The URL can be used to link to this page

Home My WebLink About2021-05-26 Planning & transportation commission Summary MinutesPage 1 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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: May 26, 2021 2 Virtual Meeting 3 6:00 PM 4 5 Call to Order / Roll Call 6 Approximately 6:02 pm 7 Chair Hechtman: Thank you. I call to order this Planning and Transportation Commission regular 8 meeting of May 26th, 2021. I welcome the public, Staff, and my fellow Commissioners. Mr. 9 Nguyen, will you roll the tape? 10 11 [An automated voice recording begins to play disclosing Zoom procedures.] 12 13 Chair Hechtman: Thank you. Mr. Nguyen, will you call the role, please? 14 15 Mr. Vinh Nguyen, Admin Associate III: Chair Hechtman? 16 17 Chair Hechtman: Present. 18 19 Mr. Nguyen: Vice-Chair Roohparvar is absent. Commissioner Alcheck? 20 21 Commissioner Alcheck: Present. 22 23 Mr. Nguyen: Commissioner Chang? 24 25 Commissioner Chang: Present. 26 27 Mr. Nguyen: Commissioner Lauing? 28 29 Commissioner Lauing: Present. 30 31 Mr. Nguyen: Commissioner Summa? 32 33 Commissioner Summa: Present. 34 35 Mr. Nguyen: Commissioner Templeton? 36 37 Commissioner Templeton: Present. 38 Page 2 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Mr. Nguyen: We have a quorum, thank you. 2 3 Chair Hechtman: Thank you. Fellow Commissioners, I am having some unstable internet issues. 4 So, if they persist, I’m going to try to turn off my camera and see if I can stay connected that 5 way. If I can’t and I’m gone for a prolonged period, since our Vice-Chair is not here tonight, I will 6 sign back in as quickly as I can, but because our Vice-Chair is not here tonight, I would suggest 7 based on purely on seniority that Commissioner Alcheck take the helm until I can reconnect. So, 8 with that, I would like to move into oral communications. 9 Oral Communications 10 The public may speak to any item not on the agenda. Three (3) minutes per speaker.1,2 11 Chair Hechtman: So, this section is for the public to speak on items that are not on tonight’s 12 agenda. Please raise your hand if you wish to speak. On the Zoom App, there is a raised hand 13 button on the bottom of your screen. If you are dialing in from a phone, please press *9. Mr. 14 Nguyen, are there any public speakers for oral communication? 15 16 Mr. Vinh Nguyen, Admin Associate III: Chair Hechtman, we currently do not have any raised 17 hands. 18 19 Chair Hechtman: Thank you. We will then move to agenda changes, additions and deletions. 20 21 Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions 22 The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management. 23 Chair Hechtman: And I do have a modification of tonight’s agenda. As you can see from the 24 agenda we have two items. We have a public hearing regarding ADUs that is scheduled to go 25 from 6:15 to 8:15 and then Item Three is the review of Board Handbook from 8:15 to 8:45. This 26 is the third time that the handbooks has been on our agenda and I did not realize that the last 27 two times that it was on, there were members of the public wanting to speak on that item. And 28 they sat through our both of those meetings until we continued them I think both after 11 29 o’clock. So, I’m not wanting to allow that to happen again, but I believe that our Item Two, the 30 ADU item, is going to take longer than 2-hours so my intention is this. After… we will start with 31 Item Number Two and we will take it till roughly 8:05; whenever we finish a discrete item. Then 32 we’ll take a break and we’ll come back at approximately 8:15 and take on the handbook item 33 and we will take public comment and complete it. And whenever we finish that, we will go back 34 into Agenda Item Two. That way we’re going to get this handbook item on when members of 35 the public are expecting it tonight. And incidentally, in this setup, we will be able to take public 36 hearing… public comment two, the ADU item, before that break. I think well before that break 37 so we won’t delay anybody who is here for that either. So, that’s the way we are going to 38 handle that item. Are there any other Commissioners that have other agenda changes, 39 additions, or deletions? Alright, I don’t see any hands. Then we will move to City official report. 40 Page 3 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. City Official Reports 1 1. Directors Report, Meeting Schedule and Assignments 2 Chair Hechtman: Ms. Tanner? 3 4 Ms. Rachael Tanner, Assistant Director: Thank you. Good evening [unintelligible – muted] 5 6 Chair Hechtman: Ms. Tanner, you’re muted. 7 8 Ms. Tanner: Thank you. I hovered over the mute button but apparently did not push it all the 9 way. Good evening, good to be here with you all this evening. Just a few updates, first looking 10 back at City Council over the last couple meetings that City Council had and land use items that 11 were at the City Council. So, last week we had on Tuesday, a meeting that was entirely about 12 land use items and so that was a new… I guess it’s been done before, but not in the recent past, 13 and perhaps a way to try to consolidate some of the land use topics for the City Council. So, 14 there were two pre-screenings for two different projects that the Council considered and gave 15 feedback to the proposers. One is on Wellesley which is a proposal for apartments within an R-16 1 Zone under the PHZ Program and the other… of course now it’s escaping me… it was a 17 different PHZ Program and I’m forgetting the address but Council also did give feedback on 18 that. Commissioner Summa, do you remember the address? 19 20 Commissioner Summa: 955 Alma. 21 22 Ms. Tanner: Thank you. 955 Alma which I also confused with 855 El Camino which is Town & 23 Country. So, those two projects did get reviewed by the City Council and again, pre-screenings 24 are not binding but do give applicants a sense of whether they would like to move forward with 25 their proposed project. 26 27 We also had the map item that was before you all and PTC unanimously recommended which is 28 181 Addison and that did get approved by City Council. And then Council discussed the appeal 29 of the RHNA allocation, whether or not the City would like to pursue an appeal of that 30 allocation from ABAG. The Council did vote to pursue that appeal and so Staff will be working to 31 file that by the deadline which I believe is July 9th. The ABAG and HCD did just recently finally 32 approve the allocation, I believe last week their board met to do that, and so that kind of began 33 the appeal timeframe. So, we will… Staff will be working on that. 34 35 And then this past Monday Council had an item that was clarifying an ordinance about the 36 extension of Planning Entitlement and Building Permits. So, you may remember when the 37 pandemic first start, there was an ordinance that was put forward to make sure that the 38 entitlements and Building Permits that were set to expire during the emergency didn’t expire. 39 Page 4 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Perhaps someone wouldn’t be able to start construction or proceed with their project because 1 of the great amount of uncertainty and so that ordinance simply clarified how to count when 2 those permits would expire. So, I can go into that in more detail if the Commission is interested, 3 but I think it’s a pretty well-written Staff report that does explain for anyone who needs to 4 know the terms of that extension and how to apply that to their project and their permit. 5 6 We also are continuing to work as a City on our Housing Element and so next Thursday I believe 7 will be our next Housing Element Working Group meeting and so we look forward to that. It’s 8 5:30 to 8:30 and that will be held via Zoom. 9 10 And then the last update that I want to make is that we do have… continue to receive and 11 process applications for safe parking. And so, you may remember that our City has two Safe 12 Parking Programs. We have a public program at the Gang Road lot which is next to the baseball 13 fields out there. The athletic center and that is a 24-hour lot that is managed by the county 14 through contracts that they have and we lease that to the county. We also have a congregation-15 based program. And so, the congregation base program is any religious congregation or 16 organization, can apply for a permit to host up to four vehicles overnight at their site and that’s 17 overnight only for those vehicles. We have one permit that has been issued and that program 18 just started last week. The permit was issued a while ago but it did take some time to get it up 19 and running. They reported they had two individuals who were using the program and two 20 others that were on the wait list and that is at the Highway Community Church on Middlefield. 21 And then we have another permit that has been applied for that is tentatively approved which 22 is for the Unitarian Church on Charleston, 505 Charleston. And we have two other applications 23 that have been received and are still under review. So, that program continues to be processed 24 by the Planning Department and we do look forward hopefully in the fall we’ll have enough 25 information from the existing programs… again, we only have one in operations right… to make 26 some changes to that legislation. That is temporary legislation that Council enacted of January 27 of last year and so the final legislation or the proposed permanent legislation would come 28 through PTC before going to Council. So, we are looking forward to that, continuing to help 29 people in our community and being able to come even better program. 30 31 So, those are the updates that I have for you today and I’m happy to take any questions that 32 the Commissioners might have. 33 34 Chair Hechtman: Questions of the Commission? I do see any hands. Are there other Staff 35 reports for us to receive? 36 37 Ms. Tanner: There are not any reports at this time. 38 39 Chair Hechtman: Then we will move into our action items and we have two of them tonight. 40 Page 5 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Action Items 1 Public Comment is Permitted. Applicants/Appellant Teams: Fifteen (15) minutes, plus three (3) minutes rebuttal. 2 All others: Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 3 4 2. PUBLIC HEARING/LEGISLATIVE: Review and Discuss Potential Ordinance Changes to 5 Palo Alto Municipal Code Chapter 18.09 to Consider Regulations to Encourage 6 Affordability for Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). Environmental Assessment: 7 Exempt from the CEQA pursuant to Public Resources Code Section 21080.17 and 8 CEQA Guidelines sections 15061(b)(3), and 15305. 9 Chair Hechtman: We’re starting, as I mentioned before, with Agenda Item Number Two. It’s a 10 public hearing/legislative review and discuss potential ordinance changes to Palo Alto Municipal 11 Code Chapter 18.09 to consider regulations to encourage affordability for accessory dwelling 12 units or ADUs. Before I ask for the Staff report, let me lay out in addition to the break, how 13 we’re… how I’m intending to handle this. So, this notwithstanding its estimate of 2-hours in our 14 agenda, there… Staff is looking for direction on 14 different items and each one of those will 15 require a motion. So, if you do the math, 14 motions at even 15-minutes for each topic, that’s 3 16 ½-hours and that is… that would be great if we could get it done that fast. So, but I want is… 17 what I want to try to organize here is a very efficient way to move through this and so the 18 organization that I’m envisioning is we will receive the general overview Staff report. We will 19 ask questions that we may have of Staff. We will take public comment. Then we will… each 20 Commissioner can have up to 2-minutes for some general overview comments. Then we will 21 move into our 14 items and we’re going to start with two items off the second list if you will 22 from the Staff report which is the term of the deed restriction and the income level. Then we 23 will come back to the eight that are listed first in the Staff report and then finish up with the last 24 four from the second group. And for each of these items, we will get a brief… a Staff slide 25 highlighting the issue. We will then have a lightning round where each person in 1-minute can 26 describe where they are on the issue. Every Commissioner can hear it, then we’ll have a second 27 lightning round on that item, another minute and then I’m hoping we’ll be ready for a motion. 28 Start working on a motion and we will repeat that as we move through each of these items. I’m 29 hoping some of them can be addressed pretty quickly and you don’t need to spend all the time 30 allotted to you. 31 32 So, I see a couple of hands-on presumably the procedures I’m trying to lay out. So, let me start 33 with Commissioner Templeton and then Commissioner Alcheck. 34 35 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to clarify which action item we’re on. 36 I thought you said we were going to hear three before two. 37 38 Page 6 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Hechtman: No, I’m sorry if I’ve misspoken. We’re going to start with two and take it until 1 about 8:05 and then we’re going (interrupted) 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: I see. 4 5 Chair Hechtman: We’re going to pause because the Item Three, the… any members of the 6 public are expecting that at 8:15. So, I wouldn’t want to start that too soon and have somebody 7 miss it thinking that… and so we’re going to take a pause, do Item Three in its entirety, and then 8 return to Item Two. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: So, how does that work? Do we continue Item Two till later in the 11 meeting? 12 13 Chair Hechtman: No, the Chair has the discretion to basically organize the agenda in this way. I 14 did… I was curious about that myself, so no motion to continue is necessary. We’ve just made 15 that adjustment to the agenda and we will literally just pause it while we take item three. 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: Ok, alright thank you for clarifying. 18 19 Ms. Tanner: Commissioners may be familiar with other bodies in other Cities that sometimes do 20 things that what’s called time certain. And so, at the time certain that the item is stated to be 21 called, other items pause, and then that item that has a time certain is called up. 22 23 Chair Hechtman: [unintelligible – no audio] Ms. Tanner. Commissioner Alcheck. 24 25 Commissioner Alcheck: I think that’s great that we’re doing that to get these people who’ve 26 been attending three meetings in a row sometimes on the dais but my question was. You ran 27 through the order really quickly, so would you just say the numbers again how you want to go 28 through the things. I want to write them down so I have them. 29 30 Chair Hechtman: Sure. If you look at the Staff report, we’re going to start with Item Number 31 One at the bottom of Packet Page 14 and then do Item Number Two which is on Packet Page 32 15. And then we’re going to go back in the Staff report to Packet Page 11 and do in order roman 33 one through roman eight which takes us from Packet Page 11 to the bottom of Packet Page 14. 34 And then we’ll finish up with Items Three, Four, Five, and Six which are… start on Packet Page 35 15 and go over to Packet Page 16. Alright, so any more questions on this process which I hope 36 will work, and see us complete both of these items tonight at a reasonable hour. Alright, seeing 37 none, may we have a Staff report. 38 39 Page 7 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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. Garrett Sauls, Associate Planner: Sure, thank you Chair and thank you, Commissioner 1 (interrupted) 2 3 Ms. Rachael Tanner, Assistant Director: Go ahead, Garrett. 4 5 Mr. Sauls: For time tonight. It’s another dense discussion on ADUs which I’m sure is kind of a 6 unique situation for many people. We don’t normally try to cram so many things into one item 7 but the idea is we’re trying to be a little bit more expeditious with some of these things to 8 hopefully capture a lot more information at one time. So, that we don’t have to have too many 9 meetings on this. 10 11 Alright, so I’m going to share my screen, and can you all see my screen? I’m sharing my 12 presentation. 13 14 Ms. Tanner: Yep, we have it. 15 16 Mr. Sauls: Ok, thank you. Alright, so like we said earlier, we’re going to be talking about 17 accessory dwelling units. Spherically, what we’re going to be talking about today are how we 18 can try to incentivize affordable accessory dwelling units which is a subset category of accessory 19 dwelling units that aren’t necessarily addressed by the State Code currently. 20 21 So, to overview what we’re going to talk about. We’re going to just give a brief understanding 22 of what junior and ADU… junior accessory dwelling units and accessory dwelling units have kind 23 of come to as of today. We’re going to talk about the City Council’s direction and potential 24 policies that we’re going to discuss today as well. 25 26 So, to capture a timeline, last fall was when the Council had passed the new… the City’s new 27 Accessory Dwelling Unit Ordinance. This was an ordinance that complied with state law as well 28 as provided additional changes and they had directed Council or they had directed PTC to 29 continue refining that policy or those policies to find better ways to encourage accessory unit 30 development. Now in February and March, the PTC had discussed the non-affordability section 31 related to what are potential ordinance changes to the Accessory Dwelling Unit Ordinance and 32 that, in addition to what we discuss tonight, is going to fill out what is going to be a future 33 ordinance we develop. In that timeline at the current understanding is that possibly June or 34 July, late June or late July, we would be returning back to the PTC to identify these items. You 35 know the standard items that we’d be adopting as our by-right ordinance regulations that 36 anyone are able to utilize as well as these regulations that are specifically targeted towards 37 benefits or incentives addressing or encouraging affordable unit development. And ideally then, 38 following from that meeting at PTC, in fall time we’d be returning back to Council with an 39 ordinance with recommendation from the PTC. 40 Page 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. 1 So, to catch the overall items what the Staff report talks about, we talk about potentially 2 allowing for reconstruction or expansion of non-conforming walls. We talk about potentially 3 removing the requirement to have an existing garage to benefit from the state’s Parking 4 Allowances which potentially could eliminate or what currently allows for is a reduction in 5 parking requirements on site. Potentially providing additional accessory dwelling units when an 6 affordable unit is being developed. Exempting basements from the floor area and maximum 7 size requirements. That the state law and our current ordinance includes potentially increasing 8 the maximum size of an ADU and a JADU. Providing potentially reduced setbacks to the current 9 standards which are right now 4-foot interior and rear side setback. Potentially exempting 10 Development Impact Fee for these units and also reviewing potential for expediting reviews in 11 addition to what are maybe some potential standards that we or potential review processes 12 that we have been looking to enact as of recent. 13 14 The following policy considerations that are also in the Staff report at the end is discussions on 15 how we want to establish a duration for these affordable units? How long we want them to be 16 affordable for? What are the income categories that we’re trying to serve? Currently, the City 17 does a fair job of trying to address its market-rate housing and Staff would be more interested 18 in understanding PTC’s interest in establishing maybe a targeted moderate or low-income 19 category for these types of units. Additionally, discussing the income verification and leasing 20 process as well as how tenants are selected as well as what are the potential program 21 administration costs for doing that? And what are potential financing options that are available 22 through the state… through state funds that we might be able to use for ourselves to help 23 administer that program, or even potentially establish partnerships with other organizations 24 that can help support financing for these units… for these types of unit development? 25 26 So, the input and the recommendation that we’re looking for from the PTC tonight is to identify 27 what incentives we want to pursue and which ones we do not want to pursue. So, similar to 28 what we had discussed in the meetings in February where deciding a policy just making an 29 action on which ones we want to… an incentive that we want to pursue and then tossing the 30 others so much to the side to say spend your time on this, not necessarily on that. And once we 31 provide… once we have received that input from the PTC, I mentioned before, we’ll be 32 returning in about June or July, late June/July, to present a potential draft ordinance on these 33 topics. 34 35 And we have additional slides that will showcase the items individually that we can continue… 36 that we can discuss. 37 38 Chair Hechtman: Thank you, Mr. Sauls. Questions of Staff by the Commission? Commissioner 39 Alcheck, your hand is up but I think it’s just still up from before. Alright, questions by any 40 Page 9 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioners before we go to public comment? I’m seeing no hands so I will opening the 1 floor… I mean open the floor for public comment. Please raise your hand if you wish to speak. 2 On the Zoom App, there’s a raise hand button on the bottom of your screen. If you are dialing 3 in from a phone, please press *9 and Mr. Nguyen, before I ask you for public speakers. I should 4 mention that while Mr. Sauls has mentioned that there are additional slides he will be showing 5 us on the individual items. Those slides provide information that’s actually already in our Staff 6 report. It’s just breaking it down on an item-by-item basis. So, we feel that the public, with 7 access to the Staff report and its attachments and this summary Staff report on the front end, 8 have the information they need to make full public comments. So, with that, Mr. Nguyen, are 9 there any public speakers for this item? 10 11 Mr. Vinh Nguyen, Admin Associate III: Yes, we do have one raised hand. Our speaker is… I’m 12 sorry, we have two raised hands. Our first speaker will be Peter followed by Keith. 13 14 Mr. Peter Baltay: Good evening, can you hear me, Vinh? 15 16 Mr. Nguyen: Yes, we can. Thank you. 17 18 Mr. Baltay: Hi, my name’s Peter Baltay. I’m a practicing architect in Palo Alto. I’d like to speak to 19 three of the items in the Staff report. Item number one, some flexibility in converting existing 20 garages to ADUs is necessary to allow reasonable functionality. I suggest to you that you 21 consider altering the daylight plane as a means of allowing this. Currently, a day light plane of 22 10-feet… starting 10-feet high at a property line up 45-feet [note – degrees] is what’s required 23 for a main house where an accessory building is only 8-feet up 45-degrees. Consider just 24 allowing a 10-foot day light plane for accessory structures is a means to allowing a roof to 25 exceed by 1 or 2-feet maximum on an existing garage structure. This will allow the interior to 26 have an 8-foot ceiling which is a reasonable and necessary thing. 27 28 Secondly, when converting an existing garage into an ADU, it’s unreasonable to require the 29 replacement parking and then later expect someone to convert that back into an ADU by 30 having a garage. On most lots in Palo Alto where a detached garage is necessary. You cannot 31 also fit covered parking. There’s just not enough width in a typical City lot. Therefore, an owner 32 would be required to build a garage or a carport, then later take out a permit to build an ADU in 33 the same place. Just duplicating the approval process and wasting construction effort. It’s 34 contrary to City policy. It disincentives ADU construction. It’s poor public policy. Zoning should 35 be independent of permit sequencing. 36 37 Thirdly, basements, you should allow basements under ADUs per all over City… current City 38 policies. Current… many houses with a basement typically have the basement edge 2-feet 4-39 inches from the property line with a 6-foot setback and a 3-foot exit stair on the side which is 40 Page 10 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. quite typical and an 8-foot concrete retaining wall which is quite necessary. You’re left with 2-1 feet 4-inches from the edge of the property line to the edge of the foundation. Having ADUs 2 having the same type of basement is approximately the same difference. There is no technical 3 reason not to do it. The City currently has a Tree Protection Ordinances, currently has civil 4 engineering and shoring requirements, currently has dewatering policies. All of these 5 adequately address this issue. There is no technical reason to prohibit basements below ADUs. 6 7 Lastly, I support the items that are mentioned in the letter referred in Appendix Boulevard from 8 the Palo Alto architect group. They’re all legitimate reasons. The issues before you tonight are 9 not strictly based on affordability of ADUs. There’s numerous other detailed items that merit 10 your and City Council concern. Thank you very much for hearing me. 11 12 Mr. Nguyen: Thank you Peter for your comments. Our next speaker is Keith and it looks like we 13 also have a new raised hand from Nigel. Nigel, sorry if I mispronounced your name there. Up 14 next is Keith. 15 16 Mr. Keith Bennett: Hello, I’m Keith Bennett. I’m with Save Palo Alto’s Ground Water. First of all, 17 I want to say that there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what the Dewatering Ordinance 18 permits and doesn’t permit. The current Dewatering Ordinance does not restrict in any way the 19 amount of water that is pumped; or the rate of the amount of the water being pumped; or in 20 fact, the amount that ground water is lowered even 1,000-feet or 2,000 away from the 21 pumping site. So, hiding behind the Dewatering Ordinance I think is misplaced. 22 23 Our comments are not related to basements per se but we are very concerned about 24 basements in areas where the basement… where construction of the basement will interact 25 with ground water and our soils are the largest component of our stormwater management 26 system in the City. Our soils absorb and transport about 80 percent of the stormwater in any 27 given year and basements impede that flow. Contrary to population belief, with a normal 28 basement, the water just doesn’t go down and under the basement because of our soil 29 structure which is a layer of sand and clay. In fact, it goes around so basements impede the flow 30 of stormwater and in addition… so they work as a dam. That raises the groundwater level in 31 surrounding areas during increasing events… increasing storm events that we would expect 32 with climate change. 33 34 And in addition, building basements without compensation reduces the stormwater storage 35 capacity of our soil. We have regulations on the surface for permeable pavements but it’s 36 doesn’t make any difference if there’s no place for the water to go. 37 38 So, we would like… we… our request is that all setbacks in areas where groundwater is a 39 concern be at least 6-feet for the edge of the underground construction. The current ordinance, 40 Page 11 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. as you know for houses, as Peter just mentioned, and in fact are to close and adding more 1 underground construction onto a lot is the wrong direction and rationalizing as it’s ADU is also 2 the wrong direction. 3 4 Again, our comments are strictly focused on areas where groundwater is an issue. It’s not an 5 issue in much of the City but it is an issue also in a large part of the City. Thank you. 6 7 Mr. Nguyen: Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Nigel. 8 9 Mr. Nigel Koh: Hi everyone, this is Nigel, a homeowner in Palo Alto. I have submitted our plans 10 to the individual review and we’ve gotten first our revisions without any… to many comments. 11 And with the second revision, we received one that said there was an issue with the ADU in 12 terms of covered parking space and we are planning to build an ADU and not a garage. And 13 there is no room on smaller lot areas within Palo Alto to build both ADUs and covered parking. 14 So, I think it is fair or good policy to have us build a garage and then remove it just because we 15 are building a new home at the same time. And so, I think that should be independent of the 16 way the permit is sequenced as Peter has brought up previously. 17 18 And we are also considering renting it out to help offset the high cost of housing. So, myself and 19 my wife and our new kid, we want to be raising our family in Palo Alto but you know we’re 20 trying to keep the cost low as well. So, we do want to ask that… to consider that, to remove the 21 requirement for covered parking for the ADUs. Thank you. 22 23 Mr. Nguyen: Thank you for joining us tonight. Chair Hechtman, that concludes public comments 24 for this item. 25 26 Chair Hechtman: Alright, thank you to our members of the public. Alright, we will now move to 27 the Commission discussion, and as I mentioned before. The way it’d like to start is to give every 28 Commissioner the opportunity to spend 2-minutes with overview comments, not directed to 29 any of the… necessarily to any of the 14 items that we will be taking up individually. But more 30 big picture and so I’ll ask if any of my fellow Commissioners are interested in doing that. If so, 31 who would like to go first? Ok, I’m not seeing any hands so I’ll lead off and see if anybody wants 32 to follow me. 33 34 So, we have a discrete issue tonight within the… it’s a subset of the ADU discussion and here, 35 what we are particularly looking at is how can we encourage property owners to do something 36 that we cannot obligate them to do and that is to provide an affordable dwelling unit. How can 37 we do that? And so that issue, really to me, begs the question if we develop an ordinance with 38 incentives to provide affordable housing units, but because of the way we do it, no one ever 39 builds one, then have we wasted our time and I think the answer to that would be yes. So, my 40 Page 12 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. focus, as I looked at all of these 14 items, is to put myself in the shoes of a property owner who 1 might be tempted to build an affordable unit, and what would it take to actually get them to do 2 it? So, those are my preliminary overview comments. Any other Commissioners want to speak 3 before we go to the individual 14 items? Commissioner Summa. 4 5 Commissioner Summa: I did have a question for Staff and I was wondering if Staff had looked at 6 other Cities? Maybe it’s too soon in the lifetime of ADUs but if other Cities had had success in 7 this quest for incentivizing affordable ADUs? 8 9 Ms. Tanner: So, I don’t know if Garrett… there you are. I know Garrett did do that. Do you want 10 to describe where you were able to look, Garrett? 11 12 Mr. Sauls: Sorry, I was talking but I was muted. Yeah, no, I’ve definitely taken a look at the 13 number of those and the task force was helpful in identifying a specific instance that is included 14 in the Staff report here related to potentially proving an additional accessory dwelling unit. The 15 City of San Diego actually has a program or it had established a program around the same time 16 that we did our ordinance last year with City Council. Where they effectively established that 17 you could, in a transit priority area, if for every unit that you provided that was an affordable 18 unit. You could get another unit on top of that to an unlimited amount and for every area that 19 was outside, that was outside of a transit priority area. You’d only get one. That so far has been 20 the only program I’ve been able to find that has mostly anything, to say the least. I’ve looked at 21 a number of others in the Bay Area and even looked at Santa Cruz. It didn’t necessarily seem 22 like there was a lot of information out there just yet as to how successful the program even was 23 in the City of San Diego. It’s so [unintelligible] that it's only a couple of months old 24 unfortunately so I couldn’t find anything that described how much interest there was on that 25 yet. 26 27 Ms. Tanner: I think just to build on that. I think there… it is a pretty new untrodden territory for 28 Cities in terms of how to have affordable ADUs and so we’re on the cutting edge. So, that’s 29 awesome, but also could sometimes be the bleeding edge. So, you try something and see if it 30 works. I think there are more programs in Cities to help make it easier to build an ADU. Either 31 providing pre-approved plans or financing programs. Some of those things which we do hope to 32 get eventually, but that’s more about increasing production, not necessarily the affordability of 33 the unit to the prospective tenant. 34 35 Commissioner Summa: Ok thank you for that. 36 37 Chair Hechtman: Any other Commissioners want to make preliminary comments before we go 38 the individual items? Alright, see no hands let’s move then to our first of the individual items 39 which is Item Number One. The length of time for the deed restriction. Mr. Sauls? 40 Page 13 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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. Sauls: So, I’m sharing my screen again right here. So, overall, the topic discussed in the Staff 2 report about the duration of affordability really gets to what Assistant Director Tanner just 3 mentioned. This is a new territory where typical affordability is thought more of the 50- to 99-4 year time span. To echo what is identified in the Staff report. What we have looked at so far, 5 which like I mentioned before was the City of San Diego and limited other communities that 6 have tried to establish an affordability aspect to their ADU development program, has really 7 looked at shortening that timeframe significantly. And what their recommendation at the time 8 was 15-years for most units. We had also spoken with the task force about this back in 9 December of last year to identify to them also that we were looking at how we can think of 10 more ideas to put into this to try to address Commissioner Hechtman or Chair Hechtman what 11 you’re kind of getting at in general. Which is we want to spend the time to make something 12 that works, not end up wasting it. So, overall, their thought and from what they had heard was 13 that the residents that they had reached out to felt more that a 5-year time period was 14 appropriate in terms of meeting affordability. I think Staff has some concerns as it relates to the 15 shortness of that period relative to the type of unit we’re trying to provide. So, what we are 16 looking from the PTC to give input on is if there’s a duration of affordability that we establish? 17 That we have a clear understanding of what we’re trying to go for and it could be even 18 something that may be tiered based off of the level of affordability. So, for low or very-low-19 income units, perhaps there may be a lower threshold or a shorter span to the length of 20 affordability that may be provided where as standard units might receive a more standardized 21 15-, 20-year or 30-year timeframe. 22 23 Chair Hechtman: Thank you. So, I think the way that we’re going to need to do this probably 24 logically is to take any Commission questions before we start our lightning round. 25 Commissioner Templeton, I see your hand is up. Do you have a question or do you want to start 26 the lightning round? 27 28 Commissioner Templeton: I just have a question. I was wondering about recently we had a 29 presentation about rents and the structure was such that the new homes for a period of 15-30 years or whatever could be regular rent and then afterward the rent where controlled more. 31 Had you thought any about a structure like that for ADUs where you’d have a faster chance of 32 recovering the cost of the ADU before going into the affordable price bracket? And if you did 33 think about it, why is this is the recommended way to go? Thank you. 34 35 Mr. Sauls: In an earlier draft of the Staff report while we were working on it, that idea was 36 considered in that maybe we could establish that in conjunction with other policies like 37 providing an additional unit. Perhaps we establish a threshold that says 15- or 30-years is what 38 needs to be achieved and you as the homeowner may be able to choose which unit you want to 39 assign to what. So, that it might be something like maybe a year or 5-years for one unit, 25- or 40 Page 14 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 29-years for the other. So that, like you suggested, you may be able to recoup that cost in a 1 shorter timeframe as most of these developments can, especially in the Bay Area, be fairly 2 expensive. Between what we’ve seen numbers from $20… $250,000 to $300,000 depending on 3 the materials, the size, and most other things as a result to it. 4 5 In the end of it, I believe… and we also have our housing planner today with us, Tim Wong, so 6 he may be able to speak to this a little bit more. From my recollection, there were some 7 complications with how that might get actualized in a program. And so more so we were 8 looking to establish maybe an easier metric of just saying here is one threshold and then here is 9 another. For a standard unit maybe a moderate income, 80 to 120 percent, has this threshold 10 and a very-low or a low-income has a lower threshold or a different one. So, it’s a little bit 11 easier to implement than trying to ensure that the homeowner is following through with 12 maintaining a certain amount of timeframe because those can be very difficult to track. It is not 13 necessarily this day… you know January 1st it’s affordable and it stopped at January 30th 14 because they had a tenant move out and they had to find somebody else. That time period kind 15 of continues and so that was a little bit more difficult to figure out that nuance. 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. 18 19 Mr. Tim Wong, Senior Housing Planner: And good (interrupted) 20 21 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Chang, question or you want to start the lightning round? 22 23 Commissioner Templeton: Chair, Chair? 24 25 Chair Hechtman: Oh, I’m sorry. 26 27 Commissioner Templeton: Sorry to interrupt. I think Mr. Wong wanted to add a comment as 28 well. 29 30 Chair Hechtman: Oh, sorry. 31 32 Mr. Wong: Apologizes. Yes, Tim Wong, Senior Planner, just to address Commissioner 33 Templeton, generally, it is administratively harder to enforce when we have suspended the 34 restrictions for X amount of years. Understanding your sentiment to try to have the 35 homeowner recapture their cash sooner than later but it is difficult to enforce to go from a 36 market-rate unit to a restricted unit later in the future. 37 38 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. 39 40 Page 15 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Chang, question? 1 2 Commissioner Chang: I had a question. So, Mr. Sauls could you expand a little bit more on how 3 Staff arrived at the recommendation for 15-year? You had mentioned that you were looking at 4 a few other Cities and I’d be curious to know specifically which Cities and just any other thing… 5 any other information you can give us about how you arrived at that number? 6 7 Mr. Sauls: Sure, so this timeframe matches or mirrors the City of Diego’s timeframe that they 8 had established which was 15-years. Ideally, it’s again this unique situation where we don’t 9 have these kinds of units as a framework to base it off of. And again, those typical affordable 10 units are a much longer timeframe which a homeowner may not be so much… so willing to 11 continue, or it just may be difficult as we’ve already discussed to recoup those costs after such 12 a long period of time. So, the idea here was to try to establish a timeframe that would provide a 13 meaningful amount of time for people to cycle in and out of these units. Rather than say give 14 say a year or two or a couple of years that may be at a moderate-income level or a very low-15 income level. The idea was really to try to create a bit of a middle ground. That it would still 16 give the City affordable units for a decent amount of time and not necessarily create one that 17 was too short or especially long. 18 19 Chair Hechtman: Any follow-up question Commissioner Chang? Alright, then let’s hear some 20 Commissioner comments on this idea of a length of time for deed restriction. As I said, I’d like 21 to have this be a lightning round where each of us spend a minute sort of getting our idea, our 22 thought out on the table, and we can have a second round to react to other Commissioners and 23 hopefully have a motion. So, Commissioners who would be willing to step up first? 24 Commissioner Lauing, thank you. 25 26 Commissioner Lauing: Thanks. You know the standard right now is 55- to 99-years for 27 inclusionary BMR and obviously affordable is the highest demand that we have to solve for in 28 the next round of RHNA and beyond. I guess my concern is we’re going everything we can to 29 get more inclusionary units at 15. If we drop below the 50 to 99, number one we’re making 30 these slightly less permanent. They’re actually more like temporary compared to 50 to 99 and 31 does that raise the question that we’re intending to go back and revisit the 50 to 99 on other 32 inclusionary? So, whatever number is picked above 15 and below say 50, that reduces the 33 amount of time that these affordable units are going to be standing basically. So, we’re actually 34 building up with this approach a problem down the line that these folks are going to be taking 35 that off because they can get more rents after X numbers of year; 10, 15, 20 whatever. So, 36 that’s a concern that there’s an inconsistency there and that we’re essentially putting up almost 37 temporary affordable housing that’s going to go away. I’m not even sure that would actually 38 qualify under the RHNA definition if that’s… that was our intent. So, those are some of the 39 concerns in my lightning round. 40 Page 16 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Hechtman: [unintelligible – no audio] Commissioner Lauing. Commissioner Summa. 2 3 Commissioner Summa: Thank you, Chair. I am… I share the same concerns that Commissioner 4 Lauing shares and really, I don’t know… I mean 15-years is a really short time. Where does the 5 person go after that? If… I mean it’s very challenging for us to find groups that want to finance 6 affordable housing so where does the person go? 15-years isn’t even a generation and does 7 that unit them get removed from our… is there a deficit now? Are we down an affordable 8 housing unit with regards for RHNA numbers? That’s problematic for me and just to… I mean 9 people tend to stay in affordable units when they get them for quite a long time because they 10 wait so long to get them. So, I… 15-years would not be suitable for me. I would me more along 11 the lines of closer to 50. Maybe there’s a sweet spot somewhere in the middle that’s below 50 12 but 55 and 99 being the normal, 15 doesn’t really do it for me. Thank you. 13 14 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Templeton. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. I’m also concerned about the timeframe. It doesn’t make 17 a lot of sense to me. It also does feel flipped as far as being able to recover the cost. We’re not 18 talking about major corporations. We’re talking about people that own a home and are trying 19 to add an additional place to live on their property. I’ll be it small, so I feel like that’s a long time 20 for a homeowner to carry the financial burden of creating these units and eventually perhaps 21 after their lifetime being able to rent it then at a higher rate. We lose the affordability so it just 22 seems a little bit backward to me and I’m happy… I invite Staff to feel free to respond. These 23 are my lightning-round comment but I’m just baffled because this feels like a lose-lose. I don’t 24 know how this helps motivate towards our goal of building the affordable unit because it’s 25 harder for the builder and harder for the renter because they have a cliff when they have to 26 move out. So, I would love to brainstorm a little bit about what we can do to make this more 27 appealing but it’s problematic. Thank you. 28 29 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Alcheck followed by Commissioner Chang. 30 31 Commissioner Alcheck: I originally organized my thoughts on the items tonight in the order the 32 Packet treated them. I’m comfortable addressing this question ahead of the eight ideas but I 33 want to make a broad point about the eight ideas and how they relate to this item; which is 34 that they are of course extremely related. And if our goal is to actually incentive wide adoption, 35 to actually succeed and encouraging the development of ADUs as our Chair eloquently said at 36 the beginning for the purposes of affordability. Then the extent in which this body supports the 37 flexibility proposed should be directly proportional with this item’s length. 38 39 Page 17 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. So, I mean, frankly, I think including 55- to 99-years in the Staff was a mistake because it sets us 1 in this perspective that this is somehow related to below-market-rate housing which it is not. 2 Below-market rate housing developers often partner with federal or state funding sources. 3 They’re in the business of developing units. It’s… the whole model of the ownership of the 4 property is related to this concept. That’s not what we’re talking about here. 5 6 What we’re talking about… first of all, to address something that Commissioner Templeton just 7 said. Any amount of ADU development in this City addresses our housing needs. Every time we 8 put a unit that could theoretically house an additional family unit, person, couple, elder. We 9 create an opportunity to address the crisis which is entirely supply-related. 10 11 Now, there’s the lofty goal of affordability. I’m sorry about this sunlight on this window but this 12 other idea of affordability is exceptional because we’re saying in addition to the expenses that 13 you’re going to undergo to build this house. We want to also encourage you to consider not just 14 renting it but also renting it for less than you get and that is a huge ask. So, I would assume 15 anyone that supported the shockingly high 55- to 99-years would be very, very encouraging of 16 the other eight items. Essentially, you might as well allow them to build a four-story multi-17 tenant dwelling because (interrupted) 18 19 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Alcheck, can I have you wrap up your first 1-minute, please? 20 21 Commissioner Alcheck: Yeah, sorry, it’s 1-minute. Anyways, so I will say this, the Packet didn’t 22 discuss a couple of the ideas that I’ve already said in the three previous meetings. Number one, 23 if we can measure the gift, for example waiving Impact Fees, then we can allow someone to 24 opt-in or opt-out. If after 5- or 7-years their incapable of continuing this relationship. They pay 25 you back what they did with interest, something like that. We are probably kidding ourselves if 26 we think that someone’s going to opt into this for I imagine anything over 10-years. 27 28 I would just add one more item here that what is the difference between the deed restriction 29 and the requirement that the unit be rented? If a homeowner builds this, rents it out for a few 30 years, then sells the home. Is the next homeowner obligated to actually rent it to a below-31 income person or could it sit vacant? I think those are questions we have to understand. 32 33 Chair Hechtman: Thank you, Commissioner Alcheck. Commissioner Chang, I see your hand but I 34 also see Ms. Tanner and let me go to her first. Ms. Tanner? 35 36 Ms. Tanner: I don’t want to interrupt the lightning round. I just want to… when it’s done I know 37 Commissioner Templeton had raised some question so whenever this finishes. 38 39 Chair Hechtman: Ok, alright, we’ll come back to you after this first round. Commissioner Chang. 40 Page 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 Commissioner Chang: I’d actually like to hear the answers because maybe I won’t have to speak 2 but I will just say that I… without the deed restrict I think this is… we may as well just… without 3 an adequate deed restriction. I would say that we can just have a conversation about ADUs, 4 right? My concern is that if we’re really talking about doing bigger ADUs that might house 5 families and like Commissioner Summa said. When people move into affordable housing, they 6 want to make their lives there. If this affordable housing is going to go away shortly, then we 7 have a problem. Where are people going to move and I’m all… I love these ideas of slightly 8 larger affordable units where a family could actually set up. You know we always talk about the 9 school teacher who needs affordable housing. Well, they want to be able to have affordable 10 housing with their family and so I’m really concerned about the… 15-years seems just really 11 short because people are going to get booted, and then what do we do? So, that’s where I 12 come out on this. I don’t know how the solve the problem though because I do understand that 13 it can be a pretty big barrier to homeowners. 14 15 Chair Hechtman: Thank you, Commissioner Chang. I think all the Commissioners except me 16 have spoken so I will say that today I can build an ADU not deed restricted and I can rent it out 17 for the market price. So, the question is what’s it going to incentive me to not do that? To not 18 maximize my income from the ADU and recognizing that if I have… if I deed-restrict it and am 19 limited to satisfying some component of affordability, I hope you can still hear me, then what it 20 means is I’m probably going to rent that for less than it’s costing me and so I’m going to lose 21 money. So, the question is, on the front end, how many years will I be willing to lose money 22 before I just say, you know what, I’m not doing that. So, I think the number should be 10-years 23 because I think that’s a long time and I think that if this works and we get 20 people building 24 deed-restricted ADUs every year, then 10-years from now we’ll have the first 20 roll out but 25 we’ll have 20 new ones coming in and we’ll always have 200 at any time. And as they roll out, of 26 course, then they are just market-rate housing which we also need which I could have built in 27 the first place. 28 29 So, I like 10-years and then we’re going to talk later about a possibility of a second or sorry, a 30 third ADU, a bonus ADU. I think that should be 10-years longer than whatever term we agree 31 on here. 32 33 Alright, so that’s our first round. Ms. Tanner, you want to respond to some questions? 34 35 Ms. Tanner: Sure. Yes, thank you, Chair. I did hear a question from Commissioner Templeton 36 about kind of the order of operations. I think as Mr. Sauls explained, putting the affordable time 37 period on the other end, let's say 10- or 15-years after development, I think does create a bit of 38 a similar challenge but different in that whomever is living there at that time would need to be 39 removed from the unit unless that person’s income qualifies for the affordable unit. And I think 40 Page 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. it could create an administrative challenge of making sure that we have appropriate flag in our 1 system that is there 10- or 15-years in the future to notify that that owner that they now must 2 rent to someone else different from who’ve they’ve been renting too. So, it may be easier to 3 have the affordable portion be in the front end for a given period of time. It clearly begins on a 4 clearly begins on a certain day and it clearly ends on a different date. 5 6 I do think just to perhaps going along with what Chair Hechtman has said. Part of this is to recall 7 that this is additional. So, again the existing ADU rules apply and are available to any property 8 owner where residential property is allowed. Residential uses are allowed. We typically see 9 single-family homes adding ADUs, although multi-family buildings are eligible to add ADUs 10 under state law as well. And so, this is talking about what incentives, which are the later items, 11 would the Commission and the City ultimately be willing to extend in exchange for a period of 12 time for which the unit is affordable? And I would say 99- or 50-year is longer than a typical 13 mortgage in the United States and may be longer than the typical homeowner ten-year and so, 14 that could be a challenging timeframe for a homeowner to commit to. And again, to actually 15 yield the affordable ADU and I certainly do agreed, whatever timeframe is used, even if it’s 99-16 years or 50. When those affordable units turn into market rate, there’s always a challenge and 17 it’s not necessarily pleasant. And so, I do want to recognize that that’s a fundamental just 18 discomfort with the program and that it isn’t forever but for a fixed time period. 19 20 Chair Hechtman: Thank you, Ms. Tanner. Alright, we’re ready for round two now. 21 Commissioners, you’ve heard each other’s preliminary thoughts. Does… do any Commissioners 22 wish to speak more or react to anything they’ve heard? Commissioner Alcheck. 23 24 Commissioner Alcheck: Thanks. I’ll just try to jump in. I have lots of thoughts on this. I didn’t get 25 a response from the Director or any of the Staff members about what happens if a new 26 homeowner decides not to rent at all. 27 28 Ms. Tanner: If… go ahead, Garrett. 29 Mr. Sauls: Sorry, I mean the deed restriction runs with the property, so they would be 30 beholding to it as well. 31 32 Commissioner Alcheck: Right, [unintelligible](interrupted) 33 34 Mr. Sauls: Any future homeowner would need to be rent that unit as an affordable unit as well. 35 36 Commissioner Alcheck: So, the homeowner is required to be a landlord or if they elect to be a 37 landlord, they have to be an affordable landlord? 38 39 Page 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. Tanner: I think we would argue the former and I think we, unfortunately, have our normal 1 City Attorney here. So, we would need to look into the legality of that. I know there are some 2 efforts underway in Cities to ensure that ADUs are actually rented or typically it’s creating a fee 3 or some type of penalty if you don’t rent it. So, it’s… so there’s a way to get around it but those 4 are also not full developed or implemented. 5 6 Commissioner Alcheck: I think these are some of the questions we need to better understand 7 because maybe being a landlord in a certain period of life makes more sense but being a 8 landlord forever doesn’t. I think what you’re asking tonight… first of all, let’s just… I want to 9 state for the whole concept which is there are a lot of people interested in ADUs. There’s 10 nobody interested in affordable ADU development right now. The only way someone gets 11 interested is if you give them something really exciting tonight. And so, my concern is that for a 12 large number of the items, one through eight, I don’t think they’re particularly appealing for the 13 sort of person who wants to build an affordable ADU. I don’t want to get into them now but 14 basements are the most expensive part of an ADU so or most expensive part of construction 15 and they add a tremendous amount of time. So, the sort of person who’s trying to create 16 something affordable isn’t likely trying to build the most expensive version of that. And so, 17 what happens when you say it’s got to last for 55-years and you’re… but you’re trying to appeal 18 to someone who wants an 1,800-square foot ADU which is the sort of ADU only the kind of 19 person who probably has no financial constraints could build? And then what sliver of the 20 population is that? 21 22 So, for me, subsidizing waiving fees, waiving permits, faster services, not necessarily creating a 23 whole slew of different looking or different sized or different placed ADUs are more 24 appropriate to this discussion. And then the question is because those don’t mean you’re living 25 with an ADU that you wouldn’t have otherwise had. Then the issue… then the discussion of the 26 affordability becomes easier because you can say look, you were granted this and we expect 27 this, like a contract, and if you can’t live up to that. Then we can maybe have a claw back. Now, 28 I don’t… I’m not necessarily saying I know exactly how that works but I just… I have some real 29 concerns that we’re working on something that won’t succeed. 30 31 And so, I second this notion of a 10-year and I would… I don’t know that it will result in 200-32 units over 10-years or what not but I would suggest that the only way… what I would suggest 33 from everyone is you all have the sense of where you’re going to be on the other issues tonight. 34 So, unless you’re really bullish on the other items, I just can’t imagine who’s going to do this. 35 Who’s going to build the 55-year deed-restricted property and what about this setup is going to 36 encourage them to do it? And I’m… I think that you have to imagine how you’re going to act on 37 the other items when you vote on this one because if you plan on being conservative. Then this 38 is the nail in the coffin to the whole thing. 39 40 Page 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. Chair Hechtman: [unintelligible – no audio] Commissioner Alcheck. Other Commissioners for a 1 second lightning round? Commissioner Summa, thank you. 2 3 Commissioner Summa: Yes, thank (interrupted) 4 5 Chair Hechtman: Followed by Commissioner… I’m sorry. 6 7 Commissioner Summa: Sorry. Not to say that 55- to 99-years, I agree that may be unrealistic for 8 homeowners opposed to affordable housing or so maybe 30-years is a sweet spot. A lot of 9 mortgages run in that direction. I just think… and I’m really concerned that hardly anybody will 10 want to take advantage of this. Even with… the incentives to me aren’t really great but I do 11 think if we’re going to do it. We have to make it a meaningful contribution to the lives of people 12 that want to live in Palo Alto and can’t afford to do that. So, I don’t want to jump ahead of the 13 process Chair I would be willing to make a motion here when you’re ready. 14 15 Chair Hechtman: I’m sorry, my internet cut out. I think you were saying you’d be willing to make 16 a motion? You’re muted now. 17 18 Commissioner Summa: Sorry, I said I didn’t want to jump ahead of the process but I’m willing to 19 make a motion when you are ready to entertain one. 20 21 Chair Hechtman: Ok, thank you. That could be very shortly. Right now, I only see Commissioner 22 Lauing’s hand up. 23 24 Commissioner Lauing: I have… can you hear me ok? 25 26 Chair Hechtman: Yes, thank you. 27 28 Commissioner Lauing: Ok, you’re as well so I’m not on screen. So, do we have any data… a 29 question to Staff I should have asked earlier. Do we have any data at all on what average rents 30 are for ADUs and I have a follow-up point on that? 31 32 Mr. Sauls: Sure, so unfortunately there’s not really a lot of databases available for this. Primarily 33 what we’re able to find is what we can see online on things like Craig’s List or Apartments.com 34 and the prices that we found have varied significantly. Any from something being $1,800 a 35 month to $4,000 a month for any size of these units which has also varied between 300 and 36 900-square feet. So (interrupted) 37 38 Commissioner Lauing: When you’re looking at these numbers, you know they’re actually 39 detached ADUs? 40 Page 22 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Mr. Sauls: From what we can gather, they appear to be, yes. The imagines aren’t always so 2 great in terms of what people upload onto the internet, but most of what we’re able to see are 3 ADUs. It’s unclear if most of them are detached, some of them may be attached. 4 5 Commissioner Lauing: I don’t think actually any of them are yet but anyway. So, the question is 6 as a couple are eluding to here, Commissioner Alcheck and Commissioner Summa. You know 7 we may not actually have a problem here. In other words, if they’re already getting very low 8 rents like $1,800. That doesn’t sound low but it is in Palo Alto. Then jumping through all of 9 these hoops to also potentially later down the line in our conversation add potentially a third 10 ADU based on just data from San Diego. Maybe that’s just too much because they’re already 11 getting a good deal on the cheap ADU which is exactly what we expected. So, I think we have to 12 keep that in mind. 13 14 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Templeton. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. As we start to think about making motions, I’m going to 17 just throw this out there that personally, I think we… this proposal from Staff has… could 18 benefit from this discussion and another bite at the apple. Because I’m not feeling very 19 confident in the Staff recommendations. I do think the discussion is really helpful and I wonder 20 if there’s any possibility that people would be interested in continuing this discussion but 21 potentially continuing this item. So, I just wanted to throw that out there. I feel like there’s 22 going to be a lot of feedback tonight and it’s going to be hard for us to necessarily come to 23 consensus on recommendations at this point. Thank you. 24 25 Chair Hechtman: Let’s see, Commissioner Lauing, I think your… is your hand still up from 26 before? 27 28 Commissioner Lauing: No. 29 30 Chair Hechtman: It’s newly up? 31 32 Commissioner Lauing: No. 33 34 Chair Hechtman: Now it’s down. 35 36 Commissioner Lauing: Yeah. 37 38 Chair Hechtman: Sorry, I’m frozen here. Commissioner Alcheck. 39 40 Page 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. Commissioner Alcheck: So, I picked up on Commissioner Summa’s motivation to make a 1 motion. Look, I think we… bullet three on the slide in front of you. No one… you haven’t… no 2 one’s even addressed that. The idea that we have a motion right now that wouldn’t even 3 touched upon bullet number three seems insensitive to the goal. Would we create a shorter 4 timeframe for deeper affordability? Yeah, why not? I mean again, I think you’re asking the most 5 affluent community in the world to out of the goodness of their house… you know, out of the 6 goodness of their hearts to spend anywhere between I guess as little as $30,000 and as much as 7 $200,000 on building something. That those who have… the individuals with less finances to 8 build this are less than fine to walk away from affordability and it’s not the affordability. It’s not 9 how much rent they get. It’s the idea that they’re going to go to this list of people who qualify, 10 that can’t housing anywhere else in Palo Alto, that those individuals may have a chance and 11 that’s going to set a new market. So, the rate that they’re getting on the market, $1,800, is low 12 but when you only can offer it to the three or four or 2,000 people on a specific list. That 13 number gets even lower because the number of people who are on that list is much lower than 14 the number people in general who’d like to find a place in Palo Alto. So, this is market-driven. If 15 you can’t get a person on the list to take the number because it’s too high, you need to keep 16 dropping. So, there’s a lot here to unpack and I agree that the City should get something if it 17 gives something. The question is, what the City is going to give an unlimited basement isn’t it. 18 And making the permit process so they don’t have to build the garage and then refile to use the 19 garage as an ADU. That’s… you should be doing that anyway. That’s not it. Those aren’t the 20 things that are going to get people to do this. I would suggest to you and I’ve suggested in the 21 last two times we’ve talked about this. That a City subsidy to encourage this would go a long 22 way and that (interrupted) 23 24 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Alcheck, we’re focused right now the term. 25 26 Commissioner Alcheck: I know (interrupted) 27 28 Chair Hechtman: The City subsidy actually is coming up later in the meeting. 29 30 Commissioner Alcheck: I acknowledge that. My point is, is that if we’re going to come together 31 here and say 15-years. Then my assumption is that collectively there’s some acknowledgment 32 that we’d have to be really bullish on how we’re going to incentive a random Palo Altan to take 33 on that deed restriction; which basically is us asking them to operate like a charity because 34 nobody builds affordable housing for profit. They’re required to do so. In the City of Palo Alto, 35 we require for-profit developers to build a certain number of units for affordable. The only 36 people that are doing it for… not for free but for a living are the non-for-profit. 37 38 And so, there are number of things that we’re going to talk about tonight that probably should 39 be allowed anyway. Like other Cities are having a much easier time allowing flexibility in the 40 Page 24 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. ADU process. There are some things we need to figure out tonight that are going to create 1 these incentives and so I guess what I’m trying to say is there’s a sliding scale here. Right now, 2 based off the… my sense of what we’re going to accomplish tonight, I don’t think 5-years is 3 going to be enough… short enough. And if… but if there was some sense from the makers of the 4 motion or the people who are going to get behind a higher number. That they’re willing to get 5 really, really bullish, then ok, fine. Then this exercise is worth the time. 6 7 So, I agree with you that those items aren’t on the discussion table but they are because to 8 completely under mind… I can’t… if I say, you know what? I’ll come together with you on 15-9 years but we don’t get any consensus on anything else. Then my first vote was useless. 10 11 Chair Hechtman: Alright, thank you, Commissioner Alcheck. Let me… I guess… Commissioner 12 Templeton asked an interesting question and let me talk about that for a minute. This was… 13 this a challenging item and that’s I think a little bit reflective in the way we tried to reorder it 14 because it’s interdependent in a lot of ways. And Commissioner Alcheck was just making 15 comments along that line too and so it’s really problematic. How do we decide term before we 16 decide the next item, income level? But if we did it the other way, you’d be asking the same 17 question. How can we decide income level before we decide term? And so, this is the quandary 18 of this and I don’t know how we solve that problem in 2-weeks or 4-weeks. I think… and so 19 that’s why we decided to do this it this way, take these over arching issues first, term and 20 income level, and then dig into the particular incentives. So, that’s… now if it’s the will of the 21 majority of the Commission to continue this, I’m willing to go along with that if we have some 22 concrete plan for how we’re not going to be in a near-identical situation whenever we do 23 reconvene. And I’m open to hearing those ideas. Commissioner Templeton. 24 25 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you, Chair. One way we could approach this perhaps is to 26 have the discussion on all the items before making a motion. So, that we can understand those 27 inter-dynamics and where we’re converging. I don’t know if it’s a great idea but that’s what 28 came to my mind and I wanted to share that. Thank you. 29 30 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Summa. 31 32 Commissioner Summa: I almost… well, I did want to ask Staff a couple things. We don’t have a 33 legal representative here tonight. Do we have people from Alta Housing here tonight? 34 35 Ms. Tanner: We do not. We do have a legal representative, it’s just that Mr. Shimizu is not the 36 land-use experts that Mr. Yang is. 37 38 Commissioner Summa: Oh ok, I’m sorry. I misunderstood that. I agree with Commissioner 39 Alcheck that there’s an awful lot to unpack here and you make a decision on one thing and it 40 Page 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. affects the others. I think we’re talking about this as an action item when perhaps because 1 there’s so many… so much to understand here and so little… so few comparable programs. 2 Really just one that Staff found to look at but Council wanted… specifically directed us to talk 3 about this issue. So, I’m happy to do that but I do feel like it’s pretty premature in a way. 4 5 But I want to hear from more of my… I have a strong feeling that if we do this. It should be a 6 meaningful contribution to affordable housing and that the same number of people would 7 probably… there may be people out there that would offer an ADU to another family on their 8 property at a lower rate anyway but that aren’t going to be happy with a deed restriction. So, I 9 know of one person that is building an ADU for that precise reason because a lot of people care 10 about that regime in Palo Alto. So, I have very mixed feelings about it but if we do go ahead 11 with this, I think it should be a at meaningful level. So, I would be willing to make a motion kind 12 of following that line of thinking. 13 14 Chair Hechtman: Alright, so I’m interested… before we have that motion, I’m interested in 15 feedback on Commissioner Templeton’s idea that maybe we go through the… we do it a little 16 differently. Instead of having 14 discrete votes one subject at a time, we talk about all 14 17 individually, and then we have a series of motions perhaps in the order that I had intended to 18 lay this out; one, two, then the first eight, and then the last four. I’m open to that idea and I’d 19 like to know what other Commissioners think about it. 20 21 Commissioner Alcheck, your hand is up. Is it from… to talk about that? 22 23 Commissioner Alcheck: Yeah, I’ll just… yeah, I’ll respond to the question. I was hoping that… I 24 like this idea. I think actually for the purposes of memory and since we have a little bit of an 25 interesting breakup tonight. I think if we went through the other… the ideas and did decide how 26 we feel about each one of them and then came back to this item. It would be easier and I would 27 suggest to you that I think some of the suggestions fall into the camp of realistically appealing 28 to the sort of person that would build this. And also, a large group of the items don’t and so 29 once we separate those two in the discussion. I think we’ll be in a position where we can say 30 you know, I don’t think anybody here would disagree with the idea that the longer 31 commitment, the better. The question is, is what we’re going to agree on here going to be 32 sufficient to justify that commitment? And that’s so… I think that that suggestion that 33 Commissioner Templeton made is good. I think we could even have a little more formality. Not 34 necessarily go back to item one at the end of 14 and then vote on it. We could do one, then 35 two, then three and the come… or roman numeral one through eight and then come back and 36 say ok, do we think we have enough to justify this kind of commitment and how do we want it 37 to work with the levels of affordability and etc.? 38 39 Page 26 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. I also agree with Commissioner Templeton sentiment that understanding how this is works in… 1 how it’s exercised I think would help. I don’t think we really appreciate how the mechanics of 2 this would work and that might need more time from Staff to develop it. 3 4 And then the last thing I would mention is I’m a little concerned with the mention of San Diego 5 and their program and their 15-years. Because their 15-years might be based on a specific set of 6 flexible options that we may not even be entertaining. And so, it’s hard to compare one to the 7 other but it would have been nice to maybe for the next time we did this to have a slide that 8 says just do they have tranches for affordability? How do they… if this is adopted, I don’t know, 9 how do they execute the deed restriction and how does it work in terms of a homeowner who 10 doesn’t comply? What happens to them? Can they opt-out and whatnot? So, I’m in favor of this 11 idea that you asked for responses of and I’d be keen to do the lightning round version to get 12 back to this point. 13 14 Chair Hechtman: Thank you, Commissioner Alcheck. Other Commissioners want to weigh in on 15 this process idea of running through the items before we vote on any of them? So, we can at 16 least get a sense of where we all are. Commissioner Lauing? 17 18 Commissioner Lauing: I think that’s fine and I appreciate the suggestion from Commissioner 19 Templeton. Part of this, as we’ve already seen, is that there… this whole thing is new for us, 20 ADUs in general. Secondly, it’s new for lots of folks and so there’s no data and we always get I 21 think appropriately frustrated when there’s no data. So, when it comes down to a lot of these, 22 it’s going to be we’re going to be speculating just on the point that you made Chair Hechtman 23 which is what would I do if I wanted to put this up and get benefits from my ADU? That’s kind 24 of market research with one person so I think it’s going to be tough with the lack of data and 25 sort of defining the problems. But anyway, of getting out of that is what Commissioner 26 Templeton is suggesting so I support it. 27 28 Chair Hechtman: Alright, thank you. So, I’m inclined to do this, and let me ask Commissioner 29 Templeton a question as the originator of the idea. Do you think it would be sufficient if, for 30 each of these items that we’d go through before voting on any, we just had a minute lightning 31 round on each; or do you think we need two rounds to discuss each and the move on? Ok, two 32 rounds. 33 34 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah, I think that we were able to come with our initial thoughts and 35 then respond to each other and that was really helpful with the item we looked at so far. That’s 36 just my opinion but it was helpful for me to hear where everyone stood and then talk it 37 through. Oh, Commissioner Hechtman [note – Chair Hechtman] may be having internet 38 troubles there. Ok. 39 40 Page 27 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Hechtman: I can’t tell you how frustrating this is to get fragments of sentences and that’s 1 why my… I keep turning on and off the video to try to capture it a little bit better. At some… 2 maybe at the break, I’ll try to relocate and sit on top of our router and see if that (interrupted) 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: And reboot, I can’t tell you how often that helps with Zoom but I 5 digress. 6 7 Chair Hechtman: Ok, well then let’s do it this way and so I’d like to… we’ll move from this length 8 of time discussion to item two, the income category. We’ll do everything I said before except 9 take a motion and vote. So, we’ll hear from… we’ll get the Staff bullet points, we’ll have two 10 lightning rounds and then we’ll move on… and hopefully get a sense of where each of us is and 11 then we’ll move on to the next item for the same process. So, can we have the Staff slide on… 12 there it is. 13 14 Ms. Tanner: Great, Garrett (interrupted) 15 16 Mr. Sauls: Sure, so this (interrupted) 17 18 Ms. Tanner: If you can go over this and then I do have something to add when you finish up the 19 slide. 20 21 Mr. Sauls: Sure [unintelligible], so this is fairly straightforward. Primarily we would want to 22 understand PTC’s interest and appetite for directing or organizing the category that we’re trying 23 to achieve in terms of our income levels with this program. 24 25 Right now, we currently meet our market rates fairly well. It’s really the moderate to low-26 income target areas that we are currently not doing… not performing well. And I have a table 27 that I can show you at the end of this, but overall, we’re wanting to understand if PTC has a 28 preference for directing these units to satisfy the moderate-income categories or target 29 specifically any sort of low-income category and whether that is of value in terms of how we 30 establish this program or not. 31 32 So, before Assistant Director Tanner, if you want to go ahead, I’ll move down to the slide that I 33 was thinking to share. 34 35 Ms. Tanner: Great and the slide that Garrett’s going to show, shows how we’re doing right now 36 in our current RHNA cycle with the production at the different income levels. So, with very-low, 37 low, moderate, and then above moderate. And then the percentages on the right are the 38 percentage complete of the assigned RHNA allocation. So, you can see in above moderate or in 39 moderate we’re at 9 percent and in low-income, we’re about 15 percent. 40 Page 28 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 The information that I wanted to add I think might help with the conversation and I want to 2 thank Tim Wong for sharing it with us. It’s the income table that shows the rents with 3 associated incomes and so our locate Palo Alto housing table has not been updated. So, Tim 4 was able to located the San Jose table. It would be pretty similar in that was have the same 5 overall our county has the same area median income and that comes down from HUD, the 6 Department of Housing and Urban Development, federally. And so, the AMI is from the federal 7 level and then down to the Cities. So, I think you can see my screen, it’s a wonderful, and I 8 mean this is in the best way, government-created table. So, it’s kind of hard to read and what 9 you’ll see here is the kind of the apartment along the top. So, the efficiency apartment, a 10 studio, 1-bedroom, 2-bedroom, 3-bedroom, 4-bedroom, and then in this center column or the 11 most right column on the screen is the income level of that unit. So, 100… if someone is at 120 12 percent of Area Median Income, which you may recall 80 to 120 for our category is the above… 13 the moderate group, sorry. The efficiency rent limit is, for example, $3,177 a month, and if you 14 go down to let’s say 80 percent, and if it were let's say a 2-bedroom ADU or apartment. The 15 rent limit is $2,724. So, again, the person’s income is decreasing and so the rent amount is 16 decreasing. That’s why even though it’s a 2-bedroom, it’s less than the efficiency of the 120. So, 17 could give you a sense of what those limitations might be on those theoretical affordable ADUs 18 at the different levels, just to try to get a little bit of perspective because we don’t have a lot of 19 data on how much the rents actually area in existing ADUs. But we can think about what the 20 limits would be under the program that could be established. So, I can send this to you all by 21 email so you’ll have it and then also we can make sure that it’s added to the post on our 22 website for this Staff report and this item. 23 24 Chair Hechtman: Alright, thank you, Ms. Tanner. So, let's have… so we have heard from Staff. 25 Are there questions of Staff on this discrete segment? I see Commissioner Templeton’s hand 26 up. Question or lightning round? 27 28 Commissioner Templeton: I do have a question. Yes, thank you, Chair. The slide that we had up 29 before the HUD one had percentages of levels of housing. Can you remind me, I believe you 30 said earlier that we don’t know what portion of any of these levels is represented by ADUs? Is 31 that correct? 32 33 Mr. Sauls: So currently, they would fall underneath the above moderate or the market category 34 because we don’t have a program that establishes anything specifically for moderate or low-35 income. 36 37 Commissioner Templeton: Well, didn’t somebody just say that the rents were like $1,800. Was 38 that you? 39 40 Page 29 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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. Sauls: Yes (interrupted) 1 2 Ms. Tanner: Thank could be the real-world rent that someone is paying, but that doesn’t 3 necessarily dictate where it falls in RHNA. So, RHNA doesn’t say what are the actual rents that a 4 unit is charging and divided up. It says is this unit deed-restricted to be affordable or not? Then 5 it gets to go into one of the categories. If it's not deed restricted and it’s not an affordable unit, 6 then it’s assumed to be market rate. Even if that market rate is lower than the average rate. 7 Does that make sense? 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: Yes, it does. So, by implementing a deed restriction program on 10 ADUs which are already by their nature very affordable. We will automatically move numbers 11 from this section to or from above moderate to any of the other categories. Is that what you’re 12 saying? 13 14 Ms. Tanner: That is correct. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: I see. Ok, thank you. 17 18 Chair Hechtman: Alright, let’s have a lightning round on this income category. Who would be 19 willing to speak first? Ok, thank you, Commissioner Chang. 20 21 Commissioner Chang: Thanks. I think it’s really attractive if we really can target the 50 to 80 22 percent AMI. I’ve always wondered why we consider 120 percent of AMI to be low income 23 when it’s market, right? I mean it… more than 50 percent of people can do it, then it’s market. 24 So, I think it’s a very attractive idea. That’s my comment. 25 26 Chair Hechtman: Other Commissioners for the 1-minute lightning round? Commissioner 27 Templeton. 28 29 Commissioner Templeton: Sorry, I’ve got another clarification question because Commissioner 30 Chang just asked a really good question. Can you clarify… can Staff clarify why we think 80 to 31 120 percent of AMI would be affordable housing in Palo Alto? Does that have something to do 32 with the HUD numbers being county-wide or? 33 34 Ms. Tanner: So, the… sorry, continue. 35 36 Commissioner Templeton: Nope, go for it. Thank you. 37 38 Ms. Tanner: So, I think it’s important to separate the Area Median income from the housing 39 market. So, what HUD does is calculate what is the Area Median Income. Just because an Area 40 Page 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. Median Income, for example in Santa Clara County for a household of four is $151,000 roughly 1 a year. That’s a fairly high income in most United States and even in quite frankly, in most of 2 California. However, a household’s ability to pay their rent depends on what the housing 3 market prices are. So, the housing market prices in the Bay Area are very, very high. So, even a 4 high-income earning household may be low income when it comes to being able to afford the 5 market rents that they are facing. So, you might recall from previous conversations, if a 6 household is spending more than 30 percent of their income on their household… housing cost. 7 Then they are cost burden and their housing that they have is not affordable to that household. 8 So, I hope that helps to understand why 120 percent of Area Median Income, that household 9 still could have a hard time competing and paying a reasonable amount of their income for rent 10 in the Bay Area and in Palo Alto. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you so much, Ms. Tanner. That’s very helpful. 13 14 Chair Hechtman: Alright, so I’m seeing Commissioner Alcheck, followed by Commissioner 15 Summa, then Commissioner Lauing. Lightening round, Commissioner Alcheck. 16 17 Commissioner Alcheck: I mean I think that this is a common… this particular knowledge about 18 how the 120 percent factors in I think is a really important thing for Commissioners to 19 understand. The big takeaway here is that 126 average thousands is the median income in 20 Santa Clara for a four-person household. And if you made 120 percent of that, you’d be, I don’t 21 know, let’s say, $150,000 and there’s no household making $150,000 that could afford to live in 22 Palo Alto. It just doesn’t work and it’s certainly not to buy, right? And so, I like to use a different 23 number which is the starting salaries for teachers. It’s very easily assessable. I can send that 24 [unintelligible] to any of you if you’d like. Palo Alto Unified starting teacher salary is $67,000. I 25 think what we should be asking ourselves is do we want to be the kind of town where a local 26 teacher can live here when they're just starting their career, or do we need to them commute 27 from Hercules? And then the question becomes from affordability standpoint is, if you make 28 $70,000 a year, what is the determination that you’re housing is unaffordable? Well, we… that’s 29 on… that discussion is in our packet, right? I think… maybe Staff can help me find the page. It 30 has to do with the degree to which something is unaffordable as how much of a percentage of 31 your income you’re required (interrupted) 32 33 Ms. Tanner: 30 percent, 30 percent or… if it’s higher than 30 percent it’s unaffordable. 34 35 Commissioner Alcheck: Right, so we’re really trying… that’s who we’re talking about and you 36 have to qualify and so would it be great if we could provide housing for individuals who meet 37 the criteria of very low, yes. Those aren’t the individuals employed in the Unified School District 38 but so I’m not suggesting that we only consider teacher housing. Or but what I’m trying to 39 suggest is it’s a distraction to think of it as 120 percent is somehow like these people are doing 40 Page 31 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. fine. I think the bigger question is… here’s my advice which is that if it’s good enough for the 1 City, it should be good enough for us. So, if the City operates within the 80 to 120 percent AMI, 2 I think we should apply the same standards. Not just because it makes sense, but because it’s 3 going to be easier for the typical resident to identify the salary that they’re assisting. It’s going 4 to be very easy to say look when you are helping somebody… when you’re looking at someone 5 between 80 and 120 percent AMI. You’re looking at somebody like a first-year teacher and I 6 think that that would be a selling point for the program. 7 8 And again, I think if you’re talking about trying to create housing and ADUs in R-1 from just very 9 generous residents. It’s going to be a bigger sell to say oh well, we actually really want this just 10 targeting 60 to 80 or even lower. I think that’s complicate so for those reasons I would support 11 the first paragraph of item two on Packet Page 15. 12 13 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Summa followed by Commissioner Lauing. 14 15 Commissioner Summa: First, I am comfortable with 80 AMI for the high end. I think what… I 16 don’t think it's just teachers. I think it’s anybody that works in Palo Alto. It could be janitors, it 17 could be bus boys. I mean for me it’s not just teachers and even though I also care about that. 18 But I was wanted to ask Staff why on the other slide, you don’t need to go back to it, but you 19 recommended 50 to 80 percent instead of 30 to 80 percent which more consistent with kind of 20 the range for BMR housing. BMR is typically 30 to 60 but I think a lot of people think 80 is 21 appropriate here too. 22 23 Ms. Tanner: I think we align our recommendations with the BMR program which is I believe the 24 80 to 120 and so typically the very-low-income and then there’s extremely low income, which 25 in RHNA is wrapped into the very low-income numbers, are served by 100 percent affordable 26 housing which I believe did indicate. I believe the current BMR program is set at the 80 to 120 27 range. Tim, did you want to add to that? 28 29 Mr. Wong: Yeah, just to clarify a little bit more. Yes, our BMR ownership requirements are 80 to 30 120, and when we did have BMR rentals they were lower though. They were in the 60 to… 50… 31 60… sorry, it’s been a while; 60 to 80 range but for rental it was lower, but 80 to 120 32 (interrupted) 33 34 Ms. Tanner: Right, so I think we did align with that and so we didn’t push lower because again 35 those are typically units that are provided in 100 percent affordable housing. Again, doesn’t 36 mean the Commission can’t choose that but we also I think had in mind, our typical applicant 37 which is a homeowner, not a larger multi-family building that’s adding ADUs. So again, trying to 38 think about how that might be administered or again how they would recover some of their 39 investment in the ADU and have that be sustained. 40 Page 32 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Summa: Ok, I guess I was thinking of the larger BMR housing projects which was 2 typically 30 to 60 AMI. I… if my colleagues are comfortable with 50 to 80, I guess I would go 3 along with that. I sort of think it leaves out those very low people that we’re also trying to 4 house but maybe we think that’s not realistic for this situation. But that’s where… but need is 5 very great there so I’m tending a little bit more towards that depending on what the comfort 6 level is with my colleagues. 7 8 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Lauing. 9 10 Commissioner Lauing: Yes, thanks. I would actually disagree with Commissioner Alcheck’s 11 comments, starting with this table that’s in front of us where it shows that the major problem is 12 moderate on down. Not with above moderate or all which we’ve already almost hit in a pretty 13 bad cycle. And when you look at the goals for the RHNA cycle, 57 percent is what I call truly 14 affordable so that’s where we need to emphasize. Over 100 percent for this use I don’t think 15 makes any sense at all and I could be comfortable with 80. It’s specifically for this use is what 16 we’re discussing and I think the use case was sited as if it was the core basic metric of one 17 teacher with a starting salary in his or her first year. I don’t think that’s the right use case at all. 18 That’s not realistic that someone can live in Palo Alto their first year out of college. It’s just not 19 but if two teachers moved in together, they made almost $150,000, then they could. So, it’s just 20 the wrong use case to be making a global decision like this, but I think we actually have to 21 emphasize in all of our affordable housing, but we’re talking about this tonight, this under 80 22 percent is really difficult to make happen and it’s really what we want for mechanics and 23 gardeners and all kinds of folks. So, that’s where I’m at. 24 25 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Chang. 26 27 Commissioner Chang: So, this will be my second time. I’m not sure that Commissioner 28 Templeton spoke once on this already so I’m happy to wait. 29 30 Chair Hechtman: Thank you for reminding me. Commissioner Templeton and then I will make 31 my initial remarks. Commissioner Templeton. 32 33 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you so much Chair and Commissioner Chang for your 34 thoughtfulness. I read this table as moderate as having the highest level of need and while we 35 do also need low and very low-income housing. I feel like what we have heard from our Staff 36 and our affordable housing developers is that that has produced a slightly different way. I do 37 feel that moderate-income housing mirrors the City’s BMR program. It does seem to be the 38 most realistic in terms of what we can expect individual homeowners to build. While I do agree 39 there are probably a few people in the City who could build and sustain low and very low-40 Page 33 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. income housing on their ADU project. I find it very unrealistic that that would be the case for 1 most homeowners. So, if our goal is to encourage people, the moderate-income housing seems 2 to be the area of highest need and the most likely to get built-in this program. So, that’s the 3 direction that I’m leaning. Thank you very much. 4 5 Chair Hechtman: Thank you, Commissioner Templeton. I share those sentiments. To my 6 thinking, when you look at this table it really tells the tale. We are not developing and haven’t 7 in the last… in the first 5- or 6-years our moderates. That’s the most lagging number. I don’t 8 believe that individual homeowners faced with building an ADU which they can rent at market, 9 so that’s part of the 92 percent; or taking a deed restriction, getting some concessions, and 10 renting it for the kinds of rents that you can charge if you’re limited to very low or low. I don’t 11 think that’s realistic. I don’t think anybody will do that and I think the market has shown us that 12 people are not generally doing that. That the way that those very low and low are getting filled 13 is with these not-for-profit builders that are infilling that. So, I think we have this missing middle 14 of moderate, and if we could move that 9 percent up appreciably with this tool, I think that 15 would be great and so I’d be supportive of setting the income category for these deed-16 restricted affordable units at the moderate level. Commissioner Chang, you’re up for round 17 two. 18 19 Commissioner Chang: So, just a clarifying question. The moderate is… before I make my 20 comment. Moderate would be 80 to 120, is that what we’re saying? 21 22 Mr. Sauls: Correct. 23 24 Commissioner Chang: Ok, so my comment is this. So, I’m looking at the table on Packet Page 10, 25 at the top of Packet Page 10 and I’m trying to do my own calculations to generate the table 26 from San Jose. But essentially, if you look at one person and I think that the example that Mr… 27 that Commissioner Alcheck gave is a little bit misleading because a teacher making $67,000 28 would qualify in the low-income category on this table. And what I worry about is all… this 29 housing getting snatched up by people who… we’re not addressing the low-income folks at all 30 either or hardly addressing it with the table that’s on the screen. And if you look at say a 31 median income individual with $106,000 and 30 percent of that would be what? 30… I can’t do 32 math right now while also talking. 33 34 Ms. Tanner: Commissioner, what are you trying to figure out? 35 36 Commissioner Chang: So, the rent for that person would be around $2,600 for a studio, right? 37 That seems like (interrupted) 38 39 Ms. Tanner: For what the income group? Sorry, what’s the percentage? 40 Page 34 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: For a median at $106,000. 2 3 Ms. Tanner: So yeah, so someone’s at the area… is at the area median income, so at 100 4 percent Area Median Income. 5 6 Commissioner Chang: Right, at 100 percent Area Median Income for a studio, you can charge 7 $2,600 a month-ish (interrupted) 8 9 Ms. Tanner: Right, yes. 10 11 Commissioner Chang: Approximately and so based on the information that we hear earlier. 12 That’s what people are currently charging for their ADUs. That seems plenty reasonable to me. 13 In other words, we need to work on, according to this table, moderate, low and very low pretty 14 badly. So, I would cap it more around that moderate range so that we’re… and it seems looking 15 at the numbers on the table and doing my quick back-of-the-envelope calculation. That meets 16 what we’re charging what is out there on Craig’s List right now for ADUs. So, that’s… I think I 17 stick to that range, moderate or lower. I mean like 100 percent of AMI is kind of what I’m saying 18 based on this table. 19 20 Chair Hechtman: Thank you, Commissioner Chang. Commissioner Alcheck, you’re next. You’re 21 muted. 22 23 Commissioner Alcheck: So, the $126,000 represents a household and so the number I cited 24 earlier and I sent the PDF to Assistant Director Tanner so she could share it with you which is 25 the compensation for teachers from 1- to 30-years in our Palo Alto Unified. I think… look, this is 26 a really good example of our Commission’s split, and what I would suggest to you is, is if you 27 want to allow these individuals the perks considered tonight for developing an affordable 28 housing unit. And you also want to limit to the lowest amount, lowest tranche, then you have 29 to remember that you’re creating an incentive for people who maybe not consider this option 30 at all. And I think what I’d like to say is that two teachers in Palo Alto who make $150,000 31 together are really incentive not to live here because of the cost of housing. 32 33 Now when we’re talking about the ADUs, we’re talking about potentially things as small as 500-34 square feet, 400-square feet, and as large as 900. Maybe after today, a little larger, 1,200. 35 These aren’t really super large units. I think that using the 2014 to 2020 RHNA number and 36 saying we’ve done a good job is a mistake. We’re about to see our numbers explode and 37 everything that… every story in every paper is about how young people can’t afford to live here. 38 The people we need to rely on can’t afford to live here. Our caretakers, our service people, our 39 teachers, our police. No one can afford to live and this doesn’t… Palo Alto isn’t going to solve 40 Page 35 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. that problem for all its employees in the ADU. But this is one of the 1,000 levers that needs to 1 be pulled all over the Bay Area to increase supply and so I think that this is sort of an irrelevant 2 conversation. We use the system that’s already in place. 3 4 We… by the way it’s… there’s missing component here. You don’t just go ok, you make… you 5 qualify to 80 to 120 percent so I get to charge you X. No, not unless there’s somebody willing to 6 pay that on the list of qualified, pre-approved people that you have to spend $500 to $700 to 7 pre-qualify. So, there’s this process that… we’ve all heard the story about how Stanford homes 8 are cheaper because the market for Stanford homes is smaller. Fewer people can bid on that 9 home, as a result, the prices are lower. They are not pushed down mechanically. They’re 10 pushed down as a result of demand and so that’s not to say a Stanford home can’t sell for a lot 11 of money if somebody really starts a bidding war and they go crazy. But on average, they’re 12 lower because there’s less competition and that’s what we’re talking about here. We’re talking 13 about saying this is reserved. This whole pocket of stuff is reserved for these individuals and so 14 the results… I think it’s wrong to look at the table and go oh, the rents are going to be this 15 which is that’s the average we’re getting. No, I think the rents would be significantly lower 16 because you would have to find someone willing and most people make that decision. How 17 much of my income do I want to part ways with just so that my commute is lower? Just so that I 18 can manage my standard of living. 19 20 And I want to make that bigger point which is this is a story that the teachers are talking about 21 constantly. It’s the hardest part for our local schools and a lot of our local institutions. 22 Attracting talent to this area is difficult because of the commute and so I use that as reference 23 because I understand Palo Alto’s priorities have a lot to do with children and school. So again, I 24 think you have to paint a picture. Who are you going to… who are we trying to get this 25 homeowner to rent to and who do you… who’s the example? Who’s the poster child and that’s 26 why I would suggest that we don’t spend too much time with this because it’s so minutiae I 27 think. I think it’s… if you’re going to save just very low income, then we’re going to have just as 28 many very-low-income units built as we had in the last 10-years which is hardly any because no 29 is in the business of essentially operating a charity. That’s what it takes. 30 31 Chair Hechtman: Thank you, Commissioner Alcheck. So, we are looking for second-round 32 comments on this discrete issue of what you think the appropriate income category is for these 33 incentivized, deed-restricted ADUs. Commissioner Summa. 34 35 Commissioner Summa: Just a quick question for Staff, if you could remind me where 50 percent 36 AMI comes in. Is that low or very low? 37 38 Ms. Tanner: I’ll ask if Tim Wong can ask that or Garrett if you know the answer but Tim 39 (interrupted) 40 Page 36 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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. Sauls: I believe that it comes into low and Tim can confirm that. 2 3 Mr. Wong: It’s right at that border but it is technically very low income. Very low income is 4 defined as 30 to 50 and low income is 51 to 80. 5 6 Commissioner Summa: Ok so I would… I’ll just reiterate that I… just an observation that one of 7 the reasons Stanford owned homes of cheaper is also because they’re not purchasing the land. 8 They have a long-term lease hold so that’s an issue there. 9 10 I am still comfortable at the 50 to 80. I also observe that once you get up… nobody’s going to… 11 who’s interested in this idea is going to do it because unless they’re really interested in helping 12 out and they see it as a social good. So, I think that when you get up to 1… over 100, the cost of 13 the unit is discounted such a tiny way when you get 100 and 120. And I think people forget that 14 there is still value… there’s still rent coming in at 50 to 80 percent AMI. So, I think we should 15 keep that in mind and I’m not sure that any… I’m not sure this will be very successful at all, to 16 be honest, and like I said earlier. I do think people could just decide without a deed restriction 17 to charge less than market rate because they want to and or they might have some sort of 18 relation or know the person from their work or in some way. 19 20 But if we are going to do it with the deed restriction, I think it should be at a meaningful income 21 level that we’re trying to address and so that would top at 80 percent AMI for me. Thank you. 22 23 Chair Hechtman: Thank you. Other second-round comments before we move to the next topic? 24 Alright, I’m not seeing any hands so… oh, I am seeing a hand. There we go. 25 26 Commissioner Templeton: Chair? 27 28 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Templeton. 29 30 Commissioner Templeton: Chair, sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to remind you of the time. Are 31 we still taking a break and switching topics? Can you remind us of the process, please? Thank 32 you. 33 34 Chair Hechtman: Yeah, so I was wanting to wait until approximately 8:05 because our next… I 35 wanted to start our next item at 8:15 rather than early. And so, I was thinking we will at least 36 get the Staff report and questions out of the way on this next item. Then we’ll take our break 37 till 8:15, we will pause this Agenda Item Two, take Agenda Item Three, complete it and come 38 back to Agenda Item Three. Alright? So, if we can have the Staff slide for this item is roman one, 39 the expanded reconstruction of non-conforming structures. 40 Page 37 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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. Sauls: Ok, thank you. So, to cap this whole conversation related to this topic, it’s really 2 important to understand what the current standard is. So, the current standard for any sort of 3 non-conforming walls, which are typically walls that are closer, taller, or closer in terms of 4 setbacks requirements, that wouldn’t typically be allowed; or taller than what would typically 5 be allowed within those spaces and sometimes it can be both of those. So, the current 6 standards that we have in our code are to simply think of those buildings as shrink-wrapped in 7 the sense that they aren’t allowed expand. So, if you have a 1950’s carriage house garage, that 8 structure may be limited to a very small height and would, therefore, if there’s current… if it’s 9 currently within say a 4-foot setback. The areas within those setbacks aren’t allowed by be 10 expanded at all. Otherwise, it would require the structure to be relocated to a conforming 11 location in order to be built to the height that would be otherwise allowed by the state and the 12 City Code. The policy proposal that was worked with the task letter number five and proposed 13 Staff was that we would be able to allow some minor increase into these non-conforming 14 spaces to determine them to be essentially or roughly the same type of structure. And so, the 15 proposal was to allow for up to a foot in height addition as well as up to 6-inches everywhere 16 else, to be able to expand in order to provide for a… in the result of a conversion of a garage for 17 example. A non-conforming location to an ADU, it would allow for a minor expansion that 18 would still result in substantially the same type of structure. So, that was on policy proposal. 19 20 A potential proposal also would be to establish a pre-determined envelope that applicants can 21 expand to. So, the Staff report identifies one example as being allowing developers or allowing 22 homeowners to develop an ADU up to 10-feet or 12-feet with a specific type of roof pitch or a 23 specific type of day light plane within the area from 0- to 4-feet in terms of your interior or rear 24 yard setback. Again, when you’re converting a structure that is otherwise non-conforming. 25 26 So, what we’re looking to receive input on for the PTC is how open we all are… how open you 27 all are on these kinds of policies and increasing what would be considered a non-conforming 28 structure where it’s counter to the standard process which is to eventually eliminate those at 29 some point. Those non-conforming situations or conditions over time would be eliminated at 30 some point. 31 32 Chair Hechtman: Alright, thank you, Mr. Sauls. So, we’re going to take questions now. I’d like to 33 have any questions come out of Staff and then we’ll take our break. Commissioner Chang. 34 35 Commissioner Chang: So, Mr. Sauls, a question for you about why one of the… why the 36 proposal is 6-inches and… 6-inches for out and 12-inches higher. Is that to allow for insulation 37 or something else that is typically got… why those numbers? 38 39 Page 38 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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. Sauls: That’s correct. It is ideal to provide a better opportunity for providing insulation and 1 squeezing what is often time the cases that you have this again, shrink wrap concept externally. 2 But as a result, you also have that internally so you aren’t able to really budge or move those 3 spaces much with when you try to develop something that wasn’t intended to be used as 4 habitable space into habitable space. And so, there are different requirements for say fire or to 5 meet… sorry, fire and building life safety requirements. And insulation can often times be one 6 of those things that adds some thickness to it which means interior-wise, it’s going to shrink 7 basically is what’s going to happen. 8 9 So, the idea for the… sorry, the idea for the 6-inches was to again, try to provide some 10 additional dimension for people to convert these structures. And not necessarily create 11 something that is going to be overly large relative to the existing structure and try to provide 12 flexibility while reducing overall impacts. 13 14 Commissioner Chang: Follow-up on that, so then was the intention, is that only in the event of a 15 reconstruction then because are you saying that for a complete demolition. The Staff 16 recommendation would still be just to put the wall back up in the same place but allow it to 17 further not… allow it to push even further out into a setback? 18 19 Mr. Sauls: The ordinance currently allows for reconstruction effectively but it would be 20 reconstruction to the same extent as the non-conforming situation exists. That’s how the 21 current ordinance is written. This would allow for potential reconstruction and expansion to a 22 minor degree. 23 24 Ms. Tanner: And perhaps just to add to that, I think part of what we understand from the 25 architects who’ve been outreached is that demolishing a structure and starting over is typically 26 probably more cost-effective. Because you’re taking structures that were not intended when 27 they were constructed for human habitation. A garage, a shed, what have you and so there’s a 28 lot of changes that need to happen to that structure to make it meet, as Garrett said, our life 29 safety codes and just modern standards of what one would expect in a housing unit. So, to 30 cram that into or try to fit that into and retrofit a building is a lot of work, but if they can say ok 31 it can go up a foot. Well, that might give some room for interior spaces again, and as Garrett 32 kind of said, insulation or other types of things that’s the 6-inches on the side. 33 34 So, to give that flexibility where currently, as Garrett mentioned, as a City we tend to say we 35 want your non-conforming use to go away eventually. We don’t want it to continue to persist in 36 the same location and so this perhaps being an incentive to try to again ultimately lead to the 37 affordability. But of course, the PTC could say that they would like to see this just be a general 38 part of our ADU legislation, regardless of affordability. 39 40 Page 39 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Hechtman: Ok, Commissioner Lauing, we’re asking questions of Staff. 1 2 Commissioner Lauing: Right. The question to Staff is if we were to allow this along the lines you 3 described and to be specifically codified. What would be the minimum setback at that point? If I 4 calculate it right, is it 3 ½-feet or can it get even more limited than that? 5 6 Mr. Sauls: One thing that we’ll discuss later, it could be lower. It also depends on what the 7 existing structure is. So many times, you have a garage that may be wedged right into the very 8 corner of a property. Either in the back, right or left corner of the property and often times as 9 we’ve seen in the last 4-years since our new ordinance was taken into effect. That’s become the 10 dominant pattern for people to develop these units is a garage conversion, mostly detached. 11 12 Commissioner Lauing: Ok. 13 14 Chair Hechtman: Alright, I’m not seeing any other questions of… I am seeing a question of Staff, 15 Commissioner Summa? 16 17 Commissioner Summa: Yes, thank you. So, if demolitions and a new conforming structure is 18 preferable and is often less expensive. Why wouldn’t we want to incentivize that instead of… is 19 it because a historic look or something of the garage or? 20 21 Ms. Tanner: I think that Commissioner Summa, that this would… the building would still be non-22 conforming. I think as Garrett is referencing, we have a lot of garages that are converted that 23 are at the corner… rear corner of the property. So, they’re not setback at all and so if someone 24 wanted to demolish that and say let’s… I want a 16-foot tall ADU. Well, they’re going to have to 25 move that 4-feet off the property line. Because now they’re heading into the territory where 26 they’re getting rid of their non-conforming building and so we’re saying ok, well you’re new 27 ADU has to conform. This is proposing to say you can keep that same footprint or that same 28 location in that corner but you get 6-inches on the side to make sure that the walls can 29 conform. Maybe you get 6-inches or a foot or whatever the PTC decides on the roof structure 30 but you’re not moving the building 4-feet off of the property line. Does that help make it a little 31 clearer? 32 33 Commissioner Summa: Yeah, I just… I was just wondering why if it’s cheaper and easier to do it, 34 demolition than a new one, but I guess what you’re saying is it might eat up the yard. And so, 35 for me, this is a little bit related to roman numeral six, which is also about setbacks, and I will 36 say that because of all my years on the Development Center Customer Advisory Group and Mr. 37 Sauls just mentioned this. That structures that are in the corner, which a lot of garages are, on 38 the property line and I don’t know if this law was changed. I know that people at the 39 Development Center very much wanted to change this law. They become a conflict because to 40 Page 40 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. fix up or paint your building, you have to have access to the neighbor’s yard when they’re right 1 on the property line. So, and I know that was a big problem historically. So, I wouldn’t want to 2 create that situation where it doesn’t exist. You really do need to have room to go around the 3 backside of the building, whether they’re dwelling units or garages, to do maintenance. So, 4 that’s my concern. 5 6 Chair Hechtman: Thank you. Right now, we’re just asking Staff questions. Later on, tonight we’ll 7 get into our lightning round. 8 9 Commissioner Summa: I’m sorry. I should have phrased it more as a question. 10 11 Chair Hechtman: Is there an answer you need? 12 13 Commissioner Summa: No, but I just would… would this allow for that situation to occur, where 14 it takes something that was not on the property line and puts it on the property line? 15 16 Chair Hechtman: Alright, I’m not seeing any other questions of Staff on this item. So, we are 17 going to pause this item, Agenda Item Number Two. We’re going to take a 9-minute break. I 18 have 8:11, we’ll come back at 8:20, and at that point, we will take up Agenda Item Number 19 Three, the Board Handbook. We’ll complete that item and then we will return to Agenda Item 20 Two and discuss where we are in the evening and in that item. So, we’ll see you back in 9-21 minutes. Thank you. 22 23 [The Commission took a short break] 24 [The Commission moved to Agenda Item Three] *See page 60 for Agenda Item Three 25 26 Chair Hechtman: And I will note that it’s 9:30. We are going to as close to 9:55 as a break in our 27 subject matter will allow, I want us to have a discussion about whether we want to go past 28 10:00 tonight and see what that yields. But that’s what I’m intending to do in a little more than 29 20-minutes. I do note that there is, unlike many of our items, there’s no particular urgency that 30 we’re facing with this ADU incentives item tonight and so that may play into come the 31 Commissioner’s thinking. 32 33 Alright, so where we left this item, we had received Mr. Sauls cheat sheet for the first item on 34 our list… sorry… allowing reconstruction expansion of non-conforming structures. We had 35 taken questions of the… from the Commissioners of Staff and we’re ready to start the 36 discussion. And so again the format that I’d like to use here is 1-minute lightning round to get 37 out succinctly what your thoughts are about this item. We’ll do that once, then we’ll have a 38 second round where people can react, and then we’re not doing motions yet so we’ll move 39 onto the next item. And this frankly is a very good reason why we’re going to need verbatim 40 Page 41 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. minutes because I don’t think we’re going to finish this tonight and we may not get to any 1 motions. And so, all of us are going to have to remember some number of discussions and I 2 think the minutes might be helpful. 3 4 Alright, Commissioner Templeton, you want to lead us off with a lightning round? 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: Sure. So, we’re on point I, is that right? 7 8 Chair Hechtman: Correct. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Ok. I’m generally supportive of these kinds of modifications to ADU 11 rules but I don’t understand why we only want those for affordable ADUs. I feel like this could 12 be pretty beneficial to the ADU program overall and yeah, I’ll leave it at that. Thank you. 13 14 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Chang. 15 16 Commissioner Chang: I have still a clarifying question of Assistant Director Tanner or Mr. Sauls. 17 If I understood correctly, you said, Assistant Director Tanner, that current ADU Ordinance 18 allows for reconstruction of a non-conforming structure as long as it stays. Not… sorry, 19 complete demolition of a non-conforming structure and rebuilding it in the same spot as long 20 as the shrink wrap is not expanded. Is that correct? 21 22 Ms. Tanner: Mr. Sauls has appeared to answer because I may have spoken errantly so let us 23 hear what he says. 24 25 Mr. Sauls: That is correct. It is effective that you would be able to tear it down and rebuild it to 26 the exact same extent that it existed as a non-conforming structure. 27 28 Commissioner Chang: Thank you for that clarification. Ok because I wasn’t clear on that when I 29 was studying up on this. So, then, in that case, I am… this again, it seems to make sense to allow 30 an additional 6-inches or 12-inches as the case may be. But my concern would be that we… that 31 there’s enough space to maintain the structure. In other words, in the instance where you only 32 have 6-inches between it and the property line. If you can’t get onto the other side for 33 whatever reason. That’s a problem and creates a problem for the ADU and its longevity. It’s 34 just… it creates like a… it’s just a problem. So, I would be ok with it as long as we said something 35 about sufficient… as long as there’s sufficient space to maintain… sufficient access to maintain 36 the structure. Right, to paint it on that side, to do whatever it is that you need to because if it’s 37 going right up against the fence that’s shared with the neighbor. You only have 6-inches or no 38 space at all, you’re going to create a problem. So, that would be my comment. 39 40 Page 42 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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. Sauls: Yeah and I can briefly speak to that. As Commissioner Summa had mentioned earlier, 1 we have this problem occur quite regularly with an accessory structure. Mostly because our 2 standards are pretty loose in terms of where you can locate them. Staff always tries to 3 encourage applicants for anything to try to give that space for maintenance purposes. There’s a 4 difference obviously between encouraging and requiring. And that’s where we often times run 5 the gambit of working with the applicant as best we can and other times when… and it’s not a 6 negative or a positive. It’s just an applicant may want to utilize their backyard space and shifting 7 that structure eats into that. And so, a lot of the complications that have come around to this is 8 really starting from what is my lot like and how much space do I have to develop? That kind of 9 starts the location design for a homeowner so it certainly can become an issue. I think probably 10 eliminating like you’re suggesting where that can occur when there’s not enough space is 11 certainly important. 12 13 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Alcheck. 14 15 Commissioner Alcheck: Lightening round try attempt number one. This isn’t a sufficient enough 16 carrot if you will. It’s just not. First of all, I think a lot of us, including Commissioner Chang, have 17 struggled with why we would allow someone to demolish something totally and rebuild it in a 18 place where we really don’t want it. So, I think her instincts are right there. I don’t actually think 19 that’s what the architects are asking for and in fact, the other component of this if we would 20 just consider them as separate because the second one really feels like a poison pill to me. The 21 first concept which is this idea that we would allow some flexibility to address this issue where 22 we have a lot and lots of garages that are structurally perfect but non-conforming. And in order 23 for them to become habitable space… in order for them to comply with the code in order to be 24 habitable space, they need a little flexibility there because otherwise, you’ve got to demolish 25 them. I think that’s what we need to do here. The irony is that it would be completely 26 reasonable to adopt this, and we’ve had this discussion, as it applies to all ADUs. There are a 27 1,000 examples of garages that are kind of in the back of a property that someone could 28 immediately turn into an ADU if they had 6-inches… if they had this exact flexibility. And then 29 when they’re told, you know what, you’d have to demolish this and move it and they’re like 30 forget it. So, the housing supply would… the ADU production would go up with this very 31 reasonable addition. 32 33 My two issues are number one, the second part is unreasonable and I think unasked for. And 34 the larger component is that by couching it into discussion of affordability. You almost make it 35 sound like it’s a generous gift when it should be reviewed in the space of this is what we should 36 already be doing. And so, this isn’t going to encourage affordable housing development. 37 Certainly, the second part of demolishing the whole thing and rebuilding it right where it is, I 38 don’t think is a productive, appealing option. I think people want to take what they have, 39 Page 43 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 upon it which in theory would cost less, and the adjustment of 6-inches here or there 1 is reasonable. 2 3 So, I share Commissioner Templeton’s sentiment here that we should be doing this in… we 4 should already… this should already be a part of our code. And I think I’m piggybacking on some 5 of the other Commissioner’s struggle which is that this second piece of allowing demolition and 6 then rebuild on the same spot is not… is probably not a good part to include. We should just 7 stick with existing structures in order to bring them into compliance. 8 9 So, yes, we should do… add this, push it to apply to all units and we shouldn’t include both parts 10 of this. 11 12 Chair Hechtman: Alright, while I’m waiting for other Commissioner’s to raise their hand on the 13 first round for the lightning I… thank you, Commissioner Summa. 14 15 Commissioner Summa: Ok, thanks. I share the concern about structures that are too close to 16 fences to maintain, but I don’t think adding 6-inches is significant. You know, it’s so hard to 17 decide about this because it really… it is… it really depends on the exact property. So, you 18 know, I think privacy is a challenge but, in some situations, it wouldn’t be at all and others it 19 might be. So, I guess I’m for the flexibility as long as it doesn’t create a problem with 20 maintenance or a problem with privacy. 21 22 And maybe Staff could just answer but I feel like I’m having déjà vu. I feel like we did discuss 23 this for ADUs in general and I guess that’s something that the Council didn’t adopt is some 24 flexibility for non-conforming… because I remember because we were even thinking how far 25 into the setback should… would we be comfortable with it being. So, did that not make it into 26 the ADU… the general ADU law? 27 28 Ms. Tanner: I think that there are some state requirements that are about… that address 29 existing structures which we did adopt. And so, I think what this would suggest is to add greater 30 flexibility which certainly is within the City’s purview and to some Commissioner’s points, could 31 be for all ADUs if that’s what the Commission would like. So, I think we may be recalling that 32 this is a topic covered in state but not this specific allowance for the additional room. 33 34 Commissioner Summa: Right, ok, thank you. 35 36 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Lauing. 37 38 Commissioner Lauing: Yeah, just briefly as a couple of my colleagues have noted. This is 39 seeming to get to frankly a more important point which is how can we get any ADUs built in a 40 Page 44 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. way that they’re safe and they’re inhabitable. So, if we’re forcing people to be in non-1 conforming things where they have 6-foot ceilings instead of 8 or no insulation. I mean that’s 2 no way to live so I don’t have any problem with making this is adjustment generally with the 3 exceptions that were also noted by a couple colleagues that if we get down and we can’t do any 4 maintenance where it’s within 6-inches from a fence. That’s just the problem. That’s just it and 5 we may get there in some cases and it needs a Variance so that’s ok too. 6 7 But I think that… so, technically this doesn’t even seem like it should be part of this report 8 because it’s not really just for affordable and that’s a problem I think inherently with this 9 report. Because a lot of these things are not just what are big incentives for doing affordable 10 ADUs. 11 12 I think the privacy concerns are not just perceived, they’re real, but we got to make some 13 sacrifices here and be sensitive to how we fix that particular small problem. But I think in 14 general, you know this kind of de minimis increase in roof size and walls to get inhabitable 15 structure I think is quite appropriate generally. That’s all. 16 17 Chair Hechtman: Thank you, Commissioner Lauing. So, I’m generally supportive of the… 18 allowing the expansion along the lines that Staff has recommended. But where I have concern 19 really is the… primarily the side yard and to a lesser extent the rear yard setback because that’s 20 where you start to impact more your neighbor. And so, under state law, they’ve decided that 21 it's ok for an ADU to be 4-feet from a property line. Now we have existing structures that are 22 closer than that. So, what I was thinking is, if we were allowing this 6-inch expansion at least on 23 the side yard and I’d be interested in hearing from others on the rear yard. What we said is you 24 can’t use that 6-inches if you are… if the structure currently is 4-feet or less from that side yard. 25 So, if you’re 3 ½, you’re stuck at 3 ½ but you can add the 6-inches on the other side which 26 would be 12 on the other side to make up for it. And that way we keep, when it’s 4-feet or less, 27 at least the existing area for maintenance which as Staff has pointed out is sometimes going to 28 be zero. It’s built right up against the fence and this isn’t going to solve that problem. But so, I 29 think… so that, I thought, is… would be my suggestion on that is hold the line at 4-feet or 30 existing, whichever is less. 31 32 The other thing that I wanted to mention is because I’ve heard a couple… at least a couple… 33 three Commissioners say this should apply to all ADUs and I don’t necessarily disagree. But you 34 can make the same statement on maybe all eight of these items that we’re going through and 35 every time we decide… and so we could just flush this whole idea of making affordable ADUs 36 and just go back to making flexible ADUs. But tonight, we’re talking about affordable ADUs and 37 I just want to make the point that on this first item,… if we allow it, somebody could be in a 38 position of saying well, ok, I can get this flexibility if I’m willing to deed restrict or I don’t get it if 39 I’m not. And for that person, it might tip the scale and make them commit to an affordable ADU 40 Page 45 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 that’s the purpose of the exercise we’re going through right now. And so, I think if we… we 1 need to distinguish between regular ADUs and affordable if we’re expecting to create any 2 affordable ADUs. 3 4 Commissioner Summa followed by Commissioner Alcheck. You’re muted. 5 6 Commissioner Summa: I didn’t have my hand up. I forgot to put it down. Sorry. 7 8 Chair Hechtman: Oh, it’s alright. Commissioner Alcheck then we’re back to you and your hand 9 up again Commissioner Summa. 10 11 Commissioner Summa: Sorry. 12 13 Commissioner Alcheck: Ok, so I just wanted to [unintelligible]. I agreed with you, we can’t… all 14 these could apply to the regular ADU process. This one, in particular, is just bad policy because 15 what… there are two kinds of people that are going to build ADUs. The ones that are going to 16 build those brand-new models and then the other people who are going to take something that 17 exists and turn it into housing. And for that population, whatever they’ve got is what they’ve 18 got and I think, and my understanding from architectural task force is that this inflexibility is a 19 major hurdle. That basically they go oh, if I have to move it, then forget it. I mean there’s a 20 perfectly good garage there if I can beef up both walls. 21 22 And I don’t think it’s like you can take 6-inches from one wall and move it to the other because 23 they have to create a compliant wall. Whether that means insolation or fire-retardant materials 24 or whatever it is. They’ve got to make it thicker on both sides and they have to increase the 25 height by such and such so that it’s code compliant. And I agree with you, there are some 26 instances where homes are right on the fence and they are there… I mean the accessory 27 structures are there on the fence. I’m familiar with that but I think… so, I agree with you. We 28 can’t treat every policy but this is one of the hurdles that for whatever reason we’re stuck with 29 and I think it's poor ordinance writing. And so, this to me is a false offer because if we really 30 care about ADU development, then we should allow these structures to be built like that, and 31 the second part which I want to reiterate. 32 33 I don’t think we should allow a structure to be completely demolished and then rebuilt in a 34 place that we don’t actually want them to be rebuilt in simply because it’s cost-effective. If it’s 35 cost-effective to tear something down and build it somewhere else, great. If it’s cost-effective 36 to tear something down and build it in the exact same place. That’s you making a decision 37 about how you want to use your backyard. You’re making a decision that you’re willing to pay 38 whatever it is to have it in that spot, but that’s not the spot we want new construction. 39 40 Page 46 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 so, I wrote in my notes, allowing expansion in redevelopment, right? In demo and 1 redevelopment would exacerbate the privacy concerns and pit affordable housing developers 2 against consistent application of our Building Code and resident expectations related to privacy. 3 So, many people buy into homes in Palo Alto and assume that the non-conforming structure 4 that existing just over their fence will one day be removed as part of a larger remodel or new 5 construction project. So, creating a path to not simply legalize but expand the non-conformance 6 of these structures is problematic. That said if all you’re talking about is taking that structure 7 and slightly adjusting it so that it can become code compliant for habitability. That to me seems 8 like the pathway for ADU development in general. 9 10 And so, I’m concerned that we’ve lost a big opportunity to have ADUs in general because we’ve 11 never bit the bullet on this one. And I don’t believe that this, even in conjunction with all the 12 other ones, is the sort of thing that will create an ADU person into an affordable ADU person. I 13 think that this isn’t in the barometer. So, that’s kind of where I stand on this and I appreciate it. 14 I don’t intend to say this on everyone. This is the only one I intend to… well, this is the only one 15 I really strongly feel that way. I also think there’s an inconsistency with the basements and I 16 can’t make sense of it. But other than that, I really think this is the only one where this should 17 be our policy. We should be encouraging the transformation of these parking garages into ADUs 18 because that’s important right now and I think that the half… the abutted thing. That might… I 19 wish that there was an architect here to be like you know what? When that’s the case we have 20 no option or we build in. I wish there was someone here to tell us that either moot or 21 something not to worry about or maintaining the exist… I just think that that’s probably not a 22 concern. I think that that’s less likely to be a project that architects will take on because of the 23 complexities of being on the property line. And so, I… anyway. 24 25 Chair Hechtman: Mr. Sauls, your (interrupted) 26 27 Mr. Sauls: So, to one extent to get to the items that Commissioner Alcheck was talking about. 28 To one extent the state law adopted regulations that effectively said your can kind of tear down 29 and rebuild something. So, to that point, we obviously can’t do any less or take that 30 requirement out and I think what has been discussed tonight really has highlighted that the 31 Commission is open to allowing this flexibility to go beyond that. Not just to say sure, you can 32 tear down because it’s an old shed that’s kind of leaning to the side. You know, you can tear it 33 down and rebuild it but also, you can expand it to a small extent. 34 35 I think Chair Hechtman, you had suggested that in the instance when, your specific example I 36 think you had suggested, in the instance where there’s an existing side that’s closer than 4-feet. 37 They would be required to maintain that rather than expand closer into it so say, with your 38 example, you said 3 ½-feet. So, if they were at 3 ½-feet, you’re suggestion was that they would 39 stay at 3 ½-feet along whichever side that was occurring and the expansion could occur on the 40 Page 47 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. other side. I think it is… I think there may be some value in the discussion as to when you’re at 1 closer to a zero-lot-line situation or that more proximal situation where there isn’t the space 2 which is what I think Commissioner Summa and Chang and Templeton were identifying. That 3 maybe there’s an opportunity to shift what otherwise would have been an opportunity to 4 expand 6-feet or 6-inches sorry on that side that’s at that zero to 6-inch side and shift it over to 5 another location. All of this obviously is a vestige of a code that really highlights the importance 6 of removing something that’s non-conforming and overall, what we’re trying to encourage, or 7 at least what it sounds like the Commission is trying to discuss at this point is allowing this to 8 occur on any other sort of unit. Not specifically something that’s portable and if that’s what the 9 interest is. We can certainly pursue that and we can generate some language related to that in 10 the future ordinance that we have. So, that it could be better discussed because right now it is a 11 very nebulous topic at the moment and so a lot of these can be often times just kind of 12 nebulous as it’s a meaty subject that we always don’t think about. 13 14 Chair Hechtman: Let me ask a question of Mr. Sauls. So, from the slides you had up earlier, it 15 was my impression that in our current code where you are working on the existing non-16 conforming structure, you have to hold the existing line, so wherever it is and so… and that’s 17 true whether you try to remodel it, you know, tear some stuff off and put some new stuff on or 18 tear it down to the ground and build anew. So, what that tells me is there… for us to have that 19 provision, there must be construction techniques where you can hold the line, or else we would 20 have a requirement that couldn’t be met. And so (interrupted) 21 22 Mr. Sauls: Yeah, go ahead, sorry. 23 24 Chair Hechtman: So, it might not be ideal. I mean maybe… and I had a client who got in trouble 25 with this because when they rebuilt a wall, they did add more insulation and they moved that 26 wall out 2-inches., not realizing that that wall was already right at the 10-foot setback line. So, I 27 know that there are construction techniques that will expand a wall, but from our code it 28 makes me believe that there are also construction techniques that won’t. 29 30 Mr. Sauls: Yeah and so from what I’ve heard in conversations with the architect group and with 31 our own consultants that we have on other projects. There are things like spray foam insulation 32 that kind of serve that purpose. But overall, the other thing that we often times fun into with a 33 lot of properties in Palo Alto is they’re really old. I don’t use the example of the 1950s carriage 34 house lightly because we run into that pretty frequently and so this is obviously an issue that is 35 sensitive to contractors and developers when they come into propose these kinds of units. And 36 I imagine they run into this a lot more often in any City really that Zoning Ordinances are very 37 specific about you have this mesh or this envelope really that you can’t punch out of. Where 38 you otherwise, if you shift it a couple feet, the City says now it’s not a big problem. That’s a 39 matter of comfort, right? The City has come to acknowledge over decades of implementing 40 Page 48 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. their regulations to say are we comfortable now with expanding that threshold to an extent 1 that we deem it’s acceptable. And that sounds like the discussion that occurring tonight and 2 overall, I think what we’re getting is that the Commission is open to allowing that for all ADUs. 3 Not specifically as an incentive to accessible… affordable, sorry, affordable ADUs. 4 5 Chair Hechtman: Alright, I think that’s a good place to stop our discussion of subitem I and take 6 stock in the time which is 9:58. And I’d like to hear from the Commission what your pleasure is. 7 I am certain that we cannot finish this item tonight. I don’t think anybody is willing to stay that 8 early in the morning to get that accomplished. So, the question is, I think, do we stop now, do 9 we go a little longer? I’d like to hear from the Commissioners. Commissioner Templeton. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: I share your concerns. I don’t think we’ll finish tonight. I’m 12 personally ready to continue. I’d love to hear from the other Commissioners before making any 13 kind of motion though just to see what the other folks think. But I think we’ve had a really good 14 discussion tonight honestly. I think we’ve accomplished a lot but there’s the law of diminishing 15 returns after 10 o’clock and since we don’t have a chance of finishing it. It's kind of… I wonder if 16 it would still be valuable to continue our discussion at this point. Thank you. 17 18 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Summa. 19 20 Commissioner Summa: Thank you. I don’t think there’s a chance we’re going to finish it tonight, 21 to be honest and so I am flexible with the rest… how late the rest of the group wants to go. I 22 would say that once to get the second part of this, it’s the administrative aspect and there has 23 been some discussion already with Alta Housing. I think it would be almost impossible to really 24 have that part of this discussion without a representative from Alta Housing here. So, for that 25 reason alone, I think it would be good to continue this and try to get… I think if that’s ok for me 26 to ask to try to get Alta Housing here. Because if they’re really planning on doing this it’s kind of 27 different than what they’ve expressed in the past about administering small, individual 28 properties instead of larger multi-family properties. So, I would be very interested in continuing 29 it and having some more representation for the Commissioners. 30 31 Chair Hechtman: Other Commissioners have anything to add? I guess I will add, I’m open to 32 taking on the next item which is the removing the garage carport requirement for conversion. 33 Get to the end of that discussion and see what time it is and see if that’s a good place to stop or 34 we want to take on another one. So, I’m not… Commissioner Chang. I have a thumbs up from 35 (interrupted) 36 37 Commissioner Chang: Ditto, the thumbs up. 38 39 Page 49 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Hechtman: Ok. Alright, well let’s dive right into that then and so we’ll ask Mr. Sauls to key 1 up the slide for that. Lead us through it, please. You’re muted. 2 3 Mr. Sauls: Sorry. Alright, can you see my screen now? 4 5 Chair Hechtman: Yes, we can. Go up one. 6 7 Mr. Sauls: Yeah. 8 9 Chair Hechtman: There you go. 10 11 Mr. Sauls: So, this topic discusses the potential to allow for removal of the need for existing 12 parking requirements or existing… or a garage to exist in order to benefit from what the City 13 previously had and now the state has adopted replacement parking requirements. And so, what 14 is the typical situation is that for any new single-family home, they’re required to have two 15 parking spaces which at a minimum one is covered and the other is uncovered. In any situation, 16 those requirements for the parking are that they have to be beyond a front yard setback and in 17 some instances, can’t encroach into a street-side setback. The other instance that I was bringing 18 up earlier is that when these garages are converted to an accessory dwelling units. The state 19 has identified that there is no longer a requirement to replace that parking on site. So, not even 20 an instance of confirming or requiring uncovered spaces to be on the site, but even just no 21 parking required effectively. What the state code didn’t do when they updated their ordinance 22 and what we did as a result of updating our ordinance was to allow for junior ADUs to benefit 23 from a garage conversion. As how we had established before for accessory dwelling units which 24 was that when you convert an attached garage to a junior accessory dwelling units. You are 25 able to replace those parking spaces as uncovered spaces within the front or street side 26 setbacks where it would typically needing to be passed a typical 20 or 16-foot setback on a site 27 plan. 28 29 The policy proposal would be to treat that then as in lieu of providing parking on a site. Say as a 30 result of construction of a new house, where a new house is required again to have at least one 31 covered space. In lieu of providing that or in lieu of requiring that, we could say that or PTC 32 could suggest that in lieu of that we identified something on the plan that there’s going to be 33 an ADU in place of a garage. We could still require that those spaces to be uncovered because 34 it’s a different kind of tier system basically where the State Code says there has to be an 35 existing structure there. Obviously, there needs to be something existing to be converted. We 36 can not say remove the need or classification of a conversion but simply say in lieu of 37 developing a garage on your new… on your property as a result of a new single-family house 38 development. You could, in essence, simply replace that with an accessory dwelling units and 39 then you would show uncovered spaces along the driveway or what have you on the property. 40 Page 50 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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, that there’s still a code requirement met and we’re still meeting the parking requirements 1 as adjusted for the house, for the main house. 2 3 The other thing obviously would be… another opportunity would simply be to reduce the 4 amount of parking that is required for the main house. But the idea is really is just related to is 5 this an incentive that is successful or could be successful to eliminate what otherwise creates a 6 two-step process for a new single-family home. You produce… you develop your home, you 7 build a new house that requires at least a detached or an attached garage and then if you are 8 wanting to convert that space rather than build a separate detached structure. In that instance 9 then we could say ok, you can do that all in one permit. Where as now, you’d be required to 10 submit the plans, get them reviewed, issued, approved, and inspected. And then you would 11 have to come back afterward to submit a permit to convert the structure to an accessory 12 dwelling unit. 13 14 Chair Hechtman: Alright, questions of Mr. Sauls? So, I think I have one because I’m a little… I 15 thought I understood this but the slide has me a little confused. I understand the basic concept 16 is we collapse a two-step process into a one-step process and in so doing, we essentially relieve 17 them of the need to build a covered garage that is going immediately be converted. So, I think I 18 get that concept but what I’m not understanding is when I look at the policy proposal on the 19 screen, are these two alternative proposals because both start with when an affordable unit is 20 providing in conjunction with the construction of a new house. Are these two different choices 21 for us to talk about? 22 23 Mr. Sauls: Yeah, so the first choice is in lieu of building a new garage, you build an ADU and you 24 show or we require then that uncovered spaces have to be located on the site plan or 25 demonstrated on the site plan. Either we decide that it has to be beyond a setback or we 26 decide it can be within the front yard setback where traditionally it is not considered or allowed 27 to be counted towards the required parking for the site. 28 29 The other is that we could simply say, you don’t have to provide parking whatsoever if you are 30 substituting an affordable ADU for a garage when you build a new home. 31 32 Ms. Tanner: I think the difference is between do we change the parking requirement or do we 33 allow the parking requirement to be satisfied in a different manner? 34 35 Chair Hechtman: Ok but under the current regulations, if I have a house, I necessarily have one 36 covered and one uncovered space minimum. Now I come in and I convert the garage and I lose 37 the covered parking space but I still have one uncovered space. 38 39 Ms. Tanner: That’s correct. 40 Page 51 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Hechtman: And so, in the first policy proposal alternative, what confused me is you have 2 this language could be provided as uncovered spaces, plural, which makes me think what 3 you’re saying there is we do a one-step but we still get two parking spaces. It’s just they’re both 4 uncovered rather than one covered, one not. 5 6 Ms. Tanner: Exactly, yes. 7 8 Chair Hechtman: Ok and in the second possible iteration, we allow the one-step process and we 9 don’t require any parking. 10 11 Ms. Tanner: Or it could be just that… so right now the requirement is for two spaces; one 12 covered, one uncovered. So, it could be reduced that it’s only one uncovered space that’s 13 required for the primary house. 14 15 Chair Hechtman: Ok, alright, that’s very helpful. Thank you. Alright, other questions of 16 Commissioners? By Commissioners or comments? I’m not seeing any questions so let’s go to 17 lightening rounds. Commissioners, tell me what you think. Commissioner Summa, thank you. 18 19 Commissioner Summa: Thank you. I… this is another one I thought we already eliminated this 20 two-step process for ADUs but maybe it didn’t get in there. I am very much in favor of 21 eliminating the two-step process but retaining the current parking… required parking spots on 22 site. 23 24 Chair Hechtman: That was lightning fast, thank you, Commissioner Summa. Commissioner 25 Chang. 26 27 Commissioner Chang: What Commissioner Summa said. 28 29 Chair Hechtman: We’re on a roll. Other Commissioners? So, I was think similarly that we should 30 eliminate the two-step process and condense it to one and I was thinking that ideally when we 31 condense it, and again, we’re looking at this as possibly an incentive to do something deed-32 restricted… we’re do… for a deed-restricted unit. So, we’re going to give them something they 33 can’t normally get, and normally through the two-step process, you can get one parking space 34 on site uncovered. So, I was wondering whether somebody who was attracted to this one-step 35 process might be willing to provide two uncovered spaces. Even though they cannot have deed-36 restricted, going with the two-step process, and only end up with one. I was wondering if Staff 37 had given some thought to whether someone who’s interested in building an ADU would 38 actually decide, I’m going to go with the two-step process because I don’t want to have to 39 Page 52 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 a second parking space anywhere on site, setback or otherwise. Did Staff wrestle with 1 that or seen examples of it? 2 3 Ms. Tanner: Yeah, I’ll (interrupted) 4 5 Mr. Sauls: I mean (interrupted) 6 7 Ms. Tanner: Have Mr. Sauls give some examples possibly but I think part of what it comes down 8 to is dimensions a bit in the parcel size too. So, if you’re providing uncovered space to the first 9 white box on the right-hand column. You know, that takes up more space and as Mr. Sauls said, 10 we may have to decide well where can the car park? Can it park in the front setback because 11 normally that’s not allowed, even though there may be a driveway there? That wouldn’t be… 12 approve a plan that says that’s where the car parking space is. And so maybe Garrett, you can 13 talk a little bit about some examples but I think that is an important aspect to consider. 14 15 Mr. Sauls: I’ll give an example of a standard and a narrow lot. With a narrow lot what you 16 typically experience is a long driveway leading to a detached garage in the back corner of the 17 lot. In that instance, you’ll almost always have the ability to locate a parking space along that 18 drive aisle leading to the garage. For a standard lot where you don’t have more constraints in 19 terms of the narrowness of the house or the narrowness of the site and how the setbacks apply 20 to it. Something like a forward or front-facing attached garage will typically have a driveway 21 obviously in front of it. And, you know, I haven’t seen any projects where we don’t have a 22 driveway. It’s very integral and important to many people when they do any sort of project. We 23 also have a very specific threshold to which the driveway can’t expand beyond. We say you can 24 have a 16-foot wide driveway that is effectively 20-foot deep which is the standard front yard 25 setback. Now, our uncovered parking space dimensions are 8 ½-feet by 17 ½-feet… 8 ½-feet 26 wide by 17 ½-feet deep. So, roughly that can accommodate two spaces if we were to really 27 squeeze it. Anytime that there are adjacent to walls, we typically require that they be shown 28 dimensionally as 9-feet so that there’s proper swing, clearance for the vehicles, and passage for 29 the vehicle. 30 31 So, there are… it is likely that most people would be able to satisfy this requirement by 32 demonstrating it within the front yard setback. Currently, the code doesn’t really get to that 33 point because it's still… and even the State Code even has this… requires on this fundamental 34 idea that something exists. All of this is based on a conversion, rather than a new structure. 35 36 ADUs aren’t required to provide parking. We haven’t… we as Palo Alto haven’t had that since 37 before 2017 I believe even and the state, as of recently, only required it if you have very, very, 38 very niche examples which Palo Alto doesn’t really satisfy. And so, as a result, you know parking 39 became a really big issue that the state was trying to tackle which is why they identified that 40 Page 53 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. parking for a conversion does not have to be replaced in any kind of configuration whatsoever. 1 But again, fundamentally, that something exists to be converted. It does not… they don’t 2 discuss anything in their ordinance about the interplay of how this creates a multi-pronged or 3 multi-stepped process. 4 5 Ms. Tanner: And I would just add very, very briefly. I do think this is an item where Staff did 6 consider could this apply to all ADUs to prevent that two-step process which I don’t think 7 anybody wants to go through process just to go through it or have folks build stuff just to 8 change it later. But it is something that has this interplay with parking which is a very sensitive 9 issue in our community and so we’d certainly want the PTC to opine on the conditions under 10 which this could occur. 11 12 Chair Hechtman: Alright, thank you. Other Commissioners want to weigh in on this idea? 13 Commissioner Alcheck. 14 15 Commissioner Alcheck: I waited till the end of the lightning round so I could have a little more 16 time because I need that for this one. First thing I want to say is there’s a couple context issues 17 here that I want to raise. Number one, in a lot of new construction where detached garage has 18 to be in the rear or a lot. The prevailing trend has been to develop a one-car garage and utilize 19 the lengthy driveway as the secondary, non-covered parking space. This trend developed 20 because people wanted to reduce the usage of the rear area in a way that they were covering 21 the ground and then also because our FAR includes the garage. And so, they were able to use 22 more FAR in the house by minimizing the size of the garage. I believe that if we eliminated this 23 two-step process, you would see that switch. People would begin to develop these 800 or 900-24 square foot ADUs and they would be much more suitable for habitability. 25 26 I would suggest to you Director or Assistant Director Tanner that we… I could read you the 27 minutes of the last time we talk about this and the time before where I suggested this is bad 28 policy mostly because it harms neighbors. Neighbors have the burden of living through 3- to 5-29 more months of construction and also there’s an environmental impact here. Why are we 30 building a garage if the intent of the developer or the builder to then immediately take it apart 31 and build it into something else? There’s a loss there. 32 33 I would suggest to you there’d be no point in paving the 100-feet of driveway that’s typical on a 34 lot of these or 85-feet of driveway that’s typical on a lot of these situations to a structure that 35 will no longer be a garage. That’s another example we contend in our Building Code a lot with 36 covered and permeable surface. 37 38 So, there’s so many reasons why this is a bad process. This when people go a Palo Alto process. 39 This is about process. Making someone come back after they’ve finalled, only to then 40 Page 54 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. reconfigure that unit with now appliances, did they lay the plumbing in advance because they 1 knew they were going to do it, do they have to break the concrete? I mean the whole thing 2 seems so wasteful that I’m shocked that this hasn’t been already adopted. 3 4 I think my biggest concern with this is that I don’t think this is a carrot that makes any 5 difference to somebody who is going to be asked. Are you going to deed restrict to save 6 yourself 2-months? I don’t know. I’m worried that we’re missing this bigger picture of it has to 7 be so juicy to get someone to adopt the 15 or 20-year… ok, let me just say one more thing that 8 maybe I see that Ms. French is on this conversation. Maybe, I don’t know if she’s here or not, 9 but this is something that maybe she’d appreciate. 10 11 Once we start eliminating… assuming we do adopt this policy of eliminating the two-step 12 process which is a waste of money, time, and its environmental unfriendly. Assuming we did 13 that, at some point you start building homes without garages, without covered parking, and our 14 code has some specific determinations when it comes to streets and parking. If you’ve got the 15 majority of homes with covered parking in the front or covered parking in the back. If you have 16 a JADU that’s converted to the front garage that’s converted. Will that change the calculation of 17 contextual setbacks? These are actually important questions. 18 19 I agree with you that there’s sensitivity in our community about parking. I would suggest to you 20 that if you want to pit the residents against affordability. Then we pass… then we recommend 21 something that says you don’t need to find parking on the street… on the property. And that 22 would be a problem because our two-step solution doesn’t create that problem. Our two-step 23 solution right now allows… you have to build at least one space accommodate on the property 24 uncovered and if you convert. Well, the state exempts you from having to satisfy the parking 25 requirement in general. If we go to one step, we do have to have a scenario where we try to 26 maintain street parking because that is… off-street parking because that’s incredibly important 27 to the community. And I don’t want the community to go no, this is bad policy. We don’t want 28 parking and affordable housing to be fighting with each other. And so, there’s some complexity 29 here with respect to contextual garage placement. There’s some complexity here with respect 30 to the setting the community in affordable housing against each other and when it comes to 31 parking. 32 33 So, I misspoke earlier because I was going to tell you there’s only one of these that I really think 34 should apply no matter what. Now that this was dealt with, I’m thinking to myself like I would… 35 I think this… my hope is that maybe Staff could look at this again and say ok. If we really want to 36 be sensitive to the community, how can we fix that? And if we really want to be sensitive to the 37 environmental, how can we fit that? If we really want to pursue our permeable surface policies, 38 how does this align with that and what do we do about the fact that if there is no parking 39 provided on a property and that begins… because we want to encourage affordable housing. 40 Page 55 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. How will that affect other homes that have garages in certain places on their property if their 1 statistics change? 2 3 And so, there’s actually a lot of complicated questions in this idea but I would agree with 4 Commissioner Summa, who also felt like we already dealt with this in that the two-step process 5 makes not sense. So, if we’re going to fix that problem and I guess if we fix it for all ADUs which 6 I would assume would be the right policy. I think you can’t miss the opportunity to address the 7 other issues which is figure out a way to maintain at least the minute uncovered space off-8 street in a code-compliant way that it is now. And then number two, address some of the 9 ancillary situations that might develop with respect to streets with very close ratios of parking 10 placement which I think could create an issue. 11 12 Mr. Sauls: To that, I can talk just briefly to that last point. We currently established that any 13 property that doesn’t have a garage or in this instance what would be created effectively if they 14 didn’t have a garage. You know that would be considered as a rear placement effectively. 15 16 Commissioner Alcheck: Right. No, that actually (interrupted) 17 18 Mr. Sauls: So, the transition would then be is that if everything, like you’re saying, if everything 19 was 50/50, right? Front or rear. As soon as this policy were to be adopted and more people said 20 I want to do an ADU. Then (interrupted) 21 22 Commissioner Alcheck: Or JADU 23 24 Mr. Sauls: What that [unintelligible], it’s going to be… or JADU, yes. It would then become that 25 most of these properties are going to follow underneath or fall under the criteria of rear 26 detached garage basically. 27 28 Commissioner Alcheck: Right and I would just add to you that the irony of that is that when the 29 Planning Department and the Council address that particular context garage placement issue a 30 couple years ago. One of the ironies was this notion that you can… that we should be able to 31 maintain the streets existing relationship forever. And what I’m highlighting to you is there is no 32 pathway where a street can change in one direction and if, for example, someone builds a 33 brand-new home and they put this… they turned a four-place garage into a JADU. Effectively 34 creating a home that has no garage, no covered parking. They could affect the home next door 35 which would then want to pursue a project of its own and then have a potentially less amount 36 of rights than they had a year before. And that sort of… that would be unsettling I think for 37 some residents. I don’t know, at least I think that’s potentially unsettling and so I think what we 38 have to do is we just say well what if… if this happens on a street. Do we add some language 39 Page 56 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. that says well whatever was before the garages started disappearing is maintained or are we 1 going to have a situation where front-facing garages become extinct? 2 3 Chair Hechtman: Alright, other Commissioners want to talk on this item, the conversion issue? 4 Alright, I’m not seeing any other hands so what I’m hearing, to summarize on this issue, it 5 seems like among the Commissioners there’s strong support for condensing the two-step 6 process into the one-step process. I don’t think we’ve heard enough from Commissioners at 7 this point to understand whether there’s consensus about what to do with the parking. I think 8 we’ve heard some comments but I haven’t heard a common thread yet on that, other than, I 9 think it is a common thread that all of the Commissioners are sensitized to the parking issue. 10 11 Now it is 10:25 and so I will ask the Commissioners again what’s your pleasure? Do you want to 12 take on the next item which is whether to allow a second ADU which really third… well, two 13 ADUs and a JADU it would be. Anyway, do you want to take on that topic and see how long it 14 takes us, or are we ready to conclude for the evening on this. Commissioner Templeton, I see 15 your hand. 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: I am ready to conclude for this evening and ready to make a motion 18 but I wanted to give the other Commissioners an opportunity to weigh in first. 19 20 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Alcheck, something to say on this timing issue? 21 22 Commissioner Alcheck: I share Commissioner Templeton’s sentiments. I think, to be honest, 23 there’s a benefit to having a greater a proportion of the items reviewed by seven if seven will 24 ultimately vote on this. And so, to the extent that we push the remaining items to a time when 25 Commissioner Roohparvar [note – Vice-Chair Roohparvar] will join us. I think actually that will 26 improve our discussion at that time. 27 28 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Lauing. 29 30 Commissioner Lauing: I agree we should continue, particularly since I think the next three to 31 four are substantive and will take a long time. 32 33 Chair Hechtman: Ok. I do… and I’m fine with continuing. I do note that at our June 9th meeting, 34 we already have the PTC review of Objective Standards which I understand from Ms. Tanner is 35 a… it’s going to be a substantive and lengthy item. We’re also missing at least Commissioner 36 Chang that night who has participated meaningfully tonight and I’m sure would like to be 37 around the remaining discussions on this item. So, if we are going to continue it, Ms. Tanner is 38 there a date out in the future that looks like we might want to bring it to? Keeping in mind that 39 I think we’re going to try to get somebody from Alta at that next round. 40 Page 57 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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. Tanner: Certainly, I would suggest June 30th as the date certain if the Commission is going 2 to continue which I believe is our second meeting in June. 3 4 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Templeton, I see your hand. 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you, Chair. Do we anticipate any other absence on that date 7 in June? I know travel schedules may start appearing again so. 8 9 Commissioner Alcheck: Is it the first Wednesday? 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: This is the 30th which is the last day and bumping up against the July 12 vacation week usually. 13 14 Commissioner Alcheck: I won’t be present. 15 16 Ms. Tanner: Yeah, I think it’s a few days… a day before the 4th of July weekend or. 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: On the 30th, you… who said they would be absent? Commissioner 19 Alcheck? 20 21 Commissioner Alcheck: It’s my… Commissioner Alcheck. I’m… I will be… I can’t make it that 22 evening. 23 24 Commissioner Templeton: Ok. Should we do… Chair, what do you think about maybe a… just a 25 date uncertain and figure this out behind the scenes with a poll or something because I think 26 we have had a really good discussion. It’s great to hear all the different perspectives. 27 28 Chair Hechtman: I’m comfortable with that, particularly because, as I mentioned earlier, there 29 isn’t a particular, this is important work but it’s not time-sensitive work and so I think we can… 30 we have the luxury of waiting till we have a full complement of Commissioners and we can 31 figure out when that might be. 32 33 MOTION 34 35 Commissioner Templeton: We also might be in person by then, could happen. Ok, well then 36 with the input that we’ve heard so far and I think I see Commissioner Summa nodding her head 37 as well. Maybe I’ll just go ahead and make the motion at this point. So, I move to continue this 38 item to a data uncertain. 39 40 Page 58 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. SECOND 1 2 Commissioner Summa: Second. 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you, Commissioner Summa. 5 6 Chair Hechtman: Summa seconds. Any discussion? Seeing none, Mr. Nguyen, will you take a roll 7 call (interrupted) 8 9 Commissioner Alcheck: Just quick point of clarification. Do we need to specify a data uncertain 10 but not the next meeting or the one after that? Do we have to be specific or does this mean 11 that we’re going to have to collectively find a date sometime in August or July? 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: I think I saw Assistant Director Tanner indicating that we don’t have 14 to specify that and she was present for our comments about trying to coordinate that behind 15 the scenes. 16 17 Ms. Tanner: Certainly, and also, I think the Chair had discussed in our pre-meeting possibly 18 talking about summer schedules. So, I do take with this the sentiment to endeavor to find a 19 date when all Commissioners are available to discuss. 20 21 Commissioner Alcheck: If I just may say one thing about process-wise. I just want to say that I 22 typically don’t prefer that Commission business happens simply because I’m not present and if, 23 for example, an item like this were there was an opportunity. I would send notes in on the item 24 if I couldn’t attend in person. So, if that… all I’m trying to say is I’d hate to get to July and find 25 out that there were other absences because of summer and we end up don’t dealing with this 26 until September. So, if the Commission leadership and Staff want to discuss at their next pre-27 meeting or whatever when they want to schedule this. I would suggest to you that I’m 28 comfortable with you proceeding without me present if that makes sense for our business. 29 30 VOTE 31 32 Chair Hechtman: Ok, that… thank you, appreciate that. So, essentially, I think the motion is to 33 continue to a date uncertain which could be June 30th. I think it would be good to find out from 34 the Vice-Chair whether she has a scheduled conflict that day before a decision was made. And 35 then Commissioner or Ms. Tanner, you’d need to look at what else we might have on that date 36 to see if this would be a good fit. Because I think we can judge by the length of time it took us 37 to get through four items out of 14. Four of which I do think are not very lengthy but six I think 38 could take some time so we need a good block of time. So, we have a motion, we have second, 39 we have no further comments. Mr. Nguyen, will you take a roll call vote, please? 40 Page 59 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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. Nguyen: Commissioner Alcheck? 2 3 Commissioner Alcheck: Aye. 4 5 Mr. Nguyen: Commissioner Chang? 6 7 Commissioner Chang: Yes. 8 9 Mr. Nguyen: Chair Hechtman? 10 11 Chair Hechtman: Yes. 12 13 Mr. Nguyen: Chair Hechtman? 14 15 Chair Hechtman: Yes. 16 17 Mr. Nguyen: Commissioner Lauing? 18 19 Commissioner Lauing: Yes. 20 21 Mr. Nguyen: Commissioner Summa? 22 23 Commissioner Summa: Yes. 24 25 Mr. Nguyen: Commissioner Templeton? 26 27 Commissioner Templeton: Yes. 28 29 Mr. Nguyen: The motion carries 6-0 with one Commissioner absent. 30 31 MOTION PASSED 6(Alcheck, Chang, Hechtman, Lauing, Summa, Templeton) -0-1(Roohparvar 32 absent) 33 34 Chair Hechtman: Thank you. We will now move to approval of the minutes. 35 36 [The Commission moved approval of the minutes.] 37 Commission Action: Motion by Templeton, seconded by Summa. Pass 6-0 (Roohparvar absent) 38 3. Review the City Boards, Commissions, and Committees Handbook and Recommend 39 Adjustments to Implement the Handbook’s Directions. 40 Page 60 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Hechtman: It appears that we are all present and so thank you, everyone. I have relocated 1 from the freeway to the pond and I’m hoping that will help with my internet stability. And we 2 will move now to pausing Item Two. We move to Agenda Item Number Three, review the City 3 Boards, Commissions, and Committees Handbook and recommend adjustments to implement 4 the Handbook’s directions. Ms. Tanner, is there a Staff report on this? 5 6 Ms. Rachael Tanner, Assistant Director: Yes, there will be a brief Staff presentation. Just one 7 moment and we’ll bring that up. Good evening Commissioners, just want to do a really short 8 presentation regarding the Board and Commission Handbook, and really just want to 9 emphasize that it will be brief. If I can advance the slide. There we go. 10 11 So, the purpose is to promote awareness of the handbook amongst all of our Boards and 12 Commissions. So, the Planning and Development Services Department has three Boards and 13 Commissions that we Staff. Planning and Transportation Commission, Historic Resources Board, 14 and the Architectural Review Board. So, we’re doing an item like this with all of our Boards. We 15 also want to allow an opportunity for questions and/or discussion. Will note, the City Attorney 16 and City Manager’s office are the lead on the handbook and associated items. And so, some 17 questions I may have to take down and get back to you all later on. And so, want to highlight 18 some of the differences between the handbook and the PTC’s practices. 19 20 I also want to make the Commission aware, and I will say this is something I was only made 21 aware recently, after the publication of the Staff report, which is that on November 20th, 2020 22 when the Council adopted the handbook. They did create some changes from the dais which 23 you case in Letters A through H here. The first was to adopt the handbook and to use the ARB 24 as a template for the Boards and Commissions applications; to direct Staff to implement the 25 changes in the handbook; update the HRC description around HSRAP… to include HSRAP and 26 Emerging Needs; modify term limits for three-term positions for the Historic Resources Board; 27 Architectural Review Board and two terms for all others; keep the membership of the Human 28 Relationship Commission to seven members and apply term limits to currently serving Board 29 and Commission Members who would be eligible to reapply for an additional term; and lastly, 30 to require Staff reports be provided to Boards and Commissions 7-days in advance of each 31 meeting. So, some of these changes were not incorporated yet into the book itself, and then 32 additionally, some modifications are going to be further discussed by the City Council. So, for 33 example, Letter E, term limits, is a discussion that’s scheduled for Council on June 1st and so we 34 do look forward to hearing what the Council does decide about term limits and if there are any 35 changes from the current proposal. 36 37 And this slide just shows, like the table that’s in the Packet, what is in the handbook, what the 38 current PTC practice is, and if there’s any adjusted recommended change. And so, you can see 39 that one of the most monumental changes just probably would be changing to verbatim 40 Page 61 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. minutes which we currently don’t have. Some of minor changes, kind of behind the scene, 1 yearly attendance. 2 3 I do want to look at number three or the third one down. Boards and Commissions need to 4 submit a yearly work plan for Council’s approval. So, as of last Friday, departments were 5 notified that they need to create a work plan by… for submission to the City Clerk by this Friday. 6 And so, what I will do is create a Staff generated draft plan and then we will discuss that and 7 agendize that for our June 9th meeting. And then if the Commission does approve the work plan 8 with any modifications. That would be presented as an At Places Memo for the Council’s 9 consideration on June 22nd. And I do apologize for that timeline, but we just were made aware 10 of that at the end of last week. 11 12 Staff liaison to adjourn meeting if there’s a lack of quorum. The last item on this table, terms to 13 commence on November 1, is an additional item that will be considered on June 1st by the 14 Council when they are looking at the ordinance that would effectuate some of these changes. 15 My understanding is that term commencement day may change from the proposed. So, we will 16 wait to see and certainly update you on the change and where it settles. 17 18 And then… don’t know why today I’m having trouble advancing my slides. There we go. 19 Members… and this again, the term limits is the topic of the first line; letters of resignation, 20 who to address those too; mandatory training shall be provided, and so we did have trainings 21 that were provided. And hopefully, you were able to attend or to watch the videos that have 22 been made available, and then meeting procedures should follow the City Council’s Rules of 23 Order. So, Staff will prepare some changes for the PTC Procedural Rules to conform to the 24 Council Rules of Order. For example, no substitute motions are permitted I believe and so that 25 was something that we want to make sure we align. 26 27 So, that’s the end of the presentation. I do want to note and call our Mr. Vinh Nguyen, who did 28 help with the development of the Staff report. We continue to look for opportunities to 29 develop our Staff and provide opportunities for growth and so I think he did a really great job 30 on his first Staff report. So, thank you for that Mr. Nguyen. With that, that concludes the Staff 31 presentation. 32 33 Chair Hechtman: [unintelligible – no audio] Ms. Tanner and Mr. Nguyen. A job well done. Let 34 me start with any questions that Commissioners have on the Staff report and then we can 35 move to public comment. Commissioner Chang. 36 37 Commissioner Chang: I don’t know if this is quite a question on the Staff report, but it is a 38 question about other things related to the handbook that I read recently as I was oriented. 39 Because Mr. Nguyen sent me a bunch of things, including the PTC Procedural Rules. So, I just 40 Page 62 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. noticed an inconstancy between the PTC Procedural Rules and what we have on our agenda 1 often. 2 3 So, my understanding is that public comments are limited to 3-minutes but then comments on 4 any individual agenda item, according to our Procedural Rules, is 5-minutes, but on today’s 5 agenda it says 3-minutes. And then similarly, in our Procedural Rules it says that groups are 6 limited to I think it’s 15-minutes… oh sorry, groups are limited to 10-minutes, but on our 7 agenda, it says that groups are limited to 15-minutes. And I have no stake in which way it is, 8 one way or the other. But I’m hoping that we can be consistent because I think it’s confusing to 9 us and confusing to members of the public who are planning to… you know they’re timing 10 themselves. Like I should I maybe time you for 3-minutes or 5-minutes? So, that was just a 11 question about what it should be. 12 13 Ms. Tanner: That is a great point. It is an inconsistency and I think what when we do come back 14 with the updates that we need to do our Procedural Rules, that could be a discussion. I believe 15 that… in my understanding again as inheriting from past ways the Board has run is that I think it 16 became… maybe became… maybe Commissioner Alcheck knows. I don’t know if it’s been 17 different in terms of his 10-year but that the Chair can I think… it’s just to 5 but the Chair can 18 limit it to 3 and I think perhaps that became the habit I’m guessing. And so instead of saying 5 19 and then continually limiting to 3. I think that maybe the agenda got updated just to say 3, even 20 though it’s the Chair's discretion to limit it to 3 or to have it be all the way up to 5. 21 22 With the group comments, I’m not sure how that got confused either but I think it is a point 23 that we do need to decide what we want to do and then true up all of our documents to be 24 consistent. 25 26 Chair Hechtman: So, these are questions of the Staff report before we go to public comment. 27 Commissioner Alcheck. 28 29 Commissioner Alcheck: I’ll just… I just want to fill some gap in. I think that is the… that’s almost 30 exactly right Assistant Director Tanner. I think the idea originally why they lowered the number 31 was, and I don’t know that they did it in the right place, but was the idea that it’s always better 32 to know you have more than to know you have less. And so, while the… most of the meetings in 33 the beginning of my 10-year allowed people to speak for 5-minutes, but they maybe didn’t 34 come with 5 and then find out that it was only 3. It was sort of the reverse. They could be the 3 35 to 5 but they prepared for 3 and if they were given 5 that was a bonus. I think that’s why but I 36 don’t know that it’s necessarily good. 37 38 Chair Hechtman: Alright any other questions? I don’t see any so we will now open the floor for 39 public comments. Please raise your hand if you wish to speak. On the Zoom App, there is a 40 Page 63 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. raised hand button on the bottom of your screen. If you’re dialing in from a phone, please press 1 *9. Mr. Nguyen, are there public speakers for this item? 2 3 Mr. Vinh Nguyen, Admin Associate III: Yes, we do have a couple raised hands and we actually do 4 have a group that will be donating their time. And I just want to remind everyone that if you are 5 donating your time, you do not need to raise your hand. So, I will be lowering the following 6 people’s hands. Keith, Nelson, and Mary. If that’s incorrect, please raise your hand again and 7 we can address that. Ok, our first speaker will be Chris, followed by Fred, and I will also be 8 lowering… actually, I will also be lowering Annette’s hand as well. Ok Chris, ok ahead. 9 10 Mr. Chris Robell: Thank you Chair and Commissioners. I had actually four points. The first 11 relates to what the book… the handbook calls successful meeting management and getting 12 through items in a timely manner. And in my mind, I think that means the Commissioners need 13 to really stay on point, formulate their thoughts, not rambling, not going off-topic, or what the 14 handbook calls grandstanding. And I think that’s really important to make sure there’s sufficient 15 time to allow everybody to be heard and the agenda items don’t get pushed or moved and 16 there’s sufficient progress. So, if anybody is not doing that, I think I would encourage a process 17 for coaching and warning and I don’t know exactly what happens if that’s not being met but I 18 think that’s a really important thing that there’s always opportunity for improvement on that 19 front. 20 21 Second point, which Rachael talked about was the Staff reports being released to the public 7-22 days prior which is great. I think that also needs to apply to Colleague’s Memos and even more 23 importantly, presentations. So, sometimes there have been incidences at PTC where there’s 24 material that’s really new or slightly different or a different twist and that shows up. And you 25 don’t know what it’s going to be in there and it’s different than what’s in the Staff report. So, I 26 think those presentations need to be also not 7-days for presentations but sufficient. So, that 27 the public can and the Commissioners can review them and have a chance to respond. 28 29 The third topic is about public engagement. I think it’s absolutely critical to keep Zoom as well 30 as YouTube. YouTube allows people to watch it at double speed for people whose brains go 31 faster than people’s mouths. So, I think YouTube and Zoom are really critical in making people… 32 that’s one of the benefits of COVID along with clearer air quality. So, I think we should keep that 33 even though that when we go back to City Hall and I know there’s legislation contemplating 34 requiring Zoom, but that to me doesn’t matter. I mean the legislation is a minimum 35 requirement and I think Palo Alto deserves better than just the minimum. We should just make 36 a policy to keep it and I will mentioned that as well to Council. 37 38 And then the last one has to do with the transcripts. I don’t really… my understanding and I 39 spoke at this at Finance Committee is the budget went back for or at least it was recommended 40 Page 64 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 go back, the $63,000, to do the full transcripts for full transparency. Which I think we can all 1 agree could… there’s opportunity for improvement on that. So, full transcripts and verbatim 2 should not be discouraged. I don’t think… I think Council will hopefully reverse that. I know Pat 3 and Eric Filseth were proponents of that in Finance. So, I hope we do go back to or keep that I 4 should say. Thank you very much for your consideration and for putting this book together and 5 I think it will be very helpful. 6 7 Mr. Nguyen: Thank you Chris for your comments. Our next and last speaker is Fred. If there’s 8 anyone else who wishes to speak, please raise your hand now. Fred, I see your entire group is 9 here so you will get 10-minutes. Fred, if you’re there, you can unmute yourself now. Fred, if 10 you’re there, can you please unmute yourself and speak? 11 12 Ms. Tanner: Mr. Balin, if you’re speaking we still can’t hear you. You should have the unmute 13 button in the lower-left corner of your screen I believe if you’re on a computer. I don’t know if 14 anyone from Fred’s group can raise their hand and help us to get through to him, or perhaps 15 speak in his stead if they are ready. Do you want to try again Vinh to unmute him? 16 17 Mr. Nguyen: Yes. Still no response. 18 19 Ms. Tanner: Yeah, Mr. Balin, can you unmute yourself? Is there anyone from Mr. Balin’s group 20 who feels that they could speak in his stead, or we can provide the phone number Mr. Balin and 21 you can call in to provide your comments? Maybe is Ms. Sanders part of his group or Mr. 22 Bennett? 23 24 Mr. Nguyen: Yes, both of them are part of his group. I’ll go ahead and allow Ms. Sanders to 25 speak first. 26 27 Ms. Tanner: Thanks. 28 29 Ms. Becky Sanders: Oh, hi there everybody. Yeah, I could call Fred but maybe Mr. Bennett has 30 something so I’ll just call Fred right now and see what’s going on with him. Thank you for this 31 extra time. 32 33 Ms. Tanner: Thank you and Mr… maybe we can unmute Mr. Bennett and he can share if he has 34 any insight. 35 36 Mr. Nguyen: It looks like Fred has rejoined on a second account. 37 38 Ms. Tanner: Ok. 39 40 Page 65 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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. Nguyen: Fred, go ahead. 1 2 Mr. Fred Balin: Can you hear me now? 3 4 Ms. Tanner: Yes. You may want to log off your other account. You’ll have an echo I think until 5 that happens. 6 7 Mr. Balin: Right, let me try and do that. Sorry for this confusion. 8 9 Ms. Tanner: It’s ok. There’s got to be some kind of technical issue in a meeting on Zoom. 10 11 Mr. Balin: Let me log off the other one. Let’s see, can you hear me? 12 13 Mr. Nguyen: Yes, we can. Thank you. 14 15 Mr. Balin: Alright, so if I’m not… if there is no echo I’ll start and thanks for those residents who 16 donated their time to me. Good evening and many thanks to all the appointed officials present 17 and past who have lived up to the letter and spirit embodied in the City’s new Boards, 18 Commission, and Committee Handbook throughout their public service. The handbook includes 19 much-needed codification of expectations for preparation, attendance, and punctuality, of 20 roles and responsibilities, of procedures, and of adherence to a Code of Conduct. 21 22 The Chair, or Vice-Chair as a stand-in, is entrusted to set a positive tone, ensure the 23 effectiveness of the group process, that items move along without delay, all members are 24 heard in a fair and safe manner, and to intercede when called for. Ways to handle conflicts 25 represented during the March 31st training session for Chairs and Vice-Chairs and at a late hour 26 at the end of your meeting 2-weeks ago. After a Commissioner’s question about process was 27 misinterpreted as an insinuation of unethical Commission behavior and a personal affront. The 28 Chair calmly and appropriately disabused those notions and the crucial fault line between 29 addressing the topic, but not the person was upheld. 30 31 Amidst the fine in this guiding document, there are two very significant changes approved by 32 the Council related to increase transparency and good government. There was also one 33 recommendation that works counter to those goals. Let’s start there and quickly help put it to 34 bed. Staff is recommending that verbatim minutes of the Commission be discontinued. This 35 dubious idea has been raised in the past as a way to save money, but with advances in speech 36 recognition technology such as the Zoom transcription, I get on my screen. It’s even harder to 37 justify. The proposed change would make it much more difficult for the public and Council to 38 prepare for subsequent meetings, or for citizens to research past issues. The proposed 39 Page 66 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. replacement “sense minutes” will not cut it in word or deed. Enough said. Let's move on to 1 better news. 2 3 Not explicitly called out in the Staff report or within the presentation tonight, but within the 4 handbook is an important change to the process related to quasi-judicial items. Those in which 5 Commissioners in effect act as judged regarding Variances, Conditional Use Permits, Home 6 Improvement Exceptions, Planned Community and Housing Zone applications, appeals, and 7 other matters where exceptions to existing code are requested. To decades ago when Karen 8 Holman and Pat Bert were on this body, Commissioners instituted a procedural change in which 9 communication with an applicant or the public was strongly discouraged on such items. This 10 procedural change led to a shared Commission norm that kept all discussions on quasi-judicial 11 items in open view and greatly improved public confidence in the Commission’s work. 12 13 Some applicants however did not like it and brazenly displayed their disdain in front of the 14 Commission and/or excoriated the Commission afterward. Particularly, during two notorious 15 Planned Community applications for what are now Alma Village and College Terrance Center 16 who’s plans this body did not recommend. Both decisions would be appealed to a City Council 17 which has no strong prohibition on speaking with interested parties at any time. That policy 18 leads some Commissioners as well as members of the public to view the Commission’s work as 19 greatly diminished if concurrent with or even prior to the Commission’s hearings on a quasi-20 judicial matter. Applicants and/or their agents were interacting with Council Members and 21 counting noses. Moved by this dissatisfaction, Council changed its Procedures and Protocols 22 Handbook in 2011 to support the role of Boards and Commissions in making independent 23 recommendations to Council by discouraging such communications outside of any noticed 24 public hearing prior to the final recommendation of the Architectural Review Board or the 25 Planning and Transportation Commission. 26 27 But by that time a gradual change in this Commission’s composition had produced a majority 28 that wanted act more like the Council and so akin to ships passing unnoticed to each other in 29 the night. Just as the Council was tightening its rules, the Planning Commission, that Planning 30 Commission voted to loosen up its own by removing its strong prohibition on such 31 communications. They tried to soften via new disclosure options which were soon ignored. The 32 City Council this past November 30th, reinstated the former Commission policy. On your Packet 33 Page 63, or also handbook Page 24, middle of the page. For quasi-judicial hearings, 34 communications with an applicant or any member of the public is strongly discouraged 35 beginning from the time an application has been submitted and until final decision is reached. 36 In amending this body’s procedural rules to include the Council’s directive, the added disclosure 37 options from 2011 should be removed. 38 39 Page 67 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Also, of great significance is a new Council requirement, not in the handbook but thankfully 1 mentioned tonight, requiring Staff reports to be provided to Boards, Commissions, and 2 Committee 7-days advance of those meetings… in advance of those meetings. This is a much-3 needed and belated follow-up to the aftermath of the two projects cited earlier. In those days, 4 Council Packets were released on the Thursday prior to a Council meeting and to often followed 5 with significant later revisions before or even at the scheduled meeting. City Manager James 6 Keene moved the Packet release date back first by 1-day to Wednesday and following the 7 implementation of a new agenda management system, an additional one full week. Agenda and 8 Staff reports, a major change in transparency win that Staff and the Clerk’s Office was able to 9 seamlessly implement. 10 11 It is very important now, that once again Staff, the Clerk’s Office, and the City Manager work 12 together to implement this new policy of an extended Packet release window for all Boards, 13 Commissions, and Committees as soon as possible. Of course, this mandates these items be 14 simultaneously released to the public. I noticed that this week’s PTC Packet was released on 15 Thursday, 6-days prior. Rather than Friday or often Monday. You’re getting closer. 16 17 We have been living in very strange times. Tremendous hardship and disruption and yet for 18 those who make it through, ways to see the world differently. For anyone who complained that 19 voices here are skewed because only certain people can attend and speak to Commission 20 meetings. A new argument will now be needed. Can you imagine any way in which Palo Alto’s 21 future for public meetings here, at the Council and other Boards, Commissions, and Brown Act 22 compliant Committees, whether decentralized across public official homes or gathered 23 together once again within City Hall or at other location, can ever go back to a world in which 24 the public must appear in person in order to speak? That is history. So, let the new fuller 25 engagement continue and flourish with continued release of verbatim minutes here, full 26 compliance with the new quasi-judicial procedures, and release of agendas with complete Staff 27 reports for this and all other Boards, Commissions, and Committees a week prior to their 28 meetings. Thank you. 29 30 Mr. Nguyen: Thank you Fred for your comments. Chair Hechtman, that concludes public 31 comments for this item. 32 33 Chair Hechtman: Thank you and thank you to our members of the public who spoke tonight. So, 34 I will bring this back to the Commission for a discussion. And so, I’m not intending to put a time 35 limit on our discussion here, but I would encourage everybody to get to the point if they have 36 comments on the handbook. And then let's figure out what… well actually, let me start with a 37 question because it’s not entirely clear from the agenda what Staff is looking for here. First of 38 all, it’s an action item so I would think it would need some kind of motion, and would the 39 Page 68 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 be to either adopt it or to recommend adjustments to implement its directions? Ms. 1 Tanner? 2 3 Ms. Tanner: Certainly… yes, can you hear me? 4 5 Chair Hechtman: Yes. 6 7 Ms. Tanner: Certainly, the Commission could simply concur that we agree… we’ve received the 8 handbook, we understand its contents and we will adjust our Commission accordingly because 9 that’s what the Staff… work Staff would do afterward. The only caveat is just that the handbook 10 is changing again but what I assume is that if the Council changes it. Then those changes will 11 kind of flow down to them. So, that might be the motion that could be made. Certainly, if there 12 are things that the Commission would like us to push back or write comments to Council 13 regarding, that could be another item that the Commission may wish to convey comments to 14 Council. 15 16 Chair Hechtman: Thank you for that clarification. So, Commissioners, who would like to lead off 17 with their compliments, questions, or concerns about the handbook? Commissioner Chang. 18 19 Commissioner Chang: First, thank you so much Mr. Nguyen for putting together that table that 20 kind of digest where we are now, what we’re supposed to be able… what we need to do to 21 close the gap. That was well done. 22 23 I just have one opinion on something which is… which aligns with the most recent public 24 comment. The handbook says that verbatim minutes are discouraged but it doesn’t say that 25 they’re not allowed and to understand that they are cumbersome. That said, they’re also really, 26 really valuable for understanding the context because as Commissioner Alcheck so often says. 27 He wants to put more information into the motion so that any reader of the motion can 28 understand what we were really trying to get at and I think that the value… since what the PTC 29 does is create a recommendation. It’s really hard to get the color behind the recommendation 30 without the verbatim minutes and so what I would suggest is that we do have summary 31 minutes. I think that’s also very, very valuable. If somebody just wants to understand bottom 32 line what happens at the meeting. It’s very cumbersome to dig through 100 pages of verbatim 33 minutes, but I would say I want to keep the verbatim minutes too. So, can we have both would 34 be my question and suggestion? 35 36 Ms. Tanner: Certainly, so just for information and I don’t want to say yes or no because I kind of 37 don’t know, but I would assume we probably can. We do have a service that transcribes our 38 minutes and so that’s how we do get that… those done. So, we can check to see if they could… 39 Page 69 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 know, they’ve already transcribed it. Could they do sense minutes as well would be what I 1 would want to ask that firm if that’s a service they provide? 2 3 Chair Hechtman: I would note on that while I am waiting to see other Commissioner’s raise 4 their hand, that if you look at our minutes even today, at the end of each item, there… and in 5 fact, maybe at the end of the document, there’s already a summary of all the motions from that 6 meeting. So, I would imagine that it might not be difficult to break that off into a separate 7 document and give us both minutes; verbatim minutes and summary. 8 9 Ms. Tanner: Yeah and then we could post that with the minutes. Often what happens with 10 Council is you’ll see the action minutes and then the full minutes, or I don’t know if they’re 11 going to do full minutes… verbatim minutes as well but we can have both posted separately for 12 ease of access. 13 14 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Summa. 15 16 Commissioner Summa: Thank you. I just wanted to agree with my colleagues. I think verbatim 17 minutes are invaluable. Especially for very complicated motions for the public and even for us. I 18 mean sometimes I like to go back and read them. And it’s actually easier to flip through the 19 minutes than to flip through a video and find what you’re looking for. So, I just… I’m glad it’s a 20 suggestion and not a requirement so I think that’s about it. Thank you. 21 22 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Lauing. 23 24 Commissioner Lauing: Yes, thanks. I think we should stay with the current minutes and then do 25 the sense minutes as well. They both add value and I think the cost is de minimis and you heard 26 from whatever it was essentially five or eight members of the public that that would be 27 advisable. 28 29 The biggest issue for me on this is the PTC work plan. So, I think we should chat about that. I’m 30 actually surprised sort of globally that the requirement is for each Commission to be done by 31 June with their annual plan. Which they only have 6-months to implement and then evaluate so 32 I don’t really by that but that’s outside of our purview. But in our case, we’re so at the mercy 33 of… and this is a good thing… at the mercy of delivery of stuff from Council for us to take a look 34 at and laws and applicants. That… and I say this respectfully… we can’t even figure out 2-weeks 35 in advance what our next issue is. Let alone our strategic plan for the year. So, this is going to 36 take some work on our part to meet the requirements. I appreciate Ms. Tanner doing the draft 37 of the first one, but maybe at the same time, there’s an opportunity for us to, in doing that as I 38 did on other Commissions, propose to Council that there’s some things that we think that’s in 39 our next 6-months, 12-months we really should be looking at and kind of get their sign off on it 40 Page 70 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. in advance. So, I think it’s an opportunity as well but I think that’s going to need some work. So, 1 that’s the fundamental thing for me. 2 3 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Templeton. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you, Chair. I was wondering if Staff could clarify. There was a 6 public comment that said that Commissioners should not interact with applicants and I was 7 wondering if you can clarify that? Because I know in the past applicants have reached out to us 8 and sometimes we meet with them and sometimes we don’t. But it would be good to really 9 understand what the expectations there are. Thank you. 10 11 Ms. Tanner: Certainly, and I will say my internet is also been troubling so if something happens, 12 please shake your head or do something to let me know and that’s why my camera has also 13 been off a couple times. And I’ll ask Mr. Wong or Mr. Shimizu, he may have some additional 14 comments on this but my understanding is that when we have a quasi-judicial item where we 15 are acting kind of… you all are acting as the judge. Once the application is submitted, you… I 16 understand that it’s discouraged to meet with applicants outside of the Commission meeting. 17 That I think is the advice and so you know an applicant may reach out before they’ve submitted 18 their application or before it’s subject to PTC and I understand that that’s kind of what the 19 focus is. It certainly isn’t in the hearing, but it’s really more about the ex parte communication. 20 Mr. Shimizu, do you have any knowledge or further advice to add to that? I’m assuming it might 21 be similar for Council in terms of how they are advised to deal with quasi-judicial that they may 22 have? 23 24 Mr. Tim Shimizu, Deputy City Attorney: I’m sorry, could you just say that one more time? The 25 original question. 26 27 Ms. Tanner: Yeah, Ms… Commissioner Templeton’s responding to a comment from the public 28 kind of suggesting that Commissioners at certain times should not have ex parte 29 communication with applicants who have a project. And I was surmising and using my lawyerly 30 instincts I’ve picked up from working for a City to say I think that’s particularly applicable to 31 quasi-judicial items. That perhaps after the applications been submitted or the matter is before 32 the PTC. That’s really when the ex parte communication would be discouraged to occur. I don’t 33 know if you have further insight into how that should be handled by Commissioners. 34 35 Mr. Shimizu: So, I think as in the handbook is a new… as new living document, we’ll see if 36 Council would like to give additional direction or guidance on how much emphasis they’re 37 placing on this. And what… so it’s a question that I’ll take back to my office and Albert and Ms. 38 Tanner can fill you in as we get better guidance. 39 40 Page 71 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Hechtman: Thank you, Mr. Shimizu, and incidentally welcome to the PTC. We’re happy to 1 have you filling in tonight. Other Commissioners with initial impressions or comments? Alright, 2 well I’ll provide a couple of my own. Oh, Commissioner Templeton, do you want to… I see your 3 hand. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: Yes, sorry, I wanted to throw in my comments. I agree with what 6 Commissioner Lauing mentioned about the work plan. I think that this is… it seems unusual for 7 the Planning and Transportation Commission given our current setup is so dependent on 8 Council. I believe that was his phrasing and it is. And we do have a hard time with a look ahead 9 and I believe we are more a responsive body than one that looks ahead as the Commission 10 itself not understand that the department of planning and the department of transportation 11 may have goals for the years that they work out with Council. But I’m curious how that would 12 work and we’re happy to try it this year and give feedback but I’m concerned that it may eat up 13 a lot cycles and we’re a very busy Commission. Thank you. 14 15 Chair Hechtman: Alright, I guess I have a few comments. First of all, on the verbatim minutes, I 16 really think that that is the essence of our work and other Commissioners I’m going to be 17 echoing to some extent things I’ve already heard you say, but that’s really the heart and soul of 18 it. And I think for us just to provide summary minutes to the City Council on our 19 recommendations is nearly valueless because our items are almost never simple. And you really 20 have to understand the context for the motion which can be simple and without verbatim 21 minutes to look back on, you just can’t do that. So, I’m glad that they are discouraged rather 22 than prohibited. I intend as the Chair to keep using them and will provide the summary version 23 until we’re told by Council that that is a problem. 24 25 I do think that in putting together this handbook, the Council seemed to have tried a one size 26 fits all approach and I don’t think it really works. Because the natures of our various 27 Commissions and Boards are very different. And so there may be Commissions or Boards where 28 you really don’t need verbatim minutes and that’s fine and this work plan I think is great 29 example. I was in a meeting last week where somebody from the Arts Commission was there 30 and it turns out they have… they set goals. They want to get X number of pieces of art in public 31 place in the coming year and for that, you need a work plan. But as Commissioner Templeton 32 said, we are responsive or we’re really almost purely reactionary. We just take what is sent our 33 way. We’re not trying to accomplish things that originate here and so I think a work plan is 34 awkward for us. But it sounds like Ms. Tanner and Staff are going to give it the university try 35 and we’ll see what they come up with. And I expect what us… what we will see is a pretty 36 flexible document that recognizes the nature of the fact that we don’t know what… pretty 37 much what will be in front of us 3-months from now. 38 39 Page 72 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. And then the last item that I want to talk about was this language in the handbook that one of 1 our speakers has mentioned about communications with an applicant strongly discouraged on 2 quasi-judicial matters. So, those are things really for which we get an application from a 3 member of the public. You know either an owner of a property or business and I just find this 4 concept problematic. I’m curious to know if the Council is imposing the same limitation on 5 themselves? I know working in many jurisdictions that most of them don’t do this. Most of 6 them recognize that there are safeguards to protect the public process. Disclosure 7 requirements but there’s also benefits to allowing your decision-makers to obtain full 8 information before making a decision or in our case a recommendation. And sometimes to get 9 that full information you need communication with somebody that is going to provide 10 information. And then you need to make sure that the information is shared with your body; 11 with the Commission in our case or the Council. And one place I think that this is particularly 12 important is sometimes there are applications benefit greatly from a site visit. And when you go 13 to a site, I mean theoretically you could tell the applicant or appellant. I’m coming to the site at 14 6 o’clock tonight, stay away from me, don’t talk to me, but the reality is oftentimes whoever is 15 asking whether it’s an appeal or an application. They want to make sure you… that you see 16 something that you might not otherwise notice and so that communication I think is really 17 important. And I’m not really understanding why the right process is to avoid gathering 18 information rather than disclose the information we get because I think that if we can gather 19 information, disclose it with the rest of the Commission. The Commission makes better 20 recommendations to Council. So, I don’t know what to do about it. It’s in the handbook but I 21 would… I’d be interested in pushing back on that. Commissioner Summa? 22 23 Commissioner Summa: Thank you, Chair Hechtman and I have to say I agree with you on that. I 24 think… I kind of thought the way they were going with this is to not… to discourage meeting 25 with the applicant while a matter is being heard through the various steps of it being heard. But 26 I would find it difficult for instances when we get an appeal, you know it comes to us after it’s 27 gone through a lot… it would be impossible for us to talk to that person before they submit the 28 appeal. And it’s often very necessary to go and look at the situation which is private property. 29 And so, I agree that sometimes that’s really necessary. I mean I’ve gone and looked at sites 30 without meeting with the applicants but sometimes you kind of have to and as long as it’s 31 disclosed and people are honest about that. I think it’s more helpful than not. I did want to 32 mention that. 33 34 And the other thing is just I think there’s one sentence on Packet Page 58 which is Page 19 of 35 the second to last paragraph. I think the first sentence is really confusing. It… maybe Staff 36 would just like to look at that without us… I don’t have to read it or anything but. 37 38 Ms. Tanner: Commissioner, can you repeat the Page number? 39 40 Page 73 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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: Yeah, it’s Packet Page 58 but it’s Page 19 of the handbook and it reads, 1 during the BCC meetings, Staff liaisons will ensure there’s a quorum prior to the Chair calling a 2 Commission meeting to order and adjourn a Commission meeting in the event there’s a lack of 3 quorum 15-minutes after the start time of the meeting. Maybe it’s just me but that’s seemed 4 like the second clause of that sentence contradicts the first but. 5 6 Ms. Tanner: Yeah, I think this probably should be two sentences and I think what it’s saying is 7 after the appointed… the stated or agendized start time. If there’s not a quorum, then 15-8 minutes after that time the liaison should adjourn the meeting. 9 10 Commissioner Summa: It just seemed confusing to me so I just wanted to mention it. Thank 11 you. 12 13 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Chang. 14 15 Commissioner Chang: So, I just wanted to chime in with some of my thoughts about this work 16 plan idea. I think the timing is a little strange, you know being 6-months into the year but 17 whatever. I would just say then if it’s 6-months into the year, then we have 12-months to work 18 on it and we shouldn’t be asked to assess until the following year. But that said, because of the 19 nature of our work, because we’re responding and reactive. Maybe our work plan is like you 20 said Commissioner Hechtman [note – Chair Hechtman], a flexible document with a couple of 21 three to five priorities or something. Where if we have a light meeting, we can insert something 22 in there. So, it’s a little bit more of a prioritization or a recommendation of what we could talk 23 about. 24 25 And one of the things that I’m most curious about and had asked Assistant Director Tanner 26 about during my orientation for the PTC was I see the items that come from City Council to the 27 PTC. But I keep hearing about things that oh, City Council said that to send this to PTC but then 28 it kind of never makes it here. So, I would love to see the list of items that have been referred 29 to the PTC that haven’t actually come before us because perhaps we could offer some 30 assistance in terms of prioritizing those things. So, sometimes Council doesn’t attach a deadline 31 to it and so then I think that that might be a good starting point with respect to topics that we 32 might want to prioritize. 33 34 Chair Hechtman: Other Commissioners? Commissioner Alcheck, you ready to weigh in? 35 36 Commissioner Alcheck: Sure. You know I agree with the sentiments about the work plan. I think 37 it’s busywork. I don’t… I think maybe what the Council was sort of… maybe what they were 38 interested in is better understanding how the Planning Department is going to study different 39 topics over the course of the year with… in conjunction with the Planning Commission. That’s 40 Page 74 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 I think. I think they want to have a little oversight over what topics we go into when we 1 study them as opposed to just whenever an item comes up and they go, you know what? We’d 2 like to direct the Planning Commission to study this. Maybe they also want to have a long-range 3 goal of what items get studied in a year and so I guess I would suggest we respond to that item 4 by saying is that what you’re interested in? And if so, can you clarify that that document is 5 something that the Planning Departments come to you about and it’s not really something we 6 have draft control over? We’ve had a lot of… we don’t have any control over our agendas and 7 in the past, we’ve been accused of that. And the irony is, is that maybe this would be a clear 8 way of saying this is not something we direct. 9 10 I’ll move on. I agree with everyone on the verbatim minutes and I think this is something that 11 I’ve said a lot. I actually don’t think the motion process is even that valuable. You know we do 12 all these topics as if they’re binary, one or zero, and that’s a mistake. And no offense intended 13 but I feel like 70 to 80 percent of the solutions brought to us by the Planning Department are 14 imperfect. And so, we spend a lot of time trying to navigate discussion around them and then 15 get stuck when we have to up or down a particular issue when maybe we want to draw around 16 the edges and say look. In a more perfect world, you would focus on these goals and objectives. 17 This is the right intent but this is the wrong tool and so the notion that verbatim minutes would 18 be not available. I mean that’s a mistake. 19 20 I think… look, verbatim minutes are only useful for a kind of Council Member that will read 21 them and so if they can’t get a majority of individuals suggesting that they think they're 22 valuable. I think that sends a really negative message to I think what we have collectively said 23 tonight which is that the bulk of our discussion is the value. That we basically have very 24 different understandings of the value we add. That presents a much bigger problem. 25 26 This goes into two other changes they made. The substitute motion. We removed the 27 substitute motion no because it’s not a great tool for policy advancement. We removed it 28 because it’s a political tool. It was an easy way for someone who wasn’t happy with the process 29 to high jack it and takes a lot of time off the table. Our constraint is our time. When we spend a 30 lot of time and it’s true. I’m not one that hasn’t been long-winded before but when we spend a 31 lot of time pursuing something that doesn’t have the full support of the Commission. That’s a 32 lot of time wasted and I like that this year we’ve kind of tried to be shorter when we talk about 33 process. Don’t talk about process for 45-minutes, only for us to not get to the meat. The 34 substitute motion in the past was like that. It would take up a big chunk of time, only to find out 35 maybe it didn’t have full support. I think the friendly amendment process was much more 36 productive because it asked us to work together and come up with a better solution. And what 37 I’ve seen actually, in this particular year without the year of the substitute motion. Is that a 38 number of times we’ve come up with something and then we sort of go, you know what, let 39 me… would someone else like to put it out there? We’ve been really gracious about how we 40 Page 75 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. put together our motions I think because there’s a sense of respect there that I would suggest a 1 substitute motion doesn’t confer. So, I’m sad to see that and I would suggest that that would be 2 the City Council politicizing. Giving us a sort of a more political maneuvering tool that I don’t 3 know that we need. 4 5 I want to just tag onto the meeting with applicants and getting a chance to do site visits. This 6 again goes to this idea that these quasi-judicial items, we’re the judge. I think that’s also… no 7 one… I don’t think we should be approaching this job with that sense of an impact or authority. 8 Our best… the best thing we can possibly do is offer a diverse set of opinions to the Council. 9 Opinions that come from individuals who on a weekly or bi-monthly basis grapple with these 10 issues have some consistency with the topics and have some relevant memory about how the 11 City deals with them, and how people in the City have been sensitive to them. And so, I… to me 12 walking a project in the past has been profoundly informative and maybe for some people 13 looking at the map is good enough. But it’s true, the same information exists on GPS than it 14 does when you’re walking it, but sometimes when you’re walking it in the 3-D it becomes more 15 real. So, I’m sad to see that and I would also support a motion where we would push back a 16 little on that. 17 18 And then I would just say finally that as… I think I’m the one Commissioner that I can remember 19 in history that probably is being affected by this new term limit. I don’t necessarily think I would 20 probably pursue another term on this Commission if they didn’t… if they hadn’t passed that. 21 But I do think that the emphasis to sort of create… a term limit is valuable if you can create 22 some consistency. So, for example, if you have a lot of retirements or resignations from the 23 Commission at a particular time. Having the remaining members get termed out could be really 24 problematic to the composition of the Commission. There’s something sort of inorganic that 25 can happen when we have too many new people and to be honest I think that happened to me 26 to some extent. There’s so much turnover between 2013 and 2015. And so, I guess what I 27 would say is I mean maybe if that ever happens they’ll be able to deal with that. But one issue I 28 think that they need… that needs to be grappled with is what does it mean to have many new 29 people at the same time. And anyway, so that’s something to… that they’ll need to address. 30 31 Chair Hechtman: Thank you. So, I think we’ve heard at least once from each Commissioner. I 32 think I’m… the common themes I’m hearing are related to retaining verbatim minutes. I don’t 33 know that we need to do… take any action to do that since again the language is just 34 discouraged. I’m hearing some interest in pushing back on the absence of communication with 35 applicants on quasi-judicial and I would think that… as I understand from Ms. Tanner the 36 Council is going to be reconsidering certain items or refining certain items. And I would think in 37 a motion we might be asking them to throw that issue in with the other items they’re looking 38 more deeply at, at least as it regards to PTC. That might be one form of getting this back before 39 them. 40 Page 76 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 And then the third thing I’m hearing is some confusion and really desire for some clarity on the 2 work plan. Whether we get that clarity from the Council or as Commissioner Chang I think 3 suggested, we give that clarity in the work plan and we just take the pretty blank canvas that 4 they’ve given us to work with and just put our own vision in there. And so, it’s not clear to me 5 if… depending on how we want to do that. We may need to include something in our motion to 6 ask a question of the Council or tell them this is how we’re interpreting that mandate as it 7 applies to the PTC. 8 9 So, that’s my attempt to organize what I’ve heard so that one of you can hazard a motion. 10 Anybody want to try? Commissioner Alcheck, thank you. 11 12 Commissioner Alcheck: I’m not ready to make a motion. Since it sounds like everybody’s sort of 13 done, I just want to make a few more quick comments. You know I paid close attention to this 14 discussion at Council when it happened. I remember thinking and hearing comments from 15 other members of the public about the media inquiries and social media use and thinking what 16 is the deal there? You know, I don’t know that there’s a lot of room here for our involvement in 17 editing these new rules, but I remember at the time speakers were concerned with the City 18 Council’s effort to essentially censor conversations that happened between Members of the 19 Commission and reporters if you will or news sources. And I think that’s a mistake too 20 because… and I don’t think one Commissioner or Chair needs to represent the body. It seems to 21 me like if a reporter wanted to get a little bit of an understanding of how a Commission felt 22 about a particular thing because who knows. Maybe the reporter felt that there was an 23 undeveloped thread there. Like what… why wouldn’t it benefit the City to have the opportunity 24 to spend time in that in a journalistic standpoint? So, you know, I’m not sure what the problem 25 was but it didn’t seem like a broken system at least in our level, and considering how often our 26 discussion gets into the paper. It just seems like if they did reach out or if the media wanted to 27 have a conversation with the Commissioner in some capacity. The Commissioner would be 28 capable of saying look I represent my voice, not necessarily the voice of the Commission, and 29 somehow have a dialog that was meaningful to residents. 30 31 And then I’ll just say that the… I think there’s some… there’s maybe something that should be 32 added to the PTC handbook. Some level of additional training. I think as we move forward, it’s a 33 big part of my work has always been dedicated to affordable housing policy, and I think that 34 this Commission sort of medium to long-term future will be heavily involved in that. And I think 35 more needs to happen with regards to the education with respect to those… the affordable 36 housing issues and land use issues in general. Some sort of training. The Brown Act is great but 37 also people need to understand what are the levers in the past been for affordable housing 38 development and what are the constraints? Walking into these issues without any sort of 39 background is really hard and I think that the… maybe Planning Commission specific. I can 40 Page 77 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. imagine a scenario where the Director of the Planning Department or with a Staff member 1 created a curriculum if you will, a handbook of sorts, that really outlines how this works in the 2 state, how the state process works. You can’t come into this Commission without… you should 3 be expected to join a Commission only understanding how certification of your Housing 4 Element works. But after you join, there should be a process that helps you understand how all 5 those pieces work together and that becomes this encyclopedia that you can keep on your 6 shelf. I think that would be a helpful tool and I wish that they had incorporated something like 7 that. Thank you. 8 9 Chair Hechtman: That sounds like something that we could list as a priority in our work plan if 10 we so felt. We can impose it on ourselves without the Council mandating it through the 11 handbook. Commissioner Lauing. 12 13 Commissioner Lauing: Yes, Chair Hechtman, I have a different angle of communication that I 14 would suggest. I’m not sure that you need a motion because I think you’ve summarized it very 15 well. The central issues that we still have questions about and you also pointed out that it 16 seems like Council is open to making some shifts as Ms. Tanner has said. So, it would be, I think 17 very helpful if you just did a short meeting with the Mayor as the Chair of PTC and said after our 18 discussion the other night. I have some feedback for you, take 20-minutes on a Zoom and you’ll 19 hear it right from the horse’s mouth or the heron’s mouth I guess. But I think that kind of 20 interaction will be kind of good. So, you’d be able to read his reaction and give him some 21 reaction and it’s obviously an important Commission and they’re asking for some substantial 22 changes. So, that would be good to be heard I think between you and him. 23 24 Chair Hechtman: I’m open to inviting that dialog with the Mayor but I still think we need to 25 have a way to tie off this Agenda Item Number Three and because it’s an action item, I think a 26 motion is needed unless we’re going to continue it which I’m not proposing. Mr. Shimizu, is this 27 something that you can guide us on? Do we need a motion to conclude this action item? 28 29 Mr. Shimizu: I don’t think one is strictly required but I think it would be beneficial. Especially if 30 the Staff have some input about… if there’s a motion would underscore maybe some of PTC’s 31 concerns to Council. So, there is clear measure of some consensus, especially on your key… it 32 sounds like there’s a lot of agreement on certain things. So, I would recommend maybe that if 33 Staff have some kind of recommendation after hearing your discussion. 34 35 Ms. Tanner: And I might add if there was not a desire for a motion that was comprehensive. It 36 could be just to receive the report and that’s it. But there could be a motion if you were 37 wanting to do as Commissioner Lauing for the Commission to encourage Commissioner or the 38 Chair to communicate the concerns expressed to the Mayor and City Council in a letter and/or 39 meeting. And that might just to memorialize that there’s a will to have that information 40 Page 78 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. conveyed to Council or if you wanted Staff to do it then to direct us to convey that information 1 to the Council or Mayor. 2 3 Chair Hechtman: What’s the pleasure of the Commission? I don’t feel strongly in any direction 4 on this. Commissioner Alcheck. 5 6 Commissioner Alcheck: Maybe… I mean look, I hate when we assign extra work to one person 7 involuntarily. So, I actually really like the idea of the putting pen to paper and communicating 8 what we want and the minutes do that. But I also think what we’ve asked is that at this next 9 meeting which I don’t know if there’s a date when they pick up with discussion again and they 10 talk. I think it would be helpful if Staff articulated how the Commission felt and where they 11 wanted maybe the City Council to reconsider some items. And so, I don’t know what the 12 timeframe is there but what I would like… what I would suggest is I’d like to be… to empower 13 that message to be delivered at that time so that it’s effective. Because once that meeting’s 14 over, I suspect changes will begin to be put in place. 15 16 And so, I guess I would be more in support of a motion that directed Staff to communicate what 17 we would like communicated and if that means Staff, in conjunction with the Chair puts 18 together a letter. I think that would be… that just summarizes it bullet point, fine. If that… that 19 would… basically that would mean that we felt that more needed to be said than what could 20 simply be fit in a motion. Like we didn’t just push back against verbatim minutes. We wanted to 21 express why and if we… if the Commission felt like they wanted to have that communication 22 come from the Chair. I would suggest that maybe the Staff could begin a rough draft. I don’t 23 know. I would just suggest that it wouldn’t be… I wouldn’t want us to miss the opportunity for it 24 to be presented at the meeting that suggested it's going to take place in the near term. So, it 25 has to be somewhat in conjunction and I would want Staff to be the voice for the Commission 26 at that meeting. Unless the Chair decided to make himself present for that meeting as well and 27 I’m loathed to volunteer someone. So, I guess the question really has to be one between… I 28 think the Chair needs to communicate what he’s willing to do and then in the absence of him 29 willing to show up and make that communication himself. I think we need to be clear about 30 what we want Staff to say. 31 32 Chair Hechtman: Let me ask a follow-up question to that. Ms. Tanner, do we know when the 33 Council’s going to take up these items they’re going to be looking at? 34 35 Ms. Tanner: Yes, well I know that on June 1st they’ll be considering the term limit and they may 36 consider other matters to deal with handbook at that time. I would suggest if it is going to be a 37 letter, that it would… I want to clarify. Staff is not presenting that item and so any feedback the 38 Commission would have would likely be submitted either as a letter to the City Council that 39 would be part of the commentary that they would receive; and/or again, if the Chair was 40 Page 79 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. meeting with the Mayor or something. That would obviously be an oral communication 1 conversation they would have. 2 3 Chair Hechtman: It sounds like that meeting might need to take place between… before June 1st 4 which is (interrupted) 5 6 Ms. Tanner: Quite soon, so we could definitely probably get a letter together in the next few 7 days to turn around and submit to Council. But I wouldn’t want to presume that you could meet 8 with the mayor in that short time. 9 10 Chair Hechtman: So, yeah, I wouldn’t want to presume that either. So, in June our Vice-Chair is 11 our Council liaison, but on this item, since she’s not with… present tonight. I’d probably need to 12 attend for that anyway which I’m available to do on June 1st. I can do the 1st, the 8th, and the 13 15th I’m available. The rest of the Mondays I’m not. So, I’m fine with doing that, helping Staff 14 craft a letter, and being the Commission liaison at least on this item. And Ms. Tanner, you’ll 15 have to tell me later if there are other PTC items on that night. But assuming there aren’t, then 16 it would just be this item. 17 18 Ms. Tanner: Yeah, there are not. 19 20 Chair Hechtman: Ok, alright. So, I do think I understand… well, let me ask Staff if… let’s break it 21 down a little bit. Do you feel you have enough information from the consensus of the 22 Commission on the meetings with applicants on… and appellants and others on quasi-judicial 23 matters? Do you think you’ve got your arms around that? 24 25 Ms. Tanner: Yeah, for sure. 26 27 Chair Hechtman: Then what about the work plan? I think our comments were a little more 28 diverse on that. 29 30 Ms. Tanner: Yeah, I can take… tell you what I have captured from that was kind of a sense of 31 our work plan maybe a bit different than other Commissions because we are… get referrals and 32 we get applications. I do think that part of the Council goal, as I understood it for getting work 33 plans, was to make sure that there is alignment. So, I think maybe it was Commissioner Chang 34 mentioned for example having some items that we might want to study if there’s a low or lull in 35 meetings and then also prioritize the many items that Council does refer to us. I think that 36 would be helpful and I think that Council, in turn, wants to then prioritize our prioritization to 37 say well, I know you put this one first but we think this other one should be first or this other 38 one should be second. So, I think that is part of their idea to have the work plan. I will note it 39 Page 80 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. will be a consent item for them so they won’t discuss it unless it gets pulled for discussion on 1 June 22nd. So, we have some leeway to propose what we think should be the work plan for PTC. 2 3 Chair Hechtman: So, Commissioners, are there any items… other items that anyone feels need 4 to be included in this letter? Again, I am comfortable with the language of verbatim minutes so 5 I don’t feel like we need to push on that. Commissioner Summa? 6 7 Commissioner Summa: I was going to say verbatim minutes, but that was before you spoke so 8 that’s fine. I also think with the work plan, I’m… sorry I didn’t say this earlier. I think with the 9 work plan we can acknowledge that most of the work comes to us because it has to be done 10 and we don’t a choice. But then I was… as I thought about it, we could also work… align our 11 policy issues with the Council prioritizes. So, if Council really wants something… Council 12 priorities could become policy issues that we might focus on but that was just an idea. So, you 13 don’t need a motion now at this point, correct? 14 15 Chair Hechtman: We need a motion to… what do we say? Adopt the handbook or acknowledge 16 receipt? 17 18 Ms. Tanner: Receive the handbook and direct Staff to craft a letter based on Commissioner 19 comments and feedback. 20 21 MOTION 22 23 Commissioner Summa: Ok, I’ll go ahead and make that motion if you want. And that is a motion 24 to acknowledge that the PTC received and discussed the handbook and also to direct Staff to 25 write a letter based on the comments and concerns of the Planning Commission. 26 27 Chair Hechtman: Second to that motion? 28 29 SECOND 30 31 Commissioner Chang: I’ll second. 32 33 Chair Hechtman: Thank you, Commissioner Chang. Any discussion? 34 35 Commissioner Summa: Nope. 36 37 VOTE 38 39 Chair Hechtman: Great. Mr. Nguyen, will you call a roll call vote, please? 40 Page 81 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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. Nguyen: Commissioner Alcheck? 2 3 Commissioner Alcheck: Aye. 4 5 Mr. Nguyen: Commissioner Chang? 6 7 Commissioner Chang: Aye. 8 9 Mr. Nguyen: Chair Hechtman? 10 11 Chair Hechtman: Yes. 12 13 Mr. Nguyen: Commissioner Lauing? 14 15 Commissioner Lauing: Yes. 16 17 Mr. Nguyen: Commissioner Summa? 18 19 Commissioner Summa: Yes. 20 21 Mr. Nguyen: Commissioner Templeton? 22 23 Commissioner Templeton: Yes. 24 25 Mr. Nguyen: The motion carries 6-0 with one Commissioner absent. 26 27 MOTION PASSED 6(Alcheck, Chang, Hechtman, Lauing, Summa, Templeton) -0- 1(Roohparvar 28 absent) 29 30 Chair Hechtman: Alright, thank you Commissioners for working through that, and thank you to 31 our attendees who either spoke or gave their time so that someone could speak on their 32 behalf. I thought your contributions were very valuable to our discussion. Alright, now we are 33 going to move back into Item Two which we paused. 34 35 [The Commission moved back up to Agenda Item Two] 36 Commission Action: Motion by Summa, seconded by Chang. Pass 6-0 (Roohparvar absent) 37 Approval of Minutes 38 Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 39 Page 82 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 4. April 28, 2021 Draft PTC Meeting Minutes 1 Chair Hechtman: We have April 28th draft minutes as revised. Can I have a motion to approve? 2 3 MOTION 4 5 Commissioner Summa: So, moved. 6 7 Chair Hechtman: Thank you, Commissioner Summa. Second? 8 9 SECOND 10 11 VOTE 12 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Lauing seconds. Mr. Nguyen, will you call a vote, please? 13 14 Mr. Vinh Nguyen, Admin Associate III: Commissioner Alcheck? 15 16 Commissioner Alcheck: Aye. Aye. 17 18 Mr. Nguyen: Commissioner Chang? 19 20 Commissioner Chang: Yes. 21 22 Mr. Nguyen: Chair Hechtman? 23 24 Chair Hechtman: Yes. 25 26 Mr. Nguyen: Commissioner Lauing? 27 28 Commissioner Lauing: Yes. 29 30 Mr. Nguyen: Commissioner Summa? 31 32 Commissioner Summa: Yes. 33 34 Mr. Nguyen: Commissioner Templeton? 35 36 Commissioner Templeton: Yes. 37 38 Mr. Nguyen: The motion carries 6-0 with one Commissioner absent. 39 40 Page 83 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. MOTION PASSED 6(Alcheck, Chang, Hechtman, Lauing, Summa, Templeton) -0- 1(Roohparvar 1 absent) 2 3 Chair Hechtman: Thank you. 4 5 Commission Action: Motion by Summa, seconded by Lauing. Pass 6-0 (Roohparvar absent) 6 Committee Items 7 Chair Hechtman: Committee items, anyone have Committee items to bring to us tonight? I 8 don’t see any. 9 Commissioner Questions, Comments or Announcements 10 Chair Hechtman: Alright, let's got to Commissioner questions, comments, announcements or 11 future agenda items. Commissioner Templeton. 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: Hi, you mentioned last time about the last part of the bridge going 14 in. I think that has been delayed due to interstate traffic issues. So, it’s not going to happen this 15 weekend but I believe the following weekend according to the City website. 16 17 So, I also I think I heard you mention you wanted to talk about vacation schedules. Could we 18 briefly do that now? 19 20 Chair Hechtman: Yeah, I was intending to do that. 21 22 Commissioner Templeton: Awesome, ok. 23 24 Chair Hechtman: If there’s not anything else somebody wants to do before. So, I do eventually 25 want to talk about the possibility of a retreat later this year but I don’t really want to start that 26 conversation at 10:30. So, I’m looking for a meeting where maybe we end closer to 10:00 the 27 substantive business and we can have that discussion. But we do need to talk, if we’re going to, 28 about a summer break and we talked about this earlier in the year where we were setting our 29 schedule. And the consensus was we weren’t ready to make a decision early in the year, let’s 30 talk about it later, and so now I think we’re at later. Not necessarily tonight but I would say, if 31 not tonight then maybe the 9th. Ppeople are trying to plan their summer schedules now that it… 32 particularly since it looks like things are going to open up on June 15th. So, people might be 33 finding that suddenly they have the opportunity to have a vacation but they need to plan it 34 quickly to fit some window. So, one thing we had talked about was looking at the August 11th 35 date because that is the week for the school district to start school and so that can be a hectic 36 week in any event. And so, if we’re going to take a summer break, then that might be a good 37 time to have one of our missed meetings and then we can either go forward or backward from 38 that point. And I think I mentioned early in the year that if we were going to do that, I’d prefer 39 Page 84 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 go backward and skip the July 28th meeting where I already know I’m not going to be here. 1 So, that’s kind of teeing it up. You know, of course, we have other meetings during the summer 2 which we could miss or we could miss no meetings and people could just individually take their 3 vacations and miss the meeting that night. So, do we want to talk about that a little bit now or 4 do we want to? 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: I would and I would throw out there I don’t know if people who are 7 working… have a working schedule that deals with July 4th. Sometimes they get days the week 8 before off or the week off and it’s on a weekend. So, I don’t know really know but I would love 9 to know if anybody else is going to be absent on the 30th and then my other just contribution to 10 the discussion is where you suggesting having… missing two meetings in a row or having one 11 meeting month for two months instead of two? 12 13 Chair Hechtman: What I was contemplating was a break of a month with no meetings. So, we 14 would skip two meetings in a row, somewhat like the Council does. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah, as far as start week I wasn’t planning to miss that but I thought 17 it was informative depending on what Staff wanted to load on our docket for that week. That 18 really depends on how the other Commissioners feel as well but that’s my concern. Like I don’t 19 think I’ll be able to stay past midnight that night for what it’s worth but I’m super flexible. I like 20 the idea of planning ahead so that people can plan their vacations around our meeting schedule 21 if we happen to all be absent at the same time. Thanks. 22 23 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Alcheck. 24 25 Commissioner Alcheck: I think it would probably be helpful if I just say that on June 30th I will be 26 unable to attend. On July 28th I’ll be able to unable to attend and on August 11th I’ll be unable to 27 attend. The other currently scheduled days I am able to attend so if you do determine that you 28 will consolidate a month overlapping an actual calendar month and they include the July 28th 29 and the August 11 meeting. That would be very convenient from my perspective but otherwise, 30 I’m available for the other dates. 31 32 Chair Hechtman: And that’s actually a helpful perspective. Commissioner Summa and Lauing 33 and Chang, do you already know of vacations that you are either have planned or are plotting 34 that would be across any of the summer meeting dates? 35 36 Commissioner Summa: I personally have no plans this summer sadly but I also… I don’t think 37 historically the Planning Commission has taken a break but I guess we can. I guess there’s 38 nothing to say we can’t. So, I don’t have much to add other than that. 39 40 Page 85 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Hechtman: Commissioner Lauing. Sorry, Commissioner (interrupted) 1 2 Commissioner Lauing: Did you call me? 3 4 Chair Hechtman: Yeah, I did, sorry. Commissioner Lauing. 5 6 Commissioner Lauing: Alright, I think you only got one syllable out because you cut off. Alright, 7 no, I don’t currently have any plans. I’m always around. Commissioner Summa is correct, that’s 8 the tradition but it’s not anything that we have to hold to. I’m actually just more concerned 9 about getting an opinion from Staff, maybe not tonight, but what’s coming up in the next 3-10 months that we just have to get to. So, that would be something to check with as well. 11 12 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Chang. 13 14 Commissioner Chang: I’m gone one other week but it happens to be between meetings right 15 now instead and so it doesn’t affect our calendar. 16 17 Chair Hechtman: So, I would be curious to hear from the Vice-Chair about her summer schedule 18 which I neglected to think to ask her that before the meeting. But, so what I’d like to propose is 19 this I think this is a good start to the discussion. Let’s… when we come back on June 9th, if it’s ok 20 with everybody, let’s make a decision and Commissioner Chang, I know you’ll be out that but if 21 you have additional information. Just let me know in advance and I’ll or if you have preferences, 22 let me know and I can at least inform the Commissioners of your thoughts. Alright, on that 23 issue. Commissioner Alcheck. 24 25 Commissioner Alcheck: You know, I’m… I distinctly remember the year that I was Chair we 26 were managing the Housing Element process. And at the time we had to decide whether we 27 were going to push the 90-day review over the summer and it was highly irregular for us not to 28 take a break over the summer. So, I think the last couple years maybe we haven’t taken a 29 summer break but before that, it was more common to take a month off in the similar way the 30 Council does. So, because I remember that being a big debate. Some Commissioners were 31 opposed to pushing through so it was something we had to vote on to not take a summer break 32 back. I think that must have been 2015 or 2014. Ok, anyway. 33 34 Chair Hechtman: Commissioner Templeton. 35 36 Ms. Rachael Tanner, Assistant Director: Commissioner Hechtman [note – Chair Hechtman]? 37 Sorry, Commissioner Lauing had asked a question during his comment. I didn’t know if you 38 wanted a response now or about? 39 40 Page 86 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Hechtman: I lost the question. 1 2 Ms. Tanner: He asked about items coming forward and I would just say I think if at the next 3 meeting we can set our summer schedule. There’s not so many items that we couldn’t 4 accommodate scheduling them but I wouldn’t want to get too far along and then have 5 someone find out oh, there’s only going to be two out of seven Commissioners or we just have 6 a quorum of four. I think that gets a little disappointing for items to come in that circumstance 7 at the last minute. 8 9 Chair Hechtman: Ok. Thank you for that. Commissioner Templeton. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: Just a recap, I took some notes on the calendar, you may have as 12 well. But it looks like we’re sort of gravitating towards the 7/28 and 8/11 days back to back as 13 being the ones where we have the most number of people absent and/or other things going on. 14 So, just to have a strawman to throw out there to respond to for next time. I think that’s the 15 one where it looks like we’ve got a lot of people out and about. 16 17 You’re right about the mask mandate is going to change in mid-June. Is that what you said? I 18 think that’s correct and so we also need to talk about all of that. But I think Ms. Tanner 19 mentioned that at the beginning of the meeting so there’s more work to do on her end than 20 ours. But it’s going to be an eventful and full of change this summer so we’ll see how it goes. 21 But yeah, I would personally appreciate the chance to have a break. We have been going non-22 stop. Last year was an unusual one and we’ve had a lot of meetings this year without any them 23 being canceled which is wonderful and busy. But with all that’s going on, it might be nice to 24 have a little opportunity to have a brief reprieve to R&R so alright, thanks. 25 26 Chair Hechtman: Alright, so we will make a decision… we’ll hopefully make a decision on this at 27 our next meeting on June 9th and I’m not seeing any other hands or other Commissioner 28 comments. So, I will declare this meeting adjourned. Thank you all. 29 Adjournment 30 10:46 pm 31