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Home My WebLink About2017-12-13 Planning & transportation commission Summary Minutes_______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Planning & Transportation Commission 1 Action Agenda: December 13, 2017 2 Council Chambers 3 250 Hamilton Avenue 4 6:00 PM 5 6 Call to Order / Roll Call 7 6:05pm 8 9 Chair Lauing: Meeting of December 13th, 2017. Please call the roll. 10 Oral Communications 11 The public may speak to any item not on the agenda. Three (3) minutes per speaker.1,2 12 13 Chair Lauing: Thank you. Are there any oral communications? Ok, seeing none. We're talking 14 about the (interrupted) 15 Vice-Chair Monk: [unintelligible – no mic] one speaker card. 16 Chair Lauing: For oral communications? No, that’s for Agenda Item Three. Oral 17 Communications is things that aren’t on the agenda. 18 Agenda Changes, Additions, and Deletions 19 The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management. 20 21 Chair Lauing: On agenda changes, additions and deletions, we are going to go in the same order 22 as the agenda items are listed on here. Our own packet was a little bit wobbly but we’re going 23 to go with the order that was out to the public on the agenda. The meeting schedule was 24 attached for next year, these are draft. As well as the PTC Commission assignments for 25 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. attendance at Council. Those are obviously suggestions, it’s just a straw person. If you can’t 1 make that in your number one spot, you can just let Yolanda know if you can’t make one of 2 those months and we’ll just swap somebody else in there. Again, just for illustrative purposes, 3 we put in their backups for discussion purposes. We don’t have to have that there but if you 4 think it would be helpful in case you can’t make it at last minute, you know who to call. We can 5 list that way. 6 Commissioner Alcheck: Are you going to swap Eric for Billy? 7 Chair Lauing: Sorry? 8 Commissioner Alcheck: Are you going to swap Eric for Billy? 9 Chair Lauing: He’s in here, on the 18th, [unintelligible] 18th. 10 Commissioner Alcheck: 2018? 11 Chair Lauing: Yeah, the next page. So, does anybody have any comment on that or just leave it 12 as it is for now and you can (interrupted) 13 Commissioner Alcheck: Oh, I see. Well, this one’s just [unintelligible – no mic on] 14 City Official Reports 15 1. Assistant Directors Report, Meeting Schedule and Assignments 16 Chair Lauing: Ok, if there are no comments on that, then we can move to the Director’s report. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Hillary Gitelman, Planning Director: Thank you, Chair Lauing and Commissioners. Hillary 1 Gitelman the Planning Director and I’m filling in this evening for Jonathan Lait who wasn’t able 2 to make it to your meeting today. 3 I did want to just mention a few things. First, as the Chair mentioned, we have this 2018 4 schedule and please, as a reminder, if you know meetings that you’re not going to be able to 5 attend, please let Yolanda know as soon as you can in advance of those meeting. Because we 6 often have the ability juggle items a little bit to try and get most of you present. 7 With regards to juggling a little bit, if you look on Packet Page 7, there’s a look for word at the 8 first meeting on January 10th and a few of those things have gotten moved off. So, what we’re 9 planning for January 10th is the Public Facility Zoning Ordinance, the last bullet you see there. 10 And then we’re thinking that the ADU discussion from this evening will probably continue on 11 that day. The other items, we have a plan and we’re working with the Chair and the Vice-Chair 12 to move those around a little bit to other dates. 13 Then I just wanted to mention that you probably are aware of these already but I think since 14 the Commission last met, the Council had two planning related discussions. One was on the 15 comment letter about the Stanford GUP draft DIR. That discussion is going to continue on 16 February 27th… January 22nd, sorry, in the new year. And the Council also last Monday talked 17 about the Sustainability Implementation Plan so there was a long discussion and our 18 Transportation Staff supported that discussion at the Council. That’s really all I have, thank you. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: Quick question? I heard they pulled the Item about changing our 1 appointment dates, do you know anything about that? 2 Ms. Gitelman: Oh, that’s right, they didn’t enact the ordinance that would have changed the… 3 where the… when the terms end so they remain as they are currently. 4 Chair Lauing: Ok, thank you. Along with the agendas and so on, I just wanted to make a couple 5 comments on meeting process format. We’re going to get into this a lot more at the retreat. 6 Did you have a comment to Director Gitelman? Sure, go ahead. 7 Commissioner Gardias: Yes, so, thank you. Director Gitelman, quick question so because we 8 have more time with Stanford’s Use Permit, will we see the letter? Will we have a chance to see 9 the letter in its draft form and have a chance to comment on it because it just gets adopted by 10 the City Council? 11 Ms. Gitelman: Well, we are preparing a draft to get it into the Council’s packet for January 22nd 12 so we could put it in your packet for the 10th if it’s ready in time. I don’t know whether you 13 want to take the time for an item if we have two other actions items that day. I also think we’re 14 already in the position for having the Council’s redirection on this that we’re responding to. So, 15 it might be a little awkward but I’m not adverse to it if it’s the Commission’s desire to take 16 another look at that. 17 Commissioner Gardias: I would propose if that is possible, just if we could just limit our time so 18 pretty much we will not just have a full discussion but if we could just limit our time to have an 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. hour discussion and then still be able to comment on the letter. It may still be valuable to the 1 final form. 2 Ms. Gitelman: Well, let me talk to the Staff that’s working on it and see if we can accommodate 3 that request and I’ll communicate with the Chair about how to (interrupted) 4 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. 5 Ms. Gitelman: Make that work. I’m not one hundred percent sure but we’ll give it a try. 6 Commissioner Gardias: Sure, thank you. 7 Chair Lauing: Excellent segue to what I wanted to talk about next which is in terms of meetings, 8 just a couple things that I wanted to touch right now. And then we’ll talk about this more in-9 depth at out off-site retreat and the first one is the agenda. Obviously, the agenda is made 10 before the meeting, not after the meeting so really of efficiency we want to stay on the agenda 11 points. And that’s just respectful to all our fellow Commissioners and Staff and of course the 12 public who needs to be noticed on what we’re going to be talking about. So, we’re going to 13 include this formally at the Items of comment sections and list it as agenda items. So, 14 something like just came up, what we would say is let’s have a discussion about that under the 15 comment section as we plan for our next meeting so perfect example, you’d think we’d 16 rehearsed that which we did not. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Secondly, I’ve had some preliminary discussions with Assistant Director Lait about taking a 1 longer view of certain… and with Director Gitelman yesterday, kind of a longer view as some of 2 these big, complicated issue. And if we get involved earlier and work some of the pieces, be 3 aware of it in timelines, it will offset some of the emergencies where we’ve had to act really 4 quickly with a 300-page Staff report and make instant decisions. So, we’re going to try to do 5 some planning in that regard. Also, previously, Assistant Director Lait has said we can work on 6 some, what should we call them, lower priority items but important items that we want to have 7 available to slot in case something drops at the last minute. So that our meetings are 8 productive with good full agendas and that we’re not all coming out for one item so those are 9 in process. 10 Obviously, we want to have productive and efficient meetings and one area that I think we 11 could sort of tighten up on, in my view, is that sometimes there’s a practice of someone makes 12 a statement. And then there’s a rebuttal and then there’s a rebuttal and then there’s a rebuttal 13 and there’s a rebuttal. And really to the point that you make your statement and then there’s a 14 rebuttal, both those Commissioners are on the record then so sometimes those can be helpful 15 and sometimes they aren’t. So, I just think we can kind of look at that and maybe shorten those 16 us. And obviously sidebar conversations are distracting to the debate so unless they are a few 17 seconds, we’d like to keep those to a minimum. 18 Relative to PTC procedures, we’re – we should check about 9 o’clock to see where we are, do a 19 time check and also make a judgment and if we want to go past 10 o’clock. Sometimes we will, 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. sometimes we won’t so Vice-Chair is going to be sounding an alarm at 9 o’clock so we have that 1 conversation and make a decision. So, that’s it for that, any other comments on this agenda 2 item? 3 Study Session 4 Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 5 2. Discussion Regarding State Housing Bills That Will Become Effective January 1, 2018. 6 Chair Lauing: Alright, then we’ll go to the study session regarding the new State Housing Bills, 7 it’s becoming effective January 1, 18. 8 Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Commissioners. Hillary Gitelman again and this is really a reprise of a 9 presentation that we gave to the City Council. I think it was about a month ago, maybe it was 10 less, time is sort of running together for me but I’ll do my best to explain kind of what’s 11 transpired at the state level and how we think it might affect Palo Alto. There’s a lot of written 12 material available now coming out from the League of Cities and law firms in the state about 13 the housing bills themselves. And I actually bought a souvenir for you that gives a good 14 summary but this presentation that we put together for Council was really our attempt to try 15 and look ahead and see how the bills might affect Palo Alto. So, what they mean for us and 16 you’ll see there’s something that we can kind of deduce and some things that we’re going to 17 learn from experience. 18 Just to step back a little bit, the state legislature this year approved 15 bills that they are calling 19 a Housing Package. The governor has signed them and they become effective January 1st. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. There’s a whole host of things in it and we’re not going to talk about all of them, again because 1 not all of them affect us in the same way. The ones that we’ll probably spend the most time are 2 the first few of the bullet items on this slide because they have the potential to really change 3 our process for housing projects here in Palo Alto. 4 So, the first of the kind of important bills is this By Right Housing Bill or SB-35 and it kind of sets 5 up a three-step process. The first step is that the State Department of Housing and Community 6 Development is going to determine which local jurisdictions are subject to this bill. And they 7 should do that pretty quickly after the first of the year and we expect that Palo Alto would be 8 among those agencies where this law will apply. The evaluation is really based on the 9 jurisdictions productivity in terms of meeting state housing requirements in the first few years 10 of the current housing cycle. And while we’ve produced some units, we haven’t produced 11 enough that would get us off this list so we think it’s going to apply. T 12 he next step is that an applicant has to come in and apply for the streamlined process and show 13 that they have an eligible application. And we’ll talk about what makes an eligible application in 14 a minute but the third step then is the streamlined process that we would be forced to use to 15 evaluate these eligible projects and we’ll talk about that briefly too. So, first of all, what makes 16 a project eligible, it has to do with the applicant’s proposal, the site conditions, and we have to 17 confirm eligibility within 60-days of receipt of the application which is a pretty quick turn 18 around for us. Eligible projects have to include two or more units, they can include some 19 commercial square footage but there’s this two third ratio. So, two-thirds of the project have to 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. be residential, one third can be commercial. They have to be on a site or in a Comp. Plan 1 designation that is zoned for multi-family housing or for mixed-use and they can’t… the project 2 can involve the demolishing of a historic resource. It can’t be on a site that has hazardous 3 materials and most irrelevant to a lot of multi-family zone sites, it can’t have any housing units 4 or rental housing units on that have been there for the last 10-years. It’s also not available in 5 open space area and it’s not available when a property owner is seeking a variance or an 6 exception of some kind. There is a big loophole in that provision however because developers 7 can seek concessions under the State Density Bonus Law and use that law to waive 8 development standards or to get some kind of relief from development standards. It’s not 9 available to projects that propose subdivisions and it – there is a requirement for projects of 10 ten or more units to pay prevailing wages and meet affordability requirements that they would 11 already be meeting in Palo Alto if they are ownership projects. So, if an application comes in the 12 door and it qualifies, as I said we have 60-days to confirm the applicability of this law and then 13 we are mandated to go through a very quick 30-day… 30 additional days to approve the project 14 ministerial. So, that means no CEQA and we must make the approval based on only the 15 Objective Standards in the code. So, we won’t be able to apply subjective ARB findings and 16 other provisions of our code that call for judgment. Another big provision of this law is that it 17 provides for a reduced parking requirement for eligible projects. So, basically, projects that are 18 in transit-served areas, which is not well defined in the bill, will not have to provide off-street 19 parking. They may choose too but they don’t have too. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. So, it’s a little difficult to predict exactly how and where this bill is going to affect us. I think 1 we’re going to learn a lot in the first six to nine months of the new year. Just to step back a little 2 bit, if you think about Palo Alto, only a small percentage of the City is zoned… this is actually a 3 diagram that shows land use designations from the Comprehensive Plan but the zoning 4 provisions would look similar. You know just between ten and fifteen percent of the whole City 5 is of zones and designated to allow this kind of uses. And within that land area, obviously, 6 there’s only going to be a subset of sites that are eligible for this process and where the 7 property owner finds that it’s economically viable for them to pursue a project under this 8 statute. 9 Somethings to consider, we have a lot of very small sites in Palo Alto, this is always a challenge 10 for us when we’re preparing our Housing Element because we have to demonstrate available 11 sites for multi-family housing. A lot of parcels in Palo Alto that are zoned mix-use or residential 12 are fairly small and they already have buildings on them so it becomes a calculation for the 13 owner about whether it’s feasible or desirable to remove the existing buildings and redevelop 14 them with multi-family housing. We also have relatively strict zoning regulations and I just say 15 that as a way or because we often projects come in and request Design Enhancement 16 Exceptions and under the law, if you need an exception of some kind, you won’t be eligible for 17 this process with the exception that I mentioned for State Density Bonus Concessions. We do 18 have some areas in the City where there are large sites where we might see large projects that 19 come in and have been designed specifically to qualify for this new process. And we’ve 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. identified, for example in the Research Park, if there where a large parcel there’s kind of a low 1 FAR of .4 in the Research Park but with a large parcel you can get a lot of square footage. And if 2 there was a site… right now the Research Park requires a Conditional Use Permit but under this 3 process, there would be no Conditional Use Permit required. And we would only be able to 4 apply the Objective Standards of the code and we’d be forced to approve the project within the 5 90-days so we will have to see if we see applications like that come in. I think it’s going to take 6 awhile because I think property owners, like the City, are going to have to take some time to 7 really understand the implications of the bill and adjust their expectations and their plans 8 cordially. 9 This is a map from our Housing Element that shows our housing sites and that we don’t need to 10 look at it carefully but it does show that we’re relying in our Housing Element on a lot of sites 11 that are very small along El Camino. Most of them occupied with single-story commercial 12 buildings and the calculation about what’s feasible for the property owners is going to depend 13 on a number of factors. 14 So, we have a few recent examples that we thought would worth talking about for a minute. 15 One is the Compadre site, this was a site where we recently saw approval of a 17-unit project. It 16 required a Design Enhancement Exception because of the garage… underground garage 17 extended into a setback or something. I don’t remember all the details but there was a Design 18 Enhancement Exception. Now, of course, under the new provisions of the law, the project… if 19 they wanted to qualify for By Right Housing, they wouldn’t need to provide parking so they 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. wouldn’t need the Design Enhancement Exception if they didn’t. But on the other hand, what 1 condominium developer is going to build 7-units… 17-units without some parking so it’s really 2 kind of hard to tell how that project maybe would have been shaped or come in differently had 3 this SB-35 been in effect. The other project we have here is the 3001 El Camino which was 4 recently approved with 50-units of rental housing and that also had a small exception… Design 5 Enhancement Exception and it’s on a site that contains hazardous material. So, that’s a case in 6 which if we’d received an application under this streamlined process, we probably would have 7 been able to conclude because of the hazardous materials that did not qualify. And it would 8 have gone through the same process that we use to evaluate that project. 9 Moving on from SB-35, there’s a whole another group of the new bills that modify an existing 10 law called the Housing Accountability Act and basically, I’m going to really paraphrase and 11 Albert will beat me up if I get it too wrong but the Housing Accountability Act makes it difficult 12 for the local agencies to either deny or reduce the size of multi-family projects. Los Gatos had a 13 situation recently where they had a zoning compliant project, it complied with a specific plan 14 they had just adopted, the Council turned it down, they were sued by housing advocates, the 15 judge ordered them to reconsider and pay the plaintiffs legal bills and they ended up having to 16 reconsider and approve the project. That’s an example of how the Housing Accountability Act 17 can be used by advocates, even property owners, to sort of force a local agency to approve 18 projects that comply with their own rules… their own zoning rules. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. So, it’s changed in a couple ways to make it even stronger. We think of it as already as a pretty 1 strong set of legal requirements around the approval of multi-family housing but now it’s even 2 stronger. It’s been revised to apply even to project where one-third of the square footage in 3 commercial square footage. The new law gives us even less deference as the local agency and 4 there are procedural changes that make it super challenging from a Staff perspective to make 5 this work. And now we have a 30-day deadline from when we receive an application for multi-6 family housing to identify all of the objectives… Any inconsistencies with Objective Standards in 7 our code. Again, this is a similar concept under the SB-35 but we have to identify all of the 8 inconsistencies with Objective Standards within 30-days and then those are the only… Oh, and 9 then if we fail to identify something, the fault is on us. They can… We can’t use that later as a 10 way to modify or deny the project. Any grounds for denial or reduced density has to be based 11 on specific adverse impacts on public health and safety and we have this requirement to have 12 already identified what the Objective Standards are. I think I garbled that a little bit but we can 13 answer any questions you have about that. 14 Just procedurally, this is the thing that’s keeping me up at night, we’re going to have to look 15 hard to make some adjustments for our application intake process. We are going to need 16 applicants to submit… When they bring an application to us, all the information we need in 17 order to determine whether its subject to SB-35 and whether it meets the Objective General 18 Plan Subdivision Act and zoning standards that we need to use under the Housing 19 Accountability Act. We have to tell applicants if they come in with everything except they are 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. missing one piece, we can’t be the good customer service agency anymore that says oh, we’ll 1 take that in, you can send that to us later. We’re going to have to say nope, sorry, can’t take 2 your application. You’re going to have to come back when you have that last missing piece of 3 information so that’s at application intake. At the 30-day mark we have to identify these 4 Objective Standards and under the Housing Accountability Act, these are still discretionary 5 projects subject to CEQA. The 60-day review is for SB-35, does the project qualify or doesn’t it. 6 If it does qualify for streamline review, then CEQA does not apply and we have an additional 30-7 days of 90-days total to approve the project. 8 There are other bills in the Housing Package related to the Housing Element itself. One of them 9 is about the annual report that we produce annually. And this year we’ll be bringing that annual 10 report to you for hearing because one of the changes that have happened in the bill is it use to 11 be that Charter Cities were not subject to this requirement to hold a public hearing on their 12 annual report, which is due April 1st every year, but that’s been changed so we are subject to 13 that. We’re going to have a hearing with you and the with the City Council and that will be the 14 time… It will probably be in February sometime when we have a little background and primer 15 for you on the Housing Element requirements as a whole. There’s a whole body of law about 16 our Housing Element requirements, reporting and now monitoring that we’ll review with you 17 when we bring the annual report forward. 18 So, the change here in the law that gives me pause is that for the first time, it’s giving HCD, the 19 state housing folks, the ability to review the adequacy of someone’s Housing Element mid-20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. cycle. So, what happens now is we work really hard every seven to eight years to prepare a new 1 Housing Element and we have to submit it to HCD and they either certify it or they don’t. If they 2 don’t, we have to repair it and send it back to them to certify it but then you’re good. You know 3 as long as you make a good faith effort and work on your plan and submit your annual reports, 4 there’s nothing that gives them the ability to come back and re-evaluate the plan or your 5 performance. That’s been added to the law now and so we may see housing advocates running 6 up to Sacramento, developers running up to Sacramento and asking HCD to review an agency’s 7 compliance with their own Housing Element mid-cycle; which would be a significant change. 8 There is actually a bill that we, as a Charter City, are not subject to that sort of one-ups this idea 9 of ongoing monitoring by requiring monitoring to be done by income level. And the net result 10 of that, as I understand it, is what’s going to happen as the housing cycle goes on and housing 11 sites are built on. Often, we have housing sites in our Housing Element that are identified as 12 being appropriate for Affordable Housing because they are at a high enough density that the 13 state assumes they will be built out with affordable units. But then they develop in the course 14 of the cycle with market-rate units and all of sudden you have a deficiency in your lower-15 income supply of sites. So, the net result of this bill, which again does not apply to us at this 16 point is that agencies are going to have to, in their Housing Elements, identify way more sites 17 than they actually need to meet their regional housing needs allocation. We’ll talk about that 18 when we get to reexamining and revising our Housing Element which we’ll start doing about 19 2020. It’s going to be a much harder exercise because I think every agency is going to have to 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. look much harder at sites that have existing buildings on them. That the bar is set higher now to 1 make the argument that those are good sites and we’re going to have to have more sites… way 2 more sites than we need to meet our [unintelligible] allocation just to play it safe. 3 There were other bills in the package related to funding. One of them established a Transfer 4 Tax and there’s funding available immediately and in fact, January 1 we’ll be asking HDC for our 5 cut of that first-year money because the intention is it will be available to us to plan for… Do the 6 zoning and planning changes that are needed to implement the new bills. There was also a 7 funding measure that requires a vote so it will appear on the November 2018 ballot. Before any 8 money starts to flow it has to be approved by the voters. 9 And then probably the biggest thing that happened on the financial side is that the legislature 10 changed the rules to allow inclusionary requirement in rental housing. So, years ago we use to 11 require inclusionary so an affordable component for new rental developments but there was a 12 lawsuit and a case called the Palmer Case where the court said you could have that inclusionary 13 requirement for ownership units but not for rental units. So, we dutifully changed our 14 ordinance and we no longer have that inclusionary requirement for rental. Now the state is 15 saying we can so we’ll have to prepare the analysis necessary in an ordinance to bring it back to 16 you and to the Council to effectuate that change if we want to. 17 There were some other bills that we probably don’t need to go into providing for some districts 18 like specific plans that would allow you to streamline housing for a limited number of years. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. And then there were some really minor adjustments to the ADU previsions that were adopted 1 last year that we’re actually going to talk about because we managed to include them in the 2 Code Clean-Up Ordinance that’s on your agenda for action this evening. 3 So, I’m getting close to the end, I think there are just two most slides here. The implementation 4 considerations that we’ve identified, obviously we need to take a hard look at our internal 5 administrative procedures in the Planning Department around intake and evaluation of new 6 applications. We probably need to think about a new ordinance that memorializes our new 7 procedures in our code. We’re kind of putting our heads together to see how quickly we can do 8 that in the new year. And then once we get some funding from HDC because of one of the 9 funding bills, I think we want… We might want to take a hard look at our code and our 10 Comprehensive Plan and do anything we think we can to improve the Objective Standards that 11 will be used under both SB-35 and the Housing Accountability Act to evaluate projects. We have 12 a lot of should do this and very subjective suggestions and criteria in our code and to the extent 13 that we can, we might want to look at making some of those more Objective Standards. 14 In terms of next steps, we’re going to review our procedures. We’re doing that and trying to get 15 some things in place as effective January 1. We’re going to request this money from HCD for 16 planning purposes. We have a request from the City Council to ask… To prepare a housing work 17 plan. This came even before we had the discussion of the state package so we owe that back to 18 the Council and the Council’s intention as I understand it, this was based on a Colleague’s 19 Memo, is to look at the work plan and kind of identify those First-Tier things that they want to 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. include in a new zoning ordinance. And then refer that to you to do the hard work and 1 massaging the different elements and putting an ordinance together on… Primarily focused on 2 stimulating the production of additional multi-family housing. And we can talk more about that 3 at a future date and then… Oh, that’s Number Four so they would direct Staff to prepare that 4 and work with the PTC on the ordinance. So, I think that concludes my presentation. We’re 5 happy to answer any questions. 6 Chair Lauing: Just to begin with, was that the only official action by Council? That Item Number 7 or whatever that was? 8 Ms. Gitelman: You know they talked at length about whether there was really a need for an 9 official action and they ended up not adopting a motion. They treated it more like a study 10 session. I think they agreed that these are the steps that we need to take and there was some 11 discussion about some additional steps that we might want to take. 12 Chair Lauing: So, action to be taken is Item Number Three? 13 Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, that’s the next step for the Council. 14 Chair Lauing: Questions? Gardias is on. 15 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. Director Gitelman, thank you very much for the 16 presentation, it’s very valuable to us. I have a couple of questions from different angles if you 17 don’t mind, in various order. The first item that just comes to my mind is under the rule that 2-18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. units are qualified under SB-35, does this… does the 2-unit count include R-1 lots with 1 residential and ADU because both are units? 2 Ms. Gitelman: That’s a good question. If you step back, the streamlined process is really about 3 exempting projects from the environmental review so making them ministerial rather than 4 discretionary projects that would be subject to CEQA. And in Palo Alto, single-family homes 5 with or without ADUs are already… usually ministerial. The exception is the two-story homes 6 that are subject to individual review but it’s an interesting question and we’re going to have to 7 give that some thought as we move forward. 8 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. So, let me just do a couple of more so a… There is a 9 requirement to that reduced parking applies for the sites within half a mile of trans… away from 10 transit. So, is there a definition of what transit is? Is it any Valley Transit Authority, bus line or 11 train line or local bus? Is it defined anywhere? 12 Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, I don’t think it is defined in the law. Just like it wasn’t defined, remember 13 in the ADU law so it was subject to some interpretation. I think it’s the same thing here. 14 Commissioner Gardias: And then just a quick question about those lots that would be eligible 15 or developments that would be eligible. If you remember in 2014 we discussed the 16 development by on Stanford grounds under also conditional… under conditional use that of the 17 lot that’s Stanford grounds at the end of the Terrace College. That development right now 18 would be subject of this new law. Would (interrupted) 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Gitelman: You mean the development that’s currently under construction? 1 Commissioner Gardias: Exactly, it's near the end… It's nearly close to the completion. 2 Ms. Gitelman: I don’t think that would be… that would have qualified because there are 3 hazardous materials on the site. It was also part of a larger development agreement so it was a 4 big discretionary kind of agreement between the parties of which that was one component so I 5 don’t think that would have complied. 6 Commissioner Gardias: That’s right, I mean there are hazardous materials so this was part of 7 the CEQA findings. I remember that but if just setting this aside, this would not be the subject 8 because of the separate agreements between Stanford University and Palo Alto, that this lot or 9 development on this lot was a subject of, is this correct? 10 Ms. Gitelman: That development was one component of a much larger agreement that was a 11 development agreement that is discretionary required CEQA review. 12 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. So, this review would just make it different and then this 13 would not be required to go through this process. Thank you, I just wanted to clarify this and 14 then my next question is that in terms of the CEQA, I’d like to understand the table that you 15 had on the slide twelve. So, under Housing Authority Review, 30-day review, the CEQA applies 16 and… but then this process continues through… once this is completed, then it goes to the next 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. step of 60-days eligibility where CEQA doesn’t apply. So, within the whole process CEQA applies 1 to any project. 2 Ms. Gitelman: I’m sorry, this is probably confusing. The two columns there, the 30-day review 3 under the Housing Accountability Act is different than the 60-day review under SB-35 so don’t 4 look at both columns as applying to the same project. You’re either in one bucket or you’re in 5 the other bucket. 6 Commissioner Gardias: That was my question, I was wondering if this linear but it applies to 7 different projects. Right so which projects are… Could you clarify this for my understanding? 8 Ms. Gitelman: The Housing Accountability Act projects are any multi-family housing projects 9 that does not qualify for the 60-day streamline review so it’s still going to be subject to CEQA. 10 It’s a discretionary action, it’s still going to apply. There is a nuance though that the Housing 11 Accountability Act will also apply to the streamline projects. Do you want to help 12 (interrupted)[unintelligible]? 13 Commissioner Gardias: Pardon for this question, it wasn’t clear to me so I’m just looking for 14 some understanding, thank you. 15 Mr. Albert Yang, Senior Deputy Attorney: This table is just laying out two different review 16 processes that the City could engage in. And the 60-day review is for that small set of projects 17 that complies with this long list of eligibility requirements for the SB-35 ministerial approval 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. process. The 30-day review is… It’s not that the City has to finish this process within 30-days, it’s 1 just that it needs to determine whether or not a housing project, which could or couldn’t also 2 be subject to SB-35 or qualify for SB-35 treatment, the City has 30-days to determine whether 3 or not a housing project complies with all Objective Standards. And that’s also similar to the 30-4 days in which the City would need to determine if an applicant is complete or not but a project 5 could undergo a longer review process after that 30-days if it was not also something that 6 qualified for ministerial review. 7 Commissioner Gardias: But the ministerial review would also go through the 30-day review or 8 not? Would it be exempt from that review? 9 Ms. Gitelman: We’d probably need to do a 30-day review within so that right-hand column, I 10 could have included the 30-day standard, as well as the 60-day standard and then the 90-days 11 to approve. 12 Commissioner Gardias: Ok. 13 Ms. Gitelman: We’re going to be really busy. 14 Commissioner Gardias: Ok, thank you. The following question is like this, just I’m getting to the 15 end, so where this would put the role of Planning and Transportation in the project review 16 because some of those CEQA reviews would come to us? So, would we be… Would our role be 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. to participate in the 30-day review or our role would be applicable here under this new 1 scenario? 2 Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, normally the 30-day… We already do a 30-day review for completeness, 3 that’s an administrative action so the 30-day review is administrative, the 60-day review is 4 administrative. The change for the Commission would be if any of the projects that you see 5 would not be eligible for the streamline reviews, in which case we would only have 90-days. 6 We’d have 60-day… You know 30-days and then 60-days to make the administrative findings 7 and then we’d only have 30-days left to do the approval and that approval has to be based on 8 Objective Standards. So, we wouldn’t have time to bring it to the Commission for a site and 9 design review and then back to the ARB and then to Council. 10 Commissioner Gardias: Exactly. I mean from the time perspective, it’s just very tight to engage 11 the Commission. So, based on this discussion, if the Commission would not participate in this 12 process, is this correct? 13 Ms. Gitelman: Likely not for the projects that qualify under SB-35. For the other projects that 14 don’t qualify, you’re still going to be involved just as you are today. 15 Commissioner Gardias: Can we think or maybe discuss some mechanism for the Commission to 16 provide input to the Objective Findings? I think that this Commission has lots of intellect that’s 17 engaged and I think that could provide some valuable input. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Gitelman: I think that’s a wonderful suggestion. One of our recommendations is that we 1 take a hard look at the standards in the code and make sure that we have all the Objective 2 Standards that we want. I believe the Commission experience and expertise will be important 3 to have inquired. 4 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you very much. Thank you for now. 5 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Waldfogel. 6 Commissioner Waldfogel: Great, thank you and thank you for your presentation. I’ll probably 7 come back to Commissioner Gardias’s first question about unit definitions around ADUs. When 8 we talk about deed restrictions on ADUs I wonder whether… I’m just curious if that will bear on 9 the question of whether is a unit or not. It’s whether it was dead restricted or not deed 10 restricted but let’s take that up at that time. 11 Mr. Yang: So, I’m not sure that’s something that we can look into further. My inclination is that 12 the deed restriction would not affect whether an ADU is defined to the separate unit or not but 13 it’s something that we could look into. 14 Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah, I mean it’s a different beast. The other question is, I’m trying to 15 remember, I think it was… Is it SB-14 or 13 that governs… That relaxes some rules about teacher 16 housing on school sites. Do you remember this? I think it was 2016 bill and I’m just trying to see 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. if that plays into this definition of projects must be on a site zoned or planned, if there’s some 1 other entitlement to develop housing on school sites? 2 Ms. Gitelman: Really good question, I think school sites do have some zoning provisions on 3 them even though they are not within the Cities Land Use Authority. I’m speaking about the 4 public-school sites. 5 Commissioner Waldfogel: They are PF zoned generally in our jurisdiction. 6 Ms. Gitelman: Currently PF zone doesn’t allow (interrupted) 7 Commissioner Waldfogel: Right but I think there’s another state law that allows some 8 develop… Some housing developments on school sites. 9 Ms. Gitelman: We’ll have to look at that and my expectation is we’ll find that that’s a 10 discretionary process and that it wouldn’t qualify under SB-35 for streamlining but we’ll take a 11 look at it. 12 Commissioner Waldfogel: Thank you. 13 Chair Lauing: Other lights? Commissioner Summa. 14 Commissioner Summa: So, Commissioner Gardias asked some of my questions and one of my 15 concerns is the transit… Within a half mile of transit because I think we’re so poorly served by 16 transit and Caltrain has very limited amount of capacity increase with electrification and the 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. bus… So, I’m really concerned about how that’s defined, the transit. And I’m also concerned… 1 So, under the HAA, that Housing Accountability Act, does that apply to… Oh no, maybe it’s SB-2 35 but when you say multi-family, is that all multi-family so it’s everything but R-1? So, it’s 3 RMD. R-2, R-15, all of those? Ok. And how will the public be able to be involved in this really 4 expedited process because typically now, plans aren’t available to the public until they’ve gone 5 through a lot of reviews? So, I mean for the expedited plans, I think that’s HHH [Note -HAA?], 6 will they be online for the public? I mean how do you determine so quickly and how do other 7 people like the members of the public who might have concerns about objective versus 8 subjective standards. Will all those plans be online at that early stage for the public? 9 Ms. Gitelman: Really good question. I think we’re still talking about this but in talking with one 10 of Albert’s colleagues about a process wherein the first 30-days, we would issue a notice so 11 people know hey, we have one of these applications. We’re evaluating it to determine its 12 eligibility and we would at that point have to make plans available somehow for people to 13 understand what the proposal is and provide us any comments they have. Then we would do 14 our determination about eligibility within 60-days and then our thought was that we would 15 send a notice to the Council or I mean we haven’t even thought this through yet but of our 16 decision at the end of the 90-days. Everybody… So, we’re more transparent that these things 17 are going through our process and people know what’s going on so we have to give that more 18 thought. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Summa: Ok and are these projects appealable by the public in the same way 1 another project was? 2 Ms. Gitelman: They really wouldn’t be because they’re ministerial. The idea is that they are 3 evaluating against Objective Standards that all reasonable people are going to agree on and so 4 there’s not really a built-in appeal. We could have a hearing of some kind within that… Between 5 the 60-day and the 90-day but it would put the hearing body in a very difficult position because 6 the hearing body, whether it’s the Council, the Commission or the ARB, again could only use 7 Objective Standards that would be constrained from making suggestions about design or 8 applying more subjective things or reducing the size of the project under that. 9 Commissioner Summa: But aren’t most ministerial decision also appealable at this point? 10 Ms. Gitelman: No. Discretionary decisions are generally appealable, ministerial decisions are 11 like building permits that are not. 12 Commissioner Summa: Ok so that’s a big change for members of the public to not be able to 13 have a legal process by which they can appeal something so that’s a big concern to me. I don’t 14 know if we can build something new in but if that’s something that Staff could think about and 15 come back to us. 16 Ms. Gitelman: I think really this is… The Council had a discussion during their study session 17 about the loss of local control. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Summa: Right. 1 Ms. Gitelman: I mean this is potentially a game changer if we find that there are a lot of 2 property owners who have eligible sites who want to proceed with applications under this 3 process. 4 Commissioner Summa: Ok and then lastly just a comment, I think we should take a very strong 5 look at what we consider to be subjective and objective and some of the language that is sort 6 of… Appears subjective about what really could be Objective Standards. Thank you. 7 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Alcheck. 8 Commissioner Alcheck: Ok so I have a quick question and then I’ll jump in with some 9 comments. The Housing Accountability Act is not new, colloquial known as the anti-nimby act. 10 Do you know, is there… Can you share with us if the City of Palo Alto has been sued under the 11 Accountability Act in the last 10-years? 12 Mr. Yang: I can’t speak to the last 10-years but there…. We haven’t dealt with a development 13 that sought to take advantage of the Housing Accountability Act in recent memory. 14 Commissioner Alcheck: You know I ask that question… I figured that was going to be your 15 answer and I think it’s… I just want to provide a little bit of context here. I think for… it would be 16 an understatement to suggest that the advocates of housing development in low-income 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. housing are not thrilled about these changes. I think these are big and important changes for 1 the effort to encourage the development of housing in this community. 2 I would suggest that all of you look… I actually sent it to our secretary Yolanda to share with 3 you, an article that appeared in the New York Times on December 1st. It was called The Great 4 American Single-Family Home Problem and it took place… the story is a 2-year long story that 5 took place in Berkeley in which their Planning Department… Their Building Department sort of 6 overstepped the bounds of their local codes and stood in the way of a big development. It 7 eventually lost big in courts but really it was the applicant, the property owner, who suffered 8 significant financial losses in defending this thing. Ultimately, he got his permits and their 9 building this 3-unit duplex next to 2-unit duplexes but this Great American Single-Family Home 10 problem is a fantastic article that I think really encompasses this issue. 11 And I would suggest that this is a response to the crisis that we are in and it’s a crisis akin to the 12 fires that are raging in Southern California and the fires that raged in Northern California which 13 is we do not have enough housing. And I’ve very excited about this because I have participated 14 in a Housing Element process in this community where we identified sites and then in those 15 same meetings, we acknowledge that we don’t have to build these. We just have to tell the 16 state that they theoretically could be developed to this scale and its lip service in my opinion. 17 Its lip service and if we don’t… I mean if we can look at this as the taking away of local control 18 but what it really is, is a local municipality and I’m not just referring to Palo Alto. This is all 19 across the peninsula, have sort of gotten in the way of what would otherwise be prudent 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. development. I think you mentioned this question about the development of the one that we 1 approve with the condition of the exceeding the setback in the basement parking; that project. 2 And you suggested that who would build it without sufficient parking? I think it would be wise… 3 I think it would be prudent to acknowledge that there are municipalities, our neighbors… Not 4 Menlo Park but San Jose for example and San Francisco, which are eliminating parking 5 requirements in housing. So, the answer to your question is, lots of developers would build 6 condominiums without parking and that’s because we’re in a housing crisis. And these… In 7 many cases, these parking requirements are too high or to significant and are stopping 8 developments from taking place in areas that really need housing. It’s… That is the state of the 9 crisis so I think the hope is that our departments in our local municipalities will… While there 10 will be new requirements and new workloads, maybe there will be reduced workloads in sort of 11 the effort to creatively come up with hurdles which a lot of Cities have done in the face of 12 housing. So, I think this is can be a very good thing for our community because it will essentially 13 prohibit or put a big hurdle to those individuals who want to stand in the way of us achieving 14 the goals we set out for ourselves. I mean if anybody… If it’s the perspective of our leadership 15 that we want to encourage affordable housing development but not really, then this is probably 16 bad news but if we are serious about making room in our community for individuals of various 17 income levels to join this community, then these should not be considered a threat. If there’s a 18 project which complies with our code and we’re denying it, then we should pay the legal fees of 19 the applicant that spent 2-years, like this Berkeley applicant, to demonstrate to a judge that he 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. was in fact within his right to develop this parcel. And so, I think that we… there’s… I’m sharing 1 that perspective so that at least that voice on our Commission is heard to the extent that these 2 are big changes that housing advocates are really excited about. 3 Chair Lauing: Ok, go ahead. I was going to make a comment but feel free to go ahead 4 Commissioner [Note- Vice Chair] Monk. 5 Vice-Chair Monk: The comment is related to Commissioner Alcheck. 6 Chair Lauing: About what? 7 Vice-Chair Monk: First of all, I can appreciate the breadth of interpretation you’re having to 8 conduct and all the changes that you’re going to make so thank you for simplifying it extend as 9 possible. I really appreciate the overview that you provided in your report and tonight. The 10 RHNA obligation is in that something that’s been [unintelligible] to me so I was wondering if 11 you could talk a little bit about that? And if you can just look at the chart on Page 80 and it’s 12 saying that we’re grossly below. I just didn’t really understand how to interrupt that chart and I 13 also just want to confirm that it looks like our RHNA obligation is, tell me if I am wrong, I think 14 it’s 2187 or something around those numbers. 15 Ms. Gitelman: Our current RHNA requirement is 1,988. It’s at the very bottom of Page 80 in the 16 second column of that. So, you’ll see we’re showing here three different housing cycles. Every 7 17 to 8-years the State of California requires agencies to update their Housing Element to meet an 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. allocation provided to them from their local Council governments. So, what really happens is 1 the state decides how much the region has to produce to meet it’s housing needs and then the 2 region gets together and distributes it among local jurisdictions. So, it’s been [Note – ABAG??] 3 historically that’s done that distribution in the Bay Area and so the last time around, for the last 4 cycle which is still in… We’re in this cycle, 2014-2022, our RHNA allocation was 1,988 and the 5 RHNA allocation is split between the income categories and so you see in this table we’ve 6 provided what the allocation was in that second column. Then the third column shows the 7 number of units that we’ve actually permitted in those between… You know total units and 8 then affordable units and then the percentage of the allocation. 9 Vice-Chair Monk: Thank you for explaining that. 10 Chair Lauing: That was actually going to be one of my questions. If this word affordable that I 11 think keeps bothering us as a Commissioner. It’s like what does that mean? Is it below this or 12 below that or is it two of these segments but not all of them? So, that we know the terminology 13 best. 14 Ms. Gitelman: Just rule of thumb, when we say affordable housing, we mean below market rate 15 housing. It’s generally housing that’s affordable to households that one hundred and twenty 16 percent of area median income or less. So, each one of these terms, very low, low-income, 17 moderate, and above moderate has a definition based on a percentage of area median. And 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. moderate income and below is consider affordable and that’s one hundred and twenty percent 1 of very median and below. 2 Chair Lauing: Ok, then on 81, you’re projecting that this allocation is going to go up for Palo 3 Alto, is that correct? 4 Ms. Gitelman: Everyone who’s in the business I’m in is projecting that the allocations for all the 5 agencies statewide are going to go up like crazy in the next cycle because of our job growth and 6 other factors. 7 Vice-Chair Monk: Looking at Page 80 where we talk about how the zoning changes could 8 impact coordinating plans such as a North [unintelligible] plan. Is that something that you 9 would want to elaborate on a little bit tonight or will be covering those impacts when we talk 10 about that in a couple months from now? 11 Ms. Gitelman: Well, it’s just something that we’re going to have to keep in the bottom of our 12 mind or the back of our mind. If you think about what a Coordinated Area Plan is or a specific 13 plan that’s called in most jurisdictions, it essentially establishes the policy and regulatory 14 standards for development. And then any development that walks in the door that’s consistent 15 with those standards can move forward. And so, we will be facilitating… By adopting a 16 Coordinated Area Plan, we will be facilitating the use of SB-35, the streamlined procedure, for 17 sites that are eligible. And there are hazardous materials in that are so not all sites will be 18 eligible but elidable sites, we will be facilitating those streamline approvals by adopting a 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. coordinating area plan. And we’re just going to have to be cognizant of that, I don’t think it’s a 1 bad thing, I just think it is what it is. 2 Vice-Chair Monk: I saw somewhere in the report that Staff still needs to do an estimate or it 3 hasn’t been estimated how many the total number of projects or units this new law can result 4 in having been created. Do you have plans to study that further? 5 Ms. Gitelman: I think our thought is that there are just so many variables here that we’re going 6 to have to kind of see what happens in the first 6 to 9-months of the year and see what kind of 7 interest and what kind of applications we start seeing to really understand this fully. I mean we 8 would have to evaluate so many different variables, I don’t know that we could get our arms 9 around it any other way. 10 Vice-Chair Monk: Thank you. 11 Chair Lauing: My last question is back over on Page 91 of the packet on funding for affordable 12 housing. Can you elaborate at all as to the methodology there? You guys just go and get on 13 your knees and negotiate or is there some mathematical percentage relative to units that up or 14 what? 15 Ms. Gitelman: Good question. It’s super complicated and so I don’t know all the rules off the 16 top of my head but I do know that with the SB-2, that’s the one that’s just a transfer tax so it’s 17 already been in effect basically. They are collecting this transfer tax from certain transaction 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. statewide. That money is going to go to HCD for distribution to local agencies [note -and] in the 1 first year it’s available to every agency based on a percentage for planning activities. And so, we 2 should be able to just ask and get it. I don’t know how much money it’s going to be but it’s 3 going to be presumably enough to do… to underwrite a little bit of the planning we’re to need 4 to do. And in future years, I think it’s going to be more of a completive process so they’ll 5 establish guidelines of for distributions of the funding. 6 Chair Lauing: Potentially could that be based on the kind of project that a particular 7 municipality wants to put up? 8 Ms. Gitelman: It could. They could create guidelines that prioritize based on the type of project, 9 location, any number of criteria. I’d have to spend more time reading the bill to really guess 10 how it would work. 11 Chair Lauing: Ok. Commissioner Gardias, is your light back on? 12 Commissioner Gardias: Sure, thank you again. So, the question is like this so as we know there 13 will be a higher supply of the housing no matter what. We just approved the Comprehensive 14 Plan, so where does it put us? Shouldn’t we just maybe open the process and look at the 15 Comprehensive Plan again because the criteria and assumptions that are in the Comprehensive 16 Plan might pretty much… might be obsolete very quickly. So, with this, there might be a 17 question of an additional school, maybe or some other infrastructure impact and then our 18 Environmental Impact Report might not be up to date very quickly. So, what are your thoughts 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. about the whole process of reconciling all these views against just proved Comprehensive Plan; 1 which by the way just clearly states a scenario or estimate of the housing units that will be 2 added? 3 Ms. Gitelman: Well, I have two thoughts about that. One is that the Comprehensive Plan 4 actually envisioned that Palo Alto making headway in terms of increasing the kind of annual 5 production of housing to some extent. I mean not by a huge amount but a little bit so we had in 6 that preferred scenario an EIR a little more housing than we would have if we just kept on our 7 current track record of 160 or something average units per year. That’s an average going back 8 40-years or something so that’s one thought. So, I don’t think the state has set in motion 9 something that’s going to result in development that’s grossly out of sync with local 10 jurisdiction’s planning documents because the projects that are proposed under this streamline 11 bill have to be consistent with local zoning or Comprehensive Plans. But you do raise an 12 interesting point that if we take a hard look at Objective Standards in the code and whether 13 those could be changed or modified in some way, we should look at the Comprehensive Plan 14 standards as well; do the same thing. 15 Commissioner Gardias: Exactly, I agree right and then there’s another point but I’m reading 16 here, for example, you talk about the discussion of relevance on Page 89. You talk about the 17 relevance to Palo Alto of SB-35, 72, 879 and so forth and then pretty much you make a 18 comment, in which I totally agree with, that pretty much we should… The City may wish to 19 include fewer programs, make them clearer and identify or at least scheduled for their 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. implementations. So, when we had a discussion, which was very limited because we looked 1 only at the two elements, there was a number of the items which we didn’t focus at all which 2 we should maybe revisit from perspective of this view because now, many of these programs, 3 which pretty much would be not an objective argument in relationship to those modern 4 housing developments. 5 Ms. Gitelman: This section of the Staff report is really referring to the implementation programs 6 in the Housing Element which this Commission hasn’t seen in a while so when we come back 7 with a summary of the Housing Element requirements, we can go into this in more depth. But 8 it’s those programs that I think we need to take a careful look at the next time we revise our 9 Housing Element and see if we can’t slim them back and be a little more realistic about what we 10 can accomplish in this 7 or 8-year period. Because now HCD has the ability to evaluate our 11 performance mid-cycle and find us out of compliance if we’re not implementing our programs. 12 Commissioner Gardias: Sure, exactly and I totally agree with this. Those were the programs 13 within the Comprehensive Plan that we didn’t cover during our discussions. Although those 14 were within those two elements that we reviewed. 15 Ms. Gitelman: We didn’t look at the Housing Element at all so this suggests is really specific to 16 programs in the Housing Element which the Commission did not review as part of their work. 17 The Council… Where you… This Commission reviewed it when the Housing Element was 18 updated and the Council adopted it but at that point, we were like oh yeah, another program. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Let’s through it in and we’re trying to say, here in the future, we’re going to have to be more 1 careful. 2 Commissioner Gardias: Right but I think my suggestion that we should just look into those 3 programs and then understand which would be treated as an objective evidence and which 4 ones would not be. Then also, in the same regards, I believe that in the Comprehensive Plan, 5 there was a decision and help me to refresh my memory. I might not remember preciously that 6 there was a decision to eliminate the housing along San Antonio Road. This was the 7 Comprehensive Plan decision and then I totally agree with the suggestion here on the same 8 page that I referred to before, to pretty much return to the concept of retaining those housing 9 sites. Which pretty much called for higher density along San Antonio which is very… Which is in 10 the proximity of the transportation corridor and the train station, San Antonio train station. So, 11 from my perspective, I was surprised that we never discussed this but I believe this was CAC or 12 Council’s decision to reduce the density and to remove those housing sites along San Antonio. 13 Ms. Gitelman: Thank you for pointing that out. We do make the recommendation here that we 14 think about those… that program to eliminate those housing sites as something we would look 15 at again during the next update to our Housing Element; not do that mid-cycle because it will 16 just draw attention to us in a way that may not be favorable. I can’t find it in the report right 17 now but that did come up in the Council’s conversation and I think they understood our anxiety 18 about moving quickly with that recommendation and at least some of them were supportive of 19 this idea of waiting until the next Housing Element update. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Gardias: I agree completely. And there was one more thought so although the… 1 You don’t believe that we need to look at that Comprehensive Plan scenarios but I believe that 2 we should have at least spent some time to do the estimate of the housing under this new 3 package of state laws. And to understand if there would be… What would be the variance from 4 the scenario that Council adopted at one point in time, it was Scenario Five or Six, I don’t 5 remember which one. To understand what would be until 2030 variance between what Council 6 adopted and this what maybe be under this new set of laws. 7 Ms. Gitelman: I appreciate that suggestion. It really gets to the point that Vice Commissioner 8 [Note- Vice Chair] Monk raised just how difficult it would be to do a projection of the 9 development that might not have happened without this housing package but would happen 10 with… It would be a complex analysis that we don’t feel like we have the resources or expertise 11 to do at the moment. And I think we’ll learn soon enough is if this is going to be popular? Is this 12 going to be like our applications are going to be flying in our door or is it going to be something 13 that used sporadically? And we’ll know soon enough and be able to give you, I think, a better 14 estimate of the likely results in 6 to 9-months. 15 Commissioner Gardias: I understand. The reason that I am asking about this and I totally expect 16 that this would… This legislation would keep you busy and would impact time of your Staff, 17 totally, but with expected increases in housing, not only in Palo Alto but also in the adjacent 18 municipalities, we may expect impacts on the traffic. And then probably this may some of our 19 projects in regards to congestion or some traffic for the crossings, railroad crossings, may be 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. impacted because there would be a higher number of cars. There would be a higher number of 1 the trains and so forth. Even if there are no parking requirements for those… For the new 2 housing because as you said, some developers may still elect to build the parking underground. 3 And then, of course, new tenants would move in with their cars. That would greatly affect 4 traffic all over the place and also would affect a number of the projects that we are working on. 5 Ms. Gitelman: I just want to put this in perspective a little bit. I mean we will see what happens 6 here but the zoning we have in Palo Alto doesn’t allow the kind of dwelling unit density in 7 numbers we’re seeing right across the border in Mountain View. I mean if you read the Post 8 this morning, they just approved their plan with over 9,000 housing units. We don’t have the 9 kind of zoning here that is going to permit that volume of units in a short period of time. I just 10 don’t see that this change in state law is going to change that so I think we need to act 11 deliberatively, put procedures in place that make sense, consider our code, and we need to 12 look at the positives of this as Commissioner Alcheck indicated. There’s a positive here, we’re 13 desperately in need of housing and in particular affordable housing and we’re likely to see more 14 because of some of these bills. And let’s just take measured steps and deliberate carefully 15 about necessary changes to our ordinance. 16 Chair Lauing: Yeah, you’ve got to get some data before you can act on anything. Did you have 17 any other items? 18 Commissioner Gardias: Sure. No, thank you very much for your comments. Thank you. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Commissioner Summa? Oh, sorry. 1 Ms. Gitelman: I just want to say thanks to the Commission for spending the time on this and I’m 2 going to leave you with this summary for further reading. 3 Chair Lauing: There’s still a couple lights on. 4 Ms. Gitelman: Ok, go for it. 5 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Summa. 6 Commissioner Summa: Yeah, I have a question about the Palmer fix [Note-case] and it’s good to 7 know that we can have inclusionary rental housing. I think that will improve things but I’m 8 concerned, the way that I read the Staff report, is it true that developers could still choose to 9 pay instead of providing the housing? 10 Ms. Gitelman: We do have to allow alternative methods of compliance for rental housing so we 11 will have to have a provision where a developer could pay a fee rather than build the units on 12 site. And there are going to be a lot of cases where that actually makes sense where you don’t 13 want one affordable unit that you have to regulate on this project and then another one over 14 here and another one over here. You want to get those units in either a totally affordable 15 project or in a project that’s large enough where there’s some economy of scale for the 16 management company that’s going to have to monitor and takes care of those units. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Summa: Ok but under SB-35, anything with 10-units or more must be ten 1 percent affordable, is that right? By that it means BMR? 2 Ms. Gitelman: That’s right. 3 Commissioner Summa: So, yeah, I’m just concerned that what we’re going to end up with is no 4 matter how much developers decide to take advantage of these new bills. That we’re going to 5 end up with mostly market-rate housing again, which is beyond the reach of many of the 6 people that we would like to help with affordable housing. And in the process, and this is 7 always a concern of mine, I’ll just state it again, in the process we will be unfortunately 8 displacing people that live in current housing stock that may be more affordable. So, that’s my 9 concern with all of this and I hope we can avoid that and really build the affordable housing and 10 prioritize that. 11 Ms. Gitelman: Thank you. I think displacement was a significant concern of the legislatures and 12 that’s why the sites to be eligible for SB-35, you can’t be on a site that has a housing unit or that 13 had a rental unit within 10-years. 14 Commissioner Summa: Sorry, I almost forgot. The deed restriction under the Palmer Act [Note- 15 Case] for BMR housing is for how many years? 16 Ms. Gitelman: I’ll have to look. You know typically we’ll get a restriction for 50-55-years for 17 inclusionary units but we’ll have to check. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Summa: Ok, I would be interested to know that. 1 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Waldfogel. 2 Commissioner Waldfogel: Just one other point of clarification so because I think we’ve seen 3 some examples of this previously. So, let’s say we have a parcel that’s identified in the Housing 4 Element as, hypothetically, let’s say it’s identified as 20-units. And let’s say it doesn’t qualify 5 under these SB-35 standards and the developer comes in and say proposes 5 or 10-units. Do we 6 have any affirmative responsibility to look at that or do we… I mean it seems like this is trying to 7 get people to build up to the identified capacity in the Housing Element. But how do we turn 8 around and apply that to developers? 9 Ms. Gitelman: This kind of relates to the bill that doesn’t apply to Charter Cities. You know I 10 think in a Charter City if you had a Housing Element site that assumed you’re going to get 20-11 units and you got 5, you’d be in the whole for those 15-units. And you’d have to identify 12 another site and potentially zone another land. And you’d scurry around all through the 13 housing cycle constantly identifying more sites. Now here in Palo Alto, we’re not subject to that 14 provision, I think it’s still an area of concern. I think when we considered the 5-unit proposal, 15 we’d think to ourselves oh gosh, do we still have enough sites left to meet our housing need? Is 16 there a way that we could ask this developer to have more units on the site but I don’t think 17 we’re going to face quite the same constraint that other jurisdictions (interrupted) 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Waldfogel: But I mean… Well, yeah, it’s a little confusing the language that you 1 have at the bottom on Packet Page 90. But if hypothetically we had run out of identified sites at 2 that income level, would that be an Objective Standard under which we could deny that 3 application? I mean I’m just a little confused by how this works. 4 Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, no, I don’t think that would be an Objective Standard we could use to deny 5 a project. I recognize this is kind of complicated and I think part of it is… No, we’re going to have 6 to monitor over time our progress towards our RHNA in all the income categories. But we’re 7 not subject to that bill that would really create a problem for us if we fell below the number of 8 any one of those categories. The way I understand it, we’re not going to have to add additional 9 sites unless we fall below the 1,988 but we’ll look at that again. 10 Commissioner Waldfogel: Ok, yeah, because we’ve seen projects where… I won’t say that this 11 was on the developer's mind but they appeared to be engineered to avoid the inclusionary 12 requirements. And so there just seems to be some incentives that are fighting with each here 13 for non-SB-35 projects. 14 Chair Lauing: Ok. Thank you, we all have lots to do after those housing bills. 15 Mr. Yang: Just to respond to Commissioner Summa’s question about the length of affordability 16 requirement. That’s not addressed in the Palmer Fix [Note-Case] legislation. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Gitelman: So, I think we would default to our internal housing guidelines and I think our 1 practice is… I’ll look at it again but I think it’s 50 or 55-years. 2 Chair Lauing: Ok, thank you very much. 3 Commission Action: None. 4 3. Study Session to Review the Accessory Dwelling Unit Ordinance Implementation and 5 Discuss Potential Future Amendments 6 Chair Lauing: So, the next item on the agenda is the review of the ADUs. I think Director you’re 7 going to get some help from one of your associates. 8 Ms. Gitelman: I am. I’m expecting Clare Campbell momentarily. Let’ us take a minute and in the 9 meantime, I‘ll hand this out to you and we’ll be right with you. 10 Chair Lauing: Procedurally, what we discussed with the Director is that this is kind of meaty 11 stuff and some of it we’re going to want to ask questions and they are going to go back and do 12 some research. So, the game plan here is to intentionally not to finish this tonight so we can 13 split it up into sort of two meetings for evaluation of this. And then potentially in a third 14 meeting get a draft new ordinance. So, tonight you’re welcome to make comments as we go 15 through on each one of these items and ask questions that maybe mean assignments for Staff 16 to come back with further information at the next meeting. We do have one speaker, generally, 17 we would have the Staff report first but we could go ahead with the speaker if they would like 18 to. We’ll leave that up to the jurisdiction of the speaker, Tara? I’m sorry, reading sideways and 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. upside down, Teresa Gadda? Ok, so yeah, that would be great. Turn that mic on and you’ll have 1 5-minutes. 2 Ms. Teresa Gadda: Ok. My name is Teresa Gadda and I live a few blocks from here in Downtown 3 North and I bought a house here about 6-years ago. And one of the reasons we wanted to buy 4 the particular house we did was because it had a mother in law unit in the back. And I’ve been 5 hoping for a long time to convince my mom to move out to the area and finally did convince her 6 in the last year. She sold her house in Virginia but in that time, we’ve been wanting to do some 7 remodeling on the house. There’s been a lot of changes made to it, the main unit, to bring it 8 up… That was made without the benefit of a permit and we’d like to bring those up to code. 9 We’d like to make the house nicer inside and that everything is to code. And as part of our 10 planning, when we took our plans to the Planning Office, they were refused because the unit in 11 the back could not be qualified as an ADU because it was a foot to close to the rear setback and 12 a tiny part in the back corner, like a couple feet, were 4-feet into the left setback because it was 13 a converted garage. So, the stuff on the back was not acceptable and our entire remodel 14 process now has been held up because we cannot… We don’t have any option to legalize this 15 structure except to move the walls, which is probably expensive, or just remove the ADU 16 entirely leaving just the existing garage that it was remodeled from. And I would like if further 17 changes to the ADU had some sort of provision for this that if you want to legalize your existing 18 house that’s… And you don’t want to make any changes to the structure, I mean it’s not a legal 19 ADU, it’s non-conforming, that you should be allowed to keep what’s there. And not make any 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. changes to it because as it is, we’re going to have to tear it down. Now my mom can’t live there 1 anymore which makes me sad. So, that’s all that I wanted to say. 2 Chair Lauing: Ok, thank you very much. I think that’s the only speaker on Item Number Two so 3 we can turn over to Clare. As you go through this Clare, would you be sure to point out things 4 that are state driven versus City driven, if there are any of those? 5 Ms. Clare Campbell: Yes, absolutely and then I just wanted to point out, before we get started, I 6 think I gave everyone a little cheat sheet for… Oh, I’m sorry, wrong item. That will be Number 7 Five, sorry. Ok, great so the purpose of our discussion tonight is to get feedback from the 8 Planning Commission on the changes or refinements needed for an updated ADU ordinance. 9 And we definitely understand that this discussion may require more time than we have tonight. 10 And if it is continued, we can bring it back on January 10th so we can complete the study session 11 at that time. And if that is the case of the discussion would continue on with the same Staff 12 report because of the holidays, we wouldn’t have enough time to do a revised Staff report for 13 you. 14 Tonight, this is just a brief summary of we’re going to be reviewing. We’re going to take a look 15 at the summary of the ADU development activity, identify the implementation challenges and 16 some of the recommend changes, the follow-up to Council’s direction to explore options for 17 making ADUs available to low and moderate household incomes or income households, and for 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. addressing illegally established ADUs. And lastly, we’re going to review the update state laws 1 that are taking effect in January of 2018. 2 This is just a quick timeline to kind of show you what’s been going on. So, back in September of 3 2016, the state adopted the revised ADU regulation and those regulations took effect in 4 January of 2017. The City of Palo Alto adopted our local regulations in April and that became 5 effective on June 8th and then a couple months ago in October, the state adopted some 6 revisions to the ADU regulations which will become effective this coming January. So, right now 7 Palo Alto is working on some revised regulations to address those specific state-mandated 8 changes and that’s shown in our Item Five tonight; to take a look at those code changes and we 9 expect to get that to Council March/April of 2018. 10 So, looking at the activity from January 2017, we have reviewed twenty-four permits and nine 11 of those permits have been approved. Six of them where under the state regulations because 12 that was approved before the June 8th approval of our local code. The average unit size is 579-13 square feet. The attached units, they range from 190-637-square feet and I’ll just point it out 14 right now that 673, which is bigger than our code allows, that was an approved unit that was 15 done under state regulation where they could have a bigger unit. The detached units range 16 from 330-900-square feet, eighty percent of these permits that we’ve seen are detached units, 17 they are not attached. And so far, we have not supported or approved any bonus lot coverage 18 or floor area for any of these projects and so far, no JADU permits have been submitted for 19 review. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. So, getting to our implementation challenges so the first one, there’s been a lot of confusion 1 about which regulations apply to which type of ADU unit. So, Staff is recommending refining 2 definition to include these specific types and that includes the attached ADU, detached ADU, 3 and an interior ADU. So, we’ve provided some draft language in the Staff report to kind of give 4 you an idea of what we’re looking at for that. The second one is to clarify how bonus lot 5 coverage and floor area should be applied to new homes. As the current code specifies right 6 now, it's supposed to be used for existing homes so we just need a little direction for that. The 7 next is to confirm that basements are permitted within an ADU unit and are allowed when the 8 ADU encroaches into a standard required setback. So, currently, basement development is 9 usually ways done within the buildable area and is generally not permitted in setbacks in the R-10 1 zone. The next one is to clarify the regulations for the reconstruction of non-complying 11 structures when it’s required for the ADU development. And the next is to reevaluate the 12 owner occupancy requirement as it could be a deterrent to an ADU development and this is 13 also the subject in the attached comment letter to your report. And the speaker… The property 14 owner was here at the last meeting on October 29th who also spoke to this to his letter. The last 15 one on this page is to establish an opt-out provision for property owners who wish to remove 16 the JADU or ADU from the site because currently, our code doesn’t have provisions for that at 17 all. The next one is to clarify if there are a concern about placing an ADU in the front of an 18 existing home when there is available building area… buildable area, sorry. And then to clarify if 19 the fifty percent rear yard lot coverage limit should be applied to ADUs as it does currently to 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. assessor structures. We’d like to include the provision to allow replacement parking on 1 driveways that are located on the street side setback of corner lots. So, currently, we only have 2 the provision that says you can place in your front setback in the driveway on the front setback. 3 And then to add some provisions to address improvements to existing ADUs since our current 4 code is primarily focused on developing and establishing new ADU units. 5 So, the first City Council follow up item is to explore options to make ADU available to 6 moderate or low-income residents and Staff definitely needs to do more research on this. But 7 the City could consider an incentive-based approach as opposed to making this a requirement. 8 We could definitely see that if we make it a requirement, it could deter people from wanting to 9 create these units. Another option is to consider to participate in an established program like 10 the one that’s under development by the Housing Trust in Silicon Valley. And they are 11 developing a program to provide low-cost loans for the purpose of constructing ADUs in 12 exchange for an agreement with the property owner that they would rent it out at an 13 affordable rate. So, this could be something that the City could help participate or help fund a 14 program like this. Ok, the second City Council follow-up item is to develop strategies for 15 legalizing illegally constructed ADUs. So, we did some exploration of other Cities in the Bay Area 16 and there were very limited examples of formal programs that Cities have established. They 17 definitely have some procedures for doing this and basically, the common thread that I… That 18 we picked up is most projects will always be required to meet the life and safety requirements, 19 the building code requirements. But then there’s flexibility as far as the zoning code and 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. development standards so maybe they would let setback encroachments remain or if it was too 1 tall, that type of thing. So, there’s flexibility with the zoning standards but definitely no 2 flexibility when it comes to health and safety. As an incentive, the City could potentially utilize 3 fee reductions or fee waivers to motivate property owners to come forward. We have seen 4 some of these types of programs in some other Cities and they do it perhaps for a limited time, 5 maybe for 12-months or 18-months or something like that to kind of motivate people to come 6 in to get their units legitimized. 7 Alright so the updated state regulations will take effect on January 1st and the key changes are 8 here. So, the ADUs are permitted not only on sites with existing single-family homes but they 9 now have to be allowed with proposed homes. And all ADU units must be allowed in zones that 10 permit single-family use and not just those districts that are zoned for single-family use. So, 11 we’re going to have… I think we already implement these allowances so it’s not going to be a 12 significant change from what we are doing already. The proposed revisions, as I already 13 mentioned, are in our Item Number Five for tonight and the specific details are shown in 14 Attachment A of the draft ordinance. 15 So, for next steps, we’ll be returning in the spring to the Planning Commission with a draft 16 ordinance for review and recommendation which we would take forward to the City Council 17 soon thereafter. And as mentioned earlier, if we were to continue this item, we can 18 accommodate in the January 10th Planning Commission agenda. Thank you. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Great, thank you very much. So, again we’re going to take either comment, 1 debate and/or questions that can be handed over to Staff. Commissioner Gardias. 2 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you and thank you very much for the update. I think it’s a very 3 welcoming update and I would like to just to, for the beginning, I had proposed one change in 4 the approach and I will focus on some comments later on. But what strikes me is I still 5 remember our discussion on the ADU that we had here with this Commission and as you may 6 know, we looked into this ordinance based on the Colleague’s Memo. I think there were four 7 Council Members that wrote the memo about ADUs and we… And this triggered this discussion 8 and also an adoption of Palo Alto ordinance on this but this was before the state law about 9 ADUs was passed. And I think that the sequence was not proper because, at the time when we 10 discussed ADUs, we didn’t look into the draft. I don’t know if the draft of the state legislation 11 was available at this time and also the discussion that we had here with this panel was very 12 limited. So, the… I believe that this may be a good time just to look at the entire ordinance that 13 we have and then in addition to the Staff comments, also just take a look at the fresh… Take a 14 fresh look at the ordinance from today's perspective. We know the state law, we know the 15 benchmark that it establishes and so for this reason, I would like to propose that in addition to 16 this Staff findings, we get also our internal review and allow the Commissioners to propose 17 some other changes and open discussion on some other elements within the whole ordinance. 18 Thank you. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: So, just to clarify, you’re asking to review things in addition to the called-out Staff 1 items? 2 Commissioner Gardias: That’s correct. 3 Ms. Gitelman: I think that’s our intention. We want to hear from you if there are other items 4 that you’d like to weigh in on and we’d like to hear your thoughts. 5 Chair Lauing: Ok, did you have other comments or was that (interrupted) 6 Commissioner Gardias: I will reserve other comments for later on, thank you. 7 Chair Lauing: Ok. Other people? Commissioner [Note -Vice Chair] Monk. 8 Vice-Chair Monk: I’ll just start at the beginning and see how far I go since you have it 9 numerically ordered. So, just to recap, since the ordinance passed, we have a slight uptick in the 10 applications. Prior to the ordinance we had per year and now we’ve got nine with fourteen 11 under review and to confirm, none of them are seeking any of the bonuses, is that correct? 12 Ms. Campbell: That is correct, yes. 13 Vice-Chair Monk: So, I think there’s been a bit of an impact but I don’t think it’s that large so I 14 would want us to further construe the ordinance in a way to support the state laws and our 15 Council’s direction to remove as many barriers as we can so that the ADUs can get constructed. 16 In that regard, looking at B on the bonuses, since those were intended to allow for some 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. development flexibility and since we want to encourage more formation of the units. I would 1 support Option Two which would be to modify the code to allow existing and new 2 developments to receive the bonuses. Also, because it looks like… It doesn’t seem like it will be 3 much of an issue since the ones that are currently in front you don’t… Aren’t even applicable to 4 the bonuses so I don’t see a harm in going with Option Two. 5 In regard to the basements, Option C, I think the basements should be permitted and the 6 reason for that is that here in the R-1 zones basements are not counted towards the floor area 7 limits. So… Likewise with having a basement as part of the ADU can significantly increase the 8 size of the ADU and Staff is recommending to allow basements in both attached and detached 9 ADUs so I would support Staff’s recommendation in that regard. 10 Commissioner Alcheck: Can I ask you a quick question (interrupted) 11 Chair Lauing: Yes, go ahead. 12 Commissioner Alcheck: So, I just want to get some clarity because one of the concerns that I 13 have with this particular part is not so much whether or not… Let’s… So, my question is the 14 comment and I don’t… And I was going to ask this question to Staff too. Is the request or the 15 comment or advice that ADUs… Let’s say a detached ADU should be eligible to build a 16 basement underneath the ADU that would not be counted as FAR. So, in theory, if you had a 17 500-square foot ADU detached, you could have 500-square feet of the basement below and it 18 would essentially be 1,000 but we would only count the 500? Is that what you are suggesting? 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Monk: That’s my understanding and I looked to see what other Cities where doing. I 1 pulled up Mountain View and they said that they allow basements as well but they have to just 2 comply with the main resident setbacks. So, I would imagine that would be instructed here. 3 Chair Lauing: Is that Staff’s suggestion? 4 Ms. Campbell: No, that was not where we were trying to go with this. So, the current 5 requirement for an accessory dwelling unit… You can have a basement for an accessory 6 dwelling unit but it would count towards the maximum size of the unit. So, just say a 900-7 square foot unit is permitted for an accessory dwelling unit and you have 500-square feet 8 above or 45 and 450 below, that would… all of that would count towards the maximum size of 9 your unit. 10 Commissioner Alcheck: So, you couldn’t have a 1,800-square foot? 11 Ms. Campbell: You could not but the basement for the ADU doesn’t count towards the overall 12 lot’s floor area calculation. 13 Chair Lauing: Does not, you said? 14 Ms. Campbell: Correct. So, it counts towards the unit size but not for the maximum floor area 15 (interrupted) 16 Commissioner Alcheck: So, if you example you had… Sorry, do you mind if I just… So, just to get 17 clear here, if for example you had 400-square feet of available room in your FAR or lot 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. coverage, you could build that. And then build presumably 400-square feet below so you would 1 have an 800-square foot ADU and it wouldn’t necessarily conflict with the allotment? 2 Ms. Campbell: It wouldn’t… Yes, that’s correct. It wouldn’t conflict with the lot’s allowed floor 3 area maximum. 4 Commissioner Alcheck: Ok so I don’t… I don’t have… I just want to ask so one last question is 5 the only part of this that sort of raises my concern is the notion that someone could build these 6 basements within setbacks. 7 Ms. Campbell: Yes. 8 Commissioner Alcheck: So, for example, I mean we’ve had controversy about groundwater in 9 general, earth movement and so the notion that you could be within 6-feet of somebody’s 10 home digging underneath the ground is sort of… Because you can build an ADU theoretically on 11 a fence, right? So, obviously you couldn’t build a basement at a fence because you have to then 12 encroach onto a neighbor’s property to dig because OSHA requires you to have a certain kind of 13 cut in order to dig so it’s virtually impossible to build a basement on a fence line without 14 encroaching on a neighbor’s yard. But the question is, does… Are you taking a position on that 15 issue? Is there some limit there? 16 Ms. Campbell: So, if I can just clarify first what the rules would be. So, if you were to build a 17 brand new detached accessory dwelling unit like in your backyard, the rules today say that you 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. can… You have to maintain a 6-foot setback from the rear and the side. So, the standard 1 setback is a 20-foot rear setback and typically a 6 to 8-foot side yard setback. So, with the 2 current regulations today, you could place you ADU in that rear setback but the question that 3 we’re kind of asking clarification on is can we also comfortably place a basement in that same 4 setback location? Where typically we have not permitted basements to be located in a setback. 5 They’ve always been within the buildable area of a lot. 6 Commissioner Alcheck: So, are you looking for guidance on that? 7 Ms. Campbell: Yes. 8 Commissioner Alcheck: Ok. Did you have an option on about that? 9 Vice-Chair Monk: I think if people want to continue that dialog, we could because I think the 10 other points (interrupted) 11 Chair Lauing: It seems like we might be more productive to just stay on a single item and then 12 all weigh in on that [unintelligible](interrupted) 13 Vice-Chair Monk: I think that’s a big one and then the next one is also big. 14 Chair Lauing: Let’s just stay with that. Where you done for the moment? 15 Commissioner Alcheck: I just… The reason why I asked this question now is you were stating 16 some support and I didn’t know what you were supporting, which I will respond to if there’s the 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. opportunity. I don’t need to do it first but I just wanted to understand what it is we were talking 1 about. 2 Vice-Chair Monk: I think for right now we should focus Item C, the basements in ADUs and 3 hears everyone inputs on that. 4 Chair Lauing: Right, if you have more, continue. 5 Vice-Chair Monk: And I’ll continue later on. 6 Chair Lauing: Oh, ok. 7 Vice-Chair Monk: I can just stop at C for now. 8 Commissioner Alcheck: So, I’ll ask some questions. 9 Chair Lauing: Yeah, go ahead. 10 Commissioner Alcheck: Ok, so I’ll just speak hypothetically. If we’re… It’s hard to understand 11 sort of the magnitude of the impact but let’s just assume for a moment that somebody has the 12 space to build a 900-square foot detached ADU in their lot. 13 Chair Lauing: Including the basement or not? 14 Commissioner Alcheck: No, no, just like let’s say they have enough space within their lot 15 coverage requirement and they haven’t used significant floor area to make 900-square feet 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. impossible, they could build it; excluding for the moment the discussion about setbacks. I guess 1 my one point would be I’m not exactly sure why we would be opposed to the square footage 2 underneath the basement from occurring. Like if a house wants to cover its complete lot 3 coverage, the square footage underneath the house is no counted and its bonus. And so, I 4 guess what I am trying to say, I would like to hear from you guys or even Staff, to what the logic 5 is to essentially count that square footage as against the total since we don’t do that in our 6 other implementations of basements. The second comment… I don’t... So that’s a question I’d 7 love to get persuaded by why that’s a good idea. 8 The second question is… And I’ll just ask this one more time, there is no way you could build a 9 new ADU that’s low and begins at the fence? Like you have to start 6-feet no matter what, new 10 ADUs all have to be 6-feet? 11 Ms. Campbell: For detached, yes. So, if it was attached you would just have to follow the 12 standard house development standards so that could be a 6-foot setback or an 8-foot setback… 13 side setback we’re talking about. 14 Commissioner Alcheck: Got it. Ok, then the question really is how… So, my only concern about 15 the basement so I don’t necessarily have a concern about the counting of it but my other 16 concern is being familiar with excavation and the process involved, reducing the setback. For 17 example, individuals who live in Palo Alto who have pools are subject to a 6-foot setback. So, if 18 you have a pool in your backyard, your pool might be 6-feet from the property line by code if 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. it’s a new pool and that’s an excavation project. We would not we allowing someone to build, 1 let’s say a basement within 6-feet of what use to be 20. And so, I guess the question… My 2 concern is about whether or not that is if we’re comfortable with that or if there are concerns 3 about that process and whether or not we should be… If you’re going to allow a basement, let’s 4 say of the magnitude of 900-square feet, I’m not saying we would, would we want to encourage 5 a second policy that says well, if you’re going to do this sort of excavation work. Well, then you 6 should comply with the more ridged existing setbacks so as to reduce potential impacts on 7 neighborhoods… Neighbors who (interrupted) 8 Chair Lauing: Let’s get some other comments and then we can have Staff respond on all these. 9 Commissioner Summa. 10 Commissioner Summa: So, this was one that I was concerned about. The whole point of ADUs is 11 to add housing stock, I don’t see how having it be a basement adds to housing stock. And I have 12 concerns about the proximity to property lines and also, we have so many concerns in general 13 about basements and water tables and displacing groundwater. And it’s just when you think 14 about what’s happening under the parcel and you’re adding more and more basements. I know 15 it’s a problem in my neighborhood when people add a basement then all of a sudden 16 somebody else basement or crawl space floods. So, I don’t see the advantage in terms of 17 providing more housing unless people would them have somebody living in the top of the ADU 18 and some other family or person living in the basement. So, I think this is one that doesn’t really 19 make sense to me to add. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Commissioner Waldfogel. 1 Commissioner Waldfogel: I’m just trying to look up some… Let’s see so I’m… I actually have a 2 strong point of view on this. I do have a couple practical questions about this because if there’s 3 a basement in an ADU, I believe building code require egress of some sort in the basement 4 through light wells. I’m just trying to remember what the rules are about FAR calculation for 5 light wells and sort of how that would harmonize with the rest of the ADU regulations. 6 Ms. Campbell: So, we do have some requirements that basically limit how big your lightwell can 7 be or if it was a below grade patio so we can just kind of assume that if they are building it to 8 just the minimum requirement for the egress. They can encroach 3-feet into the 6-feet which is 9 what we allow for the single-family home so you can have 3-feet into your 6-feet so you have to 10 maintain at least a 3-foot setback from your light well. And we measure it from the interior wall 11 of the light well, not on the outside concrete area for the light well. And (interrupted) 12 Commissioner Waldfogel: Is your hypothesis that could intrude farther into that 6-foot setback? 13 That you could have the ADU at 6-feet and the light well going 3-feet include that 6-feet. 14 Ms. Campbell: It would be required if it was a livable space. 15 Commissioner Waldfogel: Well, but it doesn’t have to go in that direction. It could go in a 16 different direction so I mean (interrupted) 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: That would only be required if it was a bedroom. If the basement space 1 was a playroom or not a bedroom, right? It’s not required unless you have a (interrupted) 2 Ms. Campbell: I know for sure you need it for a bedroom. I’m not one hundred percent sure 3 about other spaces. 4 Commissioner Waldfogel: There are some non-bedroom spaces that also require it. So, I think 5 we have to think that through whether we would want to allow that kind of encroachment… 6 You know that light well encroachment in that direction or if this would be… If we allowed 7 basements, the light wells would have to go in a non-setback direction so that’s just thinking 8 through a technical question. Well, let me reserve other questions for later. I’m not sure that I 9 have deeper thoughts right now. 10 Chair Lauing: My one comment on this is that floods, flooded basement groundwater is a huge 11 community issue right now and it just seems like a science risk that is probably not worth 12 taking. But I’m not an expert on that, I’d love to hear more from the scientists about what the 13 risks are if we’re going to put up whatever the number turns out to be; 100 ADUs a year, that 14 seems like a pretty serious risk. If they were allowed, I would concur that they’d definitely need 15 to count that basement area as part of the ADU space because there’s just absolutely no way to 16 ‘police ‘that. You don’t know what’s going on in the basement so if it’s not counted they could 17 use it as living space anyway. So, if it’s a 450 and 450 basement in your example, I think you 18 have to count it at 9 [note- 900] not 450 because somebody could just go down there anyway. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: Can I just ask, how is that different than our normal process for single-1 family homes? 2 Chair Lauing: I don’t know. 3 Commissioner Alcheck: Ok, well I’ll tell you it's not so you could…. Like if you’re in a normal 4 home if you were… Let’s just say for rudimentary purposes, if you were allowed to build a 5 1,000-square foot home. You could build a 1,000-square foot basement and that basement 6 could have bedrooms and it could have anything. So, I’m just curious what… The reason I am 7 asking it because I want to understand why (interrupted) 8 Chair Lauing: I think there’s a difference in density based on the size of units and usable 9 basements. 10 Commissioner Alcheck: I’m not supporting it, I just want to understand. Yeah, please. 11 Commissioner Waldfogel: So, the difference is that the underlying purpose of the ADU is to 12 create affordable housing. This basement space can be built and it’s from a technical 13 standpoint, it’s not different but this is the most expensive way to develop a couple hundred 14 square-feet; I mean basically the site work and the waterproofing. I mean I’ve don’t this and I 15 know that square footage will be way more expensive to develop than other square footage so 16 it’s not moving us towards the affordability goal. So, that would be the difference that I would 17 point out. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Commissioner Gardias had his light on and we’ll come back. 1 Commissioner Gardias: Very good, thank you very much. It’s forty percent more expensive to 2 build underground so money pretty much is the difference. But what I would like to do, I’d like 3 to focus on other items before I get to the specific comments. So (interrupted) 4 Chair Lauing: But we’re staying with this basement item right now, right? 5 Commissioner Gardias: No, I’d like to just start from the egg. 6 Chair Lauing: No. The what? 7 Commissioner Gardias: From the beginning. 8 Chair Lauing: Oh, well no we changed the process because we thought that it would be better 9 to have all the comments on each one of these at least first time around. So, we just want to 10 exhaust everybody’s comments with respect to basements and ADUs right now. 11 Commissioner Gardias: Ok, well then, in this case, I still have some other comment or actually 12 requests to the Staff that is in regards to the whole ordinance and maybe would help us with 13 the following session. 14 Chair Lauing: Ok, yeah, we can come back to that. Are there any other comment? 15 Commissioner Gardias: Can I speak to this? 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Can we come back to it after we’re finished with the individual ones because 1 we’re on basements right now? 2 Commissioner Gardias: Ok. 3 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Alcheck had a comment back on basements. 4 Commissioner Alcheck: So, I’ll just say, look, I don’t feel strongly about this. I wouldn’t oppose a 5 Commission that felt like we should count basements. But I will say this, it’s my strong view 6 that… And this will come up later tonight because that tonight, even when we talk about the 7 amendments to the zoning ordinance that’s later in the agenda item. I think that the likely 8 hood… So, one of the comments that Staff made tonight was that this concept of new 9 construction. And what I believe is most likely going to happen is, and we’ll get to it tonight, is a 10 discussion about if converting a basement… If you build a project with a detached garage, 11 which is the example that you gave us 2-weeks ago when we were talking about contextual 12 garage placement, and then you immediately tore that down and build an ADU. So, you would 13 eliminate your requirement for parking but in a new construction, you likely couldn’t get 14 around the requirement for covered parking. So, if you had a detached garage for example but 15 you also wanted to build an ADU that was detached or somehow attached to the garage, then 16 you would essentially do both at the same time because I’m assuming that if an applicant 17 comes forward with an application for a new home, they can’t say we’re not doing this parking, 18 we’re just doing the ADU. And so, the only scenario where I imagine someone digging under a 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. basement is a new construction project because how would you even get the equipment in, it’s 1 massive, to do the dig? And then I will add this sort of color commentary, I sort of… I would 2 suggest, and this is my background in real estate, I would strongly suggest that the numbers 3 pencil out highly in favor of digging in Palo Alto. So, anything you can do, and Staff can probably 4 speak to this, if someone can build a basement and they will. It wouldn’t matter how much… It 5 could cost double what it costs to build above ground, you would do it because you can sell that 6 space for upwards of $1,400 to $1,800 a square foot. So, the likelihood of this happening in 7 some 1960’s home which has a small space in the back, very unlikely. The likelihood of an ADU 8 development which includes the basements happening in new construction if we allowed this, 9 very likely because you’re already digging the basement. I would love to see statistics about 10 how many homes are… How many of your new applicants are developing basements versus 11 not? I imagine that it’s quite high and so my only point would be is this could have a big impact. 12 I think having a… I think it would make more sense for us to understand how we evaluate 13 single-family home basements or basements under the main structure, for the purposes of this 14 discussion, alongside this discussion. Because Commissioner Waldfogel brought up an 15 interesting point about light wells and side wells and I imagine that maybe not everybody has 16 the same level of experience and it might help for us to understand. Because I think however 17 we approach the development of the ADU, should somewhat mirror the way we approach the 18 development of the main residence and so if we wouldn’t allow a main residence to do 19 something, why would we allow an ADU to do it? And if we would allow a main residence to do 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. something in a new construction project for example, what would be our logic if we would 1 allow a main resident applicant to demonstrate that the water table has no significant 2 relevance in their project. So, why wouldn’t we suggest that the water table is the reason why 3 they couldn’t do it under the ADU? So, all I am suggesting is when we come back to this, I think 4 we need to get educated about that so at least our decision is sort of uniform. 5 Ms. Gitelman: Appreciate the point. Maybe I can make just one clarifying comment, what 6 we’re asking here is about placement in regards to setbacks. We’re not… we didn’t mean to 7 raise this issue of whether the basement square footage counts or not. We feel like the current 8 ordinance, it’s kind of a settled matter that it does count towards the size of an ADU, it doesn’t 9 count towards FAR. And that is a little different than the main residence (interrupted) 10 Commissioner Alcheck: Alright, so in [unintelligible] that’s settled. 11 Ms. Gitelman: We’re really just talking about should the apply. 12 Commissioner Alcheck: I understand. I read this and I thought you were seeking opinions on 13 whether it… that’s settled. I didn’t know that. 14 Ms. Gitelman: We see that as settled, not really an issue that’s of debate. 15 Commissioner Alcheck: So, then I would revise my comments to suggest if we’re going to talk 16 about encroachments in the side setbacks. It probably would be helpful to understand how a 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. similar basement encroachment would happen on a main structure so that we can create some 1 unit (interrupted) 2 Ms. Gitelman: That’s the question we’re asking. We’re asking should we make special 3 provisions for an ADU to allow them outside of the buildable area of the lot? Where we don’t 4 allow basements outside of the buildable area of the lot for the principal residence. And I think 5 based on what I’m hearing from the Commissioners, the cost issue, the parody issue between 6 the main residence and other, the concern about basements. I’m sort of hearing that most of 7 you feel like no, this existing kind of buildable lot constraint is a valuable one and there’s no 8 reason to go further. 9 Commissioner Alcheck: Sorry, I definitely… I didn’t realize that one of the questions was if you 10 build a basement that exceeded the area of your ADU. Is that what you just said? 11 Ms. Gitelman: No, it’s can you build a basement outside the buildable area of the lot which is 12 different than the setbacks that are allowed for ADUs. This is a really… It’s a tiny question really. 13 It’s not… I mean it has far-reaching consequences but it’s a very specific technical question. 14 Commissioner Alcheck: So, would the answer… So, if a Commissioner said I would suggest we 15 don’t build within the setbacks, would that answer your question? 16 Ms. Gitelman: Yes, it would and I think that’s what we’re hearing from you in various ways. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: I would suggest that my initial response is it’s probably not appropriate 1 to build basements within setbacks. 2 Ms. Gitelman: Excellent, thank you. 3 Chair Lauing: Commissioner [Note-Vice Chair] Monk. 4 Vice-ChairMonk: Then the only other issue that you would need to look at is if there’s a pre-5 existing non-complying structure and how we’re going to handle that. And if there is or if they 6 want to put a basement there because I think we need to look at that in tandem. 7 [Male:] Well, they couldn’t. 8 Vice-Chair Monk: Right because it might… I don’t know. [unintelligible] 9 Chair Lauing: That’s the non-compliance, this is (interrupted) 10 Ms. Gitelman: Let’s talk about non-compliant structures at another (interrupted)[unintelligible] 11 Vice-Chair Monk: You don’t anticipate there would be a non-compliant structure that has a 12 basement that would go into the setback? Probably not a great likelihood. 13 Chair Lauing: Are you saying on the basement question that any new ADU detached can have a 14 basement? No question about it. 15 Ms. Campbell: Yes. 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: As currently written. 1 Ms. Campbell: Yes. 2 Chair Lauing: Right. 3 Ms. Gitelman: As currently written it can have a basement but it is constrained in terms of its 4 location on the lot. The ADU can be within 6-feet of the property line but basement cannot be 5 within 6-feet of the property line. Currently, they have to be within the buildable area of the lot 6 which is a larger setback. And so, we’re saying ADUs can have basements but it’s only within 7 the buildable area of the lot. 8 Chair Lauing: So, practically speaking, they would have to tunnel to get to the basement. Right. 9 Ms. Gitelman: It has to be under the structures. 10 Chair Lauing: Ok, Commissioner Gardias. 11 Commissioner Gardias: So, the answer is no and I’d like to propose just to move to the core of 12 this discussion. May I? Because from my perspective which is departed, it was a very small item 13 so I’d like to just talk to the Staff about some other items. 14 Chair Lauing: No, what we’re doing the process we changed. Is… we’re going to talk about each 15 one of these individual items so that we all can debate it at the same time as opposed all 16 debating (interrupted) 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Gardias: I have general questions and requests to the Staff so I hope that it 1 would be appropriate right? I just… Let me know when you would allow for this. 2 Vice-Chair Monk: I just had one more comment to wrap up on the basements and perhaps I 3 misunderstood the magnitude of this request. So, I don’t have an opinion right now that 4 particular issue. To me, it would seem that if we were to allow a basement, that it should go the 5 same setback as the ADU as opposed to the buildable area. So, I guess I have a departing 6 general opinion but not a strong opinion and I just wanted to echo Commissioner Summa’s 7 concerns in regards to the water table. I think that’s something to look at and I think it varies 8 throughout our community but I think the overall goal here is to increase housing stock. The 9 state law is to increase affordable housing, it’s to increase housing so someone might want to 10 invest forty percent more cost to build a sub-terrain basement. So, I think that it doesn’t take 11 away from building our housing stock. I think of these as just small living quarters and if they do 12 have additional storage space, it might be more conducive for longer-term residents so that’s 13 all I just want to say on that point. Thanks. 14 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Summa. 15 Commissioner Summa: Just a quick question for Staff, is that… Is the basement… Is allowing 16 basements in ADUs part of our ordinance or is that state? 17 Ms. Campbell: That’s part of our ordinance. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Summa: Thank you. 1 Chair Lauing: Ok, if there aren’t any other questions what was Item C. 2 Commissioner Alcheck: Can I just ask one quick question? 3 Chair Lauing: [unintelligible] 4 Commissioner Alcheck: Is… would it… Is it permitted to build a basement under a detached 5 garage? 6 Ms. Campbell: Yeah, it would be if it was within the buildable area. We don’t see that typically. 7 Commissioner Alcheck: So, presumably someone could create an ADU after they’ve finaled the 8 project with a detached garage by converting a detached garage into an ADU and it could have 9 basement bedroom essentially. Let me just put it this way, if they converted the garage and 10 let’s say the garage was 700-square feet or 600-square feet. Would they be restricted from 11 converting a garage because the basement below it is 600-square feet and now you have a 12 1,200-square foot ADU? 13 Ms. Campbell: So, I think the question we would ask was when was that built? So, we do have a 14 provision about conversions so if this structure was legally constructed and completed by 15 January 1st, 2017 with that basement, then you could do the conversion to turn that into a unit 16 without any restrictions on size. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: Let’s assume it’s new construction. Let’s assume this is new… Let’s say it 1 was built after that date, could someone create an ADU out of 600-square foot garage which 2 would, in theory, create a 1,200-square foot ADU? 3 Ms. Campbell: I don’t think we could because we do have a size limit. 4 Commissioner Alcheck: So, they could theoretically could convert only 300-square feet of the 5 garage? Got it, ok. Just checking. 6 Chair Lauing: Ok, let’s revert to A and B. Did anyone have any question on A which are just the 7 definitions that are being proposed and that language is being used throughout here? 8 Commissioner Gardias on that. 9 Commissioner Gardias: Sure. Thank you very much. So, in terms of A and the definitions so I 10 find them convoluted and my simple proposal is pretty much to remove the logic of interior 11 ADU which I believe it’s our definition, isn’t it or it’s a state law definition? 12 Ms. Campbell: Yeah, these are… This is draft language that Staff has come up with. I did see 13 that another local jurisdiction used similar terms and I think it was Belmont so I kind of used 14 that a starting point. 15 Commissioner Gardias: Ok so you know… So, for this reason, right because when I am speaking 16 about this, I would just like to talk about the preamble of this meeting. So, I’m going to depart 17 from this, I’m going to just come back to this what I just wanted to say because it’s just going to 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. perfectly fit into A. So, their reason that I just find this convoluted is because I just want to 1 think… I want us just to think about the whole ordinance and the impact that it has on the City. 2 We received this letter dated today and I think that this is by Mr. or by Ester [Note -Nguyen] if I 3 am not mistaken. No, actually, sorry, it’s by Sheri Furman, we all know Sheri so and I agree with 4 the first paragraph of this letter and I believe that there is a certain significance in this 5 ordinance and we should just have this in mind when we discuss this. So, we should make all 6 the effort to make sure that the ordinance about ADUs is designated from changing R-1 zoning 7 into R-2 zoning. And that would be… Because I think that some of the elements that we have 8 currently within the ordinance, they convert our R-1 into Citywide R-2. And we have never 9 discussed the consequences when we talk about this because the discussion back then was very 10 limited and we looked into this before the state law passed. So, that is a very general comment 11 and I would like us just to take this into consideration that there should be a clear cut between 12 R-1 because R-1 is one R-1. We are… We don’t have a mandate and I have not heard from 13 Council that they… That anybody is wanting to change R-1 into R-2 so we need to have… keep a 14 separation between those two zones. There is one comment or request to Staff that I would 15 like to make that may have some… that can shed some light into this. I’d like to ask about more 16 data about those pyramids that were applied over those 14 or 24 ADUs, I don’t remember the 17 number from the presentation. I’d like to understand more what is truly the trend so if you 18 could just for the follow-up meeting if you could just help us with some statistics. I’d like to 19 understand the locations, the sizes of the prime residences, is it detached or attached or I think 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. that there were no interiors and so forth. And maybe just give us also the links to the plans so 1 we can just take a look at the plans ourselves and understand what is truly the intent? The true 2 intent of those that are applying for those permits. I’d like to be really convinced and for this 3 reason I’d like to see the data that intention of the homeowners is to truly build ADUs with the 4 intent that falls within the intention of the legislative body of the state; to really have those as a 5 rental unit for lower-income or some other additional population that would inhabit those 6 units. I want to just see this myself and just understand because I have a concern that maybe 7 with this as we have it today drafted, that is a backdoor to pretty much increase the square 8 footage of the residences. And this is a strong concern that I have because specifically when I 9 look at something that’s called interior ADU, just with having two kids, I would just build one for 10 my family. And then pretty much just have a benefit of just having my son just living in this 11 separate unit which would not change the status quo but I may enjoy some benefits if it would 12 be interior or attached ADU. 13 So, that is, in general, my perspective so now when I said this, I want to just refer to Item A. So, 14 I’d like to understand also what is the difference… So, this is my question to Staff because I 15 don’t have the answer. What is the difference between interior and attached ADU because the 16 boundaries that are here are very blurred? And two units a house because when you look at 17 this, there is not truly a difference between two units and ADU… Interior ADU and primary 18 residence under the same roof… envelope. I understand totally that pretty much the 19 differences would be within the square footage and there would be a different balance but the 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. logic would be the same. That pretty much we have two units on the lot but here, in this case, 1 there are some restrictions that pretty much don’t allow you just to go more than fifty percent 2 of the residence. And then for interior or for attached ADU, I think it’s 600 so pretty much you 3 can have 600 plus 600 so you have 1,200 residents which makes it still legitimate housing unit. 4 So, with this, I believe there should be clear-cut within our regulations and I think that we 5 should try to remove some artificially created naming in lieu of a normal naming and then just 6 name them units as opposed to interior ADUs. That’s my comment to A. 7 Chair Lauing: Should we get some other comments on that (interrupted) 8 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you, please. 9 Chair Lauing: And then have Staff respond? I think Commissioner Summa was up. 10 Commissioner Summa: Thank you so I wanted to… I actually appreciate the concerns that 11 Commissioner Gardias has about just basically changing R-1 into R-2 and an interior ADU, I 12 hadn’t heard that term before. I maybe missed it but how is it different than a JADU? Is it just 13 size? 14 Ms. Campbell: So, a JADU is restricted to a bedroom, basically converting a bedroom space 15 only. An interior ADU unit is taking an existing space and it can be much larger space. So, this is 16 the one that’s definitely more flexible or has you can have a larger unit so… but… and that’s sort 17 of why we’re trying to clarify what does it all mean because we get confused between what’s 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. the difference between an attached unit and an interior unit? Staff has had that same question 1 and there are different provisions that apply so that’s why we’ve been trying to differentiate 2 the difference. So, an interior ADU unit is based on having an existing structure that was done 3 or completed by January 1st, 2017 and converting that interior existing interior space into a 4 unit; you cannot expand it in any way. An attached unit is something that maybe you convert 5 the garage and you add on 300-square feet for a closet or something else. So, it’s this 6 combination of a conversion and that word is very confusing because we’ve used it in many 7 different places in our code but it’s converting or renovating a garage and then maybe perhaps 8 adding square footage. And it doesn’t necessarily… It’s not consistent with the interior unit 9 where it has to be the existing space only that is converted into a unit, you cannot add onto it. 10 Commissioner Summa: Ok and the reason I have concerns about this and I think Commissioner 11 Waldfogel said something about this with regards to basements is that you can’t see what 12 people are doing inside a home in terms of dividing up once it’s done. So, it becomes kind of an 13 enforcement issue and how many units do they really have on an R-1 property. And then I did 14 want to thank you for providing data about the existing applications and what not. But I also 15 think the Council would… I would have liked to know and I think the Council would really like to 16 know who is actually using the units because I have a theory that a lot of times people will use 17 all of this, not to create an extra unit but to expand their family home and/or maybe have a 18 mother in law… You know have family live there. But So, I don’t know that it’s… I think we 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. should have a way to understand how many units we are providing for different families or 1 different individuals to rent, not just the overall number of applications. Thank you. 2 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Alcheck. 3 Commissioner Alcheck: Ok so I mean I think it’s sort of… I just want to respond to the 4 comments. Look, this… My perspective is that probably the majority of voting Palo Altons are 5 not particularly enthused about the densification of our R-1s, I will acknowledge that. I also 6 don’t think that even if we really encouraged ADUs, we’d see significant changes in the next 5 7 or 10-years. I just don’t think you’re going to see that because it’s costly. But I also want to add 8 that I think the goal of densification of our R-1 is an important one in our effort and vision to 9 accommodate the demand in our community for housing. I can imagine that there are many 10 individuals who work locally who could benefit from this housing and I feel like we hear 11 nonstop from residents who want to move their mothers and fathers or mother in laws or 12 father in laws into these units to accommodate a multi-generational housing arrangement. That 13 maybe aging boomers are… would prefer over an old age home or even living in one of the 14 rooms in the house. That level of independence would be particularly appealing to them so the 15 question is the bonus concepts benefit individuals who can’t afford to rebuild. It’s like the one 16 that (interrupted) 17 Chair Lauing: We’re getting to that next. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: Right so I’m just going to respond to the comment which is that if we 1 really want to encourage this housing… additional housing development in all strata of the 2 market. Maybe individuals who are older who want to move and allow someone to rent the 3 main house which by the way, would be an incredible way to bring families into the community 4 because many of our homeowners may be in a position that downsizing makes a lot of sense. 5 So, if we really want to encourage… Then the bonus concepts are important. I think this notion 6 that Gardias raised with referral to this letter that there are concerns about how those play 7 with new construction, may be valid. But I think this… I just want to… I think this concept of 8 over-policing it is fraught with inconsistencies with our “vision”. I don’t share the view that we 9 need to understand the rental arrangements of these facilities to the extent that I think 10 Commissioner Summa raised a minute ago. And I think we need to decide, are we comfortable 11 with our neighbor’s lot having potentially two families on it or two separate occupant groups 12 and if we are, then let’s not be nuanced and create all these intricate hurdles. If we don’t want 13 game system like… The issue of the JADU sounds a lot like duplexing a house. I mean not the 14 JADU, the interior ADU. The interior ADU sounds like the duplexing of a house. I don’t think 15 that’s a problem, I mean I just don’t. 16 Commissioner Gardias: I don’t think that’s a problem either. I just want… everything that I want 17 to ask… was asking us was just to name the things that they are. 18 Commissioner Alcheck: Right. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Yeah, this is supposed to be a discussion of the definition of ADU right now. 1 Commissioner Alcheck: Right so if we want to be more clear then we can say this… We can… My 2 concern is that what’s going to happen with this definition process is that we’re going to say 3 well the interior ADU can be no larger than… And it’s like how many more details are we going 4 to put in these definitions to the extent that they become so restrictive that it makes it very 5 difficult for any normal person to figure out without hiring (interrupted) 6 Chair Lauing: The intent is just for it to be clearer, that’s what Staff is trying to do. To make it 7 clearer because there are admitting that the language is not (interrupted) 8 Commissioner Alcheck: I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m not entirely sure why that isn’t 9 clear. So, Commissioner Gardias suggested that he thought they were very vague and 10 convoluted and that he would suggest eliminating the JADU definition. And I’m not entirely 11 sure why this… I’m sorry the interior… The third definition. I’m not entirely sure why that would 12 improve the situation and… 13 Chair Lauing: Just his opinion so we’re just trying (interrupted) 14 Commissioner Alcheck: I know, I’m asking him to elaborate because when someone says 15 something is vague, I would like to understand how it’s vague? So, that’s all I am asking Chair. 16 Commissioner Gardias: Sure so let me respond to this alright? So, I mean I… If there are two 17 horses right, I don’t want one of them just to be called cow just because of different reasons. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. So, if it’s a horse, it’s a horse so for this reason, I’d like to just make the uniform naming so 1 there’s a clarity also for the public and for the applicants what this about. And then also it 2 would allow us to understand the differences between the duplexes and the interior ADUs 3 because at this moment I truly don’t understand. And to be clear, I had a question to you which 4 I can just ask later on, if you could just give us some data about those units that were legally 5 constructed before January 1, 2017. That would help me to understand truly what the extent of 6 the existing stock of those interior ADUs, which are duplexes basically within in the City 7 boundaries, so we can understand truly is there a problem or not. Thank you. 8 Chair Lauing: Is there any other comments on the definitions because I might as Staff… yeah 9 because that I might just ask Staff to consider all the comments and see if they want to bring 10 anything back that’s different or not next time. Yeah, Commissioner Waldfogel? 11 Commissioner Waldfogel: I think relative to this point, I think the only difference between an 12 interior ADU and a duplex is an interior ADU is inseparable. You can’t sell it as a separate parcel 13 of property. Is that correct that it’s not… the ADUs are not separable from the principal 14 residence. 15 Ms. Campbell: Correct. 16 Ms. Gitelman: If I can make a suggestion, I think I’ve heard a request for more information 17 about the ADUs we have permitted and we’ll provide a list of them by address and whether 18 they are in attached, detached or interior. And so, you’ll at least know kind of what we’re 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. seeing in terms of a trend. We really don’t have the resources to go back and then research 1 further the existing structures that are on those lots and other lots but if we give you the 2 addresses, you can go on our website and see if you can find plans or try and investigate that 3 issue a little more. 4 I am concerned that we’re running out of time. We do want to get the Commission’s 5 recommendation on the action item tonight so I don’t know if you want to each offer some 6 thoughts about some of the remaining items and then move on or what you’d like to do. 7 Chair Lauing: I thought we would go to B and then see where we are. 8 Commissioner Gardias: Just before we go to B, I just want to stick with A for a moment. So, 9 there is a reason that I am interested in the data because there could be a stock of units that 10 are interior ADUs that was constructed legally but before they became named ADUs, they were 11 named something. I don’t know, it just happens that I have a neighbor across Cedar street, 12 actually on the corner of Hopkins and Cedar, who actually converted his house to something 13 like this. I suspect this is not done… This hasn’t been permitted and then probably once we 14 have items that are… that we define, there would probably be a number of the owners that 15 may come out of the shadows and they say ok, well we built certain things illegal. Now we’re 16 going to legalize it under this new paragraph and then there’s going to be a next question of are 17 those true duplexes or are they interior ADUs? And then pretty much for this reason before we 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. just have a clarification on this definition, I’d like to understand what those definitions would 1 encompass. 2 Ms. Gitelman: There’s an item on the list later down about legalizing illegal ADUs and I think 3 that would be the context in which we should talk about your example. 4 Commissioner Gardias: Sure, thank you. 5 Chair Lauing: So, I’m going to suggest that we do… Go back and pick up B and then do a time 6 check but we’re not even halfway through this. We definitely have to get to the action item, 7 actually two action items after this and we’re already at 8:30. So, unless we can pick up the 8 pace on comments and take fewer turns, then we’re just going to have as intended, postpone 9 some of this to the next meeting. So, B is the question about bonus lot coverage so just, in 10 general, see if there are questions about that and let’s see, Commissioner Summa is up. 11 Commissioner Summa: I’ll be brief, I’m not in favor of giving bonuses to new housing. I don’t 12 see any reason. I’m not convinced there’s any reason to do so and I would not be in favor. 13 Chair Lauing: Any other lights at this moment? Commissioner Alcheck. 14 Commissioner Alcheck: Yeah would you indulge me for a minute because I got it wrong when 15 we were talking about basements and I thought the scope of your request was larger. I want to 16 make sure that what exactly are you asking us to opine on B? 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Campbell: So, currently our provisions say that if you an existing single-family home and 1 you want to build an ADU, we would give you additional lot coverage and floor area to a certain 2 extent. So, the lot coverage, you can get one hundred percent of your unit in additional lot 3 coverage but you’ll get up to 175-square feet of floor area. So, our code is very (interrupted) 4 Commissioner Alcheck: This would be a change or this is existing? 5 Ms. Campbell: This is existing, this I show it is today. 6 Ms. Gitelman: And no one has used this provision yet. 7 Commissioner Alcheck: When you say one hundred percent if for example your lot coverage… 8 Let’s just say for the sake of this discussion say that typically lot coverage represents thirty-five 9 percent of the square footage of an entire lot. If you’ve already covered thirty-five percent of 10 the square footage of your lot, you could add 900-square feet. 11 Ms. Campbell: That’s correct. You would still have to comply with all the other development 12 standards but you do get… it’s a bonus lot coverage. So, what we’re asking tonight is how 13 would we apply this to new construction? So today someone, and we’ve had these come across 14 the counter that the Development Center already, where someone wants to submit… They 15 submit for a brand-new home but they’ve told the planner that hey, we’re planning to kind of 16 configure this because we’re going to come back later after it’s been finalized to submit for an 17 ADU. And so, they are basically planning to follow the process in a legitimate way to get that 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. extra floor area so then they would say I’m coming back for my ADU. I would like that additional 1 170… I think they are more interested in the floor area, to get that additional floor area. And so, 2 then they submit a new permit for that and then they do a modification to the existing home. 3 So, right now there is a process in place that you basically have to phase your project and you 4 get that additional bonus if you wanted to do it. So, just kind of with that in mind, you know do 5 we want to make it clearer that this is what we intended and this is now how we want to move 6 forward or do we say that yeah, that’s ok and make it easier for them or something like that. 7 Commissioner Alcheck: I got it. So, the question… So, I’m assuming that we would determine 8 applicability based on the ordinance was passed? So, I guess I would suggest the following, I 9 appreciate the concerns about gaming the system. The notion that someone… We have a rule 10 about how much you can build and you are building more right away, I get it. How would… let’s 11 assume for the moment and I would make this assumption, that probably over ninety percent 12 of the homes built in the last 10-years have maximized their floor area and/or lot coverage. If 13 they are two-story homes they probably didn’t even come close to their lot coverage but if 14 regardless, probably maximized their floor area. Why would a home that was built 3-years ago, 15 why would it be ok for that home to get 900 more square feet and not a new home? I’m not 16 suggesting I support this. That we allow 900-square feet more than thirty-five percent but if 17 that 900-square foot could only be used for an ADU, how can any of us distinguish between a 18 home built last year and home built next year? And the reason that I ask that question is 19 because, for the better part of the 20th Century, people didn’t come close to the FAR and the lot 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. coverages that we now allow. So, any home built in the 50’s or the 60’s or even the 70’s and 1 probably the 80’s didn’t push the boundaries that we have now but every home probably in the 2 last 10-years and maybe even 20 has. So, the bonus that we’re talking about is going to be 3 relevant for a bunch of homes that have reached their maximum that may only be a year old 4 and I just struggle to understand the logic behind our rationale that well, we don’t want to 5 game the system so if you’re new (interrupted) 6 Chair Lauing: I think that… Isn’t the question whether or not it’s a concurrently built ADU? 7 That’s really kind of the crux of the matter. 8 Ms. Campbell: Yeah, I think we just want to just clarify whether or not when someone submits 9 for a brand-new home, that they can just ahead and submit for the ADU and get that additional 10 floor area or lot coverage all at once. 11 Chair Lauing: Which would be no problem but if they say they're going to put it up but they 12 don’t put it up for 10-years (interrupted) 13 Commissioner Alcheck: No, no, no that’s not what… That… No, that’s not what she said. She’s 14 saying that you wouldn’t be able to get 900-square feet over your maximum in a new 15 construction. Concurrently, you couldn’t build an ADU at the same time that you're building the 16 new house and get 900-square feet bonus over your existing FAR or lot coverage. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Campbell: Yeah so 900-square feet is just for lot coverage, it’s 175-square feet for floor 1 area. 2 Commissioner Alcheck: Or 175, sorry. 3 Chair Lauing: 175. 4 Commissioner Alcheck: My point though is the best time to build an ADU is when you’re 5 building a home and if we really want to encourage (interrupted) 6 Chair Lauing: Again, I don’t think that’s the issue. The question is if they put it up and they 7 never use it as an ADU. 8 Commissioner Alcheck: No, I don’t think that’s the question. 9 Ms. Campbell: We’re trying to just clarify whether or not we can put a clarification in our code 10 to say that this bonus lot coverage and floor area also applies to new homes being built 11 because right now, the way the code is written, it’s very expletive to say it applies to existing 12 single-family homes. So, the intent is that you have an existing home built last year or 13 something and then you can go ahead and add that bonus but if you walk in the day… Walk in 14 today to get a building permit for your home, we would say, actually the code doesn’t provide 15 that. You have to just either build it complying (interrupted) 16 Commissioner Alcheck: Smaller. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Campbell: Yeah or you phase it, that’s what they do or you could phase the project and 1 come back later. 2 Chair Lauing: Well, just to stay with this point and then we’ll… there’s one other light, it 3 (interrupted) 4 Commissioner Alcheck: Can I just finish real quick? 5 Chair Lauing: I’m sorry, I thought you did. 6 Commissioner Alcheck: So, I would just suggest that that suggestion, phasing it, would… I mean 7 that’s asking a homeowner to encore costs they shouldn’t have to encore. If you’re going to do 8 construction, to do it one item, the way it should be done, you want to frame in the back, you 9 have to grade whatever it is, it makes more sense for us to do that once then phase it. That’s 10 easier on the neighbors. My point… I get it, I understand the concern that Sherry said but it 11 seems to me hard to make the case that I built my home last year so I get to do it but you’re 12 about to build your home, you lose that potential to build 900-square feet more of FAR. So, if 13 that’s… If we’re going to make that case, I think we have to decide why we’re making that case. 14 Chair Lauing: So, to me, the comment is that if somebody is putting up a new building because 15 there are plenty of deficiencies and they want an ADU, which then qualifies them for 175-16 square feet, that’s a rational argument. But if they say I’m going to do it sometime so I want 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 175 or they put it up and it turns into a back-yard playhouse, yeah that’s policing but we’re 1 trying to get extra housing here. 2 Ms. Campbell: So, it's not quite as you’re describing it. Today if someone where to build a 3 single-family home and they wanted to do the ADU all at one go with one permit, you couldn’t 4 get any additional floor area or lot coverage; if you are building something brand new today, if 5 you’re walking in with a building permit because our code says you need to have an existing, 6 already final home. So what people… What you would do if you really… So, and then the 7 alternative is to complete your single-family home [Note-and] meeting all of the code 8 requirements for lot coverage and floor area. Then you finish that and you come back later, in a 9 couple months after you’ve got it finalized and you submit your building permit to do your ADU. 10 When you submit the building permit for an ADU, you have a legitimate existing single-family 11 home and then we can go ahead and move forward with giving you that extra floor area. We 12 wouldn’t give you that extra floor area or lot coverage up front with the first permit. 13 Chair Lauing: Yeah, I think I understand both of them so I would favor the change that you’re 14 suggesting to allow that go to new homes but I’m just saying that that’s requiring them to put 15 up the ADU. That’s the only thing that I am saying. 16 Ms. Campbell: We wouldn’t give you the bonus if you weren’t doing the ADU. 17 Chair Lauing: Yeah, right, ok. Let’s see, we had Commissioner [Note -Vice Chair] Monk. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Monk: I did speak to this earlier and my position hasn’t shifted but I would just want 1 to say to echo Commissioner Alcheck on the disruption to the neighbors I think would be 2 minimized if the applicant is intending to build an ADU. And it’s just a matter of timing of when 3 they are going to do it and go through the additional process. Also, the additional resources on 4 Staff to have to apply some… Go through the application process twice. To me, this is a classic 5 example of just needing the code to come current with the new ADU Ordinance and so I would 6 support applying it both to existing and new structures. 7 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Summa. 8 Commissioner Summa: So, the reason… To answer some questions of my colleagues, the reason 9 I don’t favor it for… Look, you can have an ADU in a new construction, you just don’t get the 10 bonus. And I had interpreted the bonus to be to reflect the fact as Commissioner Alcheck said 11 that every new home being built is totally maxed our FAR wise. And it is often (interrupted) 12 Commissioner Alcheck: Not two-stories. 13 Commissioner Summa: It is often a very… It often… These houses are legal but they often 14 appear to be much more impactful the neighbors than older houses that were built out. So, I 15 interrupted the bonus to be a benefit that was generalized to say look, older houses probably 16 aren’t maxing out the property as much as new ones that are being built. So, that was my 17 thinking that the new construction doesn’t need a bonus, they still can build the legal ADU. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Commissioner Gardias, briefly. 1 Commissioner Gardias: Briefly, why briefly? So, Counsel I have a question to you so what is… 2 what does the law say about this? Is there some provision in the law because with this the 3 owners could be gaming the system very easily. You’re just going to build up not to the limits, 4 you’re going to leave let’s say 100-feet or something like this and then you’re going to come 5 back, you’ve finished your house. And then you’re going to apply for the ADU and then pretty 6 much you will gain additional space for the game room or some other summer house. 7 Mr. Albert Yang, Senior Deputy Attorney: So, state law requires the portion where we allow the 8 ADU even though lot coverage is maxed out. I don’t believe that state law has a requirement on 9 the bonus square footage, bonus FAR. 10 Commissioner Gardias: So, pretty much we cannot restrict it. We cannot say that knowing that 11 owners can game the system. We cannot restrict the homeowners to consider ADU during the 12 time of rebuilding or building new residents on the lot and then waving ADU applicability for 13 the later phase if they wish to do so. 14 Mr. Yang: No, we can’t do that. 15 Commissioner Gardias: I think that’s the answer. 16 Chair Lauing: Ok, Commissioner Waldfogel. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Waldfogel: This may be off topic and if it is, stop me but I think this is related. So, 1 let’s say that somebody is building a new house and they are required to have I believe one 2 covered parking space in the development standards. And let’s say they intent is to convert that 3 garage pretty rapidly into an ADU so what’s our stance on that? I mean do we… I mean if 4 somebody came in and said you know hey, I’m just to take the garage door away next week and 5 replace it with a man door. Do we have a stance on that or is this related to this? I mean it 6 seems like it’s related to this question of what could people do in [unintelligible] construction. 7 Ms. Campbell: I think that you bring up one… another one of these issues that we haven’t 8 addressed in our code so I definitely think it’s something that we need to add to the list of how 9 we would handle this exact situation. I think so far, we have had projects when they have the 10 brand-new home, they are complying with the covered parking but it’s a good point to make 11 that technically with our code requirement, they can… They don’t have to provide that parking 12 space, the covered parking space if they are doing this ADU. So, it’s definitely… I think it’s 13 related, this conversation, but it’s… That specific scenario has not been thought through yet 14 which we need to add to the list. Thank you. 15 Ms. Gitelman: Just if I can add on, you know I think I want to look at that particular question a 16 little more. I think we should think about it because there is this provision in the code about 17 accessory structures have to be existing as of January 1, 2017, before they can be converted. 18 And I just want to think about how that might interact with this particular question. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Waldfogel: And there’s no… There’s nothing in the new state law that would 1 obsolete that requirement, that January 1 date? 2 Ms. Gitelman: That’s right. I think we’re still allowed to do that. 3 Mr. Yang: So, that provision is in ambiguity in the state law that existed when we enacted this 4 ordinance and nothing has changed with respect to that. 5 Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah and I do want to agree with a couple of my colleague’s points. I 6 mean I think the purpose of this is to create dwelling units and there are some moral hazards 7 here that… I mean I think there are moral hazards in two dimensions. One is that these won’t 8 always create dwelling units, I mean they may be… You know people may be creating home 9 offices or exercise rooms or wine cellars or Airbnb, which are not dwelling units. And then 10 there’s this… Also, the hazard about R-1 going to R-2 and I know that those are kind of opposite 11 concerns but they’re… I think that we have to get our arms around both these issues. 12 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Alcheck. 13 Commissioner Alcheck: Yeah so you just actually perfectly picked up on something that I was 14 going to bring up later. Which is that our current system and this is sort of... I’m tagging on to 15 what Commissioner Waldfogel said. Our current system… I really want Staff to hear but I’m 16 about to say because I’d love to know their response to this. Yeah, so our current system allows 17 for the almost immediate elimination of covered parking in the formation of an ADU. So new 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. home construction, they build a detached garage in the rear, the can eliminate their covered 1 parking almost instantaneously and there’s… I believe it’s a flawed perception but there’s this 2 perception that we wanted to discourage parking on the street and parking in the front and so 3 we have… We’re going to talk about this later, we have this contextual garage requirement that 4 requires us to build these detached units in the back. And then yet, immediately those units 5 become converted to an ADU because frankly, I think we’re pretty… I think there’s a consensus 6 on this Commission that when people have garages in the rear, they typically don’t really use 7 them. They tend to park in tandem or something because it’s difficult or whatever but for 8 whatever reason, these units quickly become converted. And so that requirement that the 9 structure exists… This is… Two weeks ago, we asked a very specific comment about whether the 10 contextual garage placement provisions would have any impact on ADUs and at the time you 11 said no. That provision that requires the detached structure to exist prior to that specific date is 12 exactly why the contextual garage placement provision creates potentially a conflict with ADU 13 development. So (interrupted) 14 Ms. Gitelman: I asked for an opportunity to clarify that at a later date. I think Albert has already 15 identified the issue which is that date of January 1, 2017, is relevant if you want to wave some 16 development standards if you want some flexibility but it’s not relevant for just the conversion 17 per say. 18 Commissioner Alcheck: That helps, I think that helps. I think the broader question though, in 19 addition, to figure out exactly how to deal with that nuance, is to what extent do we want to pit 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. our neighborhoods development of ADU and essentially, I guess you would call it parking 1 camouflages or whatever. You don’t really want the cars on the street but you want the ADUs. 2 To what extent does this create a contradiction between new construction developing 3 detached structures in the rear. So, my last little quick comment on this is that I really dislike 4 the word gaming the system. I don’t… I think when we talk about an ADU, there are specific 5 requirements like it has to have a kitchen, it has to have a living area, these detached ones in 6 specific which would apply the lot coverage bonus coverage, in particular, have to meet all 7 these specific requirements to essentially be a habitual space for an individual unaffiliated with 8 the home. And I think when we say gaming the system we’re imposing some sort of skepticism 9 on the goodwill of every Palo Alton and I don’t think there… What we’re hearing across the 10 peninsula is a clambering for in-law units. Not a clamming for pool houses and so I just I think 11 it’s dangerous to impose that skepticism on this development. 12 Ms. Gitelman: Mr. Chair, if I may, I’m getting anxious about the action item. 13 Chair Lauing: I was just going to say this is the only thing… We have to move on now. We 14 absolutely have to because we said it was going to be (interrupted) 15 Ms. Gitelman: And we did hear a variety of comments, we’ll take that back and come back for… 16 To continue this conversation January 10th. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Yeah, I’m sorry, I don’t think we even have time to actually say if there are any top 1 line question about the rest of this document because we’re barely halfway through and we do 2 have two action items that we have to turn too. 3 Commissioner Alcheck: I’ll just add, I think it’s surprising that nobody showed up for this 4 discussion. Either it wasn’t noticed well because I get a question about ADUs so often in my 5 email box and I literally emailed seven people and said hey, by the way, this is a night to come 6 and discuss it. And I’m literally shocked, I just want you to know that. 7 Chair Lauing: Yeah, I am too. 8 Vice-Chair Monk: On that note, if we could just ask Staff to do what they can to invite the 9 community. I saw that it did go out on Next Door and I saw a couple community letters but 10 again, I echo that sentiment. If we can (interrupted) 11 Ms. Gitelman: You know I think if once we have a draft ordinance, I think we’ll see more 12 people. I mean this is to me a lesson to kind of move through these. Many of these are very 13 esoteric, you know a kind of procedural questions. See if we can move through a little more 14 efficiently and get to the point where we can draft an ordinance because once we have that, it 15 starts to become real and we’ll see people in the audience. 16 Vice-Chair Monk: And Director, I know you’re eager to move, I just have one question and it’s a 17 burning question. Is there anything in our code that prohibits two families or two separate 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. entities to come together to make a purchase? And this goes to that concern about converting 1 our R-1s into R-2s and take a property as tenants in common or some other arrangement and 2 treat the property as kind of as a duplex even though it wouldn’t be with that interior 3 definition. 4 Ms. Campbell: There is nothing to prevent that from happening. 5 Vice-Chair Monk: Is that a concern that we need to worry about? 6 Ms. Campbell: Ms. Campbell: I don’t know. I think we’ve thought about this and I think it’s very 7 how do you regulate something like that? I mean that’s something that we’ve thought about. 8 Chair Lauing: So, this is continued to the January 10th meeting. 9 Commission Action: None. 10 4. Discussion Regarding the Commission’s Performance, Roles and Responsibilities, and 11 Opportunity for Commissioners Feedback to Improve Processes and Results 12 (Continued from November 29, 2017) 13 Chair Lauing: Then the next item on the agenda and staying in order is we have a time-limited 14 per an earlier agreement, continued Item Number Four regarding the Commission’s 15 performance, roles and responsibilities and Commissioners feedback to improve process. This is 16 going to be a major agenda item at the retreat as well but we promised an open form on that 17 so this is the open form. And we’ll just see what kind of comments there are so I’m going to 18 clear the lights. Just had a light come on for Commissioner Alcheck. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: So, I know we have a retreat planned and the last time the Commission 1 did a retreat was so long ago, it was my first year on the Commission, and we used that time 2 specifically to discuss the ideas of specific areas plans or different topics. Anyways, while we’re 3 talking about this item, the second bullet is goal setting and I really am hopeful. and this I guess 4 would just be a plug to the Chair, that he allocates a significant portion of our retreat to sort of 5 goal setting. It’s the beginning of the year and I think that I’d prefer to use that time to talk 6 about (interrupted) 7 Chair Lauing: I’ve got a quick draft to hand out at the end in terms of new agenda items that go 8 over that and that is going to be substantive. 9 Commissioner Alcheck: The reason why I sort of… So then with that in mind, the reason why I 10 felt like I really wanted to devote some time this calendar year to this discussion was because I 11 would like to suggest that when we do have the retreat we also consider some changes to our, I 12 guess it would be by-laws or rules of order. I would propose that an amendment could be the 13 by-laws of the rule of order to remove the process for substitute amendments or substitute 14 motions in our process. I thought that based on the last years’ experience and the 5-years that I 15 had before that, that they prove to be quite disruptive to the discussion. And I believe the 16 substitute motion process is a very effective tool in a political body. It essentially is the 17 equivalent of like adding pork to a… It’s putting people in a position to vote on something that 18 they may wish to not vote on at that time and it doesn’t give the opportunity to give a more 19 balanced discussion. So, if there’s going to be some portion of our retreat that deals with 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. maybe potentially amending by-laws, instead of taking up a lot of time then to make this exact 1 point, I’m choosing to make it now which is that would be one proposal that I would absolutely 2 support because I think it would improve our meeting discussion based on the last years work 3 that we did. I’ll reserve other comments if based on other people’s comments. 4 Chair Lauing: Commissioner [Note -Vice Chair] Monk. 5 Vice-Chair Monk: At our retreat, I would like to go over the by-laws and the motion setting and 6 bring it up then and we can maybe take a vote on what you’re proposing Commissioner 7 Alcheck. 8 In regards to agenda setting, I think it would be helpful to hear from Staff at the beginning of 9 each agenda item, how the item came to us. This is something that Chair Lauing and I discussed 10 knowing whether it came to us because of a legal requirement or because it was at the 11 Council’s direction or you’re just looking for some input. That helps us have some context 12 around the discussion and perhaps there can be some interior standards that your team might 13 want to come up with on when you’re giving us our reports. A checklist on, here’s what we’re 14 trying to achieve tonight, is that clear to the PTC of what their objectives are. Sometimes we 15 have to read through… get quite far into the Packet before we find an issue that we need to 16 respond to so maybe making those a little bit more obvious could streamline our meeting 17 process. And also, account for the fact that various Commissioners have different experience 18 levels with different topics. Were as some Commissioners would want to dive deeper and they 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. want to read more extensively on a topic. Whereas other Commissioners might just want to 1 know what the general issue is and so just having that up front I think will help on a variety of 2 levels. 3 There’s this question here about anything related to the Commission’s work and finished 4 product. And I know you drafted this, Commissioner Alcheck, right? Wasn’t that your memo? 5 Was that your memo that you drafted? 6 Commissioner Alcheck: This list? It was just (interrupted) 7 Vice-Chair Monk: What does that mean? 8 Commissioner Alcheck: This was just [unintelligible – no mic] 9 Vice-Chair Monk: I don’t know if people would be interested or if Staff is interested or not but I 10 think it might be something to consider if we want to give some feedback after a Staff report or 11 after a meeting if you’re interested in serving us occasionally. I’d be open to something like 12 that, just to help with streamlining meetings and clearing up agenda items in the future. I can 13 barely read my notes so I’ll have to look at this a little more closely if I have more comments. 14 Thanks. 15 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Summa. 16 Commissioner Summa: A question for Staff, is it even legal under basic meeting procedure to 17 not allow substitute motions? It seems to be a very integral part of what we do. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Albert Yang, Senior Deputy Attorney: So, the Commission has adopted a set of procedural 1 rules governing how it’s meetings will be conducted and it’s up to the Commission to determine 2 how they want to… whether they want to change those rules. You really can have whatever 3 procedures you want. 4 Commissioner Summa: Ok so I’m not supportive of that, of making that change and I would like 5 to point out that although Commissioner Alcheck has been talking about this at some length for 6 quite some time, he uses substitute motions when he wants to. I don’t know if he considers it 7 political when he does it but (interrupted) 8 Commissioner Alcheck: Absolutely. 9 Commissioner Summa: So, I have a strong preference for keeping that an option and I actually 10 think it can help to expedite a meeting and make a meeting go more quickly. 11 As to the idea of reflecting on the previous 12-months and 22 meetings, I think that 12 Commissioner Alcheck… I think you did this at the wrong time. I think you asked us to reflect on 13 how things were going at the wrong. It would have been helpful to ask us that at some point 14 into the meeting like the 100-day checkup or something like that. That’s what I was thinking so 15 (interrupted) 16 Commissioner Alcheck: Maybe that could be your suggestion for how we do things next year. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Summa: I think it’s up to every Commissioner… Chair I mean, how they’d like to 1 do that but that was just my thought. And then I’m pretty happy to move on from this and just 2 see what our Chair has prioritized for the retreat. Thanks. 3 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Alcheck. 4 Commissioner Alcheck: Yeah so, I’ll just opine on another process that I think we could adopt 5 potentially a different tact. And just to be clear, this isn’t just a… I didn’t intend for this 6 conversation to be sort of a critic on last year, it’s sort of an opportunity to say what would you 7 prefer to see moving forward in general. But anyway, it’s not common for us to disagree with a 8 position with Staff. A lot of times Staff will make a recommendation and then we have an 9 opportunity to opine on it and then the finished product of the Commission sort of moves its 10 way to Council but there are some instances where that doesn’t happen. Where Staff will sort 11 of take a position that they actually disagree and they think that an issue is… Should be a 12 certain way and then the product that gets taken to Council is essentially a summary of our 13 suggestions; sort of like a paragraph in an unaltered action item articulated by Staff. And I 14 think… I don’t have an inherent problem with that approach. I just think that when we go 15 through that process, we should see the document before it moves forward because… I guess 16 what I could say is well I don’t see a conflict with Staff articulating our perspective when they 17 haven’t taken an alternative view on the item. I do see an issue… I think we experience this last 18 year or during the course of this year where we felt maybe something wasn’t articulated the 19 right way. And in situations where we actually had a different opinion from Staff on a policy, it 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. seems appropriate that we would at least get to review the work product that represented our 1 perspective before it made its way to Council. A good example of that, I think is this discussion 2 that we’re going to have next on the amendment, the zoning. If we… If the Commission sort of 3 unanimously take a position that differs from Staff but Staff doesn’t feel that it’s appropriate 4 and so the ordinance doesn’t get amended as it makes it way to Council. So, let’s say for 5 example there are some provisions where they’re like you know that’s a good point, we’ll make 6 a change. Other ones where they are like you know, we disagree with this Commission, we’re 7 not going to make that change but we’ll summarize your opinion. I feel like it would be more 8 appropriate for us to be able to see that summary and then move the topic on to make sure 9 that it articulates our view. As opposed to relying on Staff to articulate that view and the 10 minutes because I think that sometimes the minutes can be too overwhelming for Council and 11 that little summary is only shot to make the case that we have to Council. So, from a process 12 perspective, in those scenarios… In those planning scenarios, I think we should have a follow-up 13 work product review of the item. 14 Vice-Chair Monk: Can I just elaborate on that a little bit or maybe narrow that in some respect? 15 I think that is valuable but I don’t know if Staff has to do that every time. I’d love to see it every 16 time but what I was wondering was if we can have that available to us. Especially in those 17 instances where we’re expected to represent at Council. So, for example, I’m assigned a certain 18 month and I look at the agenda and it wouldn’t be clear to me if I was expected to speak or not 19 at Council. So, on the ones… So, I have a two-fold question, how do I know in my assigned 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. month which items and which dates I would need to be prepared to speak on behalf of PTC at a 1 Council meeting? And the follow up to that is would we have the benefit of looking at any notes 2 that PTC… a summary of our opinions on it to reference. 3 Ms. Gitelman: If I understand the question correctly, I mean I think the Commission is aware 4 when something appears on the Council agenda, if they’ve provided a recommendation on that 5 item or not. And so, what we expect the Commissioners to do when it’s your month is to review 6 the Council agendas and if there’s something that this body opined on, that’s the item in which 7 you have the opportunity to come to Council and present the Commission’s views. That’s also 8 an item in which you should find in the Staff report a copy of the minutes and a reflection of 9 this Commission’s actions. And we do our best to characterize your recommendations and 10 actions accurately. We, I’m afraid, don’t have the luxury of time to bring back our summaries so 11 that you can rivet them and make sure we’ve captured it accurately but if we make mistakes, I 12 apologize, we do our best. And if we have a question, we tend to call the Chair and say hey, I 13 don’t really remember how this happened or we’d call the maker of the motion and say gosh, 14 we didn’t get that last word. Anyway, we do our best and we’ll circle back with you if there’s 15 ever a question but it’s really incumbent on all of us to kind of understand that this process is 16 one in which the Commission makes a recommendation to the Council. We report that 17 recommendation to the Council. We also bring our own recommendation to the Council on 18 occasion but is very clear in our reports when that is occurring and we do our best to 19 summarize what the Commission has done. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Yeah and I think any assigned Commissioner can go and speak at Council 1 whenever they want; consulting with the Chair is ok or doesn’t… it’s not necessary. Alerting 2 Staff that you want to give some comments is the proper way to do it and that’s all kosher. 3 Ms. Gitelman: It’s very helpful if you let us know that you want to make some remarks. 4 Generally, in our Staff presentation, we can indicate that a Member of the Commission is here 5 and would like to make some remarks. And so, then the Council lets you jump the queue and 6 come at the beginning of the public comments. 7 Chair Lauing: Any other comments on this agenda item? 8 Commissioner Alcheck: Can I say one more quick… We’ve discussed this in the past, 9 Commissioner Fine or Council Member… Now Council Member Fine has brought it up in the 10 past. I feel like there’s an opportunity to enhance public engagement. I didn’t, as Chair last year 11 or this past year, I didn’t do anything in that regard and now that Council Member Fine is not a 12 Member of this Commission anymore, and I think he was particularly sort of technology savvy. 13 That we really don’t have someone to sort of take that up but I really do wish there was a way 14 for us to digitally interact with the community. I wish there was a way for us to have a digital 15 dialog. We get a lot of emails as a part of the Commission and we know we can’t really respond 16 to them because it’s not a forum that would allow it. Maybe there’s a way for us to set up some 17 kind of polling on issues like we put this up and we create a poll, where do… Are there specific 18 comments on any of these issues or how do you feel about X and Y? That the Chair and the 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair can work on and maybe if a pre-Commission wasn’t… meeting wasn’t the day before 1 the meeting but two-weeks before the meeting, then you could create some opportunity to 2 engage the public. Maybe if we had our own Facebook page, just something and I know that’s a 3 bigger topic but in line with this idea of everything is on the table kind of. I really think that 4 would be really amazing to have some better digital process. 5 Vice-Chair Monk: I just saw something and I forgot what it was related to but I think it was 6 powered by Open Gov. or something similar and it looked like it was through the City. I don’t 7 know if you’re familiar with it. I’ll have to look it up but I saw a related survey for community 8 input. Do you know if… No, ok. We’ll add that as an agenda item. 9 Chair Lauing: Ok, are there any other comments on this issue? What’s that? 10 Commissioner Summa: Do you want a… It looks like our public (interrupted) 11 Ms. Justine Burt: I’m sorry, this is really out of order but I’ve been sitting here for 3-hours 12 waiting to make one comment and Agenda Item Five isn’t up yet and you just asked how do we 13 get a more public comment? Like I want to say a few things and yet (interrupted) 14 Chair Lauing: That’s exactly where we’re going, is Item Five. 15 Ms. Burt: I feel like I show to go home now because I’ve been here for 3-hours and I need to 16 get home to my sons. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Right. We’re closing out this one and we’re starting on Item Five and you’re first 1 up so you can stay right where you are. 2 Ms. Burt: Ok so it could be 45-minutes of discussion and then I get to give my comment? 3 Chair Lauing: No, you get to give them right away so don’t go away, standby. So, I think we are 4 done with this subject. I don’t see any other burning… Oh, sorry, there is one more light. 5 Commissioner Gardias: This is… I’m sorry but this is just an example, this is our customer and 6 this is our… This is an example of misjudged agenda. I’m sorry for bringing this up but this our 7 internal matter, the customer should be first. I propose to close this topic, it’s a very valuable 8 topic. Let’s close it, let’s move on, thank you. 9 Chair Lauing: Yeah, we did close it. This was agendize to the public as Item Five and that’s the 10 order that we’re in. 11 Commission Action: None. 12 Action Items 13 Public Comment is Permitted. Applicants/Appellant Teams: Fifteen (15) minutes, plus three (3) minutes rebuttal. 14 All others: Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 15 5. PUBLIC HEARING: Recommendation to the City Council Regarding the Adoption of an 16 Ordinance Amending Palo Alto Municipal Code (PAMC) Chapter 2.20 (Planning and 17 Transportation Commission) of Title 2, Chapter 9.10 (Noise) of Title 9, Chapter 10.64 18 (Bicycles, Roller Skates and Coasters) of Title 10, and Chapters 18.04 (Definitions), 19 18.10 (Low-Density Residential (RE, R-2 and RMD)), 18.12 (R-1 Single-Family 20 Residential District), 18.15 (Residential Density Bonus), 18.16 (Neighborhood, 21 Community, and Service Commercial (CN, CC and CS) Districts), 18.28 (Special 22 Purpose (PF, OS and AC) Districts), 18.30(G) (Combining Districts), 18.40 (General 23 Standards and Exceptions), 18.42 (Standards for Special Uses), 18.52 (Parking and 24 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Loading Requirements), 18.54 (Parking Facility Design Standards), 18.76 (Permits and 1 Approvals), 18.77 (Processing of Permits and Approvals), and 18.80 (Amendments to 2 Zoning Map And Zoning Regulations) of Title 18, and Chapters 21.12 (Tentative Maps 3 and Preliminary Parcel Maps) and 21.32 (Conditional Exceptions) of Title 21. The 4 Proposed Ordinance is Exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) 5 in Accordance With CEQA Guidelines Section 15061(b)(3). For More Information, 6 Please Contact Clare Campbell at clare.campbell@cityofpaloalto.org. (CONTINUED 7 FROM November 29, 2017) 8 Chair Lauing: Item Five, I think there’s a public speaker for this, Justine Burt. 9 Ms. Justine Burt: This has actually been really interesting and I’m glad I sat through this because 10 I often come to City Council meetings and I give talks or I give public comment. And they have 11 an open, whatever you want to talk about for 3-minutes at the very beginning (interrupted) 12 Chair Lauing: So, do we, so do we. 13 Ms. Burt: Maybe you guys should do that. 14 Commissioner Alcheck: So, do we. 15 Ms. Burt: Well, I gave my comment at the very beginning at 6:03 and (interrupted) 16 Chair Lauing: But you itemized it for Agenda Item Number Five so that’s why we slotted you 17 here. 18 Ms. Burt: I guess I learned how to do it for next time. So, what I want to share is that there are 19 so many reasons why we cannot, in Palo Alto, increase the supply of housing. And having been 20 in on a lot of… We moved here 3-years ago from Fremont where we own a house and 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. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. moved here because our son at the time was starting 8th grade and he went to school at Jordan 1 and he didn’t do well in the Freemont School System… Public School Systems. And since we’ve 2 moved here, he’s just blossomed and he does so well and loves Pally and he’s a junior so we’re 3 really happy to be here and we’d like to be able to buy but the lowest level condo is $2 million 4 so that’s not going to happen. And I’ve noticed a lot of nimbies at the City Council meetings 5 who… It seems like 10, 20 vocal people who don’t want to see additional housing shot a lot of 6 the debates down but it feels like the Planning Commission is where the rubber hits the road. 7 And where you guys could really make a big difference in terms of adding housing in a way that 8 makes sense is by making one tiny change and so bear with me for a second here. If you step 9 back and look at where the opportunities are to add housing, you could potentially open up 10 potentially 1,000s of units by creating submitting middle housing. And given… I just get such a 11 sense being here for 3-hours that there’s so many ropes and wires constraining what you can 12 do and there’s so many, again reasons why you can’t add housing. But from the way that I look 13 at this, I’ve been pouring over zoning maps for the last few years and wondering how could we 14 add more housing that’s not like scary 10-story buildings that a lot of people think of when you 15 say more densification in downtown. I think they are picturing 10, 20, 30-story Shanghai kind of 16 things. What I’d like to see is change the zoning within a mile radius of the train stations; of the 17 University Avenue train station, California Avenue and San Antonio, change the zoning around 18 there. Almost this whole City is R-1 and when I looked for opportunities to go in with three 19 other families… I’ve been talking with a bunch of other families, go in with three other families, 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. buy a tear down for $2-$3 million and then spend $300 per square foot to build four 1,500-1 square foot units; two units and then two on top. It would only be two-stories but you would, 2 for the price of about $1.2 million dollars per family, create a nice livable unit and not to tall, 3 not scary densification but just a little more densification. And so, $2 to $3 million for the tear 4 down, I’m talking like cracked foundation, from the 20’s, just the plumbing needs to be 5 replaced, the electrical system is a hazard, replacing that it could be affordable. The lowest cost 6 condo is like $2 million now and so I don’t harbor any illusions that housing pricing are going to 7 come back down. We’re just not building enough housing so between allowing an R-30 or an R-8 40 on some of the lots that are within a mile of the train stations and allowing perhaps building 9 over those one-story shops and restaurants on El Camino, we could put in a lot of housing here 10 and that’s where the transportation corridor is. I’ve been doing consulting downtown to try to 11 reach out to shops and restaurants to give away free transit passes on behalf of the Palo Alto 12 TMA and there are a lot of people that just don’t know what the transportation alternatives 13 are. I talked to one guy that works at the Verizon store and he said I’d love to take alternative 14 transit but I can’t. I live in Heyward and I said drive to the Union City Bart Station, there’s lot of 15 parking, you can take Dumbarton Express right over here. So, I know transportation issues are a 16 major reason why people are so afraid of additional housing. I live on University, we rent, if 17 there were a zip car within two or three blocks of me, I would love to get rid of my car. And so, I 18 think adding additional density and that means changing the zoning in certain places because 19 there is such a robust mix of transit options here in the downtown areas that that could be an 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. option. And in terms of transit, electric scooters help with the first last mile issue. I think there 1 are solutions so all it takes is you guys changing zoning. That’s all I wanted to say, thank you. 2 Chair Lauing: Very much appreciate those comments and yes, that for example, you should feel 3 free to bring that up at the beginning; a general zoning question like that, great suggestions like 4 that. Sorry, you had to wait given where we had this one agenized and please tell all your 5 friends to come and give us input because we’re frustrated we don’t have more folks like you 6 out here. Appreciate it. 7 Commissioner Alcheck: And if you don’t mind, if you could send an email with your contact 8 information so that some of us could reach out to you may be to continue this discussion 9 because it’s a… You’re actually talking about a very broad discussion. And this zoning change is 10 a very specific one and it wouldn’t even be appropriate for us to have a discussion about the 11 changes you are suggesting tonight because technically it’s not apart of the changes that are 12 being agenized. That’s not to say that it’s not worth a big discussion but I’d love to be able to 13 reach out to you and sort of work with you so that I could help, in particular, figure out when 14 we could create that opportunity. 15 Ms. Burt: Ok, thanks. 16 Chair Lauing: Alright so Clare is going to handle this one. This is also complex because we have 17 stuff that we’ve done. That stuff that we’ve done has some changes that we need to have be 18 discussed. There is stuff that we haven’t done yet that we need to jump into and its pretty time 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. sensitive so Clare, you’re going to also have to instruct us which documents to refer to and page 1 numbers so please be super attentive to that. 2 Ms. Clare Campbell: Alright, great, thank you for that introduction. So, what… each one of you 3 has a reference sheet that includes page numbers for where that item is located in the draft 4 ordinance which is Attachment A of your Staff report. As well as the page number for where it 5 is located in the old Staff report which is Attachment B and I probably have an extra one if you 6 don’t have one because everybody needs it. Who doesn’t have one? Alright, so should I 7 continue? Great. Ok so you have this reference sheet for page numbering and hopefully, every 8 time we reference an item number, we can quickly flip where we need to be within out Staff 9 report package. 10 So, tonight is a continued discussion from our November 29th PTC meeting. The PTC reviewed 11 the majority of the code amendments and identified eight items that need some follow up. 12 Staff has prepared responses to those eight items that we designated and just to add, there 13 was one additional item that was added to the Staff report regarding a correction for the code 14 change numbering for the definition of Cannabis. This chart here represents the eight items 15 that we identified as follow-up items and I’m going to go through each one of them in the 16 presentation tonight. The second … And then this table here covers all of the things that we did 17 not get through last time and I’ve highlighted the items in red. Those are the ones that I’ve 18 specifically identified that I’ll be talking about in these Staff presentation. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. So, the first one is the contextual garage placement so we… Staff did not make any changes to 1 the code language and we did have some discussion about this but there are no proposed… The 2 proposed amendment does not preclude the ability to developing an ADU on the parcel. So, 3 Item Number Seven, carports and garage definition. The definitions where revised and we also 4 had to make a slight modification to the Porte Cochere definition and we clarified the use for 5 the garages and carports. So, we’ve made that a little bit clearer on what they are supposed to 6 use for. 7 Number Eleven is the floor area exemption for historic homes so the language was revised in 8 the table to provide clearer direction on how to measure the basement for the purposes of 9 measuring the floor area. 10 Item Number Twelve, the office restrictions in the CS. Staff did not make any changes to the 11 code language. We did provide additional explanation in the Staff report to explain the 12 rationale for removing that specific code section and I can answer question if you have those 13 about that. 14 Item Number Fourteen is to remove the restrictive election time for the PTC Officers and we 15 revised that language based on your comments that you provided last… at the last meeting. 16 So, Number Sixteen, the closure of inactive applications so we revised that language in 17 response to the comment provided to make it a little bit less severe. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Then on our leaf blowers for the commercial districts so we understand that this one is 1 definitely a controversial issue. We plan to do additional research with Staff of other City 2 Departments and then report back to see… with Council whether or not this amendment is 3 going to be moving forward. And certainly, we’ll be listening closely to what you have to share 4 with us tonight about this item. 5 Number Eighteen, the floor area exemption for trash enclosures in the CD. No changes were 6 made to that code language but we did provide some additional clarification in the Staff report 7 specifically to kind of make it clear that this amendment does not in any way impact the 8 allowable uses in the CD. That was something that was raised at the last meeting but it has no 9 impact to the uses that are already established for the zone district. 10 Item Number Twenty-Eight is to correct the numbering for the Cannabis definition so that one 11 was straightforward. Correction, no text changes to that. 12 So, moving onto the items that we didn’t get to at our last meeting. The first one is to establish 13 the over the counter review process and I wanted to be clear, I didn’t… our Staff report was a 14 little bit misleading. It referred to this as an architectural review… over the counter 15 architectural review and that was just a mistake in editing. We missed that when we looked at 16 the report but basically, we’re looking to establish an over the counter review process which is 17 separate from an architectural review process. So, this process would codify the existing 18 practice that we currently do at the Development Center and it’s at the Director’s discretion. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. The over the counter process would allow approval of projects deemed insignificant and that 1 have no effect to the building or environment. And typically, this is associated when we see a 2 building permit come across the counter. Projects subject to the over the counter review would 3 not be subject to further administrative processing which included approval letters and an 4 appeal period and things like that. Attachment D of the Staff report provides the draft over the 5 counter review guidelines that we would be using to help guide Staff and applicants as to the 6 types of projects we would consider for this review and it outlines the process. 7 So, the next one, Number Twenty-Two A, this is to reduce the request for hearing time and limit 8 the requesters. I’m on slide Number Eleven. So, this one is an amendment that would apply to 9 minor Staff level architectural review projects and not to Board level review projects. It would 10 reduce the request for hearing timeline from 14 calendar days to 7 days and this is basically 11 intended to reduce the overall processing time of applications while still providing an avenue 12 for an appeal. Excuse me, it would reduce the range of hearing requesters from anyone to the 13 project applicant and adjacent properties, that includes owners and tenants and this is similar 14 to how we do this for the individual review process. In reviewing the application date and this is 15 noted in the Staff report, you know we process over 132… Over 130 Staff level architectural 16 review applications per year and in the last 3-year we’ve only had two projects that were 17 appealed. So, we really think these numbers kind of support a shortened or tightened up 18 hearing time and limitations for who can make appeals. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. So, Number Twenty-Four is to modify the ADU requirements and this is exactly what we just 1 saw in the earlier presentation so we have regulations going into effect January 1st. Our code… 2 our proposed code amendments are specifically to address the state regulations. There might 3 be just a minor text correction but everything is in response to the state requirements. There is 4 no additional proposed modifications to the ADU requirements. That will be a separate effort, 5 as you already know. 6 So, item twenty-five is to update the residential density bonus per the state requirements. So, 7 the updated state regulations took effect alright in January 1st, 2017, and the key updates 8 included a local government may not require applicants to prepare an additional report or 9 study to qualify for a density bonus. A local government may no longer reject incentives and 10 concessions on the grounds they are not required in order to provide affordable housing costs. 11 A twenty percent density bonus shall be granted to any project that reserves at least ten 12 percent of its housing units for disabled veterans, foster youth or homeless persons and the 13 density bonus law requires developers of new housing projects to replace all demolished 14 affordable units so there’s no net loss. 15 Alright, so this is our last one. This is the individual review process and the demolishing of 16 historic inventory properties. So, the purpose of this amendment is to discourage the misuse of 17 the permitting process to potentially avoid additional environmental review, historic review 18 specifically, when building a new home. So, if a structure is listed on the City’s Historic 19 Inventory or it’s a National Register Eligible property and is demolished when it’s in association 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. with developing a single-story new home but no home is constructed. We would not allow the 1 filing of an individual review application within 5-years of the date of that demolish permit 2 issuance. 3 Ok so for next steps, upon recommendation from the Planning Commission the draft ordinance 4 will be revised and forwarded to the Council for review which is tentatively scheduled for spring 5 2018. And I’ll just do a quick review of the motion so Staff recommends that the PTC find the 6 proposed draft ordinance exempted from the provisions of CEQA in accordance with CEQA 7 Guideline Section 15061B3 and recommend to the City Council adoption of an ordinance to 8 amend various sections of the Palo Alto Municipal Code as reflected in Attachment A. And that 9 concludes Staff’s presentation, thank you. 10 Chair Lauing: So, I think the best process is to go back over the ones that have been reviewed, 11 see if we’re comfortable with the pull/non-pull statues and any changes and then just get that 12 section done first before going to table two. Is that alright with Staff? 13 Ms. Gitelman: That’s what I was going to suggest, that we group these and try and get to a 14 motion on Group One and Group Two either as one motion or two motions but get there as 15 quickly as we can. 16 Chair Lauing: Ok, great. So, I’m just going to itemize for discussion those that had been changed 17 as opposed to all the other ones. So that brings us down to Number Six and Staff just gave the 18 reason why they feel like the language that they have in there is not inconsistent with ADUs. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Campbell: So, I think we tried to explain this the last time but the placement… If someone 1 where to place… Where ever someone puts a garage or a carport based on the contextual 2 garage placement requirements, it does not circumvent someone from coming forward to 3 either convert or to demolish it to create an ADU. I know we’ve kind of talked about them but 4 they are actually separate items, at least from the Staff’s perspective. We don’t see that they 5 are connected. 6 Chair Lauing: The what’s connected? Six and seven? 7 Ms. Campbell: Oh, I didn’t say anything about Number Seven. 8 Chair Lauing: Ok well because it was originally connected up here when we talked about it. 9 Ms. Campbell: I think you were talking about ADUs and the contextual garage placement. 10 Chair Lauing: Yeah. 11 Ms. Campbell: Yeah so, they are not related. Developing or requiring your garage to be placed 12 in a certain place on the property does not prevent someone from developing an ADU. It has no 13 impact. 14 Chair Lauing: Right, we discussed that in the pre-meeting. I just wanted to make sure it was on 15 the table tonight. 16 Ms. Campbell: Great. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: So, we’ll look at lights for people who want to discuss this issue and that is 1 Commissioner Alcheck. 2 Commissioner Alcheck: Ok so I’ll just sort of frame this discussion from my perspective. I don’t 3 believe that the change contemplated changes… Is a dramatic change. I think though… So, the 4 question isn’t so much whether the change right now is going to somehow make it harder or 5 less hard to do ADUs. I don’t think it will. I don’t think this change will affect… have an impact 6 on the development of ADUs. I will suggest this and maybe tonight is not the appropriate night 7 to jump into this but I do think we need to look at this requirement in general. Not the change 8 but holistically. Do we… This requirement effects I think nearly every Commissioner on here 9 except Commissioner Monk and potentially you depending on your zoning and myself at this 10 time. And the question really is, this gives the perception that we want to sort of reduce the 11 parking… the visual notion of parking. And my only issue with the ADU is, and it’s the same as 12 before, encouraging people to go into a two-step process to get a new ADU seems not so 13 prudent. So, to suggest that doesn’t discourage ADUs is to suggest that having to build a two-14 car garage or one car garage. And then come back and then either, I don’t know, I guess it’s not 15 tearing it down but remodel it so that it now is an ADU seems like we’re encouraging people to 16 do a two-step process which is more costly. And so, my issue with this isn’t so much that the 17 change creates a new problem but whether or not we really need to look at this section in 18 general (interrupted) 19 Chair Lauing: Why don’t we take it in that order unless there are other major objections? 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: My recommendation through to Council would be when can we 1 understand… because here’s the issue. Everybody is going to convert their back detached 2 garage into an ADU. So, we effectively create incentive, number one to not have any covered 3 parking in this regard because if you are building a new construction project, you’re very likely 4 going to somehow incorporate… You’re going to eliminate your covered parking because you 5 can. You can take that space and you can create an ADU. And let’s say you only have 175-feet 6 for the bonus because we were just talking about that and you come back and you say well, I’m 7 going to take the 400-square feet from this garage and make it my ADU and now I have no 8 covered parking. No big deal, I don’t need to have parking so that begs the question why would 9 a home built now be required to have covered parking but a home built last year is completely 10 exempt from it? Right because in theory, you could… If somebody did want to build an ADU in 11 conjunction with new construction, they would have to do both. They would have to build the 12 covered parking and a separate detached ADU Unit. They couldn’t build the covered 13 (interrupted) 14 Ms. Gitelman: If I could just interject, we’re getting way off topic here. I mean we’re going back 15 to the prior discussion. This is a (interrupted) 16 Commissioner Alcheck: Well, I’m just suggesting that the… Again, like I am saying, I’m not 17 taking issue with the change. I don’t think the change makes it more difficult. 18 Chair Lauing: Well, then let’s just take it to another agenda item. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: But that’s something that we need to communicate to Council. 1 Chair Lauing: Ok. 2 Commissioner Alcheck: That we should investigate this and (interrupted) 3 Chair Lauing: Ok, let’s do that. 4 Commissioner Alcheck: maybe the appropriate forum would be at a follow-up or in the ADU 5 discussion. 6 Chair Lauing: Ok. 7 Commissioner Alcheck: That’s what I would say. 8 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Gardias. 9 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. So, yes, I think that is should be pulled only because of the 10 reason that we were just talking about, the ADU separate. In terms of contextual garage 11 placement, I have a question. Does the contextual for other zones then R-1, does it fall under 12 non-objective parameters or not? 13 Ms. Campbell: There are no other zone districts that require contextual garage placement. It’s 14 only for the R-1 single-family. 15 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Gardias: Ok so it’s only for R-1. Ok so, in this case, it makes it very simple so I 1 think that my perception is that just to out of the respect to the neighborhoods, we should 2 support this Staff proposal to pretty much place the garage following the contextual 3 neighborhood placement of garages. But just because of this reason to have it to discuss it with 4 ADU together, I agree with that suggestion. 5 Chair Lauing: Ok, can we move onto Number Seven then? So, seven is the clarification 6 (interrupt) 7 Commissioner Alcheck: You’ve got a light. 8 Chair Lauing: I’m sorry, Commissioner Waldfogel. 9 Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah, I’ll just say that I support the Staff recommendation. I also 10 support reopening this discussion about contextual placement. I’m not sure we have the same 11 reason why we want to do that but I think we should discuss whether it’s working… I’m sorry, 12 we should discuss whether the contextual placement is working or not. 13 Chair Lauing: Ok, at a different agenda item. So, Number Seven, any comments on Number 14 Seven which is (interrupted) 15 Commissioner Alcheck: So, I (interrupted) 16 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Summa. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: Sorry. 1 Commissioner Summa: I just want to say I support Staffs recommendation on six and seven. 2 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Alcheck. 3 Commissioner Alcheck: Yeah, I think that the… sorry, it’s not in my… what page of the packet is 4 the change? 5 Vice-Chair Monk: 133. 6 Ms. Campbell: In the ordinance, you could take a look at the ordinance, it’s on Page 114. I’m 7 sorry, it’s 109. Packet… Oh, I thought we were talking about contextual garage placement. 8 Commissioner Alcheck: 133, ok so I just want to make sure I refer to it properly. So, look, the 9 only reason why I think this language is problematic is because in the past the interpretation 10 has essentially supported the notion that you have… Let’s say you have this carport and on two 11 sides it can be completely enclosed and on one side you have a vehicle entry. Which means it 12 has to be substantially open if you’re going to fit a car through and all the fourth and final side, 13 it had to be, excuse me, open and unenclosed. And that interruption uses to support the notion 14 that it could be fifty percent open in practice. What that means is that there’s… You could have 15 some architectural flare. My only issue with this is that we’re just encouraging what I would call 16 a four-post carport and there’s some really… You could go to Hows.com and type in the word 17 carport and you’ll see a bunch of really cool carports. There is a benefit to carports, carports are 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. used to cover cars and rarely used as storage. And so, if… this kind of tees off on essentially 1 whether or not the contextual garage placement provision even works. To a certain extent it 2 might work better if carports where used more often, I don’t know. My point is that I just would 3 prefer that this language be more specific. For example, I’d say something like completely 4 seventy-five percent unenclosed or something. Something that would allow you to use flares 5 like maybe there was an architectural design that included posts that cross at a X on the side as 6 opposed to, you know I don’t know. So, to the extent that there could be a percentage that 7 allowed us to have a little bit more architectural flair, I would prefer that. I don’t know that that 8 the intent of the code is whether or not to be. 9 Mr. Albert Yang, Senior Deputy Attorney: So, if I may clarify, the ordinance you saw 2-weeks 10 ago include this language about completely unenclosed. Since then we’ve taken the word 11 completely out to allow just that flexibility that Commissioner Alcheck is proposing. 12 Commissioner Alcheck: Sorry, I’m looking at Page 133. 13 Vice-Chair Monk: It’s not reflective in what’s (interrupted) 14 Mr. Yang: I’m sorry, Page 133 is the previous Staff report. 15 Ms. Campbell: Page 105 [unintelligible -no mic] 16 Mr. Yang: Yeah, Page 105 or Packet Page 99 would also have the (interrupted) 17 Commissioner Alcheck: So, I’m on Packet Page… So, Packet Page 99? 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Yang: Yeah, also has the new language. 1 Vice-Chair Monk: Wait so we should be looking at the third column where it says ordinance 2 page is really referring to the packet page of our current packet? 3 Mr. Yang: Yes. 4 Vice-Chair Monk: Ok. 5 Ms. Campbell: I would suggest that we look at the ordinance language which is on Packet Page 6 105. 7 Vice-Chair Monk: It’s just not clear on how it was presented. 8 Commissioner Alcheck: This is my point, I think we talked about this last week, I get it. Now it 9 doesn’t say completely, it just says open and I think maybe it would behoove us just to create a 10 definition because it’s come up. Right, what does it mean? Does it mean that it can be fifty 11 percent enclosed? Can it have a pony wall? Can it have… I mean let me put it you this way, 12 ninety percent of these parking structures have a curb because the foundation is required. 13 Especially attached garages… attached carports. So, if you have an attached carport, you’re 14 going to have a curb and if your carport requires that you have the power for alternative 15 vehicles like electric vehicles, then you might need some portion… There might be a header 16 involved. I’m just saying choose a percentage, decide what you are comfortable with that you 17 think it reflective of the intent of the code that might be more appropriate. I would suggest a 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. percentage because that’s easy to use. An architect can say we’re going to use this system and 1 that represents sixty percent or eight percent open, just so that you don’t have a situation 2 where they come with a design or a drawing and you’re like that doesn’t really meet our 3 concept of open. And then the question is well what is your definition of open? The idea here is 4 let’s just create clarity so that there is no dispute later. 5 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Waldfogel. 6 Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah just another point of clarification. I think the reason why 7 carports or a reason why carports have been popular is they don’t count as FAR and 8 (interrupted) 9 Ms. Campbell: Can I just clarify for you? 10 Commissioner Waldfogel: Please do because this (interrupted) 11 Ms. Campbell: Any required covered parking in the R-1 district, whether it’s a carport or a 12 garage, counts as floor area towards the site. So, the differentiation, on the Staff perspective, is 13 we look at these two things exactly the same way when we’re evaluating a proposed project or 14 a new one. It all counts towards floor area, it all counts towards lot coverage. 15 Commissioner Waldfogel: Is that a newer interpretation? 16 Ms. Campbell: No, not at all. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Waldfogel: So, since 2006? Because I’ve seen… I mean I’ve seen a historical trend 1 of carports being built and then subsequently post final being enclosed, turned into garages. 2 Ms. Campbell: We… Yes, and that’s ok because it counts as floor area regardless so we do have 3 people who enclose their carports but it has no impact to their floor area or lot coverage. 4 Commissioner Waldfogel: Ok so if somebody... I’m sorry to keep dwelling on ADUs but if 5 somebody replaces a required covered parking space with an ADU. And then they are required 6 to replace that with something else, can they replace that with a carport or will that just be 7 with uncovered parking for that second phase? 8 Ms. Campbell: The… When you construct an ADU, you can remove the uncovered space and it 9 can be… I’m sorry, you can take away your covered space and it can be remained uncovered. 10 You don’t have to make a new covered parking space when you (interrupted) 11 Commissioner Waldfogel: Right so they… so if you convert a garage, can you then build a 12 carport? 13 Ms. Campbell: If you have the available floor area and lot coverage. 14 Commissioner Waldfogel: Ok but if you’ve consumed the floor area in the conversion and you 15 don’t have any others, then you’ll just be building uncovered. 16 Ms. Campbell: That’s right, yes. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Waldfogel: Ok, that’s just what I want to understand. 1 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Gardias. 2 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. So, there is a reason and I believe the reason is… And look 3 at… Go to Green Meadows and there is plenty of Eichler houses in those so houses from the 50s 4 and 40s that were built over there. You may find lots of carports that are in the corners of the 5 houses and pretty much like 50-years ago or 60-years ago a number of the houses were 6 designed this way were pretty much the car was part of the house. It was like a feature that 7 was added to the house, this was pretty much that era so having a carport that has tools makes 8 perfect sense from the perspective of the history of architecture and also of usage of the car. I 9 think that just having limitations of the additional wall, which we were just talking about the 10 third wall, would force the design there to specifically design carports in this way and I don’t 11 agree with this. So, for this reason, I propose to retain the language as it’s been used because I 12 believe there is a reason behind this. Thank you. 13 Chair Lauing: So, my understanding is you oppose Number Seven? 14 Commissioner Gardias: Oppose the change. 15 Chair Lauing: Right so what we’re going to need to do here is that in each of these tables we’re 16 going to have to come up with a motion and then some exception where I think we’re going to 17 have to vote individually. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Gitelman: Can I make a recommendation on that process piece (interrupted) 1 Chair Lauing: Yep. 2 Ms. Gitelman: And I want to get back to Commissioner Gardias’s opinion because I believe what 3 we’ve done is make a little editorial change that doesn’t really change the meaning of this 4 section. So, if you like the way it stands in the code, I don’t know why you would oppose the 5 change, but getting back to process. What I would suggest is that the Commission entertain a 6 motion to… I mean we have really tried… Let me step back, we have tried to either explain or 7 modify all of the recommendations that you pulled in your last discussion. So, we believe that 8 we have addressed them all with the possible exception of the leaf blowers. We think more 9 work is needed so we would appreciate a motion to include all of these items, save the leaf 10 blowers, in your recommendation to Council. Once you have that motion on the floor and 11 seconded, then you can entertain amendments if any Commissioners would want to make 12 changes to that motion (interrupted) 13 Chair Lauing: Yeah. 14 Ms. Gitelman: On specific items. 15 Commissioner Alcheck: Let me just get a question on this then. I mean I guess the question is if 16 we treat them the same, same floor area and there’s no bonus, what difference does it make if 17 a carport had three walls? I mean I’m must like what difference would it make to the Planning 18 Staff or to an Architectural Review Board is someone decided not to have a garage door and if 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. someone didn’t want to put a garage door on. I mean I guess my question is what difference 1 does it make? What do we care if a carport in the rear has three walls or a wall that’s eighty… 2 how is that significant? 3 Ms. Campbell: So, Staff, we don’t ever look at that. We just look for your required covered 4 parking. I think somehow this may be tied into the other section, the contextual garage 5 placement where Staff is saying that it applies to a carport. So, maybe if we’re changing the way 6 we look a carport so it doesn’t somehow get included in that contextual placement discussion. 7 So that’s… So, from a Staff’s perspective from the planner, we look at these things exactly the 8 same way so but I do think maybe there’s a correlation between these definitions and the other 9 section that we were talking about, the contextual garage placement. And if somehow, we 10 don’t include carports, then maybe it then makes a difference on how we define what a carport 11 is but right now, we’ve always treated carports and garages the same for contextual garage 12 placement. And so, we’ve never even… We’ve never had an issue about figuring out what is it. 13 Is it a garage, is it a carport? It hasn’t been an issue for us. 14 Commissioner Alcheck: Alright so I’ll respond and say that I don’t know that that’s true. That 15 you’ve always treated them the same way. I think there are probably some examples that they 16 haven’t been treated the same way and I think the argument that we had the last two times we 17 went through the carport change was that we didn’t… The Commission did not agree that that 18 was the intent to treat them the same way. I get that this Commission decides that it is not an 19 issue for them which is fine and I don’t particularly have an issue with it myself anymore. But I 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. do think that we should revisit the issue to determine whether it’s actually doing what we want 1 it to do and I actually don’t think me and Commissioner Waldfogel differ on this issue. The 2 question is how much more time are we going to spend on this definition (interrupted) 3 Chair Lauing: Well, that’s right. 4 Commissioner Alcheck: That seems like it’s doing nothing and if it’s not doing anything, my 5 comment which just provides a definition for open so that there is no vagueness. So, if you say 6 open means fifty percent open, then you’re done. Just like what’s a full wall, what’s a partial 7 wall? Because if a partial wall counts then we’re done and I think the idea here isn’t to grapple 8 with this. The idea is to give the people who are building projects in the City clarity so that they 9 don’t have to guess what we’re getting at, that’s all. 10 Ms. Gitelman: So, if you would have a motion on the floor, I think Commissioner Alcheck could 11 suggest an amendment to change that to read which is at least fifty percent open on two or 12 more sides. 13 Chair Lauing: Right so the last pull one, if anyone wants to discuss it, is Number Twelve and 14 then we can put a motion together for the whole first set. 15 Ms. Gitelman: Ok. 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Monk: Looking at this chart that we were handed out today where it says 11/29/17 1 report page, that column, my November 29th report ends at around Page 99. So, I don’t what 2 your page numbers are referring too. I’m a little confused. 3 Mr. Yang: Packet Pages. 4 Vice-Chair Monk: My packet ends at less than 100 pages. 5 Mr. Yang: From today’s meeting? 6 Vice-Chair Monk: No, from last week. 7 Mr. Yang: Yeah so last meeting Staff’s report was republished in today's packet as well and so 8 (interrupted) 9 Vice-Chair Monk: So, these pages are referring to (interrupted) 10 Mr. Yang: Today’s packet. 11 Vice-Chair Monk: Ok, the way it’s labeled is entirely confusing. I don’t know why you’re just… 12 So, we’re… These pages are only referring to the Packet of today? Of our… you see that the top 13 of it is labeled as 11/29, ok whatever. This is very confusing. 14 Ms. Campbell: It’s all in today’s packet. 15 Vice-Chair Monk: Ok, thank you. 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Any other comments on twelve, right? I don’t see any other lights. 1 Vice-Chair Monk: I just found where twelve is. 2 Chair Lauing: Ok so seeing no other lights can we get a motion, to begin with, to approve the 3 first table, which is our second reading of this, and then we can entertain amendments? 4 Director Gitelman, do you want us to opine on seventeen with an amendment in non-support 5 or are you pulling seventeen from this table? 6 Ms. Gitelman: I think it’s up to the Commission. You know one option would be for you to say 7 we recommend furthering all of the items except Number Seventeen which needs further work. 8 Chair Lauing: Ok so we’ll just keep that as part of the amendments that we’ll work on here. 9 Alright so do I have a motion to accept the Table 1 part of this code review? 10 MOTION #1 11 Commissioner Waldfogel: So, moved. 12 Chair Lauing: Waldfogel moves, second? 13 SECOND 14 Vice-Chair Monk: Second. 15 Commissioner Alcheck: So, just to be clear, you’re moving the table as is or changed? 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Waldfogel: I’m moving the table with seventeen pulled. 1 Commissioner Alcheck: Only? 2 Commissioner Waldfogel: Only seventeen not forwarded. 3 Chair Lauing: Ok. 4 Vice-Chair Monk: I thought you talked about the fifty percent or is that not happening? 5 Commissioner Waldfogel: Well, that would be an amendment. 6 Vice-Chair Monk: I thought that’s what they said they were doing? 7 Commissioner Alcheck: Would you like me to make a friendly amendment? Can I make a 8 friendly amendment? 9 Chair Lauing: Yeah wait, let’s make sure we have the motion correctly. What was the fifty 10 percent reference? 11 Vice-Chair Monk: I thought you said something, I just want to make sure I understand. 12 Ms. Gitelman: No, was suggesting that Commissioner Alcheck would offer that as an 13 amendment, that’s not our proposal. The proposal stands as its written. 14 Chair Lauing: Ok so the motion is to approve the initial eighteen on the proposed code 15 amendments with the exception of seventeen. 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Waldfogel: Yes. 1 Chair Lauing: That’s right and the second agrees with that? 2 Vice-Chair Monk: I’d like to hear what the friendly amendment is. 3 Chair Lauing: Well, we have to have the motion on the floor first. So, the motion right now is 4 everything gets approved except the… We don’t approve the gas leaf blowers and then there 5 would be amendments. 6 SECONDER WITHDRAWN 7 Vice-Chair Monk: I withdraw my second. 8 Chair Lauing: Ok. 9 Commissioner Gardias: Yeah, with the whole respect… I’m sorry, I’m going to just cut into this 10 discussion. At a certain point in time we stopped at the number, whatever it was, the number 11 about the garages and then we jumped to the conclusion. Then the rest… so then we jumped to 12 seventeen and then the discussion is over. I was having comments to some other item and I 13 don’t feel comfortable just to close on this issue. So, if you don’t mind just to conclude the 14 discussion, I would just like to make additional comments to some other item within this. 15 Chair Lauing: We can still do that in the context of the motion that’s on the table, that’s no 16 problem. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Monk: [unintelligible -no mic], I withdrew my second. 1 Chair Lauing: If there’s a second. 2 Commissioner Alcheck: Can I just ask a quick question? 3 Chair Lauing: Wait, hang on, there are too many questions. 4 Commissioner Alcheck: We said revised though. 5 Chair Lauing: Right. 6 Commissioner Alcheck: So, it is (interrupted) 7 Chair Lauing: That’s what I’m saying is that I thought we were only going to discuss the pull 8 items so that’s what was my understanding. If people want to comment on the revised items, 9 that’s perfectly acceptable as well. 10 Commissioner Alcheck: Ok so I’m willing to make a friendly amendment. 11 Chair Lauing: Well, we don’t even have a second right now. 12 SECOND 13 Commissioner Summa: I will second. 14 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Ok we have a second from Commissioner Summa and we know what that article 1 is. We can still discuss other items that are on this list of eighteen items so if you want to raise a 2 question on that Mr. (Note-Commissioner) Gardias, please go ahead. 3 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. Thank you but just remind me so there’s a motion on the 4 floor to pretty much to move it to the Council with pulling Number Seventeen? 5 Chair Lauing: That’s the current motion (interrupted) 6 Commissioner Gardias: That’s the current motion 7 Chair Lauing: And there are plans to do additional amendments to not support other items. 8 AMENDMENT #1 9 Commissioner Gardias: Ok good. So, pretty much if it’s a case of the amendments, then I would 10 just like to propose the amendment to pull item Number Fourteen, remove restricted election 11 time for the PTC Officers and combine it with the discussion on the by-laws. And the reason is 12 that pretty much I just personally I don’t feel comfortable just separating those two parts. 13 Chair Lauing: Right so we can get a second and vote on that but all we’re doing here is just 14 taking out November and it is planned during the retreat agenda to discuss this again in the 15 context of the by-laws so that’s already scheduled. Voting for this or against this tonight does 16 not change that policy because we can vote to change our own PTC rules and regulations. Ok so 17 is there a second on this? 18 Commissioner Alcheck: So, can you separate them? [unintelligible – no mic]? 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: We’ll just let it die and you make your own motion, there’s no second to his so go 1 ahead. 2 AMENDMENT #1 FAILED BECAUSE OF THE A LACK OF A SECOND. 3 Commissioner Alcheck: Ok so look, I’m just going to say it because I feel like to, to be consistent 4 with the previous. I think that the changes to contextual garage placement provision should be 5 apart of a more involved discussion. And the effective change of this means that individual 6 subject to the contextual garage placement provision won’t be able to avoid having to build a 7 rear parking facility. And so (interrupted) 8 Chair Lauing: So, excuse me, this is your motion? 9 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT #2 10 Commissioner Alcheck: My point is that this is a substantial change, I believe change is the 11 intent, past Commissions have pulled it and I feel obligated to suggest that we continue to pull 12 that item unit it gets reviewed more holistically because it’s not (interrupted) 13 Chair Lauing: So, that’s your proposed amendment relative to Number Six. 14 Commissioner Alcheck: That’s my six and I would suggest (interrupted) 15 Chair Lauing: Not supposed to discuss until we have a second. 16 Vice-Chair Monk: What is the motion [Note-amendment] doing? 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: The motion [Note-amendment] is to not (interrupted) 1 Commissioner Alcheck: I would suggest that we pull Number Six. 2 Chair Lauing: Approve item Number Six. 3 Commissioner Gardias: Isn’t it pulled? 4 Commissioner Alcheck: No, it’s not pulled. 5 Chair Lauing: Nothing is pulled right now. 6 Commissioner Alcheck: Except for seventeen. 7 Commissioner Waldfogel: Pull means that it was revised between the last meeting and this 8 meeting. 9 Commissioner Gardias: Oh, I see. 10 Commissioner Waldfogel: That’s what pull means in this (interrupted)[unintelligible] 11 SECOND 12 Commissioner Gardias: So, it’s a cow, right? So, I’m going to second this. 13 Chair Lauing: So, now we have a motion [Note-amendment], seconded, the speaker’s already 14 (interrupted) 15 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: I don’t even need to speak to any motion [Note-amendment]. 1 Chair Lauing: You did, that’s what I am saying. Did you want to comment on that? 2 Commissioner Gardias: No. 3 Vice-Chair Monk: [unintelligible] substitute motion? 4 Commissioner Waldfogel: No, it’s just an amendment. 5 Chair Lauing: No, it’s an amendment. 6 Commissioner Alcheck: It’s a friendly amendment so it has to be accepted by the maker first 7 which is why it doesn’t (interrupted) 8 Commissioner Gardias: So, it doesn’t need to be seconded. 9 Chair Lauing: The amendment does have to be seconded. 10 Commissioner Alcheck: No, it’s not an unfriendly amendment. I offered a friendly amendment 11 so, in theory, he has to say that he doesn’t accept it first before whatever. 12 Commissioner Waldfogel: Ok so yeah, I won’t accept it. 13 Commissioner Alcheck: Ok. 14 Commissioner Waldfogel: I’d rather just go through this process. 15 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Ok, are there any other amendments to these first eighteen? 1 Commissioner Suma: Yes. [Note- everyone started talking at once] 2 Commissioner Alcheck: If it’s an unfriendly amendment, we’ve got to vote on it. 3 Chair Lauing: Ok, alright so we’re going to vote on that. All in favor of the amendment, signal by 4 raising your hand. 5 Commissioner Waldfogel: This is to remove this from (interrupted) 6 Commissioner Summa: To remove six. 7 Commissioner Waldfogel: To remove six. 8 Vice-Chair Monk: And just to clarify, this was from this person, [Note- Ronny Bodner] had sent a 9 letter in last time on this, right? 10 Chair Lauing: I don’t know. Ok, opposed? So, it’s a tie so it doesn’t pass. 11 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT FAILED WITH A VOTE 3(Alcheck, Monk, Gardias) -3(Summa, 12 Waldfogel, Lauing) 13 Chair Lauing: Other amendments? Commissioner Summa’s light is on. 14 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT #3 15 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Summa: I don’t know if I’ll have any support for this but I would still… I’m still 1 uncomfortable with Number Eighteen which is the floor area exemption for trash enclosures in 2 the CD district. I don’t need to talk to it much because I think I talked to it a lot before but I 3 don’t think that trash areas are the same as resource conservation energy facilities. It’s clear if 4 you read the code that they are not and I don’t see a reason to exempt these. 5 Chair Lauing: Is there a second to that? Ok. 6 SECOND 7 Commissioner Waldfogel: I’ll second that but I just want to ask Staff a question. 8 Commissioner Summa: Ok. 9 Chair Lauing: Ok, Commissioner Waldfogel seconds. 10 Commissioner Waldfogel: We did discuss this at the last meeting and Assistant Director Lait said 11 that he would get back to us on what the intent was. Including resource conservation energy 12 facilities in this, I mean what does that mean in the downtown districts? 13 Ms. Gitelman: I’m sorry, we dropped the ball on that one. I don’t know off the top of my head. 14 Do you have any insights? 15 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Campbell: And so just to kind to add to that conversation, I do think that was one of the 1 concerns you raised about maybe how it might impact the uses, is that correct in the CD 2 district? 3 Commissioner Waldfogel: Well, it’s just that I believe the code that references allows up to 4 1,500 or 5,000-square feet for this resource conservation energy facility use which probably 5 doesn’t make economic sense in this context but I just don’t know why we would want to grab 6 that into this. I thought there would be some clarification on that. 7 Commissioner Summa: To be clear, my concern was in letter C of this, that you added trash as 8 an area designated to be removed and refuse storage. I don’t have a problem with the special 9 resource areas. I have a problem with adding Citywide an exemption for trash areas. 10 Chair Lauing: Did Staff have any comment on that? Particularly in light of the revisions? 11 Ms. Campbell: I think I tried to express that in the Staff report so we actually have been 12 interrupting this code section to apply to trash areas because… Let me find the exact language 13 here but (interrupted) 14 Chair Lauing: So, you’re saying that the words that you have in there are now codifying what 15 you’re already doing? 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Campbell: Exactly. It’s just really being specific so people understand that yes, these 1 conservation type uses includes recycling, compost and those types of facilities because it’s all a 2 part of that effort. 3 Commissioner Waldfogel: [unintelligible -no mic] 4 Ms. Campbell: Are you looking at the new Staff report or the old Staff report? 5 Commissioner Waldfogel: I’m looking at this week’s Staff report. 6 Ms. Campbell: Ok so for this weeks Staff report it’s on page… Packet Page 100 and in this 7 paragraph, it only talks… I was specific about the use. I’m sorry, not seventeen, I’m looking at 8 the wrong one, eighteen, yeah. So, it talks about it towards the bottom of that page and it goes 9 over to page 101. 10 Commissioner Waldfogel: Right and my feeling on this is I agree with you’re trying to do which 11 is to allow trash enclosures. What I disagree with the way that you're doing which is that you’re 12 also allowing some other things. Specifically, this cross-reference to 184212, which probably 13 doesn’t make sense in the CD district but this is just a sloppy way to write code. 14 Vice-Chair Monk: I just want to say that this was discussed at our last meeting extensively so if 15 we’re going to be reviewing all the items that we previously discussed. I don’t think that it’s fair 16 that when we continue discussions, that we have an opportunity to always go back and revisit 17 all these things. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: We’re making amendments now to what we're interested in approving. 1 Commissioner Alcheck: Can I ask a quick question to the seconder? 2 Chair Lauing: To the seconder? 3 Commissioner Alcheck: Yeah. 4 Chair Lauing: Yeah. 5 Commissioner Alcheck: Commissioner Waldfogel, it sounds to me like you’re pulling this for a 6 very different reason than the maker of the motion. Is it possible that you have an amendment 7 to the language of the actual ordinance that would satisfy you so that you wouldn’t pull this 8 item? Could you carve out the issue that you’re concerned with so that it could move forward 9 with a more appropriate… I understand your concern about the sloppiness so is there… Do you 10 have anything in mind that could solve that problem without having sort of conflicting reasons 11 for pulling the item? 12 Commissioner Waldfogel: It’s a good question. I think we’d have to write the whole section 13 because the problem is we’re mixing cats and dogs in the same piece of code. And I think we 14 need to… If we’re going to update code for clarity, we should update it for clarity. 15 Commissioner Alcheck: So, I guess maybe it would be appropriate to sort of specifically direct 16 them as to the reasoning because if the reasoning… I could support a motion to revise it 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. according to specific instructions but for the reason because trash enclosures should be 1 included in FAR if that makes any sense to the motion makers. 2 Commissioner Waldfogel: Right, the problem with this is that if we yank these other 3 definitions… If we yank the cross-reference 1842120 here, then we’re affecting other districts 4 because what this is doing is it’s removing the restriction in the CD district. 5 6 Commissioner Alcheck: No, I think I actually completely understand. I’m just saying I would 7 support a motion that articulated the very reason why you would suggest revision as opposed 8 to the suggestion that the revision be made because of trash enclosures should somehow be 9 counted towards FAR. 10 Ms. Gitelman: Through the Chair, can I offer a suggestion? 11 Chair Lauing: Yes, please. 12 Ms. Gitelman: I mean I think I understand the concern and I think a potential remedy could be 13 to put that phrase that we’ve suggested, eliminating except for in the CD district and move it 14 down to subparagraph A. So, the part about resource conservation and that stuff (interrupted) 15 Commissioner Alcheck: What page are you on? 16 Ms. Gitelman: Would still be qualified by (interrupted) 17 Chair Lauing: 101. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Gitelman: accepting in the CD district but we get the benefit of these refuge, storage, trash 1 and etc. Do you see what I mean? Would that address your concern Commissioner Waldfogel? 2 Commissioner Waldfogel: A just a minute, I need a minute to parse that. So, if you read this 3 paragraph A and paragraph B are both kinds of out of context for the CD district and we had a 4 discussion about the hazardous materials section that there restricted… They are otherwise 5 restricted in the CD district but there’s just kind of a weirdness about having a code section that 6 sort of allow them in in the CD district and then you have to cross-reference to another code 7 section that doesn’t allow them. So, I mean this is just not the right way to write code. 8 Ms. Gitelman: Would the Commission consider an amendment acknowledging the intent of this 9 change and suggesting a correction to this section? I do understand your concern. 10 Commissioner Waldfogel: So, what would that… I mean I’m open to that. What would that look 11 like? Just direction to Staff to draft something that captures this intent of allowing trash but not 12 allowing these other uses? 13 Ms. Gitelman: In the CD, that’s correct. 14 Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah, I would be supportive of that. 15 Commissioner Summa: See in general, my concern was this didn’t do enough for the CD which 16 is a very constrained zone because it just is. It’s built out and constrained and there’s no place 17 but what it does… And that’s why I originally thought it would be better as site and 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. development standard in the CD. And instead, what it does is actually increase the things in all 1 the other zones through subparagraph C. It increased the floor area reductions. I didn’t think it 2 did enough for the CD zone and I thought it went to… I thought it increased the FAR reductions 3 in other zones which I didn’t see helping the CD zone. It didn’t seem to achieve the purpose 4 that Staff intended. But we can just vote on this, I mean. 5 Chair Lauing: Would the concept that Commissioner Waldfogel is working on help that or no, 6 not necessarily? 7 Commissioner Summa: [unintelligible -no mic] 8 Commissioner Alcheck: I don’t think his change suggests including anything in FAR the way that 9 Commissioner Summa would like the trash enclosure to be included in FAR. 10 Chair Lauing: I’m just wondering if there’s some way that we can collaborate on the wording so 11 that isn’t just off into a black hole and then it comes back. 12 Commissioner Alcheck: Right but you might lose support for the motion if you include that. I 13 wouldn’t support a motion that included that. 14 Chair Lauing: Well, may need two different ones. 15 Ms. Gitelman: I do think that Commissioner Summa and Commissioner Waldfogel are talking 16 about two different things. So, I don’t know that we have a coherent motion or amendment. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Are you withdrawing your second Commissioner Waldfogel to the original motion 1 [Note – amendment]? 2 Commissioner Alcheck: No, to the amendment. 3 Chair Lauing: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, the original amendment or are you saying that you 4 would leave it in there but you would want to have it rephrased in the way that you described? 5 SECONDER FOR AMENDMENT #3 WITHDRAWN 6 AMENDMENT #4 7 Commissioner Waldfogel: So, I’ll withdraw my second but I would still like to see… I would like 8 to introduce… I’d like to propose another amendment to direct Staff to redraft this in a way 9 that captures this intent of trash but doesn’t capture these other unintended uses. 10 Chair Lauing: So, let’s take those in order. He withdrew his second so is there any second to 11 Commissioner Summa’s original motion [Note -amendment]? 12 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT #3 FAILED WITH A LACK OF A SECOND 13 Chair Lauing: Then in that case that dies and there is a new amendment on the table from 14 Commissioner Waldfogel that needs a second. 15 SECOND 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: I’ll second that. 1 Chair Lauing: And is there any further discussion on that? 2 Commissioner Alcheck: I have no comment. 3 Chair Lauing: Then all in favor of that amendment… I’m sorry. 4 Commissioner Summa: I’m sorry, could you repeat his [unintelligible]? 5 Chair Lauing: Sure, could you repeat your motion[Note-amendment]? 6 Commissioner Waldfogel: Approximately, yeah, it’s getting late. Directing Staff to redraft this 7 code to permit trash enclosures in CD districts but do not permit these other uses like resource 8 conservation energy facilities. 9 Chair Lauing: Ok, that’s moved and that’s seconded. All in favor of that amendment say aye? 10 One, two, three. Opposed? 11 Commissioner Alcheck: So, we’re treating this as an unfriendly amendment? 12 [Note -Male:] Yes. 13 Chair Lauing: Sorry, let’s revote. In favor of [note- Commissioner] Waldfogel’s amendment is 14 four… five and opposed? One. 15 AMENDMENT #4 PASSED 4(Alcheck, Lauing, Monk, Waldfogel, Gardias) -1 (Summa). 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: So, any other items that were listed as revised instead of no change that 1 somebody wants to chat about? 2 FRIENDLY AMENDMENT #5 3 Commissioner Alcheck: I’ll make a quick friendly amendment that or I would hope to make a 4 quick friendly amendment that we just revise language in Number Seven to reflect fifty percent 5 open as opposed to the vague term open. So, that anybody reading it understands what we 6 mean. 7 Ms. Gitelman: You mean at least fifty percent. 8 Commissioner Alcheck: Yeah at least fifty percent. It says completely open and I would say at 9 least fifty… I would just like to define that term so that people aren’t like what does that mean? 10 Vice-Chair Monk: Can it say mostly open or does that not (interrupted) 11 Commissioner Alcheck: I’m trying to create accurate… less discrepancy. Mostly is what, fifty-one 12 percent in your mind? I mean I guess what I’m trying to do (interrupted) 13 Chair Lauing: That’s good. 14 Vice-Chair Monk: It just seems like an easier standard that we can agree on. 15 Commissioner Alcheck: At least fifty or (interrupted) 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. SECOND 1 Chair Lauing: I would second that. 2 Commissioner Alcheck: Which one? 3 Chair Lauing: What you said, fifty percent. 4 Commissioner Alcheck: At least fifty percent, ok. So, are you treating this as a friendly or no? 5 Commissioner Waldfogel: I’ll accept that as friendly partially because I think you’ve convinced 6 me that the difference between carport and garage isn’t really material. 7 Commissioner Alcheck: Right so I’m just trying to create no uncertainty. 8 Chair Lauing: Ok, any other discussion on that point? Alright, in favor of carport and garages 9 definition is greater than fifty percent. One, two, three, four. Opposed? Two. 10 FRIENDLY AMENDMENT #5 PASSED 4(Waldfogel, Lauing, Alcheck, Monk) -2(Summa, Gardias) 11 Commissioner Alcheck: No, I didn’t oppose it. 12 Chair Lauing: I know, you got it, she did. She opposed it. 13 Commissioner Alcheck: Who else opposed it? 14 Chair Lauing: Gardias. 15 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: So, it’s an unfriendly amendment. 1 Chair Lauing: It’s four to two. It’s fine, we’re fine. 2 Commissioner Alcheck: Because I thought Asher [Note – Commissioner Waldfogel] said he’ll 3 treat it as a friendly amendment which means we don’t vote on it. 4 Chair Lauing: Well, we did so we’re done. Now we have to vote on the original amendment 5 which is… I mean sorry, the original motion which now has its amendments which is this first 6 Table One, alright? 7 Ms. Gitelman: Table One without leaf blowers, with the amendment regarding trash enclosures 8 and this latest amendment about at least fifty percent open for carports. 9 Chair Lauing: Correct. So, all in favor of that motion as amendment say aye? Three, four and 10 opposed? One. Abstention? Where are you? 11 Commissioner Alcheck: I support it. 12 Chair Lauing: Ok, sorry, I didn’t see you're (interrupted) 13 Commissioner Alcheck: I thought I was one of the four. 14 Chair Lauing: One of the five. 15 Ms. Gitelman: So, just for the minutes, it’s five in favor with Commissioner Gardias voting no. 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. MOTION PASSED 5(Summa, Lauing, Monk, Waldfogel, Alcheck) – 1(Gardias) 1 Chair Lauing: Correct. Time check here, we’re now at 10:10. 2 Vice-Chair Monk: Would we like to invite him to speak to his distention? 3 Chair Lauing: Sure, if you’d like too. 4 Commissioner Gardias: Sure, thank you. I disagreed that should be our practice. So, the reason 5 that I voted no pretty much is because I didn’t support inclusion in the election departing PTC 6 Officers. 7 Vice-Chair Monk: Are you aware that that’s an item before the Council? That they are going to 8 be changing that in the near future? 9 Commissioner Gardias: I’m sorry? 10 Vice-Chair Monk: There might be a change to the term limits and we’re going to address it at 11 our (interrupted) 12 Commissioner Gardias: Yes, I know that. I know that but pretty much that was the reason. That 13 I already just spoke about this and I am aware about some upcoming changes but you know it 14 doesn’t make me comfortable supporting this just because of the reason specifically that we 15 will just discuss by-law separately. So, just having part of the law approved today, part of the 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. law discussed, later on, doesn’t give me a complete picture and also it just… With no vote, I 1 want to just abstain the comments that I made in the past. Thank you. 2 Chair Lauing: So, we still have ten of these items. Let’s take a… is it essential that we get these 3 things finished tonight relative to your calendar for spring to the Council? 4 Ms. Gitelman: We would really like to try because we have a full agenda that first meeting back 5 in January (interrupted) 6 Chair Lauing: I agree, we do. 7 Ms. Gitelman: And (interrupted) 8 Chair Lauing: So the things that we still have to discuss after this, very briefly, is an outline of 9 the agenda for the retreat and then any other agenda items. So, I don’t think beyond this is too 10 long but I want to be respectful of people’s time. I’m not sure that all these are going to be 11 controversial either so I am personally happy to jump right in but I’d like to hear comments 12 from colleagues. 13 Vice-Chair Monk: Apologizes, I thought at our pre-meeting we did discuss fourteen and making 14 a change that was different than what was presented in the packet to Commissioner Gardias’s 15 point. Did we decide to take out the last part of unless? 16 Commissioner Alcheck: Yeah, that’s true. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Monk: Didn’t we change that? 1 Ms. Gitelman: I mean you could do that but we just [unintelligible](interrupted) 2 Chair Lauing: What we said was… All we did was sort of take away the November thing. That 3 means that we can do whatever we wanted to do and we wanted to make it more specific 4 when we reviewed other of our PTC procedures. 5 Vice-Chair Monk: I thought we discussed removing the language that says or Commission 6 sooner expires. Is that currently not what’s in there? 7 Ms. Gitelman: This Commission added that at the last meeting is my understanding. 8 Chair Lauing: So, yes, we did discuss that. 9 Vice-Chair Monk: Ok, I think we probably should have looked at this more closely. 10 Chair Lauing: So, not hearing any objections, I’m willing to try to pour through this. 11 Commissioner Alcheck: I’ll just suggest that maybe you set a time limit because I… it just seems 12 to me that this is going to Council in March or April, then maybe January doesn’t have to be the 13 date. I just don’t know that we should spend an hour so the question is how much time are we 14 willing to spend (interrupted) 15 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: I don’t think anybody disagrees with that but it’d just be nice if you had some 1 items that are closed as opposed to continued. And if we find that some of these are 2 controversial (interrupted) 3 Commissioner Alcheck: I’m just suggesting setting a time, that’s all I’m saying. 4 Mr. Yang: I will say that we would especially like to have the Commissioners feedback on 5 twenty-four and twenty-five, the ADU and the density bonus revisions to conform with state 6 law. We’d like to get those to the Council in January if possible. 7 Chair Lauing: Alright, let’s start with twenty-four and twenty-five. How about we have a 30-8 minute limit on the rest of the meeting, which is 10:45? 9 MOTION 10 Commissioner Waldfogel: I’ll move twenty-four and twenty-five. 11 Commissioner Alcheck: Can we just separate those out? 12 Chair Lauing: We are. 13 Commissioner Alcheck: No, I mean (interrupted) 14 Chair Lauing: He just did. 15 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: No, I mean like completely. Just separate them out, move them to 1 Council or do they have to go altogether? 2 Chair Lauing: I differ that (interrupted) 3 Commissioner Waldfogel: [unintelligible] we can separate it out if we want too. Those are the 4 urgencies. 5 Commissioner Alcheck: Ok, sorry. 6 Chair Lauing: So a second on twenty-four and five [Note – twenty-five]? 7 Commissioner Alcheck: Can you… I’m sorry, I just want to grab the page. You seconded it? Can 8 we just take a vote? 9 Chair Lauing: I didn’t but I can. 10 Commissioner Alcheck: No one seconded it? 11 Chair Lauing: No. 12 SECOND 13 Commissioner Alcheck: I’ll second that motion. 14 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Summa. 15 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Summa: This is a question for Staff. I know that the housing…. The density bonus 1 law hasn’t been used that much in Palo Alto but a couple times it’s come up that this provision 2 that you have to show the actual cost reductions. It’s come up a couple times from members of 3 the public that that was not actually done. Do we need to make that… Do we need to somehow 4 make that stronger so a document… So, there’s no confusion from members of the public so a 5 document that shows the actual cost reduction can be found or are you satisfied with that the 6 way it is? Am I making my… Am I making sense? 7 Ms. Gitelman: Well, I think that the change in state law means that we can’t require this 8 analysis and by making this change to the code, I hope it will be clear to the public that we are 9 not going to be able to require this analysis. 10 Commissioner Summa: Ok so the change in the state law actually took that provision away? 11 Ms. Gitelman: Right. 12 Commissioner Summa: Ok, thank you for clarifying that. 13 Vice-Chair Monk: So, referring to… Is that ok if I (interrupted) 14 Chair Lauing: Go ahead. 15 Vice-Chair Monk: Item twenty-four, accessory and junior accessory dwelling units, are we still 16 calling them JADUs because I didn’t see that defined in our definitions earlier? 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Campbell: No, the… What you’re seeing for this packet… This Item Number Five is just 1 addressing the state-mandated changes. The things that we talked about in the study session 2 are not part of the code amendments. Yeah, that’s for a future discussion when we come back 3 in the spring. 4 Commissioner Alcheck: So, I’m just going to ask the question I asked 5 [unintelligible](interrupted) 6 Vice-Chair Monk: I had… So, I just… I guess I’m confused by seeing the JADU language here 7 when I don’t know if that’s what we’re going to be calling it going forward. And then with the 8 addition on the minimum lot sizes, what’s the reasoning by adding this; pros and cons on the 9 planned community? 10 Ms. Campbell: Could you tell me what packet page you’re on, please? 11 Vice-Chair Monk: We’re looking at item Number Twenty-Four so that would be the ordinance is 12 on Page 116 and 117, right? 13 Commissioner Alcheck: Yeah, I think… Can I just say something? I think it would be helpful if we 14 understood what parts of twenty-four and twenty-five went beyond the requirements of the 15 state. If none of them do (interrupted) 16 Vice-Chair Monk: That’s what I am reading so I just want to know (interrupted) 17 Ms. Gitelman: None of them do. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: If none of them do, then I don’t even think we really have anything to 1 talk about because we have to pass it. 2 Chair Lauing: Right, they are state laws. 3 Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah, then you can call the question. 4 Chair Lauing: Right. 5 Commissioner Alcheck: I’m only asking because I think… We just had a broad discussion about 6 ADUs that is much broader than these comments and I think we still need to have that 7 discussion. And then maybe then we’ll make amendments that will enhance the ADU ordinance 8 but I just want to understand. My understanding is that these two, the state requires that we 9 adopt these to comply with their laws and if we don’t, we will be out of compliance. 10 Chair Lauing: Yeah, absolutely. Right? 11 Mr. Yang: Yes and no. I don’t think that we would agree that we would be out of compliance 12 with state law. We think these are all basically clarifying changes and the changes in state law 13 were also essentially clarifying but we think that these do make it absolutely clear that we are 14 aligned with state law. 15 Chair Lauing: So, Commissioner [Note -Vice Chair] did you get your questions answered? 16 Commissioner [Note-Vice Chair] Monk, did you get your clarifications? 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Yang: I can also speak to Commissioner [Note -Vice Chair] Monk’s question about the PC 1 zone language in here. 2 Vice-Chair Monk: Thank you. 3 Mr. Yang: It’s basically a recognition, what we had done is we had tried to list all of the… 4 basically the low-density residential districts and when we first created this list, we forgot there 5 were some PCs that also included single-family residential as an allowable use. And so, this is 6 just a recognition that there are some PCs that include single-family residential and for those 7 zones, the same ADU regulations would apply as they do in other single-family residential 8 areas. 9 Chair Lauing: Yeah, Commissioner Summa. 10 Ms. Gitelman: But to change the PC, don’t we have to open the ordinance that created the PC 11 and change it? 12 Mr. Yang: So our ADU laws apply throughout the City and state law requires them to apply 13 throughout the City including in PC zones. And so, this just makes it clearer which set of ADU 14 laws apply in the PC zones. 15 Commissioner Summa: Thank you. 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Monk: And to my earlier question, if the ordinance gets passed the way we discussed 1 it tonight and we’re calling attached and detached and interior. Are we no longer going to be 2 calling this a junior accessory dwelling unit? I just need some clarity on that. 3 Mr. Yang: So, those definitions attached, detached, interior, those were conceptual study 4 session ideas. They are not apart of an ordinance, they are not a topic proposal. JADU is what 5 we call them now, it’s what state law calls them and we’re going to continue calling them 6 JADUs. 7 Ms. Campbell: And just to clarify, a JADU is not the same thing as an interior accessory unit. It’s 8 a different type of (interrupted) 9 Vice-Chair Monk: And I assume you have a definition of a JADU? 10 Ms. Campbell: Yes, it’s in our code. 11 Vice-Chair Monk: Thank you. 12 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Gardias. 13 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. The way that I read them there is just a mechanical 14 confirmation or alignment with the state laws. There is nothing out of the ordinary that we 15 should know of? 16 Mr. Yang: No. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Gardias: Exactly so, for this reason, I propose that we agree with the proposed 1 language for twenty-four, twenty-five. 2 Chair Lauing: That’s the motion. [unintelligible – talking over one another] 3 Commissioner Gardias: Let’s vote then. 4 Chair Lauing: Alright, great. Alright, all in favor of approving twenty-four and twenty-five? Aye. 5 MOTION PASSES 6-0 6 Chair Lauing: Unanimous, yeah. No opposed, thank you. Alright, let’s take a look at nineteen, 7 historic homes. 8 Commissioner Waldfogel: [unintelligible – no mic] 9 Chair Lauing: That was tempting to get the easy ones done like the no bike license. 10 Commissioner Waldfogel: You get twenty-six done [unintelligible] 11 Chair Lauing: I was going to try to use that as a rider on twenty-four and twenty-five actually. 12 Commissioner Alcheck: So, anybody wants to pick this one up? 13 Chair Lauing: Nineteen, any comments? I don’t see any lights so (interrupted) 14 Commissioner Waldfogel: Well, does Staff want to speak to the problem? What problem you 15 are solving? 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Campbell: What we’re trying to do is just expand the applicability to more than just a 1 Category One and Two historic inventory property to also include the Threes and Fours and 2 other historic. Basically, the intent is to help preserve these historic structures and this is one 3 way to help do that and encourage that. 4 Chair Lauing: Nineteen. 5 Commissioner Waldfogel: Right and have you had applications where this has been a problem? 6 I mean is this solving a problem… A real problem or a theoretical problem? 7 Ms. Campbell: You know I think this is information that I was given from Amy French, our Chief 8 Planning Official and she has gotten direction from the HRB. And they have… Their Board has 9 expressed a desire to see these additional provisions provided for other historic properties. I 10 don’t know specific details on the projects. 11 Commissioner Alcheck: I’m sorry… I’m really sorry to ask you to do this but would you just tell 12 me what page. I’m so lost right now. I’d like to look at the language of Number Nineteen. 13 Ms. Campbell: So, Number Nineteen (interrupted) 14 Ms. Gitelman: Packet Page 142 is where I found it. 15 Ms. Campbell: Yeah, 141- 142, oh yeah. 16 Ms. Gitelman: Top of 142. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: So, didn’t we discuss this one last time? Did we not get to this? 1 Ms. Campbell: There was some… There was another historic floor area discussion about the 2 tabling, I think that’s the same thing or something related. 3 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Gardias, did you have comments on this? 4 Commissioner Gardias: Yeah (interrupted) 5 Commissioner Alcheck: I thought we had a whole discussion about the 3-feet above grade and 6 not (interrupted) 7 Chair Lauing: Different item. 8 Commissioner Alcheck: Literally, different item? 9 Chair Lauing: Yeah. Go ahead. 10 Commissioner Gardias: Yes, so I have a quick question to Staff, what’s the difference because 11 this is expansion from Category One through Four? So, what are the objects… Historical objects 12 that are under Category Three and Four? 13 Ms. Campbell: I’m not quite sure I understand but this is definitely all applicable to R-1 homes, 14 single-family homes so is that what you’re trying to clarify? 15 Vice-Chair Monk: You’re making a change from Category Two to Category Four. 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Gardias: I’m trying to understand what objects or what historical houses are 1 categorized as Three and Four as opposed to One and Two. I suspect that Hewlett Packard’s 2 garage is number One. So, what’s number Two, Three, and Four? 3 Ms. Gitelman: We’ll have to look that up but the intent is to make this incentive available to 4 more historic resources. So, buildings that are categorized but they are just not at the highest 5 level of recognition. 6 Mr. Yang: Categories Threes and Four are contributing buildings where Categories One and Two 7 are exceptional and major buildings. So as Hilary explained, historic but a wider net of historic 8 structures is what we’re creating. 9 Commissioner Gardias: So, would you mind just reiterate on this which are contributing 10 buildings? Are we talking… So, a garage would be a contributing building or it would be 11 significant building? 12 Mr. Yang: So, the definition in our code is a contributing building means any building or group 13 of builds which are good local examples of architectural styles in which relate to the character 14 of a neighborhood grouping in scale, materials, proportion or other factors. This may have had 15 extensive or permanent changes such as inappropriate additions etc. etc. By contrast exception 16 building which is Category One means a building or group of buildings of preeminent national 17 or state importance, meritorious work of the best architects or an outstanding example of the 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. stylish development of architecture in the United States. It has no exterior modifications or 1 such minor ones that the other all appearance is its original character. 2 Chair Lauing: Any further comments? 3 Vice-Chair Monk: On this item nineteen, I’m inclined to support all of it except for that section 4 on the home improvement exception because I still think it’s very vague that you’re asking us to 5 change an ordinance that did read Category One or Two. And now you’re asking us to change it 6 to Category One through Four and I just don’t have a clear picture of what entrails and what the 7 implications would be of that. So, for that reason, I wouldn’t want to support that change. If 8 you want to illuminate us more on it, I just don’t know what impact that would have. 9 Ms. Campbell: Yeah, I don’t have any additional information but it’s a similar intent as the 10 modification in the definition. So, it goes through a discretionary process so it wouldn’t just be 11 some automatic approval. It goes through the HIE, you have to make the findings and so I don’t 12 know if that kind of help with (interrupted) 13 Vice-Chair Monk: One or Two and One through Four to me are very significant changes in 14 however you slice and dice them. 15 Chair Lauing: Well, but they are all historic contributors. 16 Vice-Chair Monk: Yeah but changing a code section that was written One or Two to One 17 through Four. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Yeah but what they are extending it to is those that are not quite as spectacular 1 but they are still spectacular. It’s sort of the (interrupted) 2 Commissioner Gardias: No, so if I may? Sorry for interrupting. If I understand it clear if you 3 could just hear me out. If I understand this correctly, this is just a cosmetic clarification because 4 existing language already talks about those buildings in the City’s Historic Inventory and also 5 calls out contributing structures. So, if contributing structures already included in this 6 paragraph are of Category Three and Four, then pretty much everything what it does it just 7 makes the clarification that those that are already named are truly included. Which is pretty 8 much no change to the pronouncement, it’s just clarification. Is my understanding correct? 9 Ms. Campbell: [unintelligible -no mic] 10 Vice-Chair Monk: Is this broadening the exceptions for home improvements? 11 Ms. Gitelman: No, it’s making them available to additional historic resources. 12 Vice-Chair Monk: That sounds like a (interrupted) 13 Ms. Gitelman: It’s a process by which someone can apply for an adjustment to a historical 14 resource like a… What would it be? A typical minor change, a dormer. 15 Ms. Campbell: An HIE, maybe they are looking to do some additional lot coverage or something. 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Gitelman: A modest change, usually small scale and this would allow additional historic 1 resources to use that process and ask for permission to do something like that. It’s not 2 automatic, it just makes it available to them. 3 Vice-Chair Monk: Are there any negative downsides? 4 Ms. Gitelman: It’s a historic preservation incentive. If you believe in historic preservation and 5 you… I guess we thought it was kind of minor and it was doing a good deed but (interrupted) 6 Vice-Chair Monk: It might be minor, I just don’t know what it entails so that’s where my 7 question was coming from. 8 Commissioner Gardias: So, if you are done, I still don’t understand it. The reason is that existing 9 verbiage if I read correctly, allows already for modifications for those that are on the Historic 10 Inventory which would be the highest landmark of Category One and Two. 11 Ms. Campbell: I understand the question. 12 Commissioner Gardias: Yes so (interrupted) 13 Ms. Campbell: So, just to clarify what you were getting to so this sentence about contributing 14 structures, those are specific… This is a specific reference to structures that are within a historic 15 district. So, I definitely can see how you can make that connection but it is not exactly the same 16 thing as saying it includes a Three and a Four… Category Three and Four. Because I think that’s 17 what you were suggesting that it (interrupted) 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Gardias: Yes, so what’s the difference then? 1 Ms. Campbell: Because these are specific structures… Well, Categories One through Four are 2 specifically identified and on our inventory, they have already been identified. Sometimes 3 contributing structures need to evaluate when you’re in like the Professorville District, you 4 would do an additional evaluation to see if that house was a contributing structure to the 5 district and then they could make a determination. 6 Commissioner Gardias: So, hold on a second so just following up on this. So, thank you very 7 much for this discussion, it helps me understand because I think it would clarify the issue. So, 8 are we saying that pretty much that true revision is just broadening of this language from the 9 structures that are within the district to those that are individually listed that would be beyond 10 the district? So, for example, Professorville is a district so it’s already covered but then if there’s 11 a structure somewhere in the community center. Then pretty much because of this language, 12 this structure is also included in this language. Is this the true revision? Ok, thank you. 13 Chair Lauing: Ok, let’s vote on the motion. All those in favor of approving it please say aye. One, 14 two, three, four, five. Opposed? Abstention? 5-0-1. 15 MOTION PASSES 5-0-1(Monk) 16 Chair Lauing: Ok, we have about 15 minutes left. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Gitelman: I’m sorry, just for the minutes so it was five yes, Commissioner [Note -Vice Chair] 1 Monk abstaining. Commissioner (interrupted) 2 Chair Lauing: 5-0-1 so five for (interrupted) 3 Ms. Gitelman: 5-0-1, ok, thank you. 4 Chair Lauing: Zero against, one abstention. 5 Ms. Gitelman: Thank you. 6 Commissioner Waldfogel: [unintelligible – no mic] Somebody… Whoops, turn this. Something 7 that would be helpful is if the HRB voted on this, it would be helpful to include that in the 8 packet because I supported it based on the assertion that HRB… That the HRB recommends it. 9 So that would just be a helpful addition. 10 Ms. Gitelman: Will do. 11 Chair Lauing: Ok, the next one I actually think we did discuss last time so I’m not sure why it’s 12 on this list but outdoor fireplaces and barbeques. 13 Ms. Campbell: I don’t think we did. 14 Commissioner Alcheck: Is there a distinction between outdoor fireplaces and fire pits? 15 Ms. Campbell: No. 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: So a fire pit is an outdoor fireplace? 1 Ms. Campbell: That’s right. 2 Commissioner Alcheck: And what’s the (interrupted) 3 Chair Lauing: It’s 4-feet. 4 Commissioner Alcheck: Four feet from the rear setback? 5 Chair Lauing: From the interior side and rear property line. 6 Commissioner Alcheck: Four feet. So presumably someone has put a fireplace on a fence? 7 Ms. Campbell: Well, we’ve had them right up against property lines in the past so we had to 8 clarify that… And we were kind of using the guide for where we would allow your chimney for a 9 single-family home. So, we have a requirement that we allow your fireplace to encroach 2-feet 10 into your 6-foot setback for a single-family home. So, we’re using that 4-foot as a guide for 11 (interrupted) 12 MOTION 13 Commissioner Alcheck: This is literally the perfect example of the context I would have needed 14 to support this so thank you for exactly that comment. I move that we adopt this change or 15 don’t oppose it. If there’s a second we can move on. 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. SECOND 1 Chair Lauing: Second. 2 Commissioner Gardias: Just can… I’m sorry, can we have a discussion ? 3 Commissioner Alcheck: [unintelligible] outdoor fireplaces should be on the fence, closer than 4-4 feet from a property line? We need to have that discussion? 5 Commissioner Gardias: If you adopt my perspective, we don’t. 6 Chair Lauing: So, we now have a motion and second and it’s open for discussion. We have 10-7 minutes left of this meeting so go ahead. 8 Commissioner Gardias: So, it’s a motion already (interrupted) 9 Chair Lauing: Yes. 10 Commissioner Gardias: Without discussion? 11 Chair Lauing: No, it’s a motion and a second and now you have discussion. 12 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT 13 Commissioner Gardias: Ok so the reason that I just want to have a conversation on this is 14 pretty much that I understood that 4-feet was related to the encroachment of the existing 15 attached chimney into the setback when it’s part of the house. However, firepits, fireplaces, 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. this is a totally different animal. There is a… It’s pretty much when you have a fireplace, there is 1 a sparker [unintelligible] that’s up there so from the perspective of a neighbor, it may make a 2 difference. You may say that 2-feet is not much but it just… I think that there should be a 3 setback of 6-feet as opposed to 4 feet because there is a smell, there could be smoke and then 4 4-feet, it’s really just one meter; it’s very close. And pretty much 6-feet would be consistent 5 with the setback… The property setbacks, that’s the reason. 6 Chair Lauing: Any other comments? If there aren’t any comments, we can vote. 7 Commissioner Alcheck: I would suggest that I would treat as an unfriendly amendment simply 8 because I would prefer to go with the recommendation by the fire… I’m assuming somebody 9 was involved in this? 10 Ms. Campbell: Yes, we talked with the fire and the Building Department so fire recommended… 11 I think they were saying at least a 3-foot clearance just for access purposes. So… but 4-feet has 12 been sort of the consistent set… So, we’ve already been doing it already so we’ve been applying 13 the 4-foot. 14 Commissioner Alcheck: Yeah, ok, I’m not… Sorry to interrupt you. I’m just going to suggest that I 15 would accept that… I would not accept that as a friendly amendment. So, if you want to get a 16 second and put it to a vote. Otherwise, my motion supports moving forward with the 17 recommendation from the already exceeded recommendation of the Fire Department. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Is there any second to that amendment? 1 AMENDMENT FAILED BECAUSE THERE WAS NO SECOND 2 Chair Lauing: Ok then we’ll go back to the original motion so all in favor of approving this as 3 recommended? Two, three, four, five. [Note-Opposed] one and I think you’ve already spoken to 4 your dissent essentially, right? Ok. 5 MOTION PASSES 5(Lauing, Alcheck, Monk, Summa, Waldfogel) -1(Gardias) 6 Chair Lauing: So, let’s do the easy one and pick up the bike license. Does anybody have a 7 problem with that? 8 Vice-Chair Monk: I think twenty-one is easy. 9 Chair Lauing: I think twenty-six is easier. 10 MOTION 11 Commissioner Waldfogel: I move twenty-six. 12 Vice-Chair Monk: And twenty-one, we’ll put them together? 13 SECOND 14 Chair Lauing: Twenty-six, second. 15 Commissioner Alcheck: Wait, hold on. Can we do one at a time, please? 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: We are. Twenty-six is moved and seconded. That’s removing the requirement for 1 a bike license requirement. 2 Vice-Chair Monk: Second. 3 Chair Lauing: I already did. Any comments. 4 Vice-Chair Monk: Call the question. 5 Chair Lauing: Ok, all in favor? One, two, three, four, five, six to zero, ok. 6 MOTION PASSES 6-0 7 Chair Lauing: Going back to twenty-one then. Comments on over the counter architectural 8 review process. 9 MOTION 10 Vice-Chair Monk: I move that we adopt Staff’s suggestions to make the changes for the 11 (interrupted) 12 Commissioner Alcheck: So, my only concern (interrupted) 13 Chair Lauing: Second, please? 14 Commissioner Alcheck: Oh, sorry. 15 SECOND 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: We need a second to discuss it. Ok, I’ll second it so we can discuss it. Comments 1 then. 2 Commissioner Alcheck: Yeah, I would just… Sorry. 3 Commissioner Gardias: Yeah you know I have a comment in a formal sense because typically 4 when there is a… I mean to pick a form of a meeting like this should be that there is a discussion 5 and then pretty much when the discussion… There’s some sort of agreement or disagreements 6 built during the discussion. Then pretty much there is a motion proposed. 7 Chair Lauing: Yeah, the parliamentary procedure is that you should have a motion on an item 8 and a second. Therefore, its qualified to have enough interest to discuss it and then you have 9 an extensive discussion as long as it takes. So, there’s not anything here that’s not being 10 discussed and everybody has a chance to do that so I think we are following that process. 11 Commissioner Gardias: I’m not sure, I would have to look up our by-laws. Maybe Counsel can 12 help me with this right? I’m just up to having a discussion on this. I just don’t feel comfortable 13 with the (interrupted) 14 Chair Lauing: You’re asking for discussion before there’s motion and what we’re in here for is to 15 review each one of these things that we’ve all studied offline and at length and discuss each 16 one of those. Staff would like to have approval on each one of them so we’re taking them one 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. on one and seeing where we can get them approved and where we can’t. So, I think we’re right 1 on target here. 2 Vice-Chair Monk: And just speaking to my motion, I reviewed the proposed changes I think that 3 they are pretty minor. They do add some additional authority towards moving things along 4 from a procedural process standpoint on behalf of the Director and I think they are changes 5 that I would support as written. 6 Chair Lauing: Other comments on… I’m going to clear these lights because they’ve been 7 stacking up so Commissioner Alcheck. 8 Commissioner Alcheck: Yeah so, I guess my only issue here is it’s… One of the methods that 9 we’ve been sort of following is what does this solve, what problem? I don’t know if we’ve gone 10 over that so I think we might be rushing this one. I want to understand why, for example, 11 projects that are determined to be exempted would not be subject to administrative processing 12 including a formal determination letters or appeal opportunities. I just think, why are we 13 putting people in a position where they can’t sort of have a discussion that has some oversight? 14 I guess what I’d like to know is I’d like Staff to provide us a little bit of an idea of how this has 15 worked in the past? I understand what it says but why is this a problem? Why would this 16 process give the Director authority to make projects exempt from appeal opportunities? 17 Ms. Campbell: So, the way that it works today, let’s just say you have a commercial building in 18 the Research Park and you wanted to switch out a window to a door. So, that’s an exterior 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. modification to a site so typically we would say that if you have any exterior modification, you 1 have to go through architectural review. And when we see things at the counter… So, we do 2 this every day at the counter. When we see something at the counter that is so minor, which 3 we would consider that to be so minor, we approve it just through the building permit process 4 and we don’t make the applicant go through a formal architectural review application. 5 Commissioner Alcheck: What if you don’t approve it? 6 Ms. Campbell: What we do is we have them go back and (interrupted) 7 Commissioner Alcheck: Would they be able to go… Could they go through a different process? 8 Ms. Campbell: There’s a couple option so one option is you go revise your building permit or 9 typically what is, is we just don’t have quick enough information. So, they maybe need to go 10 back and revise the plans to include full dimensions or show us what the existing conditions is 11 more clearly with some photos and they have a proposed condition or they can actually 12 formally submit an application. So, when they formally submit an application, if they are 13 somehow don’t agree… I mean that doesn’t happen. They could submit an application or 14 sometimes it happens where we see something, they think its simple but we do not and we say 15 ok, well this rises to a level of a Staff level review and you have to submit and go through that 16 formal process. But what we’re trying to do is establish a codified process because we do this 17 and nowhere in our code today does it say that we can actually do what we do by approving 18 these things at the counter. And what we’re trying to do is get something done quickly and 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. efficiently and usually it’s always associated with a building permit so we do have some kind of 1 paper trail for whatever we’re doing. 2 Commissioner Alcheck: Do you anticipate a list that would determine minor and not minor? 3 Ms. Campbell: Yeah, we’ve… There’s a draft document in the Staff report attachments that give 4 you… That we’ve put together as some guidelines for the types of projects we would potentially 5 consider for this process. So, like I was saying, like a window change, door changes, maybe 6 some minor landscaping or vary… They have to be very minor and if for any reason we think 7 that it just doesn’t meet that threshold, we bump it up into the formal process but the idea of 8 not having an appeal period and things like that, it just doesn’t make sense. Because when 9 we’re doing something at the counter and we’re trying to help get this process done, it just 10 doesn’t make sense. 11 Commissioner Alcheck: Let me ask you this question. Is it your… Is it Staff’s opinion that your 12 intent of this is to insolate builders from appeals that contradict Staff approvals? 13 Ms. Campbell: No. 14 Commissioner Alcheck: Ok. 15 Ms. Gitelman: This is really a kind of customer service thing that we’re already doing. It’s the 16 kind of thing like if you brought in one of these little applications to the counter and we said oh, 17 that’s a Staff level ARB. I have to take it in, it’s going to take 14-days, I have to notice it, blah 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. blah blah. They would say are you kidding me, to replace a window? To replace 12 shrubs 1 outside the front door? So just as we’ve done this over time we’ve developed this workaround 2 and we’d like to codify it so everyone is aware of kind of the list of things that are on Packet 3 Page 272 that initially that we would recommend having this streamlined process. 4 Commissioner Alcheck: So, is it like an automatic approval? 5 Ms. Gitelman: No, it’s with a building permit. I mean you still have to… We… You still have to 6 prove to us that it’s a good idea and it meets our code. 7 Commissioner Alcheck: Ok and so if they didn’t, then they could seek a different kind of review? 8 Ms. Gitelman: Then it would go up to the Staff level ARB. 9 Commissioner Alcheck: Alright. 10 Chair Lauing: Ok, I see no other lights so is there any other discussion on this? 11 Commissioner Gardias: Yeah, I mean this is exactly what I was talking for because my question 12 was here what’s material, what’s not material so thanks very much for directing us to this list of 13 those items that qualify for this over the counter. My question is like this, is the neighbor 14 notified somehow if there is maybe a minor item but facing the neighbor that would be 15 impacting the neighbor in some way? 16 Ms. Campbell: There is no notification process that we’re suggesting. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Gitelman: We’re really trying to put things on this list that no one is going to care about. 1 Commissioner Gardias: Ok so for example, if somebody… Like a color rendering if somebody 2 paints the rafters 4-feet away from the property lot red and those rafters have never been red. 3 So now the neighbors see a red color, which may be impacting him, does the neighbor know 4 about this process? 5 Ms. Campbell: I mean they could definitely contact the City and then we can investigate how 6 that was approved and I mean they still… This wouldn’t apply to single-family homes. This is 7 only for commercial and multi-family projects but then we would need to do that research to 8 figure out, was that part of a building permit? If it was part of a building permit, did the planner 9 sign off on it? I mean things happen all the time without the City being involved at all with 10 approving it. 11 Commissioner Gardias: Sure. Ok, thank you. 12 Chair Lauing: So, this is twenty-one, over the counter architectural review process. All in favor 13 of supporting that, please raise your hand. Seven… sorry 6-0. 14 MOTION PASSED 6-0. 15 Chair Lauing: Alright so per our agreement of 30-minutes ago, we’re coming up on 30-minutes. 16 We have four to go. I would suggest that we move over to the announcement section and if 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. somebody wants to press on after that’s done, we can come back to these four. So, in other 1 words, we’re going over to the agenda item number (interrupted) 2 Commissioner Alcheck: [unintelligible – no mic] 3 Chair Lauing: Otherwise we’d have to continue these last four items to the next meeting 4 because it would be very short. 5 Commissioner Waldfogel: So, you’re talking about twenty-two? 6 Vice-Chair Monk: Twenty-two, twenty-three, what else? 7 Chair Lauing: Sorry, I’ll close that up. Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-seven and twenty-8 eight. 9 Ms. Campbell: And twenty-eight (interrupted) 10 Commissioner Alcheck: So, is seventeen like going to Council in some fashion or it’s not going to 11 Council or what’s (interrupted) 12 Chair Lauing: Is what? 13 Commissioner Alcheck: Seventeen; between now and spring, is seventeen going to go to 14 Council? 15 Chair Lauing: What’s seventeen? 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: The blowers. 1 Chair Lauing: No. 2 Ms. Gitelman: We’re going to do some more research and we’ll let you know. If we take it 3 forward, we’ll keep you in the loop on what happens with that. I mean there is interest to move 4 something forward but we recognized that you’ve raised some issues and we may need to 5 modify the text. 6 Chair Lauing: Right so we’re on record as against it so if it goes to Council, it goes with us 7 against it at this point in time. 8 Commissioner Alcheck: So, when we talked about this… I’m sorry when we talked about being 9 against it, I feel like there was various reasons why we were against it. I think Commission 10 Summa for example, just opposed gas leaf blowers in general. My suggestion was (interrupted) 11 Chair Lauing: Yeah, that’s all true. 12 Commissioner Alcheck: So how would (interrupted) 13 Chair Lauing: It’s not ready for prime time is the way I would explain it. 14 Commissioner Alcheck: It doesn’t sound like we’re going to review it. It sounds like it’s going to 15 go up when it’s ready and I don’t know if we have consensus on how we feel about it. That’s all 16 I’m saying. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: I don’t know that that’s the case because Director Gitelman said that there has to 1 be some more research before they are comfortable presenting it and if it’s not (interrupted) 2 Commissioner Alcheck: [unintelligible] 3 Chair Lauing: But what a second, that’s what I’m trying to say here. And if it’s not going to go 4 until March, we would have time take a look at your new proposal and incorporate it into our 5 motion or not. So, we don’t know that yet because you don’t know that yet. 6 Commissioner Alcheck: So just so I understand it, is that you’re understanding? That you’re 7 going to bring back that item before the next time you bring it to the council [unintelligible]? 8 Ms. Gitelman: You know we had hoped you would get all the way through here and that would 9 be the only outstanding item and we wouldn’t have to come back necessarily but it looks like 10 you’re going to have a handful of things that we’re going to have to bring back so we can bring 11 that with it. 12 Chair Lauing: Right but we don’t know that yet. What I’m saying is we might be able to get 13 through these next set of agenda items quickly or not. 14 Commissioner Alcheck: The question I had wasn’t whether or not we know that. The question is 15 if we do get through the things that your optimistically excited to get through, which I’m happy 16 to do, will that item come back? That’s my question. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Gitelman: Our thought is if you got through everything, our thought was that we would 1 carry a recommendation forward to the Council that attempted to address the concerns you 2 articulated at the last meeting. 3 Commissioner Alcheck: Right so my comment is just that I don’t know that we have consensus 4 on those comments. That’s it so if she… if the [unintelligible] does not come back on seventeen, 5 which they just said they wouldn’t if we finish tonight, my point is that I don’t know that we 6 actually developed a consensus on seventeen. We had a few people comment about it but we 7 did not actually say here’s how we feel about it and so I just want to put that out there that that 8 item would not be resolved by us at a later date if we move tonight. 9 MOTION 10 Commissioner Waldfogel: Can I move twenty-two and if it gets a second, I have a question for 11 Staff? 12 SECOND 13 Vice-Chair Monk: Second. 14 Chair Lauing: Question to Staff. 15 Commissioner Summa: You want to approve twenty-two? 16 Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah, I want to move (interrupted) 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Monk: I seconded. 1 Chair Lauing: What’s the question for Staff? 2 Commissioner Waldfogel: The question for Staff is just as a matter of code design, I agree with 3 what you are doing here which is to change the way that you give notices. I’d actually prefer to 4 see these definitions of how to give notices pulled out. To just say give notice and then have 5 some definition section that describes how to do that as a matter of architecture because I am 6 looking at a piece of code from 1963 that says written means includes printed, typewritten, 7 mimeographed or multi-graphed and I don’t even know what a multi-graph is. So, you know the 8 problem is these kinds of codes get obsolete because technology changes but that said, I 9 support this direction today. 10 Chair Lauing: Any other comment on that? 11 Commissioner Gardias: Yes, I have a comment. So, in twenty-two, there is a recommendation of 12 removing the requirements for publication. Why would we do this? 13 Ms. Campbell: Let me get to the page and I’ll be right there. 14 Commissioner Gardias: No so the reason that I am asking is because pretty much that 15 supporting the whole paragraph, twenty-two, I think that because of our relationship with Palo 16 Altons it should be keep… should be sustaining the publications… Sustaining the notice in the 17 press. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Campbell: Ok so let me help clarify so this is a very specific code reference to publishing 1 and emailing a Director’s decision. So, when… Currently, when we take action on a project and 2 we prepare a letter, we do not publish that decision in the newspaper. So, we have not been 3 doing that for the last 15-16-years that I’ve been here and we don’t email the Director’s 4 decision either to anyone. We do put things on the web and things like that, we do have other 5 existing processes that we do to make the Director’s decision known but we have not been 6 doing anything to publish a Director’s decision. We still always notice and publish for hearings 7 and we send out cards when we in a use permit or a major ARB, we sent out notifications to the 8 neighborhoods; a 600-foot radius. But this I specifically to clear up a reference to publishing a 9 Director’s decision which we don’t do and we have not been doing. 10 Commissioner Gardias: Yes, I understand. This has already been said so my question was about 11 those items that I cannot read. So, this fact that the Director’s decisions were not published in 12 the paper don’t justify not doing so and then as an argument I can say that with recent 13 discussions for the last couple of years, we were expanding the Director’s purview for various 14 decisions within a number of the code chapters. So, having exposing Director’s decision, 15 pushing them to the citizens via papers that they read, which is the proper communication 16 channel. As opposed to the posting to the website which they have to actively reach out to as 17 opposed to paper that they receive because it lands in their driveway. I think that I would 18 support just maintaining this process and truly following it as it’s today stance. 19 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Summa. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Summa: Thank you. I’m fine will all the rest of them except for this one. I was 1 going to make a motion to pull this one. I was… I’m kind of… I think it’s harder for people to find 2 information about decisions. There use to be a running list of applications applied for, there use 3 to be a running demo applied for, and I sort of agree that we are giving the Director more 4 authority to do more things, not in public. So, I kind of has a problem with this one although I 5 understand it’s… You’re codifying a present process but I think there might be a way we could 6 expand letting people know about this without sending direct letters on the website, just list. 7 But also, I’m very uncomfortable with only… in the first paragraph at the end, only the… any 8 adjacent owner or tenant being able to appeal a decision. I just think that’s to narrow, a group 9 of people that could appeal something. It could be someone across the street, someone down 10 the street so I could make a motion… Wait, I forget if we have a motion on the floor? 11 Vice-Chair Monk: We have a motion and I think (interrupted) 12 SUBSTITUTE MOTION 13 Commissioner Summa: To move twenty-two, ok. I’d like to make a substitute motion to pull 14 twenty-two and to move approval of twenty-three, twenty-seven and twenty-eight. If I 15 (interrupted) 16 Chair Lauing: Whoa, whoa, whoa. 17 Vice-Chair Monk: Wait, wait, wait. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: Don’t do that, just one (interrupted) 1 Vice-Chair Monk: Hold on. 2 Chair Lauing: Wait. 3 Commissioner Alcheck: Or let this go to a vote. 4 Vice-Chair Monk: I think the main thing that I heard from you was that it went from the owners 5 or the adjacent property owners and they took out the ‘any’ part. That sounds like (interrupted) 6 Commissioner Alcheck: I have a [unintelligible -no mic] 7 Chair Lauing: So, yeah but she is commenting right now. 8 Commissioner Alcheck: But she’s not (interrupted) 9 Vice-Chair Monk: I just wanted to clarify what Commissioner Summa was taking issue with. 10 Chair Lauing: Right so procedurally a simple way to do this is to have a discussion about it and 11 either approve or defeat this and you’ve just stated that you would like to have a different kind 12 of motion to they know what your intent is but you’re perfectly qualified and can go ahead and 13 do a substitute motion if you’d like. 14 Commissioner Waldfogel: Do you want to just make an amendment to yank that section? 15 Chair Lauing: That’s another option. 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Monk: Want Staff to speak to it? 1 Commissioner Summa: I could make an amendment to yank the… to eliminate the… Pardon 2 me? 3 Commissioner Alcheck: You don’t like any part of it. 4 Commissioner Summa: To eliminate the limiting the appeal… It doesn’t even seem like it was a 5 big problem so in the last 6-years you’ve had only two of these such appeals, right? 6 Ms. Campbell: That’s correct. 7 Commissioner Summa: And so, it doesn’t seem like a big problem that we have to solve and I 8 don’t think eliminating it to only adjacent property owners or tenants is appropriate. And I’d 9 like to add something that I think the Directors… I think it would be good to have a running list 10 of Director’s decisions because I think they are very hard for people to know about if they do 11 want to appeal them. And so, I would like to add in B something about that and I don’t think it’s 12 going to add a lot of hassle or work for Staff because you’ve only had two in 6-years. 13 Chair Lauing: I’m not clear what you want. Did you may want to make a lot of adds to this, is 14 that your amendment? 15 AMENDMENT #1 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Summa: No, my amendment would be to remove from paragraph one where it 1 limits anybody… it limits the requesters for a hearing to appeal to only tenants or property 2 owners adjacent to the subject. 3 Vice-Chair Monk: You want to keep it as is. 4 Commissioner Summa: And then in B, I think it would be appropriate to explore a way in which 5 we can convey in an easy fashion, just a list on the website, Director’s decisions… I don’t think… 6 So, people know about them. 7 Vice-Chair Monk: Can the letters get posted maybe to the website? Something like that? 8 Commissioner Summa: No, it would just be a running list of Director’s decisions or something. I 9 mean I want to leave it open, I don’t want to be too prescriptive but I don’t think people have a 10 way of finding out about Director’s decisions. 11 Chair Lauing: Right but if we’re amending (interrupted) 12 Commissioner Alcheck: Can I… I have a question (interrupted) 13 Chair Lauing: No, wait for a second, if we’re amending the motion, then we have to have a 14 specific what the amendment is so that comes down to language. Otherwise, we have to give 15 the intent of that and then have the Staff come back with another revision. 16 Commissioner Summa: That’s what I’d like. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. AMENDMENT #1 FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND 1 Chair Lauing: Ok. Yes, Commissioner Alcheck. 2 Commissioner Alcheck: So, two things, number one, one option is to pull this item so that we 3 can spend a little bit more time on it as opposed to passing as is. I would suggest to you that I 4 absolutely agree with Commissioner Gardias’s statements. I don’t think the logic that we 5 haven’t been doing this is represents… We haven’t followed our code so that’s why we should 6 change our code maybe not be prudent. And the only other caveat to this is I… Are you 7 suggesting that you don’t post any Director’s decisions or you don’t post Director’s decisions 8 related to this? And I’ll say that with this caveat which is I thought we just created this whole 9 notion of Director’s decisions within the last year. This sort of idea that we have a Director 10 determination was sort of created only a little while ago and I thought that when we created 11 that determination, we also created an appeal process that was kick-started and terminated 12 based on the date the document was published. So, if you remove that date, what does that do 13 to the appeal process that’s in place? Maybe that appeal process didn’t apply to this specific 14 caveat but my broader question is, are you even publishing any Director’s opinions? 15 Ms. Campbell: So, for decision action items, we do have a running list of the Staff level 16 architectural review applications that get approved. That’s posted on the web through the ARB 17 agenda, I believe that’s still on the ARB agenda. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: No but I mean this… The [unintelligible] Director’s decision, I thought 1 was something that we created. 2 Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, you’re talking about interpretations… code interpretations. 3 Commissioner Alcheck: Is different than this? 4 Ms. Gitelman: We established a process for Director’s code interpretations where we would 5 publish them and someone could appeal them, that is different than this. These are decisions 6 (interrupted) 7 Commissioner Alcheck: What is that? What does published mean in that regard? 8 Ms. Gitelman: I don’t remember off hand but we made some process where we would have to 9 disseminate an interpretation and someone could appeal it. This is about decisions that we 10 make on minor Architectural Review Applications so it’s a decision on an applicant’s project. 11 They are usually minor projects, they qualify for our Staff level review and we make the public 12 aware of it by placing a notice that’s been approved on the ARB agendas. So that’s how we’ve 13 been doing it but we haven’t been publishing in a newspaper, we haven’t been doing all this 14 stuff that’s in the code and so we’re trying to make the code match reality. 15 Commissioner Alcheck: So, would it be more appropriate to instead of removing… So, is it your 16 opinion that this provision removes the published requirement altogether or continue to 17 publish it in the ARB agendas? 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Campbell: So, just to clarify too, it does apply to other projects, not just the Staff level 1 Architectural Review. It applies to variances and Conditional Use Permits. So, all we’re trying to 2 do is just eliminate the requirement to publish in a newspaper and do an emailing for the 3 Director’s decision. We do have (interrupted) 4 Commissioner Alcheck: To the applicant? 5 Ms. Campbell: Yeah. No, it's to whoever is interested. I think it… So, it’s like to the 600-foot 6 radius or something. It’s just (interrupted) 7 Ms. Gitelman: It's still an administrative burden and quite a notification requirement. Saying the 8 current notification process of mailing the decision letter to the applicant, sending notice cards 9 to the 600-foot radius when applicable and post decisions on the City website has been 10 effective to keep citizens informed. Notices to individuals who request them can be sent. 11 Commissioner Alcheck: Ok so (interrupted) 12 Chair Lauing: So, as a practical matter (interrupted) 13 Commissioner Alcheck: Then it’s not such a significant change and if that’s the case, then I 14 think… That’s the problem with this process is that we’re not all talking about the same thing. 15 So, if it’s not… If it’s just a different type of notice as opposed to no notice, then that would be 16 relevant, I’m sure, to your support and mine. And I think to a certain extent, it doesn’t sound… I 17 would suggest that I don’t share the same concern as Commissioner Summa regarding how 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. many people can appeal because if it’s very minor, then really your neighbors are probably the 1 only people who are relevant, not people who live down the street. 2 Chair Lauing: So, as a practical matter, we now have a substitute motion [Note-amendment] on 3 the floor. 4 Commissioner Alcheck: Which doesn’t have a second. 5 Chair Lauing: It doesn’t have a second but I just want to say that we’re done. We’re over our 6 time limit, we’re not going to be able to finish this thing. So, we can also just hold on this entire 7 thing and not vote on it tonight. So, at this point (interrupted) 8 Commissioner Alcheck: I think we (interrupted) 9 Chair Lauing: Hang on, hang on, so at this point, the substitute motion is there which is going to 10 need some word smiting and I don’t think that there’s a second at this point. 11 Commissioner Gardias: Yeah so if I may, right? So, this (interrupted) 12 Chair Lauing: Is there a second for this motion, please? If there’s not, then we can move on. Ok, 13 there’s no second so now we can move on. Commissioner Gardias. 14 SUBSTITUTE MOTION FAILED DUE TO LACK OF A SECOND 15 AMENDMENT #2 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: I’d like to make an amendment. I mean I don’t know how I would make 1 an amendment to this because the motion is to just pass it but what I’d like to suggest that if 2 there’s a concern, that we articulate it a little more clearly because there might be some 3 support for… I just want this to work the right way. 4 Vice-Chair Monk: Wait, I’m a little behind. I thought (interrupted) 5 Chair Lauing: I think what we should do is we should withdraw the motion and work on the 6 working until the next time we need it and then come back with the wording. 7 Commissioner Alcheck: But it’s not eliminating a notice so the discussion we had was based on 8 this notion that somehow people weren’t going to get a notice on something. 9 Vice-Chair Monk: I think we’re close on it. I’m just confused because I thought Commissioner 10 Summa had an amendment. Did that get withdrawn? 11 Chair Lauing: It did not get a second. 12 Commissioner Alcheck: She substitutes motioned it. 13 Vice-Chair Monk: There was a substitute motion. 14 Commissioner Alcheck: That failed. 15 Commissioner Gardias: Yeah, if I may? I agree with this reasoning right so if this twenty-three, 16 twenty-two paragraphs just relate to all those items on Page 272 which are minor items, then 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. from my perspective, I agree with that there is no need for publication so I withdraw my 1 comments. I totally agree those are minor items, they don’t need to be reviewed. However 2 (interrupted) 3 Ms. Gitelman: That list on 272 was the prior item. That’s irrelevant to Number Twenty-Two. 4 Commissioner Gardias: So, it’s irrelevant so what (interrupted) 5 Ms. Gitelman: Number Twenty-Two is about other matters. 6 Commissioner Alcheck: No, no but the premise remains. It’s just a different publishing, it is not 7 a no publishing. You are in fact probably noticing, even more, people it’s the relevant people 8 and so the reason why I mention that this is important is because I don’t want there to be the 9 false impression that there’s all this support for pulling if, in fact, you’re ok. 10 Commissioner Gardias: No, just hold on a second, I just want to now understand right because 11 it says here in paragraph A of Twenty-two that minor architectural review project. So, B relates 12 only to minor architectural review projects. 13 Ms. Campbell: No B, if you read through the paragraph, it actually talks about architectural 14 review, Conditional Use permits, variances, and so it does talk about… It’s more than an 15 architectural review. 16 Commissioner Gardias: Ok so that’s what I was looking for so example if there’s a Director’s 17 decision that we talk the masks for the Verizon… For the antennas for Verizon communications. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. And then Director’s… We gave the Director’s decision to make her accountable and to allow her 1 to make the decision on placement of those… On some architectural… On some buildings. And 2 then my question is does this fall under… If the Director makes a decision under preview of that 3 ordinance, does this fall under this publication or not? 4 Ms. Campbell: So currently… so that example for this, a wireless project that you’re using, the… 5 I’m just going to explain what we would do. We would send out an approval letter to the 6 applicant, we would send out notice cards to a 600-foot radius around every single pole if that’s 7 what we were doing initially and we also post to the website to let people know what the 8 Director’s decision is. But we wouldn’t publish it in the newspaper and wouldn’t do some kind 9 of email notification unless it was part of that specific project where people said hey, email me 10 with the statues on the application. 11 Commissioner Gardias: Ok so it’s different then so I sustain my comments because I thought 12 that my comments were pertinent to the process and I think that we should be pushing the 13 communication to the constituent. As opposed to just having constituent coming for the… to 14 our website with the desire to understand the Director’s decision. Giving the same argument 15 that I already made that we entitle the Director with lots of decision making and I think it would 16 be appropriate to push this communication by a press posting so they are aware about the 17 decision that the Director made. 18 Chair Lauing: Ok I think we’ve debated this enough. Motion-maker? 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. MOTION WITHDRAWN 1 Commissioner Waldfogel: So, I’m persuaded to pull this motion for two reasons and should I 2 say what they are? 3 Chair Lauing: You can or we can just vote on it. 4 Commissioner Alcheck: Let’s vote on it. 5 Vice-Chair Monk: I want to hear why he wants (interrupted) 6 Chair Lauing: We can vote on it. 7 Vice-Chair Monk: I’d like to hear why (interrupted) 8 Commissioner Waldfogel: Do you want to just vote on it? No, I mean what I am persuaded by is 9 the idea of what a publication is something that we need to… I’m sorry. I can’t see the red light 10 on my side. This notion of publication needs to be just better defined. I think you’re probably 11 right in where your cut off is but I’m not one hundred percent sure so I’m a little worried about 12 it. And then the second issue is on this… The issues that Commissioner Summa raised about 13 who has the right to appeal is something where perhaps this is so narrowly circumscribed that 14 it doesn’t matter but I actually need to spend quite a bit more time reading a very complicated 15 piece of code to know if that’s true or not so that’s why. 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Ok so this should be not pulled but pushed. In other words, we just don’t make a 1 decision on it and this will be one of the left-over items. 2 Commissioner Alcheck: Is there… I’m sorry, Is there already a definition for publishment or no? 3 Like what do you do for all the other publishment requirements? Actually, don’t answer that. I 4 guess the question (interrupted) 5 Chair Lauing: Ok we’re moving. 6 Commissioner Alcheck: that would [unintelligible] would be if we just knew what those where 7 because if it’s the same as what you’re proposing then maybe this wouldn’t be [unintelligible]. 8 Vice-Chair Monk: I also think it might be helpful to get more of the ordinance in front of us so 9 that we’re not looking at it as this grand thing because if it’s really just a minor ordinance and 10 we saw what it was referring to, we might not have had such a big debate. 11 Commissioner Alcheck: For the record, I would have supported this too. I would have supported 12 this motion. 13 Chair Lauing: So, unfortunately, we’re going to have to leave this one with two or three 14 unfinished unless somebody wants to stay till 1 AM. 15 Commission Action: Item Continued to 1/10/18 16 17 Approval of Minutes 18 Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 6. November 8, 2017, Draft Planning & Transportation Commission Meeting Minutes 1 Chair Lauing: And move onto the approval of the minutes of November 8th, 2017. Ok, so any 2 motion to approve the minutes of November 7 [Note -8th]. 3 MOTION 4 Commissioner Summa: So [unintelligible] 5 SECOND 6 Commissioner Alcheck: Second. 7 Chair Lauing: Summa, second Alcheck. All in favor of that? Aye. Everybody approve? Any 8 abstentions? No. 9 Vice-Chair Monk: One abstention. 10 Chair Lauing: One abstention. 11 MOTION PASSED 5(Summa, Alcheck, Lauing, Waldfogel, Gardias) -0-1(Monk) 12 Ms. Gitelman: [unintelligible -no mic] 13 Chair Lauing: To approve the minutes. 14 Ms. Gitelman: [unintelligible – no mic] 15 Chair Lauing: You were here last week. 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Monk: Yeah this was for November 8th, I was in DC. 1 Chair Lauing: Ok, sorry. 2 Commission Action: Minutes passed with a vote of 5-0-1. 3 Committee Items 4 5 Chair Lauing: Alright then Committee items, we have no Committees. 6 Commissioner Questions, Comments or Announcements 7 Chair Lauing: Commissioner question, comments or announcements. Here is where we’re 8 actually going be listing upcoming agenda items so new agenda items would come on the 9 agenda right here. The only thing that I want to do tonight is to distribute a broad outline of 10 things that I think we should cover at the offsite. Just pass those down. We can discuss any of 11 these… We’ll get a copy for you folks to here if you want. 12 Commissioner Alcheck: Do you know where we’re doing it? 13 Chair Lauing: Yolanda has a room but I don’t know where the room is. It’s on the 17th, it’s 14 scheduled to start at 5 and we’re going to be done by midnight and we’re going to have dinner 15 and we’re going to have a nice room. 16 Commissioner Alcheck: I thought it was 4 to7. 17 Vice-Chair Monk: I thought it was [unintelligible] 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Well, Gardias can’t get here until 5 so we think we should do it at 5. 1 Commissioner Gardias: Yeah so, I specifically advised that during the work week I may be… you 2 know depending on my schedule, I may come or I may be late . 3 Chair Lauing: [unintelligible] after 4? Late after 5 or late after 4? 4 Commissioner Gardias: Late after 5. Well, yes, of course, but you know I may be late so you 5 have to excuse me because of (interrupted) 6 Vice-Chair Monk: [unintelligible -no mic] 7 Commissioner Gardias: Dinner but also if I may make a comment, right? So (interrupted) 8 Chair Lauing: Well let me make a couple comments first on this agenda, ok? 9 Commissioner Gardias: Ok, sure. 10 Chair Lauing: So the concept here is to obviously tie in what we need to do in the coming year 11 with the Council priorities. They may not be the new priorities by the 17th, I don’t know but 12 they are not going to change that much. The point I’m making with the second bullet point is if 13 there’s stuff that has to come to us by law, by Council, by Staff preference so we would like to 14 know from Staff what their visibility is on those issues for the year. And then we’d like to know 15 from each of us if there are big issues that they think that this is something that we should 16 tackle, even if it’s not on anybody’s else agenda. That’s going to be a bigger list, like the Comp. 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Plan, and we’re going to have to whittle it down, prioritize it and say these are the ones that we 1 think we’re going to get a chance to do and like A Level and B Level. And then if we think at that 2 point we already want to try to start creating some Committees to work on it, we could do that. 3 I put on here in quotes, negotiate Staff time because I think we’re very respectful of the fact 4 that Staff has got a workload so we can’t create fifteen AD HOCS on stuff that we want to work 5 on but I think it’s going to be a friendly negotiation. And so all of that is sort of strategic future 6 objectives/goals and then the next section on here is this review of process for meetings, 7 suggestions for changes to the procedures, up or down with certain parliamentary procedures 8 that are already in our procedures. Some of which we’ve follow and some of which we don’t 9 and the ultimately, kind of taking notes to get down to a document that 218 [Note -2018] PTC 10 plan. So, this is for you to edit, to attack, to give comment on not only here but at the next 11 meeting. There’s nothing set in stone and then that gives you, whatever that is, 4-weeks to 12 continue to work on it. So, that’s the over… Yes, Commissioner Gardias had a question. 13 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. Just from my maybe corporate perspective, off sites like this 14 typically take 2-days and two dinners so you may skip dinner if that is not the objective. But yes, 15 typically when I participate in the past. And then it looks already, by looking at this, that 16 discussions might be really broad and deep and it may take us lots of time. So, I know that you 17 are working hard just to reconcile all the calendars but if there’s a possibility just to have us 18 over the weekend meet a whole Saturday and half of Sunday probably would be another 19 option. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Yes, I tried that because I much prefer Saturday or Sunday and our new 1 Commissioner is not available on Saturdays or Sundays. So obviously, the idea is to have one 2 hundred percent of attendance so that’s what we’ve optimized for at this point but the point is 3 taken and if we get five other votes that direction, we’ll have to take a look at it. 4 Vice-Chair Monk: Any Saturday in January he’s unavailable? 5 Chair Lauing: Any Saturday period because he teaches. 6 Vice-Chair Monk: I think they are on winter break, no? 7 Chair Lauing: That was the feedback that we got. Commissioner Alcheck. 8 Commissioner Alcheck: Yeah so first of all, I would never attack this effort and I think anybody 9 that would is misguided in their approach but I would suggest one thing that I think could be 10 very instructive. Which is that a new Mayor will be selected at the first meeting in January, 11 which I believe will give you time between that assumption of power and this meeting. I think 12 this was the 17th? I’m hoping that there’s time because what I would suggest that could be very 13 instructive would be if you and Vice-Chair met with the Mayor and Vice Mayor ahead of this 14 meeting. I don’t need to opine on what this meeting… I don’t feel strongly about this meeting 15 agenda except that I hope it’s relevant and I hope we accomplish a lot. And I think it might… 16 You might approach the meeting with even some new idea or some new opportunity after a 17 meeting with the Vice Mayor and the Mayor if you say (interrupted) 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Yeah, that’s the plan, that’s the specific plan. 1 Commissioner Alcheck: Oh, you were going… Oh, alright because I think I might work if they 2 encouraged a certain discussion. 3 Chair Lauing: Commissioner Summa. Oh, ok. Any others? There’s definitely too much on here 4 and we’re not going to be able to talk about another eight priorities so if one person… Each 5 person comes with one that they’d like to see, that would be manageable. Don’t have to limit it 6 to that but as I say, other ideas that you have in the next 4-weeks before our next meeting, you 7 can bring them to that meeting and/or just send me a note but no… with respect to the Brown 8 Act though, not to everybody else. 9 Commissioner Gardias: Perhaps you would like either Yolanda or somehow we provide the 10 input to you before then because I’m sure that everybody (interrupted) 11 Chair Lauing: That’s what I just said. 12 Commissioner Gardias: Has probably twenty… I’m just… you know as soon as possible so you 13 can build up the agenda based on everybody’s wishes. 14 Chair Lauing: Yeah, no, that’s what I just said but if it’s better to go to Yolanda, that’s perfectly 15 fine. Another agenda items for the future that we haven’t discussed that need to be looked at 16 in the future? 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Alcheck: I don’t know if this is appropriate time but if our intention tonight is to 1 agendize the remained of the discussion that we just took a pause on having for a future 2 meeting. I guess the question is to Staff, have… is in your mind, have we effectively dealt with 3 twenty-four and twenty-five in a way that you could bring it before Council before the 1st? So 4 that the rest of the items could then go… Ok, so we’re ok in that regard. 5 Chair Lauing: Right and I mean the only thing that I want to ask if people want to grit their teeth 6 and get through the last four, we can try to do it but it seems like we could also continue it to 2-7 weeks out and finish up those last four. So, I’m getting nods either way from Staff? 8 Ms. Gitelman: I don’t know exactly when we’ll be able to bring it back but we’ll find a date on 9 your calendar. 10 Chair Lauing: What’s the question? It does, go ahead. 11 Commissioner Gardias: So, the question is about the bicycle boulevard under us. Is it possible 12 that we could get some update at the upcoming PTC meeting from Josh? It looks like there’s a 13 large discussion… Neighborhood discussion about how this is going to work out and there are 14 lots of skeptics discussing this online. I went over there myself and I really felt that there were 15 some items that we didn’t discuss and maybe because that we just gave Staff the blanket 16 permission to apply a number of the observations throughout. And those observations may 17 work well for one street, may not be applicable for another street and one observation that I 18 had that was not brought up before was that when there are curb extensions at the crossroads. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Those extensions are for the depth… for the width of a car which totally changes the logic of the 1 rollout curbs that are on the street. And the reason it’s like this, that those extensions that they 2 narrow down the street width thus taking precious territory from the bike lanes. So, when I 3 look at this in reality how it’s coming up, I felt I understood that the neighborhood concerns 4 about some risk items. So, I would like to maybe ask if Josh could come here and give us an 5 update on this and address some concerns. 6 Ms. Gitelman: We’ll give that some thought. Just because your next meeting isn’t until after 7 the first of the year, why don’t I send the Commissioners some information by email just so you 8 know the latest on that project. We’ve had a lot of back and forth with concerned neighbors 9 and we’re also hearing a lot of support for people who want these kind of bike improvements 10 so there are a lot of things to talk about but maybe we can send you some information online 11 and answer your questions that way. 12 Commissioner Gardias: That would be great, thank you. 13 Chair Lauing: Ok, if there’s nothing else. Motion (interrupted) 14 Vice-Chair Monk: On that, I just wanted to also request that if we could get a presentation on 15 what the TMA has accomplished at some point. Next year would be great or if it’s something 16 you can email to us just so we’re informed. 17 Chair Lauing: So, I think we should adjourn tonight with a civic… Sorry. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Waldfogel: Since we’re throwing the kitchen sink out here, one more thing which 1 is just the we should probably talk about the Crescent Park traffic meltdowns and just 2 understand what’s going on. 3 Ms. Gitelman: Can I make a suggestion going back to the retreat? I mean this is going to turn 4 into a laundry list of everything and we just don’t have the Staff resources to bring every 5 possible topic. Can we use the retreat to kind of prioritize those items that are of general 6 interest to the Commission? I thought the Chair had a great idea, we could have a list of those 7 things and as we have resources and time on your agendas we can strategize about how to 8 bring those. So, I heard traffic in Crescent Park, Ross Road construction project and TMA 9 progress, ok? 10 Commissioner Gardias: So, if I may make a suggestion because I was thinking about this? Those 11 are TMA, Crescent Park, and Ross Boulevard are topics of concern of the neighborhoods, there 12 maybe be others. I thought that… And then they are concerns of others… Ours because we 13 would know they would impact our reviews. It may be good to update our process and allow 14 Commissioners to discuss some topics during the bi-weekly meeting with yourself or Jonathan 15 on some advance notice that we would be providing to you. So, I’m saying that for example, if 16 there is a concern by Commissioner Waldfogel about Crescent Park traffic, he would send a 17 notification to the Director or to Jonathan Lait asking about an update on this topic. And then 18 he would bring up this question during the first half an hour of the meeting thus receiving an 19 update on this very topic. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Lauing: Did you (interrupted) 1 Commissioner Gardias: I’d like to propose the change to the process if possible. 2 Chair Lauing: We’ll we’re not going to vote on that tonight. It’s not agenized. 3 Commissioner Gardias: Sure, no but I’m just suggesting that maybe if there are concerns like 4 this, that pretty much we can just establish like a Prime Minister’s questions in the house of 5 comments that would allow us just to pretty much get updated on different topics. 6 Commissioner Alcheck: It’s 11:30. 7 Commissioner Gardias: It’s 11… That’s exactly what I’m saying. 8 Commissioner Alcheck: Bring this to the retreat. 9 Commissioner Gardias: Sure, I’m just giving you a heads up. 10 Chair Lauing: I would just like to suggest we’re, in our own way, civil servants and I would like to 11 honor the late Mayor Lee by just adjourning this meeting in his honor and in his memory. We’re 12 kind of all in this together and just thought that would be appropriate for tonight. So, with that, 13 we stand adjourned. 14 15 Adjournment 16 11:08pm 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Palo Alto Planning & Transportation Commission 1 Commissioner Biographies, Present and Archived Agendas and Reports are available online: 2 http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/boards/ptc/default.asp. The PTC Commission members are: 3 4 Chair Michael Alcheck 5 Vice-Chair Asher Waldfogel 6 Commissioner Przemek Gardias 7 Commissioner Ed Lauing 8 Commissioner Susan Monk 9 Commissioner Eric Rosenblum 10 Commissioner Doria Summa 11 12 Get Informed and Be Engaged! 13 View online: http://midpenmedia.org/category/government/city-of-palo-alto or on Channel 26. 14 15 Show up and speak. Public comment is encouraged. Please complete a speaker request card 16 located on the table at the entrance to the Council Chambers and deliver it to the Commission 17 Secretary prior to discussion of the item. 18 19 Write to us. Email the PTC at: Planning.Commission@CityofPaloAlto.org. Letters can be 20 delivered to the Planning & Community Environment Department, 5th floor, City Hall, 250 21 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301. Comments received by 2:00 PM two Tuesdays preceding 22 the meeting date will be included in the agenda packet. Comments received afterward through 23 2:00 PM the day of the meeting will be presented to the Commission at the dais. 24 25 Material related to an item on this agenda submitted to the PTC after distribution of the 26 agenda packet is available for public inspection at the address above. 27 Americans with Disability Act (ADA) 28 It is the policy of the City of Palo Alto to offer its public programs, services and meetings in a 29 manner that is readily accessible to all. Persons with disabilities who require materials in an 30 appropriate alternative format or who require auxiliary aids to access City meetings, programs, 31 or services may contact the City’s ADA Coordinator at (650) 329-2550 (voice) or by emailing 32 ada@cityofpaloalto.org. Requests for assistance or accommodations must be submitted at least 33 24 hours in advance of the meeting, program, or service. 34