The URL can be used to link to this page

Home My WebLink About2023-10-25 Planning & Transportation Commission Verbatim Minutes_______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Planning & Transportation Commission 1 Action Agenda: October 25, 2023 2 Council Chambers & Virtual 3 6:00 PM 4 5 Call to Order / Roll Call 6 6:01 pm 7 Chair Summa: Good evening, I want to welcome everyone to the regular meeting of the 8 Planning and Transportation Commission, and we also are… have guests tonight from the 9 Human Relations Commission, so welcome all of you. Could you call the roll please? 10 11 ROLL CALL 12 13 Ms. Veronica Dao, Administrative Associate: Chair Summa? 14 15 Chair Summa: Here. 16 17 Ms. Dao: Commissioner Akin? 18 19 Commissioner Akin: Here. 20 21 Ms. Dao: Vice-Chair Chang? 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 Vice-Chair Chang: Here. 2 3 Ms. Dao: Commissioner Hechtman? 4 5 Commissioner Hechtman: Present. 6 7 Ms. Dao: Commissioner Lu? 8 9 Commissioner Lu: Present. 10 11 Ms. Dao: Commissioner Templeton? 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: Here. 14 15 Ms. Dao: We have a PTC quorum. 16 17 Chair Summa: Thank you. Would you like to call the roll of the Human Relations Commission? 18 19 Minka van der Zwaag: Yes, Chair Smith? 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Minka van der Zwaag: Vice Chair Eberle? 2 3 Vice Chair Adriana Eberle (HRC): Here. 4 5 Minka van der Zwaag: Commissioner Causey? 6 7 Commissioner Katie Causey (HRC): Here. 8 9 Minka van der Zwaag: Commissioner Kraus? 10 11 Commissioner Michelle Kraus (HRC): Here. 12 13 Minka van der Zwaag: Commissioner Hsieh? 14 15 Commissioner Amy Hsieh (HRC): Here. 16 17 Minka van der Zwaag: Four present, we have a quorum. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Summa: Thank you so much, and just to welcome our guests again and let you know that 1 Chair Smith will be here in about a half an hour, I think. So, we will move on now to the Public 2 Comment Period, that’s for anyone who wants to make a comment that is not an item not on 3 the Agenda. Ms. Dao. 4 5 Oral Communications 6 The public may speak to any item not on the agenda. Three (3) minutes per speaker.1,2 7 8 Ms. Dao: I have not received any speaker cards or raised hands. 9 10 Chair Summa: Okay, we’ll move on then to Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions. 11 12 Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions 13 The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management. 14 15 Ms. Amy French, Chief Planning Official: Yes, I offer that we could take City Official reports after 16 we complete our session with the Human Relation Commission, since that’s pertaining to the 17 PTC matters. 18 19 Chair Summa: That would be fine with me. 20 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. City Official Reports *Heard out of Order* 1 1. Directors Report, Meeting Schedule and Assignments 2 Ms. Amy French, Chief Planning Official: Good evening, Amy French, Chief Planning Official, 3 4 Study Session 5 Public Comment is Permitted. Three (3) minutes per speaker. 6 7 2. Permitted. Three (3) minutes per speaker. LEGISLATIVE STUDY SESSION: 8 Recommendation to City Council Regarding Proposed Amendments to Palo Alto 9 Municipal Code (PAMC) Title 18 (Zoning) Chapter 18.42 (Standards for Special 10 Uses) Section 18.42.160 (Safe Parking) to Permanently Establish the 11 Congregation-Based Safe Parking Program by Allowing Overnight Safe Parking as 12 an Ancillary Use to a Church’s and Religious Institution’s Use in All Zoning 13 Districts Where Churches and Religious Institutions are Allowed Uses, and 14 Establishing Regulations Related to Safe Parking, Including a Maximum Number 15 of Vehicles Per Night on Each Site. 16 JOINT SESSION WITH HUMAN RELATIONS COMMISSION (HRC) 17 18 19 Chair Summa: Okay, so we will move right on to our study session, so staff has a report. 20 21 Manager Specialist Rachael Tanner: Good evening, I’ve got to get myself situated here, Good 22 evening members of the PTC and Human Relations Commission, Rachael Tanner, last time I was 23 probably before the PTC I was as the Assistant Director of Planning and Development Services. 24 But I’ve returned in a limited term role as a Manager Specialist with the Department working on 25 certain projects like the Safe Parking that is before you. And I want to thank Ms. Dao, she I think 26 is going to share the screen with the presentation. So, I have a brief staff presentation that 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. highlights some of the things you saw in the staff report, and then invite comments, questions 1 from Commissioners as well as public comment. 2 3 Chair Summa: Okay, welcome back Ms. Tanner, and I wanted to let everyone know that after 4 this item is completed, we’ll take a little short ten minutes break to let everybody resituate, and 5 if the Human Commissions, Human Relation Commissioners would like to stay and view the rest 6 of the meeting, we’d love to have you here. Okay. 7 8 Vice Chair Eberle (HRC): Thank you. 9 10 Manager Specialist Tanner: Just want to start out with a little bit of why we’re having a joint 11 session, we don’t often have joint hearings. Want to thank all of you for accommodating an 12 earlier start time, and for the HRC, a date that you don’t normally come to City Hall, so thank 13 you for being here. Part of it was that we, is this working? Okay. Part of the idea is that we were 14 going to take this item to HRC for comment and then to the PTC for comment and 15 recommendation to Council, but instead of having it sequentially, the idea would be to have the 16 conversation together, so that the PTC and the HRC benefit from hearing and learning from 17 each other and sharing, and staff as well, and then if the PTC does make a motion tonight, it 18 really can encompass in the report to Council, can encompass the full conversation that is had. 19 So that is the reason for the joint session tonight. I’m going to start by going over some of the 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. program background and the services that are associated with the Safe Parking programs at 1 congregations in Palo Alto. Next slide. So, first just to remind us what Safe Parking is, the Safe 2 Parking programs provide parking lots where unhoused program participants who are dwelling 3 in their vehicles, can park, they can become connected to services and ultimately, they can find 4 secure and stable housing. And this program was developed due to the needs of unhoused Palo 5 Altans. And I should add that another feature of not just a parking space in a parking lot, that’s 6 needed and hopefully has some more measure of safety than just parking somewhere on the 7 street. They’d also have access to restroom facilities, hand washing facilities and again 8 connection to services. Next slide. So, there are two types of programs that provide Safe 9 Parking overall in Palo Alto. One, the congregation based Safe Parking programs, so these are 10 religious institutions or churches, and then the 24-hour program, which is on publicly owned 11 lots. So, you can see here on Table 1, on the right, is showing the four congregations that have 12 Safe Parking programs in Palo Alto, and you can see when they first submitted the date for their 13 first permit and then when that permit was approved. So, we have Safe Parking programs in 14 operation going all the way back, the first one, in March of 2021, and then most recently in 15 June 2023, approved the most recent permit. And you can see here just a map of the four 16 congregations, as well as the 24-hour lot, the 24-hour lot is at 2000 Geng Road, so you can see 17 that kind of in the northern portion there near the Baylands. Next slide. This table shows the 18 participants and the placements associated with those participants so you can see again the 19 congregations listed there, Highway, Unitarian Universalist, First Congregational, and then 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. you’ll notice that Congregation is a name that doesn’t have anything listed because they just 1 started, the data is still just a little too fresh to really report on their program. But this is going 2 all the way back really the entirety of the program up to June of this year. And we did ask if 3 there are any significant updates from the June 30th date and there hasn’t been… again these 4 programs are quite small and so there hasn’t been a lot of updates. Just to remind the 5 parameters, these are programs that can house up to four vehicles, so they’re maybe more 6 than one person sheltering in a vehicle so that’s why you can have a number of unique clients, 7 but you also have the number household. So, you can understand kind of how the persons are 8 spread, or the individuals, couples, are they families. And so, you can see the unique number of 9 clients that have been served, so a total of thirty-seven unique clients in twenty-five 10 households. And you can see positive placements. Again, you may recall from the staff report, 11 positive placement is that the person is leaving to a place that is designed for human habitation 12 whether that be an affordable housing unit, maybe they’re going to live with friends or family, 13 or reconnecting with loved ones, perhaps they’re going to another rapid rehousing or other 14 type of program, but it is permanent and secure and safe housing versus a non-positive 15 placement would be maybe they’re continuing to live in their vehicle but have left the program, 16 or have decided to live in a different type of location but not participate in the program 17 anymore. And so, you can see we’ve had seventeen placements overall of the… and it’s of the 18 clients, so that’s of the thirty-seven individual clients, seventeen of those clients have been … 19 have gone on to a positive placement so it’s about a 45% overall positive placement route. And 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. then I just want to note in the County in FY 23, this would be an attachment, I think it’s 1 Attachment B that you all had, that had some of the diagrams around some of the data that in 2 the county overall, it’s about 34% of the participants in FY 23 exited to housing and in FY 22 3 about 14% exited to housing. So, we’ve seen I think, relatively, again it’s a very small group of 4 individuals and households, but we’re seeing relatively good performance compared to the 5 county as a whole, which obviously is a much bigger universe that we’d be looking at. And then 6 just draw your attention to the last box, the point in time count, again, just to kind of get a 7 sense of the scale and scope, at the last point in time count 206 unsheltered folks, unhoused 8 folks were counted, 187 of them unsheltered, and of those 187, 181 were sleeping in vehicles. 9 And the vast majority of vehicles folks are sheltering in are RV’s versus passenger vehicles. For 10 the most part these congregation based programs serve passenger vehicles, so a car, maybe a 11 regular SUV, but not the larger SUVs that you may sometimes see parked in parts of the city. 12 The 24-hour lot does, however, serve those who are living in RVs. Next slide. And this is again, 13 similar information but just also adding in the Geng Road site at the bottom, so that is the 24-14 hour lot, so again you can see kind of the placements, and this adds also showing… where the 15 households are affiliated with Palo Alto, so again we have a discussion around whether or not 16 we want to have preferences in this program. And so, you can see that we are tracking our folks 17 connected to Palo Alto in some way, is that somehow where they would see themselves as 18 maybe their last resident, maybe they have a job here, maybe they’re in school here, and then 19 overall the number of nights provided and the occupancy rate at the congregation and the 24-20 _______________________ 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. hour lot. So again, it’s not necessarily even, and certainly the congregation has not had 1 operation the entire duration of this period of time, but again this gives you a sense of scale 2 and the scope. Obviously, the Geng Road site is 24-hours, it served 84 individuals in this time, 3 makes sense because it can serve up to twelve RVs, and each RV may have more individuals 4 living there, than in a vehicle. Next slide. Now on to the draft ordinance that is before you and 5 kind of what the proposed policy changes are. Next slide. So, I’m just going to voice over these, 6 but certainly we can go back to them if there’s any of you that have questions on or want to 7 make further comments on, these are a few of the policy changes. The first is the permit 8 duration. The pilot program had kind of a ninety day kind of initial period and then an extension 9 and then you would need to come back and reapply to renew your permit. So, this is much 10 more like other conditional uses that we have in the city where once you apply for it and we say 11 that we believe you made the criteria, you have that permit, unless and until either it’s revoked 12 due to not following the conditions of approval, there’s a change of ownership. This permit is 13 not transferable; or, if the use is abandoned. So, if the church decided hey, we don’t want to do 14 this anymore and then five years later maybe the congregation changed its mind, they would 15 need to come back in and get a new permit for that because too much time would have passed 16 between the operation. But, essentially we’re saying the trial period showed that no news is 17 good news. During this entire pilot period we really haven’t had any complaints and se we feel 18 pretty confident, we’ve vowed things in. We have had for each of the… each of the 19 congregations have gone through this process, we ended up hosting, as the city, a community 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. meeting, a neighborhood check in to let folks know what was going on, to ask questions, very 1 productive meetings, and so we’re explicitly allowing the authority of the director to host that 2 meeting, instead of leaving it up to guess work. You know, could they, could they not and 3 typically we’ve been doing it so we might as well state that that’s part of the plan typically that 4 we would be hosting that. And then again, you can see on the right side of the screen the 5 preferences. Again, this is a proposal to essentially say that these four categories would have 6 preference. If essentially, push comes to shove, if we start getting too much demand for the 7 spots we have, we would give preferences for the Palo Alto spots for persons who fall in this 8 category. Again, I want to note that the county and the program provider here in Palo Alto is 9 not super in favor of this preference in part because it’s maybe not needed and we just haven’t 10 had a situation where we’ve had more people than we had parking spots available, and also 11 they feel that they do already vet folks to try to put them in the placement that’s going to be 12 best for them, so if somebody works in Palo Alto, they want to put them here in Palo Alto so 13 they can get to their job easily. If likewise, somebody might have connected with them here, 14 but maybe they’re actually better placed in a different community that’s closer to the things 15 they normally do on a day to day basis. And so, they kind of feel like maybe it’s a solution in 16 search of a problem, but I will say that when we do our community meetings, this topic often 17 does come up of like how do we know that we’re going to be serving our folks in our 18 community and making sure that this problem is providing help to them. So, I can certainly see 19 both sides and bring it to you all for consideration. Next slide. So, in the proposed policy we also 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. are proposing to keep the appeal distance the same, it’s about six hundred feet, so that means 1 that within that six hundred feet radius is where we mail notices to owners and occupants that 2 there’s a proposal for Safe Parking program within your six hundred foot radius of that, and 3 that’s also the folks who can file an appeal if they’re concerned about the program. We’re 4 continuing to propose that there’s no fee charge for this, it does not thankfully take very much 5 staff time to approve and it’s one way the City can help to not provide a ton of financial 6 resources but certainly not burden these programs any further. And then some minor 7 operational changes, really that again align with what the operator has been doing, and so 8 we’ve often put these into our conditions of approval, because it happens through the 9 negotiation process, so again instead of having to go through that process, let’s just put it there, 10 it's already black and white, these will be conditions of approval. Again, they’re things that are 11 already happening and I think that probably the most … seems the most important one’s the 12 newest, is the reporting. Just asking for an annual report, and it lists the date of that we’d like 13 to have, so that again, we can continue to get a sense of how the program is operating and are 14 we meeting the needs of the community. Next slide. So that is the end of my presentation and 15 I’m happy to be available for questions. Thank you. 16 17 Chair Summa: Thank you very much for that, if any Commissioners have any clarifying 18 questions, we can take those and then we’ll go to public comment and then back to the 19 Commission. Any… I see Akin and Commissioner [Vice Chair] Chang. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Akin: Thank you, Chair Summa. So, a couple of questions came up as I was 2 reading the material, number one, what are the concerns about serving RVs and the 3 congregation based sites? 4 5 Manager Specialist Tanner: So, I would say they probably come from two sides. From the 6 program operator side, they actually feel that because… and I again, I’m conveying to you what 7 they conveyed to me, so apologies now if I don’t convey everything exactly accurately, but 8 essentially, because Move Mountainview operates the congregation base sites here but they 9 also operate RV lots both here and in Mountainview and in other communities and so in their 10 experience, I think just the nature of the RVs, they’re better suited for places where they don’t 11 have to move every day, and so I think participation in a congregation based lot just tends not 12 to be a very good fit, for those households, and so they really try to put them in to a medium 13 more suitable lot. Also, just due to the sizing of the RVs itself, the way that they have to space 14 the RVs to have distance between them, it can just create more challenges in the congregation 15 lots when you’re limited in the number of vehicles you can have, to four, so I think both from a 16 household service perspective and from like a dimensional perspective, it becomes harder to 17 serve them in the RVs. I think from neighbors who again, are expressing concerns before the 18 programs are operating, and not necessarily after, I think there’s a concern around maybe 19 unsightliness of RVs, or kind of would there be more problems that could be associated with 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. folks who are living in RVs and those who are living in vehicles, I think that’s a little bit you 1 know, maybe just concern that may not have born out, but I know again for the program 2 operators perspective they prefer… and I would say… if another operator came in and worked 3 with the church, and wanted to serve RVs, they would be allowed to under the ordinance, but 4 the current operator just chooses not to and that’s totally fine. But it’s not the ordinance that’s 5 preventing them from doing it. 6 7 Commissioner Akin: Very good. Thank you. That segways into the next question I wanted to ask. 8 You’re probably going to get several questions about the number of spaces on each site, so one 9 that I had was, is there a tendency for multiple households to shelter as a group? Because if 10 that happens, then either the site might not be large enough or given the low utilization 11 numbers, it may be that their avoiding them because there’s not enough space to handle 12 everyone. 13 14 Manager Specialist Tanner: That’s a good question, I hadn’t asked that question specifically of 15 the service providers, like if that’s a common occurrence so… but they didn’t volunteer it, 16 doesn’t mean that it’s not, by I just couldn’t say definitively one way or another if that’s a 17 common occurrence in terms of households being in multiple vehicles, wanting to be together 18 and not being able to find sufficient space. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Akin: Okay, I think that’s it for me for now. Thank you. 1 2 Vice-Chair Summa: Commissioner [Vice Chair] Chang. 3 4 Vice Chair Chang: Thank you. So, I have a couple of data questions, so if you look at Table 2 on 5 Packet Page 12, does the positive placements column reflect households or individuals? 6 7 Manager Specialist Tanner: Sorry, you said Table 2? 8 9 Vice Chair Chang: Yes, Table 2, bottom of Packet page 12. 10 11 Manager Specialist Tanner: Yes, I believe that represents the individuals. 12 13 Vice Chair Chang: Individuals, okay thank you. And then, do you happen to know how many 14 churches there are in Palo Alto? 15 16 Manager Specialist Tanner: I do not know the answer to that question, yeah, I don’t know the 17 answer… several dozen I think, at least, but I’m not sure the exact number. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice Chair Chang: Okay. And then, what’s the Capacity of the Geng Road location, the report 1 says twelve RVs, but does it also have additional spaces for regular vehicles? 2 3 Manager Specialist Tanner: Well, certainly it wouldn’t have… so I would say if lets say they had, 4 obviously not RVs bigger than a car, I don’t know that they would double up a space there, and 5 kind of have two cars parked in an RV space, and I think they do try to prioritize RVs there; I 6 would say twelve overall, but certainly if they reconfigured it, vehicles could be more. 7 8 Vice Chair Chang: Thank you. So, I’m sorry, I’m trying to read my list of questions here. Oh, 9 following up on Commissioner Akin’s question about congregation sites not being ideal for 10 serving RVs, is it also because of hook ups that are needed, or is that an issue at all? 11 12 Manager Specialist Tanner: So, the RVs, even at Geng Road, there’s not like really sites for them 13 to hook up, like if they need to dump there waste, they… I believe they get vouchers to go to … 14 I think there’s a site in Redwood City where they’re able to go and kind of dump waste and do 15 things like that, I don’t think that they have… I think they may have some electric hook ups, I 16 will say, it’s been a little while since I’ve been out to the site, but certainly if they were at a 17 congregation, they would not have hook ups, and like running generator wouldn’t be allowed, 18 so again maybe there’s some inconveniences to being at the congregation based site for an RV. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice Chair Chang: Okay. And then, quick question about the … on page 15 there’s a comment 1 from I think one of the applicants… like one of the congregation applicants… about changing 2 the neighborhood notification process. Do you know what was driving that… like can you 3 provide a little bit more color given that the city does do that already? 4 5 Manager Specialist Tanner: Yeah, I would say that it probably was driven either by their 6 misunderstanding the process or kind of the sense that… I mean I think we could all say like 7 when’s the best time to let someone know you’re going to do something… is it when you’ve 8 decided… is it when the church applies, or our point of notification is after we’ve reviewed the 9 application and decided we could approve it. So, let’s say someone submits an application that 10 we can’t approve it, we wouldn’t notify the neighborhood that we’ve received an application 11 that, you know, we can’t approve. And so the time comes when we’re going to approve it. 12 What we did try to do to address this, is allow that neighborhood meeting to happen and then 13 … so we’d notice that there’s going to be a neighborhood meeting about this application that’s 14 going to be approved, and then after the meeting, then say okay this application is going to be 15 approved and the appeal period now starts. Before what we were doing is notifying folks that 16 we have received an application, it’s pending approval unless it’s appealed, and then we’d 17 essentially cram in a neighborhood meeting, because people would want to have one, we’d 18 delay the appeal process, and so it just kind of became a little clunky, and so instead of why 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. don’t we just do the neighborhood meeting if we know we’re going to have to do one, and then 1 tell people that you know… so I would say we’ve tried to respond to that in some ways. 2 3 Vice Chair Chang: Okay. There was also mention of an appeal that was withdrawn. Can you just 4 provide a little bit more color as to what the supposed issue was that then became a non-issue? 5 6 Manager Specialist Tanner: Yes, that was with Stevenson House, which was next door to, I 7 believe the Unitarian Universalist Church, and so their Board was concerned… I think similar 8 concerns to other neighbors in terms of safety, security, you know, what’s going to be 9 happening, how do we know what’s going to be happening at that site, who’s going to be there, 10 you know, how is it going to impact our residents and really just overall just trust building. I 11 think the program provider, the city, were able to answer their questions and work together 12 with the Board of Stevenson House to get to a place where not only they felt secure, but there 13 were some physical improvements that were made in terms of, I believe there was a gate, and 14 some items that were just needed to get discussed and got hammered out and to everyone’s 15 satisfaction, so the appeal was withdrawn. 16 17 Vice Chair Chang: Okay. And then on Packet Page 16, the report says that CalTrans is proposing 18 to reduce available street parking on El Camino, are those reductions temporary or expected to 19 be permanent. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Manager Specialist Tanner: I think as proposed they are expected to be permanent, however, I 2 think there’s a good deal of space and time and other things to go, before that actually 3 happens. So, not to say that it won’t happen, but just to say there’s a lot of politics that could 4 happen between now and then. So… 5 6 Vice Chair Chang: Okay, and then my final question is around sort of how this whole process 7 works, so if a household… an individual is assigned to a particular site, does that… are they 8 ever… is there a time limitation to their assignment, meaning do they run out… is there a you 9 know you can only stay here for one week, or three months, or how does that work? 10 11 Manager Specialist Tanner: So, they do have some requirements with the program in terms of 12 meeting, I believe monthly with their case worker, and essentially creating a housing plan and 13 like a plan to stable housing, so there’s no… I don’t think there’s a specific time limit with the 14 Move Mountainview specifically, where they can stay, but there is kind of routine check ins, 15 and again, the goal is to get folks into stable, you know, housing. Sometimes that can take a 16 little bit longer for folks than others, but that is always the goal and I don’t think it’d kind of like 17 an in perpetuity with no kind of checking in attached to that, and so trying to you know, keep 18 people on a path towards stable housing in accordance with a plan that they create. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice Chair Chang: Okay, so we don’t have, because I was looking at the data tables and you 1 know, the book’s like, I’m guessing that there’s like contiguous stretches of time where a 2 particular vehicle may have been utilizing one place, but I guess I can’t tell. 3 4 Manager Specialist Tanner: Yeah, it is hard to tell and part of the challenge with the data, and 5 we may be able to get more over time, it’s also one reason we are asking the Program Provider 6 to aggregate the data, so that we couldn’t trace it back to any particular individual and say like 7 oh, it was that car that was there at this particular church that I saw for x months, so it is a little 8 challenging. I mean on the positive side, we do hear anecdotally that some folks are there just 9 for a few days. You know, by the time they get in the program, they’re able to get resourced 10 into housing. Sometimes it just depends, there are example a lot of resources to get households 11 with children, into housing very quickly, and the county does a really good job of finding 12 households with kids places to stay that are permanent and were stable. 13 14 Vice Chair Chang: So, when you were talking to the administrator, did they ever cite any 15 examples where people had to be turned away, where they had reached capacity? Because, 16 overall, the program is… we have more room, right… than is being used. But I’m wondering, is 17 there a seasonality to it or do they ever … because even with the RVs, where there’s only 18 twelve RV spaces, the vast majority of people who are being housed in vehicles are in RVs, but 19 there’s not … but even the Geng Road location is only at 64%. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Manager Specialist Tanner: Yeah, so some of it would be, you know, I would say they did not 2 volunteer any challenge with capacity, I don’t think that’s an issue, I would think for RVs it is, I 3 would say part of the challenge with the RVs is that like for example when they got the site 4 started up, there may be days in there where technically the site was available, but really the 5 program was still getting going and so there’s some time that’s counted in there, as well as the 6 transition time of let’s say someone does leave the site in a positive placement, even though 7 you may have someone on a wait list, there are very vulnerable households, so like getting in 8 touch with that person, finding them, you know getting them to actually come to the site 9 sometimes can take some outreach and just some time to work with those families to get them 10 to the site and so even though there may be … so there may be gaps even though there’s 11 maybe a wait list that’s waiting to come in, it’s not like they’re right outside just ready to drive 12 in right away. 13 14 Vice Chair Chang: Okay, Thank you. 15 16 Chair Summa: Okay, I would just like to state for the record that we have been joined by Chair 17 Smith from the Human Relations Commission and I have another light that is either Vice Chair 18 Eberle or Commissioner Lu. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice Chair Eberle (HRC): Thank you, it’s me, Vice Chair Eberle. Sorry, I didn’t know… we never 1 use the lights, so I had no idea how to 2 3 Chair Summa: It worked out perfectly. 4 5 Manager Specialist Tanner: Sorry, I don’t want to interrupt Member [Vice Chair] Eberle, but I 6 did want to say we do have Michael Love, who is with Move Mountainview who’s in the … what 7 do you call it… the zoom attendee list, so just to say that he’s with the program so if there are 8 program specific questions to the Chair, if you wanted to direct them to him, maybe after 9 public comment we could hear from them, or he may make public comments related to the 10 program. 11 12 Chair Summa: Okay, thank you for letting me know. Oh that… go ahead. 13 14 Vice Chair Eberle (HRC): Thank you, thank you for being here. I have a few questions. First of all, 15 did you get any feedback from the tenants? 16 17 Manager Specialist Tanner: We did not. We did not ask the tenants for feedback. So, any of 18 their feedback would come through the program operator. And I would say their participants 19 just to be… you mean by the program participants, correct? 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice Chair Eberle (HRC): Yes. Yes, because I have heard some complaints. I think about the 2 inability of having children out playing around. You know, having to be… not being able to have 3 any property outside of the vehicle. And you haven’t heard this feedback? 4 5 Manager Specialist Tanner: I have not. Again, we could maybe hear from Mr. Love later on, he 6 may be able to address that concern. 7 8 Vice Chair Eberle (HRC): Okay. The other question I have is I noticed that there seems to be you 9 know, well there’s more positive placements from the church… from the congregations spaces 10 versus the public one, and why is that. Why do you think that is? 11 12 Manager Specialist Tanner: I would be hazarding a guess if I were to say why there’s more, it 13 could be a number of reasons. It could either be… I mean the positive placements can be both 14 up to what’s available to provide to folks as well as their willingness to accept it, or folks may 15 choose to leave the program before they are able to get to a positive placement either from a 16 variety of personal needs or decisions, so I wouldn’t be able to hazard a guess on why one is 17 more than the other. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice Chair Eberle (HRC): So, you think there’s an advantage to having these smaller places, 1 where… I don’t know how Move Mountainview works, and maybe he can answer this question. 2 But I’m just wondering if there’s more contact with the tenants, if there’s more help, more 3 support, versus a large lot. 4 5 Manager Specialist Tanner: Yea I think if we could… through the Chair if she would like to have 6 Mr. Love answer the question, we could have him answer that on behalf of Move 7 Mountainview. 8 9 Chair Summa: Yeah, I think it would be helpful. And I noticed that he’s been moved up so he 10 can participate, I believe. 11 12 Manager Specialist Tanner: Are you there Michael? 13 14 Mr. Michael Love: Yes, Hi, good evening, I am. 15 16 Manager Specialist Tanner: Sorry for speaking on behalf of you earlier, hopefully I didn’t 17 (crosstalk) errors that I made. 18 19 Mr. Love: That’s quite alright… None, none at all. No worries. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Manager Specialist Tanner: I think the question from Member [Vice Chair] Eberle was around if 2 there are any reasons that ya’ll see why there may be more placements that are positive from 3 our congregation sites than from the Geng Road site. 4 5 Mr. Love: I would have to review our data on that a little bit, I think that’s really a good 6 question, I have to admit I hadn’t looked at it that way comparatively. But my hunch is that we 7 get some younger folks that have taken to living in their car and some very old folks who have 8 taken to living in their car, but the placement tends to be easier for a single person to be kind of 9 slotted into either some kind of permanent support of housing or rapid rehousing, or even find 10 something affordable for them. They may have work, for example, that is compared to our RV 11 families that may not be working. And there’s some challenges there. And that I don’t know. 12 There’s certainly some interest there, in getting out of their RVs, it appears, but I really have to 13 check that and get back to you why that appears to be happening. I think there is value in 14 having the smaller lots, for the reason as has been pointed out, should the parking start to be 15 harder to acquire on the street, in the future, that may impact the cars as much as the RVs and 16 so having spots that, even though there are some open, we are almost at… we’re at 47% 17 tonight I think, on the church lots I counted. But, to have places available for people quickly has 18 been helpful. We can often take the car dweller in the day we get the application, interview 19 them, and get them situated on a lot pretty quickly, which is helpful. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Manager Specialist Tanner: There had been a question, also from Member [Vice Chair] Eberle 2 around folks with vehicles… participants with children you know, wanting to be able to play on 3 the site, if there’s been any challenges with the ordinance as drafted, or the conditions of 4 approval for being able to have toys maybe? Outside of the vehicle, is that the question? 5 6 Vice Chair Eberle (HRC): Yes. 7 8 Manager Specialist Tanner: Are you aware of anything like that? 9 10 Mr. Love: That’s a good question, it has to do with the clientele that we get on the different 11 lots, we rarely have children on the congregational lots, very rarely. And so the RV lots is where 12 we tend to see families with kids, and they’re absolutely permitted to play outside on the lots 13 and have their toys and things. This is more the general upkeep of the lot for fire safety, and we 14 would ask people to, if they’re putting things out on the lot during the day, to put those things 15 away and get them inside, it’s the concern that we wouldn’t be able to get emergency vehicles 16 in there for their safety, but not, they’re absolutely encouraged to play on the lot. 17 18 Vice Chair Eberle (HRC): So just to clarify, on the Geng Road site, you could have things outside 19 the vehicle/RV? 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Mr. Love: Yes. 2 3 Vice Chair Eberle (HRC): Thank you. And you rarely get children on the congregational lots 4 5 Mr. Love: Very rarely, and actually those sometimes… I mean, you imagine more than one 6 person living in a vehicle is hard and as was brought up earlier, families, especially single 7 parents with children, have a lot more avenues to services and they tend to be there for a brief 8 time. We want to get them off that situation and into some housing quickly and the county is 9 able to accommodate most of the time. 10 11 Vice Chair Eberle (HRC): Thank you. I have one other question. And, you mentioned in the 12 report that there was one congregation right now, that’s interested in applying for a permit, 13 correct? I thought I read that. There’s interest from one other congregation? 14 15 Manager Specialist Tanner: I don’t think that is what… I don’t think we have any current 16 congregations that are waiting for permits right now. 17 18 Vice Chair Eberle (HRC): There’s interest, I thought. Just that there was interest, no? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Manager Specialist Tanner: I think… I mean I hope there are… is more interest from 1 congregations, but I can’t tell you that I’ve been approached by any recently. I would have to 2 say our staff person Emily is the planner who works on that, at least a few months ago when we 3 were working together, there wasn’t anybody in her que, but congregations will inquire and 4 then sometimes it will be a few months before they then kind of take that next step. 5 6 Vice Chair Eberle (HRC): Okay, so there’s not a rush right now. 7 8 Manager Specialist Tanner: No. 9 10 Vice Chair Eberle (HRC): Thank you. Those are all my questions, thank you. 11 12 Chair Summa: I have more lights, but I want to make sure that we are sticking with clarifying 13 questions and not the full discussion at this point, unless we have no speakers… I don’t see any 14 online. Do we have any in the room? 15 16 PUBLIC COMMENTS 17 Ms. Dao: No, I have no requests for public comment. 18 19 Vice-Chair Summa: Okay, so we’ll just go ahead in order, I believe Commissioner Causey. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Causey (HRC): Hi, thank you. As somebody who used to work with ARC faith 2 based organizations, and also with community members that are very close to considering 3 these programs, this is just really fantastic work to see. My first question is, I was wondering 4 how did they reach the number of maximum vehicles being four? 5 6 Manager Specialist Tanner: That’s a good question. When we created the program and the 7 Council asked us to look into it, we researched other neighboring programs in other cities that 8 were similar, Mountainview being one of the closest and kind of having the more long standing 9 programs, and kind of mimic some of the numbers that other cities had for their projects, and 10 so four was a number, I would have to say I can’t remember exactly all the cities, but four was 11 the number, I think in Mountainview and I think they have at some point allowed eight vehicles, 12 I want to say, but maybe it had been adjusted to four. And so that’s kind of where the City 13 settled. 14 15 Commissioner Causey (HRC): Got it… got it. Are there any further, I was also looking at other 16 cities programs, are there any further regulations around RV safety, I just know in other cities 17 there’s been concerns about them being very flammable. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Manager Specialist Tanner: Yes, so, in regard to the RV lot, and I’m would say I’m not sure if this 1 is in the ordinance for RVs or in the way that the lease has been written with Move 2 Mountainview for the specific Geng Road site, part of… even for the congregation based sites, 3 part of what you have to have is a site plan, that shows where the vehicles are going to be 4 parked, in a congregation based program the parking lots are usually ample enough that there’s 5 plenty of room, it’s not really a huge issue in terms of a fire safety, it’s more about spacing 6 between the vehicles to provide some privacy, as well as kind of put them in the best situation 7 for even privacy from residences or other nearby uses. At the Geng Road site, because the site 8 is quite… it’s got a long rectangular site, which can be hard when you’re maneuvering RVs in 9 and out of, and so there was a lot of work done to really space out and mark out where could 10 those twelve vehicles be, and as well as having fire safety access. So, that site plan had to be 11 reviewed by the Fire Department and that’s where kind of the twelve spaces for the vehicles. 12 13 Commissioner Causey (HRC): Got it, got it. And final question, you were talking about having 14 the preferences in this policy for people with ties to Palo Alto et cetera, and also that there are 15 currently openings in the program, and walking that line of the program manager saying that 16 there is already a … they try to match people with the best sites possible, is there any concern 17 that implementing these preferences could create like more vacancies? 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Manager Specialist Tanner: Well, I think that would be… so I think what we would not want to 1 do I think collectively, would be to do things that would prevent what he just described 2 happening where someone can walk in and say hey I’m ready to participate in the program and 3 that very moment they’re getting placed right, so that there’s that immediate, we’re able to 4 serve you; not… so come back later, right, which is not what we want to tell somebody who is in 5 a vulnerable situation. At the same… so I think the scenario where the preferences become 6 either necessary, or a challenge is when we start having scarcity at sites. When there’s not 7 enough available slots to easily put someone in a place, and so we might have to say well, you 8 know, we can’t place you in Palo Alto because X, Y, or Z, and so we’ll have to wait until there’s a 9 spot available to you. I think certainly the preferences would not, I think, suggest that someone 10 be removed from a site who’s already been placed, but more part of the screening of like you 11 know, to place them in a Palo Alto site if there were a wait list that people with connections at 12 Palo Alto might go up higher on that wait list, for the Palo Alto sites. I don’t know if that 13 answers your question. 14 15 Commissioner Causey (HRC): No, that gives me a lot of really good information, and actually, 16 my final final question is just to clarify one more time, you said this earlier in your presentation, 17 for the community meeting, what is it… you said it was at the Director’s discretion of when to 18 have a community meeting? How is that feedback taken into account, is it just like this… it will 19 still be happening but we want to take the temperature of the neighborhood… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Manager Specialist Tanner: Yeah, so, I’ll tell you what we have been doing and how… what’s 2 proposed differs slightly I would say. So, what we have been doing in the current ordinance that 3 is on the books right now, essentially is that we receive an application, we review the 4 application once the department, in this case it’s the authority of the Director says yes, this 5 application meets all the criteria, we are going to issue a permit for them to operate a Safe 6 Parking program. That is when we send a mailed notice within six hundred feet of the site, and 7 saying, there is a pending application that is going to be approved in fourteen days, unless you 8 appeal it then it will happen. So, that kind of creates an environment where if a neighbor is just 9 not sure and doesn’t know what it is and is concerned, then it feels like their only avenue is to 10 appeal it, right, and to say I’ve got to just appeal the whole thing because that’s the only thing I 11 can do. And so what happened in practice is we would essentially say like okay, we’re extending 12 the appeal deadline in order to hold a meeting, hold the meeting, talk to folks, have dialogue, 13 get to point usually where the congregation and the neighbors reach some type of agreement 14 or understanding or a trust, because the congregations want to have good relationships with 15 their neighbors, and then we pick up and say now the appeal deadline is there, no one appeals 16 it because we’ve gotten to a good place, and the permit is issued. So what different now is that 17 the Director can say, we’re going to hold a community meeting, which I would imagine in most 18 cases, unless it’s a congregation that has no neighbors, we would do, hold the community 19 meeting, and then after that issue the notice. The first notice would say you’re invited to a 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. community meeting is on X, Y, Z date and time, talk about this upcoming permit, and then the 1 second notice would say the meeting happened, based on the input, Director is going to issue 2 the permit, you have fourteen days to appeal. So, there is still an appeal process if someone is 3 not satisfied, or concerned, but it happens in a more, hopefully collaborative environment 4 versus kind of the only thing you can do is appeal, or feel like the only thing you can do is 5 appeal the permit itself. 6 7 Commissioner Causey (HRC): Got it, thank you so much for clarifying all that. 8 9 Manager Specialist Tanner: Welcome. 10 11 Chair Summa: Chair Smith. 12 13 Chair Kaloma Smith (HRC): Ah, good to see you. Yes. How many churches applied? 14 15 Manager Specialist Tanner: So far, the four that have received permits are the four that have 16 applied. We have had in the past, like in the very first year, a couple churches that were 17 interested, but didn’t end up submitting the application. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Smith (HRC): Do you know what was the resistance, was it internal for the church or 1 external from the community? 2 3 Manager Specialist Tanner: The one congregation that I can think of I think one, the pandemic, 4 let’s say that happened after this ordinance was adopted, so they ended up using a lot of their 5 rear yard space for meeting space, their parking lot for outdoor meetings and for holding their 6 church services. And them some other facility enhancements and since then, I just don’t know 7 what’s happened internally to the church, but they haven’t approached us yet. So, that’s the 8 one example I can state. So I’d say I guess internal to the congregation would be my answer. 9 10 Chair Smith (HRC): Because I noticed on Page 15, of the packet, two of the points was 11 opposition from neighbors and changing the neighborhood notification process. From what I’ve 12 heard from some churches, it’s become very daunting for the neighborhood process because 13 you only have one or two voices that can coalesce against them. How do we balance the church 14 trying to do good for our people in our community versus one really loud person in the appeals 15 process, trying to push the issue? 16 17 Manager Specialist Tanner: Yeah, that is like a question of democracy I think, out do we weigh 18 the needs of the few and those of the many and where do things fall. I will say this proposed 19 ordinance continues the ability for a neighbor, or resident, or property owner within 600 feet, 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. so it isn’t anywhere, it’s within that six hundred feet radius to file an appeal. So, I think that was 1 one attempt to try to say that a person filing an appeal, even if it’s just one person, has a close 2 in stake to what’s happening… right… their proximate to the issue and I would say to your 3 earlier point on the daunting-ness, particularly the first congregation that went through it, you 4 know it was probably not very pleasant. It was a lot of work and it was a lot of conversations 5 that they may not had anticipated, and a lot of bridge building and smoothing with their 6 neighbors. And so, I don’t want to say it’s not a challenge, I’m not sure… we could change the 7 appeal process, the PTC could opine on a different process, however I’m not sure… what we can 8 do, our attempt to kind of institute the neighborhood meeting, more regularly, is like we’re 9 going to come to you and tell you what’s happening and share with you, is one, I think less 10 effective and somewhat hard to administer would be requiring the church to hold its own 11 meeting but I think often until the city sends the official notice, sometimes folks aren’t really 12 listening. And then when that happens it’s like oh! This is really happening, now I would like to 13 get more involved. 14 15 Chair Summa: Also, the appeal is not free, right? It’s a regular appeal process, so there is a cost 16 associated. 17 18 Chair Smith (HRC): What’s the cost? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Summa: I forget, I don’t know the exact cost, I forget. 1 2 Manager Specialist Tanner: Veronica do you know how much an appeal cost would be to be 3 filed? 4 5 Chair Summa: Commissioner Kraus. 6 7 Commissioner Kraus (HRC): Just Rachael it’s nice to see you. 8 9 Manager Specialist Tanner: It’s nice to see you as well. 10 11 Commissioner Kraus (HRC): For all the work you’ve done. Let’s get this close to me. I just had a 12 question on the most recent lot that’s become available that only has twenty-three numbers 13 for the last six months. Do you have a sense what that looks like? 14 15 Manager Specialist Tanner: I’m going to call on Michael Love on the line to see, for 16 Congregation Etz Chayim, if there’s been placements there, or any kind of update on how that 17 site has been in operation, they got their permit in June of this year, so just a few months. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Love: Yes, hi. I had that right in front of me because I thought that might come up. Who’s 1 on each lot and how many. Hang on a second. The short answer is that Etz Chayim has had 2 clients on the lot, and to the eye of the beholder they tend to be invisible because they don’t 3 necessarily show up… they never seem to show up exactly at seven, or whenever that particular 4 congregation’s lot is open. And they tend to leave as soon as they get up to go off and do their 5 business, so, we’ve always experienced that there’s not very much interchange between the car 6 vehicle dwellers and the host congregations. That’s not unusual. It has been a slower start for 7 sure in Palo Alto to begin to fill… fill the lots, but we have folks on every lot tonight, and on the 8 congregational lots we have seven across the system so there’s three with two clients and one 9 with one client. But they are generally allusive. It’s work for us to make the connection which 10 usually happens in the daytime by phone and text, just to schedule their visits with their case 11 workers. Because they’re just, by definition, using that property lot less than an RV dwellers. It’s 12 sort of the opportunity to run into to each other is less. 13 14 Commissioner Kraus (HRC): And that’s regarding the most recent lot that got added I see. You 15 know, I know there are three synagogues in Palo Alto, I don’t know how many churches there 16 are, or mosques; that might be some really useful data, long term. 17 18 Manager Specialist Tanner: Certainly, I’m jotting that down as something we can look into. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Summa: Commissioner Lu. 1 2 Commissioner Lu: Thank you. I have a few questions, likely for Mr. Love, on the operator side. I 3 want to elaborate a little bit on Vice Chair Chang’s question and redirect it a little bit to Mr. 4 Love. How is the four vehicle limit actually enforced and how often to we actually hit four 5 vehicle, the four vehicle capacity on any given site, like how many nights per year? 6 7 Mr. Love: That’s a really good question. The way we regulate the number of vehicles to four is 8 that we do not place more than four. So, there’s no scenario in which a client can drive in. 9 They’re absolutely required to file an application with us and go through an interview and 10 screening process so it’s not a … well somebody told me… it’s not like you’re pulling into a camp 11 site at Yosemite and telling the ranger in the morning. They have to be pre-registered, and so 12 since the custom and the rule is four, we simply don’t enroll more than four. That’s … we have 13 been full, only very occasionally at the congregational lots, but it’s easy to regulate it. I think it 14 is a question of having too many vehicles. If more than four strikes me as being tricky because it 15 can start to take on… be a bigger task for the congregation to host more vehicles. I know it’s 16 tempting because they’re smaller units and there’s often a lot of parking spaces that aren’t 17 being used, but four seems like a good way… and maybe in a year or so, we know how to do 18 this well enough that congregations and the communities and the municipalities might make a 19 change in that, but four seems likes a comfortable number. It allows the community, the 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. congregations to participate and help and it also encourages their neighborhoods … that hey, 1 we can do this and it’s not you know, destroying our neighborhood. We’re actually feeling good 2 about helping people, so, maybe it’s good to start small and we’ll see, you know, how we’ll all 3 live with that. I hope that’s helpful. 4 5 Manager Specialist Tanner: Let me add this Mr. [Commissioner] Lu, the program often does do 6 site visits each night and morning, so that’s also part of the making sure that the unhoused 7 don’t decide… oh hey, let me just go park there, so, there’s that kind of, on the enforcement 8 side as well. 9 10 Commissioner Lu: Thank you, that’s very helpful. Just to drill down a little more, so there’s been 11 a few nights where we have been at capacity across the system at the congregations, it 12 sounded like. So, in those cases have we actually needed to turn people away? Or, even… or, 13 just in general have we ever needed to turn people away from the congregation sites? 14 15 Mr. Love: In Palo Alto, no. There’s always been a spot for them. 16 17 Commissioner Lu: Thank you. A couple more questions, have we spoken with the folks who 18 don’t participate in the Safe Parking programs? I understand we want to do more outreach, but 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. is there a sense that there are inherent limitations to the current program, or improvements 1 that we’d have to make? 2 3 Manager Specialist Tanner: Well, I can offer some and then would ask Mr. Love to offer any 4 additional comments. I think certainly there is a requirement to leave in the morning, and then 5 return at night, so, if someone doesn’t prefer to have to move that frequently, that would 6 probably be just a very practical barrier for someone to say well, I can do the same thing 7 without you know, the benefits that you’re offering. Which would namely be a safe and secure 8 and relatively clean restroom and you know, the monitoring and the connection to services. So 9 if someone didn’t feel those were benefits to kind of in the trade off to needing to move 10 routinely, which they still would need to do in their vehicle, but maybe not as frequently. I 11 mean maybe not at those specific times, that could be one programmatic limitation. Certainly 12 we know that the congregational lots have vehicle type limitation, in accordance with program 13 operator’s kind of preferences, but I don’t know Mr. Love, if there’s any additional barriers that 14 kind of prevent folks from wanting to just even connect to a service at all, whether it’s twenty-15 four hours or overnight, that they’d rather just be on their own versus working with you all. 16 17 Mr. Love: I would say that’s true. There is a… you know, vehicle dwellers are as unique as you 18 and I are in our neighborhoods, all the rest of our neighbors; and there is a slice of that 19 community, it’s not a great big slice, but there is a slice in that community … a segment of that 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. community, that really doesn’t… you know, is sort of out there to be an independent as they 1 can be. And they really don’t want to be in the… under the care of a program that requires 2 them to meet with a case worker, et cetera, et cetera. So, it’s not as attractive to somebody 3 who’s gotten used to being utterly independent and alone, which is kind of a shame, because 4 often those folks suffer the most in terms of state of mind from being isolated. But there… 5 we’ve tried to think, and haven’t come up with anything, I’ll admit, ways to make it so that it 6 seems… so that there’s more value to somebody to be in the program, other than to just get a 7 safe place to park, because basically I can find that behind Safeway. And, if I don’t want to work 8 with a case worker, that kind of seals the deal. I wouldn’t want to be in the program. I know 9 Palo Alto is beginning a really good outreach program with the hiring of some community 10 outreach workers. We hope that just as we get the word around, we’ll start to see more people 11 who will check us out. But what’s keeping them away seems to be primarily, in the 12 congregational lots particularly, they just are not that eager to go in the direction of housing. 13 That’s rarer in the RVs. 14 15 Commissioner Lu: Got it. So, the main limitation in the program is almost that it is a program at 16 all. One last question, on the operator side, are we concerned about any of the operational 17 challenges that we’re proposing to encode here? 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Manager Specialist Tanner: I think Mr. Love can speak to that. I noted certainly that the 1 preference program was not well supported by Move Mountainview, I don’t believe any of 2 them are minor operational changes had any challenges, those are on slide 10 if ya’ll have the 3 slides but certainly Michael, you can speak to any of the challenges that you may have noted. 4 5 Mr. Love: The preferences, I don’t want it to appear that we’re not you know, supportive of 6 that, we’re absolutely can support that. We explored that as whether that would be good or 7 bad for the Palo Alto wanted that… the program to unfold in Palo Alto, because we had noticed 8 some limitations that placed on the Mountainview program, and we kind of explore that 9 together but at this time, the way that those are painted in the … the proposed regulation, I 10 don’t see that as being a constraint for us. This statistically, even when we’re early on in our 11 work, we’re just… in taking people in and talking with them and learning about them, we’re 12 finding that we’re talking to local people, eighty percent of the time. So, as I think you brought 13 up earlier, somebody who has work in, doctor, you know, neighborhood in Gilroy is not very 14 interested in commuting from Palo Alto down to you know, Gilroy, just for a place to park. So, 15 the preferences are one thing I would want to encourage us to just… that’s workable, it’s not 16 going to be a disincentive for us. 17 18 Commissioner Lu: Got it, just wanted to confirm that there were no objections to the 19 operational changes. Thank you. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Summa: Thank you. And thank you Mr. Love. Commissioner Templeton. 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you very much Chair. I’m going to start with saying how 4 appreciative I am that we piloted this program and the results look really positive. And I think 5 you’ve highlighted that so I don’t need to go into more detail. I do want to ask some tough 6 questions here tonight, we do have a difficult political environment that we’re also navigating 7 and so I want to just talk about… we have a section in here about vetting the client, the 8 application, how background checks are dealt with, and the question that comes to mind is … is 9 it possible or how does it work if somebody is … let’s call it poorly behaved on one site, can they 10 move then to another site or do they get some kind of red flag on their account, and can you 11 speak to that Ms. Tanner, we’ll start with you and then Mr. Love if needed. 12 13 Manager Specialist Tanner: Yeah, so, I’ll say maybe just to start over all, that there are… just 14 maybe have to landscape a little bit because I think years go beyond, just like Palo Alto, but to 15 the region, right. And so there is a lot of coordination at the county level that the county is kind 16 of the center and there is a unified system that all the providers, whether they’re in Safe 17 Parking, or another type of shelter program participate in, so, ideally for both the participants 18 and all the program providers, there’s like one John Smith in there and if they go to this place 19 for that, or here for this, everyone knows it’s the same person receiving different services. So 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. there’s a high level coordination at least kind of from that level. What I would ask Mr. Love…. I 1 know that he’s spoken to this several times in community meetings, around their no tolerance 2 in Move Mountainview for certain behaviors and so people would be asked to leave the site, 3 maybe you can speak more directly Michael, if someone you know, engages in some behavior 4 that’s not great at your site, would they be able to go to another program operator who would 5 maybe not be aware, or if you’re able to flag that in the coordinated system that this person 6 may need a different type of place to have a program that maybe gives more guidance or 7 boundaries that help them to still get housing, but maybe not a parking lot site. Mr. Love, could 8 you speak to that? If you have any of those… 9 10 Mr. Love: Sure, yes if we have some one who’s egregious in their violations, we can put a note 11 on the system, a systemwide note that says this is why this person is no longer going to be 12 served by Move Mountainview. You know, either there’s a… whatever the incident is… and so 13 everyone is advised that at the very least, they want to have an extra deep and long 14 conversation with this client if they show up for services. Internally, we don’t move someone… 15 disqualify some one from one lot and then put them on another lot. If they’re disqualified from 16 the program, that’s system wide for us. They can’t go to another lot, say from a Palo Alto lot 17 and come over to a Mountainview lot. Now if it’s a subtler kind of situation where it’s not a high 18 level egregious violation it may be just a matter of chemistry, we might move somebody around 19 before it comes to that, if we see that there’s some bad chemistry. We try to not street people, 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. we want to keep them if we can, but there are absolutely things that they can do on our lots 1 that they’ll be told to leave immediately. There’s other things that are less volatile, where we 2 may give them three warnings and then say you’re not able to come to terms with this for 3 following the rules, but the fact is, that most people who are discharged, are people who are 4 very nice people, who haven’t been rowdy or anything, but they really made it clear that they 5 just don’t want housing, and they’d really like to park in our lot forever. And they county simply 6 won’t allow us to do that. So most of the discharges I do are because people don’t want to 7 engage in the program. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you both. Yeah, I’m thinking of a pretty dangerous edge case 10 right now, and I recognize that’s not something you’ve normally encountered and hopefully we 11 don’t encounter that, but I do want to make sure that we, as a body of the City, are thinking 12 about that and working with our partners on it. Specifically, we are encouraging our faith 13 institutions to participate, but we’re having hate crimes against our certain faith communities, 14 right, and also, we have identity, we want people to be safe in our programs, and I’m not sure if 15 three strikes for hate violations would be acceptable, I want to make sure that we can say… 16 that we don’t pass somebody from one synagogue to another synagogue if they are hateful. 17 Right. Like I want to think about that and make sure that our partners are thinking about that. 18 So, I appreciate your explanation and I would love to see us add a little bit more safety in that 19 area. Thank you. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Summa: Thank you. Chair Smith, and then Commissioner Hechtman. 2 3 Chair Smith (HRC): My question is how many total parking spots do you think we need, if we 4 can approve whoever asks, I noticed the point of time count has gone down, but I’m suspecting 5 it will go back up this year given that some of the COVID rental protections have gone down and 6 the homeless population is spiking, has gone up dramatically in shelters in the first six months 7 of 2023. What is the maximum number of places do you think that the City A) Needs or B) Can 8 handle? 9 10 Manager Specialist Tanner: Yeah, so I was just doing the math, so if we’re doing point in time 11 count math, there are … you know if 181 folks are sleeping in vehicles and 68% are RVs, then 12 that means 58 people are sleeping in cars, or not in RV vehicles. So, that would be… assuming 13 that they are each in their own vehicle, that would be 58 parking spots. Which we’re at sixteen 14 right now. Now granted, each of those folks is probably not individual, they are some 15 individuals that are in combined households but you know, we’d need a significant number 16 more parking spots than we are, if every person living in a vehicle said yes, I would like to 17 participate, you know, in this program. 18 19 Chair Smith (HRC): Okay, thank you. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Summa: Commissioner Hechtman. 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. Chair, are we still just asking questions, or also making 4 comments. 5 6 Chair Summa: We’re free to do anything. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Good. Alright, so let me start with a couple of questions and this one 9 actually ties to the last question. So, Packet page 12, the second paragraph, says of the 206 10 people in this year’s Palo Alto counts, 181 were sleeping in vehicles, which is nearly 90%. But if 11 you go to the next paragraph, it describes 2022, with… of the 276 unhoused Palo Alto 12 households, 29% identified their vehicles as the most frequent place they’ve slept. So, that’s a 13 big delta, and I was wondering if perhaps the 181… I wanted to find out if that’s a correct 14 number or maybe it should have been 81, because that’s roughly a third, closer to a 1/3 of the 15 206. 16 17 Manager Specialist Tanner: Yeah, so, part of it is using two different data sources, so one is the 18 point in time count, and the other is numbers reported through the county’s VI-SPDAT system, I 19 believe, I’m not sure if that’s how they pronounce it… what did you say? 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Causey (HRC): VI-SPDAT 2 3 Manager Specialist Tanner: Great, much better than my pronunciation of it. The VI-SPDAT 4 system just rolls off the tongue doesn’t it, so those are two different measures of counting … 5 the point in time count is literally going around and surveying individuals in the real time as 6 they are waking or sleeping. Whereas the VI-SPDAT is going to be… I would imagine where 7 people were interacting with the county, and so it’s maybe a different measure of the data. 8 We’ve got to take it in. So, we’ve provided both, their numbers are different, but to try give a 9 sense of magnitude of the challenge. 10 11 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay, and I do think that’s important to tie into the last question 12 because if it’s 29% are regularly sleeping in vehicles that reduces the demand from 58 to some 13 smaller number. Okay. Next question, let’s see this is actually in the ordinance.One of the new 14 suggested additions to our ordinance as it becomes permanent, is on Packet Page 27, no 15 temporary structures, no temporary structures or amenities such as clothes lines shall be 16 allowed to be erected in relation to the Safe Parking program. So my question is, is a folding 17 chair or a play pen, are those amenities? Are we.. because I, you know, if they’re not intended 18 to be, I think we need to clarify that language, and I understand at Geng, the children are 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. encouraged to play, and I would think that there might be a playpen or something that you 1 would call an amenity, so is it the intention that you can’t have things like folding chairs? 2 3 Manager Specialist Tanner: I would say it is not the intention, to not have, you know, chairs or 4 other… I think going in concert with the next one, personal property, not that it shall never be 5 outside of the vehicle, but that it wouldn’t just kind of be there in perpetuity until the person 6 leaves the program, but they’d bring in and out kind of on a daily basis. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay, that’s helpful, so I would encourage a little bit of looking at 9 that word amenities, just so, again, because part of the issue we will have long term, is not only 10 churches looking at this language, but also neighbors. And I don’t want a fight in the future 11 where in a congregational parking lot, somebody has put their chairs out and neighbors say 12 hey… that’s an amenity. Right, so I think we should clarify that. Alright, couple of comments, 13 first of all, I am a member of congregation Etz Chayim, as is Commissioner Reckdahl who’s not 14 here tonight, and earlier this week I did talk to our Executive Director to get feedback on the 15 program. Since the permit was received in June the program has operated very well, there have 16 been zero incidents, problems of any sort. It is undersubscribed. Typically there is a single car 17 that will use it on a given night, and the most there have ever been is two. I did also confirm 18 that restrooms are at least twenty five feet from the street frontage because that location, 19 along Alma it’s closer to the street. Some of these, as I understand, some of the congregations 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. have them maybe tucked back, but I do think that we need to think about that twenty five feet, 1 while generally it make sense, but we could have a situation where that would be a bar to some 2 congregation that wants to institute the program. And so I think the Director should have some 3 flexibility. On the preference list, my thought is, we should not include it, at least until we 4 become over-subscribed and then, only as to the City lot. And it doesn’t need to be in the 5 ordinance for the City to do that. I do think it’s important for these congregations, that they be 6 able to pursue their mission as they see fit, and I don’t want that kind of requirement to be a 7 bar to some congregation that might otherwise be willing to start this program. I want them to 8 have that flexibility and honestly, we all… I think know that this is not a Palo Alto problem, this 9 is a national problem, which regional impacts. You know, where our city limits end at the next 10 city’s beginning, I think that it’s important to place as many of these unhoused people in a safe 11 environment, every night as we can, in every city. So, I’d not be supportive of that. One item… 12 the last item I’ll bring up and nobody has mentioned it so far, but it's in the staff report, this 13 concept of density of permits. And that is, you know, just a notion of how close to each other 14 can congregations who have this service be. I do … I think this is an opportunity where we can 15 be sensitive to neighborhood concerns, and I think that someone who is within 600 feet of one 16 of these sites, can express their concern. I think it may be too much to have that same person 17 within 600 feet of two sites. That might feel like an overconcentration to them, and I think that 18 would be a reasonable way to feel. So, I would think that we might want to separate them by 19 1200 feet. So that no person was… so that no resident was ever in that situation where they felt 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. concerns coming from two directions within 600 feet. Those are my questions and comments, 1 thank you. 2 3 Chair Summa: Okay, I’m not seeing any lights so I will take a… make a few comments. Lots of 4 really great questions asked, so I don’t have a lot of questions left, I will agree with 5 Commissioner Hechtman that I don’t think the preferences are necessary at this time. And I 6 would like to give as much leeway to faith institutions that would like to be a part of this 7 program, to craft a program for that… that works for their mission. And I also think that some 8 faith institutions might feel they can handle more than four vehicles. And some faith 9 institutions have very small lots, and some have very big lots. So, I think there might be a better 10 way… there might be a way to include that notion into the ordinance. Yup, to allow more than 11 four vehicles. I would like to see that. And I appreciate that Mr. Love mentioned that it might 12 become overwhelming for an institution to have more than four, but if they felt like they could 13 support more than four, and maybe there’s a way to do it with the… I mean I think there’s a lot 14 of discretionary power that we have to where we put these cars, so I don’t think it should 15 become a problem. And who knows, I’m not quite sure how I feel about the density, I don’t 16 think it should be a really big problem, because we’re so carefully siting these on each parking 17 lot situation that I don’t see how anyone would feel overwhelmed, and it also occurred to me, 18 this whole thing, I’m glad that we’re doing it this way, within a permitting process, but I was 19 always surprised that a church said we can let someone use our parking lot at night if we want 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. to. So I really appreciate that we have a more … a regulated permitted process to go through. I 1 think about the appeal process, I wanted it clarified that it’s just our normal standard appeal 2 process, as written in the code… Okay. 3 4 Manager Specialist Tanner: Actually, it does get appealed to the City Council, that directly to 5 City Council for decision. So, I don’t think that’s for all permits, but there are some permits 6 where the appeal is directly from the neighbor to the Council. 7 8 Chair Summa: Okay, so this one goes directly to the Council then. Okay. Alright, thank you for 9 clarifying that. So, I think this is a great improvement to offer this citywide, so I just wanted to 10 thank you for doing that. I don’t see any lights, do I have any other comments from my 11 colleagues or my new colleagues? 12 13 Chair Smith (HRC): Just one comment on density, I know the place that density will be a 14 challenge is Middlefield. Because I know there was one church that was offering it within six 15 hundred feet of us, and people were like… are you going to offer it, because we would be… 16 we’re within 600 feet of probably four churches. So, I think even if there was a carve out for 17 Middlefield, and saying along that church road corridor, not having like, things contiguous 18 within 1200… I think that area specifically we’d have to address. But, I don’t think it’s anywhere 19 else in Palo Alto, if I can’t remember. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Manager Specialist Tanner: I do have answers to some questions that came up during the 2 discussion just for clarification, the appeal fee is $700 dollars, not $600 dollars. It’s gone up 3 since I was last here. And the VI-SPDAT system is one that is indicating folks who have wanted 4 to engage and are looking for, or seeking, or participating in services, and so that’s probably 5 around like twenty-nine-ish people or thirty folks. So, we think about 58 is the total number 6 who are sleeping in vehicles and of those maybe thirty or so, who are like… I would like to not 7 be doing this and work with the county or work with others to get out of that situation, so, 8 we’re about halfway there. If we think about it being roughly thirty, in terms of the number of 9 parking spots that we have available. 10 11 Chair Summa: Other comments? 12 13 Commissioner Causey (HRC): Can I add something Chair Summa? 14 15 Chair Summa: Go ahead, Vice Chair and then Commissioner Causey. 16 17 Vice Chair Eberle (HRC): Thank you. Just on the density piece again, I did think about that as I 18 was looking at the map, as most of the churches are in south Palo Alto, and if you think about 19 Middlefield, all of those churches are again, in south Palo Alto, where you know, they’ve been 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. hurting, but the fire and Mike’s Diner almost closing, and trying to revitalize the businesses 1 there, and maybe revitalize the whole corridor, so I do think about equity between north Palo 2 Alto and south Palo Alto, and there’s I guess First Congo is north Palo Alto, and it’s the only one 3 that is part of the program, I… so… but at the same time, I was thinking I don’t know how much 4 parking the other churches have, do you… I mean I don’t know how many churches there are 5 on that side, and I know the ones in downtown don’t really have a lot of parking. So… is that 6 just the way it is, basically? 7 8 Manager Specialist Tanner: Yeah, I think you make some good points, just in terms of where 9 churches are located, is not evenly distributed, and so… and even to your point, the kind of age 10 in which the church was constructed and the kind of parking associated where you can just kind 11 of… the spaciousness, is not evenly distributed either. So, that could lead to saying yea we do 12 want to have some type of density limit, just to make sure that… because south Palo Alto 13 happens to be where most of the churches with larger parking lots is, does that mean that’s 14 where all of the Safe Parking lots need to be. And so, if we’re kind of saying, happy medium, 15 maybe it is 1200 or 600, or 600 feet just to give some breathing room, and not make that part 16 of town feel like they have to have all of the Safe Parking there. Even though that’s where most 17 of… many churches are. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice Chair Eberle (HRC): Just one thing, I do want to make this one comment that I remember 1 when this program first came out, and there was outcry… I remember getting calls from some 2 of my kids classmates parents, to try to organize to fight the program. And, I am so happy to 3 hear that there’s been no problems, and you don’t really hear about it anymore. So, it exists, it 4 seems to be working well with those communities, so it’s really nice to hear that it’s been 5 successful. 6 7 Vice-Chair Summa: Commissioner Causey did you… 8 9 Commissioner Causey (HRC): I didn’t have my light on. 10 11 Chair Summa: Okay. 12 13 Commissioner Hsieh (HRC): It was me. 14 15 Chair Summa: Oh. Go ahead. 16 17 Minka van der Zwaag: So, I just wanted to get some information about what Mr. Love referred 18 to and it’s referred to a couple of times in the report, so, the city has started a contract with Life 19 Moves for their services of two full time outreach workers. So, they are just being onboarded 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. now, one of them is on the streets, but and I will be meeting with them tomorrow, but those 1 outreach workers will be having a root or, you know, different places in the community but 2 they will also be making contact with vehicle dwellers, and RV dwellers, as well as, and we’ll be 3 partnering with agencies that we already have, that have ties with the RV community. So, I 4 wanted to let you know that. 5 6 Chair Summa: Thank you for that. May I ask you a question. Anecdotally, I notice a huge 7 diminishment of the RVs parked on El Camino in front of Stanford, do we have any idea why? 8 Did people just leave during COVID, I mean this may be some of it, or… 9 10 Minka van der Zwaag: I don’t know. I don’t have a specific answer to that, I know that one of 11 my colleagues is maybe Melissa… 12 13 Manager Specialist Tanner: She’s on the line I think… 14 15 Minka van der Zwaag: Yes, so one of my colleagues is also on the line that may be able to 16 answer that specifically as well. 17 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Manager Specialist Tanner: Ms. McDonough, I don’t know if you want to address that. I think 1 you just go promoted… and I also know we have Meghan Fogerty from Stanford, but I’m not 2 sure if she knows the information regarding what happened to the RVs 3 4 Ms. Melissa McDonough: You’re asking about El Camino Real specifically? This is Melissa 5 McDonough, Assistant to the City Manager. 6 7 Chair Summa: Hi, yes, thank you for joining us. Yeah, I was just curious, anecdotally, because I 8 count them as a habit, when I drive by and there were thirteen today. And at one point there 9 were over forty, so I’m sure wondering, if anybody knows what, if they found a better place or 10 if they’ve moved out. 11 12 Ms. Melissa McDonough: I can only give you an anecdotal answer, in return to your anecdotal 13 question. During my conversations with our police officers and some of our service providers, 14 recently there’s been a lot more movement of RVs off of El Camino because of Stanford football 15 games. So you may just be encountering the displacement of those vehicles, is what I would 16 expect. 17 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Summa: Okay, thank you. Yeah, I’m well aware of them having to move on football days, 1 but this is just so many fewer than there used to be. But thank you for that information. Do I 2 have any other comments? Commissioner [Vice Chair] Chang. 3 4 Vice Chair Chang: I did have a question. So, it looks like there’s maybe a total of less than sixty 5 right now, if assuming that the numbers don’t change, as Chair Smith had mentioned that they 6 are already changing, but maybe sixty cars, or non RVs, and then about 120-ish RVs, and so it 7 actually seems like it’s the RVs parking that would be a real challenge. Do we know where they 8 are going right now? This is kind of a piggy back on Chair Summa’s question, as well as given 9 that we only have twelve spaces that are suitable for RVs what’s the solution there? And it also 10 sounds like the RV, that housing the folks in RVs is a stickier problem because they might need a 11 larger space because there’s more people in the household. 12 13 Manager Specialist Tanner: Yeah, certainly I think I’d refer to Ms. McDonough, where folks are 14 going, or Mr. Love in terms of where do folks go when they’re not parked where they may have 15 been parked. I’m sure there’s a number of places. I think certainly the numbers would suggest 16 that if we had more capacity for more RVs to be parked, there could be more participation by 17 those living in RVs in the program. Certainly we have a pretty… the amount of space we have 18 relative to the number of vehicles is pretty lopsided, right, twelve spaces and 181 people and 19 68% of that are living in RVs, so I think it’s like 123 if we use the point in time count number. So, 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. you know, not really a one to one space. The options would be to try to expand the public 1 program, which you know, the city identifying more of its resources available for RVs, that 2 could be one option. Another option, which could be considered is to allow other types of lots 3 that are not congregations to also host safe parking programs, and so that might be a shopping 4 center, it could be some part of the research park, or Stanford, or other types of institutions 5 that may for a variety of reasons, want to do something like that. I believe this is … I believe like 6 in LA, for example, one of the VA’s there hosts like a safe parking in their parking lot part to 7 serve the veterans that often their patients, and so, we could think of other institutions that 8 could be hosts to these types of programs, besides congregations and perhaps could have 9 larger capacity for RVs. So, it would be both allowing other types of parking lots to host Safe 10 Parking and including RVs in who they could serve, but then the other challenge, or thing to do, 11 would be to find the service provider to match with those lots to then service the RV 12 community. And again, whether or not those are twenty-four hours lots where they can stay 13 kind of you know and not have to move frequently, or if it’s a similar to the congregation 14 program. So, not an unsolvable problem, but certainly would take some different dimensions 15 possibly than the program that we’re considering today. 16 17 Chair Summa: I see that Ms. McDonough has a hand up. I don’t know if that’s from before. 18 Okay, it’s down. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. McDonough: It was up more to answer your question, I’m sorry it didn’t occur to me right 1 when I spoke previously, but the other thing that’s going on, on El Camino right now, is our 2 sanitary sewer replacement project and as part of that project, we’re going segment by 3 segment, there’s both daytime and nighttime work, and our workers have sort of noticed all of 4 the vehicles on the road, letting them know that this working is going to be happening, when 5 it’s going to be happening, on different segments, and have also been in communication with 6 Move Mountainview and some other stakeholders that have connections with the vehicle 7 dwellers in Palo Alto. 8 9 Chair Summa: Thank you for that. Commissioner Lu is your light on? No. Vice Chair Eberle? 10 11 Vice Chair Eberle (HRC): No. 12 13 Chair Summa: Okay, thanks. I am not seeing anymore lights and if no one else has anything to 14 add, I would just like to make sure with Ms. Tanner that you got all the information that you 15 think you need. That you got questions answered. 16 17 Manager Specialist Tanner: I would only say… well one thing, just to correction to my previous 18 number, in the Vi-SPAT system, there are 79 individuals which is 29%, so I think I said thirty, 19 which is 30% of folks living in their vehicles, or who are unhoused or living in their cars. And 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. that number is 79 individuals. So, I will say, Melissa, I don’t know if you know this chart that 1 we’re looking at doesn’t differentiate cars from RVs, so I’m not sure if that number includes RVs 2 or not, but the point is, we have more people who are living in their vehicles than we have Safe 3 Parking spots, I think still stands, just how far from that number, it kind of depends on what 4 we’re counting. The only thing I would say, and not to prolong this joint hearing, but certainly if 5 there are any Commissioners from the HRC who had any thoughts regarding preferences, 6 density, other things that the PTC were voting on, I think they would appreciate to hear that 7 now, as opposed to after they voted. And then if not, the PTC would adjourn, under the Chair, 8 I’m satisfied as a staff person with the hearing. 9 10 Chair Summa: Okay, Human Relation Commissioners, do you have, would you like to weigh in 11 on some of the questions, preferences and density, I think we’re already heard some. Go 12 ahead. 13 14 Chair Smith (HRC): First of all, I thank the Planning Commission for having us, you didn’t have to 15 so, so we’re grateful for including us in this process. If the gentleman that goes to Etz Chayim, I 16 think he brings up… he brought up several clear things, I think, when you’re dealing with faith 17 institutions, allowing them to structure around what they do, I know for example in 18 Mountainview, there are some of the faith institutions particularly a catholic church, that they 19 only wanted to do females, as individuals, they wanted to provide a safe haven for females and 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. cars. So, I think giving some freedom to match mission with program is critical. The other thing 1 that I’ve heard from several faith leaders is that the Palo Alto process has been applied to this 2 and as a faith leader, you want to do good, but you also don’t want to be stretched out, so as 3 we consider the appeal process, understanding that churches/faith institutions doesn’t want 4 negative press, don’t want to be dragged, you know, there was at the initial time of the 5 program, there was fear mongering… like are we getting drug addicts, are we getting people 6 that are criminals, are we getting this, and so , we will need the spaces, but how we do the 7 appeal process I think needs to be adjusted, understanding some of the sensitivities in the 8 institutions. And finally, I think we should look beyond faith institutions, to expand because 9 they’re… we are going to tap out in capacity, particularly if we… I agree with the 1200 feet on 10 Middlefield, or church corridor, so when you start doing that, you take out the churches on 11 Middlefield, but you also take out the churches behind them, like the Christ of Christian 12 Scientists, and part of the catholic church property. And a lot of those other properties they 13 don’t count for some other streets. So, we should look at incorporating other community 14 partners in this process, because I think there will be a need, and I think it is a good thing. And a 15 final thing, the Chair, she made a…. I think an astute observation that maybe we should look at 16 scaling the amount of people or cars. We can have more property based on some quotient for… 17 and I’m just…. A random number for every 25 spaces RV, or twenty spaces, you can get one 18 extra car, or some number that. And I don’t know the match, don’t quote me on twenty, 19 because I don’t know church parking lots. I know what a church parking lot is, but I think it 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. would be good for churches with… that have a hundred, or a hundred-thirty parking spaces that 1 are off the street, to be able to say, okay, we want to do six cars, not four cars. 2 3 Chair Summa: Anyone else? Could you… we have a request from Commissioner Templeton to 4 put the slide up that you need direction on for this. 5 6 Manager Specialist Tanner: So, it’s like nine Veronica, and ten. Which just shows, these are the 7 proposed changes, so this one includes the duration community meeting preferences, and then 8 the next slide shows the appeal distance, no permit fee and then the other operational 9 changes. I would say the one thing that’s not here is the question of the density of permits, 10 whether or not that’s something that, it’s not currently addressed in the ordinance, so we could 11 add something, if there was a desire to add something. 12 13 Chair Summa: Thank you for that. If we are done with this part of the process, the study 14 session, I would say we should take… 15 16 Commissioner Causey (HRC): I was going to make a comment completely agreeing with 17 Commissioner Hechtman and Chair Summa and Chair Smith, on the regarding preferences, I 18 used to work for one of our faith based institutions and like many of our faith based 19 institutions, they provide temporary shelter for a good portion of the year and I always ask 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. them, I was like…. I was like don’t you want to do more of this? And they were like, we 1 absolutely do, and but it is that worry about neighborhood concerns and the fear mongering 2 we’ve seen in the past and I just firmly believe in letting … giving faith based institutions as 3 much flexibility as possible to serve their missions, you know, raising maximums if possible. I 4 know that in San Jose, they way that they do their policy around this is at maximum 49% of the 5 lot can be used for safe parking, and I’m not sure if that would be a good fit for us, but like Chair 6 Smith said, maybe something like … just potential changes to raise the maximum. 7 8 Chair Summa: Thank you for that. So, I’m not seeing any other lights or hand signals, so we’ll 9 take a small recess and allow ourselves to reassemble you know, eight minutes or something 10 like that. Thank you very much to the Human Relations Commission, Chair and Vice Chair. You 11 may stay and watch our deliberation if you don’t want to go home, but you may also go home. 12 13 Vice Chair Eberle (HRC): Thank you for having us. 14 15 PTC returned from break with all members present except for Commissioner Reckdahl 16 (absent). 17 18 Action Items 19 Public Comment is Permitted. Applicants/Appellant Teams: Fifteen (15) minutes, plus three (3) minutes rebuttal. 20 All others: Five (5) minutes per speaker. 21 22 3. LEGISLATIVE ACTION: Recommendation to City Council Regarding Proposed 23 Amendments to Palo Alto Municipal Code (PAMC) Title 18 (Zoning) Chapter 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. 18.42 (Standards for Special Uses) Section 18.42.160 (Safe Parking) to 1 Permanently Establish the Congregation-Based Safe Parking Program by Allowing 2 Overnight Safe Parking as an Ancillary Use to a Church’s and Religious 3 Institution’s Use in All Zoning Districts Where Churches and Religious Institutions 4 are Allowed Uses, and Establishing Regulations Related to Safe Parking, Including 5 a Maximum Number of Vehicles Per Night on Each Site. 6 7 Chair Summa: Okay, we are back, and we are now on our next time which is an action item on 8 the exact same issue and that is regarding changes to our now temporary to make our Parking 9 program… Safe Parking program permanent. Okay. So, I don’t think we need the same staff 10 report again, so I’m just going to… if there are questions, observations, motions, and I don’t 11 think we… I should check, but I don’t know that there’s anybody Ms. Dao, who wants to speak 12 at this time. 13 14 Ms. Dao: I have no requests to speak. 15 16 Chair Summa: Okay. I don’t see anybody on zoom either, so we’ll just go straight into it. So, I 17 see a light, Commissioner Akin. 18 19 Commissioner Akin: Thank you Chair, there’s been a lot of discussion about the preference list, 20 and I think the consensus is developing that it’s not necessary. I’d like to support that position 21 at least. I’m waffling on the density question. I appreciate the potential political advantages of 22 having the density limit, but I worry about imposing the restriction particularly in cases where 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. there might be an advantage to be gained from particularly the operators point of view, into 1 having more closely spaced sites. So, I’m still struggling with that if we can, in our discussion 2 think about that a little bit more, it might come to clarity on that for me. And the last 3 observation is I suspect we should recommend that there is some path for having more spaces 4 per site. I don’t know exactly what that path should be, but as the outreach process really takes 5 off, then perhaps we’ll get a little more contention for these spaces. I’m a little uncertain about 6 that because we don’t seem to be getting families in the congregation spaces, and that perhaps 7 is directly related to the lack of RV support and those spaces. So, it gets complicated quickly, 8 but I think I would feel more comfortable if there were a path for congregations to offer more. 9 That’s everything that’s on my list. Thank you. 10 11 Chair Summa: Okay, Commissioner [Vice Chair] Chang. 12 13 Vice Chair Chang: I think Commissioner Akin highlighted the three kind of decision points for me 14 too, everything else that’s in the Ordinance, I support. So, regarding the density, I think how I 15 feel about the density can be traded off with the question about finding a way for 16 congregations to host more than four participants, vehicles. And the reason I say that is 17 because on the one hand, initially, I was thinking that I… that density kind of wasn’t an issue. 18 Because as the … if we think about all the churches on Middlefield, which is probably where it’s 19 most likely going to be impacted as well as sort of the blocks parallel to Middlefield. The 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. institutions on Middlefield are quite large for the most part, with very large parking lots, and so 1 they are spaced very far apart as it is. It doesn’t seem like there would be a huge impact there. 2 It would be a different situation if there was a church corridor in downtown Palo Alto. But, if we 3 were then to say… have some sort of ratio, either square feet of parking lot space or number of 4 parking spaces and then allow many institutions on Middlefield to host many more than four 5 vehicles, then I think there could start to be some pushback from the community. So, where I 6 stand on this…. I don’t… I think that would need to be studied a little bit more, because I’m not 7 sure that we know what the right number would be unless it’s a very small tweak, like an 8 additional two vehicles, or something like that. But if it were a blanket kind of per parking spot 9 or per square footage rule, I don’t know what the implications of that would be, and that would 10 make me feel a little more nervous. And, I wouldn’t want to touch that unless we also put a 11 density… you know something like 1200 feet requirement. And I don’t think the preferences are 12 necessary at this point in time. Thank you. 13 14 Chair Summa: Commissioner Hechtman. 15 16 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. Let me start with a question. Is the Geng site subject to 17 the Ordinance? 18 19 Manager Specialist Tanner: The Geng Road site is not subject to this Ordinance. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. So, I used to represent what are called small scaled group 2 recovery homes. And these are facilities for six or fewer people in recovery. Drug or alcohol 3 addiction typically, and once upon a time, you had to get a local permit to occupy a house for 4 that purpose in a residential neighborhood. And, there was a tremendous amount of fear 5 expressed by the neighbors. Ultimately, the Federal Government came in and said six or fewer, 6 it's federal rules, no local permit. But what happened over time, was largely those facilities 7 moved in and did not cause a problem in the neighborhood. You know, because these are… the 8 clientele there are people who are wanting to get better. There are exceptions to every rule, 9 but when I think about that experience, it reminds me of the fear that can be felt by neighbors 10 in close proximity to homeless sheltering; and you know I really took to heart Chair Smith’s 11 comments about sort of the challenges that congregations face, faith based, in wanting to do 12 this but not wanting to alienate their neighbors. And so, I think as we move forward, we want 13 to encourage more congregations to do this and we have to help them by not creating a 14 scenario that unnecessarily creates more fear in the neighborhood. So, when I think about the 15 maximum of four, and I hear some of my fellow Commissioners, I do think that there should be 16 a path to more than four, and I was thinking of something like, you know, every year you can 17 add two, up to a maximum of eight, or whatever maximum it is, but that way you have to start 18 with four and let it operate, let the neighborhood realize that it’s not a problem, and then a 19 small bump up, if there’s demand and the congregation wants to do it, and then maybe one 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. more a year later after that. So, that’s one concept that maybe could thread this needle 1 without having to come back and amend the ordinance later. The ordinance does incidentally, 2 in its findings, it does talk about four. So we’d have to look at that if we want to implement 3 something like that. In terms of the density issue, you know, one thing that occurred to me… 4 because I hadn’t really thought about this geographically, and honestly, I don’t think I have 5 enough information to recommend supporting 1200 or any number, but I do think that we can 6 help the Council look at this if, when this goes to Council, staff will prepare a map with all of the 7 faith based institutions and a 1200 foot diameter, radiating from each one of them so we can 8 start to see, right, how many… how much we’re excluding if we do something like that. And so, 9 I would like them to … if it’s the consensus of the Commission, I would like the Council to know 10 that we’re interested… we were interested enough in that possibility to have this data provided 11 to them for them to consider, without making a recommendation of let’s do 1200 or not. So, 12 those are my thoughts on how to you know, adjust this ordinance as we recommend it to the 13 Council. 14 15 Chair Summa: Thank you. Commissioner Templeton. 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you Chair. I’m going to speak in favor of preferences. Just in 18 case, we want to reconsider. Specifically, point number one is extremely important. If you have 19 become unhoused suddenly, unexpectedly, and you’re a student in the PAUSD, it’s very 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. disruptive to be kicked out, while you’re parents try and figure out how to secure new housing. 1 And it’s disruptive not only you know, to their sense of stability, to their relationships, to their 2 schooling, but it’s very financially valuable to be able to remail in this district. And so, I just feel 3 compassion, this has happened to several friends of mine, that have lost their houses, while 4 their kids are in district and they have had difficulty securing another one before the lease runs 5 out, because they get bumped, or the landlord raises the rent in the middle of negotiations so 6 sometimes it takes longer than you think, and they do need a temporary place to be able to 7 reside, or reside so that they can qualify to remain in the district. So, I do accept that we 8 currently are not at capacity, and this isn’t an issue, but if you look ahead, a lot of financial 9 gurus are telling us that we’re not out of the woods yet in terms of the economy so, when you 10 think about this and plan ahead, make sure that those children are protected. So that’s my plea 11 for that, thank you. 12 13 Chair Summa: I’m not seeing other lights. I would say that I agree with my Colleagues and I 14 certainly think of the preferences, the one that really stands out is school kids, so I wouldn’t 15 mind leaving that one in there, and I think it’s kind of the practice anyway of people that work 16 with these communities, but I think it doesn’t hurt to spell it out. So I would be fine with that 17 and leaving the others out for now. I don’t think they’re as compelling. And then, I … I myself 18 personally, am not really concerned about the density issue, but given that others are, I would 19 be perfectly happy to accept sort of a program as outlined by Commissioner Hechtman. That 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. sounds like a good compromise. And I really do like the idea of a map with churches. I would 1 really want to see, and I think we could come to a conclusion about that if we had thought 2 about it in that way before, but I would like to see 600 versus 1200, because 600 is the kind of 3 accepted sphere of impact by project, that we currently accept. So that would be interesting for 4 me to see. And, I think that covers the issues for me. 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: If I could just drill down on the families with enrolled students 7 concept, again, recognizing that this ordinance doesn’t apply to properties with RVs, right, this 8 is only the places where people are in cars where I think we hard from our representative of… 9 Mr. Love, thank you, that you’re generally not having children, right, these are …. I don’t know, 10 he didn’t say always, but nearly always a single occupant in a car. And so, it’s not a child. And 11 so, I’m just trying to think about whether this could actually… I mean, how does that work? If 12 you know, my congregation has this obligation to provide a preference to families with 13 students, first of all I think they would normally do that without being told. I think protecting 14 and helping children is the mission of every faith based organization. So, but I’m wondering if 15 there could be a situation here where something that we don’t want to happen, happens. And I 16 don’t know what that would be. But anyway, that’s my concern and I’m just voicing it, I don’t 17 generally have a problem with keeping that, but I’m wondering if there’s a risk that we’re not 18 thinking of. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: I’ll just remind you that students can be homeless, and students can 1 be eighteen, so these are… not mutually exclusive scenarios, and often in the case of I 2 mentioned, which does happen frequently, if you’re following any of these Palo Alto parents 3 groups, like multiple times a month, we’re seeing people displaced from their home. They don’t 4 have the RV, yet. They’re trying to find a house, or an apartment or a place to rent. So, those 5 are people that would be in their cars as well. And even if they have a friend that their child can 6 stay with, they still need the residency in order to stay in the district. And if the organizations 7 are likely to comply anyway, they shouldn’t object to this restriction. 8 9 Chair Summa: Commissioner Akin and then Commissioner Lu. 10 11 Commissioner Akin: Yeah, just a brief observation about a map with twelve… with six hundred 12 foot radius from faith based institutions, you don’t want to create something that… where the 13 coverage is so high that it looks intimidating. We may … we may have a relatively small number 14 of congregations who are interested in doing this and we would never run across any overlap, 15 but if you provide a diagram of that sort, you may find that huge areas have overlap of one kind 16 or another. And, I wouldn’t want that to dissuade Council from considering liberalization of the 17 rules we’re proposing here. 18 19 Chair Summa: Commissioner Lu. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Lu: Thank you. A few thoughts… just recapping some of the really comments so 2 far, on density, I have significant reservations about density restrictions. I think there’s inherent 3 value in having as many congregations as would like to participate, participate. And a broader, 4 just network of people and institutions that can support people who participate in this 5 program. On capacity, I think Commissioner Hechtman’s plan sounds totally reasonable to me. 6 On preferences, I generally support preference 1, I think there’s also value in preference 2. The 7 preference for people who have lived in the community or are involved in local community, this 8 is maybe an abstract concern now while there’s still plenty of capacity, but I think it’s likely that 9 could just be better outcomes for people net net across the entire system if people can have 10 safe parking near their families, near communities that they’ve engaged in. So, preference 2 11 could also maximize the amount of good that our program can do. To throw one wrinkle here, 12 when talking about families and how many participants are single people in a single passenger 13 vehicle, we do have the option of accepting RVs, and there could be some trade off like you 14 could have four passenger vehicles, or two RVs, or some fractional combination there of; I can’t 15 think of reason why RVs are inherently worse in any way, like they’re inherently louder, 16 inherently … more likely to lead to public safety incidents or anything like that. Maybe the only 17 possible thing is that RVs are slightly taller and slightly more visible, but this feels like relatively 18 moderate in the context of mostly large parking lots. So, yeah, I’d like that they would offer it 19 for peoples consideration as well. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Summa: Commissioner [Vice Chair] Chang 2 3 Vice Chair Chang: So, as I’m listening to all the really good comments, I want to remind us all 4 that the operator said that there’s no barrier to implementing these preferences, but then from 5 a legislative perspective, there’s no point in putting rules in if they’re unnecessary. It just makes 6 for messy code. But I do also concur with Commissioner Templeton that the impact on 7 students is going to be much larger than the impact on any other group that might be given 8 preferences, and so even thought it’s not an issue right now, and even thought this operator 9 would likely prioritize families with children in PAUSD anyway, it’s probably worthwhile because 10 it’s such an important point, with such an outsized impact on the lives of the program 11 participants, if they are enrolled in school here. I think Commissioner Lu brings up a really good 12 point, and I wonder if it would be worth while to build in the flexibility to allow us to 13 accommodate RVs, that said, I would defer to the operator, so there’s a reason that the 14 operator doesn’t … it is difficult possibly because it’s also not very attractive as Ms. Tanner 15 mentioned, for RV owners to have to move their very large vehicle, and find someplace else to 16 put their very large vehicle, every day. But, that being said, if we want to think forward, there 17 may be a reason to build in some flexibility, especially because there are some very large 18 parking lots at some of the faith institutions, that could easily accommodate RVs. So, that’s just 19 a thought. I kind of like that idea, that this is ordinance. We know how slow this process is, so 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. by the time there’s a need, I mean this pilot was put in pre-pandemic and now we’re finally 1 making it permanent. So, by the time there’s a need, it may be too late, so I wonder if we 2 wouldn’t want to maybe make that a possibility; and make it one where the congregation, as 3 well as the, you know, the operator can always choose to utilize that space or not, but kind of 4 leave it up to the congregation. I mean we could put parameters around it such as two for one, 5 or something like that. Thanks. 6 7 Chair Summa: Commissioner Templeton. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. I also wanted to respond about whether or not RVs 10 present more of a health hazard than cars. It’s my understanding that yes, they do, because of 11 the dumping of waste matter. Yeah, I’m talking about sewage. So, I was wondering if staff 12 wanted to respond to that and maybe it would help us move on past this issue. Thank you. 13 14 Manager Specialist Tanner: Yeah, so I think… I would say certainly the issue of discarding waste 15 water is present in RVs and not present in a typical vehicle, I think there is… if that’s not 16 properly attended to, then that can become a problem and unfortunately has in some 17 communities in the recent past, relative to RV’s waste water. I would say, just in terms of 18 vehicle limit overall, you know if the Commission did want to give staff direction to you know, 19 develop a clause that Council could incorporate around allowing… whether it’s up to eight 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. vehicles max, again RVs are allowed, I think just programmatically not currently happening right 1 now, because of the program operators preferences and kind of the way that they have a feel 2 it's best to serve folks who are living in RVs, so there could be a different operator that a church 3 works with that does want to place RVs there. I will also say, related to just the challenges at 4 some congregations have overcome with neighbors that was often a discussion point, well what 5 kind of vehicles are going to be there and having kind of regular cars, if you will, was more 6 palatable than maybe having RVs. So, just to say, RVs are allowed under the current ordinance, 7 I mean certainly if you want to create a max, it doesn’t mean the congregation has to serve 8 that, so if Move Mountainview and the congregation felt four was fine, they wouldn’t need to 9 go up to eight, but they could have the flexibility under the ordinance to do so, that might be 10 something that … especially if they’re also proximity limitations then we can still serve more 11 people but it just may not be at more congregations. 12 13 Manager Specialist Tanner: Thank you so much, and just wanted to see if there was anybody 14 ready to make a motion. 15 16 Chair Summa: Okay. I think that’s my job but okay. Thank you. 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: Encouraging and encouraging you all and all of our jobs. Thank you. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Hechtman: Alright, since the current ordinance and the proposed ordinance 1 doesn’t preclude RVs, I won’t be including a reference to that. 2 3 MOTION 4 5 Commissioner Hechtman: I will move that the PTC recommend that the City Council adopt and 6 proposed the amendments to Palo Alto Municipal Code, Title 18, Chapter 18.42 and 18.42.160 7 recommended by staff and contained in Attachment A to our staff report, with the following 8 modifications: (1) Delete the second preference, which is F12 ‘ii’ and modify the first (i) to 9 rather than say families with students to just clarify it’s students, so that could be an individual 10 seventeen or eighteen year old student, rather than family with, it could be both that way. (2) 11 Modify the ordinance to create a path to increase the maximum number from four to six after 12 one year of operation, and from six to eight after two years of operation, which the same 13 process applicable as the initial permit issuance, in other words, there will be appeal rights in 14 that. (3) Clarify the use of the word amenities in subpart F14, consistent with our dialog tonight. 15 (4) We would instruct the staff to provide a map to the City Council showing radius of 600 and 16 1200 feet from the faith based institutions in Palo Alto to inform the Council’s dialogue on 17 whether there should be any density limit. 18 19 Chair Summa: Do I have a second? 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 SECOND 2 3 Vice Chair Chang: I’ll second. 4 5 Chair Summa: Okay, we have a motion and a second, would either of you like to speak to either 6 the motion or the seconder? 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: I don’t need to. 9 10 Chair Summa: Okay. Any other observations, comments? Okay I think that we are ready to vote 11 then, on this motion. Ms. Dao, if you would call the vote please. 12 13 Manager Specialist Tanner: Sorry, can I just add a clarifying question just to make sure I 14 captured it correctly? For deleting the preference, so I got the part about updating the 15 preference, and then to delete the second preference. 16 17 Vice Chair Chang: There’s actually a typo I think in the ordinance where the second, third and 18 forth preferences are all lumped into the little (crosstalk) 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Manager Specialist Tanner: Right, so I just want to make sure you’re saying delete all of little 1 Roman Numeral i, which says that starts with second preference but includes actually more 2 than … 3 4 Commissioner Hechtman: Right, delete to little i … 5 6 Manager Specialist Tanner: Got it. And it’s entirety. Thank you. 7 8 VOTE 9 10 Ms. Dao: Commissioner Akin 11 12 Commissioner Akin: Yes. 13 14 Ms. Dao: Vice Chair Chang 15 16 Vice Chair Chang: Yes 17 18 Ms. Dao: Commissioner Hechtman 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Hechtman: Yes 1 2 Ms. Dao: Commissioner Lu 3 4 Commissioner Lu: Yes 5 6 Ms. Dao: Chair Summa 7 8 Chair Summa: Yes 9 10 Ms. Dao: Commissioner Templeton 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Yes 13 14 Ms. Dao: Motion carries 6-0. 15 16 MOTION PASSED 6 (Akin, Chang, Lu, Hechtman, Summa, Reckdahl, Templeton) -0 -1 (Reckdahl 17 Absent) 18 Commission Action: Moved by Hechtman, seconded by Chang. Pass 6-0-1 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Summa: Wonderful, thank you very much. We will move on to (interrupted) 1 2 Manager Specialist Tanner: Sorry, I just wanted to clarify for the record, sorry I was distracted, 3 thank you Commissioners for voting, but technically, we’ll note that you were in support, but 4 the PTC is actually taking the action on the item today, so thank you for your votes, but I think 5 they’re not actually voting on it, because the PTC has the authority to make the 6 recommendation to the Council. I just wanted to make sure that’s clear. 7 8 Chair Summa: Yes, that’s why we were voting. 9 10 Manager Specialist Tanner: Okay great, thank you. 11 12 Chair Summa: Okay, thank you for that. 13 14 Chair Summa: So, we will now move on to our second study session of the evening, which is on 15 retail study introduction and check in. 16 17 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you, Ms. Tanner, nice to see you back here. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Manager Specialist Tanner: Yes, thank you, it’s great to be here and good to see you all, thank 1 you. 2 3 Chair Summa: Okay. So, We are ready for staff report. On item four. 4 5 Ms. French: Or perhaps could we do the reports from officials? 6 7 Chair Summa: Oh, I forgot about that. 8 9 Ms. French: Rafael … I’ll start. 10 11 City Official Reports *Heard out of Order* 12 1. Directors Report, Meeting Schedule and Assignments 13 14 Ms. Amy French, Chief Planning Official: Amy French, Chief Planning Official, giving you just a bit 15 of an update, you know, I provide the report in the packet about upcoming Planning and 16 Transportation Commission meetings so you have those dates, just a quick report out, this 17 week Council heard the Stanford University Medical Center development agreement 18 modifications, that was Monday, upcoming, let’s see, who is… November… Is it Allen 19 [Commissioner Akin], with a backup, representing Planning and Transportation Commission and 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. so we have, let’s see, several meetings, I count three meetings in November, at Council, where 1 we may like to have representation if that’s not overdoing it. We have the Elsworth Place 2 Action Item, the planned community Middlefield/Elsworth … two planned communities, going 3 for Action on that date. A couple of… we have the electrification equipment that’s just a 4 consent item, with a modifications, so that’s nothing, just a second reading, we have on 5 November 13th, the Comp Plan amendment Ordinance implementation Ordinance that you all 6 saw a month or so ago, 575 Los Trancos is a site and design application, the one with the pool 7 near the creek … for action. Then on November 27th we’re looking at the rental registry, it’s an 8 action item as well. So that’s November. And then of course, this item is scheduled … parking is 9 scheduled to go in December to Council, Safe Parking … I’m going to look and see who’s on for 10 December… You know who you are right, okay George [Commissioner Lu], so that’s on the 11 docket. We also have the downtown housing masterplan, it’s a consent item that month, and 12 looking to possibly bring the SB 9 standards, which are the housing standards that Council saw 13 before you all saw the ordinances, and we’re tweaking the standards after three or four visits 14 with the ARB, after three or four meetings with the focus group. And then again, looking 15 forward to next year, which we don’t have to talk about now. It can wait. 16 17 Chair Summa: Okay thank you. Do we have any other staff wanting to give us a report or 18 update? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. French: I believe Rafael is … 1 2 Chair Summa: Not here. 3 4 Ms. French: Tuned in? I was chatting with him. 5 6 Chair Summa: I don’t see him. 7 8 Ms. Dao: No, he was on earlier, but I think he left. 9 10 Ms. French: He’s been off and on. 11 12 Chair Summa: Well, that’s okay (interrupted) 13 14 Ms. French: It’s hard to catch up to us. 15 16 Chair Summa: Then we can move on with the staff report for item 4. 17 18 STUDY SESSION 19 Public Comment is Permitted. Three (3) minutes per speaker. 20 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. 4. Study Session: Retail Study Introduction and Check-In 1 2 Ms. French: Great, I am going to introduce, I’m trying to see if they are online, do we have 3 Surabhi and Dan, yes. Okay. So, this is… we have a presentation, I don’t know… 4 5 Chair Summa: Dan is an attendee, not a participant, I don’t know if he needs to be raised up. 6 7 Ms. French: Oh, he needs to be raised up, so just a quick overview, and you’ve seen the report, 8 about this time last year, maybe it was even earlier, end of August, we brought forward the 9 interim ordinance on the thresholds for CUPs and all of that, it went to Council as a extension of 10 the interim ordinance because we didn’t have our retail study ready, so we started that 11 process, then there was Streetsense who came along and we do also have representation, I 12 have to ping him as well, Steve is going to be attending this is you have questions on that, but 13 Street Sense came along and we had a Streetsense presentation with Council in June, they 14 approved that, in so many words, and then we are kind of back at it, with our retail study that is 15 informed by Streetsense and has an expanded scope from last fall when we got our first version 16 of it. So, without further adieu, I’m going to ping Steve, and let Surabhi do her presentation. 17 Surabhi? 18 19 Ms. Surabhi Barbhaya, Consultant: Amy, did you elevate Dan as well to the panelists? Okay. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Mr. Dan Wery, Consultant: Yes, I’ve been elevated. I’ve been promoted to panelist, Hi 2 everybody, I’m Dan Wery from Michael Baker International. I just wanted to check, do you guys 3 have our presentation or should I share my screen? 4 5 Ms. French: Who ever is… Do you have the presentation? 6 7 Chair Summa: Somebody needs to share… 8 9 Ms. French: Dan? 10 11 Mr. Wery, Consultant: Well, just a very short PowerPoint, it’s very short. We have seven slides, 12 so I can set that up very quickly. And let me just make sure I’ve got this… I’ll share screen, so I 13 was going to present the first few slides and then I was going to hand it off to Surabhi to 14 conclude and then we’ll be available for Q and A. And let me just make sure I’ve got the right… 15 tell me when you get the right screen here… should be this one. Okay, do you see our slide? 16 17 Ms. Barbhaya, Consultant: Yes, I can. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Wery, Consultant: Okay, great. Okay, again, good evening, I’m Dan Wery from Michael 1 Baker International, Surabhi and I are here, we’re kind of the lead on your team here, we’ve 2 been working with staff for quite a while, and what we wanted to do was just kind of present 3 and introduce the Retail Recovery study. We started a while ago and we can give you a little bit 4 of update, but we’ve got some preliminary work that we’ve done so far, but we just wanted to 5 introduce you overall, to the project. The goal of the study is to retain, strengthen and facilitate 6 retail in the key commercial areas of Palo Alto. Really trying to retain and recover the thriving 7 retail activity. And you know, one key component to this is to modernize the regulations and 8 ensure a vibrant commercial area. So just real quick, we’ll jump on and look at the study area, 9 so these are all kind of the primary commercial areas, in Palo Alto, our focus is really on four 10 key areas, centered on University Avenue, California Avenue, Midtown shopping center, and 11 the retail components or zones on El Camino Real. Primarily on the east and west of the 12 intersection with California Avenue. Those are the CN and CS zones. And then just kind of what 13 we’re… what’s in the study that we’re doing and what are the main components, so we’re 14 looking at best practice research, we looked around and we’re benchmarking all good practices 15 relating to retail recovery and good retail practices in general, we’ve studied the retail trends 16 and analysis, they’ve been evolving as you know, quite a bit. Peer city interviews and research, 17 we started off with a couple, we just finished with a third peer city review. So, again, looking at 18 our best practices and more locally how those local examples that may apply more specifically 19 to Palo Alto. And then stakeholder interviews as well. We’re shooting for about twelve, we’ve 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. got about seven so far and we’re looking for some more. And then we’re doing a constraints 1 analysis on your zoning and procedures, a deep dive. And then other components include, and 2 these are some of the newer things that we’ve added on more recently, is the look at the 3 impacts of AB2097, which eliminates minimum parking requirements within a half mile of high 4 frequency transit, particularly train stations. So that covers virtually all of University and 5 California districts. And then incorporating the Streetsense Economic Development Strategy 6 report that was just concluded and completed, so, we’ve seen a lot of… what we saw in our 7 preliminary analysis was really heavily documented and explained in the Streetsense report so 8 that’s very nice to see there’s a lot of synergy between those and we’ll be incorporating that 9 into our final report. And then ultimately the goal is to make recommended land use changes, 10 land use zoning controls, regulatory changes. We are also… have been asked to look at the 11 parking, again because of AB 2097 in particular, but also because parking in general is often a 12 critical component to all the other retail components. And then we have scope and budget for a 13 number of meetings with the PTC and then also two meetings with the City Council. And then 14 ultimately when we work through that we’ll have a final report. So we do expect to be back 15 with you as we make further progress, and have more detailed findings, but we’re going to kind 16 of just give you an overview tonight. And then I think Surabhi was going to kind of cover in a 17 little bit more detail the outreach. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Barbhaya, Consultant: Sure. Hi, I’m Surabhi, I’m an Urban Designer with Michael Baker, I’m 1 here to work with Dan to get this retail study done. So, I have done, to date, seven with 2 businesses and property owners interviews and with… it also includes the Chamber of 3 Commerce. We have documented the interviews and you’ll see the memo of the findings of 4 these interviews. Along with that, we have also done interviews with local cities, including 5 Redwood City and Mountainview City in the first round of research. We recently interviewed 6 the peer city of Santa Monica, and we will be doing research up there based on this interview as 7 well as the interviews in the memo and submitting it to the City. Next slide please. 8 9 Mr. Wery, Consultant: Oh, here we go. 10 11 Ms. Barbhaya, Consultant: So this is a tentative schedule for this project, we had our first 12 meeting with staff in July, and we are in the process of doing stakeholder interviews, we’ve 13 done a few. We hope to wrap up the stakeholder interviews by the end of November, if 14 possible. We have wrapped up the interviews with the peer cities and neighboring cities and we 15 will submit a memo hopefully by October end, or mid November. The best practices 16 documented back in the first round, we will revise that and resubmit it to the City by the end of 17 November, and we will start… we just started parking analysis with collecting data and trying to 18 figure out what data is available from the city. And then we’ll do the parking study analysis 19 based on the data available. As far as zoning review and recommendations we hope to have 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. back beginning of December and have a recommendation by the end of March. [TIMESTAMP 1 2:46 Unintelligible] by the end of April we will have a report with recommendations for changes 2 to zoning and parking. We have in our scope, about six… have identified six Commission 3 meetings and this is our first Commission meeting, and we hope to return in January for an 4 update of the work done so far. And the adoption hearing, we’re hoping, will be something in 5 May and June. So that completes the tentative schedule, it might change a little bit, based on 6 how the project progresses, but this is what the schedule is for now. So, with that, I think we’re 7 ready to take questions. 8 9 Chair Summa: Okay, so that concludes the presentation… I guess, we need questions, and I see 10 that Commissioner Akin’s light is on. 11 12 Commissioner Akin: Thank you. I’m not sure how much detail you want to get into at this level, 13 but one question that I know will come up is in analyzing parking resources, how much use do 14 you make of the residential parking areas near downtown? This has been a contentious subject 15 of the past and we have a residential parking preference program in effect there, which is 16 somewhat unusual in that commercial permits in the residential neighborhoods are permitted 17 in a limited way. But I’m curious as to what you’re thinking is at the moment, about whether 18 you will count those areas as parking resources and if so, in what way? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Ms. Barbhaya, Consultant: So, as of now, we’re collecting… so the data that we’ve collected so 1 far is focused on the garages, the city garages and the on street parking, but the main idea of 2 parking analysis is to understand how much development the University Avenue, and California 3 Avenue can absorb without parking in light of AB 2097, before figuring out parking strategies 4 for additional development. So the study is focused on what that threshold would be, at what 5 time the city needs to implement a parking strategy or TDM strategy. 6 7 Commissioner Akin: Thank you, I just wondered if you were aware of this history of already 8 using adjacent areas as parking resources. So, if you do a census strictly on the basis of garage 9 space and on street parking in the downtown commercial district, that won’t be an accurate 10 reflection of how parking resources in the are used. Particularly as AB 2097 comes into play, 11 there would, I presume, there would be additional pressure to use parking resources other than 12 those two types that you’ve identified. Other than the garages and the on street parking in the 13 commercial district. So I think that really needs to be a part of your analysis. I can’t offer you 14 advice on what the correct way to do that is, but it is an issue that you should keep in mind. 15 16 Mr. Wery, Consultant: Yeah, I appreciate that, I’ve started responding and I had myself on 17 mute, but what I was trying to say earlier and to build on what Surabhi said, we had a good 18 intensive meeting with the staff this week on that, and looking at all the resources, and one of 19 the things we do have is that permit data sort of looking at the residential permits and the 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. commercial permits and trying to track that. And then there’s some really good survey data, 1 some of it is a little bit older, where it’s very comprehensive and we have a good inventory of 2 the On Street spaces throughout, including the side streets as well. So, we’ll be taking a look at 3 all of that. 4 5 Commissioner Akin: Okay, so when you say the side streets, you mean including all the parking 6 permit district (interrupted) 7 8 Mr. Wery, Consultant: I believe… I do believe everything we got data from, we’re going to be 9 looking at and I believe we have that, not just for Cal Ave, and University in particular but the 10 surrounding areas that include the RPP. 11 12 Commissioner Akin: Good. And this is above my pay grade, but I understand the parking 13 assessment districts have complex issues involved as well. So, a simple census of space won’t 14 capture those, so you need to be aware of those as well. Thank you, that’s it for now. 15 16 Chair Summa: Thank you for that. Commissioner [Vice Chair] Chang. 17 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice Chair Chang: Yes so, I wanted to understand how, so the twelve stakeholders or… it says in 1 our packet that those will be selected by City staff and so I was wondering how staff has 2 decided. 3 4 Ms. French: There was a list that was developed with … in consultation with the Director of 5 Planning and Development services and perhaps Mr. Guagliardo can weight in on this, he is also 6 attending the meeting, to develop how that list of names was developed in consultation with 7 the consultant. 8 9 Mr. Steve Guagliardo, Assistant City Manager: Good evening, Chair and members of the 10 Planning and Transportation Commission, Steve Guagliardo, Assistant to the City Manager. 11 Happy to answer the question. We were trying to come up with a spread of stakeholders that 12 represented the various retail elements operating in town. We do have that list that’s been 13 provided to Michael Baker and then as they eluded to, I believe they’ve made contact with 14 most but not all of them. As we continue to try to work through that list, we’ll certainly work 15 with Michael Baker to make sure they are able to get contact with what we feel is a significant, 16 not statistically significant, but a representative sample of those different retail sectors so that 17 we can make sure we go forward. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice Chair Chang: Okay, thank you. Am I also correct in understanding that the peer cities and 1 research is now completed so there’s no opportunity to like give feedback on the selection of 2 those cities? 3 4 Ms. French: My understanding is the only city that was interviewed to date has been Santa 5 Monica, but Surabhi, can you weigh in as far as those other cities noted… 6 7 Ms. Barbhaya, Consultant: Yes, so the other cities were Redwood City and Mountainview, and 8 these are the neighboring cities we compared… we interviewed them regarding their zoning 9 codes, their parking policies, their ground floor retail [TIMESTAMP 2:54 Unintelligible] so we’ve 10 interviewed those two cities and Santa Monica, but we can work with city staff, if there are 11 other peer cities that you would want to identify. 12 13 Vice Chair Chang: Okay, I do have comments, but I’ll save those for later on. 14 15 Chair Summa: Commissioner Lu. 16 17 Commissioner Lu: Okay, thank you. A few questions and maybe a couple of comments sprinkled 18 in too. Just to confirm, where does the transit analysis fit in here. The Packet mentions that 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. there’d be discussion of pedestrian access, and biking, is that like lumped into the parking 1 scope? 2 3 Ms. Barbhaya, Consultant: So, not exactly, so what we are doing is we using Streetsense 4 support with [TIMESTAMP 2.55 Unintelligible] strategy for pedestrian and traffic improvement 5 and mobility improvement and will be integrating that report with our report, but our main 6 focus would be to analyze the ordinance, the zoning ordinance and parking. The rest of it would 7 be from the Streetsense report. 8 9 Commissioner Lu: Got it. I think, we’ll I have comments on that but I can say that… save that for 10 later. It does make sense to consider pedestrian cycle, public transit access, and first class 11 access as well. A question about the stakeholder interviews, are we also going to interview 12 landlords? 13 14 Ms. Barbhaya, Consultant: Yeah, so we have interviewed a few landlords in our first round, and 15 this round I think the main focus is on the business owners. The first round before, a few 16 landlords participated in interviews. 17 18 Commissioner Lu: I think there is a strong case for landlord interviews, in many areas they’re 19 storefronts that previously had successful businesses, but have been empty for years because 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. the economics of renovating and renting it out have not worked for the landlords and I think 1 understanding and kind of working backwards from what it would actually take to get those 2 spaces leased back out is really important question for me at least, and I’ll hold more comments 3 until later. Thank you. 4 5 Chair Summa: Commissioner Hechtman. 6 7 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. So, one of the written comments we received urged that 8 the study sort of separately look at restaurants and other kinds of retail because there are 9 different drivers and motivations and you know, paths to success for those two different 10 models. The scope of services doesn’t specifically call out that you’ll be doing that. I suspect you 11 will be, but I wanted to confirm that that is part of the plan or learn that it’s not, that you’re 12 going to lump all retail together. 13 14 Mr. Wery, Consultant: I’ll take a shot at that. Thank you, the definition of retail is somewhat 15 unique in Palo Alto, so that’s an issue we’re looking at, but also looking at all the other 16 associated uses, so, in our initial studies we are looking at retail and office, retail like, retail 17 supportive, and other kind of uses that do can and will support the overall vitality of the area. 18 So, we’ll be looking at kind of the full range of mix as it effects overall vitality of the corridors. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Hechtman: Including restaurants? 1 2 Mr. Wery, Consultant: Yeah. Certainly. 3 4 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay, great. Alright, next question, and this might be what 5 Commissioner Lu asked but I didn’t really understand the question so let me ask it a different 6 way. We received a number of written comments from citizens wanting to make sure that part 7 of the study looked at bike-ability and walkability of our retail centers. And in fact when you 8 look at the staff report, it’s reflecting on the Streetsense report where the second of the three 9 building principles that emerged from the Streetsense study was improve accessibility by 10 embracing walking and biking solutions to, from, within, all the city’s commercial districts, and 11 addressing parking policies and systems. So, again, looking at your scope of work, there’s 12 references to parking, but no references to biking or walking. I did see in one of Dan’s slide, that 13 part of your process is going to be to integrate the Streetsense report which does highlight the 14 importance of these things, but maybe you could … but I did want to clarify that this access by 15 means other than vehicle is… will be a part of your study, or tell me it won’t be. 16 17 Mr. Wery, Consultant: Yeah, it wasn’t specifically looking at that but it is one of the overall kind 18 of trends and best practices, is making sure that there’s a strong emphasis on all modes of 19 activities, not just cars. Obviously parking is a big part of it to get people in, but again, these are 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. in many ways serving the immediate neighborhoods as well, so that pedestrian access and bring 1 in bike activity from broader areas, will certainly be a critical function. So, we will look at the 2 facilities, and things like how it’s accommodated, in terms of the physical kind of streetscape 3 but that… our focus has been primarily on looking at the zoning and procedures and what are 4 the best practices. We have identified, again in our initial best practices analysis, you know 5 making sure that physical access through all modes including bikes and pedestrians is included. 6 So there may be more of that kind of higher level, we don’t have a scope to specifically look at 7 streetscape design, other than just kind of generally, but there’s no… there could be some 8 design recommendation, very generally, but (interrupted) 9 10 Ms. Barbhaya, Consultant: Unfortunately, this study is not included as part of the scope, which 11 could be a next step of this project. It could become a study like in implementing a streetscape. 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. Thank you. 14 15 Chair Summa: I’m also really concerned and glad that Commissioner Akin mentioned it about 16 the residential parking permit programs downtown and also to let you know that they exist 17 around California Avenue too, and your map showed the California Avenue business district 18 actually going south all the way to Page Mill, which it doesn’t do. It’s just California Avenue.. 19 yeah, because there’s a residential neighborhood there called Mayfield. So, you don’t have that 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. whole purple area to count the parking in. So I wanted to let you know that and, we did get a 1 number of… Commissioner Hechtman already mentioned it, letters about bike and ped and 2 also ADA, one of the letters emphasized ADA considerations, so I think that would be very 3 important to include in here. And I wanted to ask, in the report that Council considered in 4 August, accepted, there is … I believe a list from Streetsense of their stakeholder interviewees, 5 and I’m hoping that your interviews will include more small businesses and as Commissioner Lu 6 mentioned, landlords also. This list doesn’t really capture what I would think would be as 7 helpful as talking to more business owners that operate in all of our business districts. That’s all 8 for me for now, Commissioner Akin. 9 10 Commissioner Akin: Thank you. I just wanted to clarify one thing, I may have misunderstood. 11 So, as I read the packet here, we were focusing on parking rather than including bike, ped, ADA, 12 and as part of scope of work, specifically because we’re talking about … because you are talking 13 to the PTC, and zoning is one of our critical functions. And zoning for parking is where this 14 comes into play, for us. The other issues are not being ignored; they’re simply not being 15 brought to us as part of this particular piece of work. So, is that understanding, correct? Or 16 approximately so? 17 18 Mr. Wery, Consultant: I think that’s a fair assessment. Yeah. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Akin: Okay, thank you. 1 2 Chair Summa: I’m not seeing any other lights. Oh, Commissioner [Vice Chair] Chang. 3 4 Vice Chair Chang: So, for comments, because I think that was just clarifying questions, right? Do 5 we need to take public… 6 7 Ms. French: This is a study session, so taking public testimonies… (crosstalk) 8 9 Vice Chair Chang: So there’s no public commenters. Alright. On to comments then. So, I was 10 looking at the peer cities and was really hoping that we would… if I look at the different retail 11 areas that covered by this project, there’s downtown, there’s Cal Ave, there’s El Camino, and 12 Middlefield, those four, and I’m not sure that just Mountainview and Redwood City would 13 necessarily be the right peer cities, so one thought I had was Los Altos could be really applicable 14 when we start looking at how, perhaps say Cal Ave might look. And yeah, so that was one 15 thought. Then we also have a few… I don’t know if there’s the opportunity to just look at a few 16 other cities, so if we look at demographics of Palo Alto, and where that’s headed, it’s pretty 17 different from say Redwood City right now, I believe. I haven’t looked at the demographics 18 carefully, but if you look at some of the retail operations that are staring to happen in 19 Sunnyvale and Cupertino it may be worth looking at what is appealing to those demographics 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. as well. And then finally, if we’re looking at southern California, I think about Pasadena as well 1 as Santa Monica. So, that’s just my comment, I think that it may make sense to do a slightly 2 broader look other than just Redwood City and Mountainview. 3 4 Mr. Wery, Consultant: And I think to be clear, when we first started, I think we started more 5 with proximity discovering Mountainview to begin with, not that they were directly comparable 6 in terms of all other aspects like Palo Alto, that’s hard to do. But, Mountainview and Redwood 7 City we had made initial outreach to them. There were several others I think we looked at, but 8 we had really good interviews that were very helpful and still the trends and their practices 9 were consistent to what we were thinking; and then we just added Santa Monica because that 10 was identified as more of comparable, directly comparable example. So, if staff wants to look 11 at others, we can talk about doing Sunnyvale or Cupertino or Los Altos, or even Pasadena. 12 13 Chair Summa: Commissioner Akin 14 15 Chair Summa: No, 16 17 Commissioner Akin: Pardon me, I didn’t realize I had hit my switch. I do have a question, but I 18 don’t know that it’s my turn. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Summa: Go ahead. 1 2 Commissioner Akin: Okay, this is regarding stakeholder interviews. Of course there’s great 3 concern about change in the retail economic environment because of online sales for example, 4 but we do know of a number of instances of business that have relocated out of Palo Alto, yet 5 are still doing well. And I would be very interested in knowing since economically they seem to 6 viable businesses, what let them to move from Palo Alto, so as a stakeholder interview 7 candidate businesses that fit into that category might be of interest, number one on my 8 personal list would be University Art. But there have been several of this type and I’m sure we 9 could put together a list in some way. Thank you. 10 11 Mr. Wery, Consultant: That’s a great idea. 12 13 Chair Summa: Commissioner Lu did you want to make your comments? 14 15 Commissioner Lu: Yeah, I had a question first actually, so on Packet page 50 when discussing 16 formula and chain store regulations, you describe it as a quantitative analysis of whether these 17 regulations are beneficial, what do you mean by the quantitative analysis? And what would that 18 actually look like? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Wery, Consultant: Let me pull that up here, Can you just say what section you were 1 referring to? 2 3 Commissioner Lu: Task 5, the second bullet point. Quantitative analysis of whether these 4 regulations are beneficial. What’s a quantitative analysis in this context? 5 6 Mr. Wery, Consultant: Regulations… that’s a good question actually. I’m trying to find that and 7 unfortunately, it’s not opening up here for me. Let’s see… let me look at it in context here. Let 8 me pull it up, I think I may have closed that. But in terms of the regulations and quantitatively, I 9 think one of things we’re going to be looking at is serving action terms for parking, for example. 10 Just looking at the ratios in terms of how much capacity there is, looking at overall your 11 development standards versus actual usage, that’s what we’re trying to get a handle on, we 12 kind of calibrated those, valuate those also against industry standards and make sure their 13 contemporary, see how things are trending and changing, so we’ll look at, again, just to give 14 you an example, for parking, city standards, actual use rates, as best we can tell, and then also 15 like ULI, urban land institute of transportation engineers, regularly publish and update 16 standards and so that would be one thing to collaborate and look at. The other thing that we 17 have also been looking at was looking at the actual occupancy rates and trying to track those 18 over time with a variety of different sources. And try to see how those trends, and try to 19 corelate that with the regulations, and then also I don’t think we can necessarily quantify and 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. say if you make this change in your standard or regulation you’re going to have this economic 1 result, that’s why that phrasing was kind of confusing. But, we are looking at where, for 2 example, peer cities and other best practices … what results they’ve had after they’ve made 3 changes. So that’s probably what that’s referring to. Is you know, if we’re able to quantify and 4 say after making certain certain technical changes or procedural changes, whether they are 5 temporary or permanent, if they can show, he we’ve generated a number of… attracted new 6 business, we’ve retained uses, we’ve increased foot traffic, perhaps increased sales, so where 7 that data is available, we’re trying to pull that in. I believe the Streetsense study actually has 8 some really good information that we’re hoping to pull in along that line. 9 10 Commissioner Lu: Great, that’s… feedback maybe. 11 12 Mr. Wery, Consultant: that’s a circular long answer but ultimately, wherever we can, we’ll try 13 to, you know, provide objective information to the extent possible. 14 15 Commissioner Lu: Yeah, if we have… if we can actually establish a trend in similar cities that 16 have formula chain retail restrictions and have a sense of the impact on rent, or just overall 17 occupancy of commercial spaces, I think that’s useful data. This might be implied, but just to be 18 explicit I think that there’s inherent value in tenant and local retail and so that’s kind of the 19 direction I would look at, like these regulations from. Okay so maybe just a couple of quick 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. comments. I also second considering Los Altos as a peer city to investigate, they have many 1 kinds of independent local retail clothing stores, thrift shops, toy stores, like a sewing store that 2 are less and less common in Palo Alto, but they’ve seemingly been able to preserve them. And I 3 think looking at strategies if any of that, they’ve even employed to preserve local businesses, is 4 definitely in scope of any kind of peer city analysis. I’m also still not totally clear what the biker 5 pedestrian or ADA access would look like in the final report. I understand that parking falls 6 under zoning, but bike access, transit, bike parking, very much also falls under Transportation, 7 I’m not sure if there’s more to like tease out here, but I would just emphasize that to the extent 8 possible, we should include that in like … we should just include that in the scope. Yeah. 9 10 Chair Summa: Thank you. Commissioner [Vice Chair] Chang did you have another question? 11 12 Vice Chair Chang: No. 13 14 Chair Summa: Okay, I was going to ask you about the slide that showed you coming to us in the 15 New year monthly? Is that true? 16 17 Mr. Wery, Consultant: Yeah, up to six meetings, I think is what we had scoped and so some of 18 these may be short updates and others might be more detailed in terms of an in depth 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. presentation in terms of findings or at least preliminary findings and recommendations. So, I 1 think they can vary. Sorry Surabhi, I cut you off. 2 3 Ms. Barbhaya, Consultant: No I just wanted to say that some of these just might be like updates 4 that for example in January we might come back and give you an update on stakeholder 5 interviews and peer city interviews and in February or March we could do a much more deeper 6 dive of what we… what the findings are from the zoning code and what your recommendations 7 are trying to provide. 8 9 Chair Summa: Okay. I am not seeing lights from my colleagues, and I’m wondering if you have 10 enough… if you received enough feedback from us, or if we’ve received enough or you know, I 11 think we’ll all be looking forward to seeing this when you have more specific data. 12 13 Mr. Wery, Consultant: Yes, Yes, we’ll be happy to share that, hopefully we’ve given you an 14 introduction, the idea really was just to kind of introduce ourselves and introduce the project 15 briefly and you’ve given us some good ideas we’ll go back and speak with staff and work on 16 those, so it was very helpful. 17 18 Chair Summa: Okay. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Wery, Consultant: And so that’s kind of what we were looking for was just to really kind of 1 kick this off and get this initiated and then as really get into the depths of analysis we hope to 2 back, if we have questions for you, we’ll have to come back and again, as we have more 3 information to present, we’ll come back and speak with you. 4 5 Chair Summa: Okay, and to incorporate some of my colleagues ideas about Los Altos, I think 6 you’ll also find some of the successful business that left Palo Alto actually went to Los Altos, and 7 so I think that would be a very interesting… interesting information to get. Do my colleagues 8 have any other comments, or, Ah… Commissioner [Vice Chair] Chang. 9 10 Vice Chair Chang: Just one more plug for Los Altos, so a couple of things, no when I look at 11 Mountainview and Redwood City, they are different in certain ways, but if we look at El 12 Camino, El Camino, the length of El Camino is very different depending on where you are, right, 13 it’s very… in Santa Clara it’s entirely different from Atherton, it’s entirely different from Palo 14 Alto. And so, I do think that incorporating some Los Altos into there may help, when we think 15 about how to revitalize our section of El Camino, and similarly Los Altos has some interesting 16 programming I think on Thursday nights, or first Fridays or something like that, so again, 17 something else to look at there too. Thanks. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Wery, Consultant: That’s a really good one. And if you’ve got examples of those business 1 that have gone, I know you mentioned the University Yard, if there’s any others specifically, 2 that kind of details is really helpful. 3 4 Commissioner Hechtman: Shady Lang, a little bit longer ago, they’ve relocated to Menlo Park. 5 6 Chair Summa: No New Books 7 8 Commissioner Akin: Paper Whirl, which I believe is in Los Altos. 9 10 Ms. French: There’s others that have gone to Redwood City as well from Palo Alto. I live there. 11 12 Mr. Wery, Consultant: There was a third one there, I thought I heard, before Paper Whirl. 13 14 Chair Summa: No New Books. University Arts went to Redwood City… 15 16 Ms. French: Dragon Theater went to Redwood City. 17 18 Chair Summa: Shady Lane also moved and stayed open, as did 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Akin: Nature Gallery 1 2 Chair Summa: Hmm? 3 4 Commissioner Akin: Nature Gallery which also moved to Los Altos. 5 6 Chair Summa: Nature Gallery, that’s one. So, it’s kind of sad when we see our businesses 7 leaving when they are successful elsewhere, and close by. We’ll email you if we can think of 8 more. 9 10 Mr. Wery, Consultant: Yeah, that kind of data is really helpful. 11 12 Chair Summa: Okay. Commissioner Akin. 13 14 Commissioner Akin: Thank you, I just want to put a place holder in, this is one of the big zoning 15 issues we have to deal with, is what might be done for increasing height limits and FAR in 16 downtown, as Streetsense identified population increase as a possible retail booster. I’m not 17 going to get into this because it’s a far more complex issue than we have time to deal with 18 tonight, but that certainly falls within our purview, it involves some complex analysis with 19 return to work as well as according to the last data I’ve seen from Joint Venture, silicon valley is 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. still increasing it’s employment, even if it’s overall population is stable or declining, so you 1 might expect jobs downtown to be replaced even if there is no return to work, because 2 companies are still expanding. So, all of that has to be taken into account in the trade offs for 3 increasing density through zoning. Thank you. 4 5 Chair Summa: Okay I am not seeing any other lights, so, unless anyone wants to add anything 6 we are through here. Thank you very much Dan and... I’m sorry, Surabhi, for presenting this 7 evening and we’ll see you next year. 8 9 Mr. Wery, Consultant: Yes, great, happy holidays and we’ll see you soon. 10 11 Chair Summa: Okay thanks. Bye-bye. 12 13 14 APPROVAL OF MINUTES 15 Public Comment is Permitted. Three (3) minutes per speaker. 16 17 5. Approval of Planning & Transportation Commission Draft Verbatim and Summary 18 Minutes of September 13, 2023 19 20 Chair Summa: Okay, we have one set of minutes, I believe, to approve, and that is the draft 21 verbatim and summary minutes of September 13th. Do I have a motion? 22 23 MOTION 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. 1 Commissioner Hechtman: I move approval as revised. 2 3 Chair Summa: Seconder? 4 5 6 SECOND 7 8 Commissioner Akin: Second. 9 10 Chair Summa: Okay, I don’t think anyone needs to speak to it, so, if you can conduct the vote, 11 please, Ms. Dao. 12 13 VOTE 14 15 16 17 Ms. Dao: Chair Summa? 18 19 Chair Summa: Yes. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Ms. Dao: Commissioner Lu? 2 3 Commissioner Lu: Yes. 4 5 Ms. Dao: Commissioner Hechtman? 6 7 Commissioner Hechtman: Yes. 8 9 Ms. Dao: Vice-Chair Chang? 10 11 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. 12 13 Ms. Dao: Commissioner Akin? 14 15 Commissioner Akin: Yes. 16 17 Ms. Dao: Motion carries 5-0-2. 18 19 MOTION PASSED 7 (Akin, Chang, Lu, Hechtman, Summa) 5-0 -2 (Reckdahl, Templeton Absent) 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. Commission Action: Motion by Hechtman, seconded by Akin. Pass 5-0-2 1 2 Chair Summa: Thank you very much and do we have any Commissioner comments, questions 3 or announcements? 4 Commissioner Questions, Comments or Announcements 5 6 Vice Chair Chang: Just a reminder to my fellow Commissioners to please email your lists and tell 7 your people to fill out the survey for Safe, oh my goodness it’s late… Safe Systems, for the Safe 8 Systems work, the new traffic safety work that Sylvia Star-Lack presented to us last week, 9 because the only way to capture the near misses is through that survey and that’s critical to our 10 work, we’ve been asking for it for a long time, asking for that information for a long time, and 11 so I think it’s incumbent upon us to reach out to our networks and get people to submit that 12 survey. 13 14 Chair Summa: Thank you. Anyone else? Well then, I will adjourn the meeting. Thank you. 15 16 Adjournment 17 8:09 pm 18 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 2 3 4 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. Palo Alto Planning & Transportation Commission 1 Commissioner Biographies, Present and Archived Agendas and Reports are available online: 2 http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/boards/ptc/default.asp. The PTC Commission members are: 3 4 Chair Doria Summa 5 Vice-Chair Bryna Chang 6 Commissioner Allen Akin 7 Commissioner Bart Hechtman 8 Commissioner George Lu 9 Commissioner Keith Reckdahl 10 Commissioner Carolyn Templeton 11 Get Informed and Be Engaged! 12 View online: http://midpenmedia.org/category/government/city-of-palo-alto or on Channel 26. 13 14 Show up and speak. Public comment is encouraged. Please complete a speaker request card 15 located on the table at the entrance to the Council Chambers and deliver it to the Commission 16 Secretary prior to discussion of the item. 17 18 Write to us. Email the PTC at: Planning.Commission@CityofPaloAlto.org. Letters can be 19 delivered to the Planning & Community Environment Department, 5th floor, City Hall, 250 20 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301. Comments received by 2:00 PM two Tuesdays preceding 21 the meeting date will be included in the agenda packet. Comments received afterward through 22 2:00 PM the day of the meeting will be presented to the Commission at the dais. 23 24 Material related to an item on this agenda submitted to the PTC after distribution of the 25 agenda packet is available for public inspection at the address above. 26 Americans with Disability Act (ADA) 27 It is the policy of the City of Palo Alto to offer its public programs, services and meetings in a 28 manner that is readily accessible to all. Persons with disabilities who require materials in an 29 appropriate alternative format or who require auxiliary aids to access City meetings, programs, 30 or services may contact the City’s ADA Coordinator at (650) 329-2550 (voice) or by emailing 31 ada@cityofpaloalto.org. Requests for assistance or accommodations must be submitted at least 32 24 hours in advance of the meeting, program, or service. 33