we just don't know so we have to build out 13
a plan that is somewhat agnostic about technologies that some that somewhat abstract about 14
technologies. 15
16
The other point I would make is that if we're going to reduce parking requirements on buildings 17
around TMA investment or around other commitments I completely support that as long as it 18
comes with durable long term support for those programs. I mean by durable I mean like 35 to 19
50 year durations. Because giving somebody a concession in 2020 because they do see and 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 will survive until 2070 just because they're doing something because they're putting a little 1
bit of money into a program and in 2019-2020 just doesn't seem like a good trade off. So we 2
need to find programs that match the timeframe of the concession to the financial 3
commitments that are being made. Again, we need to track what the trends are and over time 4
it may be that we need more parking, it may be that we need less parking, these are somewhat 5
unknowable from where we sit today. 6
7
To pile onto the Geng Road observation I think that several people I mean Commissioner 8
Rosenblum has made this point, several of my colleagues have made the point, but I think that 9
the real principle here is somehow we need to do something at the Embarcadero/101 10
intersection. And whether we frame that up as reducing traffic or increasing LOS or something 11
like that that seems like a reasonable policy goal, but sort of taking it down to the level of this 12
particular thing might be a little too specific. If somebody came up with a couple hundred 13
million dollars to build a bridge connector from Embarcadero out into out to the Dumbarton 14
we'd probably accept that and I think we'd say that's consistent with the policy, but again I 15
don't see anybody with a checkbook in hand for that one today. So anyhow those are my high 16
level comments on this Element. 17
18
Commissioner Gardias: Thank you; excellent comments. And also same comment to all my 19
colleagues; I think that all the comments are brilliant and very interesting. And so just 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.
saying this because I don't really see that this is the way of reviewing Comprehensive Plan. I 1
believe that each of these topics that they mentioned is very important and should be a subject 2
of a separate discussion for this reason the discussion should be structured otherwise some 3
value that was offered here by Commissioner Summa, Rosenblum, and others may be lost. And 4
then or some other value that maybe it's not recognized by others maybe put in some report, 5
but would not be agreed upon by the colleagues. So I still would like to maybe change the tone 6
of discussion just either focus on some topic and then pretty much extract the knowledge from 7
this minds and then have comprehensive picture on variety of items that we were discussing. 8
So that's I’m just after this exchange I'm just getting to this conclusion that we should really just 9
have this discussion structured a different way. 10
11
And so let me go back to some comments that I started with. So when I was making a 12
suggestion of recognizing 280 and 101 as the transportation lanes I didn't envision the policy 13
that is on Page T-58, T-8.8. What I envision I envisioned a route that has stops and then pretty 14
much it allows to transport the commuters from point A to point B and that point B would be 15
intersection of 280 and Page Mill Road. And then there should be a bus stop there that would 16
allow commuters to change into a shuttle that would be crossing that, that would be passing 17
over 280 on the bridge of Page Mill Road. That’s my perspective and for this reason I would 18
argue that the transportation not of the of Embarcadero and Oregon should be rebuilt because 19
first of all it's a loss of land and then pretty much it would allow to open a bus stop 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 101 side. And then if we had I know that this is something not of the short term value, 1
but if we had something like a policy of the sort that would maybe steer some ideas at adjacent 2
municipalities. We all take 280/101 and we know that others may benefit from the same stops 3
because some municipalities like Redwood City they have similar situation when there is an 4
overpass of one highway like for example 92 over 280 which is a perfect place for having a bus 5
stop and then transporting population from Redwood City to Palo Alto to San Jose. So with 6
saying this, so this was the proposal number one. 7
8
Then also we have other opportunities of course of long term of a transportation routes which 9
is the tunneling of the Caltrain which I think should be in this document. Again, I know this is 10
not the short term win, but also we should recognize probably in the document a policy that we 11
would support Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) under El Camino. I strongly believe that there 12
should be BART under El Camino. So with this I'm going to just go through the to the through 13
my idea of just pretty much going from top to bottom. Yes please. 14
15
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Let me do this before we get going on another [unintelligible]. I mean 16
we have a speaker of card. 17
18
Commissioner Gardias: Sure, of course. Yes. 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.
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Let me invite Ms. Ellson to come speak and then let's maybe just caucus 1
on how we should move through this next round and how that aligns with what we can do 2
effectively over the next hour or so. 3
4
Penny Ellson: Thank you and good evening. My name's Penny Ellson and I'm speaking as an 5
individual tonight. So I just had a couple of comments on some of the goals. Goal T-4 talks 6
about protecting neighborhood streets and does it specifically, but it what it doesn't it sort of 7
excludes the residential arterials almost specifically and in fact some of those residential 8
arterials are school commute corridors as we well know. These are sensitive areas and it's 9
when it talks about slowing traffic it really kind of limits that to residential neighborhoods and 10
in fact we have some areas on our residential corridors that are heavily used by school 11
commuting children and the police are unable to enforce for speeds because the 85th 12
percentile speeds are way too high for them to do that. That is a problem we need to solve and 13
I hope we can get some language and Goal T-4 and Policy T-4.2 that would address the des… 14
the City of Palo Alto designated school commute corridors. We might draw some of that 15
language from the school commute corridors policy that City Council approved on October 27, 16
2003. 17
18
And then secondly in program T-662 it talks about continuing to provide bicycle education. In 19
fact there's sort of there is kind of a lot of people misunderstand that Safe Routes to School is 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.
just about bikes. We are all about getting people into all kinds of alternative modes of 1
transportation and that is a big part of our education program. We start in kindergarten 2
through second grade with pedestrian safety skills and we start working on bike skills in third 3
grade. So really this should read “continue to provide bike and pedestrian traffic safety skills 4
education for adults and children in the public schools, parks and rec programs, and the 5
juvenile traffic diversion program. We need to specifically call out pedestrian skills because 6
that's very important and I don't want to lose that first part of our program that lasts for three 7
years. 8
9
And finally I just want to comment really briefly in my interactions with VTA in the last year I 10
would say that our transit vision is more ambitious than we are ever likely to see happen. We 11
are about to see South Palo Alto transit significantly cut and I hope that the maps in the new 12
Comp Plan will reflect that. It's probably not going to be implemented till spring, but we should 13
probably put that in there. Anyway, thank you very much for your time and I've heard some 14
interesting comments this evening. Nice work. 15
16
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Thank you very much, appreciate the comments. Ok, so let's just check 17
now what we want to do next. I mean I think there's a couple things we could do. We could I 18
think that Commissioner Gardias still has some pending comments on the Plan. I think we 19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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 allow time for that. Do other people have additional comments or responses or sort of 1
what do we want to do next? Yeah, go ahead. 2
3
Commissioner Rosenblum: So I'd like with you as Acting Chair to make the proposal. And 4
yesterday we had a pre-commission meeting, talked about basically this round going forward 5
and each person listing their hot button items. Staff was going to take the opportunity to note 6
those items and consolidate. And then we were going take a break and then we’re going to 7
come back and see if there is consensus among the Commissioners around those items. Which 8
ones do we have consensus that yes we'd like to see this done and which ones we’re split and if 9
there are any things that we left out. I'm still in favor that approach. So we already did round 10
one. I think staff would then come back with the full list so I think this does answer 11
Commissioner Gardias’ request to make sure we don't lose any of this because we will get to 12
see the list and see if it matches your expectation. So I'm personally still in favor of this 13
approach, but again I would just defer to the Chair [Note-Acting Chair]. Whatever you want to 14
do is (interrupted) 15
16
Acting Chair Waldfogel: So the only nuance I have here is that I think some of us said most of 17
what we wanted to say in round one. I think that some of us deferred it and I want to just 18
make sure we get everything, we want to get all the round one comments on the table before 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.
we take a couple minute break. So if you have additional comments that you want for round 1
one or anybody who has them just raise your hand right now so that we can get those in. Yes. 2
3
Commissioner Rosenblum: I'm fully in agreement with all of the last speaker's comments 4
around I hope that I could repeat all of them so they make it on to the record, but in order not 5
to repeat them if they were, if there's already a record then I am in favor of basically every 6
comment. And if you don't have them I'm happy to repeat point by point. 7
8
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Yes, Commissioner Summa. 9
10
Commissioner Summa: Well, I do want to hear the rest of what Commissioner Gardias wants to 11
share and I also appreciated Ms. Ellson’s comments and I also very much appreciated some of 12
Acting Chair Waldfogel’s comments especially since they kind of coincided with mine, but which 13
were much more eloquently put. So and I would be happy for there not to be I don't think for 14
what gets transmitted to Council we have to say oh, there was a majority of us who agreed with 15
something or didn't agree. I think they could just, it could just be a list. I don't see why the 16
majority is necessarily relevant and I'll leave it at that for now. 17
18
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, thank you. Commissioner Gardias, please continue. 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 Gardias: Yeah, I mean actually I haven't started my comments yet. I just want to 1
make it clear, right, that I just pretty much expressed the overall perspective of this how the 2
transportation should look like in Palo Alto. But so I will get to my comments, but then the end 3
goal is not clear to me because we're talking about the list that would be presented to the 4
Council. I believe that we're going to present the updated draft so pretty much the changes 5
that we agree upon of programs and policies would be by our vote would be included in this 6
document. Isn't that right? 7
8
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you for the opportunity to clarify. We're not proposing to do another 9
version of this document. The idea is to transmit a list of your recommended changes and the 10
issues that you identified to the Council. 11
12
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Just as a point of clarification and I may ask for some legal backup on 13
this, but my understanding is that our responsibility is if we choose to transmit a report to the 14
City Council the contents of the report are not defined by the code, we have no statutory 15
obligation to explicitly review or to transmit an alternate version of the Comp Plan, but is that 16
an accurate summary of where we are? 17
18
[Albert Yang, Senior Deputy City Attorney]: Yes, I think that's fair. 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 Gardias: No, I have this understanding. I’m just not sure pretty much what... I 1
just don't see how this how without the specific resolutions how this would be converted into 2
action. Because if Council receives the list of our proposals which will be lengthy and very rich I 3
don't see the Council to debate each point by point, each policy by policy, and program by 4
program. I just simply don't see it practically. So I'm not really sure about the value. I mean I 5
understand if that is pretty much the direction I can participate in this, but I don't really believe 6
that the value we would be proposing would be of some significance. 7
8
Ms. Gitelman: I guess we'll leave it to the Commission about whether you want to take the time 9
to hammer through the list of ideas that you come up with and offer of the Council specific 10
Motions. That's entirely up to you. If you think that would be the most effective way to 11
communicate what your views on this work product are or as the Acting Chair indicated just 12
simply the list of ideas that have been discussed here and the transcript of your meeting. It’s 13
up to you. 14
15
Commissioner Gardias: Right. 16
17
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Let me just again my understanding is that we have a series of meetings 18
agendized for the or where this agenda is over a series of meetings. As far as I know nothing 19
we do tonight needs to be definitive in the recommendation. I think that tonight we collect 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.
information. I think if we choose to there may be a point in this process where we submit some 1
language for a report. I'm not sure tonight needs to be that night. So I don’t think you should 2
feel like this is your last chance to weigh in on specific language if you believe that needs to be 3
proposed. 4
5
Commissioner Gardias: Right and I understand this, but I we had already this discussion that 6
pretty much was we had like what two months ago about where we also spoke about the 7
length of the review which we was limited to the 90 days. But and we know that the Council 8
wants to implement the plan and we know that pretty much the Council this is the Council led 9
plan as opposed to Commission led plan. That's how it ended up; however, just if we commit 10
still this 90 days to the input to the… I would see the more concrete input to the Council as 11
opposed to list, even prioritized list. I probably would be looking for some agreement on 12
maybe on the top items that where the consensus would emerge where we would pretty much 13
say this policy, specific policy would have to change. So then the Council would pretty much 14
just go through the list of the policies would say yes or no. So but nevertheless let me just go 15
through my comments. 16
17
So I'm going to go through the top, top to bottom, and maybe I will just stop to give other a 18
chance to speak. So I'm going to go through from Page T-22 which is the first Goal T-1. What I 19
am proposing to include in the in this language phrase of encouraging small business and home 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.
business and that is something that we discussed with Jonathan at some certain point when we 1
were discussing the Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU). And it may be controversial today where 2
pretty much we have a pure residential neighborhoods that by policy are not tainted with home 3
offices. And I'm not talking about this that practitioners that pretty much like bookkeepers that 4
do their books and nobody just visits them. I think that at one point of time there may be a 5
need maybe in some neighborhoods that are ripe for this opening to allow for to allow to some 6
to conduct a home business that would allow for visitors coming to the residence. And that this 7
from the why this would be in the Transportation Element because it would be one of those 8
polices that would reduce traffic because those practitioners would not need to commute to 9
the offices, seek for office space, and so forth. So that's one of the proposals. 10
11
When I go to the next one is policy on Page T-23, Policy T-1.1 which I don't really understand 12
this policy so pretty much and there are some others that are bracketed as new and I'm just 13
giving this as an example. Some of those policies they don't they are not very actionable. So I 14
don't understand pretty much a what we would do underneath. So this is just an example of 15
those polices that I don't understand what we pretty much should be doing in response to it. 16
17
In terms of the TDM which is that program T-1.2.2 on Page T-24 there is a list of the reduction 18
of the percentage reduction in the certain areas. And I think that I remember what was that 19
behind this there was a top level of 30 percent reduction, overall reduction by TDM. We had 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.
this discussion like two years ago. I wasn't or maybe this was about TMA. I don't remember 1
specifically, but the idea behind this percentages was that pretty much they were not they were 2
there was no scientific calculation behind those reductions. So for this reason I was questioning 3
those percentages and specifically I remember TMA that was cited by Mayor Pat Burt in the 4
press as one of the goals. Today we know that there will be no 30 percent reduction as of TMA. 5
So I’m just question this goals because if there is no dollars there is no budget. There is no 6
program to reach those reductions. They pretty much they mean nothing and TMA example 7
was clear that 30 percent reduction that just came to us they put it on the slides and then it's 8
been a year and a half or two years I think that that reduction is zero. 9
10
Ms. Gitelman: Can I just offer (interrupted) 11
12
Commissioner Gardias: Sure. 13
14
Ms. Gitelman: Some comments on that? First this policy that you're citing with the numeric 15
values and on Page T-24 those are goals that we're suggesting would be applied to private 16
developers who come in and propose new development of a certain size. And these numbers 17
were set in consultation with our traffic engineering team and purposely set to be aggressive, 18
but achievable for the different districts that were shown. This is in their best judgment, but 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.
knowing what they know about the land uses and the ability to achieve reductions associated 1
with various techniques. So that's where this derives from and it's not related to the TMA. 2
3
Then with regard to the TMA I think it's not accurate to say that they haven’t achieved any 4
reductions. They have some pilot programs that are showing very good results. I don't 5
remember offhand whether they're at 8 percent or they're not at 30 percent yet, but they're 6
only really just beginning their work and just getting the kind of funding they're going to need 7
to make a real reduction. I think in the budget for this coming for this fiscal year the Council 8
allocated enough that they project they can get to a 14 percent reduction, so almost halfway to 9
the 30 percent goal. And think the attention of the CAC and the Council in these policies about 10
the TMA and then it’s kind of highlighting the TMA in this section was really to elevate that as 11
an important program that the City supports and will continue to support in an effort to achieve 12
the goal that they've articulated. 13
14
Commissioner Gardias: I understand, but it was and of course those goals are very noble, but if 15
there will be if they are not achievable I'd rather not have them on paper. Because then pretty 16
much this is not becoming then is then this document is becoming unattainable and that is a 17
problem. So I'd rather just have this goals somewhere in the subsequent plan where they could 18
be revised, but not at this level. If there is truly nothing of the science behind those numbers. I 19
haven't seen the calculations [unintelligible] if the if this truly manual of the transportation, if 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 Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) provides the basis for the 50 percent reduction in 1
the Downtown district I'd like to pretty much see to receive that is substantiated. If not I'd like 2
to just pretty much remove them or somehow put them underneath so it's not at the policy 3
level. 4
5
In on Program T-1.23 I think that this Commission it's a new program and now we're talking 6
about TMA. This Commission needs to evaluate really TMA annually. We haven't seen TMA 7
groups since at least year and a half if I remember correctly. 8
9
Going to the reducing greenhouse gas emissions this is T-25. There are some policies about 10
new programs about for example Program T-1.3.1 to develop EV and EV promotion program. 11
That is I'd like to understand how this differs from the building code? What are we doing and 12
then I think that 2016 California Building Code went into effect on January the 1st if I remember 13
correctly. So what are we doing more than it is required in the in the code? 14
15
Ms. Gitelman: This is a program that would call on the City to develop additional programs or 16
strategies to try and get an increase in electric vehicle usage. So it doesn't specify exactly what 17
those programs would be, but I could imagine they could be anything from financial incentives 18
to requirements on existing multi-family housing, any number of other strategies that are not 19
currently in the building code. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Gardias: Right, but my question is what would what additional value above 2
California Building Code this program would provide? If this program would provide not 3
incremental value I just I’m not really sure if that is of value all together. I think that pretty the 4
California regulations are becoming very are coming at a fast pace and they are very restrictive 5
and then we may be in the catch up mode after the California Building Codes not in the 6
forefront with this program. 7
8
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Can I ask a point of clarification? Is this binding on the Utilities 9
Department too, the Comp Plan? 10
11
Ms. Gitelman: Like all of the implementation programs I mean this is something that we hope 12
could be accomplished in the 15 year life of the plan. This one in particular is saying to examine 13
the barriers and opportunities to expand EV use in town. 14
15
Acting Chair Waldfogel: But might that, might the Utilities Department take this up as a call to 16
action? 17
18
Ms. Gitelman: I mean I think they're already doing. I mean I think all departments are already 19
looking at this. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Gardias: So specifically there is a California Green Building Standards a section of 2
California [unintelligible]. And then in terms of this if we're going to have this program I'd like 3
to see the note that would allow the private infrastructure to invest in this in the vehicle 4
charging stations. This talks only about the City and I'd like to see the program that would allow 5
private entities to invest in this charging station. 6
7
The same I'm going to the transit use on Page T-26. If you and program I'd like to direct you to 8
Program T-1.6.2 that talks about working with Caltrain, Amtrak, and public bus operators to 9
expand bicycle storage and public transit vehicles and so forth. So before we had before Bay 10
Area had started public transportation program if you remember there was a network of the 11
privately operated railroads and bus routes as well. So I would like to include in this language 12
word private to see if we can accommodate any private bus operators. 13
14
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Do you have many more pages of comments? 15
16
Commissioner Gardias: Yes. 17
18
Acting Chair Waldfogel: [Unintelligible] most efficient way to transmit all this. I mean in terms 19
of process I just wanted to check what is the best process because I think this is more specific 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.
than we necessarily will be able to develop general opinions on. I mean would it would 1
transmitting all these as an e-mail or memo be a format that we could take on or continue the 2
topic? I mean transmit it and then continue the topic? I mean it’s just that I think going 3
through these one by one I want to make sure all these issues get raised. I want to make sure 4
we do it in a productive way. 5
6
Ms. Costello: We don’t… we can obviously take them as a written product, but we're not sure 7
whether some issues would be raised that are of interest and we can transmit those to the 8
Council and they would go as comments that's fine. That's enough. All these are options for all 9
of you. I think the downside of that the upside it's more efficient which is desirable. The 10
downside is there may be things that are brought up that are of interest to the entire 11
Commission that (interrupted) 12
13
Acting Chair Waldfogel: What if we were to say that we would open this up for these written 14
transmittals that can then get redistributed and if we were to hold this topic open and we 15
continue it to the next meeting to just finalize if there's any other discussion. So that way we 16
have both a process to feed all this in and a process as a Commission to discuss those 17
comments. I’m just looking for a format that gets all the issues on the table, ensures that we 18
have that we all have a chance to comment on it, but doesn't necessarily get us doesn't 19
necessarily keep us here until midnight. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Ms. Gitelman: We could certainly do that. The only thing I’ll note for the Commission is the 2
next meeting we're going to talk about the big sections in Land Use that all that some of you 3
have expressed a deep interest in like all the growth management policies in Goal L-1. So we 4
can certainly do that if Commissioner Gardias wanted to send us a written list we could send it 5
back out to the Commission in your packet for the next meeting and then you could quickly 6
review it and identify any that are of concern (interrupted) 7
8
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Let me just take people’s temperature on this whether we’d rather go 9
through this or we'd rather just whether we’d rather just get these transmitted in some other 10
form. No comments? 11
12
Commissioner Rosenblum: I'm personally a little torn on this. I don't think this is going in a 13
great direction because I think what we're going to end up with is a mismatch of a very long list 14
of Commissioner Gardias’ specific items matched against some philosophical or a more high 15
level points that were raised by most other Commissioners and I think that it's going to be hard 16
to match them. And so if the intention was to get it all out then to have a reconciliation process 17
where we go and try to see if there's consensus around individual items I don't think that that's 18
going to happen by this process. But I also recognize that Commissioner Gardias should have all 19
of his input properly recorded so I don't know what the right format is for 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.
1
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Yeah and that's exactly I mean I want to make sure we capture all this. 2
I want to make sure that as a body we have an opportunity to comment and deliberate on it, 3
but I'm not sure that I mean if it's another five minutes I think great. But if it’s, if there's a lot of 4
this tonight the question is will we be able to effectively deliberate on it tonight? 5
6
Commissioner Rosenblum: I will… if I could add just one quick thing? So Commissioner Gardias 7
my observation is that you're mixing up two things which is you're listing your points, but also 8
having a dialogue back and forth with staff trying to convince them of your points. And the 9
listing of your points is like five percent of the… EV’s, should they, should you have the ability 10
for charging stations to have private enterprise invest in them? That's a five second statement 11
verses the couple minutes that follows it about the justification and what staff thinks, etcetera. 12
And so my belief is that actually you could get through your list quite efficiently, but you're 13
mixing kind of staff discussion, validation, arguments for with the list. So that's my personal 14
observation is that there could be a more efficient way of doing it. 15
16
Commissioner Gardias: Yeah so let me think how I can adjust. I totally understand it, right? I 17
prepared it in a different way because I was thinking that at the end of the day Council will get 18
our specific recommendations and I was concerned with this review to be done at the top level 19
because then we would just burden Council with if they accept list of our observations 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.
rewriting this code if they choose to accept them, those comments. That was so I'd rather just 1
pretty much go through specific policies like this one that you proposed which I really like was 2
about the shareablity of the parking structure which I think that there should be a separate 3
policy added which is not in the parking section that would speak that parking infrastructure 4
the new developments, new and existing development of parking infrastructure would be 5
sharable with the public and cross city parking shareable program, right? So that would be 6
specific policy I'd like to see being added to this. 7
8
So let me at I will think how to capture the comments. Let me add couple of other ones that I 9
was thinking of. So first of all I would like to just question the need for the transportation 10
center. That we have next to the Cal Station. This is the future location of the University 29 11
and then I think that there is opportunity to relieve that area of the transportation of the bus 12
parking and loading and offloading and then commit this area to the housing and retail in the 13
future. And then relocate the transportation transit center somewhere else. So I will probably 14
convey the other comments in writing or a… 15
16
Commissioner Monk: I'd like to add on to what you were just referring to in regards to parking. 17
I agree with your wanting to make a policy there and when Commissioner Rosenblum plan put 18
forth the idea of liquidity of parking I agree that there's probably a lot of parking out there 19
that's not utilized because we don't have access as you mentioned. I don't know about legal 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 in regards to this, but I would like to see some encouragement of technology. I believe 1
there's apps that are the Airbnb for parking. So that's what I'm referring to when I talk about 2
legality and policies and that nature, but this community talks about congestion and parking all 3
the time next to jobs/housing ratio. It's like those three things all the time and what are we 4
doing really about parking? 5
6
I don't know if it's within the purview of the TMA or not. If it's not maybe we should consider 7
adding it otherwise I would propose a program could be to put together a community group 8
that could examine innovations in parking solutions and technology. I think some of the apps 9
are called Spot or JustPark things like that. I'd also look to nontraditional concrete parking 10
structures this is a 20 year plan. We don't know what's happening in the future and what 11
developments we’re going have with regard to public transportation and otherwise and 12
needing to have some flexibility in repurposing the land so things like automated mechanical 13
parking systems that can maximize parking efficiency that are also a cost savings to the City and 14
help also reduce environmental impacts are the types of things that I'd like to see a real 15
emphasis put on. Like a real group put together real policy behind it. 16
17
Commissioner Gardias: Yeah, so if I may add to this, right? Because it's interesting thought and 18
I was hoping that we can have some discussion because Commissioner Rosenblum had when he 19
spoke about this he also had vision that during the that in the proximity of the transportation 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.
centers if there is TDM program, successful program, implemented then there should be the 1
owner of the property should be given the bonus of the parking reduction. So I was having 2
opposite thought and this was based on the reason, but because the public transportation is 3
not picking up after the growth rates of the jobs and housing the at this moment we really 4
cannot afford to provide the bonuses for the parking. Because we would deplete ourselves 5
with the space for parking cars that is truly desirable even if there is a mitigation of TDM 6
parking. What I would be proposing was to require fully parked facilities, either housing or 7
offices being built, but then decouple the ownership of the housing from the ownership of the 8
parking and thus pretty much change that opened those structures underneath to the public 9
and then allow to pretty much to take profits to take private organizations to profit from either 10
renting or selling those parking spaces. But this would be detached from the parking ownership 11
of the inhabitants of this building. 12
13
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Yes, Doria. 14
15
Commissioner Summa: So I think what you guys are all talking about is in the event that there 16
are under parked residential structures that if they chose to do so obviously it would have to be 17
at the buildings, the building would have to be interested in this, that they would be able to let 18
businesses use them. Which I think is a great idea, but it's also already happening. The 19
Epiphany Hotel valet parks in is it called Lytton House? The retirement house? Lytton Gardens. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
So these things are already happening and because a lot of times necessity is one step ahead of 1
planning so it could be that we need to identify the correct agency to have a little outreach 2
program to see if there's other opportunities like this. So I don't know if it would be TMA or a 3
city staff person. It's just probably that people haven't thought about it. So I think that's a fine 4
idea. Why waste parking? 5
6
Commissioner Rosenblum: And again I think we're kind of out of line with the original process, 7
but the things I brought up have been mentioned a couple of times so I want to clarify. I 8
actually think that the parking plan that the City has pursued for the last couple of years is quite 9
intelligent. So almost they there's a three legged stool around parking supply, parking 10
wayfinding, and residential protections, etcetera that I think are quite logical. So I actually think 11
the City's made a lot of progress in this regard. 12
13
The thing that I object to is a structural issue. Because we are concerned with buildings “under 14
parking” we force each of them to fully park and as a result what we end up with is this 15
hodgepodge of subscale parking garages that even if you were to unbundle them which I agree 16
with. I agree with Commissioner Gardias. They should be unbundled. You should be able to 17
have ownership of parking space be separate from the unit or an office and those offices should 18
have to pay for their parking spaces individually. And if a person doesn't have a car they 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.
shouldn't be burdened with the price of a parking space. If I have two cars I buy a second one 1
in the apartment building, but that should be my cost to bear. 2
3
However, what we do as a result of all this is the subscale parking garages even if unbundled 4
are really inefficient so imagine again that there's been studies of traffic patterns in downtown 5
areas and a lot of it are people just circling around looking for parking. And when you have 6
these is what you find is I go into one building that is built for 30 spaces and hope that 1 or 2 7
are unoccupied and I come out go to the next one and the next one and so even if you 8
unbundle like one thing would be to have a vendor with valet parkers that know where all the 9
buildings are, but again I think that that is a non-obvious solution. The obvious solution is I 10
think to prioritize more liquid parking which is to put the money in in lieu fees around scale 11
parking garages that are usable by many companies where possible and not to prioritize each 12
building having their own private walled garden parking lot. So I think that's a more intelligent 13
thing. And not only that it’s not some fantasy. We see this in Redwood City, we see this in all 14
of our neighbors. It's not unusual to have a combination of paid parking by zone, full scale 15
parking garages, unbundled parking in buildings, and parking that allows the right ratio that is 16
on site. There certainly has to be some parking onsite. 17
18
My second point though around reduction for TDM we tend to make contradictory statements 19
up here. We talk about not having enough funding for TDM programs. And so my suggestion is 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.
where does the funding come from? Well, building parking spaces is incredibly expensive. So 1
every space in Palo Alto we estimate is $60,000. That several projects have come before us and 2
have offered that instead of building 2 extra spaces or instead of building 10 extra spaces they 3
could supply thirty years to Commissioner Waldfogel’s [Note-Acting Chair] point of Caltrain Go 4
Passes to every man, woman, and child in the building. So in perpetuity and they still come out 5
ahead. And so then we can add to our wish list. What else do we want them to give? If they 6
give a bike every resident they’d still come out ahead. If they gave free bike repairs for life to 7
every resident they still come out ahead. All of their Amazon Fresh orders paid for they still 8
come out ahead. Like the fact is building parking spaces is incredibly expensive and you can 9
come up with a package of things that compensate for not building those spaces. 10
11
So my point for Commissioner Gardias is that when you are in the appropriate place in 12
exchange for aggressive TDM measures that actually achieve the 30 percent reduction that 13
you're skeptical of, but many buildings have achieved this, that they should be rewarded by 14
basically having the money available to make those aggressive TDM measures real. Otherwise 15
there's no incentive for them to do anything. They just fully parked the building. We're just 16
going to make them pay more money for parking and that money could have gone to 17
something good for the City which is getting rid of our cars. So anyway I wanted to explain a 18
couple of my comments and why I care about this. 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 Gardias: For the record we’re just starting. May I? Ok, so no. I mean I didn't I 1
mean I totally support that pretty much if there is an aggressive measure of TDM 2
implementation that building owners should be rewarded with implementing this. So for this 3
reason I envision that the separation of the either ownership or sub-ownership of the 4
underground parking garage so pretty much that would allow for separation of the cost and 5
revenue, separation of the profits, that would pretty much allow for separate cost and profit 6
valuation of the building that would be without the parking cost and garages separately. That 7
would also allow us to truly assess [unintelligible] demands and supply of the parking stalls 8
because if there would be a separate ownership of those or some separate management that 9
would pretty much that would allow us to understand where what is true cost of the parking? 10
Is the demand met or it's still there. 11
12
Acting Chair Waldfogel: I think that there are good points on this. I'm not sure going to resolve 13
this tonight. The question is what do… do we want to capture that there's some disagreement 14
about parking policy? I think that Commissioner Monk had a did you still have a comment that 15
you want to make before we take a quick break? 16
17
Commissioner Monk: Yeah, I don’t think we’re looking to solve it here and now. I think what 18
we're trying to do is ask Council to approve a policy that would enable us to really examine this 19
issue and address it in a meaningful way because I don't know that that's happening. I think 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
that we’re counter to with all due respect Vice-Chair’s comments about us being a small village. 1
Compared to Manhattan we are, but Palo Alto’s a world renown city and we’re the technology 2
capital of the world. We can come up with a solution to this problem. There’s a lot of 3
brainpower here and innovation and I think if there's a team that's dedicated to really looking 4
at we can come up with something that will alleviate our parking issues. So I propose to leave it 5
at that for now. 6
7
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great. Before I stop for a few minutes so that staff can catch their 8
breaths, just one question for you; does the Comp Plan need to touch on any high speed rail 9
related issues? I'm not sure they're in here. Like for example, does the Comp Plan, should the 10
Comp Plan reflect on whether we would want a Caltrain, I mean a high speed rail stop if Cal, if 11
high speed rail is built? I mean are these elements that should be captured or are captured? 12
Just any comments on that? 13
14
Ms. Gitelman: The plan certainly could include a specific policy or a position on high speed rail. 15
I think there's something about it in here and (interrupted) 16
17
Acting Chair Waldfogel: I'm not an advocate; I'm just asking whether that's been part of the 18
dialogue up till now. 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. Costello: It has been part of the dialogue. It hasn't got to the level of specificity of whether 1
there should be a Cal a rail a station here in Palo Alto, but there has been and there are policies 2
primarily focused on things like collaboration and minimizing any negative impacts. 3
4
Acting Chair Waldfogel: It's just that they're the Council may need to decide whether you need 5
to advocate for that or whether they need to advocate for that to be elsewhere. Anyway I 6
don't want to discuss that right now. I just I wanted to ask the question. Why don't we take a 7
few minutes, regroup. Yeah and then we'll…. and then we'll continue after that. 8
9
Commissioner Monk: I had one minor addition that I omitted initially, very short. Just referring 10
to the Map T-1 that has to do with the regional transit connections; we also need to include the 11
relationship to the commercial centers because that's not listed. 12
13
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Ok, 10 minutes. 14
15
[The Commission took a break] 16
17
Acting Chair Waldfogel: We just had a discussion. Do you want to just outline the alternative? 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. Costello: Very graciously. Commissioner Waldfogel [Note-Acting Chair] realized that trying 1
to take all the really good comments that have been made and make them into a nice 2
condensed list right now on the fly might be beyond the skill level of the staff and consultants, 3
but so really to kind of pull this together in a useful way here's what we're thinking of doing. 4
We will take the comments from tonight and we will we are we will create a list. We will try 5
and identify the areas that we thought we heard consensus on and we will bring that list back 6
at the next meeting. 7
8
Now in order to make the next meeting because we see a real advantage to having this come 9
back to you quickly while you remember, not that you wouldn't remember it a month from 10
now, but while it's fresher in your memory we need to just take what you gave us tonight and 11
put that together and not try and get more from you. Not individual written comments or 12
anything. We won't be able to add those and get a staff report out to you for the next meeting, 13
but we will come back at the next meeting. We'll keep the hearing open and we'll continue the 14
item so that you can take a look at the list and you can say yeah, those that captures our 15
comments or not. We’ll be modest. You know we might have missed something. And that 16
captures… yeah we had, we do feel like we have consensus on the areas or we don’t and we 17
can go on from there. And then if there are written individual comments that people want to 18
write I'm not discouraging you from doing that, but they won't get included in this list. You can 19
do that, but it'll be attached because we won't we have to turn this around and get it out on 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.
Friday or get it drafted on Friday and into production. So that's, but feel free to send additional 1
comments. They can be brought up next at the next meeting. They just won't be incorporated 2
in this list. Does that captures what we? 3
4
Acting Chair Waldfogel: I think it does and I think that it's essentially what we discussed before 5
with the exception that we're just deferring the collection and production to give everybody a 6
little more time to do a good job on that. Do we have any I mean are there any…? Yes. 7
8
Commissioner Summa: So I think that Commissioner Gardias had a lot more comments so I'm 9
just trying to understand the process. So the we're going to continue this, we're going have a 10
list, and then we're going to have another meeting on transportation so that additional 11
comments could bear have equal weight. Is that? 12
13
Ms. Costello: Well, what I'm saying is if Commissioner Gardias or any other Commissioner 14
wants to submit written comments, that's fine. We will send them out. We will what we're 15
going to use in terms of creating the list where we think there's consensus and where the 16
comments that we already have something that's… that's going to be of what was discussed 17
tonight. So then when it comes back at the next meeting you all can take a look at the written 18
comments and say well, I want to add these two. And every comment that everyone makes the 19
transcript will be transmitted to the Council and any written comments will be transmitted 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.
the Council. So we don't discourage written comments. That's fine to do it. It's just that what 1
we're going to try and do I think Commissioner Waldfogel [Note-Acting Chair] said it, we're 2
going to do what we promised to, what we set out to do. We’re just not going to try to do it on 3
the fly tonight. We're going to take what happened tonight and create a set of comments and 4
then they'll be an additional meeting where transportation will be one of the topics. 5
6
Commissioner Summa: Ok, so then the final whatever go whatever is referred to Council finally 7
will won't be the list from this evening because we haven't completed, but will be the list from 8
the second transportation meeting? 9
10
Ms. Costello: Right, right. 11
12
Commissioner Summa: Meaning if… ok. 13
14
Ms. Costello: Right. 15
16
Acting Chair Waldfogel: And just to that point I mean I still encourage… I mean we still have 17
time. The mikes are open. If there are additional issues that anyone would like raise tonight to 18
get onto the list I think we can (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. Costello: Yes. 1
2
Acting Chair Waldfogel: We can do that. 3
4
Ms. Gitelman: And I, I’d just add one thing, I’m sorry. 5
6
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Yes, please. 7
8
Ms. Gitelman: I think we do want to preserve the opportunity to go on to Land Use at the next 9
meeting so our hope would be that we could talk about the list that we prepare on 10
Transportation, the areas where there are consensus, then any written comments we receive. 11
If the Commission wants to give us direction on simply attaching those or merging them 12
somehow and then have an opportunity to move on to the first set of Land Use issues which 13
are big issues. 14
15
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Right and I think with all due respect I mean we may end up keeping 16
these items open continuing them so that we can keep coming back to them. I think as we go 17
through this they'll be some iteration as we understand more. So we'll kind of see how that 18
process works. It's a discovery. 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. Gitelman: Well and just going into this with our eyes wide open one of the outcomes of 1
continuing this Transportation discussion is that your colleagues who were not able to be here 2
this evening will have an opportunity to add their comments and so this is going to elongate a 3
little what we had thought would be accomplished in one evening. It may be a little more 4
involved and that's fine. 5
6
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Yeah, I think we're learning as we go. 7
8
Commissioner Monk: I'm just curious is there reason why you couldn't just send us the lists and 9
ask us to confirm whether or not it's inclusive or if it's missing anything rather than…? 10
11
Ms. Costello: Yeah, that’s what we’re going to do. 12
13
Commissioner Monk: But in advance? 14
15
Ms. Costello: It's just the production of it. It's better than spend it all out at the same time. 16
17
Commissioner Monk: You mean with our next packet? 18
19
Ms. Costello: Yeah. In the next packet. 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. Yang: And that’s it’s more it’s also for Brown Act reasons to have the Commission’s 2
business be done in the meeting in public and so we can prepare the materials for you to 3
consider, but the actual input from the Commissioners as a group would need to come in a 4
meeting like this. 5
6
Ms. Costello: Right. 7
8
Commissioner Monk: I've been getting my packets on Friday afternoons. If there's pieces of it I 9
know you like to get them all to us at once, but I think… are we doing other things other than 10
the Land Use at the next meeting? 11
12
Ms. Gitelman: There is another item on the agenda (interrupted) 13
14
Commissioner Monk: If there’s anything you’ve prepared in advance if you can (interrupted) 15
16
Ms. Gitelman: So there are going to be two items on your agenda next time. They'll be this 17
discussion of Transportation and Land Use we hope and then there's an item on rail. 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.
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Ok, well I mean I think that this is we're learning as we go. So why 1
don't we continue with the discussions for with the comments. Commissioner Gardias, do you 2
have more comments that you’d like to add? 3
4
Commissioner Gardias: Yes, please. So yeah I tried to just convey to you the bigger ticket items 5
just to focus on those larger items. So a couple of weeks ago at one of our meetings we talked 6
about Sterling Canal as a possible bike route and this is under the public ground so opening this 7
route to the bikers would be desirable in connection to the bridge that we approved a couple of 8
weeks ago over 101. So I would like to add this to the either infrastructure to the list of the 9
most future improvements and I think that this would be very, very cheap investment that 10
would require more energy as opposed to dollars spent because there is only one bridge that 11
needs to be built over one of the creeks; Sterling Canal opening for a bike route. 12
13
Yes, ok. So next item that I would like to just add to this list is pretty much and we talk about 14
this on the at the time when we discuss connector, cross-town connector that failed because of 15
different reasons and then we didn't utilize million and a half that was granted to us by I think 16
that this was Federal or State grant. I think that what we should have a policy to open to 17
pedestrians and to bikers routes along the creeks in Palo Alto. We have we have three creeks 18
plus one overflow which makes four of them. Probably opening all of them would not be 19
possible because they are right behind the private properties and then people may not feel 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.
secure if suddenly there would be pedestrian or bicycle traffic behind their fences. But then 1
there are some of them that go through commercial or they’re adjacent to the commercial 2
properties and I think that Adobe Creek if I remember correctly meets this definition. This is 3
the closest one to Mountain View so some of these routes maybe pretty much ready to be 4
opened after the discussions with the Santa Clara Water District and pretty much make it 5
available to the public, to the bikers, and it would pretty much create one additional 6
accessibility route. So that is I would propose that this would become a policy. Because this 7
way we would engage with the Santa Clara Water District in negotiation to open those routes 8
and I think this is that it's the time is to follow the footsteps of other municipalities and make it 9
available to the public where it's really feasible. 10
11
Another item that I would like to include in this policies would be pretty much requirements of 12
the companies located in Palo Alto to jointly to open their buses to all or to either create a joint 13
TMA program for all the companies in Palo Alto or open their buses to other companies. I think 14
that there may be I think that Mountain View has a program like this where companies they 15
have their shuttles that are open to others, to other companies. If not we should require or at 16
least recommend companies located here to share their the transportation that they use for 17
their employees. There may be some liability element because they may have a different legal 18
protections over their employees, but then if there are unutilized buses of Hewlett Packard or 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.
some other corporations then they may be open to another VMware or some other company 1
that's located here that takes the same route. 2
3
And then also another comment I would like to see the program our Palo Alto Shuttle program 4
being restructured this way so it does not compete with VTA. I don't really know how we 5
effected change of the VTA routes that happened just during the last year, but they were not 6
profitable as they should have been and when we were adding a line just like a year ago or year 7
and a half ago that was partially going along El Camino. I had concerns that it may affect VTA. 8
The I think that there are two important transportation corridors for the VTA which is 9
Middlefield and also El Camino. And then I think that we by having our buses running along 10
those two routes we affect profitability of VTA. I don't really know anybody, I don't know many 11
that would be [unintelligible] taking to the Bus 35 which would I think would become a 12
different number very soon because our buses our shuttles are so readily available and you 13
don't have to pay two dollars. So I think that we should restructure the program that so no we 14
don't compete with VTA. 15
16
And also I don't know whose ownership it would be, but I spoke about some private 17
transportation which I don't know if how possible it would be to support, but we should 18
consider to open bus stops to for private operators to utilize them. Today I believe that they 19
are exclusively utilized by VTA. Sometimes I see there are buses that stop at VTA bus stops 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.
are maybe not licensed. If you recall there was a discussion in San Francisco because bus 1
operators of Google mainly and Facebook they were using public bus stops for their purpose 2
and I believe that this ended up with just sending a bill to those two companies. The I think 3
that there is some opportunity to explore if this would allow some to operate and not operate 4
buses that would not be funded by City of Palo Alto. So those were the bigger ticket items that 5
I would recommend. Thank you. 6
7
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Great, thank you. Additional comments? Anyone else have anything 8
they'd like to add at this point? Is the process as we've just outlined, is this acceptable to the 9
group? 10
11
Ms. Gitelman: Well, I wanted to thank the Commissioners. These were really, really good 12
comments. I thought we got off to a good start and we will bring these back to you in a 13
somewhat organized way and identify those where we believe there is consensus for your 14
consideration at the next meeting. 15
16
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Ok, great and then just formally do we need a Motion to continue? 17
18
Mr. Yang: No, I don’t think we do. 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.
Acting Chair Waldfogel: We’re just leaving it open with no action taken tonight? Ok, I just want 1
to be sure we're doing the parliamentary right thing. Thank you. Ok, so now I have to find my 2
agenda I think there's… Thank you everybody for the thoughtful comments and the patience. 3
How late is it? 4
5
Commissioner Gardias: One more. 6
7
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Just one more. 8
9
Commissioner Gardias: I'm sorry. We're still in session? 10
11
Acting Chair Waldfogel: It was just like Steve Jobs, it’s just one more thing. 12
13
Commissioner Gardias: One more. No, but I remember… I remember. No, sorry guys. I have 14
no iPhone to review, but I remember when we talked with [Unintelligible] about policy to align 15
bike routes with as a policy, at the policy level with the sidewalks. And if you remember we had 16
different designs of different streets where bike routes were proposed in the middle of the 17
street like it is in San Francisco. So we had a discussion and [Adrian] agreed with me that pretty 18
much we should not pursue this design that San Francisco has because it just there it creates 19
risk of collision of the bicyclists and the cars. So as a matter of the policy there should be 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.
policy that would require that all bike routes are aligned with the sidewalks. And maybe in the 1
future would like for example, in Netherlands they would be incorporated into a sidewalk 2
where bikes are separated with a curb or some other hard element like by Jordan from the 3
traffic. Thank you. 4
5
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Feel free to submit more in writing. Because this we're leaving this 6
open. 7
8
Commission Action: No Action Taken 9
Approval of Minutes 10
Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 11
6. June 28, 2017 Draft Planning & Transportation Commission Meeting Minutes 12
13
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Ok, Item Number 6. Moving on, going, going, gone on Item Number 5. 14
Item Number 6, Approval of Minutes; can we have a Motion? 15
16
MOTION 17
18
Commissioner Monk: I move that we approve the minutes from the June… 19
20
Acting Chair Waldfogel: 28th. 21
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Monk: 28th meeting. 2
3
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Ok. 4
5
SECOND 6
7
Commissioner Gardias: Second. 8
9
VOTE 10
11
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Second, moved and… yes. Any amendments, changes, revisions? All in 12
favor? Aye. Opposed? Minutes pass. 13
14
MOTION PASSED (5-0-2, Chair Alcheck and Commissioner Lauing absent) 15
16
Commission Action: Motion to Approve Minutes from June 28th Meeting (Motion: 17
Commissioner Monk, Second Commissioner Gardias). Motion Passed 5-0 (Chair 18
Alcheck/Commissioner Lauing Absent) 19
Committee Items 20
21
Acting Chair Waldfogel: We don't have any open committees. 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
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Commissioner questions, comments, announcements? Feel free to 4
add. 5
6
Commissioner Monk: One announcement, I don't know it went to the Commission I believe, but 7
basically what I understand is that San Mateo County Transit (samTrans) is releasing results on 8
their study of the Dumbarton corridor transit options and as it relates to the congestion here in 9
Palo Alto; something that we should be looking to review at some point. I’m understanding 10
that it's going to be held on August 2nd at 2:00 p.m., I don't know where, but there was an 11
email that was sent to all of us I believe. So I think that's something we need to make sure we 12
pay attention to. I thought there was also agenda item on things we want to make sure that 13
are covered on the Land Use section? Was that part of our agenda tonight? 14
15
Acting Chair Waldfogel: No [unintelligible]. 16
17
Commissioner Summa: It was part of this. 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.
Acting Chair Waldfogel: So I would recommend submitting that in I mean since we continued 1
that item you can submit that. You can submit that by email. 2
3
Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah, if we could… if it's ok for staff that we submit our suggestions 4
on covered areas for Land Use by email then I think that would be a good format. Is that 5
appropriate? 6
7
Hillary Gitelman, Planning Director: We're happy to get your suggestions. Again, we're trying to 8
get this report pulled together by the end of the week so we really need them tomorrow. 9
10
Acting Chair Waldfogel: Ok, any other Commissioner questions, comments, announcements? 11
In that case the meeting is adjourned and the next meeting is… what is it? August 9th. 12
13
Adjournment-9:35pm 14
15
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Palo Alto Planning & Transportation Commission 1
Commissioner Biographies, Present and Archived Agendas and Reports are available online: 2
http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/boards/ptc/default.asp. The PTC Commission members are: 3
4
Chair Michael Alcheck 5
Vice Chair Asher Waldfogel 6
Commissioner Przemek Gardias 7
Commissioner Ed Lauing 8
Commissioner Susan Monk 9
Commissioner Eric Rosenblum 10
Commissioner Doria Summa 11
12
Get Informed and Be Engaged! 13
View online: http://midpenmedia.org/category/government/city-of-palo-alto or on Channel 26. 14
15
Show up and speak. Public comment is encouraged. Please complete a speaker request card 16
located on the table at the entrance to the Council Chambers and deliver it to the Commission 17
Secretary prior to discussion of the item. 18
19
Write to us. Email the PTC at: Planning.Commission@CityofPaloAlto.org. Letters can be 20
delivered to the Planning & Community Environment Department, 5th floor, City Hall, 250 21
Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301. Comments received by 2:00 PM two Tuesdays preceding 22
the meeting date will be included in the agenda packet. Comments received afterward through 23
2:00 PM the day of the meeting will be presented to the Commission at the dais. 24
25
Material related to an item on this agenda submitted to the PTC after distribution of the 26
agenda packet is available for public inspection at the address above. 27
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It is the policy of the City of Palo Alto to offer its public programs, services and meetings in a 29
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