HomeMy WebLinkAbout2019-02-13 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: February 13, 2019 2
Council Chambers 3
250 Hamilton Avenue 4
6:00 PM 5
6
Call to Order / Roll Call 7
6:05pm 8
9
Chair Riggs: Alright can we do a roll call? Ok, well welcome everyone. I see we’ve got a full 10
house tonight. It’s great to be here, thank you to Staff for the great report. We have two items 11
tonight. 12
Oral Communications 13
The public may speak to any item not on the agenda. Three (3) minutes per speaker.1,2 14
15
Chair Riggs: I think that what we’ll do is we’ll ask for any comments that are about things that 16
aren’t on the agenda and then what we’ll do is we’ll hear from Staff. And once we hear from 17
Staff, we can comment on the agenda items if there are any public people in the public who 18
would like to comment on those specific agenda items. So, do we have any comment slips for 19
things that aren’t on the agenda? 20
21
Ms. Yolanda Cervantes: No. 22
Agenda Changes, Additions, and Deletions 23
The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management. 24
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
[The Commission moved to City Official Reports] 2
City Official Reports 3
1. Assistant Directors Report, Meeting Schedule and Assignments 4
5
Chair Riggs: So maybe I’ll turn it over to you, Jonathan. 6
7
Mr. Jonathan Lait, Director of Planning: Sure, yeah for the official report than just a couple 8
items to note and you may have already followed from the City Council. I think the Planning and 9
Transportation Commission may have reviewed some component of the Downtown Garage; 10
the Environmental Report or something? So, the City Council had approved the ARB 11
entitlement and certified the Environmental Impact Report but postponed any action on 12
authorizing any additional work through the contract to advance the project. The idea was to 13
pause on that while the City explores a broader parking management strategy for the 14
downtown area. So, as we have more information to report on that we’ll share that with you. 15
16
And then also on the Council agenda was the discussion regarding the Downtown Residential 17
Cap and this is one that the Commission did consider and had recommended against. The City 18
Council did approve the removal of the 350,000-square foot non-residential cap for downtown. 19
And so that will be adjusted on the second reading and be effective probably in about 45-days 20
or something from now. Along with that direction they asked to take up some additional 21
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
studies which we anticipate doing as part of the Downtown Corradiated Area Plan which we’re 1
hoping to launch in winter, next winter. So that concludes the report. 2
3
Chair Riggs: Questions from the Commissioners? 4
5
Commissioner Lauing: Chair? I’d just like to say an official congratulations to now Director Lait 6
who joins us tonight for the first time so congrats. 7
8
Mr. Lait: Thank you. 9
10
Commissioner Roohparvar: Congratulations. 11
12
Mr. Lait: Thank you. 13
14
Commissioner Lauing: Well you can’t clap in Chambers, right. 15
16
Chair Riggs: Thank you Chair Lauing [note – Commissioner Lauing] that was very appropriate. 17
18
Study Session 19
Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 20
2. The Planning and Transportation Commission Will Hold a Study Session and Provide Feedback 21
on the Progress and Conceptual Site Layout and Circulation for the Cubberley Master Plan. 22
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Chair Riggs: So, with that, I maybe will go into our first our first item which is a study session for 2
the Cubberley Master Plan and I think we have a presentation from Staff first. And then if 3
there’s any public comment we’ll take that and then roll into feedback and iteration from the 4
Commission. 5
6
Mr. Jonathan Lait, Director of Planning: Great, thank you, I’m going to invite Kristen O’Kane to 7
lead us off on the presentation and we’ll go from there. 8
9
Ms. Kristen O’Kane: Good evening, Kristen O’Kane with Community Services. We’re here 10
tonight just to share with you some information and some… what we’ve heard from the 11
community on our Cubberley Code Design process which we also have been calling a Master 12
Plan. And I just want to emphasize the word Code Design because that’s really what it is. We’re 13
using all of the community to help us design the future of this site with the school district as 14
well. So, the things that we’d like to focus on specifically tonight with the Planning Commission 15
are things like massing, layout of the site, transportation circulation. There’s going to be a lot 16
more in the presentation on process as well as programming that we’ve heard from the 17
community. We’ll try to focus mostly on those things that you’re interested in. So, I’m going to 18
turn it over now to our consultant, Concordia. To my right is Steven Bingler and Bobbie Hill and 19
they’re going to lead off on the presentation and then we’re here to answer any questions you 20
might have. 21
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Chair Riggs: I think Commissioner Waldfogel we’ll let you take the floor. Go ahead. 2
3
Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah, no I mean just before we go into the presentation it wasn’t 4
really clear from the Staff report what the goal of this item. What are you hoping for us to do 5
besides listen? 6
7
Ms. O’Kane: We’re hoping to just hear feedback from you on where we are at this point. This is 8
a huge project that we’re doing collaboratively with the school district and like I said with the 9
community. It’s going to have major implications to that area because it will be a bigger project 10
than we’ve seen in a really long time. And so, we would… we just want to do a check in at this 11
point so there’s no action. It’s just how are we doing, were do… what do you think of where we 12
are right now and do you have any insights on housing at the site which is something that we’ve 13
been hearing? How tall we want to go with our buildings? How we want the site layout to be? 14
Like I said there are two property owners so that adds another layer of complexity with this 15
project and anything about traffic for vehicles, pedestrians, or bicyclists. Any feedback on that, 16
that you’d like to share, we’d be really happy to hear that. So, this is really a study session, we 17
went to Council Monday night with the same presentation, we were at the School Board last 18
night, and right now we’re just – we’re getting feedback so that later as we continue forward 19
with the Master Plan there are no surprises. And just emphasizing it is a Master Plan so it’s not 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
– at the end of this process, we will not have architectural designs. We will have a concept of 1
what this site could look like in the future if we want to take it one step further. 2
3
Chair Riggs: So, and I’m going to suggest for this item that maybe what we can do is listen to the 4
consultant and then I think what I’d like to do is go down the line and give input back because 5
really, I think [note – that’s] the job of what we need to do tonight. Forgive me if I’m putting 6
words in your mouth but it’s really just to provide that expertise and feedback that they can go 7
and run with. We don’t – again, I’m going to put words in your mouth. I’m not sure that we 8
know process in terms of when this might come back to us. It’s a fairly long-time line but our 9
goal tonight is really to provide that expertise that we do in terms of being the appointed body. 10
Is that a good characterization? 11
12
Ms. O’Kane: Thank you, yes, that’s right on and just to make one final comment. That the only 13
funding that we have right now is to complete this Master Plan but we’re sharing those costs 14
equally with the school district. Once the Master Plan is complete there’ll have to be some 15
decision from both the City Council and the School Board as to how we fund the next phase 16
which would be starting to design and build. Thank you and I’ll go ahead and turn it over to 17
Steven and Bobbie. 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Ms. Bobbie Hill: Good evening, happy to be here this evening. We open with this slide just to 1
note that initially the project – the scope of the project was to include only the 35-acres that is 2
the Cubberley site. We learned from community members in the first and second meeting that 3
there was concern that the school district did not also include the Greendell and the 525-site 4
given its essentially part of the same area. And we were happy to see that both the Council and 5
the school district saw the wisdom in that. And then subsequently prior to meeting number 6
three we added those two sites which just gives us a bigger footprint and a bigger canvas to do 7
the planning. 8
9
So, this is a Code Design process as Kristen mentioned. The First Phase really focused on 10
program needs and special relationships and then honing that in meetings one and two. And 11
the deliverable from that phase is a programming document which either you have or you 12
certainly have access too. It was something that’s shared with Council and shared with 13
everybody that’s participated in the process. There’s a very robust website that documents 14
everything that we’ve done; planning for the meetings, the actual meetings, and the results 15
after that and we do a meeting summary after each document. So we – meeting three which 16
happened just a couple weeks ago was where we begin to look at the design direction and 17
aesthetics and then take that in a longer period of time between meeting three and meeting 18
four. Again, bringing certain expertise to the table to hone the work that needs to be done and 19
evaluated in preparation for the Master Plan due in for the last round of feedback in May. 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
So, the top ideas, we gathered hundreds of ideas from community members in meeting one. In 2
meeting two we actually asked them to prioritize those ideas. I will add that prior to those 3
meetings we did meet with the Cubberley tenants who are there now and to understand their 4
needs and their plans. And also, to evaluate the square footage that they had at this point and 5
where the may need additional space. All this again is documented in the programming 6
document. It’s available to everybody. 7
8
You can see here the existing uses at Cubberley, preserved or expanded. The blue is the inside 9
programming and the green is the outside programming. When we expanded the use to 10
Greendell we actually are now having conversations about potentially moving – putting a 11
permanent location for the adult education at PAUSD which has now spread to I think seven to 12
ten sites around the City. They’d like to consolidate their operations. And then the new 13
Cubberley programs that the community wanted/desired. Again, you see the blue and the 14
green, indoor, and outdoor, and then with the 525 sites, one place for recommendation for 15
potential Staff housing for the school district. This just gives you a hint of what the document 16
looks like. It’s about 150 Pages but it goes into great detail about these different program areas 17
and the requirements. 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
And then the other work that happened was really looking at the massing in meeting one and 1
I’m going to pass this along to Steven to share with you. 2
3
Mr. Steven Bingler: We got feedback from the community, as you know most of the buildings 4
on the Cubberley site are a one-story. So, we got a lot of feedback from the community that 5
they would be willing to – to get more open space they’d be willing to consider two or three or 6
even four-story buildings which are all fixed within the existing zoning envelope and in order to 7
get more green space. Not yet. And also, they mentioned that they wanted to maximize the 8
green space and put the parking underground as much as possible or under the buildings and 9
those kinds of things to get more green space. 10
11
So, we took all of their recommendations and we came up with three different scenarios if we 12
will. One scenario is what we call the Independent Campuses which is basically all of the school 13
facilities on one side of the site and all of the community facilities on the other end of the site 14
with a big green space in the middle. And the second… the third one was the Building in the 15
Park which is basically everything in one building that would be built in various phases. And the 16
third one was we call it the Shared Village which is kind of an intermediate sort of hybrid 17
between those two. So, by far the comments that we got back centered more and more on the 18
Shared Village concept and they gave us what their… what they felt were the strengths and 19
weaknesses of those schemes. Everything from energy conservation and efficiency to the scale 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
of the buildings and those kinds of things. And so, at the end of the day the Shared Village 1
concept or direction was voted the number one of the three and so we’ve moved in that 2
direction to develop for the third meeting. I don’t know if we’ve mentioned yet but there has 3
been so far 380 some unique participants in this process in three meetings. So, all of our 4
meetings have had about 150 to sometimes 200 people. Some people have been to all three 5
meetings and a lot of people have been to at least one meeting. 6
7
Anyway, this is the concept that evolved out of those discussions. The concept in Phase One 8
would include a health and wellness center, a visual arts facility, two gymnasiums on top of 9
each other, a maker space, workshop, and upholstery center, performing arts and café, the 10
Greendell Elementary School and adult school. Then the multi-use space and a kitchen and then 11
a whole variety of other Cubberley programs including early childhood and all kinds of art 12
programs for example. And then in Phase Two the buildings that you see in red would be the 13
school building because the school district is not sure yet when they will need a new school 14
building but they want to preserve on this site the right to build a school building in which – in 15
this case, which is comparable to Pally or Gun. And so, in the First Phase, you see the light blue 16
buildings are the community buildings, the community programming buildings. And the red 17
buildings are the school buildings and the purples buildings are shared uses so the gymnasiums 18
would be part of the day for the school, part of the day for the community, maybe at nights and 19
on weekends for the community. All of those spaces would be shared and so the taxpayers 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
could get the benefit of those – that optimizes those public facilities. In addition to outdoor… I 1
mean indoor spaces, we also… oh, I’m sorry. We also added onto here, there are the future 2
middle and high school and then also the Palo Alto Unified School District is considering moving 3
their offices to this site to free up some space over at the Pally High. And also, they suggested 4
that they want to consider some Staff housing, workforce housing for their teachers. 5
6
And then in addition to the indoor spaces, we have outdoor spaces which the… everybody 7
wanted to preserve the existing soccer and softball fields. There was a suggestion of a skate 8
park and with future discussion, we’re not sure whether that is going to hold – sway or not but 9
there’s – but one thing that we can be sure of, pickleball is ahead of everything else as far as I 10
can tell. There’s a playground, there’s a number of tennis courts, a dog park, swimming pool, an 11
outdoor exercise area that’s associated with the health/fitness centers, an amphitheater, some 12
flexible green space for the community center and then childcare play area for the early 13
childhood center and then a central promenade that in a way also serves as a neutral ground 14
between. Whenever you’re designing these… a public school and a public service on the same 15
site there are all kinds of issues around security and separation at various times of the day that 16
come up. So, in a way we’ve created this promenade in the center that provides that neutral 17
space where we don’t have to have big fences and things like that dividing all the things. We did 18
a project similar to this one by the way in Emeryville where we put a school… a pre-k to 12 19
school and parks and recreations facilities all on the same site. So, we’ve been down this track a 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
couple of times already. At any rate, so then we also have a quad for the school… a separate 1
quad for the school as well as an outdoor café and seating area. So, say with the performing 2
arts center and then the Greendell playground. 3
4
Now at the end of the day if we go back and look at what the community asked for which was 5
more open space. We were able on the same site where you can see the chart on the left the 6
green is the green space and then the dark black is the building footprints and then the grey is 7
the parking and access roads. We’ve been able to create 59 percent more green space as a 8
result of the changes in the planning. At the same time, we’ve more than doubled the square 9
footage on the site by going to two and three and four stories in some locations. The higher 10
buildings are in the center of the site and the lower buildings are on the perimeter of the site. 11
With all… these also were requested by the community as you can imagine. People who live 12
around the site don’t want big buildings… four story buildings right next to them. And in 13
addition to that, we’ve reduced the amount of paving… parking lot paving by 40 percent by 14
using structured parking rather than surface parking. 15
16
We have also been addressing some of the issues. What you see here are the actual physical 17
property lines. There’s 8-acres that are owned by the City and another 35-acres that’s owned 18
by the school district and clearly, in order to implement this plan, there would have to be some 19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
changes which we anticipated. Maybe the City keeps it 8-acres but it takes a different 1
configuration; realignment of property lines. Bobbie? 2
3
Ms. Hill: So just to share with you at meeting number three based on all the information that 4
we’ve gathered, we’ve brought this back to the community and shared this plan. And in 5
multiple activities, we focused on the program, organization and massing, circulation and 6
parking, and the look and feel. So, there was a large table sheet that you see here where 7
basically we’re asking people once they’ve had a chance to look at all of this information and 8
really respond are, we… did we get it? Are we listening to them? Do they see anything that’s 9
missing? Are there any additions they would like to have? So, what we learned is that we ask if 10
people agree or disagree that the massing model fulfills the community goals for the site and 11
clearly, they agree that we’re moving in the right direction. We also heard to they want the 12
pool to be moved away from these neighbors. They thought that they would not particularly 13
want to hear the noise and distraction of a pool. So, in our iteration that we’re working on 14
that’s going to move more to the middle of the site. We… they wanted to reduce and 15
reconfigure parking structures so that is in the works as well and push two-story buildings away 16
more from neighbors, in particular on the north side of the Greendell building. Now I’m going 17
to hand it over to Steven. 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Bingler: So, another big part of the discussion that… from the very first meeting as you 1
probably know better than we, had to do with traffic. Traffic and traffic circulation and I mean 2
people pulled out their pencils and they really went after it. How many entrances to the site? 3
How much parking? How congested is it going to be? We actually, with the addition of the 4
Greendell site, thought we would have some relief by being able to provide some access from 5
San Antonio Road but under further investigation that included our traffic consultant, Fehr, and 6
Peers, we have concluded that that would not be the best thing for the neighborhood. There’s a 7
lot of residential… it would be too much of an impact on those residential neighborhoods so 8
going back to the original plan of having two entrances and exits off of Middlefield. And the… 9
there are also a very elaborate system of biking and jogging trails on the site. We have in the 10
First Phase of it… I should mention that the First Phase we assume will be City’s work because 11
the City has a more urgent need for revamping those building and or building new buildings. 12
Those buildings are now 60 some years old and have served a useful life but the school district, 13
on the other hand, doesn’t really know when they might need another school. And they know 14
they don’t need it now, they don’t need it probably for at least another 10-15-years. So, the 15
school is more of a place holder at this point whereas the City’s needs are more urgent and 16
more. So, we’ve divided… generally into… the project into a Phase One, Phase Two based on 17
those distinctions. My guess is we’ll end up having Phase One A, B, C, D as we move further into 18
the costing and that kind of thing. So, we have on… in the First Phase, we have eight… nine… I 19
can’t quite see it, 950 parking spaces and about 800 bicycle spaces. And then when we expand 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
to Phase Two, we have a total of 1,380 parking spaces and 1,800 bicycle spaces. And you can 1
see the layout here, the layout is still very much in flux with… in consultation with a lot of the 2
biking people and the pedestrian people. I think Kristen has another meeting tomorrow with 3
that group to continue to refine this plan but this is a general layout. And then another thing 4
that we learned is that we had originally come up with a plan where the parking… I mean the 5
bike parking would be pretty much on the perimeter of the site and the pedestrian… pure 6
pedestrian would be in the center. But we learned from the City that it would be more 7
preferable to provide more direct… bicycle parking more directly related to the uses that… 8
adjacent to the uses. And I have to say I’m happy to have a new piece of vocabulary which I 9
think is awesome which where they explained that those would be called Rockstar parking 10
spaces. So that’s a new part of my vocabulary that I’ve picked up here in Palo Alto so I’m going 11
to turn it back over to Bobbie to talk about meeting number three. 12
13
Ms. Hill: So that gives you the background information for the second activity where we had a 14
similar sheet that gave the detailed information about all of these traffic and circulation 15
options. And again, we asked the community to tell us, did we… where did we get this right? 16
Where would you agree? Where would you agree? Where do you disagree? What other things 17
might be added and what we learned in that meeting is that does this plan seem to be safe and 18
easy to navigate for pedestrians, bikes, and cars? And for the most part, we got that right and 19
does parking access look convenient? So again, much of this is we’re working very closely with 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
the Safe Routes to School folks and understanding that parking and circulation is a very big 1
issue. So, we still have work to do on this but we’re moving in the right direction. 2
3
What we heard in particular highlights are remove the road that connects to San Antonio which 4
we’ve already done, separate bike and car paths, create better bike access to the interior of the 5
site which we have now done, and keep a walking path that connects Greendell to Fern 6
Avenue. 7
8
So, the last activity was really moving us into some sense of design options and aesthetics and 9
what people preferred. So, we have activity here where we asked for architectural style 10
preferences. We brought up some prominent styles that we see here in Palo Alto and the 11
region; mid-century modern, arts and crafts, mission style and contemporary, high tech. We 12
asked them to respond to specific elements in each of those like shape of roof, windows, 13
lighting, green space, those kinds of things and then we asked them to rank each of those one, 14
two, three and four in terms of their preference. And so, here’s what we learned, that with one 15
being the top winner… the top vote-getter. The contemporary and high tech is falling in the 16
number one spot and mid-century modern falling in the number two spot. 17
18
And then the last thing that we did was looking at landscape preferences. Everything from the 19
shapes on the site, the actual landscape and hardscape, and actually color palettes for paving 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
and such. Things that like that and we asked them to give us a response and actually where we 1
fell somewhere right in the middle. 2
3
And after every meeting, we do an after-action review. We want to find out people’s concerns 4
in the heat of the moment. Tell us what’s working and we thought we share this fundamental 5
question was do you agree that we… the Cubberley Master Plan is on the right track and 73 6
percent of the respondents said they either agreed or strongly agreed. 7
8
Just a really quick little if you’ve not been to any of the meetings you can get a sense here of 9
how they’re conducted. We do some presentation but we really want people to be doing the 10
work at their tables and not necessarily sitting with just like-minded people. We think it’s very 11
important in this process of Code Design that you’re hearing from people who have different 12
points of views. You’re hearing from people you don’t know and listening to their concerns so 13
that you can have a better sense of compromise, a better sense of what’s going to work for the 14
largest amount of people int eh community, and that’s how we do the work. And all of our 15
three meetings have been held in a similar format. 16
17
And last but not least we wanted to share with you the role of our community fellows. So, this 18
is something that we do in projects all over the country and we’re really excited here. I think we 19
have 12 adult fellows and we have 6 student fellows; three from Pally and three from Gun. And 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
these fellows have gone… they’re volunteering their time, they’ve gone through an extensive 1
weekend long training about a Code Design process, and we also meet with them in regular 2
conference calls. And then we meet with them in person prior to every meeting so they are 3
fully aware of the agenda, they understand the activities, they understand how best to facilitate 4
those activities, we have a chance to give them feedback and answer questions. And then they 5
actually sit at the tables and facility that work and then they help us as we move forward to 6
each meeting. They are… have been incredible. Interestingly when we chose the fellows and we 7
brought them into the room they didn’t know each other so these are people from across the 8
community who now know each other. And again, our student fellows have been just absolute 9
rock stars. I call one of them the Mayor and one of them the Senator and I suspect they’ll be 10
sitting in one of your seats before you know it. 11
12
And so, where we are now is, we’ve completed meeting three. Now we have about a 4-month 13
chunk of time to really refine the work that we’re doing and to be prepared to bring these 14
alternatives back on May the 9th. And that will be the last round of an opportunity for the 15
community to weigh in on these different options and then after that, we’ll take that 16
information and the complete the Master Plan in the summer of ’19. Next meeting again is May 17
9th. We also, as I’ve said, a very robust website with all of the information documented. If 18
anybody… anybody can come and participate at any time. They can even come to the last 19
meeting and they would make a contribution. This way if they choose to really get informed 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
and understand how we got somewhere. They can go to the website and get all of that 1
information but they can still come no knowing anything and contribute. And that’s it, thank 2
you very much. 3
4
Chair Riggs: Alright thank you. So, I think hearing it, I don’t have any speaker cards so… can I 5
confirm that, that there are no members of the public? Ok. So, with that maybe I’ll open 6
maybe… I’d like to kind of maybe have a structured deliberation if that’s ok with my -- so if we 7
just go down the line, either left to right or right to left and provide any feedback we might 8
have or if there are any questions, we just take those one at a time. Is that ok (interrupted) 9
10
Commissioner Roohparvar: Sure. 11
12
Chair Riggs: By acclamation? Ok, so no offense to Commissioner Waldfogel but let’s start on my 13
left. 14
15
Commissioner Waldfogel: [unintelligible – off mic] 16
17
Chair Riggs: That was intentional. No. 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Lauing: Well by that random flip of the coin you’ve got somebody who’s got a 1
lot of experience with Cubberley. We’ve dealt with this for years on the Parks Commission and 2
it’s just really heartening to see how far it’s come from the original, it had some acronym, CAC? 3
Not CAC but anyway (interrupted) 4
5
Ms. Hill: I was CCAC, the Cubberley [unintelligible – many people talking at once] 6
7
Commissioner Lauing: CCAC, that’s right, that was before the CAC, that’s right. So, it’s just 8
really good. I would just want to ask Staff if in future there’s going to be action items coming 9
out of this as the thing progresses? Director? Will this be coming back to us for any action 10
items? I mean I don’t think the zoning is going to change, they don’t need a CUP I don’t believe, 11
so I’m just… and whoops. 12
13
Mr. Lait: I think you… there may be an opportunity for the Commission to see the Master Plan 14
again as it makes its way in draft final form on its way to the City Council. And as we heard 15
earlier there’s no funding that has been identified for the next piece of this so we’ll have to see 16
where that happens. I imagine based on what I’ve seen here that there are probably some 17
legislative amendments that may need to be made to our Zoning Map or Zoning Code. So, the 18
Planning Commission would certainly be involved in any process that involves rezoning 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.
there may be some discretionary entitlements but I’m not sure at this point where the 1
Commission would be involved. 2
3
Commissioner Lauing: Ok. Sort of comments on the… feedback in addition to those I made 4
years ago. I think it’s just absolutely terrific that you were able to get as much new square 5
footage there because that was always constrained and it's just such a wonderful community 6
resource. So now you’re going to be able to get stuff done there so I think that was terrific. I 7
know it’s more costly getting the parking underground in the demand that you heard from folks 8
for more green space is just a phenomenal part of the design. I presume that that green space 9
that you quote is inclusive of the playfields? Yeah, so that’s included in the green space so I 10
think all of that is terrific. 11
12
Over on Page 18 of the Packet, you rank the programs by number of votes. That is also very 13
consistent with the Parks Master Plan research that we did which was massive over the course 14
of about a year and a half. And particularly I just want to point out one thing is the request for 15
gyms, swimming pool, and the expanded playing fields which I think are in about the top 10 16
were always very high. And the particular thing that you capture here, of course, is because of 17
the site so you have something in the south, whereas those facilities are in the north. So, it’s a 18
huge improvement to have those major facilities that [unintelligible] have only been in the 19
north. So that’s a great addition as well, thank you. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Roohparvar: Thank you for your presentation and all your hard work on this. I 2
am relatively new to Palo Alto and the Cubberley project. So, I don’t want to play a Monday 3
morning quarterback or anything but I did want to give you some feedback. Do you feel that 4
you got an adequate cross-section of the community’s input in this process? 5
6
Ms. Hill: Yes, we do actually although we are doing some additional outreach. In fact, I had a 7
meeting today at Pally High, about 2-weeks ago we had a meeting at Gun to get more youth 8
participation. We are also… our fellows are working hard between now and then to try to have 9
more child age parents be able to come even though we know that’s a challenge on a 10
weeknight if you have little children at home. But in doing this work all over the country for a 11
community of this size to have well over almost 400 unique participants in this process, we 12
think based on our experience that is a very representative group of people. And I dare say in 13
most other processes in Palo Alto you’ve not had nearly that number that traditionally comes 14
and participate. And our model of Code Design does… we do want to bring everybody into the 15
same space at the same time so that they are hearing… and they’re not just responding to a 16
survey. They’re not just responding from a very likeminded constituents’ points of views so we 17
think it’s important to have people in the room together. So, we are working hard to have more 18
people come to the last meeting and again, we have… the City has a list that goes out a huge 19
blast, so the school district and they get invited to everything and they also get updates of all of 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
the work that’s taken place thus far. The meeting summaries, the deliverables, so we also 1
believe we have wide birth in terms of reaching people at least in that regard. 2
3
Commissioner Roohparvar: When do you typically hold your meetings and how are… are you 4
sending out… do you typically hold them during the week? Weekdays at night? 5
6
Ms. Hill: Yes, actually before we… I mean in the beginning we spoke with City Staff and school 7
staff and everything and said what do you think is the most ideal time to have these meetings? 8
And we went around and around and it was agreed that it would be on Thursday evenings. So, 9
it’s at 7 o’clock to 9. 10
11
Commissioner Roohparvar: Ok well let me just tell you what I’m getting at. So, I actually live 12
very close to Cubberley, I’m in that community in the group of people who would use this, and 13
to be honest I was surprised to see the top program by a number of votes was adult education. 14
Because I walk around and my community is all parents with young children just like me so that 15
is somewhat of a disconnect for me. We’ve got letters from the public today, I think two letters, 16
indicating that too. I believe Commissioner Templeton also lives in the area so you can speak to 17
that as well if that’s your perception of who is are the constituents of the community who’d be 18
going to this. Did you want to speak to that quickly? 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Templeton: I just wanted to make a point of clarification, I have a note for this 1
myself. By adult education do you also include preschool family? Preschool family technically an 2
adult education program but it’s a co… it’s a parent education live (interrupted) 3
4
Ms. Hill: Oh, yes, I’m sorry. 5
6
Commissioner Templeton: …with your children. It’s very infant to 4-year old focused so I think 7
when you refer to it as adult education it may be misleading unintentionally. 8
9
Ms. Hill: Yes. 10
11
Commissioner Templeton: But I think that may speak to Commissioner Roohparvar’s 12
(interrupted) 13
14
Chair Riggs: And Commissioners if you could just try to keep your… discipline yourself because I 15
think we’ll be more efficient if we do it one at a time. 16
17
Commissioner Roohparvar: I asked her. 18
19
Commissioner Templeton: I just didn’t want to go down a path. I’m trying to be efficient, yes. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Roohparvar: I asked her. So, what do you guys… is that what you contemplate 2
by adult education? What is it going to consist of? 3
4
Ms. Hill: By adult education… actually, I can speak most specifically to that. So right now, the 5
adult education program that’s PAUSD Adult Ed. Program is scattered amongst, I don’t know, 6
around 10 sites all around the City. Some of their administration and a very few of their 7
programs are actually at Greendell and on Cubberley right now. They would like to consolidate 8
and have their program be on the Greendell site potentially and utilizing some of the space at 9
Cubberley. So, for instance, the upholstery is a very strong program that they have, that’s an 10
Adult Ed. Program. It’s a program that happens through the Adult Ed. [unintelligible] PAUSD 11
and so they would be a tenant and provide a variety of programs. I mean they have a huge 12
catalog of programs that they do in the evenings after school for adults. 13
14
Commissioner Roohparvar: So, it’s those types of like English as a second language (interrupted) 15
16
Ms. Hill: Yes. 17
18
Commissioner Roohparvar: Upholstery classes, knitting (interrupted) 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Ms. Hill: Right. 1
2
Commissioner Roohparvar: These are the types of things that we’re talking about with adult 3
education. That’s what it’s going to be primarily composed of? 4
5
Ms. Hill: Well I don’t… do you have (interrupted) 6
7
Ms. O’Kane: Well I’d like to add to that. Some of the things we heard is people were interested 8
in vocational training for adults. So, things… even… there’s a… we’re proposing a commercial 9
kitchen. We heard a lot about a commercial kitchen that both non-profits could use but also 10
could be used as a teaching space and a tech are where people could learn more about 11
technology and apply that to potential movement in their career. 12
13
I wanted to point out your comment, so we recognize that the demographic that’s been 14
showing up to the meetings is predominantly I would say 50 and older. We did some surveying 15
at the last meeting to see what age groups were attending and it is an older crowd. And we are 16
now making a stronger effort and our fellows are also making a strong effort to reach that age 17
group that for whatever reason because they’re busy, they have children, they are not 18
attending. And one way we’re doing that is through the… I’m attending next week the 19
Pedestrian and Bicycling Advisory Committee meeting at the school district which is made up of 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
parents of school-age children from the different campuses. So, there’ll be an initial meeting 1
there and then just a push to get them to help us get people involved. It has been advertised to 2
all the schools, the flyers have been hand delivered to the neighborhood around Cubberley. 3
Most of the people attending the meetings live in the Greenmeadow Neighborhood but we’ve 4
offered childcare and that demographic is just not getting engaged so we’re doing a major push 5
to get there. 6
7
Commissioner Roohparvar: They’re trying to survive. 8
9
Ms. O’Kane: No, I hear you. 10
11
Commissioner Roohparvar: That demographic, they’re just trying to survive. 12
13
Ms. O’Kane: Yeah, I understand. We also have an opportunity for people to provide impact… 14
input online. So, if they go to our website, people can share their ideas, share their feedback to 15
us without attending a meeting at all. So, we welcome as much input as we can get from 16
everyone in the community. 17
18
Commissioner Roohparvar: That’s great to hear and then I had a lot of issues but I… questions 19
but one other issue that I wanted to discuss or point out if for me as a parent it makes me really 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.
uncomfortable to have school facilities shared with adult facilities. I mean how… I think the 1
gymnasium is going to be shared but then students are going to want to use the gymnasium at 2
night for soccer or for whatever… the playfields or on the weekends for games. Have you guys 3
thought about that? How to create more of a division where there’s not… just for security and 4
safety reasons. 5
6
Ms. O’Kane: So, we have thought about that and we were just meeting this morning talking 7
about those exact issues and we’re still working it out. You know right now the City… so the 8
school gyms and the school fields are used by the school district during the day and after 9
school. And then the City actually is responsible for renting out their gyms and fields to other 10
users which include adult groups. So, there is some level of that happening now but it’s very 11
discreet times, it’s very controlled. So, we’re working out those details and we recognize that is 12
not something that we’re custom to having those shared uses but I wanted to ask if you wanted 13
to share the experience at Emeryville Center for Community Life? 14
15
Mr. Bingler: I’ll even go a little bigger than that as there’s been a movement over the last 15 to 16
20-years about around this concept of community schools. Where taxpayers are saying we 17
can’t afford to have gymnasiums for the kids from 9 o’clock in the morning until 4 o’clock in the 18
afternoon and a separate gymnasium for the community where people come at 5 o’clock and 19
leave at 10 o’clock at night. And then come back early in the morning until 9 when they go 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.
work. So, there’s a lot of push back from the community about can we really afford to keep 1
building and maintaining and using a lot of energy… sustainable energy… unsustainable energy 2
to do this. So, this is a part of I guess I would say that way of thinking. The most extreme 3
version is one… in the country is one that we designed in Emeryville which literally has a pre-k 4
to 12 school and all these community facilities and a separate community performing art center 5
and everything all on the same site. I can tell you it’s not as easy to design as if you just have 6
everything on two separate sites but it can be done. And it’s being done all over the country in 7
lots of different jurisdictions. 8
9
Commissioner Roohparvar: And then in this instance where we’re doing it, is it being driven by 10
space limitations or by financial money funding limitations? What’s driving this? 11
12
Mr. Bingler: I would say it’s being driven by three things. One thing is cost, another one is space, 13
but the third thing is there’s a lot more emphasis on not… on finding ways to integrate 14
education with community life. So that education is not sequestered from the world, that kids 15
don’t feel like they’re going to prison every day. So, I would say all of those things are a part of 16
the conversation. 17
18
Ms. Hill: I would just add that the Emeryville… the name of this is the Emeryville Center for 19
Community Life and it was designed by the community in collaboration with the school district 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
in the City. They chose to call it that because they wanted to create a there in Emeryville and 1
something that felt like a place for the community and everybody in the community. 2
3
Mr. Bingler: And there are just as many issues between having an elementary school and a 4
middle school on the same site and having a middle school and the high school on the same 5
site. And Emeryville it’s literally pre-k to 12 so you can imagine how complicated that was. 6
7
Commissioner Roohparvar: One other issue that I just wanted to point out is I think you… the 8
Packet said that the school district is unsure about whether they’re going to do a middle or a 9
high school. The only thing that I wanted to point out is those are going to have different 10
parking requirements because I assume if you’re having a high school, kids are going to bring 11
their cars versus none. Has that been taken into consideration an I guess you can’t really… you 12
don’t know what’s coming so you have to (interrupted) 13
14
Mr. Bingler: Well, we’re planning for high school. 15
16
Commissioner Roohparvar: Planning for the high school. 17
18
Mr. Bingler: We’re planning for a high school but it’s interesting you bring that up because 19
they’re also, as I’m sure you’re aware there are a lot of conversations in the transportation 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
business these days, but what is transportation going to look like 10-years from now as it 1
relates to driverless cars? And are we going to even need all these parking spaces? In fact, 2
parking garages are now being designed so that they can be… with ceiling heights that make 3
them be able to be converted into other uses because there’s so much concern right now about 4
we’re going to have more parking. Some people are projecting that we’ll have parking spaces 5
will have to be eliminated. I heard recently somebody said that within 30-years there will be 6
enough space available in downtown Los Angeles for three Cities the size of San Francisco 7
because of all of the other reduction in parking because of driverless, [unintelligible], and ride 8
sharing. So, I don’t know, we’re actually planning for both of those things I want to tell you 9
because we’re planning very specifically for drop-offs. The areas where people can be dropped 10
off by Uber or by Lyft or by driverless cars or whatever and we’re not clairvoyant enough to 11
know where it’s going to go. But we just want to be able to provide for both and not either or. 12
13
Commissioner Roohparvar: That makes sense. Two more quick comments and then I promise 14
I’ll stop. I just wanted to say I think it’s fantastic that you guys are thinking about future and 15
affordable housing on campus or on the site. That’s wonderful, I think we need it. We do need 16
to provide affordable housing to our teachers because they’re such an important part of this 17
community. 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
And then just a slight issue, I thought it was a little bit odd to have the secure children/infant 1
play area surrounded by the community. Is that it is, surrounded by the community center 2
spaces? What’s that secure infant… secure children’s playground surrounded by? It’s a building. 3
4
Mr. Bingler: That’s an early learning early childhood center that uses the open space in the 5
middle like a doughnut. 6
7
Commissioner Roohparvar: Oh ok, got it, got it. I didn’t understand what that was. Ok, that 8
makes sense now. No further questions. 9
10
Chair Riggs: Sure, Vice-Chair Alcheck. 11
12
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Alright, so I’ll just… I want to respond quickly to something that she said. I 13
think… my kids currently go to a preschool that is also a community center and they use the 14
gym at the same time as the gymnasium is used by gym members. And so, I think it is… it’s 15
more possible than we think and I think one of the… this will go into my other comments but I 16
think one of the biggest challenges that we will have before us is to just demonstrate how 17
possible some of the things that I think you’re going to attempt at suggesting we do. Just how 18
possible those things are will have to demonstrate to create familiarity there. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
I’ll just… I’ll try to be quick. I watched your presentation also on Monday… on the Monday night 1
meeting. This is your third on this week (interrupted) 2
3
Mr. Bingler: Yes, it is. 4
5
Vice-Chair Alcheck: … I think that explains why there’s virtually nobody in the room tonight on 6
this item. They were either there on Monday night or they caught you yesterday at the 7
(interrupted) 8
9
Ms. Hill: The school district. 10
11
Mr. Bingler: It’s the school district. 12
13
Vice-Chair Alcheck: School district. Basically, everybody has heard it except for us. I’m 14
impressed with the outreach. I think you deserve credit, I think the City deserves credit, the 15
accommodations that were made to facilitate a greater level of participation I think are very 16
impressive. I had never heard of some of them before or I’ve never really seen those in action 17
before and I’m sort of proud to some extent that we took it upon ourselves to do that. And 18
maybe the school district deserves credit there too for making that a priority and I think that 19
the mixed approach of leading and facilitating the process, the discussion is commendable also. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
But before we pat ourselves on the back, I want to suggest the following. The fact that the plan 1
that we have so far seems to be so well received could possibly mean that it just isn’t bold 2
enough. And my advice to Council could be to encourage you, this team, to immediately 3
develop a more diverse set of options. We mustn’t be afraid of a more diverse set of visions 4
here. I was struck listening to Governor Newsom earlier this week by his directness. He… his 5
effort to “be real” on some of the tough issues and I’m eager to see our leadership 6
acknowledge what our community needs and direct this team to come up with some options 7
that address or at least attempts to address them more thoroughly. And I’ll say, I think it would 8
be profoundly helpful for example if, in the next step of this effort, the team begin to introduce 9
innovative approaches to the community center and rec center design… recreational amenity 10
design in Cities with a far denser standard. What do I mean by that? How are gymnasiums, 11
community centers, recreational sites in Tokyo, London, Manhattan, Paris, how are they laid 12
out? And I think a lot of people will say this isn’t Tokyo. We have higher home… land prices than 13
Tokyo. 14
15
Mr. Bingler: Right. 16
17
Vice-Chair Alcheck: They cost more to build… more to buy here than it does in Manhattan so we 18
are Manhattan. We’re just not acknowledging it, right? And there’s nothing on… I wish… it 19
would be great if we could put the slide that is a little… it’s the most zoomed in one of the maps 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
if that’s alright? Yeah, right there, no go back. Yeah, so there’s nothing inherently from my 1
perspective problematic about this. I think it’s beautiful. If I were to try to be like Gavin 2
Newsom this week and be real, this is a really super community center/school site. You took a, 3
with all due respect, crappy, outdated, dilapidated place and I spend a lot of time at Cubberley. 4
I coach Palo Alto girl softball there. It’s a major site for the softball crew. I’m there regularly for 5
whether it’s the dance performance by some small group or for some other activity. It’s actually 6
amazing how many different groups are utilizing that site and it goes to show how in need we 7
are of that sort of space. But it’s kind of falling apart and never… no… it’s hard… it smacks of 8
needing to be updated. This is like oh this is everything, this is like the joining equinox. Better 9
than equinox, this is like the fancy gym that costs a lot of money and I think it’s great but I 10
would suggest to you that any development at this site that didn’t include at least 100-units of 11
housing (interrupted) 12
13
Ms. Hill: Yes, yes. 14
15
Vice-Chair Alcheck: For individuals on the City or the school districts payroll would be a 16
monumental failure. I’m not… I hate that you said two to three stories. I think you’re not… I’m 17
not being dramatic here for my own benefit, I’m being dramatic for your benefit. I think we 18
must not be tone deaf, I think the success of this project is much more likely to hinge on its 19
sensitivity to our City’s housing crisis than its sensitivity to our proud and vocal pickleball club. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Ms. Hill: Yes. 2
3
Vice-Chair Alcheck: I mean it sounds funny but when you said that I thought, are we… and I 4
really respect that of what you’ve done but it’s like no one wants to see [unintelligible] 5
moonwalk. I’m so sorry that we don’t have enough pickleball facilities and we should. That’s on 6
the Parks and Rec Commission but I think people will pay attention and I think they will suggest 7
that we failed if this site looks like a fancy gym. And I would suggest to you that if it were up to 8
me, there’s too much circulation space here. Not every building needs a quad or a courtyard 9
out in front of it. We should fill in the space between all the blues and everything should have… 10
I don’t necessarily think of… I don’t necessarily think the model of putting housing on top of 11
everything else works. I think you can have a housing section and a recreational section and a 12
school section. They don’t need to all… it doesn’t necessarily need to be on top of each other 13
like Santana Row. You don’t need housing on every section but do not have an option here that 14
makes some people really upset with you means that you have more work to do in my opinion. 15
And the pool’s location, I know you acknowledged Monday night that it’s moved in some new 16
revision. The pool’s location is the least of the concerns for the people who live next door. I love 17
the idea of non-profit having space. What non-profit? What non-profit is operating… who are 18
working at this non-profit? Where do they live? Why would they meet here? They live across 19
the Bay. What individuals are… need to learn about new… like retraining, right? That’s what you 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
triggered my mind, oh they are going to get retrained so they have new opportunities. Who? 1
Who are we talking about? What population? Not to say that there aren’t individuals in Palo 2
Alto that are struggling that maybe need to be retrained in certain fields but that population is 3
getting smaller and smaller every day because there’s no place for them to live and afford to be 4
here. So, I’m not suggesting this site becomes a low-income housing site. I’m suggesting that 5
because of the City’s ownership and the school district’s ownership, they should prioritize their 6
employee's housing here and that there should be an exclusive effort to create that. 7
8
And I really am excited for because I think this could be the biggest opportunity for the next 50-9
years that Palo Alto has to do something impressive and I think it’s awesome to be apart of a 10
project like that. So, I’m excited for you, I hope that you continue to have success in it. 11
12
Ms. Hill: Thank you very much. 13
14
Mr. Bingler: Thank you very much. 15
16
Chair Riggs: Commissioner Templeton. 17
18
Commissioner Templeton: Thank you, thank you for putting this presentation together and for 19
all of the work that you’ve done so far. I’ve heard nothing but praise form the community 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.
members and others that have been involved so thank you. I have a ton of questions. I love 1
Cubberley, I practically spend my life there when I’m not at my house so just I apologize to the 2
Commissioners coming after me but I do have a bunch of questions. 3
4
Quickly while I’m looking at this map that we have up, we have little tiny blue things above the 5
purple near the soccer field. What are those? 6
7
Chair Riggs: Pickleball. 8
9
Commissioner Templeton: That’s pickleball? 10
11
Ms. Hill: Correct, yes. 12
13
Mr. Bingler: Right. 14
15
Commissioner Templeton: Alright so first I want to address the community questions that 16
brought up… the questions that the community members brought up. So, thank you 17
Commissioner Roohparvar for discussing the diversity of participants. I was little skeptical of 18
that concern until I saw the video and yeah, it definitely does appear to skew in one direction. 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, I applaud your efforts… your future efforts to reach out and I’m happy to talk offline about 1
ways I think you might be more successful at reaching that group. 2
3
Ms. Hill: Great. 4
5
Commissioner Templeton: Will there be a playground that is public in this space? 6
7
Ms. Hill: Yes. 8
9
Mr. Bingler: Yes. 10
11
Commissioner Templeton: And where is that on the map? 12
13
Ms. Hill: Let me see. 14
15
Mr. Bingler: You’ve got to go back. You see it, there it is, third down from the top. 16
17
Ms. Hill: Right here, playground. See where there’s the pickleball and then there’s a playground 18
here. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Templeton: Ok and that’s rather diminutive given the size of the acreage. 1
2
Ms. Hill: Well it looks small but it’s… the scale of this is… let me just give you a for instance. 3
4
Commissioner Templeton: It looks smaller than a tennis court, is that correct? 5
6
Ms. Hill: Well it’s (interrupted) 7
8
Mr. Bingler: It’s actually about the size of two tennis courts. 9
10
Commissioner Templeton: Ok is the green a tennis court? 11
12
Mr. Bingler: Sorry? 13
14
Commissioner Templeton: Is the green representing a tennis court? 15
16
Mr. Bingler: Right so if you take two of those tennis courts. 17
18
Ms. Hill: See here is pickleball. She’s… I see what you’re saying, it does look smaller and 19
(interrupted) 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Templeton: Alright, I’ll move on. 2
3
Ms. Hill: Anyway, it’s there and it’s not actually… I mean the size of these things are morphing. 4
5
Mr. Bingler: We can make it bigger if you want. 6
7
Commissioner Templeton: No, no, I’m asking for clarification because a community member 8
wrote and asked us about it so I want to be as crystal clear as possible in case they want to give 9
you future input. 10
11
Ms. Hill: Great, thank you. 12
13
Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. Safety concerns, I really appreciate Commissioner 14
Roohparvar’s approaching this topic and I want to just caution us about inadvertently being too 15
dismissive of that because of our successes in other areas or other communities or trends that 16
are happening. I would encourage you to study the types of police reports that are coming in 17
from this area but I’ve involved in and attending activities at Cubberley for many years and this 18
safety and security issue is serious. It’s not a joke. It’s not a trend that’s going to go away. This is 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.
something we need to bake into the design. So, I would love to see as part of the design some 1
safety concerns, safety measures being highlighted like lighting and police call box or whatever. 2
3
Mr. Bingler: Gotcha. 4
5
Commissioner Templeton: Maybe that’s future, maybe we’re too early. 6
7
Ms. Hill: That kind of detail is going to happen in the architectural phase but certainly we can 8
call it out in the plan. 9
10
Commissioner Templeton: I think it would help a lot of people feel more comfortable with the 11
design. I do understand that we want… and I’ve heard wonderful things about having space that 12
is used by children and seniors and employees and all of the different parts of life. I’ve heard 13
wonderful things about it as well but just so you know, we’re having some serious safety issues 14
in Cubberley just the way it’s currently designed. 15
16
Mr. Bingler: I think that’s a good idea. [unintelligible – off mic], I know how to do that. 17
18
Commissioner Templeton: And then you said that the building design that was chosen was 19
either modern or mid-century and not (interrupted) 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Templeton: Maybe that’s future, maybe we’re too early. 2
3
Mr. Bingler: Either contemporary, high tech, or mid-century modern. That was what the highest 4
(interrupted) 5
6
Commissioner Templeton: Perfect, I think there was some misunderstanding about that in the 7
community as well. Excellent. And is there any interest in integrating style choices with some of 8
the famous Eichler type designs that are in close proximity? 9
10
Mr. Bingler: That’s what mid-century modern is in this context. 11
12
Commissioner Templeton: Ok so but that was not chosen. 13
14
Ms. Hill: Well it the second, it was a close second so (interrupted) 15
16
Commissioner Templeton: So where are we in that decision process? Is it final? 17
18
Ms. Hill: No, no, not at all. We’re just getting that initial information so that we can then take 19
that and then draft some scenarios. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Templeton: Excellent so you’re confirming what I read in the notes and in your 2
presentation but I just want to specifically call out some questions that we received. 3
4
Now onto my questions, so I wanted to ask about the adult school and preschool family and 5
that infants are part of the design. You mentioned earlier that there are so adult only classes 6
that will on the campus and in your vision but we are designing spaces that are for children and 7
infants as well. 8
9
Ms. Hill: Correct. 10
11
Commissioner Templeton: The pool, swimming is big in Palo Alto, you may have noticed that, 12
and I’m so glad to see a pool involved in the design. One of the things that I’m a little concerned 13
about is let’s imagine that we rent the pool out in the evening to a swim club that is going to 14
have several hundred children going in and out and being dropped off. I understand we’re 15
going to move the pool based on this design but if… a traffic consideration for you and flow 16
consideration would be to make sure that we have a drop off lane for people because I think 17
that will be a primary use. 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Bingler: Yeah, as I mentioned the drop-offs are a big part of the next phase actually of what 1
we’re doing. We have one big drop off at the end of this promenade. On the other end is a big 2
traffic circle where we see that as exclusively for dropping off and we’re not looking at doing 3
something similar on this north side of that plaza to increase the number of drops offs. 4
Especially adjacent to the preschool. 5
6
Commissioner Templeton: Excellent, I think I spend all my time at Cubberley doing drop off and 7
negotiating so the more you can do that the better. It will… there’s a lot, I’m sure you know. 8
Anyway, you asked for traffic input, that was my big traffic input. 9
10
Connectiveness to Mitchell Park, this might be part of… I appreciate Commissioner Alcheck’s 11
[note -Vice-Chair Alcheck] urge for you think bigger. I wanted to see how we would integrate 12
with people… I can imagine people that are going after school to Mitchell Park to the library for 13
a couple of hours and then going to their activity at Cubberley and having that connection. I just 14
did a couple of searches on Google Maps to see how would a pedestrian or bike person access… 15
a cyclist accesses the site and it wasn’t clear that there are some dedicated way to get across 16
Charleston. That there is one that goes through a neighborhood but we may want to study the 17
impact. I think that was Nelson Drive so if we do end up having 1,800 bicyclists coming onto the 18
campus, we would want to make sure that that neighborhood would have minimal impact. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
I also agree that I would love to see our housing be not just for teachers but for City employees. 1
It would be very important for the City to do that and I love the idea of finding creative ways to 2
get more people living in this space. There have been studies and I’m sure you’ve read all about 3
these things but when we have a space that is used all day and all night through different 4
activities and flows, we have better safety. And I think it would tie into those other concerns. 5
6
More about the parking, you didn’t mention chargers but I’m sure that’s going to be part of any 7
modern parking design so just to throw that out there. And then is it too early to really talk 8
about the flow in the… on the site of how people are getting in and out? I didn’t see that in the 9
presentation. 10
11
Mr. Bingler: No, we did have some diagrams that show that. I don’t know [unintelligible]. 12
13
Commissioner Templeton: Which Page was it? I was struggling to… was that the black and 14
orange one at the back? 15
16
Mr. Bingler: Yeah. 17
18
Commissioner Templeton: Ok. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Bingler: You can see that we have access two points on Middlefield Road and there’s 1
basically a loop that can go either direction. So, there are two (interrupted) 2
3
Commissioner Templeton: Oh ok. 4
5
Mr. Bingler: Access from Middlefield and those go into the site and the bulk of the parking is in 6
a long strip that’s parallel to the field… to Nelson. And that’s actually under all of those tennis 7
courts and also under what we think it probably ends up being the location of the pool. So, to 8
your point, you can park and go right upstairs and go to the pool. But… so that’s the bulk of the 9
parking and then there’s additional parking over to the… the part there, the… I can’t describe it 10
right now. I can’t point to it. 11
12
Commissioner Templeton: So, both of these entrances and exits are two directional? 13
14
Mr. Bingler: Yes. So, it’s a big U through the site and then we’re trying to… as you see on the 15
drawing you can see that traffic circle. The traffic circle is actually a pull off from that so you 16
don’t have to go through the traffic circle. The traffic circle is exclusive for drop-offs. 17
18
Commissioner Templeton: Great, I did not understand that from your presentation. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Ms. Hill: Right here. 1
2
Commissioner Templeton: So, thank you, that’s wonderful. 3
4
Mr. Bingler: Right there and we’re looking at doing… there’s another one at the other end and 5
we’re looking at putting it a little bit closer to the (interrupted) 6
7
Commissioner Templeton: That… does a left turn lane into… from Middlefield into Cubberley 8
come with your plan? 9
10
Mr. Bingler: There is a traffic light. 11
12
Commissioner Templeton: There is a traffic light. 13
14
Mr. Bingler: There’s a traffic light (interrupted) 15
16
Commissioner Templeton: I encourage you to go and drive through that because there’s no left 17
turn lane and it really causes a clog. 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Bingler: Well we have a traffic consultant that helping us figure it out on how to make sure 1
those intersections be the best they can possibly be. 2
3
Ms. Hill: And we’re working with City Staff in that regard too. 4
5
Commissioner Templeton: I see you nodding, ok, right. Well, that would be, I would think, 6
really important for this to make traffic crazy on Middlefield, crazier. One other thing I didn’t 7
see was an acoustic rehearsal space for musical… I saw for performances we have the 8
performance hall but is there a space where people that are doing choir (interrupted) 9
10
Ms. Hill: Yes, there is. 11
12
Commissioner Templeton: Ok perfect because we need a lot of that in our City. Ok, I think that 13
is everything. Excellent, thank you very much. 14
15
Ms. Hill: Thank you. 16
17
Chair Riggs: Commissioner Summa. 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Summa: Thank you very much for the presentation. I also was watching Monday 1
night and I’ll try not to repeat things that other… my colleagues have said. So just a couple of 2
questions. Well, first of all, it’s great to see this site being considered to be optimized. It’s not 3
the most efficient currently with surface parking and one-story buildings. I think a key to a 4
success will be how its trends… the transition points with the neighborhood and with regard to 5
that, I guess I have a preference for more of a mid-century look. And I certainly think with large 6
glass structures you want to be careful to… they are typically not safe for birds and that would 7
be important too. 8
9
So, and also, I think it’s important not to duplicate things that are at Mitchell Park because it’s 10
so… its really rather close and there’s the Magic Bridge and there’s a wide variety of 11
recreational things happening at Mitchell Park. So… oh I… one question, Phase Two when the 12
red school buildings show up, do we lose something? 13
14
Ms. Hill: No. 15
16
Commissioner Summa: What was there before? Was there surface parking? 17
18
Mr. Bingler: Surface parking. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Summa: Ok I wasn’t sure about that from the pictures. And then… so let’s see, 1
it’s very ambiguous. I’m not sure you’ll be able to put all these things in, in the end, but 2
hopefully, we’ll do that. I think it’s a good blend of a lot of things the community will need. I do 3
think that you might need… where ever the pool ends up, I think you might need a drop-off 4
area for the pool also. But other than that, it seems premature to comment too much when 5
there isn’t a project so good luck with the rest and I’ll be looking forward to seeing what comes 6
out in the end. 7
8
Commissioner Waldfogel: Oh, we lost our Chair temporarily. Question for you before I ask… 9
before I get into some other things. Can you speak at all about other agencies thinking about 10
Shared Village versus Building in the Park approaches? I mean what are other people… what are 11
other similar size Cities doing when they look at these tradeoffs? 12
13
Ms. Hill: I’m sorry, what was the first part of your question? I didn’t hear the first part. 14
15
Commissioner Waldfogel: So, what are other Cities that you’ve worked with considering when 16
they look at tradeoff between a Building in a Park approach? I’m going back to the very 17
beginning of your presentation, Building in the Park versus Shared Village approaches to this 18
kind of community center? 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Bingler: I can answer that. This whole notion of joining community facilities together with a 1
school, at the scale that we’re talking about here, is not universally done in this country. And as 2
I said, there are schools that are being designed that become part… a little bit more like the 3
gymnasium shared or the auditorium is shared but the notion of a more complete and 4
wholesome shared facility is more unique. 5
6
Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah well that’s not really my question. My question is given that 7
there are these different approaches that you proposed at the very beginning of your 8
presentation. There was the Independent Campus versus the Shared Village viruses the Building 9
in a Park and I’m just wondering what other agencies have thought about… I mean our group 10
apparently came to the Shared Village out of these three. That’s what you said was the 11
consensus but I’m just wondering is that what other similar size communities are choosing 12
when they look at these tradeoffs? I’d just like to know what’s the best practice. 13
14
Ms. Hill: Well I think what Steven was saying is I don’t think there are a lot of communities that 15
are doing this. 16
17
Mr. Bingler: You’re creating the best practice right here. 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Ms. Hill: And so, in Emeryville, I would say it’s a shared use campus. I mean that’s one other 1
example that we designed that is a combination City school district collaboration and that is 2
(interrupted) 3
4
Commissioner Waldfogel: Ok so there’s just not a lot of precedents is what you’re saying? 5
6
Ms. Hill: No. 7
8
Mr. Bingler: No. 9
10
Commissioner Waldfogel: Ok that’s (interrupted) 11
12
Mr. Bingler: But I can tell you that as it relates to the function of the use on three different 13
options. The notion of the school being completely separate from the community center kind of 14
misses the option… misses the synergy that be gained from that. And at the same time putting 15
everything into one building get’s into… knowing that it’s going to be phased when you’re 16
trying to add onto existing… constantly adding onto an existing building with construction. I 17
think those were the two things that came up a lot around the tables as advantages and 18
disadvantages and probably what led to the compromise. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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Commissioner Waldfogel: Ok, yeah, I was looking more for what other people are thinking. So, 1
one thing I would just say about this is that I’ve been on a number of building Committees and a 2
constant struggle in facility planning… you know when you’re looking out into the future… is 3
how to develop a party in a site plan with flexibility about program. Because we’ve had a lot of 4
discussion about program tonight, I’m not going comment on program because programs 5
change. I mean over the 10-years it takes to develop this site, some of these programs may be 6
more important, some may go away. Who knows and it’s very harder to guess programs 20, 30, 7
40, 50-years in the future you know and hard… impossible; which is why buildings become 8
obsolete? 9
10
Mr. Bingler: That’s right. 11
12
Commissioner Waldfogel: And so, something that I would urge you to do in this, I mean I think 13
it’s… I think that in a lot of these community meetings you need to be fairly tangible in talking 14
about Phase One. But as you think about this, I’d urge you to think about flexibility, you know 15
flexible space. I mean having a building that can only function as a health and wellness center, 16
can only function as a preschool, I think would be an error because in 30-years we may need 17
twice as much of one and none of the other. 18
19
Mr. Bingler: Yeah, you’re right. 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Waldfogel: And so, the… I don’t know how much intentionality you’re building… 2
you’re conceiving of here… in this but I would just urge you to be as unprogrammed as possible. 3
4
Mr. Bingler: Yes. 5
6
Ms. Hill: If you happen to run into people who have been to the meetings, they would tell you 7
that we say that numerous times at every meeting. That while we won't know the specifics of 8
what they need and want, that what we ultimately want to design for is flexibility and it’s the 9
very thing that you said. We have no way of knowing 10, 20, 30 years down the road what 10
these buildings will be used for. 11
12
Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah, no that’s (interrupted) 13
14
Ms. Hill: It is something we’ve been saying all along, just wanted to let you know. 15
16
Mr. Bingler: And we won’t be the architects but we are very aware of that there’s a whole 17
movement that’s just beginning in the architectural field called open buildings and it’s just 18
addressing that purpose. I mentioned earlier about parking garages now with 12-foot floor to 19
floor heights. You only need 8 to 10-foot floor to floor heights for a parking garage but if it’s 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
ever going to be anything but a parking garage it better be 10 or 12-feet. So, people are 1
building parking garages now with those additional heights because they don’t want to be stuck 2
with a dumb building. The same is true of all buildings, so there’s a whole new movement that 3
we’re very much in touch with. We will incorporate those principles as much as we can on the 4
planning side, where we’re using building widths of 60-70-feet. We’re not making massive floor 5
plates that can’t be lighted or ventilated or whatever as well as sustainable design practices. 6
7
Commissioner Waldfogel: Ok it’s good to hear that. So, I mean given that it’s hard for me to say 8
anything about circulation because I think program evolves. It’s just are to know what is the 9
loading at different times of day given evolving programs but one question, I just want to make 10
sure that you’re considering a special requirement for circulations. I mean for example if you’re 11
envisioning that a building is a maker space or a performing art space or visual space, I’m having 12
trouble seeing how a loading dock fits in the sight plans that you’ve envisioned. So just things 13
like that, I just want to be sure that you’re accommodating those kinds of special circulation 14
requirements. 15
16
Mr. Bingler: Yes, yes, we are. 17
18
Commissioner Waldfogel: Good. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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Mr. Bingler: I had about a 30-minutes conversation this afternoon about loading docks. 1
2
Commissioner Waldfogel: Ok great well let’s not reticulate it because there aren’t a lot of us 3
here [unintelligible](interrupted) 4
5
Mr. Bingler: It’s not my favorite subject. 6
7
Commissioner Waldfogel: But you’ll have some snoring if we go there. Ok great well my 8
colleague loves loading docks. The other thing that I’m just a little confused about is a 9
performing art space is adherently that’s programmed. You know you need fly space, you need 10
a whole bunch of special things, you need stage space, and so how is the community thinking 11
about the coordination between this and other similar spaces? There’s a new performing art 12
space at Pally, there’s Lucie Stern, Stanford has built the Bing Theater so how are we supposed 13
to think about this? 14
15
Ms. O’Kane: I will say that… so the Community Services Department currently manages all the 16
theater space owned by the City which is the Children’s Theater, Lucie Stern Theater, as well as 17
the Cubberley Theater and they are booked every day. There is demand for them, we have to 18
turn people away who want theater space so there is a demand in this community. There isn’t… 19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
we don’t have privileges of using the space at Pally or at Stanford so we’re really utilizing and 1
maximizing the space that the City has right now. 2
3
Commissioner Waldfogel: So, there’s a… this is turned on? So, there’s an underlying… there’s 4
program… I mean there’s a City program that is cognizant of what the needs are for these kinds 5
of spaces. I mean that’s something I’m not aware of. 6
7
Ms. O’Kane: That’s correct. 8
9
Commissioner Waldfogel: It’s not part of this Packet so I was little… I’m not sure what the right 10
word is but I just wasn’t quite sure how to think about some of these and where some of these 11
requirements are coming from. 12
13
Ms. O’Kane: Right so they’re coming from a couple of sources. One is the community feedback 14
we’ve heard but as Commissioner Lauing mentioned there are the Parks and Recreation and 15
Open Space Master Plan that was adopted by Council in 2017. And that involved a huge needs 16
assessment for recreation programming, for parks programming. And so, based on those two 17
needs assessment efforts that we did in addition to just our Staff knowing and having to turn 18
people away who desperately need theater space for their theater groups. For their… you know 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 Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra uses the Cubberley space now. There’re many different 1
performing art groups that use the space and they need it. 2
3
Commissioner Waldfogel: Ok great, that’s great and health and wellness is something that’s an 4
existing program? 5
6
Ms. O’Kane: Health and wellness, right now, there’s a stroke rehabilitation and a cardiac 7
therapy program at Cubberley. 8
9
Commissioner Waldfogel: But these are City programs? 10
11
Ms. O’Kane: So, the City leases the space to those groups and there’s again… so additionally 12
Avenidas is leasing space from us not here at Cubberley while they’re rebuilding downtown. 13
And we’ve heard that… it has… because they’re now in this part of Palo Alto, the southern part, 14
they’re reaching a whole new group of people that typically weren’t coming downtown Palo 15
Alto. So, it’s… the health and wellness center, there’s a strong component of senior health and 16
wellness center in this but it would be for all generations but a very strong influence towards 17
seniors. 18
19
Commissioner Waldfogel: Ok but it’s not a City program is what you’re saying? 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
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1
Ms. O’Kane: Well it could be. We don’t know yet who’s going to be here and who’s going to be 2
programming this site but currently, the City leases space at Cubberley now to different groups 3
who then do the programming. 4
5
Commissioner Waldfogel: Ok great, well thank you, that’s really all that I… those are my 6
questions. 7
8
Chair Riggs: Thank you Commissioner Waldfogel. So, I guess summarizing some of the other 9
people’s interim operability with other spaces is great and just emphasizing that more housing, 10
looking at being bold, I think those are all things that I would emphasize as well. Making sure 11
that it’s a safe, secure space for people of all ages I think is important. Flexibility also I think is a 12
very important thing to emphasize and I’m glad… one of the things that I want to talk about 13
relates in part to what Commissioner Waldfogel brought up. So, I have some detailed 14
comments that I just want to run through real quick. 15
16
With regard to the demographics of this, I actually think it does… I agree with my fellow 17
Commissioners. I think it would behoove us to look at a Saturday. That wasn’t mentioned just 18
yet, I don’t believe anybody brought it but I think that looking at outreach on a Saturday, 19
Saturday in May. I think you said May 9th is the target? If we could make that May 11th or May 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
18th, I think that would be really good for cultivating another subset of the community or a 1
Sunday but I’ll just throw that out there as a suggestion. 2
3
Commissioner Lauing… we talked a lot about the great… preserving the fields and increasing 4
fields. If you’ve actually been on many of the fields late fall, they’re dirt, so I do think that we 5
want to make sure that we’re balancing out services and that’s in the report. We’re not talking 6
about different types of surfacing right now. I think we want to consider that and think about 7
whether or not we want maybe half of the… two of larger fields to be additional turf fields and 8
two to be natural. I do think that the wear and tear we have in this location, particularly in the 9
winter months, they’re not useable and so they could be useable. If they were available, they 10
would be used. And I can disclose that I’m a resident of Fairmeadow and my kids go to Hoover 11
and I’m here almost every day. So, I think that would improve the flexibility of the space as well. 12
13
I just want to echo the comments of other Commissioners, I think the mid-century character is 14
important and I don’t think we brought up the fact for the record that this is right adjacent to 15
one of our few historical registered property in the City. So, this is the one mid-century or the 16
one of the two mid-century neighborhoods in the City so I think that’s important to note from… 17
to give credence to the mid-century style. 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
I think the big thing that I want to say is I… and this relates to many of the people who talked 1
about the massing. Specifically, I think that the east side of the site is under massed. You can 2
focus on imageability and increasing bulk on that site. You have… you could create a potential 3
gateway on the east side of the site. So that whole Middlefield frontage, in my mind, could be 4
much more dense and perhaps stepped back to more of the neighborhood scale. I think that 5
you really have an opportunity, particularly at both of the entrances, to create a more iconic 6
massing gesture and that’s not reflected in the massing right now. That could be housing, it 7
could be another thing but I think that there’s… you can use architecture in that way to create 8
an entrance… an informal entrance; a gateway. Whether or not its pedestrian, whether or not 9
it’s automotive so I think that just consider that. 10
11
I have to say personally I’ve been to enough corporate campuses where nobody walks. That this 12
feels like one of those and I’ll just say that my concern with the current Building in a Park layout 13
is that the parks aren’t… don’t gesture as being usable for alternative uses other than 14
landscape. There’s occasional… I think you sprinkled a little playground here and this is 15
supposed to be an informal seating area for meditation, an amphitheater. I actually quite 16
candidly I think that the independent campuses model and I was hoping Commissioner 17
Waldfogel would go there from a massing standpoint. That creates more useable open space 18
that does meet that flexible requirement. So, I mean I guess in the spirit of being bold, I know 19
you tried to pack as much on there as possible and be creative but in terms of creating useable 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.
open space, not only do you create the useable open space. One of the things… the advantage I 1
think of looking at that and I’m just challenging us to think beyond what’s been presented as a 2
part of the pre-final plan is that part of the challenge with this site is that you can’t see the 3
playing fields from Middlefield. So, there’s no visual identity or to phrase… the lynch phrase, 4
imageability. If it’s a wellness center and you have no clear identity of many of the wellness 5
activities that are happening there then it doesn’t have the identity of a wellness center. Or if 6
it’s a… so I would actually figure out a way to funnel down maybe a visual approach from 7
Middlefield to the actual fields which you could accomplish with your independent campuses 8
model. And I think that’s just something that maybe you could [unintelligible] or key on as you 9
cultivate the final design. Maybe there are another couple options to get explored. 10
11
As we’re talking about massing, a couple other things that I just want to point out. I think like 12
Commissioner Waldfogel said, I think it’s really early to talk about circulation which is why I’m 13
surprised to hear you dismissing the route to San Antonio. And the reason is because I think 14
that we have this site wrong from a housing standpoint. That fact that we’re keeping Greendell 15
where it is I think is a mistake. If we’re really rethinking 40-acres, maybe that’s the optimal site 16
to put townhomes or low-density housing. And so, if we’re really being bold maybe this corridor 17
needs to go through and that needs to become a neighborhood and a neighborhood that may 18
serve the people on this site. And then one last thing just regards to circulation, I mean I’m not 19
sure… I can’t figure out why we’re putting a parking structure, not on Middlefield. I think 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
there’s a lot of precedent for ingress and egress right off a major corridor that would prohibit a 1
lot of automotive inflow and outflow from the site. And I think it would operate really well with 2
a control right turn out of the parking lot and then a left out on to I guess the southern egress. 3
You know we don’t have to talk about the circulation piece but I actually think we probably 4
ought to rethink the location of that site. I know these are more in the weeds than other 5
people’s comments but I feel like it’s important to get those out because I think they also really 6
challenge what we’re thinking about in terms of the existing status quo design. 7
8
I know I probably just said more than I should normally in my Chair role but so with that, I’ll just 9
open it up to final comments from you all before we close this item. Alright, seeing none, thank 10
you very much and we’ll I guess start the next item if that’s ok with my fellow Commissioners? 11
Keep rolling. 12
13
Mr. Bingler: Thank you. 14
15
Chair Riggs: Thank you. 16
17
Commission Action: No Commission action was taken. 18
19
Action Items 20
Public Comment is Permitted. Applicants/Appellant Teams: Fifteen (15) minutes, plus three (3) minutes rebuttal. 21
All others: Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 22
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
3. Planning and Transportation Commission Annual Review and of the Comprehensive 2
Plan, Inclusive of the Housing Element, and Possible Recommendation on any 3
Changes or Additions to the Plan. 4
5
Chair Riggs: Alright so next up we have Item Number Three which is an action item. Public 6
comment is permitted on this item but we’ll hear from Staff first. We offer 3-minutes per 7
speaker. This is the annual review of the Comprehensive Plan, inclusive Housing Element, and 8
our goal here is to recommend any changes or additions. And also, this… I think that Staff has 9
indicated prior to the meeting that if there are any additional items we want to provide in 10
writing feel free to that. So maybe we can introduce our new Staff Member. 11
12
Mr. Jonathan Lait, Director of Planning: So, thank you Chair. This actually will be a joint 13
presentation by myself and Hang Huynh will be presenting this. I’ll cover the first part dealing 14
with the Comp Plan and then she’s going to work on the Housing Element part. In case… 15
because this is your first time meeting her, she is… she’s our new Senior Planner who’s 16
responsible for our housing programs and that’s everything in its entirety that we’re working on 17
here. So, she has a big role and a lot of reasonability here so we’re glad that she’s here and 18
joined us. How long has it been now, like November? 19
20
Ms. Hang Huynh, Senior Planner: Two months. 21
22
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Lait: So, she’s getting up to speed. Ok, so this… I don’t remember doing one of these 1
reports before. I think this is an annual obligation that we have in our Zoning Code also in state 2
law now for Charter Cities but I think because we were in the process of updating our 3
Comprehensive Plan, we just never got around to doing these annual updates. So, this is 4
something that you can expect to see on an ongoing basis as we move forward. And so, the… 5
what we’re interested in here and it’s a big report with a large attachment and a lot of fine 6
print. And it may be that you look at this and you focus in on the area or two that you have 7
maybe particular interest in or something that catches your attention. We made a comment in 8
the Staff report and you may surprise me and go in a different direction but our initial 9
perspective was that since we’ve just updated the Comprehensive Plan as of 2017 November. 10
We weren’t anticipating that there’d be a lot of redirector or suggestion for amendments to 11
policies or programs that have been adopted by the City Council. Again, you may surprise me 12
and you may have some suggestions that would certainly be happy to pass onto the City 13
Council. 14
15
So, of the… well as you can see on the slide, you’ve got 418 programs that were adopted in the 16
Comprehensive Plan. That is ambitious and I’m happy to say that we’ve made tremendous 17
progress on completing or at least partially completing a good number of them. We’re… I would 18
say if you go by the percentages, we’re a year ahead of schedule assuming we finish those 19
partially completed ones. And with the Housing Element, this is one that is an 8-year cycle 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.
we’re actually doing really well on our Housing Element implementation as well. We’re happy 1
to talk to you about some of that. 2
3
So, as I noted this is… it’s been a local requirement but it recently became a State requirement 4
that applies to Charter Cities and it’s out intent to… these are two different sort of reporting 5
cycles. The Housing Element because of its regional significant and statewide significant had 6
already had its requirements for reporting. And what we intend to do is join our other Comp 7
Plan reporting to align with that so that you can consider both of them in its entirety. Of course, 8
you know that the Housing Element is a part of our Comprehensive Plan. In fact, here are the 9
other Elements that the Comp Plan consists of. We’ve put an asterisk next to housing just to let 10
you know presentation wise we’re going to be covering that separately. 11
12
So again, as we look at our progress in taking this document which again, we were what a year 13
and three months roughly into its adoption? We’ve made some good progress on completing 14
many of these and working with our other City departments and really advancing the objectives 15
and interests of the City when adopting the plan. And one that… there’s a couple that we’ll 16
highlight for you and no one… more… you know prioritize… you know we don’t prioritize these 17
but just for sense for what’s going on. Here we’ve got an ask to a program that requires us to 18
evaluate the cost effectiveness of going to a completely carbon neutral gas supply and are 19
Utilities Department as reported that they have achieved carbon neutrality last… in the fiscal 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.
year 2018. So, kudos to them and the community for that. For emergency services, we have 1
another program for expanded outreach and education in the event of significant events. And 2
they’ve reported having completed over 149 public safety education events last year so we’re 3
making… and these are ongoing. A lot of these programs are going to be ongoing efforts. Public 4
Works, household recycling continues to be significant. Our rates in the state are higher than 5
other communities and higher… it is higher than the Santa Clara rate by about 4 percent so 6
we’re making good strides in that regard as well. For Community Services there’s some interest 7
in… we’ve identified interest in providing a range of vocations among different programs for 8
different parts of our population. And again, you can see there that we’ve engaged over 2,100 9
children with various classes of different… for our youth age groups. And then the Commission, 10
of course, will be… is familiar with the efforts that have been made over the past couple of 11
years related to the Housing Work Program with the Affordable Housing Overlay, workforce 12
housing, and more recently with the Commission’s work on those broad amendments to the 13
CC, CS, and CD Zones. As well as some changes to our multi-family zones that have taken place 14
to address some increased densities and we use this slide here as a transition to our Housing 15
Element progress report. Good things to report here but also some sobering numbers that I 16
think we need to be mindful about as we go forward so Hang if you wouldn’t mind? 17
18
Ms. Huynh: So good evening Chair, Commissioners, and fellow Staff. I am… I’d like to 19
reintroduce myself, my name is Hang Huynh, I’m the new Senior Housing Planner. So, I just 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
wanted to let you know that this is a brief informational review of the annual progress report 1
that’s due to the state each year. Again, the Housing Element is a chapter in the Comprehensive 2
Plan and it’s the only chapter that needs to be certified by the state. Again, it’s also on a 3
different cycle, 8-year cycle from 2015 to 2023. [unintelligible – off mic] 4
5
I just to remind Commissioners about the Regional Housing Needs Allocation or communally 6
known as RHNA. So, each City has an RHNA goal so the City of Palo Alto has a goal of 1,988-7
units which we accommodate for in the Housing Element through housing inventory sites. I just 8
wanted to remind you because I will refer back to RHNA in the upcoming slides. 9
10
So, there are three components of the annual progress report related to the Housing Element. 11
First being housing production via permitted units and the state defines permitted units as 12
Building Permits. And secondly the progress… the City’s progress towards the RHNA goals and 13
third the status of the Housing Element programs. So, before you, you see the production that 14
the City permitted in the past 4-years or sorry, from 2015, in particular with focus on 2018. So, 15
the City has permitted 54-units, net new dwelling units and of that 36 are ADUs, 14 are single-16
family homes, and 2 are new duplexes. 17
18
The second part of the annual progress report is our progress towards meeting the RHNA goals. 19
So, since 2014 we permitted 43 very low-income units and all the way up to 304 above 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
moderate units. Again, that’s market rate units so we’ve accomplished overall 22 percent of our 1
RHNA goals. 2
3
The last part of the annual progress report is our status of implementing the Housing Element 4
programs. So, in the Housing Element programs, these programs are encouraging housing 5
production within the City. So, the Housing Element laid out 72 programs in which we have 31 6
ongoing, 14… sorry 12 complete… 12 underway and then down to five not completed. The City 7
again has until 2023 to implement these programs. 8
9
So, before you are the five programs that have not been completed and they may need further 10
Council direction. One being consideration of a Transit Oriented Development Overlay but I also 11
wanted to highlight some accomplishments from the Housing Element. These were actually 12
success through City-wide ordinance. So, the City amended their Below Market Rate 13
Ordinances so they decreased the actual requirement from five units to three units. So now the 14
threshold has decreased to allow for more BMR requirements over more units. Another is 15
encouraging more development by amending the zoning requirements. So, we adopted the 16
Affordable Housing Combining District that allows recently for the Wilton Project, 100 percent 17
affordable housing project, to be adopted by Council. 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
So, this concludes Staff’s really brief informational review of the annual progress report. I’d like 1
to turn it back to you, Jon, our new Planning Director. 2
3
Mr. Lait: Thanks. Chair, really back to you. We’re happy to answer any question that we can 4
from the Commission. 5
6
Chair Riggs: Alright so I think we have a member of the public that wants to comment and we 7
can go… 5-minutes going to be ok or we have time. 8
9
Mr. Fred Balin: It won’t be more than a minute. 10
11
Chair Riggs: Alright. 12
13
Mr. Balin: So, the Director mentioned that there are certain obligations that come with being a 14
Charter City. There are also certain exceptions that Charter Cities have which are, oh I don’t 15
know, maybe a quarter of the Cities in California. One of those exceptions is that a Charter City 16
does not have to have consistency between the Comprehensive Plan and the Zoning Code. And 17
this has caused problems in the past. We’ve had projects that were clearly not consistent with 18
the Comp Plan. I’ll give you one example, Alma Plaza, 100 percent commercial, 90 percent retail 19
turned into 75 percent housing. One of the four neighborhood centers in the Comprehensive 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Plan and there are many others. Cities have enacted ordinances both by their Council or by 1
initiative to require consistency between Comp Plan and zoning. It’s perfectly logical and 2
reasonable and is one of the reasons why on the Citizen’s Initiative to reduce the Office Cap to 3
750,000-square feet. We put in the Zoning Code as well as the Comp Plan adjustment. So 4
anyway, it’s something that should be followed as policy but also should be factored into code 5
within the City. Thank you. 6
7
Chair Riggs: Thank you, Mr. Balin. So, seeing no other comment slips in front of me I think 8
we’ll… if I don’t see any disagreement from my fellow Commissioners maybe we’ll go down the 9
line again. Just try to be efficient in terms of our questions and feedback. Commissioner 10
Waldfogel, are you ready to go or would you prefer [unintelligible](interrupted) 11
12
Commissioner Waldfogel: Sure. Do you want a motion? 13
14
Chair Riggs: I don’t think we need… do we need a motion for that to just go (interrupted) 15
16
Commissioner Waldfogel: Well no but I mean we need just to get a motion on the… in front of 17
us because this is an action item. 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Riggs: I think why don’t we just go down the line. If you want to make a motion then we 1
can see if there’s a second but I think yeah if you want to make a motion that’s fine 2
Commissioner Waldfogel. 3
4
MOTION #1 5
6
Commissioner Waldfogel: And I just want to move the Staff recommendation. 7
8
Chair Riggs: Do I have a second? 9
10
Commissioner Lauing: I actually have a question in terms of process to understand what the 11
Staff recommendation would be? I didn’t know we were going to have a motion right away but 12
is the objective tonight pass on basically your report on the statues? That’s the main one and 13
then the second objective would be if there are any changes that we are going to suggest to the 14
Comp Plan, that’s a separate item? 15
16
Mr. Lait: You can certainly break it out that way if that’s your interest. The motion, as I 17
understand it, is to pass along the report that Staff has prepared with all the attachments which 18
is satisfying the requirements for doing this update. If the Commission thinks that… excuse me, 19
not the update but doing this annual report. If the Commission thinks that it would like to 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
forward some other… provide other policy direction or refinements to the Council that could be 1
taken under the same motion or a separate motion. 2
3
Commissioner Lauing: Right so that was my understanding of the two sorts of objectives or 4
outcomes for tonight. The first one seems relatively vanilla because it’s your report and its 5
actuality. And the second one seems substantive and therefore I thought that they should 6
probably be separated. 7
8
Vice-Chair Alcheck: [unintelligible – off mic] 9
10
Chair Riggs: So, I would… we have a motion on the floor. Can… Chair Lauing [note – 11
Commissioner Lauing] (interrupted) 12
13
SECOND 14
15
Commissioner Lauing: I’ll second that. 16
17
Chair Riggs: Ok, we have a second and if you don’t… lets… so the motion on the floor, let’s have 18
a discussion and then we can discuss things for the record and then we can do a vote. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah that’s fine and after we do that, we may want to follow on with 1
some discussion about this other part about Comp Plan review. Let’s just get this part behind 2
us. 3
4
Chair Riggs: Alright, so do you have any further questions Commissioner Waldfogel? 5
6
Commissioner Waldfogel: I do not. 7
8
Chair Riggs: Ok Commissioner Summa. 9
10
Commissioner Summa: So, I’m a little confused, are we speaking to the motion? 11
12
Chair Riggs: If you have any feedback on the plan? The motion on the table is to… on the report 13
that was provided in your Packet. Now is the time to talk to that. 14
15
Commissioner Summa: Ok so I’m happy to move Bullet One. I had… as it’s your work progress 16
to the City. Most of my comments would be… fall under Bullet Two so if it’s appropriate I’ll just 17
go ahead. Just so you know Packet Page 65 has what I think is just an error on it that you might 18
want to correct before it goes to Council. And that is the second to the last H2.1.12 has the 19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Downtown and Cal. Ave Area Plans completed at the fair right. So, you might want to just 1
correct that because neither (interrupted) 2
3
Mr. Lait: H2.1.12? 4
5
Commissioner Summa: .12. Twelve. It’s just a… I just noticed it and thought you’d like to correct 6
it. Neither one has it and then, in general, my comments sort of fall into line with comments of 7
our member of the public this evening, our sole member. And that is… so I can phrase these in… 8
so, first of all, let me say I hadn’t… since I was on the Comp Plan group, I hadn’t… I worked 9
really hard on it and I hadn’t read it for a while. So, I was actually relatively happy to reread it 10
and see that it had a lot of really good programs, goals, and policies. 11
12
But I think… I wonder if some of them are strong enough and my concerns… there’s six of them. 13
One is retention of existing housing so we have for instances 8.1.2, 8.3.1.9, I don’t know how 14
much detail you need me to go into. And also… but we have… we are… I don’t know that those 15
goals and maybe it’s because the Comp Plan is not aligned with the Municipal Code in every 16
way. But I do worry about retention of existing housing and whether we have strong enough 17
policies to do that. 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
And also, my second point was retention of development standards for transition. We have 1
very strong statements about that in the Housing Element. 2
3
Retention of neighborhoods serving businesses, retail, retail-like and services. We have pretty 4
strong language about that in Land Use but I worry that we’re losing a lot of that just through 5
the Municipal Code and other practices may be. So much of what we… where we want to build 6
housing depends on fixed transit which is Downtown and Cal Ave. But I’m very concerned that 7
there’s not a strong enough… in the Housing Element or Transportation Element that there’s 8
not strong enough language about working with VTA to remain… to keep bus routes that we 9
really, really need if we’re going to base housing on it. 10
11
And then finally I’m concerned that some of the policies we have are inconsistent with 12
retention of open space which is not just… and the quality of our open space which is not just 13
actual open space like Baylands and in the Hills but also back yard habitat. I worry about 14
inconsistencies in our ordinances that are allowing more and more permeable portions of back 15
yard habitat and losing that. Which is very important for animals and bugs and it’s kind of a 16
worldwide problem right now. So, at a high level, those are my concerns and I see a lot of the 17
protections except I do think we need to put stronger language about working to retain bus 18
routes and increasing bus routes because that and the Caltrain is all we have in addition to the 19
commuter train. So, I think that needs to be added and I think the rests of them the concerns 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.
have either need to be… there need to be policies that work a little hard on those or that we 1
need to align some of these goals with our Municipal Code. So, without going into more detail 2
about specific programs and policies and goals, I will leave it at that. 3
4
Chair Riggs: Commissioner Templeton. 5
6
Mr. Lait: Oh I… if I… I’m sorry if I can? Just so we’re… I want to be helpful to the point that if 7
there’s… so I appreciate those comments. And at some point, I’d be interested in a motion from 8
the Commission if there was a shared interested in making a recommendation to Council about 9
additions, deletions, or strengthening. 10
11
Chair Riggs: I think Commissioner Summa has provided some suggestions so I think what I’d like 12
to see if we have a motion on the floor. And maybe there’ll be some consensus around this 13
shared recommendation or I think what was suggested earlier was that we could potentially 14
have a second motion following her… voting on your recommendation with some additional 15
comment. I think process-wise that might be encumbered of what Commissioner Summa had 16
suggested previously. Is that ok? 17
18
Mr. Lait: (off mic) Yep. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Riggs: Ok. Commissioner Templeton. 1
2
Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. Thank you for this report. Just looking on Page 15 of the 3
chart of the building activity, in general, I feel like there’s a lot of quantitative analysis offered in 4
your report. Is there any intention to include any qualitative as it has changed dramatically from 5
2015 to 2018? When you send this to Council will there be an analysis about why? 6
7
Mr. Lait: I’m sorry, can you tell me what Page number you’re on? 8
9
Commissioner Templeton: 15. 10
11
Mr. Lait: I’m sorry? 12
13
Commissioner Templeton: 15. 14
15
Mr. Lait: Packet Page 15 or… oh on the PowerPoint slide? 16
17
Commissioner Templeton: Oh, slide 15, I apologize, thank you. 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Lait: Ok and I’m sorry your question again… so yeah, this is a qualitative analysis and so 1
what would the… this is a quantitative analysis, what would the qualitative element be? 2
3
Commissioner Templeton: Or do you intend when you send this to Council to include any 4
thoughts on why it has changed so dramatically from 2015 to 2018 in terms of the number of 5
units built? 6
7
Mr. Lait: Yeah, I… I don’t know. I will say this, as far as the reporting to HCD it’s a very 8
prescribed methodology and our first objective is to meet their standards. In fact, their 9
template now is so immense that we weren’t even really… I mean you have it in here but it’s 10
illegible right? 11
12
Commissioner Templeton: Yeah, right. 13
14
Mr. Lait: So, we’ve linked… hopefully, we’ve linked it to an online so the short answer is we 15
may do that. 16
17
Commissioner Templeton: It may not be required for the RHNA reporting. 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Lait: It’s not required for reporting but we may have an interest in doing that and we have 1
this parallel process that we’re trying to implement. And I’m not sure that we’ll get to it this 2
year but it was… it’s our intent to give the Commission and the Council a little bit more 3
information about trends that are happening that relate to a variety to land use issues and 4
housing, of course, being one of them. And in addition, our Housing Work Program which has a 5
subjective of 300 and some odd units per year being achieved and we’re clearly not on that 6
trajectory just yet. 7
8
Commissioner Templeton: Right yeah, I appreciate that. I think that if you do have a variation of 9
this report that is suited for that discussion in the future you may want to go back a few more 10
years and see if this was a spike or if it’s a cliff. I think that would be really usefully input and 11
any thoughts that our new Staff member Ms. Huynh. Thank you for joining the team. That’s my 12
only question, thank you. 13
14
Chair Riggs: Commissioner Alcheck [note – Vice-Chair Alcheck] 15
16
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Ok so a quick question… a few quick questions about what… how do we 17
certify… how does this certification relay our sort of failure to meet the goal and what are the 18
consequences of that? And what are… how does the certification sort of address that 19
discussion? Is it just numerically here’s where we are? Clearly, we’ve zoned this, we met that 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
requirement when we got out Housing Element Certified in the first place. So, this 1
recertification is just a status report on how we’ve progressed? 2
3
Mr. Lait: Yeah, I probably won’t use the word certification. It’s an annual report and it’s just to 4
show the progress that we’re making toward this effort. 5
6
Vice-Chair Alcheck: And does it… is there any component that is required to address ways to 7
improve let’s say dramatic gaps between the expectation and the… does it offer suggestions on 8
what we could do? Are we supposed to maybe articulate efforts to address the gap? 9
10
Mr. Lait: So not with the annual report, we do that as… when we do our update to the Housing 11
Element. So, in the next few years when we’re tackling that challenge, we’re going to take a 12
look at our ability to have met some of these areas and see if there’s continued government 13
constraints or other issues that are precluding us from getting there. But I think what we’re also 14
seeing is some changes at the state level and notably with SB-35, the reporting requirement 15
have changed with respect to the document that we’re producing this time around. And our 16
production of above moderate housing is something that the state is tracking and has 17
implications with the streamlining provisions of state law. And so, while this report doesn’t 18
necessarily get to an analysis of what you’re speaking too, there are other elements coming 19
into play that are causing Cities to have to take a look at that. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Can you… would it be possible to put the table up that has the number? Ok 2
so of the 54, those are what permits issued? Of the 54 permits issued do we know how many 3
are replacing existing single-family structures? 4
5
Mr. Lait: Replacing single-family what? 6
7
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Structures? Are these permits (interrupted) 8
9
Mr. Lait: These are all net new numbers. 10
11
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Net new numbers meaning it’s not some single-family home that’s tearing 12
down and building a new single-family home? 13
14
Mr. Lait: That’s right. 15
16
Vice-Chair Alcheck: So, this 54 is essentially the project at Page Mill and El Camino? 17
18
Mr. Lait: I don’t know about that. I’ll tell you… and you may have the actual number but there’s 19
some like 34 of these units are attributed to ADUs is that correct? 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Ms. Huynh: So, of the 54, 34… sorry [unintelligible]? Thirty-six are ADUs and 14 are new single-2
family homes and two are duplexes. So those are… so these are Building Permits. 3
4
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Ok so what about that project? That workforce housing project that was 5
Windy Hill? Did that get (interrupted) 6
7
Mr. Lait: Oh yeah, they haven’t pulled permits yet. 8
9
Vice-Chair Alcheck: They haven’t pulled permits yet. 10
11
Mr. Lait: Yeah. 12
13
Vice-Chair Alcheck: But they’re approved? 14
15
Mr. Lait: No, they got their Land Use Planning [unintelligible](interrupted) 16
17
Vice-Chair Alcheck: They got their land use so they still have to essentially submit a set of plans 18
and once that process goes through, we could get credit for those 50. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Lait: That’s right. 1
2
Vice-Chair Alcheck: I had just assumed it was 54. Yeah, it’s somewhere around there; 58 3
maybe? Ok, so the… did you say 16 single-family homes? 4
5
Ms. Huynh: Fourteen single-family. 6
7
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Fourteen. Are those the Maybell site? What are those? Those are the 8
Maybell site. 9
10
Mr. Lait: Yeah. 11
12
Ms. Huynh: Yeah. 13
14
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Got it and the ADUs are 36, ok. Alright, so I guess my… I don’t think there’s 15
much to say here except this… I guess my point would be I wouldn’t wait 2 ½-years to have a 16
focused dialog about what governmental elements in our system are maybe creating barriers. 17
Maybe there’s an opportunity here to include… when this… because I suspect the next step for 18
this is to go to Council. And then they take our… either accept our recommendation or… I mean 19
I imagine they will accept our recommendation and direct you to issue that report. But I guess 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.
think it would be advisable to include in that presentation any ideas you have now without 1
spending obviously the amount of time that you will when you reevaluate in 2-years. Maybe 2
that’s a more focused articulation but we’ve… maybe it’s we’ve found that we have a hurdle in 3
our process with respect to ADU submissions that could… we could have seen so many more. I 4
don’t know, maybe there’s some easy fruit, easy low hanging fruit that could be identified in 5
that presentation. That could say oh you know, these are some interesting points and why 6
don’t we have the Planning Commission review solutions to them. I don’t know. 7
8
Mr. Lait: So (interrupted) 9
10
Vice-Chair Alcheck: I don’t want to wait for 2-years and then come up with an idea of how to 11
get more than 36 ADUs. The 14 site is kind of a one-off. 12
13
Mr. Lait: Absolutely and I don’t think we’re waiting for that period. We have the Housing Work 14
Program which lays out a number of… that takes the Comprehensive Plan and has very 15
prescribed asks that we go and do. And you heard just part of a process where we made 16
significant changes to our Downtown zoning. And so, I think part of this is continue to work on 17
that Housing Work Program, see what kind of attention the changes that we have made 18
generate in the community, and so I think we’re actively looking toward that. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
With respect to ADUs, we’re still evaluating that process too and trying to find ways that we can 1
even streamline it where we are because I think the process is actually taking a little bit longer 2
than it ought to. And I don’t want that to be a reason why somebody’s discouraged from filing 3
an ADU application. So, we continue to look at those issues. I only mention that thing about the 4
every 2-year because that’s… we’re mandated to do that but you’re right. We are implementing 5
and reviewing other changes to advance our Comp Plan objectives. 6
7
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Look I support the motion. The Staff… in my view of this Staff 8
recommendation I agree with the sentiment that we’re a little early to start adjusting… editing, 9
I think. It’s hard to appreciate what’s a problem and what needs to be fixed yet. I don’t know 10
that I… I guess I would want to hear Staff articulate somebody necks or conflicts before I came 11
up with them essentially. So, to the extent that the motion is to not make those changes, I 12
support that too in some regard. 13
14
The one thing I’d say in addressing Council’s discussion about this would be that I think that this 15
very disappointing 2018 performance should be… they should have a discussion about it. I think 16
the incident with the President Hotel presents them with an opportunity… it presents our 17
leadership with sort of an opportunity to maybe create some momentum in inviting residential 18
developers to reconsider Palo Alto in 2019 and 2020. And I think that the way our Council could 19
do that is by creating a framework in our Downtown for another residential building very 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.
similar to the President’s Hotel to be built. And that would essentially explode our current 1
height limits and parking requirements but it just… I think there’s a real opportunity based on 2
all the affection for the President’s Hotel as a residential building that we’ve seen in the 3
community. To maybe sort of piggyback on that and say maybe we should consider some 4
overlay in our transit-oriented corridor here to consider a high-rise residential building. I’m just 5
saying that I think a part of the discussion that they have on this topic might want to include 6
some brainstorming on addressing the gap in the requirement or realized issued permits. That’s 7
it. 8
9
Commissioner Roohparvar: I have no comments on the pending motion. 10
11
Commissioner Lauing: Ok just briefly and as the secondary, I definitely think these two subjects 12
should be decoupled and so we’re talking about the first one now. The first one seems to me to 13
be (interrupted) 14
15
Chair Riggs: Can I interrupt you Chair [note -Commissioner]? I think the motion on the floor was 16
not to decouple them so if you had a misunderstanding we should go back (interrupted) 17
18
Commissioner Waldfogel: (Off mic) I said that we should have a second motion [unintelligible]. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Riggs: Ok so we should get clarity on your motion just to make sure the seconder is clear. 1
Staff recommendation… motion to support Staff recommendation only meant item… only 2
meant the Housing Element. Is that your… I just want to make sure we’re clear on the motion. 3
4
Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah, the Staff recommendation is that the Planning and 5
Transportation Commissioner review this report and all attachments before recommending it 6
for City Council’s review. So, this in Packet Page 49, there’s nothing in the recommendation 7
regarding Comp Plan review. So that’s my motion is to forward the Staff recommendation and I 8
said that if we need to, we can have a separate motion around Comp Plan review. And I do a 9
couple comments about that which I’ll bring up after we dispatch this first one. 10
11
Commissioner Lauing: Correct and that’s what I seconded. 12
13
Chair Riggs: Ok, that’s fine, just wanted to make sure we’re clear. 14
15
Commissioner Lauing: Right so on the first motion I think we should just be clear and that the 16
wording should be something like PTC has reviewed the APR and suggests that Staff forward it 17
to Council. So, I don’t know what we’re recommending as opposed to forwarding because 18
we’re not changing anything or commenting on it. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Templeton: [unintelligible – off mic] 1
2
Commissioner Lauing: As corrected is fine. 3
4
Mr. Lait: I (interrupted) 5
6
Commissioner Lauing: I guess I don’t understand (interrupted) 7
8
Mr. Lait: I think we’re over complicating it. It’s… we’ve reviewed the Comp Plan and the 9
Housing Element. 10
11
Commissioner Lauing: Right. 12
13
Mr. Lait: We have this document and we’re advancing that and if there… I guess there is a two-14
prong sort of did we… any errors. We have one error that we need to correct here. If there are 15
any other errors (interrupted) 16
17
Chair Riggs: And I probably… I mean in Chair’s prerogative I probably wouldn’t have… I think 18
this was presented as a package and our Planning Director was asking for us to give it 19
consideration as a unit. I guess I didn’t understand and I probably would have clarified your 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.
recommendation but we alright have a motion on the floor. Let’s proceed with this. I think if 1
you… Chair Lauing… I’m sorry, I want to call you Chair still. If you have any other comments, 2
we’ll take them. 3
4
Commissioner Lauing: I do. 5
6
Chair Riggs: I think then we’ll just vote on this motion and then consider the second so I 7
apologize. 8
9
Commissioner Lauing: The only other thing that I was going to suggest is that you may want to 10
take an extra step beside just the reporting requirements and move beyond that. And pick out 11
three or four whatever the right number of those areas that are substantially unfilled and do 12
sort of a these are four of our high priorities and we need to move on these and we’re going to 13
accelerate action. The one we talked about is an obvious example, that we’re low on this, what 14
can we do to really accelerate that? So, you just might use the opportunity that they’re going to 15
be looking at this and they’re probably going to be asking you wow, what can we do to mitigate 16
this or to move it forward and just be proactive is all I’m suggesting. That’s not part of the 17
motion, that’s just we can’t dictate that so that would be the only comments that I have on 18
that. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
VOTE 1
2
Chair Riggs: Alright I’d like to call the motion. All in favor? All opposed? Motion carries 7-0. 3
4
Motion #1 passed 7(Riggs, Alcheck, Lauing, Summa, Waldfogel, Templeton, Roohparvar)-0 5
6
Chair Riggs: Alright so I’m going to turn it back to you Commissioner Waldfogel since your kind 7
of created structure at this point. 8
9
Commissioner Waldfogel: Thank you. I’m surprised that you didn’t include the text of 1904030 10
in the Muni Code in the Staff report because that’s the enabling legislation for the review of the 11
General Plan. Planning Commission shall annually review the General Plan and recommend to 12
the City Council such extensions, changes or additions to the Plan as the Commission may 13
consider necessary in the view of any changing conditions. And I agree that we’re pretty early in 14
this General Plan but this was a 1962 initiative so I think that we should take it fairly seriously. 15
But that said, I don’t think that spit balling ideas from the dais is the right way to approach this. 16
So maybe we can just have a brief conversation about what the right approach might be. I 17
mean my recommendation is to set up a Committee to report our recommendations 18
particularly around this concept of changing conditions. But I’d just like to hear what other 19
people think about how we should do this because it’s a pretty open-ended process against a 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
several-hundred-page Comprehensive Plan. And I don’t think we just want to bring in random 1
ideas. 2
3
Chair Riggs: So, if I could just echo our new Planning Director’s guidance on this. This is an 4
annual update, this is every City in California… well, every City that I’ve interacted with does 5
this, it’s a… I don’t know if it’s a statutory requirement. Is it a statutory requirement? 6
7
Mr. Lait: It is now, yeah. 8
9
Chair Riggs: So, I feel (crosstalk) my suggestion is for us not to over think this. To move the 10
status update, the implementation update and then have a dialog. And that would be my 11
recommendation and I think that’s what you’re hearing from your Planning Director as well. 12
13
Commissioner Roohparvar: I’ll second that. 14
15
Commissioner Riggs: I’m sorry there is not a motion on the floor. 16
17
Commissioner Roohparvar: I know. 18
19
Chair Riggs: Commissioner Lauing. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Lauing: If the concern is that we immediately do something tonight or not at all I 2
don’t think that’s the right process. If the concern is that we should wait years, I don’t think 3
that’s the right process. So, I think that we’ve already addressed the required update but we 4
might take 6-months in for example a Committee like Commissioner… what’s your name again? 5
Waldfogel suggested. To just kind of take a look at things or we could decide that it’s too early 6
but I don’t think that there’s any action tonight that’s required on recommending no updates 7
throughout the course of the year. I think that that’s already accomplished by the first motion. 8
So, your suggestion Commissioner Waldfogel sort of resonates positivity with me on some sort 9
of time frame to be discussed. 10
11
Commissioner Waldfogel: Let’s just see if there’s any consensus and then we can craft a motion 12
if we need too. 13
14
Chair Riggs: Sorry, I think if… we have Commissioner Summa would like to speak. 15
16
Commissioner Summa: Thank you and I apologize because when I referred… I thought the 17
motion that was being moved forward was the one from the slide which was a little bit 18
different and that’s why I referred to Bullet Two and spoke to some of my concerns. But I was a 19
little confused by this item because while referring the required APR to Council is a boilerplate 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.
action. Of course, we would do that, then it seems a little open-ended to like were we going to 1
discuss the whole Comp Plan and we couldn’t obviously do that tonight. So, I kind of went 2
through and just identified a few concerns I had but I’m happy to support Commissioner 3
Waldfogel idea of having a Committee that looked into this. And it is kind of early I think to do it 4
because the Comp Plan is pretty new but I did have concerns so I shared them so that’s where I 5
am. 6
7
Chair Riggs: Commissioner Alcheck [note - Vice-Chair Alcheck]. 8
9
Vice-Chair Alcheck: I agree with the sentiment here I just think that it’s premature. I think the 10
tone in the Packet is that many of the larger Comprehensive Plan programs, long or mid-term 11
programs, haven’t even really been implemented yet. We’re still at the toddler phase of this 12
plan and we are not going to get a response from our Planning Department with specific ideas 13
on how to revise it because they haven’t really had ample time to do it. So, let me ask this 14
question to you, I mean let’s assume we didn’t have some motion right now. In your mind when 15
do you think we would begin to review these types of issues? Is there… would it be appropriate 16
to assume that this time next year we would have a better sense of programs or policies that 17
we could amend or consider adjusting at the meeting in right now next year? 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Lait: That’s certainly possible. I don’t have any… I mean I’d differ to the Chair on this. I don’t 1
have any objections for a standing Committee that maybe meets quarterly to kind of review the 2
document. And maybe we’ve changes to make to recommend to Council or not but it's hard to 3
get to engage in that one night. We’re like 2-months out from having to report this to the state 4
so I do think that there’s some value in having somebody monitoring that or a group of people 5
monitoring that. 6
7
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Yeah so, I guess that would be my response to the energy on the dais. If 8
there is an interest in an in-depth reevaluation, we… I think those motivated should put their 9
hat… should suggest exactly that; maybe convening some Committee to review. And I think a 10
more appropriate time to make those recommendation would be maybe at the conclusion of 11
2019 in anticipation of having it come before this body in the second month of 20… actually, in 12
whatever timeframe makes sense for you to be able to potentially incorporate those… 13
whatever things you need to do in order to still meet this deadline of the report. So, I’m not 14
suggesting we put it off for a year, I’m suggesting that we spent more time with it and bring it 15
back at an appropriate time when we can review it and still participate in this process before 16
the next report. I guess that’s a motion but it’s not really a motion because I think the people 17
who are interested in participating in that subcommittee should make that motion. 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Riggs: Ok you can make a motion but it's not a motion. So just let’s not confuse the 1
(crosstalk) record anymore with fake motions. Let me (interrupted) 2
3
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Sorry. 4
5
Chair Riggs: Let me just say that just an idea that it might be an opportunity to dialog this at the 6
long-awaited retreat and we are very close to a date. So, this could be a time where we could 7
maybe get some… make some assignments about if this is… there’s critical mass around this 8
type of topic. Maybe we could make some assignments for a subcommittee of some sort. I 9
think that would be a great suggestion but I want to turn it over to Commissioner Templeton. 10
11
Commissioner Templeton: Thank you, I have a clarification. Director Lait, where you asking for 12
us to give fresh input on the Comprehensive Plan or to approve your progress report with 13
regards to our progress on the Comprehensive Plan? 14
15
Mr. Lait: So, the… both I guess on… one is the report and did we get it right in terms of our 16
statues and all these kinds of things. But the Commission does have a responsibility or authority 17
to review the Plan and recommend changes or additions that the Commission considers 18
necessary. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Templeton: Is that in any way time limited to tonight or do we always have that 1
ability? 2
3
Mr. Lait: It’s part of the… no, it’s not time limited. It’s part of the annual review process and so I 4
guess our sentiment in the Staff report was this is our first report on the Comp Plan that we just 5
adopted. We weren’t expecting… I don’t think the expectation is that the Commission’s 6
rewriting this and saying a bunch of recommendations to Council. I think it’s we’ve reviewed 7
these policies, we’re seeing a misalignment in this policy with community values. Council, we 8
think that you might want to think about adjusting, modifying, or adding some new policies. As 9
opposed to us complete revisit the Land Use section because for whatever the reasons are. 10
That kind of direction I would suspect we would get from Council so I think we’re fine. The idea 11
is you’re fine-tuning it along the way is sort of my read of that. 12
13
Commissioner Templeton: Would we still be… would it still be appropriate for us to approve 14
your report of conference to the Council and still have our own conversation about it? 15
16
Mr. Lait: Sure. 17
18
MOTION #2 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Templeton: If that’s the case I’d like to make a motion to say that we have 2
reviewed and commented on your progress report for the Comprehensive Plan and send that 3
to Council. 4
5
Mr. Lait: Yeah, I think (interrupted) 6
7
Chair Riggs: I think you… so you’re moving the Staff recommendation is that correct? 8
9
Commissioner Templeton: That’s correct, the other half. 10
11
Chair Riggs: The first half of the two-prong recommendation. Alright, do I have a second for that 12
motion and then we will go to you Commissioner Waldfogel? Is there a second to that motion? 13
14
SECOND 15
16
Commissioner Roohparvar: Sure, I’ll second it. 17
18
Chair Riggs: Ok we have a motion on the floor but Commissioner Waldfogel, you have the floor. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Waldfogel: It seems to be that we’re getting too a broad consensus that… by the 1
way, Committees are at the Chair’s discretion. It’s Chair’s discretion to establish Committees, 2
Chair’s discretion to Staff Committees, so we don’t even need a motion to move forward the 3
proposal that you are making. So, as far as I’m concerned, we’ve accomplished our goals. 4
5
Chair Riggs: Before… I’m sorry. Commissioner Lauing. 6
7
Commissioner Lauing: I would just like clarity on the motion because I thought we unanimously 8
referred the report that’s necessary and that’s really the action that we need to take because 9
we can always look at the Comprehensive Plan anytime, we want. That’s one of our core 10
responsibilities so I just don’t understand the reason for this one. 11
12
Chair Riggs: So, the purpose of tonight and… Planning Director Lauing... I need you or Lait, I 13
need you pay attention to my words because I’m going to paraphrase you. Is to make a… Staff is 14
making a recommendation to or providing an update on the Comprehensive Plan and an 15
update that has to be reported to the state on our progress toward the Housing Element. All 16
we’re doing is we’re saying we looked at that, I think [unintelligible] we’re approving that and 17
we’re referring it to Council with comments. Am I characterizing our role in that? And we chose 18
to split it up and I think for one reason we do want to have a dialog, a deliberate dialog, about 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.
how we’re evolving the General Plan. But there was… that was just the way the motion was 1
made. 2
3
Commissioner Lauing: I mean thanks for stating that to see if he corroborates because I’m not 4
certain that we have say anything on the Comp Plan since we haven’t even discussed it. So 5
that’s my question and I don’t see why it’s necessary for that reason. 6
7
Mr. Lait: Ok so I… so you’ve had a motion, you voted on it too in essence move the Staff report 8
so that’s been done. And as I recall Commissioner Waldfogel’s (interrupted) 9
10
Chair Riggs: Ok. 11
12
Mr. Lait: Recommendation (interrupted) 13
14
Chair Riggs: We did not move the full Staff report. 15
16
Mr. Lait: Well you recommended the report. 17
18
Vice-Chair Alcheck: [unintelligible – off mic] 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Riggs: Yes, yes. 1
2
Mr. Lait: And Commissioner Waldfogel had commented that if necessary, there could be 3
another motion to direct Staff to forward onto the City Council any refinements or suggested 4
changes to the Comp Plan onto the City Council. So, I’m… on this last motion that’s on the floor, 5
I don’t know that we need it because I feel like we’ve acted on that motion already. And unless 6
there was a specific set of recommendations that you want to forward onto City Council for 7
consideration in this annual review, I think that would be appropriate to have that 8
conversation. But what I also heard was that at the retreat you want to talk about whether you 9
want a form a Committee to work with Staff over the course of some period of time so that for 10
the next annual report, we’re well positioned to forward a set of recommendations onto the 11
Council should that be necessary. 12
13
Chair Riggs: Thank you. Ok as long as your fine that first motion was clear enough that it moved 14
your recommendation then I think that we’re fine. It wasn’t clear that the motion hadn’t been 15
made in a clear way so but I think that I’ll… we have our attorney and we should differ to him 16
that it’s clear enough. Albert was the first motion (interrupted) 17
18
Commissioner Waldfogel: (off mic) The motion out of the Staff report was clear enough. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Templeton: May I speak? 1
2
Mr. Albert Yang, Senior Deputy Attorney: I think we have enough direction yeah. 3
4
Chair Riggs: I think (interrupted) 5
6
7
MOTION #2 WITHDRAWN 8
9
Commissioner Templeton: May I just to clarify there was some ambiguity going on here 10
because what was in Slide 21 and what was in the Packet didn’t match in terms of the motion 11
and we wanted to make sure you had full coverage. If you feel you have full coverage, I can 12
withdraw the motion. 13
14
Mr. Lait: Yeah thank you and it points out just a need for us to make sure that we’re aligning 15
our Staff report with our PowerPoint presentation. So, I’ll make sure that we’re double checking 16
that piece. 17
18
Commissioner Templeton: Thank you, sorry about confusing you guys. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Riggs: I think that was the Chair’s confusion as well. 1
2
Mr. Lait: So, did I hear that you had withdrawn your motion? Ok. 3
4
Chair Riggs: So, the motion’s withdrawn. I do have another comment before this but any other 5
comments from my fellow Commissioners? So, I would just ask that we ask Staff… particularly 6
Staff to take a transportation lens on some of these. I think that we are accomplishing some of 7
the items that are assigned to Community Development that have a transportation focus. So, I 8
think that just go through again what is assigned to Community Development and I think it 9
what’s happening is we’re assuming Public Works is checking those off. So just make sure… I 10
would just double check that. 11
12
Commission Action: Motion to approve Staff report made by Commissioner Waldfogel, 13
seconded by Commissioner Lauing, motion passed (7-0). 14
15
4. PUBLIC HEARING / QUASI-JUDICIAL. 1700 & 1730 Embarcadero Road [18PLN-00186]: 16
Recommendation on Applicant's Request for Approval of 1) Zoning Amendment to 17
Change the Zoning of the Site From CS(D) and PC to CS(D)(AD) and 2) Site and Design 18
Review & Design Enhancement Exception to Allow the Demolition of an Existing 19
18,000 Square Foot Vacant Restaurant Building and a 15,700 Square Foot Audi 20
Service Building and Construction of a Two-Story 84,900 Square Foot Automobile 21
Dealership That Combines two Brands (Mercedes/Audi). Environmental Assessment: 22
An Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration will be Circulated for Public Comment 23
From February 4, 2019 to February 25, 2019. Zoning Districts: CS(D) & PC-4846. For 24
More Information Contact the Project Planner Sheldon S. Ah Sing at 25
sahsing@mgroup.us 26
27
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Riggs: Alright do we have any Director’s update? I think there are a couple administrative 1
things. A36… actually, we have the minutes, right? Approval of minutes? 2
3
[note-Many people started talking at once off mic] 4
5
Mr. Jonathan Lait, Director of Planning: There are no items. 6
7
Chair Riggs: No, the Embarcadero. 8
9
Commissioner Waldfogel: [unintelligible – off mic] Item Four. 10
11
Mr. Lait: Well, yes, I’m sorry, thank you. Yes, if we could have a motion. 12
13
MOTION 14
15
Vice-Chair Alcheck: I’ll move to continue that item to a date uncertain. 16
17
Chair Riggs: That’s right. 18
19
SECOND 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Roohparvar: I’ll second. 2
3
VOTE 4
5
Chair Riggs: All in favor? Everybody. 6
7
Motion passed 7(Riggs, Alcheck, Lauing, Waldfogel, Summa, Templeton, Roohparvar)-0 8
9
Mr. Lait: Appreciate that. 10
11
Commission Action: Motion to accept Staff’s recommendations of continuing this item to a 12
date uncertain made by Vice-Chair Alcheck, seconded by Commissioner Waldfogel, motion 13
passed (7-0). 14
15
Approval of Minutes 16
Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 17
18
Mr. Jonathan Lait, Director of Planning: But not minutes. 19
20
Committee Items 21
22
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Riggs: Ok no minutes. No Committee items. 1
2
Commissioner Questions, Comments or Announcements 3
4
Chair Riggs: Questions, comments, accouchement, future agenda items. 5
6
Mr. Jonathan Lait, Director of Planning: I have one. As we’re looking at the next agenda which is 7
later this month, we had an item that turns out we’re not going to be prepared for and that was 8
the 470 Olive. So, at this point February 27 is… doesn’t have any items. I know that we’ve got 9
the discussion items about co-working and the legislative update but it’s going to be difficult for 10
us to get that prepared for next week and have it submitted into a Packet for the Commission. 11
12
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Can you say that again? I’m sorry. 13
14
Mr. Lait: We don’t have any items for February 27th at this point. If the Commission wants to 15
meet and have a discussion on any of its items, we can certainly do that. I just thought it might 16
be helpful if we can frame some of those that dialog with some kind of report and some initial 17
analysis but we can… I differ to the Chair and the Commission on how you want to approach 18
that. We can either cancel that meeting or we can schedule something that doesn’t require 19
some significant report generation. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Can I ask a [unintelligible]? 2
3
Chair Riggs: I… Commissioner Lauing and then Commissioner Alcheck [note – Vice-Chair 4
Alcheck]. 5
6
Commissioner Lauing: Do we have any visibility a little bit further down the pike on what’s 7
coming? For example, this crucial aspect of the next section of the Affordable Housing 8
Ordinance with the BMR and the Palmer Act and so on. I know you said last year you were 9
actually making great progress on that and as we head towards March is that when we’re going 10
to see this or do you know yet? 11
12
Mr. Lait: No, we… so we… there’s a lot going on in our department right now and we have a 13
number of vacancies and we’re having to really refocus our priorities on how we’re addressing 14
these. I’m not confident that we’re going to get all of the 2019 Housing Work Plan priories and 15
so that’s the conversation that I’m having with the City Manager about what we’re able to 16
accomplish with our resources that we have. In addition to this effort, we also have… we’re also 17
merging departments too and so that’s another administrative task that we’re having to 18
address. But I need to get back to you on that and sort of see if we can’t get you a schedule of 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.
what we expect. As you know from last year it’s kind of a moving target with the tentative 1
agenda. 2
3
Commissioner Lauing: It’s a what target? 4
5
Mr. Lait: A moving target the tentative agenda. 6
7
Commissioner Lauing: Yeah, yeah, and then I think there was something that Council referred 8
to us on parking as well. So, is that sort of first quarter or do we know that yet? I’m not trying to 9
push you, I’m just trying to get a feel of what’s coming up. 10
11
Mr. Lait: I need to get you a summary. I don’t have an answer for you on that right now. 12
13
Commissioner Lauing: Alright. 14
15
Chair Riggs: Commissioner Alcheck [note – Vice-Chair Alcheck] do you still (interrupted) 16
17
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Yeah so, I guess what I would… my recommendation would be that we table 18
this discussion for a few minutes and have a quick discussion about potential retreat options 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.
because in the absence of finding a date maybe that works for everyone. I assume Wednesday 1
the 27th is open but that would be my suggestion. 2
3
Chair Riggs: Commissioner Summa. 4
5
Commissioner Summa: I did want to report that there was a North Ventura Cap meeting. It was 6
the first Committee meeting but I was not able to go so if Director Lait wanted to share 7
something about it. 8
9
Mr. Lait: Sure. I just want to keep us… I’m happy to respond to that. I’m wondering Chair if we 10
want to finish that conversation about the retreat. 11
12
Chair Riggs: It’s fine, we’ll just give the update and I’m going to look a couple things up while 13
you’re doing it. 14
15
Mr. Lait: Ok, yeah, we… so we had our retreat. We had a number of working group members 16
attend but we also had some community members come out and participate in an open house 17
style meeting along with an interactive activity with these little hand-held tickers. Which was 18
kind of nice, it gave some instant gratification to pushing in a response and seeing how your 19
response paired with other folks that were in the room. And I do not remember the whole list, 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 was about half a dozen questions that were asked but I think there was a report out on 1
that in the local paper. And there seemed to be continued interest in providing housing. We 2
wanted to reaffirm sort of the overall envisioning of the North Ventura Coordinated Area Plan’s 3
goals and approach. There seemed to be support for that general direction, a need for housing. 4
There was some willingness to consider additional height but there was clearly a sentiment of 5
wanting to preserve the existing neighborhood character of the area. And it also explored 6
connectivity and some other elements that we’re exploring. None of it was intended to be 7
necessarily direction setting but it was trying to help us identify in broad terms some scenarios 8
that would be explored further. And so, following that exercise, there were small group 9
discussions that had a chance to dive more deeply into some of these areas. 10
11
So, on March… let me just double check the date. On March 11 there is… we’re working on a 12
town hall that focuses in on Ventura Neighborhood and a component of that will be specifically 13
with that North Ventura Coordinated Area Plan. And this satisfies the requirement of the code 14
for the working group to meet with the Council Members and so we’re going to do that but also 15
anticipate having a broader conversation about Ventura Neighborhood. So that’s a meeting 16
that we’re hoping to schedule and we’ll certainly notify the Planning Commission with some 17
details about that. 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Riggs: Alright thank you. Any other announcements and then we can get back to the 1
maybe potentially scheduling a retreat? So, one thing before we do that, Commissioner Alcheck 2
[note -Vice-Chair Alcheck] did a lot of hard work and thank you or I keep on wanting to call you 3
Commissioner. Vice-Chair Alcheck did a lot of work on mapping out assignments for Council. 4
Make sure you take a look at that, if we need to do some switching around, I think he was 5
definitely trying to respect our newer members and give them a little more easing into the 6
process. So, with that, that’s on one of the handouts that in front of you so take a look at that 7
and let us know in terms of feedback. 8
9
Vice-Chair Alcheck: You’re giving me a little bit more credit than I deserve. I just wrote 10
everybody’s name in schedule order. 11
12
Chair Riggs: Yeah, we did talk but alright, so I just had some conversations. We… it looks like… 13
we threw out a couple Mondays. It looks like and let’s just confirm this that Monday the 4th 14
might work for all of us from I believe 11 to 2 is what we’re talking about? If we can just maybe 15
all dynamically look at our calendars and see if that’s a possibility. 16
17
Vice-Chair Alcheck: (off mic) What’s the date again? 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Riggs: Was it Monday, March 4th and I believe it worked for… that we had one person that 1
I wasn’t sure if it worked for them but I think it works for all of us now. 2
3
Vice-Chair Alcheck: (Off mic) What time? 4
5
Chair Riggs: 11 to 2. So, if that works… yeah, ok, great so it looks like we have a time for a 6
retreat from 11 and 2. 7
8
Vice-Chair Alcheck: So, we’re trading the Wednesday for… like we won’t have to meet on 9
Wednesday [unintelligible – many people talking at once] 10
11
Chair Riggs: That’s correct so everyone’s spouses can be very happy that you will be home on 12
the 27th. We will meet on the 4th for our retreat and let’s just… I don’t want to make 13
[unintelligible] but I’ll move that we cancel that, the February 27th due to lack of items. And I 14
don’t know that I need… do I need to make a motion for that? So, ok thanks. 15
16
Vice-Chair Alcheck: And so, hold on, and that works for you guys, obviously right? 17
18
Chair Riggs: [unintelligible – off mic]. Alright, I think that was our last item so it is 8:46 and I 19
believe that we are adjourned. 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.
Adjournment 1
8:46 pm 2
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Ed Lauing 5
Commissioner Michael Alcheck 6
Commissioner Asher Waldfogel 7
Commissioner Przemek Gardias 8
Vice Chair Susan Monk 9
Commissioner William Riggs 10
Commissioner Doria Summa 11
Get Informed and Be Engaged! 12
View online: http://midpenmedia.org/category/government/city-of-palo-alto or on Channel 26. 13
14
Show up and speak. Public comment is encouraged. Please complete a speaker request card 15
located on the table at the entrance to the Council Chambers and deliver it to the Commission 16
Secretary prior to discussion of the item. 17
18
Write to us. Email the PTC at: Planning.Commission@CityofPaloAlto.org. Letters can be 19
delivered to the Planning & Community Environment Department, 5th floor, City Hall, 250 20
Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301. Comments received by 2:00 PM two Tuesdays preceding 21
the meeting date will be included in the agenda packet. Comments received afterward through 22
2:00 PM the day of the meeting will be presented to the Commission at the dais. 23
24
Material related to an item on this agenda submitted to the PTC after distribution of the 25
agenda packet is available for public inspection at the address above. 26
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