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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2019-06-12 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: June 12, 2019 2 Council Chambers 3 250 Hamilton Avenue 4 6:00 PM 5 6 Call to Order / Roll Call 7 6:08pm 8 Commissioner Roohparvar arrived 6:15pm 9 10 Chair Riggs: Alright if I can call us to order. This is a regular meeting of the Planning and 11 Transportation Commission City of Palo Alto. The time is 6:08 pm on June 12th, 2019. May we 12 have a roll call vote or roll call? Alright and I do believe that Commissioner Roohparvar may be 13 joining us a little later. 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: Ok Mr. Director, any oral communications that we have of things, not on the 18 agenda. 19 20 Mr. Jonathan Lait, Director of Planning: Do we have any speakers for oral communications? Ok. 21 Agenda Changes, Additions, and Deletions 22 The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management. 23 24 Mr. Jonathan Lait, Director of Planning: No changes to the agenda. 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. 1 Chair Riggs: And no changes to the agenda? Ok. 2 City Official Reports 3 1. Directors Report, Meeting Schedule and Assignments 4 2. Transmittal of a Report Summarizing information Regarding the Permanent 5 Installation of Roadway Materials as Directed by City Council for the Middlefield 6 North Traffic Safety Project 7 8 Chair Riggs: Ok, reports? 9 10 Mr. Jonathan Lait, Director of Planning: So just a couple of things to report out. Since our last 11 meeting, the City Council had a study session discussion on a project at 788 San Antonio. This is 12 a request to extend the Housing Incentive Program that the Planning Commission had 13 considered and Council later had approved for portions of El Camino and downtown and Cal. 14 Ave. area. This is a request from an applicant to take those provisions and apply them to the CS 15 Zone properties along San Antonio on the what I think is ultimately the… I don’t know if it’s the 16 south side of the street or the streets get a little funny down there so I’m not sure if it’s south 17 or east. But anyway, so that went forward and we got some feedback and the applicant is 18 moving forward with an application along those lines to extend the Housing Incentive Program. 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. A couple of other updates the Planning Commission had considered the 1210 Newell Road, this 1 was a Variance Application. The City Council had endorsed that Planning Commission 2 recommendation on consent so there’s no further action on that. 3 4 The Planning Commission also had reviewed a zone change from R-1 to RMD for a property 5 next to the College Terrace Library. That also went to the City Council since our last meeting 6 and that was also approved consistent with the Planning Commission’s recommendations. 7 8 And more recently the City Council has authorized $10 million worth of affordable housing 9 funding to be used for Palo Alto housing in support of the project on Wilton Court which was 10 another project that the Planning Commission has reviewed. 11 12 Upcoming for the June 24th meeting is a review of the… an application for an Audi and 13 Mercedes Benz Dealership at 1700 Embarcadero. The Planning Commission had previously 14 considered an application, that one was ultimately withdrawn, a new owner and an application 15 were filed about a year ago, and so that’s going forward on June 24th. That concludes the 16 report. 17 18 Chair Riggs: Did you want to discuss the second item there? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Lait: Oh, thank you, yeah. Just… this is just a communication, a report that was prepared by 1 our Office of Transportation providing information to the Planning Commission. It’s not 2 intended to be a discussion item. If the Commission felt that there was a need to discuss it, we 3 would agendize that for a future discussion but otherwise, it’s just a transmittal. 4 5 Chair Riggs: And I would suggest that we… I did have an opportunity from my fellow 6 Commissioners to speak with the Interim Transportation Director and we are going to see some 7 updates from the Transportation Division later on in the summer. Any comments from the 8 Commissioners about that update? Ok, seeing none. 9 10 Study Session 11 Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 12 There are no Study Session items. 13 14 Action Items 15 Public Comment is Permitted. Applicants/Appellant Teams: Fifteen (15) minutes, plus three (3) minutes rebuttal. 16 All others: Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 17 18 3. PUBLIC HEARING. Newell Road Bridge Replacement Project [19PLN-00130]: Review 19 the Environmental Impact Report, and Make a Recommendation to City Council on 20 Preferred Alternative, for Demolition of an Existing Two-Way Bridge On Newell Road 21 Between Woodland Avenue in East Palo Alto and Edgewood Drive in Palo Alto and 22 Construction of a New Bridge Along the Same Alignment. An Environmental Impact 23 Report (EIR)/Environmental Assessment (EA) was Circulated on May 31, 2019, for a 24 60 Day Comment Period That Will End on July 30, 2019, in Accordance With the 25 California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and National Environmental Policy Act 26 (NEPA). Zoning District: Not Applicable (Public right-of-Way) adjacent Single-Family 27 Residential (R-1[10,000]). For More Information Contact the Project Planner Claire 28 Hodgkins at Claire.Hodgkins@cityofpaloalto.org 29 30 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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, let’s enter our study session [note – action item], so we will have an 1 opportunity for public comment but I believe Claire you have a presentation to start us off. 2 3 Ms. Claire Hodgkins, Project Planner: Good evening Commissioners, I’m Claire Hodgkins, and 4 I’m the project planner on behalf of Planning for this project. The project before you today is 5 the Newell Road Bridge replacement project. 6 7 So, before I go over the brief summary of the project, I just want to identify the background of 8 when this project started and some of the key milestones that we have hit to date. So, it 9 actually started in April 2011, Caltrans deemed the existing bridge functionally obsolete 10 meaning that it did not meet certain Caltrans’s standards. So, the City worked with Caltrans and 11 the Santa Clara Valley Water District to secure funding for replacement throughout 2011 and 12 2012. We had quite a few community outreach meetings to obtain community input for early 13 collaboration on potential alternatives that we should explore and this occurred between 2012 14 and 2015. And in 2015 we released the notice of… we determined that the EIR should be 15 prepared and released the notice of preparation and began the scoping process for the 16 environmental analysis. There were numerous technical reports that had to be prepared and 17 reviewed and approved in coordination with Caltrans before we could move forward on 18 preparing the environmental analysis. So once all the technical reports were finalized, we 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. prepared the draft EIR and EA and finally, we were able to release the draft EIR environmental 1 assessment on May 31st of this year. 2 3 A brief summary of kind of where the location we’re looking at, so this is crossing San 4 Francisquito Creek between Edgewood Drive and Palo Alto and Woodland Avenue in East Palo 5 Alto. So, half of the bridge is in Palo Alto and half of the bridge is in East Palo Alto. So Public 6 Works will provide some more detailed information about the purpose and need and objectives 7 as well as alternatives that were considered, but for the purposes of CEQA, we had to identify 8 the proposed project and the Environmental Superior Alternative. So, the City coordinated with 9 East Palo Alto in identifying a Locally Preferred Alternative as the proposed project and 10 Alternative #2 in the analysis was selected. It’s actually also identified as the Environmental 11 Superior Alternative, so I’d like to provide a brief overview of what we’re moving forward as the 12 proposed project. So, that includes replacement of the existing two-lane bridge which is 22-feet 13 wide with a two-lane bridge that is 42-feet wide along the same alignment. The new lanes 14 would be wide enough to meet Caltrans’s standards for sharrows which are shared bicycle 15 lanes and also include sidewalks on each side of the bridge and it raises the existing bridge to 16 allow better flow capacity beneath the bridge. It also raises a portion of Woodland Avenue and 17 Newell Road to match that new grade at the bridge and includes some retaining walls in a few 18 locations to support that road. And this is just a brief visual of from Newell Road looking… in 19 Palo Alto looking over the bridge over San Francisquito Creek and this would be the simulation 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. for the view from East Palo Alto. Just going back really quickly I want to just note that right now 1 the simulations don’t show any landscaping other than grass in these areas. We do anticipate 2 that landscaping is going to be proposed. We are just in the process of designing that 3 landscaping so we’re expecting that trees would be installed in these areas. 4 5 So just going over the environmental review process, I just want to identify our role in this 6 project. So, the City is the lead agency under CEQA for this project and Caltrans is the lead 7 agency for NEPA for this project. And I believe there’s a representative here from Caltrans. Yes, 8 and there is a representative here from Caltrans so if there are any questions that come up 9 about the analysis as they relate to NEPA, they are available to respond to any questions 10 related to that. And I just want to also note that the City of East Palo Alto is a responsible 11 agency, I believe we need a Street Work Permit from East Palo Alto. 12 13 I also just want to note our… the PTC’s Role with respect to this project. Your scope is not only 14 limited to what’s in Palo Alto jurisdiction. We’re looking at the project as a whole here and so 15 any comments you have should or thoughts you have can relate to the project as a whole. 16 Including the portion in East Palo Alto and the portion in Palo Alto. 17 18 Just in terms of schedule we are here with the draft EIR was released, we’ll be doing scoping 19 meetings for the next couple months, and we anticipate starting construction or we anticipate 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. releasing the final EIR in August of 2019. And then Public Works Engineering is going to go a 1 little bit more into the other next steps that will follow that. 2 3 So tonight, we’re requesting you provide comments on the draft EIR, EA, and recommend a 4 Preferred Alternative to Council. And we have Staff and consultants here that are prepared to 5 answer questions about the analysis should you have any. And in addition, as noted previously, 6 to the extent that the comments relate to NEPA, Caltrans is here to answer questions as a lead 7 agency for NEPA and with that, I’ll turn it back to you. And we do have a representative here 8 from Public Works Engineering that’s prepared to provide a brief summary of the project as 9 well. 10 11 Chair Riggs: Any questions from the Commissioners? Alright, seeing none, let’s move to the 12 hearing portion and then we can… we’ll come back to the Commission if that’s ok? Do you have 13 something else to add? 14 15 Mr. Jonathan Lait, Director of Planning: So, we have a little bit more detail about the project 16 itself if you’re interested in hearing that now. 17 18 Chair Riggs: Sure. 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: Sure, ok. 1 2 Ms. Michel Jeremias, Public Works Department: Good afternoon. My name is Michel Jeremias, 3 I’m with Public Works Engineering, I’m here to present to you the Newell Road Bridge Project. I 4 wanted to give you or provide you with the background regarding the environmental 5 document. 6 7 How this project was developed, the existing bridge was built in 1911. As Claire indicated the 8 bridge was classified as functionally obsolete by Caltrans. It does not accommodate two-way 9 vehicle traffic or access for pedestrian and cyclists. In addition, the distance the driver can see 10 oncoming traffic is obscured by the trees and the vertical road profile on the approach. Another 11 and distinct component to this project is the creek conveyance. The current bridge abutments 12 are located within the creek channel and constrain the flows of the creek. As a result, the 13 reduced flow is… as a result, the bridge has a capacity to convene only 6,600-cubic feet per 14 second and this is less than the actual capacity of the creek. 15 16 The reduced flow is a concern from a broader flood protection perspective and there’s a… for 17 the benefit of all present I want to elaborate a little bit in detail as far as what that entails. So, 18 you’ll see on the map in front of you San Francisquito Creek beginning on the left bottom half 19 of the page and draining towards the right northern components. El Camino Real, the bridge 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. overcrossing, is shown on the bottom right… bottom left and Middlefield, Pope/Chaucer St., 1 then University, and Newell Road, West Bayshore. 2 3 In 1998, there was a significant storm event that flooded Palo Alto. The rain runoff exceeded 4 the capacity of the creek, as a result, several public agencies came together to develop a 5 strategy to implement projects that could reduce flooding risks. From a hydraulic engineering 6 perspective, we have to design and improve downstream first before we make improvements 7 upstream. Several projects have been completed with the initiation of San Francisquito Creek 8 pump station that was done in 2007. Most recently the downstream project Highway… 9 downstream Highway 101 Project was completed in 2018. With these projects in place, we are 10 now in a place to actually make the improvements upstream. The advancing of this project will 11 also allow another upstream project to proceed. It will replace Pope/Chaucer as well as 12 widening specific areas along the creek to allow the convenience ultimately of 7,500-cubic feet. 13 14 Based on the project need and we also described and identified a number of objectives. The 15 first was to provide a bridge that maintains connectivity for all modes of access while not 16 diverting vehicles to adjacent streets or creating an increase in a number of vehicles that use 17 Newell Road and increase in the average vehicle speeds. Other project objectives where 18 included which improve the pedestrian and bicycle access across San Francisquito Creek, 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. improve the safety for all modes of transportation, upgrading the channel beneath the bridge 1 to allow the convenience of a 50-year storm event. 2 3 Once we had identified the project objectives, we set about how to identify how we would best 4 meet that. Since then we’ve had several numbers of community meetings. Some of the earlier 5 meetings were to discuss the project and subsequently were to develop a process to help us 6 narrow down the alternatives to advance. By the fall of 2014, we had narrowed it down to eight 7 alternatives. The… we incorporated these alternatives through a screening criteria. The 8 screening criteria shown above on the table with concerns. Identifying… first was the concern 9 was that project… meet the 100-year storm event. It also did not create an impact to the Level 10 of Service and that the project does not create an impact to the Traffic Infusion of Residential 11 Environment; in other words, TIRE. What that means is that analysis… the impact would not 12 increase… would not deteriorate the safety or the comfort to the residents that use the street 13 for either walking, playing or simply exiting their driveways. Three of [unintelligible] not shown 14 in bold… you will see the alternatives, the remove the existing bridge, bicycle-pedestrian bridge 15 or bicycle-pedestrian bridge with emergency were not advanced. We could only consider the 16 four alternatives shown highlighted in this area. 17 18 [Note – male speaking off mic:] Could you go back to that slide, please? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Jeremias: Yes. 1 2 [note - many Commissioners talked amongst themselves off mic] 3 4 Ms. Jeremias: So, the alternatives that we considered for the EIR was the no-build alternative. 5 This alternative was considered all EIRs. Alternative Number One is a bridge with a bi-directions 6 one-lane. This bridge would be controlled with traffic signals. Alternative Number Two, the two-7 lane bridge with bicycle and pedestrian access, sidewalks as Claire has shown, and this would 8 be located in the current alignment. Alternative Number Three is a two-lane bridge similar with 9 access in partial realignment. Newell Road travel way would be partially aligned between East 10 Palo Alto and Palo Alto. Alternative Number Four is a full realignment of Newell Road. Similar to 11 the visual simulations shown… shared with you earlier, here’s a visual simulation for Alternative 12 One. Please note the location of traffic signals that were proposed. One of them would be 13 designated for the driveway that approached… that leads out of Newell onto Newell Road on 14 Palo Alto side. Alternative Number Two, this is the one that we’ve seen already. A two-lane 15 bridge with a stop-controlled. Alternative Number Three shows the partial realignment and 16 again similar to what was said earlier we will be placing trees along the planter strips in these 17 areas. That will be developed at a later date once we move forward with the project. 18 Alternative Number Four, it shows the full realignment of Newell Road. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. So current schedule, so one of the things that I wanted to identify is the project is now shown 1 on this but meant to include is that there are three additional community meetings that are 2 occurring. Tonight’s the first, there will be another one on Tuesday next week and Wednesday 3 next week in Public Works Transportation in East Palo Alto as well as a following one in July for 4 the ARB. The process that we follow from here would be is once circulation and EIR comments 5 are received we can proceed with the NEPA process as well. There’s a federal regulation that 6 they need to comply in order to release the FONZ [note- sounds like] and also approve the 7 NEPA EA. Then we will continue with permitting for regulatory agencies. We schedule currently 8 best case around fall or winter 2019. Once that occurs, we can also proceed concurrently with 9 the preparation of the construction documents and apply for the construction funding. 10 Beginning construction… assuming we can begin construction based on permits based on the 11 bids and funds, its as early as next year summer. And there are several items that we have to be 12 mindful of and these are the constraints. These are… we’re limited to work in the creek 13 between June 15 and October 15, upcoming rainy seasons, and coordination with the upstream 14 project. 15 16 This concludes my presentation of the project if you have any questions. 17 18 Chair Riggs: Any questions from the Commission? Commissioner Waldfogel. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah, thank you, great presentation. What is the designed flow rate 1 for this bridge? 2 3 Ms. Jeremias: Excuse me, can you repeat that? 4 5 Commissioner Waldfogel: What is the flow rate that this bridge is designed too? Is it designed 6 to 7… 7,500-cubic feet per second? 7 8 Ms. Jeremias: Yes, the flow rate is 7,500- cubic feet per second and that is the same that is 9 what’s being done for the upstream project. 10 11 Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah and I think your table said 100-year and then your text said 7… 12 50 and 70-year. 13 14 Ms. Jeremias: Right so I can clarify that, so originally when the project began in 2012, 100-year 15 storm event was higher. We were expecting a 9,200-CSF. Since then for the EIR analysis, we 16 proposed a 7,500-CSF which is what the actual creek can convey. The creek itself cannot convey 17 the capacity that we had originally assumed 9,200. Subsequent studies also, from a hydraulic 18 perspective, show that we’re not actually 9,200, it’s closer to 8,150. So, what we had designed 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. when we proposed the EIR was a design for the 50-year storm event; as in fact, we’re actually 1 meeting a 70-year storm. 2 3 Chair Riggs: Commissioner Summa. 4 5 Commissioner Summa: I just have a quick question about the visibility at the intersection in the 6 Preferred Alternative because currently the… going into East Palo Alto on Newell, on the bridge, 7 and going I guess it’s mostly northbound on Woodland. The visibility is very poor and I think it’s 8 largely due to vegetation. Will that be improved? 9 10 Ms. Hodgkins: Yes, it will be improved with this project so the project does two things. It 11 resolves the current issues of line of sight but it also…because it’s raising the bridge, even more, 12 it would be more offset. So that’s why Woodland Avenue and portions of Newell Avenue would 13 need to be raised slightly. It would fix the current issue that we have and also accommodate for 14 the fact that it’s getting a little bit higher. 15 16 Commissioner Summa: Ok, thank you very much. 17 18 Chair Riggs: Commissioner Waldfogel, you have another question? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Waldfogel: No. 1 2 Chair Riggs: Ok, I have a question. Do we have any estimation on bike/ped volume to 3 understand if the Class Three bikeway is appropriate? 4 5 Ms. Hodgkins: I think we’d have to look into that, I’m not sure if [unintelligible](interrupted) 6 7 Chair Riggs: So, I… did we look into any sub-alternatives that actually looked at a Class One 8 bikeway or a Class Two bikeway across any of the alternatives? So, these are all alternatives 9 that could have sub-alternatives so that’s (interrupted) 10 11 Ms. Hodgkins: Right so I’ll start with the response and then either Public Works or maybe our 12 engineer can add to it if I miss anything but I know that we did look into different alternatives. 13 In early analysis, we even looked at potential options that were only bike and pedestrian 14 access. Those ended up being screened out because they didn’t meet a lot of our other project 15 objectives. We did also talk about the idea of doing a full bike lane. The issue with this was that 16 everything has to be designed to meet Caltrans’s standards; it’s AASHTO standards but basically 17 Caltrans’s standards. Meanwhile, we were also getting a lot of comments from the public to try 18 and reduce the width of the bridge as much as possible. So, to accommodate that we felt that 19 based on these… the length and span of the bridge that sharrows would be the best option to 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. provide the narrowest bridge possible to address the public comments related to the width of 1 the bridge and trying to reduce our overall impact on the environment. Specifically like the 2 creek bank, while also still accommodating full bicycle access. So, we have to ask for an 3 Exception from Caltrans’s standards. We were to (interrupted) 4 5 Chair Riggs: Yeah, I [unintelligible] (interrupted) 6 7 Ms. Hodgkins: Ok. 8 9 Chair Riggs: So, did we run an MNLOS model on this? Do we know [unintelligible]? Did we run a 10 multi-model Level of Service Model on this? 11 12 Ms. Hodgkins: Can I… I’ll ask our engineer; I don’t know if we did or not. I don’t think we have, 13 thank you. 14 15 Mr. Lait: I’m hearing no. 16 17 Chair Riggs: Any other questions? Ok, seeing none, I’m going to open it up to public comment. I 18 have two speaker cards. If anyone else in the public would like to speak to this item if you could 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. please hand me a card that would be great. So first off, I have Robert Neff. Hey, did I get your 1 last name right? 2 3 Mr. Robert Neff: Yes. I’m Robert Neff, I’m a resident, I’ve been on the Palo Alto Bicycle and 4 Pedestrian Advisory Commission since around 2010. I found the draft EIR for the Newell Bridge 5 grossly inadequate because it does not address the bicycle suitability and comfort level of 6 cyclists traveling from Newell Road in Palo Alto to the Clark and Newell Road in East Palo Alto. It 7 shows that the bridge and intersection may indeed have sharrows but it does not analyze the 8 impact of traffic congestion and intersection design. This bridge will serve bicyclists and 9 pedestrians connecting from Palo Alto to East Palo Alto for the next 100-years and will be the 10 best, most direct, and most comfortable connections. So, it is essential to consider bicycle 11 circulation in more detail. 12 13 An excellent bike route should have low traffic stress. The traffic stress analysis method has 14 been developed relatively recently after even the creation of our 2012 Bike Pedestrian Plan. 15 That was used in developing goals for the local bike network improvements since 2015. Ok, one 16 example of a low-stress route is Bryant Bike Boulevard where bicycles and autos share the lane 17 but the speed and volume of automobile traffic is very low. On busier streets, low traffic stress 18 can be achieved by implementing bicycle lanes such as on Park Boulevard from California to 19 Layton Avenue. In the case of complete connection… ok with lower traffic stress along the 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. entire route a larger percentage of potential cyclists will consider using that route. In the case 1 of the complete connection from Clark Avenue in East Palo Alto, across 101 on the brand-new 2 bike-pedestrian bridge, and across the creek on this new bridge at Newell Road. All segments 3 can be considered for traffic stress and the EIR should make that analysis with regard to the 4 design alternatives. 5 6 The new bridge, of course, is low traffic stress, it’s only bicycles and pedestrians so it’s the best 7 case. Newell Road in East Palo Alto has shared lanes, no center line, 25 miles an hour speed 8 limit and an average daily volume of about 1,800 which is within the guidelines of low traffic… 9 lowest traffic stress streets. On the Palo Alto side, Newell Road has 25 miles hour speed limits, a 10 centerline, much higher traffic volumes but it also has bike lanes. So, depending on the width of 11 the bike lanes this could also be a lowest traffic stress or maybe a modest traffic stress suitable 12 for most adult bicyclists. This kind of analysis is… for traffic, stress is necessary for evaluating 13 the bridge and additional evaluation must be made for the mixed traffic flow through the 14 proposed offset intersection at Newell and Woodland. Especially considering the distinct flows 15 of bicycle and automobile traffic. 16 17 Will the Preferred Alternative create a high-stress bridge crossing and high-stress intersection? 18 I’m sure that adding bicycle lanes to the bridge and removing the offset from the intersection 19 will reduce bicycle/automobile conflicts and reduce the traffic… level of traffic stress. Note that 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. adding sharrow markings to the road, the only design feature proposed for bicyclist in the 1 bridge plans does not change the level of traffic stress. It makes no significant difference. In 2 fact, the wider lanes of the new bridge will probably tend to increase traffic speed and 3 decrease… and then increase the level of traffic stress versus the current design. So, this kind of 4 analysis is completely missing from the EIR and I hope you’ll search… you’ll include this. Thank 5 you. 6 7 Chair Riggs: Sorry, a little rusty at this. Xenia Hammer. 8 9 Mr. Neff: [speaking from the audience] Was there a light that was supposed to go off? I didn’t 10 see any lights because [unintelligible]? 11 12 Chair Riggs: Ms. Hammer. 13 14 Ms. Xenia Hammer: Hello, Xenia Hammer, I live on Sharron Court in Palo Alto close to the 15 intersection on Channing and Newell. So, first of all, the timing of this project is urgent. As 16 Michel mentioned it was started in 2011, 7-years. This project is on a critical path for other 17 flood control projects in Palo Alto. Pope/Chaucer Street Bridge, which is a major flood hazard, 18 cannot be replaced until Newell is replaced. So, I urge you to proceed as quickly as possible to 19 approve this project and move forward with construction. 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 Second of all the project itself, the proposed alternative represents a reasonable, good 2 compromise given all the community input that was given 5-years ago. People wanted a 3 narrower bridge, that’s why the bicycle lanes could not be accommodated fully. It presents a 4 reasonable compromise with multiple constituencies involved and again it needs to move 5 forward as quickly as possible. 6 Mr. Waldfogel, you asked the question about flow capacity of the creek at Newell. What is 7 really critical to consider is this, the capacity of Middlefield bridge, which is upstream from 8 Newell, is 7,500-cubic feet per second. And so whatever passes under Middlefield, the Newell 9 Road bridge will be able to accommodate which is not the case today. So… and we’re not 10 changing the Middlefield bridge so that is a key consideration here. 11 12 Thank you so much and again I urge you to move as quickly as possible with this urgent project. 13 It would be completely unacceptable if Newell Road bridge were to delay the rest of the flood 14 control work on San Francisquito Creek. Thank you. 15 16 Chair Riggs: Thank you. Thomas Rindfleisch. Did I get your name right? Is that (interrupted) 17 18 Mr. Thomas Rindfleisch: [unintelligible – spoke from the audience] 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: My apologies. 1 2 Mr. Rindfleisch: Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight. I’m Tom Rindfleisch, I 3 live in Palo Alto Crescent Park, just near Eleanor Pardee Park, and in 1998 our house was 4 flooded and I’d like to reiterate what Xenia has said. There was $28 million in damage done in 5 1998. It came largely because the Pope/Chaucer Bridge does not have the capacity to pass the 6 water the flows under Middlefield. It’s the 70-year flood but it’s the largest flood of record in 7 the creek and so it is a very reasonable goal to try to accommodate that 1998 flow. 8 9 My main concern about the Newell Road bridge is that it be raised to provide the natural 10 capacity of the creek. I live away from that intersection but it seems to me that the Option Two, 11 Alternative Two, as a Locally Preferred Alternative is a totally reasonable alternative. It provides 12 access for first responders, it provides a compromise between traffic and bicycle, pedestrians 13 and I believe it offers the opportunity to control traffic in various ways with those kinds of 14 interventions over time if that becomes necessary. 15 16 It is really critical that you approve and move forward with this replacement. We are 21-years 17 out from the 1998 flood. I run the neighborhood association website or email list for Crescent 18 Park and every winter there is an incredible fear of is the next rain storm going to be one that 19 overflows the creek and that’s because of Pope/Chaucer. We cannot replace Pope/Chaucer 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. until the Newell Road bridge is fixed so please do move forward as quickly as possible. Thank 1 you. 2 3 Chair Riggs: Alright that will conclude our hearing and so we’ll bring it back to the Commission. 4 So, I don’t see any lights but… so if there are any comments, I’ll entertain them now. Anybody? 5 Commissioner Waldfogel? 6 7 Commissioner Waldfogel: [unintelligible – spoke off mic] Awe, turn the microphone on. Thanks 8 to Staff, to Michel and Claire, for bringing this forward tonight. This is a project that’s taken a 9 long time to germinate; 21-years since the flood. And it’s time to move forward so we need to 10 move this forward. When I got the DIR [note -draft EIR?] a could weeks ago I was pretty happy 11 about where we are. There were just a couple areas that I was concerned about and maybe you 12 can comment on them. The biggest issues that I saw were just about construction impacts. I 13 mean this is heavy construction in the middle of… between residential neighborhoods on both 14 sides of the creek and I saw references in the DIR [note – draft EIR] to things like Caltrans 15 nighttime construction noise standards to pile driving for footings etc. And I was just wondering 16 if you could comment on any of that? On what mitigations are in place? What you anticipate 17 construction hours to be? I mean just some of these nuts and bolts practical questions. 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: Absolutely. So, in looking through the draft EIR I do want to clarify that I think 1 there was perhaps a little bit of unclarity about the night time construction because we were 2 referencing some of Caltrans’s standards which in some cases allow for nighttime construction. 3 But we would always use the most restrictive which in this case would be Palo Alto standards so 4 we are expecting nighttime construction on this project. 5 6 And in terms of the construction noise levels, we are anticipating that there was a significant 7 impact without mitigation. However, we’ve identified mitigation measures to reduce the 8 construction noise levels. The noisiest equipment that was identified was pile driving. Pile 9 driving was anticipated to have I think it was 95 or 96 DBA. Mitigation measures were 10 identified, I think they are outlined in Mitigation Measure NOI-3, to reduce noise levels to a less 11 than significant level. The noise barriers and some other mitigation that was indented to reduce 12 noise levels by 25 DBA. So, the anticipated noise level would be around 70 DBA from 13 construction noise and is there anything else that I can maybe add to that or? 14 15 Commissioner Waldfogel: No, I think that’s great and I think that just I’m not quite sure where 16 it fits in process but just reading the DIR [note -draft EIR?] I was a little scared of these impacts. 17 I mean I don’t want to do anything that delays the project but to the extent that we can clarify 18 what our stans is on mitigation, I think that’s great, and I think that’s… I just wanted to get 19 some of that on the record. 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: I think we can certainly look through the EIR and in the final EIR we can provide a 2 little bit better clarity about what our expectations are in terms of maximum noise levels and 3 nighttime construction or lack thereof. 4 5 Commissioner Waldfogel: Great, I think that’s helpful. I mean I think that you actually identify 6 mitigations that the private sector should copy in a whole bunch of areas and you know we can 7 discuss that separately. But I think you’ve set a pretty good model for it and wanted to thank 8 you for that. 9 10 Then just one other comment, it’s way outside my purview Michel but Design Build is a good 11 tool. I mean you have a really tight schedule here and looking at your sequencing on when 12 you’ll generate CDs versus when you’re going to bid. I wish you the very best of luck on keeping 13 this thing moving forward. 14 15 Ms. Jeremias: Thank you. I think that’s something that we can look into as we proceed with the 16 project and talking with our consultants to see whether or not and with Caltrans as well for 17 funding. We would consider it. 18 19 Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah, way outside my purview but I just wanted to mention it. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Summa: Are we going down the line? 2 3 Chair Riggs: We can do that. Yeah, sure, Commissioner Summa. 4 5 Commissioner Summa: Ok so thank you to everyone, for the Staff. I thought it was a really good 6 report, very informative, and easy to read and also to the members of the public who came out 7 tonight. Sorry, my phone. In contemplating the alternatives, I do think the Preferred Alternative 8 is a good compromise especially considering the complexities of having to deal with multiple 9 Cities and different agencies. And I think it’s important to get this going and not delay it as we 10 get crazier and crazier weather. So, my concerns were construction, which we just addressed, 11 impacts for nearby neighbors in both Cities and also a concern earlier about that one side of the 12 intersection that currently has such bad visibility. And that was also addressed so I’d like to 13 listen to the rest of my colleagues and that’s it’s for now. Thank you. 14 15 Chair Riggs: Commissioner Templeton, do you mind if I... I’m going to kind of just take Chair’s 16 prerogative here real fast because I wasn’t intending to structure things that way. 17 18 Commissioner Summa: Oh, I’m sorry. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Riggs: I’m just going to read that this is going to maybe a pile full of honey on this project 1 and I want to temper it with some comments because I think that my questions where pointed 2 earlier and they didn’t have an answer. And so, I just want to bring up the… a couple… I want to 3 highlight a couple things for my fellow Commissioners that I think should give them pause 4 about this as a Preferred Alternative; is that we don’t know anything about bicycle level… we 5 don’t know anything about bicycle and pedestrian Level of Service here based on what I’ve 6 been told by Staff. And we don’t know how this meets bicycle and pedestrian Level of Service 7 and so my question is, is this the… I think I would challenge you all to think about is this the 8 right alternative given Goal Number… Goal TR-6, Goal T-19? Does it prop up climate goals at the 9 same time and I question whether or not two-way traffic does that in this case. And I think that 10 pitting LOS against multimodal benefits in your little ratings chart is an easy pass. I don’t think 11 this would hold… this little tables holds up to any level of scrutiny and so I would pause to just 12 to think about whether or not this is the correct alternative. I think that Mr. Neff hit the nail on 13 the head. This is a 50-year investment and if we really are thinking about transportation in the 14 City a little differently in 30, 40-years, a bi-directional one-lane flow could be completely 15 appropriate in this location. It actually may be preferred in terms of directionality as we think 16 about future traffic. So (interrupted) 17 18 Commissioner Waldfogel: (off mic) Can you explain how this is inconsistent with that? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Riggs: How this is inconsistent with (interrupted) 1 2 Commissioner Waldfogel: (off mic) This option, you said bi-directional. 3 4 Chair Riggs: So… well so the preferred option here is bi-directional two-lane traffic as opposed 5 to bi-directional one-lane of traffic which is Option (interrupted) 6 7 Ms. Hodgkins: No, that’s not (interrupted) 8 9 Chair Riggs: One. They believe that the Preferred Alternative being put forward is Option 10 Number Two if I’m not mistaken which… I mean, to be honest from a structural standpoint it’s 11 pretty irrelevant. From a traffic standpoint… and I think there are design solutions that weren’t 12 considered in this case. So, I mean if we can suspend a pedestrian path off of the Bay Bridge, 13 why couldn’t we consider that from a structural standpoint here? I mean I think that… so I just 14 want to… before we kind of bless this project, I think it’s important to step back a little bit and 15 ask some bigger questions. Particularly as we’re seeing… in the life cycle of this bridge we’re 16 going to see a different type of travel; yielding behavior for vehicles. We’re going to see 17 different vehicular patterns; we’re going to see different expectations in terms of Level of 18 Service. So, I think it’s important to condition that given the life cycle of this structure. I’ll stop 19 there. 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: (off mic) I don’t understand this because isn’t that a signalization 2 option? [unintelligible] 3 4 Vice-Chair Alcheck: One-lane. 5 6 Mr. Lait: So, I’m sorry, if we can… Commissioner Waldfogel can you turn on your microphone. 7 8 Chair Riggs: This is… that is (interrupted) 9 10 Mr. Lait: We don’t have your question on the record. 11 12 Chair Riggs: So, you’re… I believe the question was is this just a signalization option? Yes, it 13 likely is paint and signaling but the likelihood that we… that Public Works would go out and 14 change the signals and restripe and redo the curbs after this is installed is de minimis. 15 16 Ms. Hodgkins: So, I just want to… for clarity are you indicating that alternative (interrupted) 17 18 Chair Riggs: I don’t know that I need a response. I don’t know I need a response from that. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Hodgkins: Ok, I’m just trying to understand if what you are proposing is… was analyzed 1 under Alternative One. 2 3 Chair Riggs: I don’t know what was analyzed under Alternative One because you told me that 4 you didn’t have any bike/ped volume and you couldn’t rationalize why a Class Three was 5 appropriate in this location. 6 7 Ms. Hodgkins: Well what we analyzed in Alternative Number One was a bi-directional bridge 8 with one-lane traffic. 9 10 Chair Riggs: Yeah but you only analyzed vehicular Level of Service. 11 12 Ms. Hodgkins: Ok. 13 14 Chair Riggs: I just want the Commission to think about that. Commissioner Templeton. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: Hi, thank you all for your work on this. I was also interested in the 17 decision to eliminate the bike and pedestrian-only bridge. And it sounded like because we have 18 to replace the whole bridge to get the flow, that we needed to include vehicles? Was my 19 understanding or can you correct that? 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Ms. Jeremias: Sorry for the confusion. The reason that those options were eliminated is 2 because they created a Level of Service increase. Level of Services were increased in pm over on 3 University and East Crescent so they had an impact, the Level of Service, at two intersections. In 4 addition to that, they also had an increase into the impact of the TIRE; the Traffic Infusion in 5 Residential Environment. 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: Right. 8 9 Ms. Jeremias: Eliminating the vehicular access through Newell would create an impact… would 10 create an increase on adjacent streets and thus impacting those in a negative [unintelligible]. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you for clarifying that and also, to the speaker’s point about 13 the changes since the bridge over 101 has opened. Do we know anything about if our traffic has 14 changes or would that be included the study that Chair Riggs’s is proposing? 15 16 Ms. Hodgkins: Are you asking about vehicular traffic or pedestrian? 17 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: All the traffic. I mean do we know if the use of that bridge has 1 changed? The public speaker has suggested that maybe more bike traffic would be going there 2 now because of the new bridge access across 101. 3 4 Ms. Hodgkins: Alright I don’t think we have updated data on that. 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: It would be interesting to find out. I can imagine that there might be 7 more traffic there as well but to be crystal clear and I want to ask this again. The bridge, it’s 8 functionally obsolete no matter how it’s used. The current bridge, right? 9 10 Ms. Jeremias: That’s correct. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Because of the flow issues and the other uses? 13 14 Ms. Jeremias: It’s functionally obsolete because it does not provide adequate access for 15 multimodal access. So, it does not provide designated, two-directional lane or a designated 16 sidewalk for pedestrians. 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: Ok and… but we don’t want to leave it there and change how it’s 19 used because it doesn’t allow enough water through. 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. Jeremias: That’s correct. 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: Ok, great, and then the last thing. I really appreciate your chart here 4 about the timeframe. You talk about it would start in spring of 2020, when do you think it… 5 how long of a commitment… how big of a project is this? 6 7 Ms. Jeremias: I believe the project would take about a year and a half to complete. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah and a half to complete and at any point during that year and a 10 half, would it be available for bike and pedestrian use before vehicle use or it would be 11 completely shut down for that entire time? 12 13 Ms. Jeremias: We would look at… depending on the scope of the work and the schedule. It is in 14 an area that maybe we can open portions of Newell on East Palo Alto side and Woodland but I 15 don’t think we could open portions of the bridge. I don’t know, we’d have to look at the 16 schedule but based on the time of the season of the year as well. 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: Ok, great, thank you. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Riggs: Commissioner Alcheck [note -Vice Chair Alcheck]. 1 2 Vice-Chair Alcheck: Ok, thank you both for your presentations and for the work you’ve done on 3 the report. Also, I just want to acknowledge that I appreciate the feedback from the members 4 in the community. Particularly with respect to the focus on alternatives modes and as well as 5 the neighbors that are here because this has been an exceptionally long process and the 6 stamina it has taken is noteworthy. 7 8 I also want to suggest that I thought that the Packet Page 28. This has been… I think I’m… just 9 feedback quickly for Staff. This is, I think, one of the more effective ways that we’ve been able 10 to hear comments from the community sort of aggregate in a very efficient way. So, I found the 11 comments that began on Packet Page 28 to just be organized well and I’m really happy that 12 that was possible so thank you. 13 14 I’m really familiar with the project. I vividly remember when Joe Terissy [note – sounds like] 15 who was the Senior Engineer tasked with shepherding this project in 2011; introduced us to it 16 and walked us through almost these exact four options. I don’t think Joe Terissy [note – sounds 17 like] works here anymore, I think he retired, he was a very nice man. Seven years later we are 18 again reviewing but are essentially the same options and I feel the same way I did back then 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. when I sat on this Commission. I would recommend that Council determine that this bridge be 1 rebuilt and done so in a way to meet the current multimodal standards. 2 3 While I agree, continue to agree that realignment is unnecessary, I strongly agree… and this… 4 it’s as if we spoke beforehand which we did not. I strongly believe that the traffic signal… that 5 this should be traffic signaled controlled. I also think that the provided 2-foot wide sidewalks 6 are woefully inadequate. It says on… it says in the Packet… I’ll just pull you to it but maybe this 7 is a typo. 8 9 Ms. Hodgkins: They’d be 5-feet wide. 10 11 Ms. Jeremias: Five… yeah. 12 13 Vice-Chair Alcheck: Page 78 says built Alternative Two… last sentence of the first real 14 paragraph of built Alternative Two on Packet Page 78 says 2-foot wide sidewalks would also be 15 provided. Is that a typo? 16 17 Ms. Hodgkins: I think that must have been an error. They’re supposed to be 5-foot wide; I 18 apologize for that. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Alcheck: Ok, well that’s good so let’s not focus on the sidewalk then. I’ll just continue 1 with my comment about the signaling. The feedback clearly demonstrates that the bridge’s 2 current substandard width has had a real impact on speed. Everyone in the community that has 3 encountered this bridge will tell you that they slow down because to not slow down would 4 likely cause an accident. So, its narrowness is, in fact, the speed bump. 5 6 Chair Riggs: It’s called a chicane. 7 8 Vice-Chair Alcheck: And we don’t just need to rely on feedback here because I know I 9 frequently say that I don’t love anecdotal evidence but we constantly review projects that are 10 traffic mitigating bikes, creating sort of narrower pathways. Right, we introduced large planters 11 on Hamilton and some of the roads off of Middlefield from downtown in an effort to sort of 12 create a more narrower pass through and that causes drivers to somehow slow down 13 subconsciously. So, I think it’s safe to agree with a lot of feedback you received that took the 14 position that widening the bridge will have the exact opposite effect. Just to say that it will 15 likely encourage faster passage over the bridge. 16 17 At the intersection of Newell and Channing, this is several blocks away, there’s a traffic signal 18 which has clearly been designed to moderate the speed of traffic; which is critical right because 19 this is an intersection where there’s a Safe Route To School path, it’s the gateway to Elenore 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. Pardee Park, you’re minutes from the Lucie Stern. So, it seems to me that if you had those same 1 concerns at this bridge location, that installing a traffic signal and essentially bringing traffic to a 2 stop right before it crosses that bridge in a very controlled way would really be the right 3 decision. I think if Palo Alto finally addresses this terribly… it is terribly substandard bridge, that 4 the Council should approve the installation of a traffic signal. 5 6 And I don’t share the view that this should be a one-lane bridge, I think that we can 7 accommodate bi-directional traffic. One of my concerns about… I think one of the things that 8 we have to appreciate here is that we have a very complicated site and one thing that happens 9 at this particular site is that there are times of day when the traffic really is predominately in 10 one direction. And so, having traffic that can only travel in one direction by a signal would 11 potentially really disrupt the pattern and that’s one of my concerns. At 5 o’clock every day, for 12 example, there’s a line of cars that are trying to cross that bridge for an hour and to some 13 extent, the stop sign doesn’t help. But if there was a traffic signal in both directions and traffic 14 could pass in both directions, I think that would be a Preferred Alternative than just one way. 15 16 I think one of the things we really need to do though is we need to ensure the safety of 17 pedestrians and bicyclist. And if the conclusion is that to accomplish all of these goals, we have 18 to use sharrows. If that really is sort of the best tactic than I would support that and I would 19 encourage Council to support that. Especially if now we have 5-foot-wide sidewalks, that seems 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. a lot more adequate. I was a little concerned about the 2-foot typo but there are a lot of 1 children who ride bikes over this bridge, there are a lot of adults who ride bikes over this, there 2 is a ton of pedestrians that cross this bridge. And if there are individuals in the community who 3 oppose the traffic light because I’m guessing it’s a bit too cumbersome, that’s kind of the point. 4 We need to slow down this bridge, it’s a neighborhood, and so I would encourage the decision 5 makers to visit that space at multiple times in a day. 6 7 And then lastly, I’ll mention this just because it came up a couple times with respect to 8 construction and I say this with the utmost respect for the men and women in the trade 9 industry who do the quality work that we often see in a professional, timely manner. I would 10 encourage the City not to select the same construction management company which is 11 currently undertaking… which is currently taking their sweet, sweet time at the fire station at 12 the other end of Newell. And I’m trying to put things in perspective here, we’ve lost some 13 credibility. When we start to talk about a project that has this level of priority and it’s taken 7-14 years and we’re basically at the same presentation that I saw at the end of 2012; it’s a problem. 15 I sort of winced when you said that the project would be finished in and you gave the specific 16 date because in my mind that is… there’s no credibility in that statement. I’ll just give you sort 17 of the guidelines why I feel that way. Construction began on the fire station on the other end of 18 this same road in January of 2018, it was supposed to finish in March of 2019, it’s now almost 19 July of 2019, drive by the fire station and there’s no end in sight. It doesn’t even look close and 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. what is… I mean it’s basically a tall garage. I mean it’s so significantly less complicated than 1 what this bridge will be. So, I think we need to learn from those mistakes, I think we need to 2 start earning some credibility back, we need to be really careful about what expectations we set 3 because the community is paying attention, and they’re frustrated and millions of dollars were 4 lost as a result of flood control. And so, I think we need to really work on that and that’s it. 5 6 Chair Riggs: Before we move on, I want to clarify. I’m trying to make sense of one of the things 7 your suggesting. Are you suggesting a Variance on the Locally Preferred Alternative because the 8 Locally Preferred Alternative has no signalization? 9 10 Vice-Chair Alcheck: Yeah, I think that two-way traffic with the 5-foot wide sidewalks and 11 sharrows would work. I think that’s a very viable option. I think that the failure to signalize that 12 intersection is ignoring the feedback and the takeaways that we’ve been presented with; which 13 is that traffic is likely to speed up significantly and make that path a lot more [unintelligible] 14 (interrupted) 15 16 Chair Riggs: Ok, I just want to get clear… I mean I think we might want to (interrupted) 17 18 Vice-Chair Alcheck: So, I wouldn’t recommend Build Two without signalization. 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, it’s not… that’s not a consideration in the pack we have in the EIR we have 1 before us. I just want to highlight that (interrupted) 2 3 Vice-Chair Alcheck: Yeah, I know. 4 5 Chair Riggs: And I actually think we might want engineering Staff to respond to that because the 6 signal… the traffic volume may not warrant a signal. So, there are specific code guidelines about 7 what warrants signalizations. So, we might want Staff to respond to that suggestion with the 8 volume that would warrant a signal and sorry, I’m just suggesting that that might be a 9 consideration because it might be illegal for them to suggest (interrupted) 10 11 Vice-Chair Alcheck: Here’s what I’m trying to say. 12 13 Chair Riggs: A signal. 14 15 Vice-Chair Alcheck: Here’s what I’m trying to say, there are tools that… there’s like various… I’ve 16 seen signals that operate almost like stop lights. They’re essentially red all the time and you 17 drive up to them and they turn green and then the second you cross they’re red again. And I’m 18 not as familiar as you with the various tools there are but what I can tell you is this is virtually a 19 blind intersection. There are a ton of pedestrians that cross it, widening it feels like you’re going 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. to make a freeway on this neighborhood street, and there’s an intersection at Channing and 1 Newell that I suspect gets virtually the same amount of traffic and that’s signaled. 2 3 Chair Riggs: So maybe… can we just frame that as maybe Staff if you could, maybe after we’re 4 done here, I think the sentiment there is traffic calming needs to be… is that what you’re 5 saying? 6 7 Vice-Chair Alcheck: Yeah, I mean arguably a stop sign is traffic calming. The problem is that 8 stops signs are often rolled through and in a blind intersection that can be really dangerous. 9 You’re coming… they’re talking about potentially increasing height or maintaining the height. 10 The height is significantly higher than the road so when you come off of that bridge and you 11 come down, there’s this… and some of the commenters mentioned it in their feedback. You 12 sort of approach at an angle, when you get to the top and you come down you suddenly see 13 that there might be somebody coming across. And so… and the traffic on your left when you’re 14 coming from Palo Alto to East Palo Alto is so far set back from that stop sign that you don’t 15 know if he’s left his stop sign as you come over. So, all I’m suggesting is that some coordinated 16 effort of signaling would maybe go a long way to addressing the concerns. 17 18 Chair Riggs: Well if we could… maybe I should suggest that we… I think they hear the traffic 19 calming and there may be other mitigations. So, we don’t have to be engineers up here so there 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. may be other mitigations that get at your concerns aside from a traffic light with the Locally 1 Preferred Alternative. So, I just… I don’t want you to… my suggestion may be just I want to be 2 clear this… what’s under consideration tonight is not what you’re describing or what’s being 3 recommended by Staff is not what you’re describing. 4 5 Vice-Chair Alcheck: No but look, the call to action wasn’t pick one of the four. The call to action 6 was to provide feedback that they can use as they continue to work on this draft EIR. And what 7 I would suggest to you is that the majority of comments that we received from the community 8 that suggested that widen was potentially not favorable border on the idea that the wider it 9 gets the likelihood of the traffic speed rising rapid so I’m trying to be responsive to that. 10 11 Chair Riggs: So maybe… I would… just let me clarify, I would like to get to a recommendation to 12 Council tonight within the next 30-minutes so Commissioner Roohparvar do you have anything? 13 14 Vice-Chair Alcheck: [unintelligible]? Is this a motion… are you looking for a motion tonight? 15 16 Chair Riggs: We are looking for a recommendation on the Preferred Alternative. 17 18 Mr. Lait: So, thank you for the comment, we’ll certainly take it. I mean this is a document that’s 19 open for public review and we want to hear all comments that people have on the document. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. So, we’ll take that comment about the signal and the traffic calming and we’ll analyze or 1 respond to it. But yeah, we are looking for the Commission’s sort of feedback or direction and a 2 vote would be helpful on the scenario that we’re looking to advance and I think it was 3 Alternative Two that we’re promoting. 4 5 Vice-Chair Alcheck: I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t think it’s incompatible to 6 suggest that one… it wouldn’t be unacceptable and this may not carry but to suggest that Build 7 Alternative Two is acceptable to the Commission. However, there are concerns about whether 8 signalization would improve that build alternative. That’s sort of what I’m saying and while that 9 may be not on the table, it’s not such a stretch, that’s all I’m saying. 10 11 Chair Riggs: If we could hear from Commissioner Roohparvar if you have anything. Don’t feel… 12 free if you do, if you’re a fish out of water. 13 14 Commissioner Roohparvar: [unintelligible]. Yeah, thank you for your presentation, just two 15 quick comments. Signalization to me seems a bit cumbersome. Is it going to still be a blind 16 intersection after you remove the vegetation? Didn’t you speak about removing the vegetation 17 to help the visibility? How blind is it going to be after? 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. Jeremias: It should not be a blind intersection. We are removing the vegetation and to 1 your question earlier is we will be raising not only the bridge by about a foot and a half but 2 we’re also raising Woodland intersection right now and Newell. Both of them will be raised 3 approximately… right close to the creek…close to the bridge about 4-feet so that would create 4 the traffic movement that we would be able to see oncoming traffic. Providing also the… 5 eliminating the concrete flood wall would also allow some visibility through the bridge itself. So, 6 that gives us… I don’t foresee that should be an issue, a concern. 7 8 Commissioner Roohparvar: Ok. I don’t have any other questions. 9 10 Chair Riggs: Excellent. Commissioner Lauing. 11 12 Commissioner Lauing: Yes, a few. First of all, we’re getting this pretty earlier in the EIR process 13 and I know somebody asked to get it early but we’re not benefiting for more than three very 14 helpful public speakers. So, I wish it was a little bit later in the process. Does it usually take 9-15 years to go from functional obsolete to this stage? Is that typical? 16 17 Ms. Jeremias: No, so it has… what happened is Caltrain does routine inspections on this bridge 18 and we’ve had inspections on the bridge down I think as early as 2010. As a result of all the 19 works that are necessary to improve and prevent some of the flooding that occurs in San 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. Francisquito Creek, we had to make improvements downstream first. So, we had to get the 1 funds to make the improvements on the levy and also to build the San Francisquito Creek pump 2 station. 3 4 Commissioner Lauing: Ok, great, which is we also got a new golf course with that upstream 5 work on floods. The thing I wanted to understand and I think I do but it’s so crucial I want to 6 make sure I do. That is what you’re saying is that the traffic during the proposed project is going 7 to actually require City Council to make findings of overwriting considerations. So, two 8 questions, one is do we not have to do that as well? 9 10 Ms. Hodgkins: I’ll let Sandy kind of add to this but no, I don’t believe you don’t need too. 11 12 Commissioner Lauing: Ok and then the second Claire, do I understand this right when I go over 13 to Pages in the supplemental… Revised Final Supplemental Traffic Evaluation Report. Is the 14 bottom line that we’re going to have this E and F during construction but after construction it’s 15 going to go back to better, I’ll say but not perfect? Because when I try to read Pages 25 and 31 16 it looks like University Avenue and Woodland and University Avenue and Crescent are getting 17 much worse when you out to 2040. 18 19 Ms. Hodgkins: I’m not seeing Page 25, hold on. Which… of the Packet Page 25? 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: No, I mean the supplement on traffic. 2 3 Chair Riggs: (off mic) That’s for a different item. 4 5 Commissioner Lauing: No, this is the traffic about… right? 6 7 Chair Riggs: He’s referencing the Item Number Two which is… sorry, Commissioner Lauing 8 that’s… those are separate (interrupted) 9 10 Ms. Hodgkins: That’s the one he’s referencing. Do you know what Page of the Packet you’re on? 11 Yeah, but which Page of the Packet are you referencing? 12 13 Commissioner Lauing: My question… we can forget that. 14 15 Ms. Hodgkins: Oh. 16 17 Commissioner Lauing: My question is, is the only concern that we have for traffic around the 18 construction because it’s going to get bad around construction? 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: Yes. 1 2 Commissioner Lauing: That’s why we need this and then after that, we’re good to go, is that 3 basically what you’re saying? 4 5 Ms. Hodgkins: Essentially, yeah. The traffic under Alternative Two really would not change 6 under operations and however, during construction, it would be a significant and unavoidable 7 impact. I just want to note too in… there’ve been a couple people who have raised some ideas 8 of either a… of doing like an only pedestrian-bicycle bridge. If there is no vehicular traffic across 9 those significant and unavoidable, impacts would be permanent impacts. 10 11 Commissioner Lauing: So, the E and F goes away after construction? 12 13 Ms. Hodgkins: Yes, and I do want to note under Alternative One I think was the only alternative 14 that was analyzed which was the alternative that Commissioner Riggs spoke to or Chair Riggs 15 spoke too. That was actually the only alternative that was analyzed that it didn’t result in 16 significant impacts because the intersections that were affected were operating at a pretty 17 good level. But it was definitely a notable impact on those… on some of the intersections under 18 Alternative One with the… if there was one lane of traffic and bi-directional. If that makes 19 sense. 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: Yep. 2 3 Chair Riggs: (off mic) Signalized bi-directional [unintelligible]. 4 5 Commissioner Waldfogel: I’m sorry, did you question… can I speak? 6 7 Chair Riggs: Yeah. 8 9 Commissioner Waldfogel: Did your question get answered on what the threshold would be to 10 establish signaling because what I feel like is there’s been this huge community process and the 11 community process has led to an answer. And I could support this idea of bi-directional 12 signalized flow but it seems like it would be consistent with building Option Two if there’s a 13 process that we could subsequently go through. So, do we understand what that process would 14 be? Is there a feasible process to do that? 15 16 Chair Riggs: So, I’m… well, I’m speaking based on my own… I’m not the City engineer which is 17 why I would encourage us not to engineer this from the dais. But my… from my own 18 background in this field the volume here I don’t think warrants… normally warrants a signal. 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. And maybe the engineers can… so volume has to be… I don’t know what level to warrant a 1 traffic signal. 2 3 Mr. Lait: So, can we just answer the question? 4 5 Chair Riggs: Sorry. 6 7 Mr. Lait: Can I just have somebody come up (interrupted) 8 9 Chair Riggs: Yes, thank you. 10 11 Mr. Lait: Thank you. 12 13 Chair Riggs: I think that there’s another… there’s an embedded assumption. Alternative One 14 has a signal because of the bi-directional nature of the flow. It has too. 15 16 Commissioner Summa: It has too. 17 18 Mr. Rafael Rius, Traffic Engineering Lead: Yes, there is typically a warrant analysis which 19 evaluates the main street traffic versus the side street traffic. Without knowing the numbers off 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. the top of my head, I don’t know if the side street traffic would be high enough to warrant a 1 signal. And also, I just would add traffic signals are generally not suppose to be installed for 2 traffic calming purposes and in fact, they’re usually not as good at traffic calming as an all ways 3 stop sign. I know the example you used where they rest in red, that’s currently happening over 4 here at Waverley and Channing and we mixed results with that and a lot of resident complaints 5 to remove it and such but that’s kind of anecdotal. 6 7 Commissioner Waldfogel: I guess would it be an option? So, let’s say we build two, would it be 8 an option to go back and restripe for this bi-directional flow and add the signal? Would that be 9 a feasible option downstream if we decided to do that? 10 11 Mr. Rius: If you have the one-lane, the two-way, one-lane (interrupted) 12 13 Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah so, I’m just trying (interrupted) 14 15 Mr. Rius: I think the width (interrupted) 16 17 Commissioner Waldfogel: What I’m just seeing if we could sort of bridge these comments into 18 a way to move forward. 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. Rius: I think a two-way, one-lane option would require a signal probably and meet other 1 warrants or engineering judgment. That (interrupted) 2 3 Commissioner Waldfogel: Right but what would that process look like? So, let’s say we build 4 Option Two, what would the process look like to then restripe and signalize per this Option 5 One? Because what I don’t want to do is get in the way of this bridge process and I’d like to 6 know if we can make this decision later. 7 8 Chair Riggs: Yeah, I think it’d be… I mean I think I agree. I mean I think it would be great just 9 build it without stripes and decide in the process the directionality because I don’t think 10 (interrupted) 11 12 Commissioner Waldfogel: (off mic) Is it possible to do that? 13 14 Chair Riggs: I mean I think that’s an interesting question but even then… I think the question is 15 could… what would be the process to rewind? 16 17 Mr. Rius: Sure, Option Two has enough width for the bi-directional traffic simultaneously and 18 keeping that as Commissioner Alcheck [note - Vice-Chair Alcheck] suggested then we would 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. probably do a traffic signal warrant analysis which looked at volumes and a bunch of other 1 things also. 2 3 Chair Riggs: Yeah you could do pretty generous Class One or Class Two bikeways plus… in 40-4 feet plus a one-lane of traffic plus pedestrian, correct? 12-feet plus (interrupted) 5 6 Mr. Rius: [unintelligible](interrupted) 7 8 Chair Riggs: Yeah, 12-feet plus 20… basically 24 so you’d have more than enough space. 9 Commissioner Alcheck [note – Vice-Chair Alcheck]. 10 11 Vice-Chair Alcheck: Yeah, sorry just quickly. Is the signal at Newell and Channing similar in its 12 resting red? 13 14 Mr. Rius: I don’t believe that one rests in red but I could be wrong. I’m trying… but I would 15 (interrupted) 16 17 Vice-Chair Alcheck: I just have bad luck with it. No, I’m kidding. 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. Rius: You might be correct; you know we don’t look at that one as quite as often but I 1 would say there’s probably a lot more volumes if you add up Channing and Newell versus 2 Newell alone. 3 4 Vice-Chair Alcheck: Yeah, I can appreciate that. I think, look, I’m… let me say this to be clear to 5 the fellow Commissioners who may be preparing a motion. I won’t stand in the way of making a 6 recommendation for Build Two. I don’t share your enthusiasm for one-way traffic that’s 7 signaled controlled. I think that the community’s preference for two-directions of traffic 8 synonymously represents feedback based on significant use. And I think that I’m not sure that 9 they’ve ever… with my exposure to this project, I don’t know that the community ever really 10 seriously considered one-way traffic that was signaled controlled. I think the debate largely 11 centered on whether realignment provided significant benefits and the challenges with 12 realignment were actually so complex that I think we sort of turned out back on… the 13 community sort of turned away from that option. So, I think that I withdraw my suggestion that 14 I can’t recommend an un-signalized intersection here; I could. 15 16 I understand what you were saying about sort of raising the road to meet the intersection and 17 you’re essentially moving the stop sign or the idea of design is that you’ll move the stop sign to 18 the end of the bridge. So, you would essentially wait on the bridge and from that position when 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. you look left you have an unobstructed view as a result of the new retaining walls and the 1 raised roadway. 2 3 I guess look, the biggest concern that I have is with traffic calming and if that can be mitigated 4 in a way, even after the fact, if it’s determined that this Build Two Alternative is not achieving 5 the goal of creating enough safety and the traffic calming mitigation options are available that 6 are not signaling and that we don’t use signaling in the City typically for traffic calming then I 7 feel comfortable with that. Those responses are informative for me and I appreciate them. 8 9 And I guess my only other ask is that if we do have a… if the Commission does suggest or 10 recommend Alternative One which although not new feels like a new direction. I would request 11 or recommend that the Staff put together some sort of model, like animation, that 12 demonstrates how this would work because I think this is a complicated execution. I can’t think 13 of a single other intersection in all of Palo Alto that operates this way; maybe you’re familiar 14 with one. And I think that we would be remised if we didn’t figure out a way to at least help 15 people understand what we were recommending if that’s actually the path we take. 16 17 Chair Riggs: Commissioner Templeton and them Commissioner Summa. 18 19 MOTION 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: Briefly, I’m not sure about how well received a signal might be given 2 the housing that we can see in the vicinity. I know that’s been a source of lengthy discussion in 3 neighboring Cities so I just want to throw that out there as a caution. 4 5 However, I would like to make a motion that we, the Planning and Transportation Commission, 6 recommend to City Council Alternative Two and with strong encouragement to Staff to include 7 a better, more current information about bike and pedestrian Level of Service if that’s possible. 8 9 Chair Riggs: Is there a second? 10 11 SECOND 12 13 Commissioner Summa: I can second that. I wasn’t going to add the additional bicycle 14 information but it certainly can’t hurt. And I also want to point out just so everybody knows it, 15 the Supplemental Traffic Report numbers the alternatives differently. So, make sure they know 16 it’s… yeah and I… just for a comment, I would not… I do think, as a seconder, that this is a very 17 good compromise for a project that involves multiple Cities and multiple agencies. And I want 18 to see it go forward as soon as possible and I, in no way, would find a signalized intersection to 19 be preferable in this location. Thank you. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Riggs: Ok we have a motion and a second. Any other comments or discussion? 2 Commissioner Lauing. 3 4 Commissioner Lauing: Just briefly, from what we presented and what the work that’s been 5 done, there is going to be a little bit of collateral damage to this relative to for example what 6 the gentlemen raised here but we are on somewhat of a timeline. We’d like to speed up this 9-7 year process. That said with the comments that Chair Riggs made if that’s something that’s 8 substantive, the only option at this point I think would be to sort of simultaneously investigate 9 that which might also include not voting on this tonight and that’s going to its downside as well. 10 So, I think maybe registering that other alternative should get another squint but that we go 11 ahead with Alternative Two might be the better path. 12 13 Chair Riggs: Any other questions or comments? Seeing none. All in favor of the 14 recommendations? 15 16 Vice-Chair Alcheck: Can you repeat (interrupted) 17 18 Commissioner Roohparvar: Can you repeat (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. Chair Riggs: Commissioner Templeton would you make that one? Can you repeat your 1 (interrupted)? 2 3 MOTION RESTATED 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: Yes. I move that the Planning and Transportation Commission 6 recommend to City Council Alternative Two with the caveat that if better bike and pedestrian 7 level service information is available, that it be included. 8 9 VOTE 10 11 Chair Riggs: Is that clear? Ok, all in favor? All opposed? Carries 6-1. 12 13 MOTION PASSED 6 (Lauing, Roohparvar, Alcheck, Templeton, Summa, Waldfogel)-1 (Riggs) 14 15 Chair Riggs: I did not vote for that and in speaking to that I think there are three reasons that I 16 would… I don’t think its… I haven’t seen the information that fully justifies that being the Locally 17 Preferred Alternative; particularly with regard to three points. I think the LOS gains are 18 marginally based on the data I’ve seen. So, I know this is important from a watershed 19 standpoint but I’m not sure that the artificial acceleration of the timeline justifies what could be 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. a unique and more safe treatment from a multimodal travel standpoint. I think there’s a limited 1 disadvantage from an automotive standpoint but I think there are extreme disadvantages going 2 from a Class Two bike path to a Class Three share the road situation and then back to a Class 3 Two bike path. That’s a dangerous maneuver for cyclists and this will invite conflict in this 4 location. 5 6 And then in line with that, I think that this is not consistent with the Transportation Element 7 and in particular regards to T-6 and T-1.19. It does not prefer multimodal; it does not prefer 8 non-automotive transportation. So yes, I hear the rest of the Commission saying that this is a 9 unique treatment but this is a unique intersection and I don’t think that a two-way, bi-10 directional, one-lane bridge that fully supported bicyclist and pedestrians would be 11 inappropriate in this location. Moving on. 12 13 Commission Action: Motion made by Commissioner Templeton, seconded by Commissioner 14 Summa; motion passed 6-1, Commissioner Riggs against. 15 1. Support Alternative #2, 16 2. Request that if more bicycle and pedestrian traffic information is available, that it be 17 included. 18 19 Approval of Minutes 20 Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 21 4. May 8, 2019 Draft PTC Meeting Minutes 22 23 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Riggs: I think we have approval of minutes and I do I have a motion to approve the May 1 8th minutes. Along time back. 2 3 MOTION 4 5 Commissioner Summa: (off mic) So moved. 6 7 Chair Riggs: Commissioner Summa so moves, second? 8 9 SECOND 10 11 Commissioner Lauing: Second. 12 13 Chair Riggs: Commissioner Lauing second. 14 15 MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY 7-0 16 Commission Action: Motion to approve meeting minutes made by Commissioner Summa, 17 seconded by Commissioner Lauing. Motion passed 7-0. 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Committee Items 2 3 Chair Riggs: I’m not sure that we have any Committee items unless you have any reports, 4 Commissioner Summa, from Ventura? 5 6 Commissioner Summa: No, because there haven’t been any new meetings. They’ve been put 7 off while Staff is working on things. 8 Commissioner Questions, Comments or Announcements 9 10 Chair Riggs: Alright Commission… ok did I hear… so we have Commissioner questions, 11 comments, announcements free for all. Commissioner Waldfogel and I believe our… the 12 Director would like to kind of do a look forward as well but go ahead, Asher [note – 13 Commissioner Waldfogel]. 14 15 Commissioner Waldfogel: Ok, thanks. I’m just curious if there’s any sort of transmittal memo or 16 assignment from Council on the RPP project timeline scope? I believe that there was an 17 assignment from Council and I’d just like to know what it is. 18 19 Mr. Jonathan Lait, Director of Planning: Yeah and actually the Chair may have some more 20 information. We had a conversation yesterday and he had a follow up with Chantel Gains who’s 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. filling in while we don’t have a Chief Transportation Official. Do you want to share on that 1 point? 2 3 Chair Riggs: Yeah so long story short is yes, we’ve been asking for this stuff and you, my 4 Commissioner… and I should thank Commissioner Summa who while I was away helped me 5 write a Chair’s memo to Council -- thank you for the help – that really asked for us to see some 6 of these transportation items. So, I thank you for that, I really appreciate that. We will be seeing 7 some transportation items and one of them there’s been some recommendations that they’ve 8 been receiving on RPP. And so, they’re going to be… it sounds like August timeline bringing 9 some stuff to us. One of which may be some recommendations in terms of how we rethink our 10 RPP, looking at holistic downtown parking I think which I think you’re interested in 11 Commissioner Waldfogel, hearing a little bit more about the rail project and I think there’s been 12 an additional Committee established that will begin meeting starting next week regarding the 13 rail project. And then I think that one of the… they’re still doing a lot of policy stuff and 14 prioritizing some of what they want to focus on strategically. So, they’re going to come and talk 15 to us about that as well. Does that answer some of your question? 16 17 Commissioner Waldfogel: Particularly but I guess we’ll get more on a rolling basis. 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: I don’t think I have a specific timeline because I mean the Interim Director is really 1 just trying to catch up and I think that we should definitely anticipant as the year proceeds. Is 2 that a good way to frame things, Jonathan? 3 4 Mr. Lait: Yeah, I mean we’re… again we’re down I think its 25 percent of our workforce in that 5 Office of Transportation and we hear the Council’s direction. And we know very clearly that the 6 Planning Commission is going to have a roll in a future dialog about RPP and a half dozen other 7 recommendations that where made as a part of the review and audit of that program. So, 8 there’s a lot of work to… that’s coming forward and we’re just needing a little bit more patience 9 to… from the Commission to pull that together so that we can have an informed discussion with 10 you. 11 12 Commissioner Waldfogel: Great, I mean my only request on that is that that be sequenced so 13 that we have time to process it. I mean I would hate for the Staff processing to take 3-months 14 and then the Commission has 3-weeks to deal with the matter, so that’s my request. 15 16 Chair Riggs: I mean just to interfere, what I ask the Interim Director to do is to bring us… what 17 she relayed to me was that there was at least 25 recommendations they were grappling with 18 from their consultant. And what I asked her to do is to bring those to us early so that we could 19 see them before there were decisions being made on those so that we had a roll in the process. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Any other questions from the… I know… I want to give the Director a chance to give a look 1 ahead. In particular, what I’ve asked him to do is roadmap some of the more complicated 2 projects that are coming out way over the next few months but also give us an update on our 3 meetings for the next couple meetings. I know we have a little bit of a wrinkle with our meeting 4 on the 26th. So, while you’re… are you ready to go Jonathan or should I… I think there were… 5 Commissioner Lauing did you have a (interrupted) 6 7 Commissioner Lauing: No, let’s stay on agenda items. I just have something that’s not related 8 to that. 9 10 Chair Riggs: Ok and Commissioner Summa did you have (interrupted) 11 12 Commissioner Summa: [unintelligible – off mic] 13 14 Chair Riggs: Ok. Whenever you’re ready. 15 16 Mr. Lait: Ok, great well so yeah, we have… we were trying to get a parcel map scheduled for the 17 Planning Commission for your June 26th. Unfortunately, the details of that didn’t come together 18 in time for us to hold that hearing. So, that item is being pulled off your June 26th meeting 19 which means we don’t have anything scheduled for your next meeting on June 26th. I know the 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair and Vice-Chair have been talking about wanting to bring in another speaker but I think 1 that may carry over until we have our next meeting in (interrupted) 2 3 Chair Riggs: If you don’t mind let’s belabor this a little bit because I know there’s been… my 4 colleagues here, you all have some pent-up frustration about wanting to serve and wanting to 5 hear things. And we just don’t have… we don’t have volume right now. So, I had an 6 informational item all slated to go on the 26th but I don’t want you to dedicate your night for a 7 15-minute item. So… and we literally… we neither have the Staff nor the projects right now and 8 if I can… I’ll say it. Jonathan, we don’t have domain over transportation right now which is why 9 I’m trying to reach out and get transportation things to come into our pipeline a little bit more 10 regularly and often. Is that a good way to put it? Is that fair? 11 12 Mr. Lait: There’s interest to engage the Commission more on transportation-related items and 13 it’s… we just need a little bit more time. And as far as the planning side of the equation, there 14 are two ways that items get to the Planning Commission. One is through a private development 15 project which a lot of them actually go to the Planning Commission and two is through policy 16 initiatives that the Council directed us to work on. And in the course of preparing those 17 projects, we engage the Planning Commission on our way to… at the outside of that project and 18 on our way onto the City Council. And so, we’ve just been really doing what we can to sustain 19 our operations at this point. And we’re hoping that in the later part of this year it’s going to be… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. your agenda is going to be a little bit fuller with some policy initiatives that we want to bring 1 forward, both in transportation and in planning; to not just fill your agenda but to get the work 2 done that needs to get done. 3 4 Commissioner Lauing: Can I just do a follow up as long as you don’t have any sharp objects next 5 to you that you’re going to throw this direction because I always ask about the second half of 6 the Housing Work Plan that was also Council assigned. And I know you’ve been working hard on 7 the Palmer Fix and some of the BMR stuff which is, in my judgment, the crucial part about the 8 housing situation here. So, eager to get on that when you can get it started. 9 10 Mr. Lait: We’ve started that actually. 11 12 Commissioner Lauing: I know. 13 14 Mr. Lait: Yeah, we started it last year and then we put it on pause for a moment when we were 15 drafting new regulations that are related to the Housing Work Programs where we changed the 16 development potential on El Camino, downtown, and Cal. Ave. So that’s caused us to now have 17 to go back and redo our proforma analysis to find out at these new development standards 18 how does that affect our Inclusionary Housing requirements. So, we ran and it had some draft 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. information on one level but now that the variables have changed, we need to go back and 1 redo that. So, we are in the process of doing that now with our consultant. 2 3 Commissioner Lauing: So that’s not something that you could slip in, in the next meeting? 4 5 Mr. Lait: No certainly not. 6 7 Commissioner Lauing: I tried. 8 9 Chair Riggs: Ok, maybe we can do our (interrupted) 10 11 Commissioner Lauing: It’s not late enough, I thought I’d trick him. 12 13 Chair Riggs: Maybe we can do our… Commissioners, let’s hear what we have... what we do have 14 for sure coming. 15 16 Vice-Chair Alcheck: [unintelligible – off mic] 17 18 Chair Riggs: Let’s see, before I go on sabbatical. 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: So, some of the items that we’re working on and one is the Palmer Fix and we’re 1 looking at the Inclusionary Housing. So, we do hope to have that before the Planning 2 Commission before the end of the year. That’s one thing that we’re having… that we’re 3 addressing. 4 5 Another is on the Housing Work Program for 2019 is the TDR Ordinance. These are looking at 6 ways to increase the use of residential floor area and density through our TDR program. Right, 7 you can use TDRs for development downtown but nobody is doing it because you get much 8 more return on a square foot of TDR for office or commercial development than you would for 9 residential. So, we’ll look at ways to see how we can incentives that and we’ll have some 10 conversations with the Commission. 11 12 We’ve previously talked to you about the EV chargers and how can we address that parking 13 challenge that we have when somebody wants to upgrade their facilities. So, we’ll be coming 14 back with an ordinance on that. 15 16 BMR, TDRs, we have work that the Council has given us recently with respect to Wireless 17 Ordinance facilities or the wireless facilities and regulations. You’re probably tracking the news 18 on that and so I think it was a month or so ago the Council gave us a year to come up with some 19 standards. We’re certainly doing what we can to come back in a sooner timeline. We certainly 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. know that the community is concerned about that and we want to come up with some 1 standards so that’s on our list as well. 2 3 And so, in addition to that, there are other things that we’re doing that the Commission doesn’t 4 see including still having to respond to SB-35. We don’t have our objective standards developed 5 yet and that’s something that we still need to do. We’re not anticipating an SB-35 project soon 6 but we may and so we want to be prepared for that when it happens. And there’s continuing to 7 monitor the action that’s taken place at the state level with respect to SB-50 and other 8 legislation that we expect to be moving through that system in the early part of next year so. 9 10 Chair Riggs: I…[unintelligible]… Castilleja, roadmap it for us. 11 12 Mr. Lait: Yeah so… oh so for Castilleja you have… that’s one of our pending development 13 applications. I won’t get into too much detail because you will be having hearings on it but 14 you’re… I believe we’re targeting the first meeting in August which is the what, the 14th? Yeah 15 and so that is going to be during the public comment period for the Environmental Impact 16 Report. So, we do expect that you’ll receive… that’s going to be the only item on that agenda 17 because we expect that there’s going to be a lot of people who want to come speak to it. After 18 that meeting, the public comment period will close and we’ll begin a series of meetings that will 19 include coming back to the Planning Commission for a review of the project which won’t be 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. apart of your August 14th discussion. But later on, in the next couple months after that, you’ll 1 have a hearing on the requested Conditionally Use Permit, the Variance, the various 2 Discretionary Entitlements, and then that will go on to the Architectural Review Board and then 3 onto City Council probably in the early part of next year. 4 5 Chair Riggs: So, when can we expect to get the EIR? 6 7 Mr. Lait: The EIR is going to be released I believe on July… about a month from now; like July 8 12th and it will be a public comment period for roughly I think 60-days. And so, the Commission 9 will have a month to look at it before the meeting. 10 11 Commissioner Lauing: Can I just ask to follow up on that? I don’t know when schools restart in 12 August. Does anyone know off (interrupted) 13 14 Chair Riggs: (off mic) That week. 15 16 Commissioner Lauing: That week? Ok so are people back form vacations because schools are 17 back? I just was concerned is the 14th to early because people will be on their vacation and they 18 won’t be able to come and comment? Ok, so that’s alright? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah, I mean just to pile onto that. I mean I think that for something 1 that’s been in the works for a couple of years, it’s a little awkward to drop an EIR with a 60-day 2 comment period on July 12th with July/August as the comment period. I mean I just think from a 3 public perspective that’s the optics of that timing are not very good. 4 5 Mr. Lait: I’d say that we’re getting feedback along those lines for the past couple of months 6 when we’ve been trying to release this. I mean it doesn’t seem like there’s any good date that is 7 available for us to release this document. 8 9 Commissioner Waldfogel: September 1 is a really good date because people are paying 10 attention in September and October. 11 12 Mr. Lait: Ok, well that’s a good time for us to have hearings then on the project. 13 14 Chair Riggs: Commissioner Summa and then Commissioner Waldfogel you had something else 15 too? Alright. 16 17 Commissioner Summa: Are you done? 18 19 Commissioner Lauing: And so, do I. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Waldfogel: [unintelligible – off mic] 2 3 Commissioner Summa: No, go ahead Commissioner. 4 5 Commissioner Waldfogel: Just one other topic and this may be something that we run as a 6 study session. I mean I’d ask about co-working, we’ve been carrying that as a possible item for a 7 couple months. We may as well just cross those out because I don’t think these items are ever 8 going to come up but we should probably run a study session on co-working and co-living and 9 just understand what’s going on in those realms. I mean there are some projects going on in 10 San Jose in co-living that are a big deal. We should understand the impact; we should 11 understand there’s some under the radar things going on in Palo Alto I think on co-living in R-1 12 neighborhoods. I mean there’s just a bunch of things bubbling up that we should understand. I 13 don’t know that we need to take a position on [unintelligible], we should understand what’s 14 going on. 15 16 Chair Riggs: I’m sorry, well we can talk offline but maybe you can help facilitate that or arrange 17 it. That sound… I mean that sounds like it’d be something the Commission 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. Commissioner Waldfogel: Oh, this is classic to toss it right back. 1 2 Chair Riggs: Yeah, ok, is there… was there something else? Anything else and I’m looking at you 3 and you jogged my memory about one thing that I was hoping that we would see again before 4 its finalized. Cubberley, are we going to see that again? 5 6 Commissioner Roohparvar: (off mic) Oh, Cubberley, that’s right. 7 8 Mr. Lait: You know I need to reacquaint myself with that. I know it went to Council recently for 9 a discussion. The EIR is going to be released (interrupted) 10 11 [note – female:] (off mic) Now [unintelligible] 12 13 Chair Riggs: I had some grey hair over that project when it came the first time. I’d love to see it 14 again. 15 16 [note - many people started talking at once off mic] 17 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Lait: Ok so yeah, I… let me get back to you on that. There’s… I would anticipate there’s 1 another pass through the Planning Commission when the Environmental Document is prepared 2 and the plan is being presented to Council. So, there’s (interrupted) 3 4 Chair Riggs: Well that’s a little too late I mean to modify alternatives. 5 6 Mr. Lait: Oh, so you [unintelligible](interrupted) 7 8 Chair Riggs: [unintelligible] 9 10 Mr. Lait: You want to be involved in the framing of alternatives for the [unintelligible] 11 (interrupted) 12 13 Chair Riggs: Well, we’ve seen it once and it’s changed a lot and I think it… before they spend… 14 do a bunch of spinning up on a Preferred Alternative. I mean for one from a design standpoint 15 was… thought that… ok, I don’t want to get into my opinion. But I would like to have a chance 16 to see before they march down the road of eliminating alternatives that this Commission might 17 feel is a little bit more attractive. 18 19 Commissioner Waldfogel: [unintelligable – off mic] 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: Ok, yeah that’s true. So just a couple of points, this went to Council last week or the… 2 you know recently and the Council did give direction on what to plan for. So that’s going to 3 reflect the project scenario that will be discussed or analyzed in the Environmental Document. 4 And again, I don’t know what the level of Environmental Review is, right? It could be an MND in 5 which case there are no alternatives that would be studied. If its an EIR then there would but 6 some of that stuff still needs to be worked out. I mean we just got the direction and we’re going 7 to be responding. I mean we by saying we the City but our Community Services Department will 8 be responding to that. 9 10 Chair Riggs: Well I would just suggest that they’ve done so much public outreach and it’s 11 supposed to be co-designed but they’ve come to us one time. I think it’s fair for us to see it 12 again before they look at alternatives in the EIR. 13 14 Mr. Lait: Again, I don’t know what the Environmental Analysis is ultimately going to be. It may 15 or may not be an Environmental Impact Report but I’ll certainly pass along the message. 16 Commissioner Summa. 17 18 Commissioner Summa: So, am I correct this body is not meeting for 2-months now? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Lait: You have a meeting scheduled for June 26th and there’s no… and it’s up to you if you 1 want to cancel it. We don’t have anything to present. There are no items scheduled for July and 2 then the next meeting is August 14th. 3 4 Commissioner Summa: Ok. So, to say the least, it’s a little disappointing to have a 2-month 5 hiatus in our work but if Staff really can’t get things to us, I understand that. 6 7 Mr. Lait: So just again, just to be clear, I know this is frustrating for the Commission and it’s 8 certainly a challenge on our side as well. There are no private development projects that are… 9 that have moved far enough along in the queue where we can present them to you. And in 10 terms of the policy work that we’re doing, again, we’re just trying to keep the lights on and 11 moving our operation again at 25 percent vacancies. We’ve got positions that we’re trying to 12 hire, we’re merging departments; becoming planning and building. I wish we had more to 13 present to you, we don’t, and we recognize that and we’re doing everything we can to get 14 things as soon as we can. 15 16 Commissioner Summa: It was not a criticism of the Planning Department; it was just a… I was 17 just expressing a sort of disappointment. With regards to the… having expert visitors come, I 18 think we need to look at a better process for that. You weren’t here for the first one but I did 19 not find that it was very productive at all. So, and one of the things at our retreat we talked 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. about was we didn’t want it to be sort of a sales pitch which I really felt that it was and it’s not 1 as if we make those kinds of decisions here. So, I think we should run… I think when one of us 2 suggests an expert come we should run it by the whole group and make sure it’s something the 3 majority of us really want to do. I just don’t think it’s… I think it’s a burden for you to have to 4 decide that on your own and I think it sort of eliminates the collaborative process that we have 5 here. So that would be my… and it doesn’t matter who it comes from, everybody should be 6 able to comment on it, and then we can make a decision more collaboratively that way I think. 7 Do we have to make a motion? 8 9 Chair Riggs: I think your opinion is noted and I did reference this, that I was bringing in a 10 transportation expert and I will continue to suggest things and I’ll do that more vocally but I 11 don’t think we’re ever going to come to a consensus on one individual. But I just heard 12 Commissioner Waldfogel give a great idea and I would totally support doing something on co-13 living and co-working. And I think that’s something that in terms of educating ourselves and our 14 community that that’s something that we should do. And so, I… if you have ideas as well, I’m 15 just trying to start a process of educating ourselves and the community. And so, we can have 16 more dialog but I don’t want to formalize a process of approving people. 17 18 Commissioner Summa: Well do any of my colleagues… would any of my colleagues prefer to 19 have a more collaborative process for approval of these? I mean I don’t know if I can make a 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. motion on that or if anybody else is interested but I brought it up before and I don’t think so 1 far, the lack of process has resulted in anything very useful for this body or the community so. 2 3 Vice-Chair Alcheck: I’ll just say in response to that (interrupted) 4 5 Chair Riggs: I think (interrupted) 6 Vice-Chair Alcheck: Oh. 7 8 Chair Riggs: Sorry, Commissioner Lauing had his light on before you. 9 10 Commissioner Lauing: Oh yeah, that was about something else though. I was just (interrupted) 11 12 Chair Riggs: Ok Commissioner Alcheck [note – Vice-Chair Alcheck] 13 14 Vice-Chair Alcheck: Yeah, look, I don’t want to get into specifics, I just… I would encourage you 15 not to assume that the majority shares your opinion on this. I think… I mean at least I can speak 16 for myself, I felt very differently than you did about the speaker we had at our retreat and his 17 roll ineffectiveness and contribution. And you took a very strong position about that and its 18 appropriateness. I think you’re taking a strong position about these (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. Commissioner Summa: I wasn’t referring to the retreat, I was referring to the (interrupted) 1 2 Vice-Chair Alcheck: I know, I’m just suggesting that the barometer that you have on the 3 “appropriateness” of these guests is not necessarily shared by everyone. And I think you should 4 maybe offline sort of test the water because I think it would be a waste of time to put a motion 5 together to suggest that the process by which I think, in particular, our Chair has reached out to 6 specialists in the industry to fill the void of time that we’ve had on this Commission in an effort 7 to create exposure to interesting things. I just… I think it’s premature to kibosh that, I think it’s 8 premature to criticize it, I think you should consider it as a work in progress and it may continue 9 to improve. And I think we have to be flexible as we attempt to expand our exposure and I 10 just… I would encourage you not to put it to a motion because I think that would be not 11 successful. 12 13 Commissioner Lauing: Can I just add a comment to that? 14 15 Chair Riggs: Commissioner Lauing. 16 17 Commissioner Lauing: Yeah so, I think it could be helpful to just, say I bring it up or I’ll bring up 18 scooters. I want some sort of presentation on scooters or Billy [note – Chair Riggs] brings that 19 up and you know I’m going to support that. But if somebody says no, that seems like it’s 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. overdone or we could wait 3-months on that, I think that kind of input would be good, and of 1 course, if we had two or three ideas then we’d like to debate sort of the batting order of those. 2 So, I think that could be helpful. I don’t think that eliminates the Chair’s prerogative to pick one 3 of them. 4 5 Vice-Chair Alcheck: It takes a lot of groundwork to coordinate these things. 6 7 Commissioner Lauing: Yeah. 8 9 Vice-Chair Alcheck: I think you’re under some false impression that there’s a line of people 10 outside that are interested in talking to us about scooters. I mean there really isn’t and to give 11 you an example, one of the individuals I reached out with from an organization that deals with 12 teacher housing was only available potentially to meet in like September and I approached her 13 in March. So, it’s actually rather difficult to set this up and I think at the retreat one of the 14 things that we suggested was that if anybody is interested… and we had that conversation 15 [unintelligible] (interrupted) 16 17 Mr. Lait: So, I’m sorry, I’m sorry for interrupting Chair and Vice-Chair. This isn’t a part of the 18 agenda where we can have this kind of discussion. We’re talking about future agenda items and 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. if you want to have a conversation about… I mean this isn’t even apart of the motion… the 1 agenda where we make motions. We’re talking about future agenda items. 2 3 Chair Riggs: It’s all bundled into one sublet here. 4 5 Vice-Chair Alcheck: I was just going to… you know I’m about to conclude. I was just going to 6 suggest that if you had an idea of something you like, not a wink, an idea, everyone is welcome 7 to sort of invest the time and energy to make that a reality. I don’t think the Chair based on the 8 experience I had in helping coordinate a potential meeting would turn anyone on this 9 Commission away from participating in helping design a learning session. And I would 10 encourage all of you to try to design one first before suggesting that it’s more simple than it is. 11 That’s all (interrupted) 12 13 Commissioner Lauing: I’m suggesting (interrupted) 14 15 Chair Riggs: I should just kill this off and please, I will be… I will coordinate with people about 16 what I’m doing. I want to echo the it is not easy. I have a lot of political capital on the line with 17 these things so I appreciate what Commissioner Alcheck [note- Vice-Chair Alcheck] said but I 18 have one more comment on this and the sentiment is understood Commissioner summa. 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 Templeton and then if it's off… if it’s something else Commissioner Lauing then 1 you. 2 3 Commissioner Lauing: Totally different. 4 5 Chair Riggs: No, no Commissioner Templeton first, please. 6 7 Commissioner Lauing: Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you, I just I wanted to suggest that a best practice in this area 10 is to get feedback when trying something new. So, if it’s something that the Chair is interested 11 in or Vice-Chair when rolling out a new program to seek feedback from people how it went and 12 what worked and we might want to improve. 13 14 Chair Riggs: Thank you, appreciate that. Commissioner Lauing. 15 16 Commissioner Lauing: Yeah, the… I hope this is of interest and very quick I’m going to pass this 17 letter around but we keep wondering if anybody is going to respond to any of our changes in 18 zoning and so on. And I just got a letter in the mail from an enterprising contractor who’s doing 19 direct mail now to encourage people to put up ADUs which I think is great. And it’s just direct 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. mail and in this case, he’s kind of shaping it towards ADU’s are becoming a major long-term 1 housing investment for homeowners with family members who require home care. That’s his 2 marketing pitch but I’m just glad that there’s interest out there and contractors are coming 3 after potential customers. So, I’ll just pass that around and I presume sometime we’ll get an 4 ADU update by the end of the year or something like that. 5 6 Mr. Lait: (off mic) If you’d like one. We just did an information report, I can send that to you, to 7 Council so I’ll send that around to the Commission. 8 9 Commissioner Lauing: Great. 10 11 Chair Riggs: Alright so I think that’s it but you were not – Mr. Director, you were not clear about 12 the meeting and… but so we have no agenda items for the 26th. We do not have a meeting on 13 June 26th so just (interrupted) 14 15 Mr. Lait: Yeah so, I think the reasonable thing to do is to cancel it. 16 17 Vice-Chair Alcheck: If he cancels it, it’s on him. If you cancel it, it’s on you. 18 19 Chair Riggs: I have… I will cancel it. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Mr. Lait: Dually noted. 2 3 Chair Riggs: I think I’ve already sent you an email to that effect. So, it is… seeing no other lights 4 on, it is 8 o’clock and we are adjourned. 5 6 Adjournment 7 8:07 pm 8 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Americans with Disability Act (ADA) 27 It is the policy of the City of Palo Alto to offer its public programs, services and meetings in a 28 manner that is readily accessible to all. Persons with disabilities who require materials in an 29 appropriate alternative format or who require auxiliary aids to access City meetings, programs, 30 or services may contact the City’s ADA Coordinator at (650) 329-2550 (voice) or by emailing 31 ada@cityofpaloalto.org. Requests for assistance or accommodations must be submitted at least 32 24 hours in advance of the meeting, program, or service. 33