HomeMy WebLinkAbout2019-03-13 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: March 13, 2019 2
Council Chambers 3
250 Hamilton Avenue 4
6:00 PM 5
6
Call to Order / Roll Call 7
6:13pm 8
Commissioner Roohparvar absent 9
10
Chair Riggs: Jonathan… alright, I’d like to call the meeting to order. Yolanda, could you do roll 11
call? Alright, welcome to the March 13th Planning Commission meeting for Palo Alto Planning 12
and Transportation Commission. 13
14
Oral Communications 15
The public may speak to any item not on the agenda. Three (3) minutes per speaker.1,2 16
17
Chair Riggs: Do we have any people that would… did I say March 13th? Yeah. Any oral 18
communications for items not on the agenda? 19
20
Agenda Changes, Additions, and Deletions 21
The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management. 22
23
[The Commission moved to City Official Reports] 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
Chair Riggs: So, I don’t think there’s any… we’ve spoken, I don’t think there’s any proposed 2
changes to the agenda. So, with that said, do you want to do the Director’s report, Jon? 3
4
Mr. Lait: Actually, I kind of feel like I just did that so (interrupted) 5
6
Chair Riggs: Ok. 7
8
Mr. Lait: No further comments there. 9
10
[The Commission moved to Study Session Item Number Two] 11
City Official Reports 12
1. Assistant Directors Report, Meeting Schedule and Assignments 13
14
Chair Riggs: Any communications from Staff? 15
16
Mr. Jonathan Lait, Director of Planning: I just wanted to report that this… I think it was this 17
week? Was it this week with the North Ventura? 18
19
Commissioner Lauing: Yeah. 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Mr. Lait: Ok. 2
3
Commissioner Lauing: Monday. 4
5
Mr. Lait: So, on Monday the City Council held a Town Hall for not just North Ventura but the 6
Ventura Neighborhood. And it had a well-attended meeting where residents had a chance to 7
express some of their interests for the neighborhood are articulated some of the concerns that 8
I think the Commission is familiar with. Cut through traffic and some of the other interests that 9
have been expressed. North Ventura was another part of that Town Hall meeting and again, we 10
heard presentations from our consultant. And there was an opportunity for the working group 11
members to ask questions of the Council. It seemed like in a couple different areas that sort of 12
in the middle and then also toward the end and then also community members came to speak 13
to about their interests, about what could happen or some of their thoughts about the future of 14
that. And so, the Council was generally supportive of the direction that we were heading. We 15
are continuing on track with the schedule and the plan that we’ve laid out. Though we are 16
going to return to Council pretty quickly to respond to a couple questions or areas of direction 17
that they gave us relative to alternatives and some of the financing for some of the stuff. But I 18
was not the only one there and I’ll ask any of our Commissioners, Doria Summa or Carry 19
Templeton if they had anything that they wanted to add to that. 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 Summa: So, I can read the motion if you want me to that Council took? Is that 2
valuable? 3
4
Mr. Lait: Yeah, that’s great. If you could do that, that would be fantastic. 5
6
Commissioner Summa: So it was unanimous and it was to update project direction to include 7
remove the Stanford playfields from the park space counted for Ventura use, evaluation and 8
propose policies around higher required inclusionary housing, workforce housing to prevent 9
displacement of existing residents, evaluate and propose office size limits to encourage small 10
office uses, and evaluate and propose an objective accounting for economic value provided to 11
property owners as part of the specific plan versus current zoning and the value of any 12
community amenities. 13
14
Commissioner Templeton: I thought it was a really useful meeting… community meeting in the 15
neighborhood itself. I hope we see more of those. In particular, it was really interesting to learn 16
the historical importance of the site to the City and that more information will be coming on 17
that. I would encourage the other Commissioners to get involved and up to speed on this 18
project because I think it’s going to have a large impact on our City. And we’ll have a lot of 19
decisions in the future too… around it so I think getting informed would be super helpful. 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 Lauing: I just wanted to comment that I turned on TV Channel 26 to watch it 2
from start to finish and it wasn’t broadcasted. So, I guess it was recorded but it wasn’t 3
broadcasted because they didn’t have television. So anyway, I read the recap of what 100 4
people, a lot of good comments and it was terrific to get that kind of community output. 5
6
Commissioner Summa: It was a good opportunity for the working group to listen to Council’s 7
concerns and also the neighborhood’s concerns. 8
9
Chair Riggs: Director Lait, you had another comment? 10
11
Mr. Lait: No further… oh, I’ll… no, no further comments, thank you. 12
13
[The Commission moved back up to agenda changes] 14
Study Session 15
Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 16
17
2. The Planning and Transportation Commission Will Have a Study Session Discussion 18
Concerning Municipal Code Conflicts With the Voluntary Installation of Electric 19
Vehicle Charging Stations and Bicycle Lockers, and State-Mandated Compliance With 20
the Americans With Disabilities Act, Within Existing Parking Facilities. 21
22
Chair Riggs: Ok then, lets move to the first item which is a Study Session and in the spirit of this 23
I just want to echo what we were told in the pre-meeting which is really this is Staff coming to 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.
us early and often with audiation and some stuff that they’re working on and looking for 1
feedback and comments on some complex both planning and transportation issues. So, this is 2
an opportunity for us to provide feedback and this will likely come back to us and feel free to 3
correct if I’m wrong there. 4
5
Mr. Jonathan Lait, Director of Planning: No, that’s exactly right and I want to welcome Russ 6
Reich who is our Planning Manager. He’s working over at the Development Services Center and 7
Russ sees this on a first-hand basis. And we also are wanting to be responsive to some of the 8
comments that we heard at the Commission with the retreat where we’re not coming to the 9
Council or to the Commission with an ordinance and sort of baked plan before we’ve had a 10
chance for discussion. So, thank you Chair for your comments, that’s exactly the spirit in which 11
we’re here today. 12
13
So, the issue that we’ve encountered is that there’s a couple of things, one from just a private 14
development standpoint. People when they improve their properties through tenant 15
improvements or other actions are often met with this requirement to upgrade their parking 16
lot. And in doing so that it sometimes triggers a loss of a parking space as an ADA space, an 17
American’s Disabilities Act parking space, is having to be installed or placed on the property. 18
And for decades we have dealt with this by allowing that space to be lost and… because state 19
law says that you need this space and we’re kind of at this a rock and a hard place. And so, 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.
something has to give and the zoning is what has traditionally has been what gives in that 1
situation. 2
3
The reason that we’re bringing this up today is I’d like to get to a place where we can 4
memorialize that practice and so it’s not something that we’re just sort of winging at the 5
counter even though we’ve got decades of experience doing this. But that’s more by way of 6
backdrop to how we’ve addressed the types of issues… this type of issue in the past. And we’re 7
seeing more frequently now with EV chargers and the City’s made a real big push to roll EV 8
infrastructure to the City. The Staff report has a number of statistics about how that market is 9
increasing in Palo Alto. Some of the Palo Alto Utility Department initiatives to advance this 10
infrastructure to the home and to commuters who are coming to Palo Alto. And then also it 11
strikes on a number of City Council policies relative to the climate change and reducing our 12
greenhouse gases. And so… and there’s money out there now for the installations of these EV 13
chargers and what’s happening though is people come in, they’re typically interested in 14
wanting to get some over the counter permit because it’s a pretty straight forward action to 15
put in the utility and the chargers and go install it. They [unintelligible]… they need to get a 16
Building Permit but when they come to the counter they’re often met with it doesn’t meet… 17
you’re putting this in a parking space or you have to lose a parking space because the new… 18
because the state law says that when you are putting in an EV charger space, the first space has 19
to be restriped to meet the ADA requirements for a parking space. So that means you have 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.
have the space but also the van accessible sort of loading area next to it. And so, we’re in this 1
similar situation as we were or are with the ADA regulations that we’ve been dealing with in the 2
past. And so, one… on one hand, we felt like well gosh, the ADA Standard is pretty straight 3
forward. That’s state-mandated, we have to do that. The EV rollout is more elective because 4
there’s no state law requiring that be changed, at least on one level. We may not be 5
interrupting that the way that some Commissioners may and I welcome feedback on that but 6
we’re… it’s coming up more often. And we’re seeing it in affordable housing developments that 7
are existing, we’re seeing at Stanford Shopping Center, we’re seeing it at (interrupted) 8
9
Mr. Russ Reich, Planning Manager: (off mic) 250 University. 10
11
Mr. Lait: Yeah, there’s one downtown at 250 University where they’re wanting to install, I think 12
it’s seven chargers and the… they’re stuck. There’s no remedy other than buying a parking 13
space right now at a tune of $75,000 and for people who are installing these EV chargers, 14
they’re doing this because in part there’s a lot of financing to support this. So, the idea of 15
spending $75,000 of their money to move this forward is not sort of penciling out. 16
17
Anyways we have some folks here with the Utilities Department that could help answer 18
questions that the Commission may have relative to EV. We… again, we’re sort of at the 19
beginning stage but we kind of want to move quickly because we are experiencing this tension 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.
and we’d like to find a solution that best balances our City’s interest relative to these big policy 1
objectives that the Council has laid out for us. While we’re also trying to deal with this very 2
specific zoning implementation challenge that we have so I’ll turn it over to the Chair and happy 3
to answer any questions. 4
5
Chair Riggs: So, I appreciate the presentation, that’s the presentation you have prepared. 6
7
Mr. Lait: Well, yeah, I kind of winged it there a little bit but (interrupted) 8
9
Chair Riggs: Ok, it’s all good. 10
11
Mr. Lait: I did want to say one thing though if I can? There was something mentioned in the 12
Staff report how downtown’s got different regulations. There’s… it’s an Assessment District, 1 13
to 250, and then the rest of the town’s got some other standards. One thing that we are 14
interested in at a Staff level is having a consistent standard that applies across the City. It’s 15
difficult for… we don’t have in lieu parking anywhere except for downtown and so that same 16
out doesn’t exist elsewhere. So, creating some kind of a parody I think is helpful how we treat 17
these different properties. 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: Ok, I think we have a comment from a member of the public so we’ll shift to public 1
comment and then we’ll bring it back to the Commission. Is that ok? So, I have… first 2
commenter and only comment card… if anyone else wants to comment on this item please fill 3
out a card… is Mr. Jones, Robert Jones. 4
5
Mr. Robert Jones: (off mic – speaking from the audience) Do you want me to come over here? 6
7
Chair Riggs: Yeah, that would be great and speak into the mic so we can all hear you. 8
9
Mr. Jones: I’ve been working on one of these projects for the last year and a half. It’s the Palo 10
Alto Housing Authority and we’ve went just about every direction we could and we did come up 11
with something that I think would work but we were told that we couldn’t do it. And what we 12
wanted to do was to go from two larger parking spaces to three compact and that would get us 13
within all the… we’d have the ADA, we’d have all the handicap, we’d have everything we 14
needed and we still have the same amount of parking spots. 15
16
When you’re talking about a place such a Palo Alto Housing Authority, this is a garage that’s 17
never going to change, that has a certain amount of spots in it and if you want to keep those 18
spots there’s going to have to be some movement in either the size of the ADA or allowing us to 19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
make some small parking sites or I can’t figure out a way that it’s going to work. So that’s my 1
plea, just let us do three compact spots. 2
3
Chair Riggs: Thank you, Mr. Jones, we really appreciate you coming out. Any other comments 4
on this item? Seeing none I’ll bring it back to the Commission and I just propose that we… and 5
we just go down the line, right to left, and provide comments and feedback. If we need to do 6
another round, we can but I think that maybe the most efficient and do you mind going first 7
Commissioner Waldfogel? Ok. 8
9
Commissioner Lauing: Did you want us to talk about all of the issues as opposed to the three 10
items separately? 11
12
Chair Riggs: I think this is an opportunity to be very forthright and linear and let’s get out all of 13
our feedback to the Commission. If we need to come back to anybody’s comments or 14
questions, if anybody has anything else to ask, we can come back to you afterward but let’s just 15
kind of get it all out and give Staff something to respond too. Commissioner Waldfogel. 16
17
Commissioner Waldfogel: Thank you. I have a couple questions, one question for Planning Staff 18
and some questions for Utility Staff and then two quick comments. So, for Planning Staff, how 19
many do you think we’re talking about? Are we talking about 10s, 100s, 1,000s? 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Mr. Reich: In terms of applications that we’re running into conflicts with, currently I’m aware of 2
two separate projects in downtown that are running into the parking conflict. There are many 3
other projects at existing sites where we tend to run into other issues. It’s not so much the loss 4
of the single space but its design issues related to the bollards and trenching and things that we 5
can usually work out. This is one issue that we’re running into on a couple of specific projects. 6
One of them was mentioned by the public speaker, the project on Alma, and the other one is 7
250 University where they just… there’s no other way to avoid losing a parking space if we 8
allow the install of the EVs. 9
10
Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah, I mean if it’s a small number we should just find a way to be 11
flexible. I mean just generally about all these issues, we need to find the tool to be flexible 12
about onesie, twosie kind of (interrupted) 13
14
Mr. Lait: Yeah, I think we’re in the low numbers right now. 15
16
Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah. 17
18
Mr. Lait: The question is to what extent does this take off and… but I don’t think we’re talking 19
100s. 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 Waldfogel: Well I’ll make a… I have two comments about that if it scales and 2
then for Utility Staff… and thank you for that answer. For Utility Staff two questions, one is 3
there is somebody… yeah. Do we have the electrical capacity in place in the districts? Are we 4
looking at upgrades in the system to support this? 5
6
Ms. Hiromi Kelty, Utilities Program Manager: So, the capacity is always the number one issue 7
that is addressed at any of these projects and so at times it does mean a panel upgrade which 8
we’ve been seeing a lot more through the Development Center. Even in the single-family home 9
arena but for larger projects, that is always the first thing that is being addressed. 10
11
Commissioner Waldfogel: So, is there also a need for electrical volts space or is that part of this 12
as well? 13
14
Ms. Kelty: So, depending on the project we haven’t seen it yet but we are expecting in the 15
future that some of the large projects, large apartment complexes, it may require a whole 16
transformer upgrade. So, we are expecting that and to add a little bit more to the first question 17
you had asked Planning… excuse me, my name is Hiromi Kelty and I’m with the City of Palo Alto 18
Utilities. We currently have a rebate program for multi-family and non-profits and that money 19
is coming from Low Carbon Fuel Standards Credits which are coming from CARB, California Air 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.
Resources Board. And we are helping to facilitate the building out of EV infrastructure for the 1
harder to reach markets within our community. We currently have 29 applications and we only 2
have six completed projects. A lot of it because most of these property owners start entering 3
the project and then they find all these barriers and it’s just too hard. So, 29 right now and I 4
imagine it will continue to increase and we have other projects in the pipeline that will most 5
likely… hopefully, accelerate the process of getting EV infrastructure installed. 6
7
Commissioner Waldfogel: Great, thank you. I think it would be helpful if we took a 8
comprehensive look and just looked at all the implications. I mean if there are electrical 9
upgrades and that will also grab garage space, we should anticipate those issues early if 10
possible. 11
12
So just my two suggestions on this and then I’m done with this. In commercial buildings, I’d like 13
to link potential lose spaces to TMA participation. If there’s some possible way to do that and 14
then in general in all buildings, we do have a piece of code, 18.54.050 (H) which I’m sure 15
everybody here knows by heart, which is a maintenance standard for parking and loading 16
facilities. It basically says a parking space in a… a parking space can’t be used for other 17
purposes. So, I would just encourage us to enforce this, make sure that the area’s where we’re 18
taking space away don’t have spaces that are being used for other storage purposes or other 19
non-parking purposes. I think that might make this a relatively easy thing to say yes too. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Summa: Ok so I was also interested in how many… how… what… how big a 2
problem this was and I do think we have to be flexible to a certain extent. Especially if it’s just a 3
small problem in any given… small number… small ratio of spots that would be lost. We 4
especially need to be flexible for persons with disabilities I think and we want those people to 5
be able to use electric cars also so that seems like we’re doing the right thing there. I think the 6
first step is… and maybe this is already being done but as Commissioner Waldfogel said, to 7
make sure that there isn’t space being used for other things in parking garages like storage. And 8
there’s often little spaces in corners of garages where cars can’t go but bikes could be parked so 9
really optimize use in the garages. Be flexible and I guess if it got to the point where it was… 10
there was a significant percentage of the parking lost we could consider using in lieu fees 11
downtown to… you know if they wanted to lose an awful lot of parking spots but that seems a 12
little premature. And I think the point is to be flexible but also make sure that the garages are 13
being optimized and used as efficiently and parking lots as possible. 14
15
Commissioner Templeton: Alright, thank you for this report, Mr. Reich. I enjoyed reading it and 16
channeling all of the interesting decisions you get to grapple with on a day to day basis. At least 17
the ones related to parking spots and EVs. I had a question, so this first… this requirement that 18
the first spot be ADA accessible, does that… is it like other ADA spots that it would only be 19
useable by someone with a valid permit? 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Mr. Reich: It is actually a little different. So, when you install between one and four EV chargers, 2
the space has to be sized as a van accessible ADA space but it doesn’t actually have to have the 3
signage so anybody can actually park there. When you do five through twenty-five EV chargers 4
then you have to provide two ADA accessible spaces, one of which must be signed and marked 5
as an ADA space. 6
7
Commissioner Templeton: Ok, great, thanks for that clarification and is there any implications 8
for the other ADA spots that may be on the site? Would you be able to exchange an EV 9
compatible ADA spot for one without? 10
11
Mr. Reich: Code doesn’t let you do that, unfortunately. It would be nice if it did but it doesn’t 12
let you do that. 13
14
Commissioner Templeton: Ok. So just to answer the… to address the points that you brought up 15
in the report. Given the growth that you’ve identified in our City, in the past 4-years we’ve 16
nearly quadrupled the number of EV vehicles, it does seem really important to make sure that 17
our priorities are clear. It does imply that our residents are interested in these spots and it is… 18
the… is reflected it the Council’s priorities as well. So, it would be helpful for me to get some 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.
maybe clarity on the nuance of what the priority feedback you’re looking for here? Are you… is 1
there something specific that (interrupted)? 2
3
Mr. Lait: Yeah so basically what we’re asking is to advance… to expand the EV infrastructure are 4
we willing to lose a parking space or two to achieve that goal? For reducing vehicle miles 5
traveled and addressing greenhouse gas emissions, are we willing to lose a parking space or 6
two for bicycle… dedicated bicycle lockers too? 7
8
Commissioner Templeton: And are there specific parts of the code that we should be talking 9
about or are we being kind of theoretical at this point? 10
11
Mr. Lait: We’re being theoretical. 12
13
Commissioner Templeton: Alright, well I think it would be wonderful to have more charging 14
opportunities within the City. And I think there… it would useful to have… in addition to the 15
trend of the number of EV drivers, it’d be interesting to see if there was any other noticeable 16
trends like an increase in bicycle commuters or pedestrian commuters or public transit 17
commuters. That we could notice that trend, if that was consistent across all of our green 18
modes of transport then we would be able to more easily justify losing spaces in certain 19
situations. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Mr. Lait: Yeah, I… in… I think there is data collection on a number of those items. 2
3
Commissioner Templeton: Cool. 4
5
Mr. Lait: Where we typically see… I mean I think the EV stands alone on its own area. There’s 6
money, there’s property owner who wants to invest it into a charger and it just resulted in the 7
loss of a space or two. For the bicycle, usually, it’s tenants of an office building that will 8
approach the City and say hey, we’re on Park Boulevard or we’ve got this great bicycle access. A 9
lot of us in the building bike here but the building owner says that we can’t lose a parking space 10
because we’re at the limit. And if we’re really trying to advance these initiatives, we could take 11
a number of cars off the road by just having a place to park our bikes because our bikes get 12
(interrupted) 13
14
Commissioner Templeton: Right and some of the building I’ve worked in I’ve seen bike lockers, 15
not in the parking lot and I’ve seen them even have a dedicated portion of the entryway safely 16
for bikes. Have we considered those as options or are we specifically only want to talk about 17
trading parking for bikes? 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: So, in new construction, we have more of a conversation about that. When we’re 1
talking about existing buildings it’s usually space that’s being built out or dedicated toward 2
receptionists or other types of activities. We can certainly explore that and we can… as I heard 3
some other comment about just maintaining the… making sure that the garage be maintained. 4
Maybe there’s some other efficiencies that we can look at with first looking at before a space is 5
lost for parking to accommodate the bicycle lockers, for instance, there be some exploration or 6
finding that it is not suitable to be placed within the building somewhere accessible, close. 7
8
Commissioner Templeton: Yeah, I mean there’s… usually, people are comfortable having their 9
bikes near them if they can’t have a locker space in the parking lot so that’s just throwing that 10
out there. 11
12
And then the adding the ADA compliant spaces is good for everybody, especially in the case of 13
the EV when you can have multiple types of users for that particular spot. So, I do hope that we 14
can find ways to build out more of the spaces and I think trading off some spots for smaller 15
vehicles like our speaker suggested seems reasonable to me. Thank you. 16
17
Chair Riggs: Commissioner Alcheck. (off mic) Vice-Chair Alcheck. 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Ok thank you. Quick question about… I just want to acknowledge something 1
in the letters that we got there was a reference to the Planning Staff member reaching out to a 2
community member in an effort to work with one of our residents in the community group to 3
prep for this meeting. And I think that’s a great practice and I mean some of the letters talked a 4
lot about the frustration but this is actually a really great way to engage. You’ve… there’s 5
maybe a community group that has more insight on EV stuff and they’ve been vocal in their 6
frustration and we reach out to them in preparation for a meeting ahead of the Commission. I 7
just think that’s great practice, I want to acknowledge that, whoever the Staff member is that 8
did that you know kudos to them. 9
10
Ok, then another question that I just want to run by you guys so that I understand it and 11
everybody else understands it. Is… can you help me articulate this?... there are transportation 12
Staff members who are potentially working with private property owners like apartment 13
complex owners or churches and have developed plans for EV conversions. And then they 14
themselves, this public/private team, have met resistance? This has already happened? 15
16
Mr. Lait: Yeah well, I’ll start and maybe Russ can maybe clarify. As I’m understanding it, the City 17
is one big City, right we’re all working together for the same goal. You know different 18
departments have their initiatives. The Utilities Department is really [unintelligible] 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
Vice-Chair Alcheck: The Utilities Department, ok. 2
3
Mr. Lait: Is being responsive to the greenhouse gas and all that stuff so they’re advancing and 4
pushing out these programs. What’s happening is people get excited and say yeah, I’d love to 5
take advantage of that and put these chargers in our building. Then they come to the counter 6
and then they run into the Planners who are nice people but they often have to say no in 7
situations like this. And so that’s what we’re trying to mitigate is trying to get to a place where 8
we can say yes and here are the perimeters [unintelligible](interrupted) 9
10
Vice-Chair Alcheck: I can’t defend the Planners but no, I’m kidding. No, I guess what I just 11
wanted to highlight that because I think this happens a lot, as local governments get larger and 12
try to do more. And we’ve got two different departments that are…. I wouldn’t suggest that the 13
Planning Department is communicating but we have a Utility Department that’s communicating 14
an initiative that’s coming from the top. And then they are meeting resistance from another 15
department because it’s difficult to get every domino in line. And so, the extent that people in 16
the community have met that hurdle and been frustrated I want to suggest that I empathize 17
and I’m happy to be a part of the process that tries to make that right. 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
I think our General Plan or I should say Comprehensive Plan sufficiently supports adopting an 1
approach that favors adding EV chargers at the expense of parking spaces. That is enough. If 2
that wasn’t enough which it is the City Council adopted a priority this year of having to do with 3
climate change which I think struck some people as sort of out of right field. It’s the first time 4
climate change as has been in the mix for a while. I think this is sort of what they had in mind, 5
this idea of putting… taking action where they can to encourage mode shift, right 6
transportation mode shift. So, if we want to encourage a more environmentally friendly 7
alternative to the gas vehicle then we should probably make our property owners in the City… 8
we should probably make the path for the property owners in the City possible. Right now, it’s 9
not exactly possible so my comment would be come back to us with a code language that 10
specifically allows for the loss of parking spaces. Even if parking currently is inadequate under 11
our current standards. I imagine this is mostly grandfathered sites, right? Newer sites are 12
probably… they probably have… I think they already have to have some level of EV parking so 13
we’re really talking about sites that are older and inadequate probably. And so yeah, I would 14
encourage you guys to bring code language that would allow number one for a space reduction 15
in the event that an EV charging space is created and so the assumption is that they would have 16
to get a permit to create the EV infrastructure in the parking space. And that would also allow 17
them to restripe and the restriping would be also approved and of course, you wouldn’t add 18
one EV parking space in lieu of seven spots. There would be some… I would be comfortable 19
with language that left it to the Planning Department to determine if the property owner has 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.
sufficiently figured out how to optimize the parking. I don’t think it’s worth saying that it should 1
be three compact spots. I think we should give a little more flexibility because maybe in one site 2
it makes sense to have three compact spots and, in another site, it makes sense to go from 3
three to two. And I think we should create flexibility. I don’t think it makes sense to require 4
someone to restripe their entire property to add one parking EV site. 5
6
I think the ADA parking spaces bring daylight to that practice. I assume that this would be a 7
separate code paragraph but that one seems even more straight forward. So, I would 8
encourage Staff to bring us language that specifically allowed for the conversion of a parking 9
space to an ADA compliant parking space if that also meant that there was a reduction in the 10
parking. Even if that resulted in further inadequacy in the site’s current parking. 11
12
And then I would suggest to you that this third thing, this bicycle lockers, is also important. 13
Almost every new development is… I shouldn’t say that. Many, many new developments that 14
are targeting a younger demographic are really pushing these bicycle storage facilities. I’ve seen 15
them at a lot of developments that tend to have smaller unit sizes like in the workforce housing 16
project I think we saw on El Camino. They had a bike storage facility. I think it would be a shame 17
if the only sites that would make space for bike storage were new buildings and I think if a 18
church or an apartment complex has demand for bike parking facilities, I think we should 19
consider accommodating if it means losing one space. 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
So, I think in all of those cases we should see three separate languages for each one because I 2
think there’s general likelihood that people will feel differently in terms of how strongly they 3
feel about each one. And I think once that you have that language, I would bring it back 4
because I think this is straight forward. I’m hopeful we can resolve that internal conflicts sooner 5
than later. 6
7
Commissioner Lauing: Ok thanks, I appreciate the preliminary comments that this is a good 8
way to start a thorny problem by bringing it at early stages and have a shot at it. Excuse me. I 9
think certainly just a couple general comments, not trying to piggyback on what my colleagues 10
have already said, not to repeat but obviously, both the citizens and the Council are strongly 11
behind the SIP in the Climate Action Plan. Council has been on record since 16 [note –year 12
2016?] so that’s the direction of the city. If we needed any evidence of demand, we seem to be 13
the state leader in electric cars and that’s not going to go away. So, our citizens are demanding 14
it and our Council is demanding it and so that’s not up for debate. 15
16
Each of these three is quite different in terms of what you need implemented. Taking the one 17
that I think is easiest, as a couple colleagues have said, I totally concur that with respect to the 18
ADA rules and so on there is a state rule that needs to be done. I don’t see any way around that 19
or that we should get around that. We should just be in compliance. 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
A couple questions on the others. When you say that there’s a number of all these barriers and 2
so on and one of the barriers under the EV chargers seems to be this restriping. Is it primarily 3
the cost or the… what’s the speed bump there? 4
5
Mr. Reich: The issue is the space. For sites that are already built out to accommodate the 6
additional space there usually isn’t the room because in existing developments they design the 7
parking facilities to the very minimum standards and there’s just no room to accommodate 8
changing that. 9
10
Commissioner Lauing: So, I guess my question is if it’s a lot as big as this room, you don’t have 11
to restripe 100 percent of it. You have to make some adjustments to squeeze down three 12
spaces or something? 13
14
Mr. Reich: No if you’re simply just adding EV, usually you’re just losing a space because you 15
have to give it over to the wider van accessible space plus its loading area. So, you don’t have to 16
restripe the whole parking lot to make that work. You usually just lose that single individual 17
space and you restripe those two spaces to make it fit the ADA required width. It doesn’t 18
usually affect the entire parking lot. 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 Lauing: Yeah it just seemed like there’s a lot of weight being put on this 1
restriping, at least the way the report was written. 2
3
Mr. Lait: It’s just that it gets restriped to lose a space. Yeah, that’s all, you lose a space. 4
5
Commissioner Lauing: Right. 6
7
Mr. Reich: There are instances related to the other ADA question where if someone is coming 8
into restripe their parking lot, that will then trigger the state ADA requirement. If for example, 9
they don’t currently have an adequately sized ADA space they may have an ADA space that was 10
built in the 1970s or something and regulations have changed since then. And then they have to 11
stripe just to paint new striping because it’s faded over time. But then they have to change that 12
striping because ultimately, they have to widen the ADA spaces and they end up losing regular 13
parking spaces to accommodate that. 14
15
Jon is mentioning also path of travel. A lot of times that wasn’t accommodated in older parking 16
lots and so they have to modify the parking lot to specifically get the path of travel to make it 17
accommodate ADA where you aren’t having to go up steps or seat grades [note – sounds like]. 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 Lauing: Right and then all this effort is not because apartment complexes just 1
want one of these, right? I mean there’s going to be some scale to it. So, the restriping, the 2
whole process, is probably not going to be… I’m not talking about ADA now. I’m talking about 3
wanting to have more EVR. 4
5
Mr. Reich: In the case of the EVs it is triggered with a single EV charger. It brings in this 6
requirement for the ADA sized space. 7
8
Commissioner Lauing: No, I got that part but I’m saying that they’re not going to just put in 9
one. Once they get started (interrupted) 10
11
Mr. Reich: Typically, they’ll put in a number of them. Some of the… it’s… a lot of the 12
applications we’ve seen like the one at 250 Hamilton, they are doing six or seven chargers. 13
14
Commissioner Lauing: Yeah, that’s what I thought so just asked wanted to clarify that because 15
the investment is being leveraged over the half of a dozen slots from an apartment complex 16
point of view. That makes the apartment complex more desirable for tenants’ visa via their 17
competitors so there’s a driver there too. Did you want to say something, Jonathan? 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: No, just as we’re talking about some of these things too there’s also bollards that you 1
need to place in some of these. So, it’s not just losing a space, sometimes the space itself gets 2
reduced in width or dimension from our standard parking dimensions. So that’s something that 3
we’d be interested in looking at as well. 4
5
Commissioner Lauing: Yeah so, the list of things that are the barriers is not 50 of them, it’s 6
more like about three that we would need to correct. 7
8
Mr. Lait: Yeah, I don’t think it’s an exhaustive list but even the one of losing a space is probably 9
the biggest barrier and why 20 of the 26 applications are sitting. 10
11
Commissioner Lauing: Yeah, oh ok, that’s good and so stating the obvious I think you’re seeing 12
universal support for making a move here but to use the old cliché, the devils in the details. So, 13
you state that achieving these goals requires both home charging and destination charging. 14
Which I totally believe but I don’t know if it’s 90 percent of the time people can get there and 15
they don’t need it at the office because they are already charged up or what. So, the numbers 16
you would need and so on, that’s… there’s a lot of detail to be pushed through there. 17
18
With respect to the bike box as I call them, are those highly, highly preferable to racks I 19
presume because of security and weather conditions and so on? 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Mr. Lait: Yes. 2
3
Commissioner Lauing: Right and when you… what’s the ratio of how many parking spots you 4
have to give up for a bike box? 5
6
Mr. Lait: Yeah how many… so it’s interesting, we… our code actually use to have a requirement 7
that if you put eight Class One bike lockers… bike storage… I don’t know what the right term is. 8
Bike locker? If you had eight of them you remove one parking space so we had an eight to one 9
ratio. 10
11
Vice-Chair Alcheck: [unintelligible – off mic] 12
13
Mr. Lait: I don’t know, we’re trying to figure that out why… this was under the adjustments of 14
the Director but somewhere between the turn of the century it just disappeared. So, we 15
(interrupted) 16
17
Commissioner Lauing: Ok well that’s a real valuable stat to know because 18
[unintelligible](interrupted) 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Lait: Yeah so what we can (interrupted) 1
2
Commissioner Lauing: It means that we can put in eight bikes and encourage people to ride it 3
and we give up one car. We also like to say let’s not give up a car but we’ve got to give up 4
something and we’re committed to this so we should do that. 5
6
Mr. Lait: Yeah, so we’ll look more into that and try to understand the legislative history as to 7
why that dropped off. 8
9
Commissioner Lauing: And right now, do most of these old buildings that you’re talking about, 10
existing buildings excuse me, have bike racks or some do and some don’t? 11
12
Mr. Reich: We haven’t studied the bike question as much. It was a recent inquiry from an 13
employee of a business that was below grade parking structure. You know for a long time the 14
code has had a number of requirements for Class One, Class Two. You know whether there’s a 15
combination of bike lockers as in addition to bike racks and so a lot of facilities out there have 16
kind of a mixed bag of the different types of storage. 17
18
Commissioner Lauing: So relative to your initial question I think there’s a possible problem here 19
that is a problem but unlike some of ours it’s not insurmountable so I think with some work we 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
can do that. I would strongly encourage your Staffing folks to have a single liaison to work with, 1
bounce things off of before you just bring the thing back to seven of us. Just to kind of make 2
sure that the communication lines are open there. That’s it. 3
4
Chair Riggs: We’re good? So, I think I’m hearing general support. I think I want to reiterate that 5
we have a lot of opportunities to address this in 18.52 or 18.52 in the zoning. I think we heard a 6
lot some suggestions on things that we can do to perhaps mitigate and again I would just 7
maybe suggest maybe there could be a clear and concise tabular way to get that. Maybe 8
something that cascades based on the range of steps taken and in terms of a table that would 9
specific criteria that we lined out. And I think we heard from the start with Commissioner 10
Waldfogel’s quick but important suggestion about participation in the TMA, looking at traffic 11
reduction strategies, and other creative performance measures in parallel with the reduction or 12
with whatever we call it. The EV or the bike box or whatever waiver process. 13
14
I think the one thing that when this comes back to us that we… that nobody really addressed 15
was so what is the maximum removal threshold and that’s really the elephant in the room that 16
we didn’t discuss. I think we’d be expecting there to be some consideration of that calculus if 17
I’m not over speaking. I think that was embedded in many people’s comments. Unless there are 18
any other comments, maybe we want to move on? 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.
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Actually, can I ask (interrupted) 1
2
Chair Riggs: Commissioner Alcheck [note- Vice-Chair Alcheck] 3
4
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Yes, so I… maybe I didn’t articulate this that well and I’m curious to know 5
what you think about this. I was suggesting… so I don’t imagine a property owner is going to 6
come to us and say I want to convert 100 percent of my parking structure to electric. So, I 7
anticipate that we’re talking about somewhere between 2 and 10 percent of their spaces. 8
Maybe 5… 2 to 5 percent and so I was suggesting the code to be flexible and say if you come to 9
us with a conversion strategy that is sensitive and efficient, we’ll approve it. So, if that means 10
let’s say they want to convert seven spaces and they have to lose nine, great. If they come with 11
seven spaces and they have to lose fourteen, no. So, I was suggesting that maybe we leave Staff 12
with this discretion as opposed to creating a percentage that will work for some people and not 13
for others. Particularly because, I’ll give you a perfect example, a church wants to do it… what’s 14
the name of that church that had the music school? 15
16
Chair Riggs: (off mic) First Baptist. 17
18
Vice-Chair Alcheck: First Baptist wants to do it, they have six spaces, they want to add one 19
space, they lose two. Are we unwilling to allow that or are we so excited about encouraging this 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
transition that we will? I mean I guess what I’m trying to say is I really think that the… I would 1
rather see us codify something that was much more flexible and try it and see if people have a 2
problem with it then over complicate it with specifics. 3
4
Chair Riggs: Commissioner… Vice-Chair Alcheck, let me… lets just… I think this conversation is 5
exhausted. I think the tone of flexibility was… is definitely related. 6
7
Vice-Chair Alcheck: I’m just curious if that’s what you meant by threshold or if that was 8
something else? 9
10
Chair Riggs: What I suggest this Commission do is give it too… give our feedback to our 11
excellent Staff, have them come back with their recommendations. It could be something 12
with… a blend between that has performance standards as well as thresholds as well as 13
flexibility. See no other comments? Ok, let’s move on. 14
15
Commission Action: No action taken. 16
Action Items 17
Public Comment is Permitted. Applicants/Appellant Teams: Fifteen (15) minutes, plus three (3) minutes rebuttal. 18
All others: Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 19
20
3. PUBLIC HEARING / QUASI-JUDICIAL. 190 Channing Avenue [18PLN-00274]: 21
Recommendation on Applicant’s Request for Approval of a Vesting Tentative Map to 22
Allow for Four Residential Condominium Units and Two Office Units on One Parcel. 23
Environmental Assessment: The project is exempt from the California Environmental 24
Quality Act (CEQA) in accordance with CEQA Guidelines Section 15315 (Minor Land 25
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Divisions). Zoning District: RT-35 SOFA II CAP (Residential Transition). For More 1
Information Contact the Project Planner Claire Hodgkins at 2
Claire.Hodgkins@cityofpaloalto.org 3
4
Chair Riggs: So, our second Agenda Item is a quasi-judicial item. It’s 190 Channing Avenue, 5
recommendation for approval of a Vesting Tentative Map to allow for a residential 6
condominium unit and two office units on one parcel. The project has been ruled to be 7
exempted from CEQA in accordance with CEQA Guidelines Section 15315, Minor Land Divisions. 8
Zoning district RT-35, a residential transition. We have Planner Hodgkins here to give a 9
presentation and before we start, I do need to ask because this is a quasi-judicial item if any 10
conflict of interests for the Commission. Maybe I could start with Commissioner Lauing. No 11
conflicts of interests? 12
13
Commissioner Lauing: Oh, I’m sorry. 14
15
Chair Riggs: No esparto (interrupted) 16
17
Commissioner Lauing: No. 18
19
Chair Riggs: Conversations? 20
21
Commissioner Lauing: No. 22
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Chair Riggs: Commissioner Alcheck [note- Vice-Chair Alcheck]? 2
3
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Yeah no, none. 4
5
Commissioner Templeton: None. 6
7
Chair Riggs: Commissioner Summa? 8
9
Commissioner Summa: None. 10
11
Commissioner Waldfogel: No esparto communications. 12
13
Chair Riggs: Ok same for Chair Riggs. Sorry, I just wanted to do that for the record. So, without 14
further ado Commissioner [note – planner] Hodgkins are you ready? You need a couple 15
minutes? 16
17
Mr. Jonathan Lait, Director of Planning: You just promoted her. 18
19
Commissioner Lauing: Congratulations. 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
[note - many Commissioners started talking at once] 2
3
Chair Riggs: Demotion? 4
5
Mr. Lait: Well you can’t beat the time off compared to what she’s doing now. 6
7
Chair Riggs: Excuse me, apologizes. 8
9
Ms. Claire Hodgkins, Project Planner: Good evening. 10
11
Commissioner Lauing: [unintelligible] 12
13
Chair Riggs: Project planner Hodgkins, are you ready to proceed? 14
15
Ms. Hodgkins: Yes. 16
17
Vice-Chair Alcheck: We do appreciate the pace though, I love the pace. 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Ms. Hodgkins: Good evening Commissioners, I’m Claire Hodgkins, I’m the Project Planner for 1
this project. So, the project is located at 190 Channing Avenue, this is within the south of Forest 2
area to Corradiated Area Planned boundaries, and in the RT-35 Residential Transition Zoning 3
District which is a specific zoning outlined under the SOFA II Cap. 4
5
And just a brief overview of the project, the project before you today are a subdivision of a 6
single parcel for condominium purposes. So, the actual parcel would not change at all but what 7
the map would allow for is six condominium units on a single parcel and that would include 8
commercial units on the ground floor and four residential on units above. So just a summary of 9
how this process works, the Tentative Map is required for any subdivision creating five or more 10
parcels or units. And Planning and Transportation Commissioner review and Council decision is 11
required for any Tentative Map. And just to summarize what a Vesting Tentative Map means, it 12
vests the right to process the development in compliance with the ordinances, policies, etc. 13
that were in effect at the time the applications was deemed complete. So just in line with this 14
requirement the Architectural Review Application for the proposed site development has 15
already been completed and approved. And then I’ll add the findings up on the screen following 16
this presentation for the mapping process. 17
18
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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, the recommended mention for tonight is that Staff recommends that PTC recommend 1
approval of the proposed Vesting Tentative Map to Council based on the findings and subject to 2
conditions of approval and with that I’ll turn it back to you. 3
4
Chair Riggs: Alright so we do have a comment from the public so we’ll take that first but before 5
we do that any specific questions about the presentation from the Commissioners? Alright so 6
let’s enter the public hearing, Mr. L. David Baron. 7
8
Mr. L. David Baron: Good evening Commission, I’m David Baron, I’m a resident of University 9
South. To me, it’s a shame that a location so close to downtown and so close to Caltrain is being 10
used for so few units of housing. This lots zoned for 35-feet of height which could, in theory, 11
hold 4-stories but it’s constrained by so many other constraints though; 1.15-floor area ratio 12
requirement and by the parking requirement. If it weren’t for the 1.15 FAR it would be 13
reasonable to construct a 4-story building here within the 35-foot height limit rather than the 3-14
story building here and that 4-story could have housed more people. And I say this as a resident 15
of an apartment with ceilings less than 8-feet high in an RM-30 zone that is… that has a 35-foot 16
height limit and that could have potentially housed a lot more people. If it weren’t for the 17
parking requirements here, we probably wouldn’t see a 2,440-square foot penthouse in this 18
proposal. They’ve managed to rather impressively cram 17-parking spaces into the basement 19
by fitting 14 cars into a width of where there’s 5 space using puzzlers. But if they did so much as 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
add another bedroom to the top floor unit, they’d have to… they’d need 18-parking spaces. If 1
they did a reasonable layout like having two-bedroom units on the top floor, they would have 2
needed 20-spaces and so because of the City’s parking requirements we have a building that is 3
housing fewer people than we could be housing. And I don’t know that the PTC has any options 4
to fix the situation for this development but I would encourage, as I’ve said before, policies that 5
lead to feature developments in this area, making more allowance for housing so that we can 6
do more to elevate the crisis level housing shortage in the Bay Area. Thank you. 7
8
Mr. Lait: So, Chair, we have one more speaker. 9
10
Ms. Kelsey Banes: [unintelligible – spoke from the audience] 11
12
Mr. Lait: Yeah go ahead and [unintelligible]. 13
14
Ms. Barnes: Sorry I’m running late. So, I was at the North Ventura Coordinated Area Plan earlier 15
this week and there were a lot of speakers who were talking about the SOFA Coordinated Area 16
Plan and how successful that was. And I live in this neighborhood, I agree it’s a really nice place 17
to live, it’s a very walkable neighborhood but I am not long for downtown. I have a roommate, 18
I’m not expecting any giant pay raises any time soon so if I want to have a family, if I want to be 19
able to stay in Palo Alto, I just can’t see how it’s feasible. So, when I read the details of the SOFA 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.
Corradiated Area Plan I think of it as being… probably at the time, it was a great plan but at this 1
time it just seems an accrodistic [note – phonics] given the cost of land and the dire housing 2
shortage that we have. So, to me, this just seems like a missed opportunity to build a lot of 3
housing in a very walkable neighborhood. I wish we could do 5 to 7-stories, it would fit in with 4
the neighborhood. If you walk down Forest there are lots of beautiful buildings that we were 5
building in the 1920s that are 7-stories high and house a lot of people and I wish we could do 6
that today. Thank you. 7
8
Chair Riggs: I’m sorry and I feel like I should remember your name but could you state your 9
name for the record. 10
11
Ms. Banes: Yes, sorry, I’m out of breath. Yeah, my name is Kelsey Banes and I live in the 12
University South Neighborhood. 13
14
Chair Riggs: Thank you for being here Kelsey and if you could just fill out a card for us. We really 15
appreciate you rushing to get here. Any other comments? Seeing none the hearing is closed 16
and we’ll bring it back to the Commission and I think we’ll begin… let’s structure our comments 17
and I would caution… I would just express to the Commission that if you don’t have anything of 18
substance to say you really don’t have to say something. So, there’s no reason to be over 19
verbose. Sorry, did we need to hear from the applicant in this case? 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Mr. Lait: No, I think the applicant has declined to make any comments unless there’s any 2
questions from the Commission. 3
4
Chair Riggs: Ok, maybe we’ll proceed, if that’s ok, with Commissioner Lauing again and again, 5
we’ll be judicious with our time, please. 6
7
Commissioner Lauing: Just a couple of the numbers first Claire, what’s the percentage of 8
square footage for housing and the percentage for office? 9
10
Ms. Hodgkins: Hold on one second. 11
12
Commissioner Lauing: If that’s easy to get. 13
14
Ms. Hodgkins: Yeah, the… let’s see. Yeah, 20… oh sorry, I’m not sure. I’ll get back to you in a 15
moment. 16
17
Commissioner Lauing: Ok and then over on Page 14 I just want to understand what you’re 18
telling us there; at the bottom of Page 14 in the Packet. You talk about previously approved… 19
sorry, I’m reading from my own notes. I’m going to read it from your printed notes. Previously 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.
approved improvements and anticipated improvements. I think you’re referencing 1
commitments to make improvements that haven’t been made yet. I just want to make sure I 2
know what we’re voting on. 3
4
Ms. Hodgkins: Oh, yeah, it’s because it’s the reversal findings and then also just the fact that it’s 5
already been approved, however, the map still speaks to improvements being made at the site. 6
So, one of the findings you’ll note up on the screen, I have the findings up, so there are a couple 7
findings that relate to what the improvements are going to be at the site. Even though those 8
have already been approved under the Architectural Review it's just explain again how those 9
improvements and the map also all comply with these findings. Does that make sense? 10
11
Commissioner Lauing: Yep, yep, just wanted to make it clear and in terms of the parking with 12
the lifts. Are the lifts going to be used at various times by tenants versus office workers? 13
14
Ms. Hodgkins: Yes, the intent would be that everything is shared so there’s no assigned parking. 15
All parking spaces are available so that they can be shared between the office uses and the 16
residential uses. 17
18
Commissioner Lauing: And in regards to one of the public comments here its maxed out in 19
terms of the amount of… I mean they’re in compliance. There’s no variance here on parking. 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. Hodgkins: There was an adjustment of two spaces that was approved as part of the 2
development. 3
4
Commissioner Lauing: Increase? 5
6
Ms. Hodgkins: No, decrease so it was 17 spaces that are proposed and approved and 19 spaces 7
were originally required. 8
9
Commissioner Lauing: Yeah so, they’re going to be (interrupted) 10
11
Ms. Hodgkins: Under a shared parking adjustment they are, yeah. 12
13
Commissioner Lauing: Yeah, ok, and then just… that’s the only questions. I just wanted to 14
thank you for giving us such a good list of references to the Comprehensive Plan. So that saves 15
time in prep and helps justify. I have no problems with negative reversals and I’d support this. 16
17
Ms. Hodgkins: And just to respond to your earlier comment the office percentage is 30 percent 18
and the residential is 62 percent. 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 Lauing: Great, thanks. Done. 1
2
Chair Riggs: Commissioner Alcheck [note- Vice-Chair Alcheck]… Commissioner Lauing… 3
Commissioner Alcheck [note- Vice-Chair Alcheck]. 4
5
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Ok. 6
7
Chair Riggs: Vice-Chair Alcheck, excuse me. 8
9
Vice-Chair Alcheck: It’s alright, it’s alright. Well let me just start, I’m fully prepared to support 10
the Staff recommendation and I hope we vote on that expeditiously. I want to say two other 11
things, first, I think… I just want to make a comment that is somewhat irrelevant which is that I 12
think that the design is awesome. And I loved your work on San Antonio and Foothill Express 13
Way. That was a beautiful building and I think that this will be an exciting addition. And then I 14
want to just address to our two commenters, I think in 7-years that was the most refreshing 15
pair of comments I’ve ever heard. I want to suggest to you that we’re not really in a position to 16
make decisions about policy and to the issues that you spoke too. It is precise because this 17
project is perfectly in line with what we currently encourage and allow that this is kind of a no 18
brainer item. And for so many reasons we should be considering adopting some of the… there’s 19
a lot of… it’s… I appreciate you coming to speak to us. I’m glad you did because it saves me 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.
time, I don’t have to say it, but I think you should make your comments known when this item 1
goes to Council because it’s a good example of the points. Not that you necessarily oppose the 2
project but it’s a good way to make the points that you’re making so I really appreciate your 3
presence here. 4
5
Chair Riggs: Commissioner Templeton. 6
7
Commissioner Templeton: Alright, thank you… I’d like to thank you, Ms. Hodgkins, for the 8
report. I guess I also want to understand better what role the zoning constraints played. Did 9
you previously have different height or a number of units or any other proposals for this site 10
that were then downsized to fit the parking requirements? 11
12
Ms. Hodgkins: You know we didn’t. It’s remained pretty consistent with what the preliminary 13
project was. What came in was pretty consistent with the Zoning Code and it proposed the 14
same number of units. We did talk about potentially encouraging one additional unit on the top 15
floor. However, the project did meet all of the requirements which included the average unit 16
size requirements in the SOFA II District. So, in the end (interrupted) 17
18
Commissioner Templeton: Can you clarify… can you expand on that? What does that mean? 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. Hodgkins: So, the SOFE II District has an average unit size so it looks at all of the different 1
units on the site and I can’t remember the exact number off the top of my head. I’ll have to find 2
it, but it has a standard for what the average size of all the units needs to be. 3
4
Commissioner Templeton: So, the size of the units on the second floor where acceptable but if 5
you split into two… well, the top floor wouldn’t be acceptable? 6
7
Ms. Hodgkins: No so it looks at all the different units so that was the (interrupted) 8
9
Commissioner Templeton: I see. 10
11
Ms. Hodgkins: Issue we came into as it did meet that requirement of what the average unit size 12
when looking altogether. Even though ideally, we would have wanted to have another unit it 13
was also restricted by the parking and so they would have had to reduce the parking 14
requirement by even more or provide some additional parking if they added another unit. So, 15
the parking was really one of the biggest constraints on this site when looking at it. 16
17
Commissioner Templeton: I think it would be wonderful to pass that feedback along. If I may 18
share some advice to the application that I’m not suggesting that you change anything 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.
the plan. I’m fully prepared to support it as well but I’m… I think understanding the implications 1
would be something very useful to share with decision makers such as Council. 2
3
The other question that I had, I guess it’s also a comment for the applicant, was just I’m curious 4
about the decision in the market to have such different sized units co-located. And I’m curious 5
about that and that’s all I have to say about that so thank you. 6
7
Chair Riggs: Commissioner Templeton would you like the applicate to weigh in on your question 8
or is it just more of a rhetorical question? 9
10
Commissioner Templeton: If he so wishes to do so on the record he may and if not then no. 11
12
Mr. Ken Hayes: Good evening (interrupted) 13
14
Mr. Lait: Just so we’ll open the public hearing again to hear comment? 15
16
Chair Riggs: I… if Commissioner Templeton, if you don’t mind, I appreciate the sentiment 17
behind your question and I don’t believe, and we can check with counsel, that that is something 18
that we can legislate at this point. 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: Yeah, I’m sorry I… well, true. I miss spoke, you don’t have to open the public hearing if 1
you want to just receive a response to a question. 2
3
Commissioner Templeton: Yeah, I… that’s understood. Thank you for clarifying but I would still 4
like to hear from you if you wish to share. I think a lot of people are interested, I’m hearing that 5
from the public as well. 6
7
Ms. Hayes: Good evening Commissioner, Ken Hayes with Hayes Group Architects, so unlike 8
many of our projects this project is actually for someone who’s going occupy the building. So, 9
you’re going to have a resident that is going to be the owner of the development. His unit is on 10
the top, it’s a one-bedroom unit and then the other three units on the second floor are for sale 11
but most likely he’s going to rent them. His office is on the group floor so it's like a perfect 12
live/work situation. 13
14
Commissioner Templeton: Exactly, thank you for clarifying. 15
16
Mr. Hayes: You bet, 17
18
Commissioner Templeton: Commissioner Summa. 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: Thank you. Thank you, Claire, for the Staff report, and thank you also for 1
adding four housing units where there previously were none and I will be able to support this 2
project. I think it’s a very nice project. Thanks. 3
4
Chair Riggs: Commissioner Waldfogel. 5
6
Commissioner Waldfogel: Do you want a motion at this point? 7
8
Chair Riggs: I would accept a motion. 9
10
MOTION 11
12
Commissioner Waldfogel: I’d like to move the Staff recommendation and the reason is that I 13
cannot make any of the negative findings on Packet Page 16. 14
15
SECOND 16
17
Commissioner Templeton: Second. 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: So, I have a motion by Commissioner Waldfogel, seconded by Commissioner 1
Templeton. Any discussion of the motion? Are we ready to take a vote? 2
3
Commissioner Templeton: I have one clarification. These findings that you’re listing are 4
potential findings, right? Not… that’s what (interrupted) 5
6
Ms. Hodgkins: So, the… yeah, those (interrupted) 7
8
Commissioner Templeton: These are allowable findings if we were to find something? 9
10
Ms. Hodgkins: Yes. 11
12
Commissioner Templeton: I just want to be clear because it says findings and not (interrupted) 13
14
Mr. Albert Yang, Senior Deputy Attorney: So, let me clarify, you’re talking about the findings 15
that are on the board. 16
17
Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Yang: So, in order to approve the Tentative Map, you have to not be able to make any of 1
these findings. 2
3
Commissioner Templeton: Right, right. 4
5
Commissioner Summa: (off mic) Negative findings. 6
7
Chair Riggs: This is a not it is what you’re saying. 8
9
Commissioner Templeton: Yeah, so I just want to make sure that you’re not saying that you 10
found any of these things. I want to make it clear for the public record because this says 11
findings (interrupted) 12
13
Mr. Yang: And you’ll (interrupted) 14
15
Commissioner Templeton: But you didn’t find any of them and neither did we. Ok. 16
17
Mr. Yang: And you’ll be able to see starting on Packet Page 20… at 19 Claire had provided draft 18
findings… negative findings that are more specific to this project. 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. 1
2
VOTE 3
4
Chair Riggs: Alright seeing no other discussion let’s… I’d like to take a vote and I think we’ll just 5
go all in favor? All opposed? Motion carries 6-1. 6
7
Commissioner Templeton: No. 8
9
Vice-Chair Alcheck: (off mic) 6-0. 10
11
Chair Riggs: 6-0, sorry. Sorry I’m going to way to fast; 6-0, 1 absent. 12
13
MOTION PASSED 6 (Waldfogel, Templeton, Riggs, Alcheck, Summa, Lauing)-0-1(Roohparvar 14
absent) 15
16
Chair Riggs: Alright thank you team for being here. Thank you for the comment and 17
clarification. 18
19
Commission Action: Motion to approve Staff’s recommendation made by Commissioner 20
Waldfogel, seconded by Commissioner Templeton. The motion passed 6-0 (Roohparvar absent) 21
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Approval of Minutes 1
Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 2
4. January 30, 2019 Draft PTC Meeting Minutes 3
5. February 13, 2019 Draft PTC Meeting Minutes 4
5
Chair Riggs: We’re moving onto approval of minutes. Do I have any comments from the public? 6
Seeing none. Do I have a motion to approve? 7
8
MOTION 9
10
Commissioner Summa: (off mic) I’d like to motion to approve. 11
12
Chair Riggs: Second? Any seconds? 13
14
SECOND 15
16
Commissioner Lauing: [unintelligible – off mic] 17
18
VOTE 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: Second by… motion by Commissioner Summa, seconded by Chair… Commissioner 1
Lauing. All in favor? Any opposed? Ok motion carries 6-0-1. 2
3
MOTION PASSED 6(Waldfogel, Summa, Templeton, Riggs, Alcheck, Lauing)-0-1(Roohparvar 4
absent) 5
Commission Action: Motion to approve January 30, 2019, and February 13, 2019 meeting 6
minutes made by Commissioner Summa, seconded by Commissioner Lauing. The motion 7
passed 6-0 (Roohparvar absent) 8
Committee Items 9
10
Chair Riggs: Thank you, we got a good Committee report earlier on the Venture Plan. Thank you 11
for that. 12
Commissioner Questions, Comments or Announcements 13
14
Chair Riggs: Any other Commissioner questions, comments, accouchements, and/or future 15
agenda items? Commissioner Waldfogel. 16
17
Commissioner Waldfogel: Just a quick report on, I went to the League of… California League of 18
Cities Planning Academy last week in Long Beach on the beautiful Queen Mary. Exciting place to 19
visit if you haven’t been there. Just a couple quick comments about it, first of all for any of us 20
who have not been to one of these conferences, it’d strongly recommend it. It’s worthwhile. A 21
lot of good sessions so do it if you haven’t don’t it yet. 22
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
A reminder and this was just hammered to us over and over at this conference but as we just 2
did on a quasi-judicial matter like Item Three. It’s all about the findings, findings are important, 3
do your homework, disclose conflicts, give your reasons for supporting or rejecting. That’s kind 4
of a simple summary of the, I say, half of the conference that I attended. Is that… am I on legally 5
safe ground there? 6
7
Mr. Albert Yang, Senior Deputy Attorney: That’s right. 8
9
Commissioner Waldfogel: Ok thank you. A couple other things that were outside of that. One is 10
I saw some really interesting presentations. West Hollywood made a really interesting 11
presentation about affordable housing. I think they’re doing some interesting things using 12
Density Bonuses. We might want to consider sending someone on a field trip to figure out what 13
they’re doing, what’s working. I’ve got a volunteer. Me too. Well, but no, they’re doing some 14
good stuff and we should understand if any of that is applicable to us. 15
16
A couple other things, you know some of this is just what I heard people saying around the 17
water cooler but I’d say small Cities and rural areas are not thrilled about VMT replacing LOS. 18
There seems to be a little bit of a threat about that. The state is intent on doing this but there 19
seems to be some unhappiness in some Cities. 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
We saw a bunch of presentations that were about a theme around reactivating commercial 2
districts like Livermore gave a great presentation on how they’ve reactivated their downtown. 3
It’s kind of interesting, I thought about this a lot. We don’t have an activation problem in our 4
commercial districts but we haven’t really activated them for the community and really 5
community uses are what these other Cities are talking about. Just something for us to ponder. 6
7
And then a final theme, I talked to a lot of Cities about the situations in Palo Alto and let’s just 8
say that we have some really good fortune here. I mean we have lots of development 9
happening in our affluent community. So, things are going very well but I heard bafflement 10
from people in other Cities when I mentioned just some of our issues and they said well can’t 11
you capture value from all that office development that’s happening. What’s going on? We’ve 12
heard a lot about Impact Fees, a lot of Cities are successful using Impact Fees. We 13
commissioned a Nexus Study a couple years ago that I think that our Mayor is now talking 14
about so we may need to dust that off and look at value capture as another ratio. I just heard 15
that as another theme from the conference. That’s it. 16
17
Chair Riggs: Thank you so much, I really appreciate that. Commissioner Templeton, did you 18
have something? 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 Templeton: I do, I’ll be quick. I appreciated Commissioner Waldfogel’s summary. 1
Great points. The only other thing that I wanted to add was in addition to the Livermore study 2
which was really interesting and very close by in case anybody wants a field trip. There was also 3
a presentation about rapid prototyping in Dallas that was absolutely fascinating. So, if you are… 4
have an opportunity to look that up it was weekend makeovers of certain neighborhoods to do 5
a what-if and get immediate community feedback with materials that were easily washed away 6
or moved. So, there was no permanent impact so I think that was something I would love to see 7
more of as we start getting creative in our applications. Thanks. 8
9
Chair Riggs: So, a quick question for you, are they calling it rapid prototyping or are they… 10
because we in the planning profession, you call that tactical urbanism in the past. 11
12
Commissioner Templeton: No, I’m sorry, I’m from software engineering land so that’s what it 13
looked like to me. The speaker was from Build a Better Block and his name was Jason Roberts. 14
15
Chair Riggs: Sounds like somebody that we should get to come to Palo Alto so thank you. Yeah, 16
that sounds cool and we… I’m familiar with these… there’s been some projects in the Bay Area 17
and I’ll actually start sharing some of them that happened in the Bay Area as well. Any other 18
questions or comments? 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.
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Yeah just administrative comment. I’m going to share with the Planning 1
Staff that April 24th, that pass over week, that Easter week, I’ll be out of town. And June 26th I’ll 2
be out of town and for any of you it’s immensely helpful if we get summer travel to the Staff 3
now. That’s the April 24th and June 26th that Alcheck won’t be present because if we fail to have 4
a quorum then we can reschedule. So (interrupted) 5
6
Chair Riggs: Yeah, let’s… if you don’t mind let’s do that offline just to give everybody gets those 7
in. 8
9
Vice-Chair Alcheck: Yeah, no I was just sharing mine as an opportunity to suggest that 10
everybody sort of reach out now. Not now but reach out after. 11
12
Chair Riggs: Any other items? 13
14
Commissioner Lauing: Are we going to talk about the agenda? 15
16
Chair Riggs: I’m sorry I (interrupted) 17
18
Commissioner Lauing: Are we going to talk about future agenda? 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: Future agenda, well I have one future agenda item so Jonathan would you like to 1
talk about future agenda? Thank you Commissioner Lauing. 2
3
Mr. Jonathan Lait, Director of Planning: Yeah, I think we’re adding one more item to… well, let 4
me pull that up. Yeah so, our next meeting is March 27th and we have one more item that we’re 5
going to have related… it’s an ordinance. It’s actually… they haven’t seen this, yet have they? 6
7
Mr. Yang: (off mic) No, we [unintelligible]. 8
9
Mr. Lait: We did? Yeah, ok. We brought the Wireless Ordinance to the Commission last year, 10
late last year. We’ve made some changes in response to Commissioner comments but also 11
some other refinements that we wanted to make on our end. We feel like the ordinance has 12
changed enough where we want to bring it back to the Commission for your review so we’re 13
going to do that in March at your next meeting. 14
15
Chair Riggs: And the first item is? 16
17
Mr. Lait: Yeah this is an annual parking process where we get a request for RPPs and the 18
Commission’s role is to hear about those different items. I think Staff is going to make a 19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
recommendation as to priorities. We’re looking for the Commission to endorse that or make 1
adjustments as it goes onto City Council and it’s for [unintelligible] (interrupted) 2
3
Commissioner Lauing: How extensive is that? Are there going to be like six different RPPs to 4
review? 5
6
Mr. Lait: I think there’s four, three or four. 7
8
Chair Riggs: It’s going to be a long meeting. Alright. 9
10
Commissioner Templeton: Do you know… are… well, when we hear where the locations of 11
those are? 12
13
Mr. Lait: When… well let’s see, I guess… it is on the agenda? 14
15
Mr. Yang: (off mic) This just got published [unintelligible]. 16
17
Mr. Lait: It looks like we just… this week there’s going to be a noticed published but the 18
neighborhoods are Old Palo Alto, Green Acres, and Charleston Gardens. 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: So, one… sorry, are you satisfied with that Commissioner Lauing? 1
2
Commissioner Lauing: Yeah, it sounds like there’s three options and it could be an hour and a 3
half, something like that. Maybe? I’m just trying to get a feel of the scale of that item that’s all. 4
5
Chair Riggs: I believe that second item that was mentioned will be a long item. They may both 6
belong items. 7
8
Mr. Lait: Well so again on wireless it was… I mean yeah, it could be but we’ve presented it once 9
before, we’re making some refinements. 10
11
Chair Riggs: So, I think let’s just prepare. I think one thing that Commissioner Waldfogel just 12
reminded me about was the DEIR process and making sure that we get advance notice on the 13
larger projects that will be coming through in terms of when those are published. 14
15
Mr. Lait: Yes. 16
17
Chair Riggs: And specifically, there’s one that we know that is upcoming which is the Castilleja 18
(interrupted) 19
20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Lait: Yeah, I don’t (interrupted) 1
2
Chair Riggs: And so, if you could just… I think more just for transparency for us and for the 3
public if we could just make sure that we’re aware of that. 4
5
Mr. Lait: So, our goal is two weeks. Is that fair for EIRS? 6
7
Chair Riggs: Well I think (interrupted) 8
9
Mr. Lait: That’s a week before your Packet gets delivered. 10
11
Chair Riggs: Well aren’t (interrupted) 12
13
Mr. Lait: That’s just sort of our (interrupted) 14
15
Commissioner Waldfogel: [unintelligible – off mic] 16
17
Chair Riggs: Commissioner Waldfogel just ask if in your mic so we get (interrupted) 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Lait: So yeah, the question was how does it relate to the CEQA timeline for public review 1
and it’s not 90-days but it could be as much as 45-days in some instances. So, you typically 2
would get it during that public comment period because we want to have the… give the public 3
an opportunity to also comment on the DEIR. So, we try to schedule at least a hearing during 4
that public comment period so about the middle of it or so. 5
6
Commissioner Waldfogel: So maybe if you can just let us know as soon as a report is published. 7
So, at the beginning of that comment so [unintelligible](interrupted) 8
9
Mr. Lait: Yeah as soon as it’s released, you’ll get a copy of it and then we’ll schedule the public 10
hearing about 2-weeks later. I think we had this listed to show at some point but it’s going to be 11
another couple months. 12
13
Chair Riggs: Anybody else? 14
15
Commissioner Lauing: I’ve got another one. 16
17
Chair Riggs: Yeah go-ahead Commissioner Lauing. 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 Lauing: Just do you have a feel of the 19 [note – 2019?] Housing Work Plan 1
items or any of those as to when we would see those? 2
3
Mr. Lait: You’re referring to the 2019 Work Plan, Part Two? 4
5
Commissioner Lauing: Yes. 6
7
Mr. Lait: So yeah, we’re… there’s at least a couple that we’re working on and we’re probably 8
not going to get to every one of those items. So, we’re still trying to see what we can get done 9
this year. 10
11
Commissioner Lauing: We’re not going to get to all of them this year you’re saying? 12
13
Mr. Lait: That’s right. 14
15
Commissioner Lauing: Right but I just wonder when we’re going to get the first one. 16
17
Mr. Lait: Yeah well when I have a better sense of the schedule, I can give the Commission an 18
update. I just don’t have that right now. On some of them, we’re still working with consultants 19
to get some work products on the 15 to 20 percent inclusionary housing, for instance, is one. 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: Right. 2
3
Mr. Lait: That… just to give you a little bit more background on that. That got stalled out a little 4
bit when we did the Part One of the Housing Work Plan because now the development 5
standards have changed which changes the financials on prototypes for how that would get 6
calculated. So now we’re having to rerun those numbers to understand the feasibility of going 7
from 15 percent inclusionary to 20 percent inclusionary. So that got put on hold and we’re 8
going to have to redo that. 9
10
Chair Riggs: Alright none other I just wanted to again thank folks for the great retreat on the 4th 11
and thanks for coming and offering your thoughts. I think we made some good progress and 12
hopefully, we can continue working on all those so… all those items we talked about. So, with 13
no other comments, I think I’ll adjourn us. It’s 7:35 and have a good evening. 14
15
Adjournment 16
7:35 pm 17
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Palo Alto Planning & Transportation Commission 1
Commissioner Biographies, Present and Archived Agendas and Reports are available online: 2
http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/boards/ptc/default.asp. The PTC Commission members are: 3
4
Vice Chair Michael Alcheck 5
Commissioner Ed Lauing 6
Chair William Riggs 7
Commissioner Giselle Roohparvar 8
Commissioner Doria Summa 9
Commissioner Carolyn Templeton 10
Commissioner Asher Waldfogel 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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