HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-10-11 Planning & transportation commission Summary Minutes1. 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Planning & Transportation Commission 2
Regular Action Agenda: October 11, 2017 3
Council Chambers 4
250 Hamilton Avenue 5
6:00 PM 6
7
8 9
Call to Order / Roll Call 10
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6:05 PM 12
13
Chair Alcheck: Ladies and gentlemen, members of the community, member of the community. 14
Let's begin our... two members; that should be plural. Let's begin the would you do me a favor 15
and call roll call? 16
17
Yolanda Cervantes, Administrative Assistant: Chair Alcheck, Commissioner Gardias, Commissioner 18
Lauing, Commissioner Monk, Commissioner Rosenblum, Commissioner Summa, and Vice-Chair 19
Waldfogel. Everyone's present. 20
21
Chair Alcheck: Ok, great. 22
23
Oral Communications 24
The public may speak to any item not on the agenda. Three (3) minutes per speaker.1,2 25
26
Chair Alcheck: I have no speaker cards for Oral Communication. 27
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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Agenda Changes, Additions, and Deletions 2
The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management. 3
4
City Official Reports 5
1. Assistant Directors Report, Meeting Schedule and Assignments 6
7
Chair Alcheck: So let's look to the Assistant Director for his report. 8
9
Jonathan Lait, Assistant Director: Thank you, Chair. Just a few items to report going to City 10
Council on October 16th the County will be making a presentation to the City Council on the 11
release and availability of the draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Stanford General 12
Use Permit (GUP). That's on the 16th and then the following week on the 23rd the City Council 13
take up two items that the Commission has interest in, one is the Comprehensive Plan update 14
and the final EIR. And you also reviewed a project on El Camino, 3001 El Camino Real, a mixed-15
use project where the former location of Mike's Bikes that's going to be presented to the City 16
Council for site and design review. And that concludes the report. 17
18
Chair Alcheck: Ok, thank you Assistant Director Lait. I want to just make a few notes real quick. 19
There is a meeting coming up I believe the 21st maybe [work] 23rd where Council will be 20
reviewing our work on the Comp Plan or they are going to be reviewing the Comp Plan that night 21
and I'm going to represent the Commission that evening in for Council. So right now I have 22
Commissioner Gardias as a representative for October and Commissioner Summa as the 23
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
representative for November and Commissioner and myself as the representative for December. 1
I'd like to keep those. There’s a, there will be multiple Commission reviewed items for October so 2
my hope is that if you're available you'll also attend the meeting because I think among other 3
things they'll be reviewing the Mike’s Bikes site and the Comp Plan. I’m basically letting you know 4
that I'd like to join you that evening to also represent the Commission with respect to our work 5
on the Comp Plan. And then the other thing is that I'd like to do is that I realized this week during 6
our pre-Commission meeting that I never calendared Commissioner Monk for representation. 7
8
Commissioner Monk: It was supposed to be November. 9
10
Chair Alcheck: Yeah, in front of Council. So what I would like to do with Commissioner Summa’s 11
agreement is to allow Commissioner Monk to represent the Commission in November which you 12
were technically scheduled to do, but you just did September and so I think… I'm not exactly sure 13
why you were you never calendared, but nonetheless let's have [unintelligible] make a note that 14
Commissioner Monk will represent Commission on for the November month of the Council 15
meetings. 16
17
Jonathan Lait, Assistant Director: Yeah for this N and then we can we’ll revisit the calendar again 18
next year and that's why we don't have Commissioner Monk on schedule right now it's because 19
she joined the Commission after a few months or maybe it's… Anyway after we (interrupted) 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Alcheck: For whatever reason it didn’t work out, but (interrupted) 1
2
Mr. Lait: But yes, we'll have her marked down for November with the (interrupted) 3
4
Chair Alcheck: Yeah, let’s do that. 5
6
Mr. Lait: Ok. 7
8
Chair Alcheck: And then obviously whoever's in charge of the Commission next year can create a 9
new calendar. Ok. 10
11
Commissioner Gardias: Quick, quick comment if you don't mind? 12
13
Chair Alcheck: Yeah, go ahead. 14
15
Commissioner Gardias: So I have actually private obligation on that night starting at 7:00 p.m. 16
17
Chair Alcheck: Which, the 23rd? 18
19
Commissioner Gardias: On the 23rd. So I can attend the 3001 El Camino with the Council. 20
Probably the review of the Comprehensive Plan is going to take longer than one hour I suspect. 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Chair Alcheck: Do are you until 7:00 p.m. or 2
3
Commissioner Gardias: Until approximately 7 pm. 4
5
Chair Alcheck: I think you're going to be fine because I think it's calendared for 7:45. Is that right? 6
7
Commissioner Gardias: Is it? 8
9
Mr. Lait: Yeah, the Comp Plan one in particular? 10
11
Commissioner Gardias: No, both. I mean there is Mike's Bikes and Comp Plan. 12
13
Mr. Lait: Right. I guess I don't have the calendar with the projected time on that. I don't know if 14
the Council is starting early on that day, but I would be surprised if they got to any of these items 15
before 7:00. 16
17
Chair Alcheck: Ok, well the good news is that if you aren't there on time I'll be there and if you are 18
on time I think you'll be all right because I think it's not… It's going to, you're right it's going to be 19
a long item. Anything else? 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Gardias: No, that’s it. 1
2
Chair Alcheck: Ok. 3
4
Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. 5
6
7 Study Session 8
Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 9
10
Action Items 11
Public Comment is Permitted. Applicants/Appellant Teams: Fifteen (15) minutes, plus three (3) minutes rebuttal. 12
All others: Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 13
14
2. Review the City of Palo Alto Downtown Parking Management Study and Provide 15
Input to the City Council Regarding Implementation Alternatives 16
17
Chair Alcheck: Alright then with that unless anyone else has any comments why don't we begin 18
with the Downtown Parking Management Implementation staff presentation? 19
20
Joshuah Mello, Chief Transportation Official: Good evening, Chair, Members of the Commission; 21
my name is Josh Mello. I’m the Chief Transportation Official for the City of Palo Alto. To my right 22
is Philip Kamhi. He is our Transportation Programs Manager and Patrick Smith who is with Dixon 23
Resources Unlimited. Philip and Patrick are going to give you a presentation this evening and 24
then we'll follow that up with a discussion. With that I'll turn it over to Philip. 25
26
Philip Kamhi, Transportation Programs Manager: Apologies. So I'm going to start off just by 27
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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
reading an email that I actually sent in response to a question that Commissioner Monk asked and 1
just really gets at the core of what are we doing here, what are we talking about tonight. And 2
that is the idea of or the concept of being able to control parking and occupancy as a tool to use 3
in part of our three pronged approach to reduce parking and traffic demand. Transportation 4
Demand Management (TDM) initiatives is the first one, parking supply initiatives is the second 5
one, and residential preferential parking is the third one and that's what we call the three 6
pronged approach to reducing parking and traffic demand. 7
8
And the reason Susan asked the question about what the how that works is I think that there's a 9
lot of information in this report, but one of the key questions that can be asked is how does 10
controlling parking enable us to control congestion. And the answer to that is that if parking is 11
free and available occupancy levels will exceed the desired levels and will cause autos to circle for 12
longer than necessary looking for available spaces. And with the current color zone system 13
parkers, particularly employees are incentivized to move their cars every two or three hours 14
doing what we are calling hopscotchers. And if parkers are required to pay for a spot many will 15
choose the spot that makes the most financial sense. And I'm just summarizing some of the 16
email; I think you've all received it. 17
18
But tonight we're here to go back and review some of the study recommendations that we 19
brought to you last time and to discuss four separate implementation scenarios that we've 20
discussed and explored with the City departments and also members of the community have 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
recommended. We'd like you to provide feedback on next steps. And we're hoping that you'll 1
recommend that if City Council approves full implementation of paid parking that they consider 2
the study recommendations that will be covering tonight. And with that I’m going to turn it over 3
to Patrick Smith with Dickson Resources. 4
5
Patrick Smith, Dixon Resources: Good evening. Thanks for having us. We were actually here in 6
August and I think that night you spoke with my colleague Julie Dixon. She couldn't be here 7
tonight, but I'm filling in and I’ll begin, I’ll kind of rehash what we went through last time in a 8
quick summary of the recommendations that we provided, but we are Dickson Resources. We've 9
we are the parking consulting firm that's been working with the City for about a year and a half 10
now beginning in April of 2016 and then we I think we finished off in April 2017 this year and then 11
have been doing some kind of ongoing additional support related to our recommendations on the 12
study in general. 13
14
But to begin concluding our parking study we came up with a number of different 15
recommendations, but I'll begin with the first one which was kind of revamping your 16
comprehensive parking permit system and that that's kind of it goes into not only making the 17
online permit application and renewal process easier for your community and your residents, but 18
also making it an easier and more efficient for your internal parking related staff. As part of that 19
in the long run our goal is to have you kind of roll your citation processing that currently operates 20
within the Police Department (PD) and enforcement kind of roll that under this comprehensive 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
parking management system. 1
2
The second recommendation I think the larger of any of them is paid parking and with that based 3
on our kind of our takeaways from our study at large including our data collection your occupancy 4
demand Downtown is extremely significant. Far above anywhere that we've ever seen and as a 5
result of that we think that a community like yours is fit for paid parking. There's a number of 6
different kind of hybrid approaches you can take to implementing paid parking and that relates to 7
the technology in which you would implement. For the City of Palo Alto we've come up with a 8
hybrid approach to parking meters per se. Along University Avenue and in and around those 9
immediate side streets we would recommend single space parking meters. For your outer lying 10
locations we would recommend a pay station or a multi-space parking meter. The reason behind 11
that being that as you're surrounding your perimeter streets get closer to your residential areas 12
we kind of want to reduce the amount of what we call street furniture. Even the fact that those 13
parking meters are rubbing up against your residential districts so eliminating single spaced 14
meters for every parking space and instead putting a single pay station on a block face is a much 15
more astatically pleasing approach. 16
17
This just gives you a quick idea of the parking technology that we're referring to. On your left are 18
your typical single spaced parking meters. I think the far left meter everybody here may be 19
familiar with, they’re in and around the Bay Area. The multi-space [unintelligible] on the right are 20
again scattered throughout the Bay Area, but they allow parking or transactions to take place at 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
one sole location versus individual meters. 1
2
Anytime a city is going to implement any form of paid parking we recommend that they 3
supplement that with mobile payment or pay by phone. It’s a it comes at no cost to the City itself 4
and instead that small transaction fee is passed on to the consumer. The goal with any paid 5
parking operation should be to make parking easy and accessible for anybody who's looking to 6
park in your Downtown. Mobile payment just provides one other approach or one other way to 7
pay for parking. 8
9
As the City or in the event that the City implements or actually regardless of whether or not the 10
City implements paid parking the City should conduct biannual or at least annual parking 11
occupancy data collection of the Downtown. Generally in any parking atmosphere the ideal 12
parking occupancy demand is right around 85 percent. If you were to take a block of 10 parking 13
spaces that equates to obviously 1 to 2 spaces always being available. That promotes consistent 14
turnover for your shorter term parking. So with that we would that the City monitor, actively 15
monitor the occupancy around Downtown in order to maintain or at least try to go or keep in 16
mind the goal of 85 percent. 17
18
Permits… as part of this kind of paid parking or overall parking management approach we do 19
think that the current cost of your Downtown permits was low certainly as it was compared to 20
other surrounding Bay Area cities. In an effort to change driving habits in Palo Alto and tackle 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
more transportation demand alternative approach we feel that raising your annual permit prices 1
to make that more equitable with what a transit past may cost to come to Downtown Palo Alto in 2
the long run will discourage or help to discourage a certain number of parkers from driving 3
Downtown and each and every day. And from what I understand this recommendation is in the 4
process or is in the works I believe that the there is a permit increase set over the next couple of 5
years and as a part of that also reducing the number of annual permits provided? 6
7
Mr. Kamhi: Yeah, I'll step… Sorry, I’ll step in there. On July 1 we increased permit prices and part 8
of that was to City Council’s plan to provide funding to the Transportation Management 9
Association (TMA) which was recently approved. 10
11
Mr. Smith: The next two recommendations are recommendations that I believe already being 12
looked into or undertaken. And the first one of those is your off street infrastructure and putting 13
in what we refer to as parks equipment or parking access revenue control systems at your 14
garages, gated access per se. And the second one of those was increasing the Downtown 15
wayfinding. Essentially one recommendation that we provided the City that they I think had 16
already recognized was developing or improving wayfinding throughout Downtown. Anytime you 17
have people that are coming Downtown in any city who are unfamiliar with where to park 18
wayfinding does help to improve the efficiency in terms of how quickly they find parking. So as 19
part of that adopting a parking brand or theme is something that we recommended as well. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Kamhi: I'll also step in there. Wayfinding was recently put out to bid as part of a greater 1
Utilities project. I believe that the project did not receive enough, I want to say enough bids, but 2
I'm not sure if it received any bids but is being is potentially being rebid. 3
4
Mr. Smith: And finally was given the state of parking Downtown currently and in the possibility of 5
paid parking in the future adopting some different enforcement processes or rules or 6
enforcement procedures was one recommendation; increasing the enforcement hours 7
Downtown, possibly expanding enforcement into the weekends such as a Saturday. As a part of 8
that enforcement and I know this is a more delicate of an issue, but we recommended the 9
implementation of License Plate Recognition (LPR), mobile LPR as a way of enforcing or increasing 10
your enforcement Downtown. LPR will come into significant play in the event the City decides 11
that they want to go down the paid parking route and implement pay stations with pay by plate 12
as being your unique identifier in order to enforce that efficiently LPR comes into focus. 13
14
Currently parking is spread out among a number of different areas in Palo Alto and one thing that 15
we think in order for the parking operation to run smoothly and efficiently going forward the 16
adopting of a centralized parking department or program or operation would be beneficial to 17
improving parking really [in a processes] through the City. As part of our comprehensive parking 18
study we engaged in a number of different stakeholder meetings throughout the course of the 19
study. I believe we held five meetings in total. The first two were kind of introductory meetings, 20
understanding kind of your key stakeholders perceptions and issues with parking in Downtown. 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Some of their thoughts and concerns moving forward the following three meetings were 1
discussing a lot of our data collection results and what we were coming to find as we progressed 2
through the study. I believe we had upwards of 20 to 25 active stakeholder participants from 3
meeting to meeting. The turnout was pretty consistent throughout all five of those meetings. 4
Some of your key stakeholders included some of your Downtown business owners, a couple of 5
developers, obviously internal City staff, and I believe a couple of residents, a couple of members 6
from the I believe it's the Palantir over here, but those key stakeholders were active and 7
consistent throughout the entire process. And with that alternative or two [unintelligible] there is 8
some additional outreach that was taken. 9
10
Mr. Kamhi: Right, so in addition to the outreach that was done with the study we did additional 11
outreach following meeting with this Commission and also with meeting the City Council. And so 12
I'll talk a little bit about that. We hosted our own focus group to kind of talk about some of the 13
ideas and to hear how the Downtown businesses felt about paid parking or really how they feel 14
about challenges that they have to understand their issues, their employees issues, and their 15
customers issues. And coming out of that group, the focus group, we found that paid parking, 16
dynamic paid parking in particular generally received positive feedback and additionally… I’m 17
sorry, [unintelligible]. The City was asked to make when and if we implement paid parking to 18
make it simple and understandable. And I mentioned this before, but participants reacted 19
favorably to the concept of dynamic pricing. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
And we also conducted a survey that the Chamber of Commerce helped us to distribute and we 1
also did in person with 33 different business owners and/or managers over the past month and of 2
course we identified some of the key issues that you'd expect for employees: the cost of permits 3
was too expensive, moving cars every two hours was difficult for the employee and also difficult 4
for them as business owners and managers, and finding parking was difficult. For customers it's 5
that same thing, finding parking was difficult and the two hour limit was too short. And just to 6
show you some of the real data that came out of that 79 percent, it's really 78.8 percent of those 7
surveyed felt that they would benefit from designating specific employee parking in the lots and 8
garages. This is probably not a surprise, but 76 of those surveyed now just note there was no 9
information, given this was just a simple survey, but they responded negatively either fair or poor 10
to the initial concept of paid parking in Downtown Palo Alto. 11
12
But it was kind of interesting when we asked them the question how would they feel about 13
dynamic paid parking if it provided parking on your block for your customers and parking in 14
garages and lots for employees that skewed completely differently. It ended up changing the 15
same reaction to the similar question and 45 percent responded positively, 18.2 percent were 16
kind of neutral, and only 36 percent are what we would consider negative and with that I'll get 17
into the scenarios. 18
19
So we've looked at four different parking scenarios and there could be a lot of different 20
modifications, but I’ll kind of talk through the four of these and Patrick will jump in and tell me 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
when I'm wrong or hit me with something. But the first scenario is paid parking lots and garages 1
only and that means implementing paid parking only in the lots and garages, not (interrupted) 2
3
Commissioner Monk: Excuse… 4
5
Mr. Kamhi: Yes. 6
7
Commissioner Monk: Are you referencing to a document that we have? 8
9
Mr. Kamhi: No, I'm just a PowerPoint. 10
11
Commissioner Monk: So we don't have a print out? Ok. 12
13
Mr. Mello: These scenarios are included in your (interrupted) 14
15
Commissioner Monk: Which page are you? 16
17
Mr. Mello: Staff report as well. 18
19
Mr. Kamhi: Yeah, the scenarios are the options or whatever on Pages 11 through 15. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Monk: Thank you. 1
2
Mr. Kamhi: I’m just going to verify I was right about that, but I think it's Pages 11 through… yeah, 3
starting on Page 11 and the first scenario or option would be paid parking in lots and garages 4
only. So this is assuming that parking meters and pay stations are installed only in surface lots 5
and garages and the garages would be outfitted with parks gates or gateless, gated entry and the 6
color zone rules would not apply in garages and lots, but they would continue to be retained on 7
street. And we would offer to long term parkers to park in the lots and garages and theoretically 8
include low income permit which was a study recommendation that could further provide an 9
ability for some of the employees to park in the lots and garages and the short term parkers 10
would continue to use on street spaces. 11
12
Mr. Smith: In reference to this scenario typically when we go into a City or any cities looking to 13
address their parking issue or parking problem the issues usually lies within the Downtown core 14
and the goal is to usually push parking to your off street locations which are historically less 15
occupied then your on street spaces. In this current scenario we would almost be reversing that 16
so we would be charging for people to park in historically long term [spaces] your off street 17
service lots or garages and now pushing them further into Downtown to further compete with all 18
the traffic that is currently trying to find a parking space in your Downtown. So rather than 19
addressing the problem from the inside and working out we would now be working from the 20
outside in and instead of pushing parking towards our outer perimeter lots and garages we would 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
not be shoving it back down towards the Downtown. 1
2
Mr. Kamhi: So the second option is providing the first hour free and this this option came to us 3
really from some of the stakeholders that had requested that we retain first hour free in front of 4
their business so that a customer that's running in to get a coffee doesn't have to pay for parking 5
or somebody that's dropping off their dry cleaning, but it assumes that we install parking meters 6
or pay stations throughout the Downtown color zones including on and off street and would also 7
include parks similar to the lots and garages scenario. Would implement the study 8
recommendation of mobile payment option and the meters would allow for one free hour of 9
parking before collecting payment. This would likely encourage customer turnover and quick 10
picking up dropping off unless we have somebody that… as long as we have a system that keeps 11
prevents them from moving their car every hour which would just force the hopscotching to be 12
more frequent. And that's why the consultant’s recommending that if this was implemented 13
although I should, he’ll probably tell you, but he's not recommending this at all. But if it was 14
implemented that we look to do it with LPR and parking sensors so that we can really tell how 15
long somebody has been parked in a specific area. 16
17
Yeah, just to speak on this potential so this would be a City management nightmare in turn in the 18
form of monitoring those one hour free spaces, enforcing those one hour free spaces. I’ll use the 19
City of Boise, Idaho as an example currently and for some time now they've had a 20 minute free 20
button. So anybody, any patron that comes downtown is able to press a button on the meter and 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
receive 20 minutes of what we refer to as free parking. Unfortunately for a long period of time 1
they didn't have those monitors in place to effectively address that issue from becoming a 2
substandard problem so what they had were media fairies and they would walk around 3
Downtown and press the button and people will then extend their free parking over the course of 4
the day with ever have, without ever having to come back to the meter. They have since took in a 5
measure to address that. They put in sensors underneath or that are related to each meter which 6
prevent the 20 minute button from being pressed more than one time; however, there’s a cost 7
associated with implementing this type of technology, sensor based technology as well. 8
9
And to provide one hour free parking you're going to have to in order to kind of maintain and pay 10
for the technology itself and any ongoing fees and costs that are associated with that technology 11
you're going to then have to the one hour free is great on the front end, but you're going to have 12
to make up for that lost hour of paid parking in some way and that's going to have to come at the 13
back end which is your hourly rate after that first hour free. So there's a push and pull here. In 14
addition to that the increased enforcement staff that you would need to Downtown to affectively 15
monitor these spaces on such a consistent or frequent basis in order to capture those people who 16
are pulling in and pulling out we foresee this as just being a significantly hard problem to monitor. 17
18
The third option that we're looking at is escalating charges with no time limit. This also was 19
something that we I think we might have even discussed it with the Commission here, but we 20
definitely heard this from stakeholders. And this is the idea that we a kind of a full install of 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.
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everything parking pay stations and meters throughout Downtown, the garages with the parks 1
equipment, and the long term parkers would be directed to the garages. But in this option 2
somebody paying at a meter could effectively purchase the space for as long as they want, but 3
the rates would increase throughout time the longer that they park in that space. So that would 4
be an escalating fee which would actually allow the City to recoup more revenues from each 5
parking space assuming people are parking there longer, but it does somewhat limit our ability to 6
control that space, create customer turnover, and keep it available. 7
8
Mr. Smith: Yeah, through our stakeholder outreach why and our surveys, Dixon's intercept 9
surveys, and speaking with a lot of your employers and business owners one thing that we heard 10
consistently was that there's a need for increased turnover on those spaces along University 11
Avenue especially. One thing that having an escalated fee schedule with no time limit runs the 12
risk of is not allowing those spaces to be turned over. I think Palo Alto's a unique city in terms of 13
who's frequenting your Downtown and frequenting those businesses and those restaurants. My 14
guess is that there's a certain number of people who wouldn't mind parking in those spaces and 15
paying for the max time no matter the cost which I think would generate some pushback from a 16
lot of your businesses and so forth. 17
18
Mr. Kamhi: And the final option that we've reviewed is this full implementation of dynamic 19
parking which is really the study recommendation. It's the primary recommendation of this 20
study. It's implementing paid parking and replacing the existing color zone system assuming 21
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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meters and pay stations throughout Downtown and garages with parks. We’d want long term 1
parkers to be directed to lots and garages and to have a low income garage permit and short term 2
parkers to utilize the on street spaces. 3
4
Mr. Mello: Yeah, just to add to Philip’s comment I think this kind of goes back to the initial 5
purpose of this study which was to develop some form of a parking management plan, right? So 6
we know that parking available parking and parking supply in Palo Alto is scarce and I can't 7
foresee it getting or improving drastically in any near future unless there's a significant shift in 8
parking behavior. That is part of this and there's components of this parking management plan 9
that I think look to change or make those changes in terms of parking and driving habits, but this 10
full approach for this parking management study part of this yes is the implementation of paid 11
parking, but another part of it is generating revenue through paid parking to increase those 12
alternative options for people to come Downtown by other modes. It's there's an enforcement 13
component to this because without with paid, with any paid parking program enforcement is 14
going to be a key player in terms of managing and making ensuring that people are abiding by the 15
paid parking rules. This looks to address both your on street and your off street in a number of 16
different ways via permits, via paid parking, via a change in time limits and so on and so forth. 17
18
Mr. Kamhi: Just to kind of come full circle and kind of dive back into some of the technology or 19
parking technology options that are at the City's hands in terms of implementing some of the this 20
technology in particular multi-space pay stations or multi-space meters usually come in three 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
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different configurations; pay and display which I'm sure we're all familiar which is I go to the pay 1
station, I complete a transaction, I'm given a receipt that I then place in my windshield. There's 2
also pay by space which is marking the individual spaces with a unique identifier number. I as the 3
parker then go up to the pay station and complete my transaction. My unique identifier there is 4
the space in which I parked in. And then there is pay by plate and I mentioned this earlier. This is 5
I would say the way in which the industry is shifting especially with the increasing use of LP… or 6
mobile LPR is pay by plate and that is using your license plate as the unique identifier. This type 7
of configuration is able to be integrated with a lot of your enforcement devices or your 8
enforcement staff’s devices so it makes enforcement much more efficient. They're able to pull up 9
on their hand held device and see which plates are paid for and which ones aren't, but I would say 10
pay by plate is what we would advocate for in the event that the City decided to adopt LPR 11
technology as well. And just to kind of circle back one last time to just the Downtown 12
configuration in terms of paid parking obviously as we mentioned before single spaced meters 13
along University Avenue and on the immediate side streets and then multi-space meters on the 14
perimeter streets. 15
16
Mr. Smith: Ok… Yeah, I think so. 17
18
Mr. Mello: Before we go to question and answers (Q&A) I just want to make a really quick point. 19
We realize this is a heavy lift. When went to Council they recognized that and they sent us back 20
to Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC) and Finance Committee to come back with a 21
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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more firm implementation strategy and a finance plan and that's what we're doing today. This is 1
a complicated series of interlinked decisions that are all dependent on each other. So when we 2
get into the Q&A I just want you to recognize that the recommendations that came from Dixon 3
are interlinked and they're not necessarily able to be segregated from each other, they're 4
dependent on each other somewhat. And then just lastly there is some common question around 5
this about why we're doing this and I just refer you to the analysis section of the staff report, 6
Program T-49 from the Comp Plan which is implement a comprehensive program of parking 7
supply and demand management strategies for Downtown Palo Alto. So this is implementation 8
of the Comp Plan in real time. This is what it looks like, this is our comp… recommended 9
comprehensive parking management plan for Downtown that we’re discussing tonight. And with 10
that we’ll gladly take questions. 11
12
Chair Alcheck: Ok, thank you. I have two speaker cards. I'm going to open it up so that the public, 13
the members of the public that are here can have some time to speak and then I will turn back to 14
the Commission for questions and comments and we will use the lights. Ok, I have Jeff Levinsky 15
and then Faith Bell. Each of you will have five minutes. 16
17
Jeff Levinsky: Good evening, Commissioners and staff. I've got five minutes so I'll make five 18
points. Point one there's a very simple option for limiting zone hopping that the report doesn't 19
mention. Our color zone enforcement officers already collect license plate numbers with 20
handheld devices and these could be programmed to limit how many zones people can park in 21
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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for free. For example you could let people park for free in just two zones a day and ticket them if 1
they park, if they’re spotted in a third zone. Two zones a day is adequate for most shoppers and 2
visitors and it still prevents commuters hopping from zone to zone all day long. If you use 3
compatible devices for enforcing the Residential Preferential Parking (RPP) zones you can then 4
extend the two zone a day limit to those too. That will protect neighborhoods from zone hoppers 5
which none of the other proposals do. This approach is much cheaper than installing hundreds of 6
parking meters and pay stations. It's more aesthetic, it's more flexible as you can craft all kinds of 7
policies, and it can protect neighborhoods as well as the core. It definitely ought to be 8
considered. 9
10
Point two, there is no serious discussion in the reports how parking meters will harm retail. I've 11
spoken [with] residents who are outraged to hear the City is thinking of charging them to stop at 12
a Downtown Automated Teller Machine (ATM) or pick up a coffee. They'll just go elsewhere. You 13
don't need to look far for where merchants have rejected parking meters because it hurt their 14
businesses. Back in the 1980’s we had parking meters right here in Downtown. Stores found it 15
pushed customers to where parking was free such as Stanford Shopping Center and so the City 16
pulled out the meters. That wasn't even mentioned in the report. The report does talk about 17
quarterly monitoring of sales tax revenue as a way to check if retail is being hurt, but what 18
happens if you discover that revenues are falling? Customers quickly become loyal and 19
accustomed to new locations so they won't necessarily ever come back if even if you pull the 20
meters out again. 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.
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2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Point three, there's hardly a mention in the reports of how parking meters will likely push many 2
to park in the RPP neighborhoods surrounding Downtown where two hours of parking will remain 3
free. The surveys show between 40 and 64 percent of respondents were unwilling or very 4
unwilling to pay for parking even if closer to their destination. Commuters who zone hop in 5
Downtown will just switch to hopping, zone hopping in the different neighborhood zones. That 6
will make parking harder to find in those neighborhoods and they'll be less safe due to the 7
increased traffic. 8
9
Point four, why does the proposal suggest it needs no full environmental review? On Page 15 it 10
lists how paid parking conforms with some Comprehensive Plan option policies, but then it omits 11
other policies that will conflict with paid parking such as encouraging local retail and protecting 12
residential neighborhoods from commercial development. Why not mention those? And 13
discouraging people from shopping where it's close means they'll drive farther away thus harming 14
the environment. Rather than claiming no negative impacts there should be a full environmental 15
review. 16
17
Five, the report doesn't address the absurd inequity of the proposal. Downtown’s parking 18
problems stem mainly from continuing to allow under parked buildings and more employees to 19
be packed into offices than ever anticipated. Right behind you is the First Church of Christ 20
Scientists building on the corner of Bryant and Forest. As a church used mostly on weekends it 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.
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2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
was exempted from parking requirements, but the City neglected to end that exemption when a 1
technology company took it over a few years ago. That one building alone accounts for a shortfall 2
of 45 parking spaces. How much time has your Commission spent addressing those issues? 3
Instead you're talking about using parking meters to charge customers and visitors to Downtown 4
like me. Well we didn't cause Downtown’s parking problems and neither did the shops we visit, 5
but you're asking us to pay anyway. And even crazier the City wants any profits on what we pay 6
for parking to subsidize the well-funded companies causing the problem. 7
8
I see this whole proposal as 174 pages of misdirection. Enforce our parking regulations and stop 9
overly dense offices and you'll end Downtown’s parking shortages. You won't need parking 10
meters, you won't need to charge residents, you won't need to burden neighbors and put more 11
cars on to their streets, you won't need to imperil local merchants, you won't need to spend 12
hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants and hundreds of thousands more on new 13
metering equipment. Say no to having the victims pay; instead use your Commission to enforce 14
our parking regulations and put an end to under parked buildings. Thank you. 15
16
Faith Bell: Good evening, I'm Faith Bell. I run and I own my family's 82 year old bookstore on 17
Emerson Street, Bell’s Books, pleasure to be here with you all; thank you for considering all these 18
things. The City of Palo Alto has frequently voiced concern about preserving the independent 19
retail community here in Palo Alto, but I have to feel that paid parking could be a death knell for 20
some of those businesses. I'm representing nine different business owners in my immediate 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.
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block, two... within two blocks adjacent to me and this was just done in a two hour walk around 1
town this afternoon. I'm find that serving 33 business managers when we have 900 businesses 2
here Downtown is laughable. I'm sorry, I know that you're probably doing your best, but there 3
are a lot of people here who have a lot of opinions and 33 is not going to represent them. 4
5
James [Christensen], the manager of McRoskey Mattress Company said this would be suicide to 6
his business. Tom Wilson, the owner of The Goldsmith, said it's one more bar to success; isn't 7
there enough competition from all the shopping centers and other towns that offer free parking? 8
Valerie Rico, the store manager of Title IX, says to say no to paid parking and fight the good fight. 9
The owner and managers of Tea Time say it's a very bad idea. Caroline who's the owner and 10
manager of the UN Store [Note-United Nations Association?] which has been there since what? 11
1960 maybe? Maybe earlier, I don't know, but does a huge job of raising money for children in 12
need and has on the backs of volunteers for a very long time says it's deadly. She says, “Good 13
Lord what else will they come up with to make small business impossible?” Several bankers I've 14
spoken with were in great opposition to it and Sonia Jorgensen the manager of Team Garage 15
Shoe [Note-KEEN Garage?] says, “Thanks so much, let's just make a bad hard situation 16
impossible.” Rob Fischer who I'm sure you all know is the owner of Gravity Bar, Reposado, and 17
the Peninsula Creamery [Note-Palo Alto Creamery?] says it would definitely reduce his business. 18
We are not welcoming this in the business community so don't fool yourselves that we are. 19
20
I've had a number of my customers express dismay at the idea of paid parking saying isn't it 21
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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enough hard enough to park here without another hurdle? If paid parking “discourages a certain 1
number of drivers from coming to town” as you've said then why is that helpful to the retail 2
community? Isn't there an intrinsic assumption in this that only we only want people to come 3
here if they have enough money to not care about additional expenses? I would prefer us to be 4
more egalitarian. 5
6
The importance of browsing in a bookstore can hardly be emphasized enough. The pleasure of 7
drifting through locally owned businesses and finding something you’d love to take home is 8
essential to our shop and other shops survival. I have serious doubts that all of my customers 9
wish to pay for the privilege of simply being allowed to come Downtown. My family's already 10
paid over $100,000 in parking assessments to build the garages. We paid that willingly on the 11
assumption that we would then get our customers a place to park, but no; two thirds of them got 12
rented out for permit spaces and we were left with much less than we had originally. Don’t our 13
customers deserve to benefit from that at least? I had asked you to think really seriously before 14
you put parking fees anywhere Downtown. It's very problematic for the business community and 15
we do not support it. Thank you for hearing me. 16
17
Chair Alcheck: Ok, thank you both and I hope that you will have some time to sort of stick around 18
so because I think that these viewpoints may encourage some questions from the 19
Commissioners. So I will leave the public comment open in case some of the Commissioners have 20
any specific questions for either of you. Ok, I have a light. As you guys light up I will write your 21
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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names down and we will go in order, first come first served. 1
2
Commissioner Lauing: Could I just ask procedurally how you’d like to go forward? I mean it seems 3
like paid parking is sort of the big issue that maybe we should talk about that first because other 4
things fall out, but there's other ways we can approach it so… 5
6
Chair Alcheck: I'm sorry as opposed to? 7
8
Commissioner Lauing: As opposed to asking detailed questions about the four options that they 9
present or digging into the study. We can go a lot of different directions. People could start 10
talking about meters and it seems to me like meters are a little bit farther down depending on if 11
we are enthusiastic about paid parking or not. 12
13
Chair Alcheck: I did not approach the discussion tonight with a specific, with any specific sort of 14
limitations. 15
16
Commissioner Lauing: Yeah, that’s my question. 17
18
Chair Alcheck: And I thought I would sort of open it up and give Commissioners a chance to 19
maybe one, ask questions that they have about the staff report in general and then also have an 20
opportunity to begin a discussion of where they are on the item. 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.
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1
Commissioner Lauing: Ok. 2
3
Chair Alcheck: I don't I didn't even want to sort of suggest that Commissioners should determine 4
their personal preference for the program even because I wasn't sure if how the conversation 5
would go. So I'm keeping it very open if that’s alright. Ok, I have Commissioner Rosenblum and 6
then Commissioner Monk and Commissioner Gardias. 7
8
Commissioner Rosenblum: Thank you and as you’ve noted we've seen this in front of us a few 9
times now. So I'm always of the mind that the philosophy that we need to properly attribute 10
costs to a resource is correct, fundamentally correct. That since we've made this thing free it's 11
overused and it has repercussions. So it's hard to find parking and people drive around until they 12
can find parking. I want to separate that from who should bear the burden, so what the pricing 13
should be for various groups because I do have questions about that. And also around how to 14
support the businesses themselves. 15
16
So my first big question is many communities in our region have made a switch recently from free 17
parking to paid parking. And the report makes mention of that and also mentions that Mountain 18
View is now is about to undergo their this same process. So they’re I think at their second study 19
session or first study session so they're just one step behind us in this. And so I'm curious what 20
happened to the retail businesses in say Redwood City or San Mateo or others when paid parking 21
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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was introduced? Because I assume that they were also very much opposed. I think all retailers 1
are always worried about free parking being converted paid parking. And so was there a study 2
done on those communities and what happened in the aftermath of their conversion. 3
4
Mr. Smith: As to whether or not there was a specific study or reflection [unintelligible] on how 5
that worked out I'm not immediately aware, but I know from speaking to some of the 6
stakeholders who had visited Redwood City and so forth and speaking with other cities in the Bay 7
Area who have now transitioned to paid parking there isn’t an immediate negative impact on 8
parking Downtown or I’m sorry, on the business districts Downtown. Nobody I don't think has 9
seen people not come Downtown or leave the City in masses in terms of paid parking, but as to 10
whether or not there's been an immediate study done on those cities that have transitioned to 11
paid parking I’m not sure. 12
13
Mr. Mello: So I have reached out to the Redwood City staff on this and their paid parking was 14
actually introduced quite a while ago. I was under the assumption that it was more recent then it 15
actually was so they haven't done any kind of data because it was it's been in place for a fairly 16
significant amount of time. They've modernized their downtown paid parking system more 17
recently and implemented a lot of the recommendations that you'll see in the report here. In 18
your staff report there is a link to the SFpark program which actually did collect quite a bit of data 19
on the impacts to the business community and the retail environment and they didn't find any 20
negatives. 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.
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1
Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah, so I appreciate the SFpark study. As close as we can get to our 2
community the better and so my big recommendation there's going to be many people here 3
concerned about this and I think that it's fair to divide them into the two representatives we have 4
today which are residents and business owners. And in order I personally care that the business 5
owners first feel like they're part of this process and they feel their businesses won't be harmed. 6
On the resident’s side we also can't be introducing a solution that pushes cars into the 7
neighborhoods and so I agree that if we are making incentive program where the loophole is well, 8
we park in the neighborhood, that's also a bad outcome. And so as we talk through these things 9
that's why I am interested in things like LPR anyway to automatically make it more difficult to play 10
that game I'm in favor of. 11
12
I'm less sympathetic to residents who would say well I would never pay for parking so I'm just 13
going to go somewhere else simply because I do think for every person who says that there's 14
someone else who says I would love to just get a space, I'm tired of driving around the block. And 15
it's not a rich versus poor thing I don't think because the proposals are a $1.50 for parking. It's a 16
convenience thing. It's people that just hate paying verses and they're willing to drive around 17
versus those who hate driving around and are willing to pay a $1.50 to not drive around. And I 18
think I used to fall into one of those camps I would never pay for parking, I would go to any 19
length, and I'm now in the other camp where life's too short, I just want to get [unintelligible] and 20
also I'm sensitive to the fact that driving around and around the block is just bad. It's bad for 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.
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traffic, safety, environment, and all that. 1
2
So in terms of the concerns that I would love to see the consultant and the City address first is for 3
the business owners and to the extent that we can get business owners and so maybe Redwood 4
City is not the right sample, but there are others up and down the Peninsula that have done this 5
to get a forum together with business owners from our City and business owners from other 6
cities to talk about their experiences and their fears and what can be done. I think that's of 7
primary importance. And then number two, to protect the residents that in the surrounding 8
neighborhoods and make sure that is not the escape valve. Personally again I feel like this third 9
set of people who would say well, I just don't like paying for parking I think we've seen enough 10
study sessions that suggests that ultimately the parking places still get filled. There will be if you 11
do your pricing right some availability left so that people don't have the anxiety of not feeling 12
they can get a place, but my belief is that there's been enough study already of the phenomenon 13
of what happens when you price parking. 14
15
So I had a my second question is around pricing itself. So it feels to me that the pricing per hour is 16
appropriate. So if we believe the numbers that a parking place in politics cost $60,000 to build 17
and you make certain assumptions around how often a place might be used times the rates that 18
we're posing up to a $22 or $24 daily maximum it seems like the payoff period on individuals for 19
short term parking are appropriate. However, it seems like the price that we're charging 20
businesses is subsidizing them and I'm wondering how you set the rates because it feels to me 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.
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that businesses should be paying full freight. Meaning there should be a payback period. If the 1
City is going to invest in parking lots then that's something on the City's dime and if we're going to 2
rent that to a business I think it should be at full freight. I feel the same way about individuals to 3
a certain extent, but less so because that's a City service that we’re providing our residents and so 4
if we lowered the rate for residents I wouldn't be unhappy, but when I did the calculations it 5
seemed like the opposite that actually residents or not I wouldn’t say residents. Individuals 6
paying short term had a payback period on the parking space place whereas businesses didn't 7
seem to. And so I'm wondering how you set the rates and whether it's just a pure market 8
dynamic or if there's a philosophy behind it over who wants, who should be paying what or what 9
the payback period should be. 10
11
Mr. Mello: If I could address the first comments and then I'll let Patrick maybe discuss what the 12
rates, why the particular rates are recommended here. I certainly think that convening a business 13
forum is a great next step. We can certainly reach out to some communities that have recently 14
introduced paid parking and see if we can form up some kind of forum with business owners from 15
Palo Alto. But I do want to say that I think you'd be hard pressed to find a paid parking program 16
that was wildly embraced by the business community in which it was introduced. We are taking 17
something that's free and charging for it and very seldomly in the public realm do you do that. 18
Generally things have a cost to begin with and you're increasing the cost. There's not a lot of 19
places where we introduce a fee to something that's historically been free so I don't know that 20
you'd ever we'd ever be able to come to you and say the business community is fully on board 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
with this. They're if I was a business owner I would take the same position and try to protect 1
something that's currently available free of charge. 2
3
I do want to draw your attention before we get into the pricing to Scenario 4 which is the fully, 4
full implementation of dynamic parking and call your attention to the third bullet point. This type 5
of system would allow for variable rates and does not require parking fees at all times. Essentially 6
we are putting in place the equipment we need to dynamically manage our supply Downtown 7
and we would manage that through variable pricing. That means that at certain times if we 8
document that people are starting to displace into the RPP district and there are vacancies in the 9
Downtown core we would reduce the rates in order to move those people back into the 10
Downtown core and out of the RPP. That would be done through real time monitoring of 11
occupancy. We can't do that real time monitoring without implementing the system that's 12
required to do that monitoring and that's what we're really talking about here. We're not 13
necessarily talking about setting a fee, sticking with that fee for 10 years regardless of what the 14
impacts are to the businesses, and just turning a blind eye. This is a dynamic management of our 15
Downtown parking supply. 16
17
I can speak to how our parking permit prices were set historically up until this past year. So as 18
you know there was a in lieu fee that was collected from businesses that were not providing the 19
amount of parking that they would be required under the zoning code. That was at a couple 20
times in the history of Downtown used to construct parking garages. There's a fund called the 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
University Avenue Parking Permit Fund and that's used for maintenance and operations of the 1
Downtown garages, Public Works cleaning of restrooms, concrete power washing, sign 2
installation, elevator maintenance, anything required to policing the garages, enforcement. The 3
permit prices up until this past year generally just covered the maintenance and operations. The 4
in lieu fees were used to construct the garages, the permit fees were used to maintain and 5
operate. This past this fiscal year starting on July 1 the permit prices were increased to be more 6
in line with the cost of an annual transit pass if you were to buy it out of pocket. A Caltrain pass 7
or a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) pass and the excess funds are being routed 8
to the TMA, Downtown to support TMA programs. That's the history of our permit pricing. 9
Patrick I think can if you want him to talk about the recommended pricing that they have in their 10
report. 11
12
Mr. Smith: Yeah, so as it relates to on and off street hourly rates there's a few considerations we 13
took into account when looking at those rates, one being obviously some of the surrounding 14
communities and what they're currently charging for paid parking. The second being knowing 15
that Palo Alto is going from free parking to paid parking that we can't obviously throw rates out 16
there that are going to be astronomical in comparison to what is free today. Another part of that 17
being that the price to park on a in front of a business on University Avenue should be more 18
expensive over a period of time then it is to park in one of your off street facilities for that same 19
extended period of time. Our goal then being to shift behavior from on street to off street 20
locations therein the cost of a daily permit over an annual period should be less than what it costs 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
to park there in that off street facility per day. So as it relates to the correlation between on 1
street/off street and off street permits that's kind of the methodology that we followed. Knowing 2
that there is free parking now and going to paid parking I don't think that it would be safe to like I 3
said before to throw in astronomical rates knowing that people are going to be having or people 4
are going to have to go through some form of a learning curve and an educational process of ok, 5
free parking now paid parking and part of that is easing people into that process. 6
7
Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah, so this will be my last comment and just out of interest in 8
hearing my fellow Commissioners ideas, but for me as this moves forward I think this is a general 9
framework that I'm very strongly in favor of. I would recommend strongly that you find a way to 10
convene a merchant forum and perhaps working with our Chamber of Commerce with their sister 11
and brother Chambers of Commerce to help convene. Even if the feedback is negative and as you 12
said you expect it will be I think this should be an open forum and I think that we should listen 13
and hear what the results have been, what the fears are, etcetera. Even if the City decides to 14
move forward we should have as much airing of the issues in a back and forth in a healthy 15
exchange. 16
17
Number two, I think we should talk about what it costs to build and maintain parking spaces in 18
this report. And so and that can just be data, but as you mentioned you put some values around 19
it should cost more to park in front of a business on University Ave. then it does off street in a 20
side, in a less congested core. And so you're trying to adjust pricing to encourage behavior and I 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.
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completely agree with that. I think there's a different dimension though which is what did it cost 1
the City to provide this resource and then based on that what do we want to charge different 2
groups of people? And so I also would see for example that our office workers those businesses 3
may have to pay more for parking, retail workers may have to pay less, but we want the City 4
overall to realize what we're subsidizing different groups. 5
6
Now my alternate objective is for office employers to pay for alternative modes of transportation. 7
If they have to pay a lot for parking then they may see that it's in their interest to further 8
encourage people to take other ways to get to the City. So that’s my ultimate objective, but the 9
very least there should be some number that we all agree this is the annual cost that the City pays 10
per off street parking place so if that is again if the $60,000 number is accurate and these 11
structures last for 30 years then it’s $2,000 a year. And if we're charging less than that per year, if 12
we're charging $500 for a parking pass for a year then we’re saying the City thinks it's worth it to 13
subsidize for each one of these workers $1,500 each year for them to park and we should be able 14
to make that decision. 15
16
So anyway so those are my quibbles with the report which I generally like. I know there's some 17
questions about technology which I’ll wait for others to get to, but to me that those would be the 18
main things. Get understand the merchant's fears, getting that out in a public forum, and then 19
and again the pricing, more transparent and why we're choosing the pricing that we're choosing. 20
Thank you. 21
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
Chair Alcheck: Ok, thank you. Commissioner Monk. 2
3
Commissioner Monk: Thank you for the report and the analysis. I think that this is a complex 4
issue. It's a multifaceted issue. It's clearly been something that's been discussed over a long 5
period of time. Being new on the Commission I don't know the full history of the three legs and 6
where we're at so I'm looking at this very much in a vacuum of hey, we're going to do this thing 7
and which scenario do you want? And I'm from my vantage point I'm not comfortable with just 8
looking at that in that vacuum. So getting the history, knowing the broader objectives that we're 9
trying to achieve, what policies do we want to implement and follow are going to be my 10
guidelines in how to look at this issue. I did appreciate that we have two members of, now three 11
members of the public here. I'm actually surprised given the magnitude of this issue that we're 12
not at a full house, that we haven't received a ton of responses from the community. So I'm just 13
wondering where is there a disconnect in that we have not received more input from the 14
community? So I personally have undertaken to ask as many people as I can what their thoughts 15
are on this and people have a variety of responses. And I’m happy to go over what I've 16
discovered. 17
18
I think what's interesting is that there might be a possible disconnect on what the data is showing 19
and what the perceptions are. So from what you outlined earlier the goal is to actually help 20
customers get to businesses more easily, to draw more people to Downtown. People don't want 21
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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to come Downtown that are locals perhaps because there is not enough parking yet at the same 1
time they don't want to pay, put in meters because then they think that will push people away. 2
So there's a logical flaw in this discussion that we need to consider hashing out amongst us and 3
that's why I would support Commissioner Rosenblum’s suggestion, did I get that wrong again? 4
Blum. To have a stakeholder group because in fact I did reach out and I am very concerned about 5
the comments that were brought to us by on behalf of Bell's Books and the nine other businesses 6
that she spoke with. I reached out myself to Russ Cohen to ask if the Downtown Business 7
Association had a perspective on this and they don't have an official position and that concerns 8
me. This is the agency that's representing the businesses and they don't have a position for us. 9
And unofficially what he said didn't necessarily match up with what I've heard tonight. So we do 10
need to hash this out on a deeper level as much as I'd like to get things resolved and moved 11
forward I think there might need to be a little bit more involvement. 12
13
So just to clarify on what Mr. Lewinsky said earlier in regards to these under parked buildings I do 14
agree with that. And I think that that might be an issue that's being researched by our TMA. We 15
have not heard from our TMA so I'd like to ask staff to please invite the TMA to come and present 16
to us so that we're more educated on what they've been up to, what they're doing, what are the 17
trends, why do they think there's been an increase in the demand for parking, the congestion. 18
Because we again this is presented to us in a vacuum and we don't have any broader 19
understanding of what's going on in the community and also what the TMA efforts have done so 20
far, what their projections and plans are. So if we can have them present I'd greatly appreciate 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
that. 1
2
In regard I'm not going to get to the scenarios right now. I have a bunch of questions about 3
those, but I would just like to throw this question out there. What do you, what would you say is 4
the cause of the increase in parking demand? 5
6
Mr. Mello: So I just want to highlight a couple things before we answer that question both in 7
response to Commissioner Rosenblum’s comments and yours. We did have a stakeholder 8
committee throughout this process that was comprised of business owners and business 9
operators Downtown. They were very vocal and all of their input is incorporated into this report. 10
Not all of them were completely happy with the recommendations that came out of it, but they 11
did participate and we did make some pretty significant modifications to the report based on 12
their input. 13
14
Following the last time we visited the Commission we worked with Russ Cohen and the [BID or 15
bid?] and Judy Kleinberg in the Chamber to convene a focus group of retail operators. 16
Unfortunately even though we worked through them only seven retailers came out to the focus 17
group meeting. It wasn't a big number, but a couple of folks that we had not been able to talk to 18
yet did attend including the operator of the Cardinal Hotel and we gained some additional 19
insights about hotel employee parking needs which we hadn't had to date. Subsequent to that 20
focus group recognizing that it was inadequate to have seven people attend a focus group that 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
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was intended to help us ascertain the opinion of retailers Downtown we worked with Russ again 1
and Judy to distribute the survey that Philip gave you an overview earlier and we had 30… 33 2
responses which again is not what we'd hoped to get through a survey. 3
4
The fact of the matter is these business owners are busy. They're not always there in the hours 5
that we go by. When they are there they're busy doing things related to operating a business so 6
it's difficult for them to participate in this process, but we did get a pretty representative cross-7
section of the different types of businesses Downtown. Now certainly we can't say that we talked 8
to even a majority of the business operators, but I am confident that we have a pretty good 9
handle on what the issues are with them, and what their concerns are, and what you see before 10
you is has been modified based on that. 11
12
And then your comment Commissioner Monk about being new to the Commission and not 13
knowing the full contingent of things that we've been working on Downtown just a little 14
background. Some of the programs that we've advanced more recently are the Transportation 15
Division did work to create the TMA in 2015. It still only has one employee and she's through a 16
consultant that the City has hired. So they don't really have a staff yet. They have a consultant 17
that's serving as the ED. They're about to hire their first time first executive director. The City is 18
about to give them a pretty significant infusion of cash so I think we'll start to see some pretty 19
significant impacts from the TMA. They've already made a 2 percent… 3 percent reduction in 20
Single Occupancy Vehicle (SOV) rate Downtown for 55 percent to 52 percent which in a couple 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.
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years that's a pretty big accomplishment. But we can certainly ask them to come and present to 1
you on where they are with their pilot programs and their SOV trip reduction programs. 2
3
Another big component of the Downtown transportation strategy was the introduction of the 4
RPP program which was also done in 2015 and then expanded shortly thereafter and is now going 5
on two years of well just surpassed its two year anniversary. And then the next step was to 6
advance this Downtown parking management strategy. So we are moving kind of strategically 7
through the multi-pronged approach of managing Downtown transportation demand and traffic 8
demand. And regard to your comment about why the parking demand has increased I mean I 9
would attribute it to the improved economy. The Downtown economy as you know there's very 10
few vacancies Downtown. The sidewalks are packed all day long. When I get out of City Council 11
at ten o'clock on a Monday the sidewalks on University are packed with people eating and going 12
to movies and so I think with increased economic activity you’re going to see increased parking 13
demand. 14
15
Commissioner Monk: Thank you for answering that last question and that wasn't exactly what 16
was made apparent to me in the report. The report to me talked a lot about hopscotching and 17
employees and I just also want to distinguish here when I say employees I'm referring to retail 18
and restaurant workers employees [unintelligible] I'll just call tech workers the tech workers. So I 19
think there is a distinction because they have a different time and length of time and commute 20
hours and so I think it's important to treat those demographics differently. My understanding is 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.
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that the tech workers are being dealt with a lot through the TMA and the garages and Go Pass, 1
things like that. So I’d for my own analysis I'm taking them out of the equation. I’m not seeing 2
them parking on the streets as an issue. It's more of the retail and restaurant workers is my 3
understanding are the ones who are hopscotching because of their odd shifts and working odd 4
hours and things like that. 5
6
And so what my overall problem is with the general plan here is that we're not addressing the 7
fact that if that's the major demographic group that's causing this you reference on Page 133 that 8
there's several hundred vehicles that are hopscotching between color zones. To me if that's the 9
issue then I'd like to talk about that issue and what can we do to help keep our retail vibrant so 10
that it in doing so it needs to have employees that are able to do their job. I see a lot of help 11
wanted signs here and we're just going to see more if we're not going to have employees being 12
able to park here. I talk with employees that park at Stanford and have gotten their cars towed 13
and spent $400. So we do have a legitimate problem that we all in the City claim that we want to 14
help retail and have vibrant Downtowns, but we really do need to put some effort into making it 15
so that employees can park here. And what's the City obligation on that and the policies? 16
17
Mr. Mello: So could I jump in and address that? 18
19
Commissioner Monk: Sure. 20
21
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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Mr. Mello: So we have learned quite a bit about employee behavior and obstacles to moving the 1
employees into long term parking spaces throughout this process. Our conversation with the 2
hotel manager at the Cardinal was one of the most illustrative of our conversations I think. She 3
the bulk of her employees hopscotch around Downtown or they park in the RPP district and move 4
between the RPP and Downtown. And we've heard that from a lot of the business owners. A lot 5
of them actually give concessions to their employees to go move their car every two hours and 6
we think the root cause of that is there's several factors. The first is we don't have a low income 7
permit for the garages or the lots Downtown so the only option currently today is to buy a full 8
price permit which is now $780 a year which is a significant lift for somebody who's making 9
minimum wage. The second thing that I think is a challenge is that we don't do a very good job 10
marketing the RPP permits. 11
12
We do have a low income RPP permits. There's a pretty significant language barrier with a lot of 13
the employees Downtown and despite our best efforts to try to use the business community as a 14
network to get the word out about RPP permits and to help facilitate the permit purchase process 15
that's not happening. We've encountered quite a few employees who had no idea that RPP 16
permits were even available and Patrick can confirm that with the intercept surveys that they did 17
at the beginning of this process, but I think moving forward one of the and this is all in the report 18
we need to really think about introducing low income permits for the lots and garages and that's 19
one of the recommendations from the Downtown Parking Management Study. 20
21
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 if we're going to continue to offer the low income RPP permits I think we need to make 1
sure that they're marketed and available to low income employees and that we don't… we 2
actually have a set aside of low income permits in the RPP. When we begin the permit selling 3
process every six months we set aside half for low income employees and we really should be 4
selling more than half to low income employees because we're trying to shift the more high 5
income office employees to alternative modes and it doesn't make sense to be selling more than 6
half of the RPP permits at full price. But I think we need to work on our Spanish language 7
outreach for RPPs and we need to create a better relationship between us and the business 8
community Downtown so that they're getting the word out and that we can and that they're 9
helping their employees access those permits. 10
11
Commissioner Monk: So you're saying the 50 percent that are allocated to low income are that 12
maxes out every time or it doesn't max out because they're not aware it's available? 13
14
Mr. Mello: No, it doesn't max out. 15
16
Commissioner Monk: Ok and it’s also because they have to buy it for six months and a lot of them 17
aren't sure that they’re going to keep their job for six months. So I also would like to put a plug in 18
there to go to the monthly payment system on those permits for the low income workers. I know 19
that was one of the agenda items or one of the items mentioned. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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Mr. Mello: Yeah so not to jump ahead, but license plate recognition enforcement would enable us 1
to be much more nimble in our permit sales approach and that would enable the real time 2
purchase of permits. So an employee could buy a weekly permit if they weren't sure they were 3
going to be here more than a week, they could buy a weekly permit, they could buy a monthly 4
permit, and that would be in some way tied to their license plate. The current system it can take 5
up to two weeks to just get your sticker or your hang tag in the mail. So they may not even be 6
around long enough to get their permit in the mail and affix it to their vehicle. So not to plug the 7
LPR, but that's one of the opportunities that LPR does present is the ability being more nimble in 8
permit sales. 9
10
Commissioner Monk: And I apologize for monopolizing, but I do have a couple more questions. 11
On the reality is is that those cars are going to park here because those are employees coming to 12
their jobs. So they have to be here. So whether we're charging for permits or not those cars are 13
still going to be here and I don't see how this program is addressing that demographic and that 14
issue. And so I would like to encourage more thought put into what we can do for that specific 15
group because to me that sounds like that's a big piece of what's happening as far as taking up 16
available parking. Why aren’t they in the garages? So yeah, I would advocate for adding permits 17
so that they can go, low income permits for the garages. And the new garage that's being built on 18
Waverly and Hamilton, what's that garage all about? Can that be dedicated to employees? 19
Would our community support having a garage being paying paid for by our tax dollars for 20
employees? Mountain View I think is doing it. 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.
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1
So I just think there's a broader issues that we need to look at. I don't know if we can revisit the 2
satellite parking lot idea with the use of our shuttle. The thing is is that with these folks working 3
at odd hours in restaurants they can't rely on other modes to get or leave their job, so they're 4
kind of stuck. We’re not providing housing for them, and we're not providing transportation for 5
them, and we're not giving them low income permits yet we still want them to come here. And 6
it's just not a fair situation so we just need to really put some thought into it and how we can 7
make it more workable. 8
9
There is definitely land right in this vicinity that we could and should consider partnering with for 10
the employee parking. What's Caltrain doing at late at night? Can employees park there after 11
5:00 p.m. when commuters aren't using that lot? What about at the North Face site? There's a 12
few spots there. What about at Anthropologie? Wherever these… there are places that I don't 13
know if the City is looking into it, but I'd like to see more creative solutions to address that 14
fundamental issue before moving forward with just hey, let's just put in these meters. Because I 15
do live in the RPP and I do live Downtown and this doesn't impact me, but I can see what's 16
happening. It doesn't impact me because we have parking where I live, but it is [fuller] right 17
down here. The RPP that I’m in that this would push people out towards is already full. So this 18
will push more and more cars out into the neighborhoods so this is more of a Band-Aid fix to me if 19
we're not actually looking at this big segment of employees and where those cars are going to go. 20
I can pass for right now on the rest of it. Thank you. 21
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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2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Chair Alcheck: Ok, thank you. Commissioner Gardias. 2
3
Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. Thank you very much for your presentation and for coming to 4
show us the study that you did. So this is the second session, right? We had a first one so my 5
impression was that there would be some incorporated input from our really fruitful session 6
number one. The way that I when I heard my colleagues speaking back then couple of weeks ago 7
or maybe a couple of months ago there were a number of the very good ideas that led me to 8
thinking that when we're going to meet again you're going to broaden the approach to the 9
parking although it's Downtown parking only. And for this reason I would expect that as a 10
minimum you going to show us some road map with various elements of the parking different 11
restrictions or improvements/implementations so we can understand the timing issue of all 12
improvements. 13
14
Today we only see this one element so it's really hard for us to speak to the entire program. 15
Perhaps you have a better understanding, maybe you have some graphs that show at what point 16
of time you were… you would be implementing or coming to us to implement some different 17
mechanisms of the parking management. This is only one piece the way I see it. So I would 18
recommend that you go back to the notes, meeting minutes from the prior meeting. There were 19
very good ideas and I think that the scope of that meeting if I recall it well was more about some 20
other ideas like for example from Eric Rosenblum there was this a proposal of management, of 21
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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opening the parking structure this is or the underground parking structures to the public and 1
sharing them. So there was a Ed was talking about a providing shuttle service from the Stanford 2
Mall and many other good ideas that I think that there should be on the timeline and that there 3
should be a roadmap that would be presented to us. So I would recommend that you pretty 4
much refresh this and then return to us with the broader understanding. The second item 5
(interrupted) 6
7
Mr. Mello: Sorry, sorry could I jump in there? 8
9
Commissioner Gardias: Sure. 10
11
Mr. Mello: We're working on probably a dozen parking projects and programs right now. This is 12
just one piece of if we were to give you a full overview of all those programs it would probably 13
take half a day. This conversation is probably going to take a couple hours just to deal with this 14
one particular program. So I do respect that opinion, but I think that tonight we're really here to 15
get you to focus a little bit narrowly on the particular recommendations that are in this study. We 16
could come back to you with a broader discussion on the other parking programs that we're 17
working on; the shuttle program and the whole host of other transportation projects and 18
programs, but tonight we really were hoping to get your input on the Downtown Parking 19
Management Study and bring that input to Council when we return to them and ask them to 20
move forward with these recommendations. 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Gardias: I understand this, but I'm speaking to it because I think that there should 2
be a road map. Such road map should be in the in front of our eyes all the time. This way we 3
would not spend time referring to some other items that maybe you already have planned and 4
maybe the discussion is moot because it's going to come up to us in a year or so and then we 5
would have a greater visibility. So I recommend at least that the cover page of next meeting on 6
this or some other parking discussion there would be a road map that would just show us the 7
timeline and all different implementation of different elements in different swim lanes. You 8
know how to do it so just it would just give us a better perspective. 9
10
So the second item is that is this what you were talking about different elements of the whole 11
program as they are coming from either this group or from the Finance Committee or from the 12
staff as well. Every time when I talk to Greg Tanaka he tells me that he promotes role of PTC and I 13
like it very much maybe because of this that he wants to elevate our position, everybody would. 14
And also he talks that we should start looking into some financial aspects of expenditure and he 15
spoke before he joined before he left this Commission and he joined the Council he spoke also 16
about some cost elements. I would be interested and we also spoke about this of in seeing a 17
profit and loss (P&L) statement of different options. I spoke about this at the prior occasion and I 18
ask about providing us P&L statement from the perspective of merchants. One is the P&L 19
statements from the perspective of City and there will be a totally different P&L from the 20
perspective of merchants. And I said that they those two might be different. 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Also I think that it would be beneficial for us before we make our decision to see some input from 2
the Finance Committee and that may be you may not be accustomed to it because of we've never 3
done it, but I think that giving numerus elements like for example subsidizing a TMA from the 4
higher fees I would like to understand how this would work from the perspective of the 5
granularity. Because flexibility in the fees that this new system would be charging is very 6
appealing, but then can we lower the fees? If we lower the fees to steer the demand in some 7
other areas where it was depleted we would naturally TMA subsidies would take a hit because of 8
this reason. So I would like to pretty much understand different scenarios how this would work 9
from the Finance Committee perspective. This would probably enhance my perspective on this. 10
11
Mr. Mello: So there is certainly a strong financial component to this decision. The Finance 12
Committee is taking this up next week and then again in either late November or early December 13
and they're going to be looking at the financial side of this study. And we were actually hoping to 14
take your input to the Finance Committee because they're going to rely on you for the policy 15
perspective and the Planning and Transportation perspective before they're going to consider the 16
financial side. 17
18
Commissioner Gardias: Sure as they should, right? But we also probably would welcome their 19
input as well. So I know these two things would go in parallel. So and I have more comments, but 20
I allow others to speak and return later. Thank you. 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Monk: Can I just ask a question? 2
3
Chair Alcheck: Thank… um. 4
5
Commissioner Monk: And you might have just answered it, but... 6
7
Chair Alcheck: Ok, go ahead. Quickly. 8
9
Commissioner Monk: If the Commission tonight isn't in a position to vote on parking tonight for if 10
that turns out to be the case and letting it be decided ultimately by Council would it still provide 11
value for us to go through these four scenarios so that in the event Council does go forward with 12
it they at least half our advisement on these four scenarios. Is there a way to approach this 13
discussion tonight in that light as opposed to this overarching policy issue that we may or may not 14
resolve? 15
16
Mr. Mello: Well that's exactly what we're asking you. Council did not direct us to go to PTC to get 17
their vote on whether to move forward with paid parking. They asked us to work with you to 18
develop an implementation plan. So if they were to elect to move forward with implementing all 19
of the recommendations from this study how should they do it? So things like the type of 20
equipment, the structure of the fees, introducing low income employee permits, those types of 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
things. 1
2
Commissioner Monk: Ok and that's an important distinction for me because in discussing the 3
merits of the different programs is a completely different discussion as to should we do this or 4
not. Thank you. 5
6
Mr. Mello: I mean I think your opinion on whether to do it or not is also valuable to the Council, 7
but if they do elect to move forward I think they'd also want to hear how you'd like them to do 8
that. 9
10
Mr. Kamhi: Sorry, I'm going just to jump in I'm going to reference the fourth part of the 11
recommendation that says “recommend to the City Council that if Council approves the full 12
implementation of the recommendations that it utilizes the following items as discussed tonight.” 13
So that's really what we're seeking tonight is your input on it. 14
15
Commissioner Lauing: Where are you reading? 16
17
Mr. Kamhi: That's from the recommendation. That's Number 4 in the recommendation. 18
19
Commissioner Lauing: Page? 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Kamhi: And it's really it's also incorporated in three it's the recommendation on Page 1. It's 1
actually on Packet Page 6. 2
3
Chair Alcheck: Ok. Ok, I am going to continue so that the Commissioners that haven't had a 4
chance to speak yet can participate. Commissioner Lauing then Commissioner [Note Vice-Chair] 5
Waldfogel. 6
7
Commissioner Lauing: Ok, thanks. I want to talk about things first in kind of buckets of bigger 8
issues like economics and public outreach and the data and then maybe make some more specific 9
comments. So the first thing I want to mention is that it seems to me that this whole objective 10
here is to have convenient access to retail and service businesses for shoppers and also for 11
people that work there. So oh, we just lost two Commissioners. So that's what we have to keep 12
in mind and so I get concerned when I read in a number of places that an important part of this is 13
the economics and potentially raising money for the transportation management because as you 14
also openly state you don't have a sort of a P&L for how that might, how this might work, the paid 15
parking. There's no expenses allocated here for very, very high equipment expenses and 16
potential staff expenses and so on. So I just don't want us to be sort of selling this to the public or 17
to Council with the perspective of it's going to raise a lot of money and solve all of our problems 18
with transportation management because we don't have a clue if it will at this point. I know 19
there are some hopes because other counties and cities have done that, but we don't know that 20
because there are just so many variables. So I just, I'm just worried that we’re being a little 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
disingenuous if we’re kind of pushed that and the economics are really not the important point 1
except paying for this. It's really are we solving the problem of congestion and parking and 2
getting people Downtown. So that's the first thing. 3
4
Secondly, I think you've addressed mostly, but I just want to make a brief comment on the 5
incremental outreach since last time because to Commissioner Gardias’ point we did give you a 6
lot of input four months ago and one of those items of input was we need to do a lot more 7
outreach. So four months later there's been one focus group and set of seven people and I know 8
that was problematic for you guys. I think we heard tonight that there's a different system that 9
we could work which is sort of block captains which would be really good if we could get a few 10
people like Miss Hill to talk to her neighbors and report in it would be much more efficient for you 11
guys than to have to do the painstaking invite 30 and get 7. So I'm not saying that's your fault; I'm 12
just saying that we don't have a lot more independent feedback and I mean let's face it, this is a 13
highly disruptive massive system for everywhere Downtown. So as some of my colleagues have 14
already spoken to we need to hear from the retailers. 15
16
And by the way I would always like to get the exact people who attend these things including the I 17
think the seven people, but if it were any of those actually service workers that could comment 18
on it or were some of them I think you said some of them were retailers. Were there any other 19
sort of customers about how they would react to where they would park; like to see kind of what 20
they represented. And I think what you said in the report what the stakeholders groups were 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
which were at the beginning dominantly a lot of City staff and then it expanded from there. So 1
this kind of broad outreach is just really important for something that's this disruptive. 2
3
So then the third big area that I want to talk about is just the data. And again we had a long 4
discussion about this at the June meeting. I'm still troubled by this 80 percent industry standard 5
which we talked about. Tonight the consultant said it's actually an 85 percent industry standard. 6
I just went through I think I put the page number down here on one of these pages and if it 7
wasn't oh yeah… on page, yeah on Page 50 of the packet this just happened to be a Thursday in a 8
month if you went up to 85 percent as the industry standard in this particular one it was only the 9
orange section in the evening on Thursday that was impacted. So somewhere in here we want to 10
talk about where does it say that we're at 90's and a 100’s? I know I saw some on certain streets 11
and so on, but I'm trying to get a feel of how pervasive is this problem and why 80 percent or now 12
85 percent is the one that we have to react to? 13
14
Mr. Smith: It to that 80 to 85 percent that’s a that is a widely accepted industry average that city 15
by cities usually abide by. Typically if we reach that… I'll go back to my example of 10 spaces on 16
the street. If we have it once you reached that 85, 90, 95 percent occupancy level you run the 17
risk of spaces not being available if you or I are trying to go Downtown and park on street 18
somewhere and as a result of that I’m then forced to circle a block or a number of blocks in 19
search of that parking space. I can tell you where the where that [unintelligible] comes from is it's 20
a guy by the name of Dr. Shoup who… 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Lauing: Yeah. 2
3
Mr. Smith: Yeah, so. 4
5
Commissioner Lauing: But I'm just saying that 80 percent is not 105 percent and it's not seven 6
days a week or all day parks. It's coming at the typical times of lunch and dinner if you really look 7
at it. 8
9
Mr. Mello: So if I could jump in here and just back up and deal with your points in order. Your 10
first comment about the P&Ls and the finances and not painting this as a revenue generator I 11
think that's a fair point. We are going to be presenting the P&Ls to the Finance Committee for a 12
third discussion on what the revenue outlook would be under the different scenarios. First and 13
foremost this is intended to be a management strategy for Downtown parking not a revenue 14
generator, but I'd be remiss if I did not mention that there are three parking projects that are 15
currently unfunded that we’re advancing and the assumption has been that they would be 16
funded through parking revenues. Those are the Automated Parking Guidance System (APGS). 17
That's the red light/green light space inventory signage that would be outside of the garages. 18
19
The second project that's unfunded that we're working on is we're estimating about a million 20
dollars, sorry, the APGS is $2 million dollars and then the comprehensive parking permit system 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
which would bring all of our different parking permits under one system and enable the kind of 1
dynamic real time virtual permitting that's estimated to cost about a million dollars that's 2
unfunded. And then finally the equipment needed to manage the parking so the meters, the 3
sensors, the parking access and revenue control equipment that is also unfunded currently and 4
we were assuming parking revenue to fund that in the budget. 5
6
Lastly your point about the our occupancy rates not always approaching 85 percent or exceeding 7
85 percent. I would go back again to Scenario 4 which is the dynamic parking management 8
system. There is nothing to say that we couldn't have free parking during the periods when it's 9
well below 85 percent and only implement parking fees during the periods where we see the 10
occupancy rates over 85 approaching 90 percent. By moving forward with installation of the 11
equipment to do the management we're not saying we're going to perpetually charge for parking 12
at all period all times of day, every day of the week. 13
14
Commissioner Lauing: Yeah, I understand that, but you still have to put up very expensive 15
unsightly meters and basically every time a resident or someone coming into our town sees that 16
it’s like oh, I got to pay that and what people think they're coming to town is I'm paying every 17
time I come to town because rarely do you drive into town where you're not spending money out 18
of your wallet on something; coffee, restaurant, making a purchase. So it's just an incremental 19
cost to cover the parking, but they feel like they're coming here to share their money with us. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Mello: I agree and there was one more point I wanted to make which is one of the things I 1
think we have to do if we elect to move forward with this is establish performance measures and 2
why are we doing this and how do we measure success. And I think we need to be clear that the 3
success should be measured by providing customer parking close to businesses, better allocating 4
spaces to employees, and not generating revenue. That shouldn't be the main driving criteria. So 5
I think something we'd also be interested in hearing from you is what the overarching goals of the 6
program need to be in and get those written into policy as we move forward. 7
8
Mr. Kamhi: If I can also just going back to the occupancy I mean the occupancy overall in the 9
study area is not really that illustrative of the issue and the issue of 85 percent really speaks to 10
what the design of an 85 percent occupancy or below is that there's an available space on each 11
block and when you go in and look at the actual block by block inventory you’ll see there's a lot of 12
times where for instance 400 Forest is above 85 percent all day long every day. And a car that's 13
looking for a parking space on that block is not going to find one it's going to continue driving, 14
circling, looking for a parking space and that that's really the impact that a parking program could 15
help to control. 16
17
Commissioner Lauing: It can. What I'm trying to figure out here from looking at the data is are we 18
trying to solve the problem of 5 percent of our parkers as opposed to 95 percent of our parkers? 19
Because if we are this is a very radical expensive program to put in place all at once and hope for 20
the best. So that's what I'm trying to figure out from the data. 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
The next question I wanted to ask about which again came up at the last meeting is that it's not 2
clear to me that we have a disaster problem on our hands with the current color coding because 3
it was stated by your colleague last time that for the most part it's not there's still these hopping 4
around and we heard one incremental idea on how we could control that from a speaker tonight. 5
So that is definitely a problem that has to be fixed. No one’s debating that, but it's not happening 6
like constantly. And again if you address that from a standpoint of employees particularly service 7
employees that could park cheaply or free somewhere else that would take that problem maybe 8
away entirely without putting in a single meter. So there it just seems like there are other 9
alternatives to that. 10
11
Mr. Mello: Yeah, if we did decide that hopscotching was the first problem we wanted to tackle we 12
may be able to address that by improving adding inventory of permit spaces in the garages and 13
introducing the low income employee parking permits. That's not going to address all the issues 14
Downtown though. It's not going to address the congestion from circling, the emissions 15
generated from vehicles circling. It's not necessarily going to ensure that there's an open space 16
on each block, but again if we decided that was the worst… the issue that we wanted to address 17
first before doing anything else I think we could look at ways to attack the hopscotching without 18
moving directly into paid parking. But the paid parking system, the dynamic paid parking system 19
is meant to address several different issues not just the hopscotching issue. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Lauing: Right. Good segue to my next question is it's too big to answer, but we're 1
looking for a behavioral change here from anything that we do. The best would be not to bring a 2
car at all, but we're assuming that we're not addressing that one in this project. So the behavioral 3
change we're trying to do is to get people to spread out and move. A couple of colleagues have 4
already raised the 100 percent specter that folks are going to fall off into the RPP area. That 5
raises a do we have to re-legislate there or lower the amount of free parking that they have in 6
RPP so there's another fall off there. 7
8
Are there any other just thoughts on what other behavior can be forced to change there or 9
through other things to do? One idea that is very unscientific is that the blue zone seems like it's 10
always parkable. I actually frequently come Downtown in the blue zone and I never have a 11
problem even at lunch parking in that zone. I mean within a block and a half. Maybe we could 12
market it somehow in electronic ways that hey, go park in the blue zone no problem. So to get 13
these behavioral changes are there any other alternatives than what you've put forth here that 14
you guys thought about and rejected? 15
16
Mr. Mello: Well I just want to remind you that there's probably a dozen recommendations in this 17
study. Paid parking is but one of a dozen. Better wayfinding signage is one that we're moving 18
forward with. As Philip mentioned we bid that out recently as part of a larger Downtown project. 19
Unfortunately we didn't get any bids so we're now negotiating with contractors to see if we can 20
get somebody on under contract to install the signage. The second component of that would be 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
the APGS which is the real time space inventory signage. They would actually direct people to 1
open parking spaces in the garages off street. So there's many, many more components to this 2
greater Downtown Parking Management Study than just the meters and the paid parking. 3
4
Commissioner Lauing: Yeah, I warned myself and you that that was too big of a question. Let me 5
try to ask it in a different way. If we wanted to somehow test this in a narrow way is could you 6
have a smaller geographical area that would still give you enough view of that? For example 7
could you just and I don't know this is right. Could you just do University Avenue? Obviously 8
there would be pushes off into the other neighborhood. Would that be other push… is there 9
enough data there that you could get to say… the obvious question is it’s a lot cheaper it's a lot 10
less disruptive. So is there a smaller set that you could pilot this and still have it be valid? I know 11
that's the important point. 12
13
Mr. Kamhi: Yes, there are. There’s well, yeah. University Avenue could be done. There's also 14
three tiers that the consultant recommended that first tier being the real core. Yeah, I’m not… 15
16
Mr. Smith: Just knowing Palo Alto I mean if you ever wanted to pilot technology I think that the 17
California Avenue district is the best place to do that in terms of seeing the effects of what paid 18
parking or some form of paid parking could do to a small business district. You're you'd be happy 19
to put it on University Avenue. I fear though that with the number and the volume of traffic that 20
comes down University Avenue that to only have one regulation in place versus the entire 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Downtown in some way, shape, or form it doesn't have to be paid parking in all the other tiered 1
zones throughout Downtown, but not having some kind of management thing in place to help 2
address whatever traffic's going to be pushed off of University Avenue you might be setting 3
yourself up for failure in terms of whether or not you think that program is successful. 4
5
Commissioner Lauing: That's the premise of my question. We can't set ourselves up for failure. 6
7
Mr. Smith: Yeah. 8
9
Commissioner Lauing: So if there is a pilot it has to be broad enough for you to get enough data 10
to say that. And I actually I don't think just doing University would do it because you get enough 11
push that would, it would so I’m just saying we could think about something that's a little bit 12
smaller than doing this everywhere in Downtown as long as we can get representative data. 13
14
Mr. Smith: Yeah. 15
16
Mr. Mello: I mean I think we could gain a couple insights by just doing one street like University. 17
We could get some insights into price elasticity and what the point is that frees up that one space 18
per block. We could also look at potentially the amount of turnover that's occurring pre-pilot 19
versus post pilot. If it's actually encouraging the turnover that we expected it to which could then 20
indicate that there is an increase in customers that are able to visit, but I don't know that we’d be 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
able to make any kind of inferences beyond that. 1
2
Commissioner Lauing: Ok, last comment which is almost a process issue, but again it's somewhat 3
similar to what my colleague Gardias said is that we've gone four months since we saw this and 4
we have had silence, no interaction. To me this is just the perfect example of something that we 5
could work on together with a couple of Commissioners working on a lot of this detailed stuff, 6
some that Commissioner Monk mentioned and Commissioner Rosenblum and this is this would 7
be perfect for that. So we could take hours and hours and hours to work on a couple of these 8
things and come back and present to our colleagues here's some ways to improve this. So I 9
would still leave that on the table for the Commission and for staff. Thanks. 10
11
Chair Alcheck: Commissioner [Note Vice-Chair] Waldfogel. 12
13
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Thank you. One of the advantages of going what am I fifth or sixth in this is 14
that there are a lot of things I can agree with that have already been said. And I'm going to start 15
by saying it may have been my jetlag, I just got home from a trip yesterday, but I did find this 16
report hard to follow partially because there's the same data presented over and over and tables 17
just sliced and diced slightly differently. So we should probably have a conversation at some 18
point about how to prepare these reports so that they get to the point more crisply. But I will say 19
the report did change my mind and it changed my mind because to the best of my understanding 20
I think in the report you've made a case that we may need to do something about pricing 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Downtown parking in the future, but I don't think the report made a case that today is the day 1
especially since we have a new parking structure in the works in Downtown so we're adding to 2
supply. So we just I don't think we've made the case today. 3
4
So let me just go through some of things I agree with that other Commissioners have said. I 5
strongly agree with several of Commissioner Rosenblum’s comments. We can't displace parking 6
into the neighborhoods so whatever we do I mean we've had some success, I think some 7
tremendous success for the RPPs. I think that some of streets that I've seen are night and day 8
different from three years ago and I think undoing that would be a disaster. It would be it would 9
be functional and a political disaster. 10
11
I also really like the idea of pricing in a few garages in a few of the parking structures. This could 12
play into what Commissioner Lauing was just talking about, his experiments in elasticity. And I 13
would love it because I have a known last resort place to go that after I make my free pass I’ll just 14
zip over to that garage and I know that for a buck I can park. So good stuff. So that's an 15
interesting idea. 16
17
I also agree with Commissioner Monk's points. If we're worried about the low income problem 18
let's tackle that directly not indirectly. I will add the caveat that I'm not convinced it's the 19
community's problem if Larry Ellison at the Epiphany Hotel doesn't pay his housekeepers enough 20
to park during the day, but that said I think that we need some flexibility around different income 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
levels and we've we do have to solve this problem. 1
2
That's said I mean it took me a while to sort this out. I hate this term hopscotching. I hate these 3
little pejorative neologisms. I mean people are legally re-parking, let's just call it re-parking. Let’s 4
not invent pejorative terms. But it looks like it's maybe 6 percent phenomenon. I mean I the 5
numbers say something like 6 percent and then there's another place which has 80 to 200 so it 6
looks like it's really at the margins. If we're going to have this phenomenon, re-parking 7
phenomenon going on it's much better that it go on in the Downtown district then going out into 8
the RPP districts so I’ll make the point again. I don't mind if it happens in the Downtown district. 9
I do mind if it happens by pushing out into the RPP districts. And ironically if what we're focused 10
on is emissions the emissions from empty Transportation Network Company (TNC) cars which I'm 11
backing into this from the surveys, I think it's 8 percent are ride sharing TNC, but the emissions 12
from empty TNC cars are probably greater than the emissions from re-parking so we could follow 13
London's we could imitate London's move and ban Uber if we were as serious about this as we 14
say we are. So I mean it's just the ideas have consequences and we have to be clear that we're 15
choosing policies that actually implement the ideas that we're trying to capture. 16
17
I also agree with Commissioner Gardias’ comments that we need to see the finances before we 18
can weigh in on options. We're not just policy Gods and Goddess. We actually need to know 19
what stuff costs to make policy recommendations because we've had a lot of discussions about 20
subsidies whether parking spaces are subsidized congestion costs and for that matter even transit 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
has subsidies. The fare box doesn't recover 100 percent of the cost of running Caltrain or VTA. So 1
whatever modes that we're pushing people into there are subsidies and there are social costs and 2
so I think it's hard for us to do this in a vacuum. 3
4
I also agree with Commissioner Lauing’s points. We just don't have many zones and times that 5
exceed the 85 percent threshold that we've laid out as the criteria. Certainly there are street 6
faces that some times of day cross that threshold, but the data does look like we have lunch time 7
and evening, probably early evening peaks and it's just not clear to me that we have to install all 8
this street furniture, all these systems, all this infrastructure to solve a couple hours a day in a 9
couple of zones. I think sometime in the future we may need to do that. We may get to higher 10
utilization sometime in the future, but as I said at the beginning I'm not convinced from your 11
study that today is the day. 12
13
I will reiterate I mean I think that a paid parking experiment in some garages or structures would 14
be a great idea because then we can start to understand elasticity and those of us who value 15
convenience can head straight for those garages at peak times. Lunch time it would be nice to 16
know that I can zip in and out. And we'll learn something from that, but and we don't install a 17
street furniture we just install some pay barriers and in some systems and that's a relatively easy 18
and cheap way to I think to learn something. 19
20
So if I have to choose from one of your scenarios nobody else so far has chosen a scenario. If I 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
had to choose a scenario, Scenario 1 is the only one that I would seriously pursue today. And I 1
would probably pursue it on a limited basis just choosing one or two structures to meter and I’d 2
use that to learn some things about elasticity and to learn some things about just get some 3
experience with the system building. So if I had to choose a scenario that's the one I would 4
choose. I mean I would support your CPMS efforts. I support increasing permit prices. I support 5
access control generally in structures. I support low income programs. I support the wayfinding, 6
but if I had to choose a scenario out of the four scenarios the only one that I would advance today 7
would be Scenario 1 and probably in some subset of Scenario 1. 8
9
Chair Alcheck: Thank you. Commissioner Summa. 10
11
Commissioner Summa: Thank you and thank you to staff and members of the public and yeah, 12
this was a lot to absorb and I agree with Commissioner [Note Vice-Chair] Waldfogel that it was 13
kind of the same data presented in different ways. My concern is about all the scenarios, I 14
wouldn't be able to choose one today, is that they're all flawed in that they have the potential to 15
greatly damage retail in Downtown and that they none of them protect the RPP areas from 16
becoming the pretty next obvious place to zone jump. I found a lot of good in what all my 17
colleagues had to say. I think I would prefer an approach that was much less impactful as putting 18
meters all over Downtown and try to manage the zone hopping both in the RPP and the color 19
zones by policy and if necessary license plate readers if that would if that's the way to integrate 20
both of those areas, the information for both of those areas to be enforced, and to find a way to 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
really make it make the existing pricing flexible enough to accommodate all income levels and use 1
that as kind of a pilot and see where we get with it and then evaluate it. I think that would be a 2
more prudent approach that would be more that would really be appreciated by residents and 3
small business owners. 4
5
I have a million questions and observations, but I want to keep the high level right now. I also 6
think if you really eliminate people utilizing short term parking zones to park all day you might 7
really see a significant result in SOV reductions which is from the side of greenhouse gas 8
emissions and that issue is what we really want to see. But I could not support any I agree with 9
Commissioner Rosenblum, I cannot support any of these now because they would all have a 10
potential and I really believe all put parking into residential neighborhoods. 11
12
So I also agree that the costs and revenue capture from this were so vague that it doesn't really, it 13
would be hard to make a decision now based on the potential for this funding the TMA. I also 14
have a strong preference for the TMA being funded by not the residents of Palo Alto by paying 15
once again for a service that we've sort of paid for through taxes already, but really by the 16
businesses. Primarily the businesses who create the problem. 17
18
As to that issue I also would like to maybe disagree a little bit with my colleague Commissioner 19
Monk about the cause of the increase in demand. So and if any members of the public 20
particularly I was thinking Faith Bell since she’s operated a business in the same place for so long 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
would like to comment on this. I lived in Downtown just kitty-corner from here until the early 1
90's and my observation about the Downtown is that what has increased are not the small 2
businesses. What has increased are the densely occupied primarily tech worker type software 3
businesses not to pick on anybody, not with the possible exception of restaurants. I think there's 4
more restaurants. And I think that's interesting because the only times in your aggregated charts 5
about where there exceeded the 85 percent threshold was as other Commissioners have pointed 6
out lunch and dinner. And I surely don't think we want to disincentivize or discourage people 7
from coming here at either lunch or dinner time and I think we want to have a flexible enough 8
parking for them to stick around and shop. 9
10
I recently had lunch with some old friends and the amount of time you spend picking out where 11
you’re going to have lunch based on where you're going to find parking versus the kind of food 12
you want to eat or the quality of the restaurant is kind of silly. And neither one of them wanted 13
to stick around and shop which normally we would do and kind of make a day of it because they 14
didn't want to go through the hassle of moving their cars. So I think that one of the members of 15
the public pointed out that with the limitation of moving once in other words four hours to one 16
other color zone or and also in the RPP would accommodate a more extensive use and enjoyment 17
of our time by not just residents, but visitors. And also people and this is kind of selfish of me, but 18
people that sometimes have to come for three hour meetings to City Hall during the day and it’s 19
hard to find three hour spots. So I think four hours is kind of sounds like the sweet spot there. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
And I did want to say that I found the Stakeholder group results and the other group of seven, I 1
forget what you were calling it that you guys worked with later, to be not very enlightening. And 2
Ms. Bell spent two hours this afternoon walking around and talked to a variety of different kind of 3
businesses and got nine people to weigh in on it. So I'm not sure and I think Commissioner 4
Gardias mentioned that maybe that block captain approach would be a really valuable way to go. 5
So yeah, so I don't know if Faith Bell would like to comment on the change in densities of worker 6
populations Downtown, but if it's alright with Chair I'd like her to. 7
8
Chair Alcheck: Sure. I mean is a… yeah. Sure. I would be happy to give her a few minutes to do 9
that. I’ll give you three minutes. 10
11
Ms. Bell: Thank you. I very much appreciate the opportunity. Just anecdotally the buildings 12
adjacent to my own which for years were occupied by retail though they have the ground floor 13
retail in place that's only required for a certain point percentage of the front of the building so the 14
ones just on either side of me now have one has 24 people upstairs in a very small building, one 15
has 12 people at the back, another has 6 at the back. So when there's the in lieu parking fees 16
done for people building new buildings or when there's an assessment made based on what your 17
footprint is and how many people you're going to have in that building it has not been updated to 18
accommodate those new changes in the tech workers. So we're seeing what used to have maybe 19
2 employees and occasional customers coming through turning into 30 people in the same 20
footprint. So that has made a massive, massive change and so it's not just the upstairs it's the 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
backs of the front of the ground floors as well. 1
2
And I might just note that the for years people have bandied about the idea of a transferable 3
permit. I for instance have a three day a week employee who's been working for me for 11 years 4
who is absolutely essential to my business and I pay $780 a year to buy her a permit, but my store 5
is open twice that much and if I could just simply share that permit with the people who came on 6
the other days it would mean a massive change in what they think they can sell for permitting 7
because she doesn't use that three days a week. Now I know they oversell, but I think they've 8
reduced the amount of overselling being done on the permits basis because there were problems 9
with that. But that would be one very creative very quick solution is just to have a hanger that 10
you put in there. So that's a couple of ideas on that. But so the in lieu fees really need to reflect 11
how many people are in those spaces and you need to reassess that as Jeff did mention like with 12
the Church. 13
14
Commissioner Summa: Thank you. 15
16
Ms. Bell: Thank you for asking. 17
18
Chair Alcheck: Thank you. 19
20
Commissioner Summa: Yes. Oh. 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Chair Alcheck: Go ahead. 2
3
Commissioner Summa: So not quite finished yet. So yeah, so it's been my observation and 4
through no fault of anyone sitting here, but just over time there has been not a very not an 5
attentive look through policy at changes in the Downtown and a more accurate reckoning of the 6
reality of how many parking spots were needed. So we can't go back and undo that, but I think 7
we can really address this from a point in a creative way that some my colleagues have 8
mentioned and public has mentioned that won't hurt neighborhoods or our small retail 9
businesses and also our single occupancy I mean single operator small businesses that tend to be 10
upstairs or in Class B or C office and also really have some significant potential reductions in SOV 11
trips which would be great for everybody. 12
13
And the last thing I did want to mention because I have a million other thoughts and questions 14
and details, but I've been talking a long time is that I just I don't think we have to worry about 15
people coming to Downtown and having an expectation of parking on a specific block face. That 16
just seems kind of unnecessary to me. I never think even if I'm going to Bell's Bookstore I never 17
think I need to park on her block. I need to park somewhere pretty close by and I think that's true 18
for people except for persons with disabilities. So at this time I would not be recommending any 19
of the four options. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Alcheck: Ok, thank you. 1
2
Mr. Mello: Thank you; if I could just make one clarification? Funding for the TMA has come up a 3
couple times as it's discussed in the report before you, the study. When the study was prepared 4
earlier this year there was no dedicated funding to the TMA. Since then starting for this fiscal 5
year City Council elected to increase the total permit fees both Downtown and in the Cal Ave. 6
business direct. And the excess revenue from the permit fee increase Downtown was dedicated 7
to the TMA. So any funding that was realized, any revenue that was realized from implementing 8
paid parking Downtown would more likely be directed to funding parking Capital Improvement 9
Projects (CIP) like the APGS, the parks equipment, and the comprehensive permit system. 10
11
Chair Alcheck: Ok, we will do a second round and I have a few lights already lit, but let me chime 12
in a little bit. First let me say thank you. Thank you for the amount of time and effort that you 13
three have put into this. I can’t imagine that it's easy to sort of sit on that side of the table when 14
the Commission is demonstrating sort of a level of dissatisfaction with what we're talking about 15
tonight, but what I would encourage you to do is to imagine that we're all sitting on the same side 16
of the table for a minute. We make a significant sacrifice here to volunteer our time to be a part 17
of some effort to sort of figure out how to best overcome some of the challenges that this City 18
deals with. And alternatively you three are paid to sort of be a significant part of that process. 19
And I think that if we if we can approach some of the comments tonight from that perspective 20
that while it's sort of my assessment that no one here tonight seems particularly motivated to 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
move this forward that this presents an opportunity for us, not it's not a… it’s not a failure, 1
certainly not on your part. 2
3
I didn't have a hard time getting through the material, but I did have a very difficult time 4
preparing for the meeting tonight. And there is one line on Page 22 that says it's if a decision is 5
made to proceed with paid parking at this time it could be operational by the end of 2018. I 6
found that sentence to be incredibly scary. And it occurred to me when I read that sentence that 7
I think despite our effort I think we've made some serious, I think we've made lots of comments. 8
We've made a significant effort on this stage to suggest that we need to look at the Downtown 9
more globally. It's not a request that the three of you have necessarily been in the room to hear, 10
it's something that we've expressed to your the leadership of the Planning Department this idea 11
that we want to explore a specific plan, something contemplated in the Comp Plan. The notion 12
that we really struggled with the retail; I shouldn't say all of us. Some of us, a good a healthy 13
portion of us struggled with the retail preservation ordinance because of its approach to the 14
problem and without necessarily being a big picture issue. And tonight I feel the same way. I 15
have some serious concerns about the plan and there's there are moments, there are issues 16
when the City Council is in the best position to sort of educate staff and the Planning Department 17
on the best course of action. There are also moments when it's incumbent upon staff to 18
recognize that more needs to be done before City Council can act. And I believe this is that 19
moment like in a very, very big way. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
We have been operating on this Commission for the last four months on a Comp Plan. And by 1
design we were sort of operating in a silo, but I would argue that also for the better part of this 2
year we have been operating in a vacuum. Our meetings are not well attended and it doesn't 3
really feel like the Council is aware of how we feel about certain issues and vice versa or maybe 4
they are, but I think the link between us and Council is staff. They are the link. We care and 5
volunteer and they care and volunteer and the connection, the go between is staff. And I think 6
that if our goal is to achieve a positive result here then staff needs to return to Council, this would 7
be my recommendation, this would be a Motion I would support if someone made it. We need to 8
return to Council and say look, there are so many balls up in the air. There is we have not yet had 9
time to look at our Downtown in a comprehensive way and understand how we should be 10
envisioning its future. When we say that we want more outreach and we want to incorporate a 11
business… a committee of business owners to sort of participate that's not lip service. 12
13
It's very easy I think to operate in a vacuum when we when we're told especially when we're told 14
by our City Council like look, we think this is a resource that we are giving away for free. These 15
are charged words. You talked about your survey and you asked people do you want to pay for 16
parking or I'm paraphrasing and they were like no. And then you said well, would you be 17
supportive of a program that dynamically created opportunities for your customers and you to 18
park and a lot of how we talk about things is a [unintelligible - glitch in audio] a lot about a lot of 19
the way we feel about things is determined by how we phrase them, right? When and I want you 20
to know I came to this meeting Commissioner Rosenblum I'll say this until our last days together. 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
I have frequently come to our meetings expecting you to like give me some profound because 1
you do, you do. You add so much and it will be a big loss when your term is up, but I sort of came 2
to this meeting saying maybe Commissioner Rosenblum will say something so profound then I'll 3
be like he's right. And tonight he said something about how we have a resource here and we're 4
giving it away for free and it reminded me of when people talk about the Post Office and they're 5
like it's not making a profit and it's… and I have always sort of looked at the Post Office and 6
thought look, not everything that we do as a government has to make money. That's not to say 7
that Restoration Hardware should be sending us 50 pound catalogs every day, but not everything 8
we do is… 9
10
What we're really talking about is we’re subsidizing something. I believe that the free parking 11
Downtown is giving away resources. I believe we are subsidizing retail and restaurants. That's 12
what I believe. And I and I'm struggling because we've talked about retail preservation five 13
months ago and a year ago and now we're talking about paid parking as if they're not related. 14
And it's hard as a Commissioner who's had six years of experience on this Commission to feel like 15
were we really being honest about retail preservation? If every retailer were to suggest to you 16
that this and look, I really appreciate your comment about Larry Ellison, but I think the vast 17
majority of our business owners are finding the insurmountable challenge of finding employees 18
who can commute here and park here and still be able to survive on their business I think those 19
are challenges that they're dealing with and they are in no position like maybe Larry Ellison would 20
be to simply foot more and more bills. 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
So to me the notion that we I would suggest to City Council that any paid parking plan frankly 2
anything, anything you have planned for the Downtown that doesn't have like 70 percent of 3
retailer support, not 70 percent of those that responded, but 70 percent of the retailer property 4
business owner support it we shouldn't move forward. We had this whole thing about the single 5
story overlay took 70 percent of residents on the street to impose a new rule that their neighbors 6
couldn’t build two story homes. If we're serious about retail preservation and we should be then 7
we should not be operating with and that and that's really why I asked you to stay. Because my 8
message to you is that despite our incredible staff because they do I do believe that they have the 9
best of intentions. They won't succeed at reaching out to your business owners. 10
11
There's only one way to participate in local government and that is to be active. And it's great 12
that you were able to go around and collect some thoughts and I would encourage you to 13
continue that advocacy and to reach out to them and say look don't miss the next meeting. I 14
have the unfortunate pessimism that regardless of what happens here tonight this will still be 15
calendared for City Council in one month's time. And if you show up with more people and 16
demonstrate that look, we've got to be we're not opposed to finding a solution that works for the 17
residents of North Downtown and Professorville, but we also want the solution to not destroy us 18
and we need to be a part of and we don't feel like we've been a part of it that will go farther than 19
my comments unfortunately. And so that would be my message to you. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
And then I would I came to this meeting with two checkmarks next Option 1, but after hearing 1
Commissioner [Note Vice-Chair] Waldfogel struggle to endorse that option if you can even call his 2
comments an endorsement of that option, I'm not sure that I can suggest that that option is 3
good. I don't feel like this is ready for prime time and I'm not suggesting it's a reflection of your 4
hard work. I'm saying we can't continue to make decisions about Downtown in a vacuum. And I 5
know we have no time and normally I'm the first Commissioner to say look, perfect is the enemy 6
of good, but this isn't good. And it's not good because you didn't try or that your work product 7
isn't good, it's not good because we haven't had an opportunity to decide whether are we willing, 8
there are benefits. Your plan has pros and cons very well laid out. There are definite benefits to 9
implementing the various plans namely that there will be more spots available for those who are 10
having a hard time finding spots. And we know that our community has said over and over we 11
can't find any spots. I know Commissioner Lauing has had a different experience, but we keep 12
hearing there's no parking. I can't find a spot. It's not worth coming Downtown. The question is 13
is not necessarily do we understand the consequences, but have we heard from our community 14
that these consequences are consequences we're willing to accept? And I think to some extent 15
the consequences are not acknowledging the impact on retail as well. 16
17
Now I would like to suggest two, a few more very small things which are that I share many of the 18
comments that other Commissioners make. I believe that the two hour limitation is also too 19
restrictive. I don't believe, I believe, I'll give you a perfect example, I had never heard of 20
McRoskey the bed company, but I was in the market to buy a bed this year and I didn't buy a 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
McRoskey bed. But because I ate at a restaurant or just down the street from McRoskey I for 1
lunch and I walked by it I had that what we want all of our visitors to do which is come for one 2
thing and experience another. The whole point of putting the retail next to retail is to encourage 3
that traffic. And so Bell’s Books benefits from being next to that granola stick stand because 4
granola is a huge everybody loves granola right now. And so that's a great neighbor to have 5
because you if you're just eating and then you're window shopping [in your you may] buy a book. 6
My point is that the whole point of if I have a business lunch that lasts an hour and a half and I'm 7
running to get back to my car I don't have an opportunity to stop by three or four shops on my 8
way and I think that that's been a mistake, has had negative impacts on our Downtown, on our 9
retail Downtown. 10
11
Ok, those are my comments. I'm not sure how we will proceed, I but I did want all of you to know 12
where I stood in terms of supporter or I do think there is a way we can communicate to City 13
Council something that is not on not even on the menu tonight if we so chose. So alright, the 14
next the order of Commissioners I have right now are Rosenblum then Monk then Gardias and 15
then Lauing. 16
17
Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah so I just want to say I think that some my comments may have 18
been somewhat misinterpreted because I actually love this report. I think it's well done. I found 19
it very clear especially because it was a continuation of an earlier report. I also believe from an 20
urban planning standpoint and again we’re the Commissioners are supposed to be thinking about 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
urban planning and we're supposed to over time we're all just citizens trying to learn this stuff, 1
but over time we should get steeped in how modern cities deal with their problems. And time 2
after time we talk about Palo Alto’s two big problems which is housing is unaffordable and traffic 3
is terrible. And our Comp Plan is trying to deal with many of these things while also constrained 4
by the reality that California is growing and as our region grows each community has an 5
obligation to also accept our share of the population increase of California. And to the extent 6
that I believe that a lot of urban traffic is caused by poor parking policies that people drive around 7
looking for spaces and that many communities in the past viewed free parking as an inalienable 8
right and it's very hard to get past that until finally after Dr. Shoup for decades is pounding on the 9
high cost of free parking and experiments were run and lo and behold traffic was ameliorated. 10
People found spaces and retail in the study that you show did not go down. 11
12
And so my two concerns are really I like the study and actually I'm the only option I wouldn’t 13
support is Option 1 because I think it does nothing good. We're trying to shift behavior to 14
encourage off street parking and this is specifically saying we're going to charge more for that. So 15
this is the only thing that does I think no good. It’s not even a good experiment. I like Option 4 16
with dynamic pricing; I have concerns though on many levels. Concern number one is I do think 17
we need to engage our retailers and talk to other cities and just understand what's happened. 18
Even though I say believe the theory I really think this is a major change that we're putting on our 19
retailers and it's a tough time to be a retailer. Again, I personally believe and I talk to a lot of 20
retailers around other issues in town and their anxieties top of the list has always been 21
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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
employees and retention. And so I'm not sure and then foot traffic and this to the extent this 1
expects foot traffic this is an important issue. So I think it's important issue enough that we really 2
make every effort to get retailers in a room with their fellow community members. 3
4
Number two is protecting neighborhoods. So I don't think this does enough. I think that the part 5
of the reason I actually support Number 4 with a recommendation for LPR is that I think that gives 6
you the tools to stop people from flowing into neighborhoods. It’ll get people to start complying 7
with the way the system is supposed to work which is if you need to park you pay for it one way 8
or the other. So either you’re parking Downtown, but there's no neighborhood exception for 9
example. And we’d have to figure that out, but LPR would give you a flexible way of doing that. 10
11
Number three is I think that we've mispriced some of the options. And so specifically I don't see a 12
reason to subsidize certain groups. And so I'll put white collar workers as one example. There's 13
no reason that we're subsidizing their parking. They should have an incentive to mode shift. And 14
so to Chair Alcheck’s point absolutely this is a system of incentives and subsidies. Not everything 15
has to make money, but I think though the behaviors we want to incentivize are A) we want retail 16
to succeed and so to the extent having free parking makes them succeed, great. But B) we want 17
people to hopefully get to our community without a car. And so if driving a car is the cheapest 18
most convenient thing to do then people of course will drive their car. If it if there's a better 19
alternative then people may be incentivized to use the alternative. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
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So to me the philosophy of doing this is that it's good urban planning. It should reduce our traffic. 1
It should do align incentives with what we want to do in the Comp Plan and so then the final 2
question is why now? And so a number of Commissioners said well, I get the theory, but I don't 3
see the need to do this today. To me the only reason to do it today are twofold. If you believe 4
our Citizen Surveys that people are really worried about parking and traffic this is one of those 5
areas that does directly address parking and traffic. It doesn't do anything about the other area 6
about housing affordability yet. The second reason is that we're adopting a Comp Plan. And the 7
Comp Plan has implications that this helps solve. The Comp Plan does call for an additional I think 8
through life of the Comp Plan is like 3,500/4,500 hundred housing units, there's additional cap of 9
1.7 million square feet (sf) of office. There's… this City is going to get denser. It's going to have 10
more workers and more residents. 11
12
And so as we deal with that the Comp Plan did talk about this three legged solution that we're 13
going to protect the neighborhoods through RPP, we're going to attempt to achieve mode shift 14
through aggressive TDM measures under the umbrella of a TMA, and we're going to start pricing 15
parking adequately to make sure that we get rid of the circling problem and we price in this 16
resource. And so the reason for it to be now is twofold; our citizens seem to be unhappy with our 17
parking situation and this will allow more parking. They’ll be unhappy about something else then 18
about having to pay for parking, but at least the immediate pain of not being able to find a 19
parking space if we believe that's the issue would be ameliorated. It should help with traffic. 20
Again if you believe all the studies that a lot of Downtown traffic has to do with people circling 21
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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looking for spaces and I believe that's true. I don't think there's any big parking lobby out there. I 1
don't think that Donald Shoup is in the pocket of someone that wants him to change the results 2
of these studies. This is in the interest again of urban planning. And the third reason is that it 3
aligns with the interest of our Comp Plan. This was one of the legs [take] to support the growth 4
that we're about to enact. 5
6
So I guess what I'm saying is I don't think this is yet ready for prime time in a sense that you can 7
vote “good, let's implement.” I really want a good stakeholder group among retailers and then I 8
would like to see before this goes to Council a look at the pricing and a look at protecting 9
neighborhoods so that, but otherwise I actually thought we'd come here and everyone would say 10
it's great report, we like this, and here are some concerns. So I seem to have sounded more 11
negative than I was, but anyway I would agree with Chair Alcheck that it seems like most people 12
would be negative. I don't know how you move forward from this. I personally wanted to move 13
this to Council with the recommendation that it be repriced with protections for neighborhoods 14
and that they before ruling have to get a substantial stakeholder group that includes end retailers 15
that they're able to hear from, but that's my input. 16
17
Chair Alcheck: Commissioner Monk. 18
19
Commissioner Monk: Earlier tonight we were asked to consider a policy position here and after 20
the discussion I would support that we do want to encourage visitors to the Downtown area and 21
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 want to minimize the amount of circling and the related emissions from the and greenhouse 1
emissions and also the further congestion and we also want to prevent deterring customers to 2
the business district. So I think that is the overarching policy that we need to look towards as 3
opposed to anything else. And I like the idea of a better way signing. I don't know if there is 4
other options or we can have weigh in on how to address this issue? Some sort of valet services 5
within the garages, I know that’s already occurring. Again, we haven't been presented on it. The 6
real time space inventory there's apps as well that gets deployed. 7
8
And living here and walking quite frequently to the Downtown area at all hours I think I provide a 9
very good vantage point to really see what's going on. And I think that we do have a parking 10
problem during the lunchtime hour and in the dinnertime hour. I think it's the same thing as in 11
California Avenue so I think that same problems here are going to be there as well. So I wouldn't 12
look at it as just in this area, but I think that we can have solutions to that. Some things that I was 13
thinking about were maybe we can do a one hour parking for some of University Avenue, just a 14
segment of University Avenue for those people that wanted to get their prescriptions, that want 15
to get their dry cleaning, that want to just grab a quick coffee or 30 minute zones. 16
17
So there I believe there are things that we could do if we're going to move towards a metered or 18
pay parking system. Down the road I would look at incorporating some 30 or 20 minute spots so 19
that the retailers who people they have a book on hold they want to run in and grab it so that 20
we’re making up for that paid parking scenario for those folks that really just need that short 21
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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period of time. Conversely the folks that are missing out on shopping after they go have lunch I 1
sympathize with what Commissioner Summa said on in that regard. And that for that reason I 2
would support something having to do with Table 3 even though that's my least favorite because 3
the cons look horrible and the pros are very weak, but with having escalating charges so if you 4
want to have a two hour pricing structure and then if they want to say a third or fourth hour then 5
it escalates at that time frame for certain streets. So that way folks that know that they have to 6
be here more than two hours have that availability because right now we don't have that option 7
to people. Maybe the garages allow for four hours or three hours, I don't know. Is it two hours in 8
the garages? Ok, so maybe we need to reevaluate where we can have greater periods of time in 9
certain areas so that it will promote people staying down here. Because that's truly a shame that 10
you have people here who want to be here who would stay here and shop, but are forced to 11
leave because of these programs that are designed to help get more people here. It doesn't 12
make sense. So I think that if there is some energy put into it I think there could be a way to 13
make both things happen. 14
15
And again just going back to this whole philosophy the Shoup idea of having 80 percent and 16
having turnover and that it's beneficial to businesses because employees can come and park here 17
I think we either need to look at the data and consider the data or we look at the fear factor and 18
the arguments against it. Because the from the business community there's a concern that 19
people are not going to come to their businesses. Is that a founded concern or not? Is there data 20
from other communities in Burlingame, San Mateo, maybe you can wait till Mountain View does 21
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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theirs and see what happens and how it impacts business or not because right now it's just a big 1
unknown. So even if we had a stakeholder group which I did say earlier that I do support and we 2
do want their buy in even still I would prefer to look at the data points on that as opposed to a 3
blanketed unfounded fear. 4
5
In regards to LPR I do support it. I spoke with a couple other folks in other cities and learned that 6
San Leandro does use it and the issue there was the data, who's managing it, how long are you 7
going to keep it? And so they agreed that they’d get rid of it completely after 30 days. So as long 8
as there's a really good mechanisms in place that people feel very confident that the data is not 9
going to be used in any other way and that it's disposed of in a shortened period of time as 10
possible, doesn't have… just is maximum amount of protections towards it. San Francisco also 11
does use LPR I learned. So it does seem to me that the benefits that it offers us are at least equal 12
to the cost that it would be attributed to run and I do understand that there's privacy issues 13
involved, but I would support it for that. 14
15
With regard to charging more for the garages I don't know that that makes sense because my 16
understanding is that that's a less desirable place to park already. Are our garages at capacity 17
right now? 18
19
Mr. Kamhi: Yes, primarily although currently the garages and lots or garages specifically are a 20
blend of both color zones and permit parking. So to answer your question the permits are 21
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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oversold and capacity is usually close to full in most of our garages for permanent parking. The 1
color zones is actually varies by garage and lot and location. 2
3
Commissioner Monk: So it sounds like you're putting long term parkers in a prime location. 4
5
Mr. Kamhi: How do you mean by that? 6
7
Commissioner Monk: Our garages to me are located in close proximity to retail (interrupted) 8
9
Mr. Kamhi: So I would say the prime location would be on the street right in front of the business 10
and then the garage and lot would not necessarily be considered the prime location, but that's I 11
guess perspective or opinion. 12
13
Commissioner Monk: Ok, so I would say something that's just a block or two away is less prime; 14
however, for a long term parker maybe they could be four blocks away and that would open up 15
more inventory closer to the Downtown core. So looking at why we're putting long term permit 16
uses in the garages I… seems like you can if there's a another place that they could be directed 17
towards would make sense to me; maybe not, I don't know. 18
19
Mr. Mello: So if I could jump in here? One thing that I don't think we've mentioned yet tonight is 20
the APGS which would have illuminated LEDs over each of the spaces in the garages would enable 21
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those to dynamically manage the supply of permit parking versus hourly and daily parking in real 1
time. So we could switch the assignment of a space just by changing the color of the light that's 2
above the space. Right now we have a fixed number of permit spaces that are painted and signed 3
and we don't have the ability to increase the number of permits spaces, decrease the number of 4
permit spaces based on the time of day, the day of the week, so the APGS would enable us to do 5
that and we could do that in real time. 6
7
Commissioner Monk: Is there a decision that this Commission needs to take in regards to the 8
APGS? 9
10
Mr. Mello: So that's an excellent question and I did want to bring this up. Even if the Commission 11
which it does seem to be generally not supportive of the paid parking recommendation I will 12
remind you that there's about a dozen other recommendations in this study and a few of them 13
are before you tonight including license plate recognition, permit pricing, those type of things. So 14
I wouldn't want you to throw the baby out with the bath water and for it to appear [the whole] 15
Commission is opposed to the study recommendations as a whole if indeed you're just concerned 16
with one particular recommendation. 17
18
Commissioner Monk: So the problem that I had with the study in making a determination and I 19
did send an email, I don't know if folks had a chance to read it or not, but I do appreciate your 20
feedback to the email that I sent. And it was that we didn't have a overriding guideline and 21
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policies. In any event looking at that the four scenarios that were presented to us the pros and 1
the cons, most difficult might not… they just there was no barometer amongst the pros and the 2
cons for me to know which one really was more or less on balance. So I think the way that these 3
four scenarios were presented to us were not presented in a way that I really was able to say oh 4
yeah, that one makes sense and that one doesn't because I'd read through it and I'd say ok, well 5
and I'm looking at someone else's, but I'd say well this one does not encourage turnover; there's 6
equity concerns. It doesn't [da da da] doesn’t do all these things oh, but it does that. Ok, well 7
then I go to this one. This one doesn't… so none of them really had a majority of pros and a 8
minority of cons that made it worth pursuing. So you might want to just reexamine how you 9
presented these scenarios to us to see if they really were drafted in a way that would make it 10
obvious on which one to go for. 11
12
Mr. Kamhi: So that the tables weren't intended to give you the answer. It was just intended to 13
create discussion on the different pros and cons and actually some of the to understand the way 14
that different systems would interact or could interact. 15
16
Commissioner Monk: And to that I guess we probably need more information to have a robust 17
discussion on it. I yeah have specific questions on the various scenarios, but I don't know if it's 18
not something that should be discussed at this point. Are you looking for input on the various 19
scenarios or not really? 20
21
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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Mr. Kamhi: I think we're looking for any and all input. 1
2
Commissioner Monk: Ok, so with regard to the dynamic parking. I would just want to point out 3
that sensors don't always work or they work for a short period of time and so when you are 4
looking to bring in a vendor make sure that they've tested whatever they're advocating for. I did 5
speak with Julian Gillette in San Francisco Mayor's Office of Transportation to ask about their 6
study. And so they weren't really doing live data collection. They did it for a year, but then the 7
sensors only lasted for one year and same with San Jose, they had a problem with the sensors. 8
There is new technology that you they have the sensors in the meters and those might be more 9
effective, but I would just make sure that whatever you do advocate for is tested and vetted very 10
well and explained because I don't think that this community would do very well with a huge 11
economic investment into what could potentially be a failure. So just be aware that. 12
13
Mr. Smith: If I could just add to that real quick? SFpark’s trial of real time dynamic pricing with 14
the use of sensors did run into its fair share of issues for a number of different reasons. And it 15
was oftentimes dependent on a location of San Francisco. Those sensors were placed as you 16
mentioned that same vendor company has now come out with a new sensor that's now being 17
trialed in San Francisco and a number of other cities around here. That's a dome based sensor 18
that is implemented into a single space meter. I would say the sensor game is a tricky one across 19
the board irregardless of just that vendor. I would say that there are a number of different sensor 20
based technologies to choose from whether they be in ground, pole mounted, so on and so forth, 21
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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but I would add there are other ways to do dynamic demand based pricing as it relates to 1
changing rates in your Downtown. 2
3
One use of doing that is using LPR. Though the LPR is set up to capture license plates for purpose 4
of enforcement it's still capturing plates which then can be geo located to a certain area which 5
then can give you an idea of occupancy demand at different points throughout the day. Other 6
cities have used basic transaction data. So the number of parking transactions that have been 7
occurred at either a pay station and/or a park or a single space meter. It's obviously removed a 8
bit from being real time, but it is a form of demand based pricing. But I mean I would agree with 9
you and Dixon as a company would advocate for vetting whatever sensor based technology if you 10
ever decided to go down that road and very well before you ever move forward with it, so. 11
12
Commissioner Monk: The reason why I bring it up is because in the report you presented to us it 13
looked as though this was a pilot to look at. And then when we go and click on the link it's from 14
2014 and then we learned that there was a different scenario that actually happened in San 15
Francisco. And so what I learned today was that they actually developed an algorithm based on 16
what that data showed and they're just using that algorithm now for their pricing. So they're not 17
actually using meters that are talking to each other and doing dynamic pricing in the context that 18
you are. They're doing that in some neighborhoods, but overall they're just using a algorithm 19
from that initial data. And in San Jose they just set the pricing and maybe they revisit it every two 20
years. So in the event that we do move to a paid structure I would advocate that it's really only 21
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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during the certain peak hours because there usually is some parking when it's not right at that 1
lunch time and right around the dinner time. 2
3
And let’s see… I’m forgetting my point. I think that it might be worth getting like heat maps from 4
the TNCs to find out when people are getting dropped off here to see if we can learn anything 5
from that. I know that Vice-Chair was concerned about the emissions by idling Ubers and Lyfts 6
and a lot of them are electric so I don't know, but in any event to find out how many people are 7
using them and I understand a lot of folks are using those to get dropped off. I think it’d be 8
interesting to see who's getting if we’re getting more people picked up or dropped off and what's 9
happening and just to see if there's any trends there and if that's going to impact the need for 10
paid parking. 11
12
In regards to doing any piloting program I'm a little concerned about it because when we did our 13
pilot of the traffic circle which wasn't a perfect pilot because it wasn't exactly what was going to 14
be implemented it was a sort of a failed attempt and got a lot of criticism. So I don't depending 15
on what type of pilot you do if you only do it in one area that's going to give you a weird skewed 16
result that might not be really truly measurable of what it would be like to do a full blown 17
program. So I would be cautious in doing a piloted program. Although I'd like to see it done, but 18
just make sure that it's done in a way that would really be reflective of the larger goal would be. 19
And… thank you. 20
21
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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Chair Alcheck: Ok, Commissioner Gardias. Actually sorry, hold on. You asked, you said you had a 1
quick process question? Did you want to get that out real quick? 2
3
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: I'm sorry this is a question for Mr. Mello. When we started this discussion 4
you told us that this isn't a policy smorgasbord, that we had to pick from our limited menu, and 5
then a minute ago you said that you'd like to get guidance on more of an itemized list, but don't 6
see an itemized list anywhere in the packet or in the presentation. So do you, can you point us to 7
a page that has a list of those things? I mean I enumerated some when I spoke earlier, but is 8
there full list of… is there a full list on some packet page that we can look at? 9
10
Mr. Mello: Sorry and I misspoke a little bit earlier. I didn't I don't want you to go one by one 11
through the recommendations. I was just saying that if there's a general negative opinion of the 12
paid parking recommendation I don't want the PTC to forget that there's a whole host of other 13
recommendations and those can be found on packet page beginning Packet Page 130. And it's 14
things like the comprehensive parking permit management system, active monitoring, permit 15
pricing, parking guidance and wayfinding. These are all the recommendations that you receive an 16
overview of the last time we visited PTC several months ago. 17
18
Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. So in terms of the report I find the report satisfactory and if 19
we were going to vote or choose one of these options the LPR dynamic pricing would be my 20
preferred. I already spoke about this at our first session so it's no brainer just going back to the 21
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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meeting minutes. So you have my full support on that recommendation that you are seeking for 1
the Council; however, as I said before there are some other factors which I think that this 2
recommendation to the Council should be enhanced with. 3
4
So personally as I can embrace right away this what you're seeking a of and you want to proceed 5
with I'd like to see some other either appendix to this study with additional documentation that 6
would allow us to have better perspective on the on some other important items like TMA, timing 7
of implementation of this program. I'm not also sure if this has to be happening today and then 8
some others that I already spoke before. So from my perspective as much as I can provide 9
support to this what you’re looking for I perceive that this is only technology related actions so I 10
think that this needs to be enhanced with some other decisions or consideration from our 11
perspective. And as I said I’d be looking for a road map, I’d be looking for the schedule of fees, 12
and then some sensitivity analysis how those would be either impacting City P&L or merchant’s 13
P&L. I spoke about this I also would like to see the draft of the policies. There is a talk about the 14
personal identification data that needs to be addressed. So some of those questions would be for 15
how long this information is kept on in our databases and then is deleted, whom it is shared with, 16
we probably would like to respect privacy. So this answer to all of those would be in the policy as 17
well. 18
19
And also I would like to have a in addition technology map. I'd like to know if there is a we talk 20
our prior session about a possibility of connecting some parking permits with the registration 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.
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database of the merchants. I'd like to understand if this is possible. If you're going to provide the 1
map then we're going to know how this is going to work, how this technology is going to work 2
entirely. So that's my expectation just to have another appendix to this report, return and come 3
back to us, show us and then allow us for discussion and we’ll provide you further 4
recommendations. Thank you. 5
6
Mr. Mello: So just to answer your question about whether we could attach permits to a business 7
currently that would be very difficult to do, but if we do move to a virtual permitting system that 8
is tied to a license plate a business could feasibly own a permit and then assign that to an 9
employee when an employee starts using their license plate. When that employee leaves they 10
could reassign it to another employee. That would be something that's easier done with a virtual 11
permitting system. Today the bulk of the employees receive stickers that are affixed to their 12
vehicles and they have to make an upfront investment of six months, the price of a six month 13
permit not knowing if they're going to be here for six months or not. Virtual permitting will also 14
allow us to be more flexible with the time periods so we could feasibly have a weekly employee 15
permit, a monthly employee permit, and so forth. 16
17
Commissioner Gardias: Exactly and so from a technology perspective we can solve all of this, but 18
then it's going to cost us. So and it will impact this P&L statements that I was already speaking on 19
number of the occasions. So we can buy all of this. I gladly endorse all your recommendations 20
that you just pointed us to starting on Page 130. I think that we should need to have, we need to 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
have them all, but would it really make our profits enhanced from the perspective of merchants? 1
I still have to learn this. Thank you. 2
3
Chair Alcheck: Ok, I have the Commissioner Lauing. 4
5
Commissioner Lauing: Yeah, thanks first just a quick comment to what you said Chair Alcheck 6
about I apparently don't see any parking problems. 7
8
Chair Alcheck: No, that’s not what I said. That’s not [unintelligible] I said it doesn't seem 9
(interrupted) 10
11
Commissioner Lauing: It’s just a misunderstanding, I know. What I was going to say is that 12
actually is a statement supporting some of the data here because I tend to drive into the blue 13
zone where almost always that is looking lighter. So I'm saying that (interrupted) 14
15
Chair Alcheck: I need to know where the blue zone is then. 16
17
MOTION 18
19
Commissioner Lauing: That's one of my recommendations, let's market the blue zone. Right? Is 20
because that because there is congestion in these other areas. They're 80 percent, there's no 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
question about that compared to the 50's. 1
2
I just want to recap where I think we are in terms of our hesitation. 85 percent which is the new 3
metric that is used that the problem goes down precipitously from 75 or 80 percent and it just 4
seems to affect mostly dinner times. It affects it and we don't want to drive people away at 5
dinner, but the problem become de minimus. The color zone situation is not radically being 6
violated now and there are ways that we can address that to your point if we want to address 7
that single source, maybe we don't. The data itself is only three months in one year of 2016. It's 8
actually in a six month period. So it would have been great if one of the months was January 9
midwinter, one was August mid-summer, probably that's lighter, but we don't know. So this 10
really sampled a six month period. We mentioned things like the Hamilton garage is going up so 11
we are taking action on that as a City to provide more parking there. We don't know what the 12
impact of that's going to be. 13
14
The consumers don't feel that the problem is pervasive and I think that that's a inconsistency and 15
our residents and visitors that are watching on TV there just is that inconsistency. People 16
sometimes just say it's just too crowded, but it isn't. I mean this one on Page 102 when you did 17
the survey, do you consider the space you parked in close enough to your destination, 66 percent 18
said yeah, close enough, 15 percent said I parked farther than anticipated and I don't mind 19
walking, and 19 percent of those surveys say well, it was a bit farther than anticipated. Well not 20
unlike Commissioner Rosenblum’s comment that in a paid parking zone you can't get mad at paid 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
parking. If you've got to walk a little farther those 19 percent walk a little farther, but they still 1
get to the restaurant. So I think there's some data that's coming back here that suggests that 2
even in a in a one on one survey as opposed to just all of our grousing that we tend to do as 3
consumers it's not as big a deal yet. I do think that there's a problem that it might get worse if 4
some of these other measures don't take effect and we have to get cooperation on companies 5
doing TDM and so on. 6
7
Another issue we talked about six of us have talked about, this will push into the RPP. So I think 8
that we don't want to make take action on this tonight, but consistent with I think what a number 9
of us said is that I would be happy to move that we that we take a stance. And I particularly 10
suggest that we move that City Council not implement this current draft of the Downtown 11
parking policy management, but instead that PTC will work interactively with staff and local 12
retailers on a revised program and that will cover all the things that we've talked about tonight 13
without having to get very, very, very, very specific. If Council says ok, we're going to take that 14
recommendation then I would strongly recommend prefer [our reckons] that we take two or 15
three Commissioners and work on this iteratively with staff. 16
17
Commissioner Rosenblum: Is that a Motion you’re making? 18
19
Commissioner Lauing: The former was a Motion, the second we sort of can't officially make until 20
we get approval from Council that that's how they want to go unless we think that we can make 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
some progress now by starting right away working with staff. 1
2
Chair Alcheck: Let me just clarify. They both can be the recommendations. You can make that 3
second recommendation as well. You don't it doesn't they don't have to accept the first one for 4
you to feel comfortable making the second recommendation. I just want from a process 5
standpoint you can… 6
7
Commissioner Lauing: That's fine. Yeah because I mean I strongly feel like that's the best way to 8
manage it. 9
10
Chair Alcheck: Alright let me do this real quick. 11
12
Commissioner Lauing: And that's contained in the Motion. 13
14
Chair Alcheck: Yeah, let me do this [unintelligible]. Will you restate just so that I can call for a 15
second will you restate that Motion? 16
17
RESTATED MOTION 18
19
Commissioner Lauing: PTC recommends that City Council not implement the current what’s it 20
called? Parking Downtown parking policy management study, whatever that phrase is. Instead 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
PTC will work iteratively with staff and local retailers on a revised program. 1
2
Chair Alcheck: So it should be really clear you're recommending that none of the options be 3
adopted and that you're not saying implementing the study. You're really saying that none of the 4
options suggested by the study be implemented, right? 5
6
Commissioner Lauing: I'm suggesting that this document not be implemented now by Council. 7
8
Chair Alcheck: Ok. Ok, alright. Do I get a second? 9
10
SECOND 11
12
Commissioner Rosenblum: Second. 13
14
Chair Alcheck: Ok. 15
16
Mr. Mello: Could I jump in here? This document includes things like the parking wayfinding 17
signage that we're already advancing and we put out to bid last month. It also includes things like 18
raising the garage and lot permit fees which Council already implemented July 1st. It also 19
includes advancing the comprehensive parking permit system. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Lauing: Yeah, no I understand. 1
2
Chair Alcheck: Hold on, before you jump in. Look, you said that. You mentioned it earlier. I just 3
want to suggest to you that you suggested earlier that if the Commission isn’t is negative about 4
the parking paid parking plan there's still other thing… I think what you're I think what 5
Commissioner Lauing is suggesting and what I think maybe we're not succeeding in getting across 6
is that it would be a mistake to implement a parking strategy in a vacuum. So one solution that 7
might cost a lot of money, lighting up a parking garage and telling you where there are spaces, 8
may be a good solution, but it probably isn't a good idea to one off that. And so it's not so much 9
that the report doesn't contain recommendations that I think Commissioners feel comfortable 10
with in some regard. I think there are a lot of things that they're not comfortable with and the big 11
takeaway here isn't so much that there isn't anything worth implementing in this report, but that 12
to do so without more comprehensive review would be a mistake. Is that? 13
14
Commissioner Lauing: It is. I wouldn't be presumptive to rule out every one of the things in here 15
because if for example there's one thing that you guys want to potentially create a Parking 16
Department. If that needs to come back to us individually we can address that individually even 17
two weeks from now, but some of these things are administrative. I don't know that we have to 18
be involved in approving how you organize the Parking Department. 19
20
Mr. Mello: Yeah, so what I'm saying is the Motion as currently worded sounds as though the 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commission is opposing all of the recommendations; recommending that Council not proceed 1
with any of the recommendations in the study. 2
3
Commissioner Lauing: No I think what Chair Alcheck is trying to clarify is that we're just saying 4
that this document as a totality should not be approved. That doesn't mean that there are things 5
in there that you shouldn't do with or without Council approval, going to Finance Committee or 6
whatever. 7
8
Chair Alcheck: Well look, I won't put words in your Motion, but what I would what my I was 9
suggesting that his Motion should be interpreted as don't move forward with this document or 10
really any plan, any… there we should be reviewing this again with a greater input from the 11
community specifically retailers so that when we do anything we get it right. I would support this 12
Motion because I think a global solution is better than four or five different one offs. I think that 13
if (interrupted) 14
15
Commissioner Lauing: I'm just trying to give it a relief valve that if they need LPR technology for 16
somewhere else in the City and they want our opining on that come back in two weeks and we’ll 17
have a discussion on that and probably approve it in five minutes. 18
19
Chair Alcheck: Do you, I'm sorry. Can I just ask you a question? Are you suggesting that you could 20
review one sort of acute parking solution and it's potentially extravagant costs without really also 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
understanding the nature of all the solutions we might consider? 1
2
Commissioner Lauing: The corner case I'm trying to come up with here is that staff says we really 3
need LPR technology and we want your opinion on if that's fair or something. And that isn't 4
about Downtown that's about in the City limits. So that's outside of just this. 5
6
Chair Alcheck: Ok, alright. Well (interrupted) 7
8
Commissioner Lauing: So that's the only [unintelligible] I was trying not to be presumptive about 9
all those. 10
11
Chair Alcheck: Yeah, I hear you. Ok, so we have a Motion on the floor made by Lauing seconded 12
by Commissioner Rosenblum. Commissioner Rosenblum do you want to speak to the Motion and 13
then I'm going to move to Commissioner Summa so because she I have her light next as a 14
speaker. 15
16
Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah. So as I said I actually support most of what's in this plan, but I 17
think the piece that I have difficulty with isn't going to be resolved without additional work. And 18
specifically convening a stakeholder group is a lot of work and it takes time. And I don't feel 19
comfortable with Council weighing in before that's taken place so I feel like that would be a waste 20
of time. I'm sensitive to the fact that there's other items here that perhaps can be disaggregated, 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
but the core of this plan is paid parking for Downtown and I think it would be good for us to take 1
on what are the main two fears I think. There may be other fears as well, but maybe I'm 2
dismissive of the third fear. But fear one, that it hurts retail which I think a stakeholder group will 3
be important for. Fear two, that it pushes problems into the residential areas. That I don't feel 4
needs to be delayed. I feel like the consultant and staff can come up with a recommendation to 5
anticipate that problem and hopefully solve that problem because I think that there are ways 6
with LPR and others that could do this. The third fear of course are people that say I don't want 7
to pay for parking, I don't like it. And that I'm saying is not that's not necessary for stakeholder 8
group. But the retailer part I don't see getting over that without a stakeholder group. 9
10
So my second is to say that I actually think the plan in entirety is good; however, I'm not sure I'd 11
feel comfortable recommending Council consider it. I wouldn’t feel comfortable with Council 12
ruling on it without convening a stakeholder group. So I believe what Commissioner Lauing was 13
suggesting was that PTC take the burden of working with staff and stakeholder group to take 14
another run at this so that we recommend this go forward to Council that we have those fears 15
hopefully better explored. 16
17
And so that's so then the second question is though around would we be willing to consider line 18
items that we support? I'm fine with that. I think the intent of Commissioner Lauing’s statement 19
was to say this the PTC’s recommendation is that we delay the body of this until there's further 20
study and to my mind that includes a stakeholder group. 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Chair Alcheck: Ok, Commissioner Summa. 2
3
Commissioner Summa: Thanks. I was sort of seeing Commissioner Lauing’s Motion as not 4
recommending the four options presented for metered solutions tonight, but being open to the 5
other aspects the wayfinding, the digital stuff. So I wonder if we just added that language if that 6
would make it if that would be better? So it could say PTC recommends that City Council not 7
implement the PPM study through any of the four options presented for metered solutions and 8
instead PTC will work just adding that. I don't know if that makes it clear or if it's for staff that 9
we’re open to hearing you guys pursue other appropriate technologies and the wayfinding and all 10
those things. 11
12
Mr. Mello: So paid parking is one of the discreet recommendations of the Downtown Parking 13
Management Study and all four of the scenarios presented tonight were ways to implement paid 14
parking. So a more succinct way to say that would be that PTC does not recommend that Council 15
implement paid parking at this time and whatever clarifications regarding working with the PTC 16
and the public. 17
18
Chair Alcheck: Just so I'm clear because I feel like I'm hearing one thing and it might just be me 19
and when you say it sounds very different. It doesn't sound to me like the Commission is saying 20
they don't think we should implement paid parking. It sounds like what they're saying is don't 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
implement paid parking yet. And that's the really big difference because if you go to City Council 1
and you say the Commission felt that paid parking was a mistake, but they're comfortable with X 2
and Y and then Council goes well, we disagree with the Commission we think paid parking is a 3
good idea. That's not what we're saying. I think astonishingly there is potentially a sort of 4
unanimous support for this idea that this isn't ready yet to be implemented. And it would be 5
potentially fatal if implemented as is. And I think Commissioner Lauing does it as respectfully as 6
possible which is to request the City Council give us the opportunity to help make this plan not 7
problematic. So I am saying, I see nodding from Commissioner Rosenblum and I see it from 8
Commissioner Lauing. I think it's really important that we understand sort of the intent. 9
10
Mr. Kamhi: I think we're just a little bit concerned with the wording. I think Josh kind of captured 11
it perfectly that the paid parking I think is the part that you're having hesitation and you would 12
like to have it come back to you. What we're trying to express is that some of the things that are 13
recommendations in the study Council’s already directed us to do and some of them have even 14
been implemented already. 15
16
Chair Alcheck: Are some of them… do you think that some of the things that you're pursuing 17
require a funding source that's related to paid parking? 18
19
Mr. Kamhi: So one of the things that we've implemented that was a study recommendation is 20
actually a funding source. It's the raising of the permit fees. That was actually a study 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
recommendation. 1
2
Chair Alcheck: No, I mean the idea of the program inside of the garages that you're talking about 3
as well. 4
5
Mr. Kamhi: The APGS? The APGS that one is somewhat dependent or at least is planned to be 6
dependent on parking funding. 7
8
Chair Alcheck: Yeah. 9
10
Mr. Kamhi: Wayfinding signage however which was recently bid out is not. 11
12
Chair Alcheck: Ok. 13
14
Mr. Kamhi: It's not tied to that. So that was something that we had already been moving forward 15
with. 16
17
Chair Alcheck: Ok, alright, sorry Commissioner Summa. I think actually your comments are 18
aligned with Commissioner Lauing's although I will let him respond whether he wants to change 19
the language. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Lauing: I don't think we need that wording change because we're not doing 1
anything confrontational here. If you wanted to put it into the Motion that City Council not yet 2
implement the plan we could say that if we feel like that's helpful, but… 3
4
Commissioner Summa: No, I was (interrupted) 5
6
Commissioner Lauing: And City Council since they've already approved some of these things and 7
you’re working on them means they have already approved parts of this plan anyway. So we're 8
not by intent saying you got to stop doing those, but we wouldn't have the authority to do that 9
anyway. I think we're just worried that all these other things might be derivative issues of going 10
with paid parking including which meters and where they go and LPR and all that stuff can't be 11
really decided until we figure out about paid parking in the context of the broader view of the 12
needs of Downtown retailers. 13
14
Mr. Kamhi: I'm sorry, I think that's captured by saying paid parking because so the paid parking is 15
the key aspect that… so I'm not sure if this is semantics, but paid parking is the key aspect that 16
you'd like to come back to you. So LPR is really I mean somewhat tied to it, but the APGS is tied 17
to it, the parking pay stations or meters all of that is tied to paid parking. I just have a little bit of 18
concern about something that Council’s already got us working on or we're already moving 19
towards that's not tied to the paid parking that provides a benefit like having consistent signs 20
throughout the City for our parking lots and garages. It I feel like an action that or Motion that 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
suggests acting against this study or holding off on this study would be suggesting holding off on 1
the work that we're already in the (interrupted) 2
3
Chair Alcheck: Let me ask you a quick question? Are you uncomfortable with the Commission 4
making a recommendation that work initiated by the Council may ought to halt? Because what I 5
would suggest to you is that while maybe something that's being suggested here is pump the 6
brakes that's not necessarily a bad thing. 7
8
Mr. Kamhi: So I think actually I don't have any hesitation with that, but I just want to be clear that 9
the things that we would be discussing putting a hold to would be the parking permit fees that 10
Council and Finance Committee recommended to be increased on July 1 and actually occurred on 11
July 1. 12
13
Chair Alcheck: I don't think anybody said that. 14
15
Mr. Kamhi: Well I’m just to be clear though that is in the study as a recommendation and that was 16
enacted following the presentation of the study. 17
18
Chair Alcheck: Ok. I don't think that we're referring to already enacting, enacted parking 19
measures. I think the Motion which is suggesting that this report not be adopted and be returned 20
to us for further study with a stakeholder group. I don't know if you used that exact term, but 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
with community involvement. 1
2
Commissioner Lauing: Local retailers is what I used. 3
4
Chair Alcheck: Local retail involvement it's not I don't think that's in conflict with the idea that 5
we've already implemented something. And I think I'd like I don't know if you're done, but I think 6
I'd like to just continue with that Motion unless you feel like you need to change it. 7
8
Commissioner Lauing: I don't feel like I need to change it because we're not trying to contradict 9
anything that staff or Council is doing. 10
11
Chair Alcheck: Let’s proceed. 12
13
Commissioner Lauing: I mean we could also say something like that recommend that City Council 14
not fully implement the current draft. What do you think about that seconder? 15
16
Commissioner Rosenblum: Sure. 17
18
Commissioner Lauing: I mean it's not… Chair? 19
20
Chair Alcheck: Look, it’s your Motion. I'm just suggesting to you that I'm comfortable with it the 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
way it is. It sound like (interrupted) 1
2
Commissioner Lauing: I don't, I don't… I’m not worried about it. 3
4
Chair Alcheck: Yeah, I'm not either. 5
6
Commissioner Lauing: Ok. 7
8
Chair Alcheck: So I'm I just… 9
10
Commissioner Lauing: They’ll know what we mean. 11
12
Chair Alcheck: Let’s hope so. Ok, I'm sorry; Commissioner Summa do you want to continue? 13
14
Commissioner Summa: Well with regard to this Motion I don't think we want to give we don't we 15
are not trying to give the idea that we think there should be no permit parking in Downtown at 16
all. I mean and the things that are already enacted by Council we don't have to recommend. I 17
think it was the four options that included changes it included metered parking, but I'm fine with 18
the it the way it is too. 19
20
Mr. Mello: If I could? Ultimately you can make whatever recommendation you want. We're just 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
letting you know that we're uncomfortable with the original wording. 1
2
Chair Alcheck: Ok, I appreciate that. Look, I'll tell you where I stand. I support this Motion and I 3
support the notion not because I'm uncomfortable with the idea of dynamic parking, but I'll give 4
you an example. When we talked about the permit parking for Downtown a year and a half ago 5
or before it was implemented I distinctly remember saying let's create a solution where 6
employers can share permits across employees. You've got a guy that works the morning shift 7
and a guy that works the evening shift or a gal, they should be able to swap the permit. The 8
notion that someone in our audience today has to pay $2,100 for three people to use one permit, 9
you see my point? That's not only did I make that recommendation last time this was in front of 10
us or every time this was in front of us and I could probably find the minutes if I needed to, the 11
point is is it wasn't we haven't solved that problem for this individual. 12
13
And interestingly we're talking about the raising the fees and you had mentioned something 14
about locking someone in for six months. We want to encourage mode changes and to what 15
extent are we discouraging a mode change… I remember having a conversation with 16
Commissioner Rosenblum once about what Google does to incentivize mode changes and one of 17
those things is that if you arrive at work using a different, something other than a SOV you can 18
you get this sort it’s like a game. You get a point of some sort and then the if you do it in 19
consecutive days you get more recognition for it and your efforts are rewarded by Google making 20
a contribution to a charity of your choice or something like that. And they create a game scenario 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
so that you're incentivized not just to do it once a week, but to do it in consecutive days. And it 1
occurred to me that the people who are going to be most capable of adapting to what could be a 2
painful change are going to be the people with the greatest means which is to say none of the 3
employees who work in our retail shops or our restaurants. And so it is with that insensitivity that 4
like anything we do here has to involve what I would… I mean if we had a stakeholder group for 5
the Comp Plan we should have a stakeholder group for the Downtown if retail is our goal. 6
7
So I support this because I would like the Council sort of in no uncertain terms to understand that 8
this I don't think they should move forward with any parking strategy without more opportunities 9
for vetting by retailers Downtown and the opportunity for us to participate in that process would 10
be only for to help them. But even if they didn't want us to be involved they should still get a 11
stakeholder group with Downtown people because the Downtown retailers and restauranteurs 12
because that’s sorely missing from this analysis. And when the pain comes it will affect those 13
groups more than it will affect the white collar workers who can take a Lyft to work because they 14
have a lot more flexibility. They're not paid $15 an hour or $19 an hour. So it’s not that this isn't 15
worth moving forward on it's that getting it wrong here could spell disaster for retail and 16
restauranteurs and something maybe that's not easy to recover from. Ok, so I support this 17
Motion. Anybody who wants, I have two lights, Commissioner Monk and Commissioner [Note 18
Vice-Chair] Waldfogel. Actually Commissioner [Note Vice-Chair] Waldfogel and then 19
Commissioner Monk. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Great, thanks. Yeah, I also support this Motion and also just a little bit of 1
feedback for staff that I think you made a little bit of a mistake in bringing us a report that 2
bundles things that are in process, things that haven't started yet, and things that might be done. 3
And now we're struggling over how to unbundle those things. And also starting off by telling us 4
it's a take it or leave it, you know choose one of the options on the table made the whole 5
deliberation focused the whole deliberation around that rather than focusing it around how do 6
we unbundle? So I think that the staff report, the structure of the presentation kind of forces our 7
hand that this is really the only possible Motion that we can consider today. 8
9
Chair Alcheck: Commissioner Monk. 10
11
Mr. Mello: Just to clarify that the study was a study that was prepared and brought to Council 12
earlier this year. Well, I'm just providing some clarification. 13
14
Chair Alcheck: Commissioner Monk. 15
16
Commissioner Monk: So I think that if something was studied and directed by Council that it 17
would be really useful to us to have that piece of information so that we have the full context of 18
what prior actions were taken, where you received your direction, and I… it wasn't clear to me 19
that that was spelled out and maybe it's in here somewhere, but maybe it wasn't just clear 20
enough. And also really what our objectives are because I too felt that hey, we need to solve this 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
problem and here's the one way to solve. There wasn't a we've looked at these other scenarios 1
or this is the reason why paid parking is the best solution. It just kind of said this is the solution 2
and that's it. That's kind of how I took the report. 3
4
Looking at the Program T-49 which is implementing a comprehensive plan for paid for parking 5
supply and demand in Downtown I'd like to know where you are on that if that's happening 6
because I feel like we're kind of putting the cart before the horse. We're having a discussion right 7
now on paid parking, but I don't really know what is the comprehensive program if there is one or 8
not. And that's on Page 20 of the packet. So everything that was presented to us was I think just 9
kind of trying to implement on the policy of creating sufficient parking, but not seeing a 10
comprehensive program. So I don't know if Commissioner Lauing’s, I’ve got a pronunciation 11
issue, Motion speaks to that or not. I wasn’t here when the Motion was made, I was in the 12
restroom, but it seems like he's got a lot of support for it. So it makes me want to support it. So 13
perhaps someone could just let us know the current state of the Motion? 14
15
Chair Alcheck: Does staff have it written down or? You do? Ok, go ahead. Please do. 16
17
Commissioner Summa: PTC recommend that City Council not implement the I think he called it 18
the PPM study. Instead PTC will work iteratively with retailers and staff to present an alternative. 19
Is that right? 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Lauing: Local retailers on a revised program. 1
2
Commissioner Summa: Ok, sorry. I tried to get it right. 3
4
Commissioner Monk: And I'd like to also have that include employee stakeholders as well, not just 5
the land owners or the store, the business owners. 6
7
Commissioner Lauing: Oh, you mean retail workers? 8
9
Commissioner Monk: Yeah. 10
11
Commissioner Lauing: That was certainly my intent, so. 12
13
Commissioner Monk: Yes, workers as well. Employees. 14
15
Chair Alcheck: Ok. 16
17
Commissioner Lauing: I think that add of retailers and employees is good. Let's put that in. 18
19
Chair Alcheck: Ok, so I have no lights. I'll give you guys another second in case anybody want to 20
say anything else. 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Summa: I actually had a couple other observations for staff. 2
3
Chair Alcheck: Do you want to make it ahead of the Motion or after? 4
5
Commissioner Summa: Whenever you prefer. 6
7
Chair Alcheck: It's up to you. 8
9
Commissioner Summa: I'll just go right now. And that is to thank staff for this because I don't 10
think we could have made a decision about this whole paid parking which is metered parking 11
decision without the work you had done. And so I don't think it is a rejection of the work that you 12
do, did. I think it is a more informed decision on whether this is something that the community 13
would benefit from across the board and would find palatable. I just wanted to make that clear 14
and I think I'll leave it at that. Thanks. 15
16
Chair Alcheck: Ok. 17
18
Commissioner Monk: And just in regards to this plan that we're proposing it would be helpful to 19
have a positive case study that we can look at because when I read through the examples I didn't 20
feel that they were rich enough with the data points and a solid comparison and what model we 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
should be looking towards. So I think that would be really fruitful in answering the question on 1
this community have similar issues, they had similar concerns by the retailers, but yet look it did 2
not impact the retail business negatively. And I think getting that sort of data would be very 3
useful to our moving forward on this. 4
5
VOTE 6
7
Chair Alcheck: Ok. Then I'm going to call for a vote on the Motion. All those in favor of 8
supporting the Motion on the floor please raise your hand. It’s unanimous. 9
10
I sort of when I opened my first comments I said this. I really hope that. Our comments are sort 11
of received constructively. I don't I think we're on the same side of the table and I think that this 12
is you guys are very involved and very personal on this. You've been working on this for a long 13
time. I don't we're not suggesting that the work’s in vain. I think what we're suggesting is that 14
this if it was a hard pill for us to swallow tonight then we imagine that it's going to be a hard pill 15
for the community to swallow and it was uncomfortable to operate without more of their 16
involvement. I think that's something that we probably all feel here. Ok, so I didn't close the 17
public forum, but I'm closing it now and that will conclude our discussion of this item. 18
19
MOTION PASSED (7-0) 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commission Action: Motion made by Commissioner Lauing –PTC recommends that City Council 1
not implement the PPM Study, instead PTC will work iteratively with local retailers, retail 2
employees and staff to present an alternative. Seconded by Commissioner Rosenblum. Motion 3
passed 7-0. 4
5
Approval of Minutes 6
Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 7
8
3. September 13, 2017 Draft Planning & Transportation Commission Meeting Minutes 9
10
Chair Alcheck: Turning back to the agenda and we have an approval of the minutes from 11
September 3rd. Excuse me, September 13th. Would anybody like to make the Motion? 12
13
MOTION 14
15
Commissioner Rosenblum: I make a Motion we approve the minutes. 16
17
SECOND 18
19
Commissioner Lauing: Second. 20
21
VOTE 22
23
Chair Alcheck: Great, second from Commissioner Lauing. All those in favor of approving the 24
minutes from September 13th raise your hand. Ok, that’s unanimous. 25
26
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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
MOTION PASSED (7-0) 1
2
Commission Action: Motion to approve minutes from September 13th made by Commissioner 3
Rosenblum, seconded by Commissioner Lauing, motion passed 7-0. 4
5
6
Committee Items 7
Commissioner Questions, Comments or Announcements 8
9
Chair Alcheck: Ok, I don't think there are any committee items, but are there any comments, 10
questions or announcements? Yes. 11
12
Commissioner Lauing: Yes, I'd like to address our Assistant Director. There are a lot of new state 13
laws on housing, 7 or 13, somewhere in that range. I would think it would be great if we could 14
get an executive summary as to A) which those are and how important they are and then B) some 15
guidelines on what policies that's going to impact for us including what we need to do to help 16
with that. And secondly related to that, but it's come up in the last few weeks as well the 17
question of how much housing we need to build, have we built in the last decade and previous 18
decade; A) I’d like to get the current Housing Element because we actually never were issued that 19
to my knowledge. Pardon? The Housing Element? Oh, ok. We have a current one? It's not in 20
the draft. Yeah we don’t have a physical copy of the Housing Element, but it would be great. 21
22
But secondly if we could get the metrics in terms of the current 10 year plan I guess it’s with 23
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) in there and where we are on that and what our 1
goals are so we know what we need to meet. And it would just be interesting to get historical 2
data of the prior 10 years which I think we did better in the prior ten years than we're doing now, 3
but it would just be good to have that data as we go forward trying to help meet those objectives. 4
5
Jonathan Lait, Assistant Director: Ok, yes. We’re currently working with the City Attorney's Office 6
on a analysis of the all the housing laws and maybe some other laws of interest to the 7
Commission. So we’ll agendize that for a discussion or submit a report. I think we're doing the 8
same for Council. We're just probably a few weeks away from having something dialed in on 9
that. 10
11
Commissioner Lauing: Beautiful. 12
13
Mr. Lait: And I can absolutely make available to anybody a hard copy of the Housing Element. I 14
hear you want one. After the meeting if you want me to get another one I can do that for you as 15
well. And then it might be a good time for us to check in as you said on the Housing Element 16
what are our goals, how are we reaching them, and what have we done in the past. So we can 17
arrange a discussion for that as well. 18
19
Commissioner Lauing: Excellent. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Lait: Ok. 1
2
Commissioner Lauing: Thank you. 3
4
Mr. Lait: Thank you. 5
6
Chair Alcheck: Ok, if I if it's ok I'd like to sort of add to that request which is I think it would also be 7
helpful if we had a summary of the in-law. 8
9
Mr. Lait: Yeah we're coming back to you with that actually. 10
11
Chair Alcheck: Ok. 12
13
Mr. Lait: I think in December with sort of our findings and some (interrupted) 14
15
Chair Alcheck: Yeah, I saw it on the schedule and I was I feel like there's also sort of state laws 16
that are applicable to that or I’m not exactly sure if they passed or they were there and 17
(interrupted) 18
19
Mr. Lait: Yeah, there’s some fine tuning. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Alcheck: Then we responded to it. It would be helpful if we had a little primer on that. Ok, I 1
want to sort of call everybody’s attention to the schedule for our remaining (interrupted). Yeah, 2
yeah, go ahead. 3
4
Commissioner Gardias: I'd like to just also add one more request in this regards. I think that once 5
staff comes back to us with the analysis I'd like to understand the impact and the risks of those 6
laws on our Comprehensive Plan. Because they're based on the interpretation of the 7
Comprehensive Plan there may be different impact on the forecast of traffic, school impact, 8
housing impact and so forth. 9
10
Mr. Lait: Specifically the Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) law that…? 11
12
Commissioner Gardias: All of those, not only ADUs. No, I’m talking about all of those. I believe 13
that our Comprehensive Plan is the subject of different interpretations and then with those new 14
set of laws we may have different housing stock based on the interpretation of those laws, not 15
only housing stock, but also traffic congestion/school impact. 16
17
Mr. Lait: Ok. Ok, thank you. 18
19
Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Alcheck: Ok. I'd like to talk a little bit about our schedule. We have four meetings left and 1
one of the items that's currently scheduled for November 29th is our annual report to Council. 2
Now I want to sort of give you a little context here. We didn't have an annual report to Council 3
last year because I'm not exactly sure. Adrian Fine didn't prepare one. And the year before then 4
Commissioner Tanaka wrote a report in conjunction with each Commissioner. So each 5
Commissioner was responsible for a section of the report and that actually was a practice that 6
Commissioner Michael, Mark Michael, before him had done for the two years Commissioner 7
Mark Michael was Chair. I'm comfortable writing a memo on how I think this year went, but 8
before I sort of step up into that I want to determine whether or not anybody has thoughts on 9
whether they would like to participate in the drafting of that memo. Which I should say that prior 10
to Commissioner Michael Commissioner Martinez which was the my first year and a half he wrote 11
those and presented them to the Commission. So there's sort of a history of no uniform practice 12
when it comes to this and so before I did it differently than the last time we did it I wanted to 13
double check if there's any thoughts on that. 14
15
Commissioner Lauing: Just could you review generally what the content is? Is it a recap of actions 16
accomplished or policies? 17
18
Chair Alcheck: So it's a it’s sort of a unique letter. The first time actually Commissioner Martinez 19
is the Commissioner that was the Chair twice in a row. I had mistakenly said it was Commissioner 20
Michael. And Commissioner Martinez the first letter he wrote was a summary of basically all of 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
the things we accomplished in the year and some of his hopes for what we could accomplish the 1
following year. His second letter was a little different. I believe it was a summation of the 2
entirety of his involvement with the Commission because that was his last, his term ended his last 3
letter and he so he left the Commission. 4
5
Commissioner Michael wrote in conjunction with the rest of us and so did Tanaka. He wrote a 6
summary of things and he gave each Commissioner like a month of the year to write a summary 7
of the things we did. And it acted like a little bit of a book report. I'm not entirely sure those are 8
useful. I'm not entirely sure if the report to Council is an opportunity for someone to Op-ed or 9
whether it should just be a bullet point list of how we what we accomplished. And so to that 10
extent I'm sort of asking for comments on it because… 11
12
Commissioner Rosenblum: So my input on this so I've seen both. My what I’d prefer is for you to 13
draft it, but to have a session where it's presented to us and I and that we get to give you 14
feedback before it gets presented to Council. Because I think it should be a coherent narrative. I 15
think when each person just writes from their own perspective I also don't think it should be our 16
diary month after month. I don't think that's very useful. I think it should be coherent around 17
here the big items that came, this year in particular is Comp Plan. Here are the things that went 18
well, here are some things that could have done better. Going forward now the Comp Plan is 19
done here some big items that should come in front of us including parking, including the 20
coordinated area plans, including so a number of things like that that I think if you were to 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
encapsulate and then we get one round of feedback to you and then I would trust that the next 1
round would go to Council on a good in good form. That would be my preference. 2
3
Chair Alcheck: Ok, I like that. Commissioner Summa. 4
5
Commissioner Summa: Yeah so oops. I had a couple questions about this and so does staff do 6
you know if there's I don't remember if there's anything in our procedures or anything that says 7
what the report is supposed to be. No? 8
9
Mr. Lait: No, there's nothing in there about that. 10
11
Commissioner Summa: Ok, it’s just a tradition. And then so if it's one thing if it's one item on our 12
agenda for that... 13
14
Chair Alcheck: Well, I have a suggestion for the timing of it. If let me before you make a comment 15
on what the item is on the agenda because I will suggest that we adjust the agenda because if 16
we're going to come back twice I’ll need… If we're going to present it and then get and I get 17
feedback and then I come back with it in final copy I'm going to suggest we adjust the schedule, 18
but so before I make that suggestion how do you feel about this, the process that Eric outlined? 19
20
Commissioner Summa: So I wasn't quite sure if you meant we were going to have a public 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
discussion about it as it looks like here. 1
2
Chair Alcheck: Oh yeah. 3
4
Commissioner Summa: Because it's on the agenda. 5
6
Chair Alcheck: Yeah, yeah. 7
8
Commissioner Summa: Or whether we would get you feedback first and also I wasn't quite sure 9
what you were suggesting. 10
11
Chair Alcheck: Ok, so here's what I'd like to suggest. Right now we have scheduled for November 12
8th a Title 18 code cleanup which is typically a light item. It involves for any of you that haven’t 13
been a part of in the past it involves making corrections to the code that are minor in nature. And 14
then we have the Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC) elections for Chair and Vice-15
Chair and then the Stanford General Use Permit (GUP) [218 – Note-2018?] draft Environmental 16
Impact Report (DEIR) comment letter. What I would suggest is that we flip the Title 18 code 17
cleanup and the PTC elections for Chair and Vice-Chair to November 29th and we move the PTC 18
Annual Report to Council to November 8th and I can spend the next month essentially drafting a 19
letter and working with staff to do that and then it on the November 8th meeting I would suggest 20
I present it. Actually it will be a part of your packet in the best case scenario so you can read it 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
and then we can have a discussion about it at the November 8th meeting. 1
2
And then at the November 29th meeting staff will have had a chance to incorporate your 3
comments into the letter and it will be in final shape I think. And then that would coincide well 4
with elections because that would be sort of completing my duty as the Chair. And we could have 5
elections on the 29th to appoint our new Chair and Vice-Chair for the coming year. And then that 6
would mean that the December 13th meeting would be run actually as soon as you appoint a 7
Chair and Vice-Chair they immediately take the seat. So what I would suggest we do is we do the 8
PTC Annual Report to Council like re-review and then immediately following that do the elections 9
and then we could do the Title 18 code clean up with the new Chair in charge. 10
11
Commissioner Monk: On the 13th? 12
13
Chair Alcheck: On the 29th. So let me say that one more time. So October 25th can I'm not sure 14
what's on the schedule aside from this garages question, but that can remain. I would suggest 15
that on November 8th we do the first draft of the PTC Annual Report. I'll bring to you a first draft 16
for you to comment on and we'll also proceed if it's going to be calendared with the Stanford 17
GUP. And then on November 29th the following meeting we would you would I would come back 18
to you with a final draft that would incorporate the comments that you gave me on November 19
8th. We would hopefully you'll say great, thanks for incorporating our comments and we are 20
recommending that and we communicate it to the City Council. And then immediately following 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
that I would suggest we have the elections which shouldn’t take very long. 1
2
And then the second item which is the Title 18 code cleanup I would suggest we move that to the 3
29th so that that meeting can be not just a one item or one issue night. Title 18 code cleanup 4
could happen on the 29th. So what's left for the 8th would I’ll repeat it is the Annual Report first 5
draft and the Stanford GUP. The 29th would be a final draft of the Annual Report, elections, and 6
then the Title 18 code cleanup which is typically a small item. And so we have basically three 7
things happening on that night. And then the 13th can remain with whatever they end up 8
bringing us. 9
10
Commissioner Summa: I have one more question for (interrupted) 11
12
Chair Alcheck: Yeah. 13
14
Commissioner Summa: Another question for staff. So there's code cleanups and there's code 15
cleanups, right? Some are quite, some are like sort of just typos and stuff and others can become 16
quite a pithy conversations. Is that giving us enough time for… I have no idea what's in this code 17
cleanup, so. 18
19
Mr. Lait: Yeah there is a variety of items and some of them are more minor than others. I don't 20
know that any of them. are hugely controversial or implement… 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Chair Alcheck: In the past we've had a discussion where we review the items and we make a 2
determination whether the items are Tier 1 or Tier 2. 3
4
Commissioner Summa: Right. 5
6
Chair Alcheck: Tier 1 was a determination that item represented like the addition of a comma. 7
Like had very little impact (interrupted) 8
9
Commissioner Summa: Right, that's what I was basically asking whether this was Tier 1 or Tier 2. 10
11
Chair Alcheck: Well in theory in the past we’ve put off Tier 2 items and suggested that those were 12
items that needed City Council input because they involved sort of interpret… 13
14
Mr. Lait: Yeah, we're taking a slightly different tack this year. I think we got a little it wasn't as 15
clean I think for staff and the Commission the one year that we did it. So what we're going to 16
present this time is an ordinance to the Commission and the Commission will make a Motion 17
based on that ordinance. And there might be elements that you support and elements that you 18
don't support, but those recommendations will be forwarded to the Council along with the staff 19
recommendation on the ordinance. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
I have a quick list here I'm looking at as far as the changes. There's some procedural changes, 1
there's going to be some dialogue on some of these matters that we have, but a lot of this is 2
mostly administrative in nature and interpretations. 3
4
Chair Alcheck: Yeah it’s not it’s just typically a quick item I think I mean. Ok, alright. So is 5
everybody comfortable with this schedule? 6
7
Commissioner Lauing: We know we might get an extra agenda item or two in the next four 8
meetings, but (interrupted) 9
10
Chair Alcheck: Right, so one question that Commissioner Waldfogel or Vice-Chair Waldfogel asked 11
me was can we move the PF zone standards amendment for City garages. Is do you have any idea 12
if there’s going to be anything added to the 25th meeting? 13
14
Mr. Lait: So that's a significant well, I guess it's a code amendment. What this is is for the Public 15
Safety Building and the garage on Sherman. And the Commission's role in this particular regard is 16
the code amendment to the PF zone. 17
18
Chair Alcheck: Ok. Alright. 19
20
Mr. Lait: And so that's what you're going to be talking about. You're not going to really being 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
engaged in the conversation of the garage or the Public Safety Building (interrupted) 1
2
Chair Alcheck: You anticipate that being a meaty issue? 3
4
Mr. Lait: Well it’s a significant project for sure, but the Commission's role in this has to do with 5
the zoning code change. 6
7
Chair Alcheck: I can’t, I'm having my time determining whether you're suggesting that this should 8
be squeezed into the November 8th meeting or whether it needs its own meeting. 9
10
[Vice-Chair Waldfogel?]: [Note-off mic] And is this a technical, are these technical issues or are 11
these policy issues? I mean if these are technical issues then I doubt that we’ll spend a lot of time 12
debating whether they’re concrete whether the standards need to be 18 inches or 22 inches. 13
14
Mr. Lait: Right. So I mean I think they are more policy in nature, but it does have to do with 15
development standards and I think the Commission may have varying levels of interest on the 16
specifics of that, but that is on a timeline that we are needing to adhere to. 17
18
Chair Alcheck: Ok. Alright. 19
20
Mr. Lait: And we’d like to keep that on the 25th and I know there may be some different 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
perspectives about the elections, but I think the at this point just looking at the schedule I mean 1
I’d almost rather move the Annual Report on to the 8th and have that be a meeting and then the 2
29th which is the weekend, which is the week after Thanksgiving could free up if it were an 3
interest of the Commission. 4
5
Commissioner Monk: I just want to point out I think of a conflict on November 8th so to the 6
extent we [unintelligible]. 7
8
Chair Alcheck: Yeah, if (interrupted) 9
10
Mr. Lait: Well, so the GUP has to happen on the 8th. 11
12
Chair Alcheck: Yeah. Here's the thing. The I need a little bit of time to sort of prepare this draft 13
letter. 14
15
Mr. Lait: Right, well there's nothing tying… I mean I guess you have some interest in getting that 16
done because on paper you’re terming out, but (interrupted) 17
18
Chair Alcheck: Well, I was specifically asked to do it. 19
20
Mr. Lait: Right. 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Chair Alcheck: By Council Member Kou. 2
3
Mr. Lait: And that’s fine. 4
5
Chair Alcheck: And she like called it out. 6
7
Mr. Lait: But it doesn't, I mean it doesn't I would say December 13th is the deadline for that, 8
right? 9
10
Chair Alcheck: Well. 11
12
Commissioner Gardias: If I may chime in? 13
14
Chair Alcheck: Yeah. 15
16
Commissioner Gardias: Sorry for interrupting. I think that I’d recommend just to take a simpler 17
route. It is your letter. It is summary of your tenure. I respect that you want to just get our 18
opinion and others did, but it's fine with me if you accomplish if you draft this letter and if you 19
write it and just send it out even without our input. 20
21
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Alcheck: You know I (interrupted) 1
2
Commissioner Gardias: I’d be totally comfortable with this. 3
4
Chair Alcheck: I appreciate it. 5
6
Commissioner Gardias: And then as I said just take ownership of this, write it yourself, and then of 7
course we could provide you with input. It doesn't have to be official. It may be offline if staff 8
(interrupted) 9
10
Chair Alcheck: The problem is I can’t share that letter with you and the rest of the Commission 11
without it being agendized and so and I actually like the suggestion having sort of group input. 12
I'm not suggesting authorship. I’m not trying to make this a burden for anybody, but to the 13
extent that someone’s like I really think you should add this. I don't consider the letter to be 14
some sort of summary of my tenure on the Commission. For all I know I may still be a part of the 15
Commission after October 24th. 16
17
So again I am trying to make this really clear we have PF zone standards on the 25th that's 18
unchanged. I'm suggesting that we do the GUP and the Annual Report on the 8th and we move 19
the code cleanup and the PTC elections to the 29th. So does anybody have a problem with that? 20
Ok, I want to make one more suggestion if we’re it would be wonderful if we had total 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
attendance on the 29th because when someone isn't available on election night it can be difficult. 1
So even if, if there's any issue let's consider the process we've used in the past which is to phone 2
in. Ok? I know we… Well I'm just suggesting if anybody has a conflict with attendance let me 3
know and we'll figure out a way to sort of involve you. Ok, alright so would you make those 4
changes to the schedule? 5
6
Mr. Lait: Yes. I do need to take a look at the Title 18. I wasn't really prepared to get into this level 7
of discussion, but I do want to take a look at our schedule and our commitments to get that to 8
Council. This is the this year's code cleanup and so we're kind of working on a schedule and so I'll 9
take a look at that. I understand your interest in that and we’ll take a look at that. 10
11
Commissioner Lauing: Just one detail for that Stanford GUP there’s going to be two recusals 12
again. So if we could have that last on the agenda that would be convenient. 13
14
Chair Alcheck: It will be last on the agenda. 15
16
Commissioner Lauing: Ok, thank you. 17
18
Chair Alcheck: I anticipate that the Annual Report draft is not going to take very long. So 19
hopefully we can do that and then you guys can go and then we can finish the GUP. Ok, alright 20
seeing no other lights, actually I see two lights Gardias and Summa, but… 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Gardias: I already spoke. 2
3
Chair Alcheck: Ok, great. So seeing no other lights then this meeting is ending at (interrupted) 4
5
Commissioner Gardias: Just one moment before you do this. One? 6
7
Chair Alcheck: Sorry, go ahead. 8
9
Commissioner Gardias: We’re entitled to some other question and answers (Q&A). So I just 10
wanted to make a comment outside of the realms of the schedule that we had a very successful 11
moonlight walk and run and then Commissioner Monk was one of the walkers and what local 12
press told me about, local press ran 10,000 kilometers (10K), I did 5,000 so we're good. We're 13
disappointed that the rest of you didn't accept my challenge, but hoping that next year we'll see 14
you all there. And then there will be another run I think it's coming in spring. So there is another 15
chance. Thank you. 16
17
Chair Alcheck: Ok, alright with that this meeting is concluding at 10:50, 9:50, excuse me. 18
19
Adjournment 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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
9:58 PM1
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.
1. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
2. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Palo Alto Planning & Transportation Commission
Commissioner Biographies, Present and Archived Agendas and Reports are available online:
http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/boards/ptc/default.asp. The PTC Commission members are:
Chair Michael Alcheck
Vice Chair Asher Waldfogel
Commissioner Przemek Gardias
Commissioner Ed Lauing
Commissioner Susan Monk
Commissioner Eric Rosenblum
Commissioner Doria Summa
Get Informed and Be Engaged!
View online: http://midpenmedia.org/category/government/city-of-palo-alto or on Channel 26.
Show up and speak. Public comment is encouraged. Please complete a speaker request card
located on the table at the entrance to the Council Chambers and deliver it to the Commission
Secretary prior to discussion of the item.
Write to us. Email the PTC at: Planning.Commission@CityofPaloAlto.org. Letters can be
delivered to the Planning & Community Environment Department, 5th floor, City Hall, 250
Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301. Comments received by 2:00 PM two Tuesdays preceding
the meeting date will be included in the agenda packet. Comments received afterward through
2:00 PM the day of the meeting will be presented to the Commission at the dais.
Material related to an item on this agenda submitted to the PTC after distribution of the
agenda packet is available for public inspection at the address above.
Americans with Disability Act (ADA)
It is the policy of the City of Palo Alto to offer its public programs, services and meetings in a
manner that is readily accessible to all. Persons with disabilities who require materials in an
appropriate alternative format or who require auxiliary aids to access City meetings, programs,
or services may contact the City’s ADA Coordinator at (650) 329-2550 (voice) or by emailing
ada@cityofpaloalto.org. Requests for assistance or accommodations must be submitted at least
24 hours in advance of the meeting, program, or service.