HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-04-24 Planning and 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
Verbatim Minutes: April 24, 2024 2
Council Chambers & Virtual 3
6:00 PM 4
5
Call to Order / Roll Call 6
6:01 PM 7
Chair Summa: Good evening, and welcome, everyone, to the Planning and Transportation 8
Commission Meeting. Ms. Dao, could you call roll, please? 9
10
ROLL CALL 11
Administrative Associate Veronica Dao: Chair Summa? 12
13
Chair Summa: Present. 14
15
Veronica Dao: Vice-Chair Chang? 16
17
Vice-Chair Chang: Here. 18
19
Veronica Dao: Commissioner Akin? 20
21
Commissioner Akin: Here. 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
Veronica Dao: Commissioner Hechtman? 2
3
Commissioner Hechtman: Present, attending remotely with no other person in the room with 4
me. 5
6
Veronica Dao: Thank you. Commissioner Lu? 7
8
Commissioner Lu: Present. 9
10
Veronica Dao: Commissioner Reckdahl? 11
12
Commissioner Reckdahl: Here. 13
14
Veronica Dao: Commissioner Templeton? 15
16
Commissioner Templeton: Here. 17
18
Veronica Dao: We have a quorum. 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.
1
Oral Communications 2
3
Chair Summa: Thank you so much for that. And now is the time where we have – –we go to the 4
public to speak to items that are not on this evening's agenda. Do we have any speakers? 5
6
Veronica Dao: I have no requests to speak. 7
8
Chair Summa: Okay. We will move on, then, to Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions. 9
10
Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions 11
12
Amy French, Chief Planning Official: There are no changes. 13
14
Chair Summa: Thank you very much. And moving right along, the City Official Reports, Ms. 15
French. 16
17
City Official Reports 18
1. Directors Report, Meeting Schedule and Assignments 19
Amy French: Good evening. Amy French, Chief Planning Official. We are here tonight with 20
several items, and this is showing the next set of meetings through the end of June, as much as 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.
we can predict. We have the North Ventura Coordinated Area Plan, which is going to be a big 1
item to come forward and hoping for the Retail Strategy's Draft Staff Report, as well, for May 2
8th, so that's in a couple weeks. We have a few more items that are noted on the screen and in 3
the packet – wanted to also call your attention to the Council is going to be going on a break in 4
July, but leading up to their July break, we have a number of planning items, and I don't think 5
there's any transportation items unless Castilleja Schools [inaudible 2:18] – TDM document – 6
but most of those are planning items. Let's see. Who's the May representative? 7
8
Commissioner Reckdahl: I think it's me. 9
10
Amy French: Is that you, Keith? Okay. So – happy to send you over some links when we get 11
closer to those dates. And then, June, we'll need one more rep and then whoever's in July is – 12
doesn't need to represent because there's no Council meetings. And that concludes my report. 13
The next item is the – unless you want to talk about any of those dates, Rafael? 14
15
Chair Summa: Oh, yes, Mr. Rius, I think, has a few announcements. 16
Senior Transportation Engineer Rafael Rius: Hi, Rafael Rius, Office of Transportation, Senior 17
Engineer. Just a few updates from Transportation – the April 29th City Council Meeting is going 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.
to be a transportation workshop that will focus on the Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation 1
Plan and the rail grade separation alignment alternatives. And other good news about our Palo 2
Alto Link, the shuttle service – the current operating hours of 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM are going to 3
expand beginning Monday, April 29th to 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM just to better serve the morning 4
and evening peak commute hours. And then, one more update about the Caltrans El Camino 5
Real bike lane effort. We – I'm sorry, just wanted to give an update that we are accepting 6
comments and perspective of – regarding the potential parking removal. Comments can be 7
emailed to Nathan Baird. His email address is posted up there. And also, there's been a series of 8
letters from the City to Caltrans and some responses from Caltrans. There's a whole series of 9
them, and they're all available on the City's website. The link – there's a link shown on the 10
board to the project's website. Those are my only updates for this meeting unless you have any 11
questions. 12
13
Chair Summa: Thank you. I do have a couple of lights, so we'll go – Commissioner Lu and then 14
Commissioner Templeton. 15
16
Commissioner Lu: Thank you. That was a great transportation update, and it's great news about 17
the Palo Alto Link. My questions aren't actually regarding transportation, necessarily, though, 18
and perhaps would be best addressed to Albert. Just one quick question – so on Monday, 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.
Council member Kou and – mentioned that SB 9 has actually been struck down at a state level, 1
and I've seen some news start trickling in on this point. I'm curious if our attorney, Mr. Yang, 2
has the latest updates or comments on what the scope of that decision is and what that really 3
means? 4
5
Assistant City Attorney Albert Yang: Yes. We also learned on Monday evening that SB 9 had 6
been invalidated as to charter cities by a trial court in Southern California. It was a little bit 7
tricky to find the actual text of that decision, but we – our office received it this afternoon, so 8
we are still reviewing it to understand its scope, but preliminarily, it looks like the court 9
invalidated SB 9 with respect to charter cities throughout California. We are – we passed an 10
ordinance implementing SB 9 in late 2020 and early 2021, and those ordinances contain a 11
clause saying that in the event that SB 9 is repealed or materially amended, that the ordinances 12
would be null and void, and we'll be taking a look at how those provisions will apply in this 13
situation where it's been invalidated by a court. And I expect that we'll be coming back to the 14
PTC with some sort of follow up on next steps. 15
16
Commissioner Lu: Thank you. That's a really significant and interesting legal decision for sure. I 17
have one more question. Perhaps this is difficult to address with – right now, but there was a 18
mass eviction just a couple of weeks ago at 531 Stanford Ave., as the property was seemingly 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.
just really neglected, and all tenants were evicted, I think, with a few days of notice. I was 1
reading news reports that there were some financial penalties applied to the landlord in the 2
range of a few – several thousand dollars per tenant. Is there any more to this story, or is the 3
City investigating any other follow-up actions or enforcements for this landlord? 4
5
Albert Yang: Yeah, I can speak generally to that item; I'm not closely involved with it. That was a 6
situation where the City found that there was a lot of unpermitted work done on the property 7
and determined that it was not safe for continued habitation, and so the building was red-8
tagged, and the tenants were not able to remain because it would not have been safe for them 9
to do so. And then, in those situations, the City's relocation ordinance – tenant relocation 10
ordinance requires the payment of relocation expenses to the tenants. 11
12
Commissioner Lu: Okay. Thank you. And I'm – know it's an act of ongoing issues, so I hope we 13
hear more about it, and we can discuss more about renter protections and also penalties to 14
ostensible slum lords in – at some future juncture relatively soon. Thank you. 15
16
Chair Summa: Commissioner Templeton. 17
18
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Templeton: Thank you, Chair. To Mr. Rius, I wanted to say, also, that I'm 1
delighted to hear about the updating of the hours for Palo Alto Link and appreciate your update 2
about the Caltrans repaving. I was hoping that in the future when you have links to documents 3
or letters that are relevant to topics that have come before us that you could have those 4
emailed out to the PTC. We do have a paper copy of that URL. Perhaps, we'll have a – maybe 5
we'll have an electronic link, as well, but in general, we like to see those sooner if we can. I 6
don't know if Mr. Rius has dropped off, so if you guys can convey that to him. And then to Ms. 7
French, I notice that we don't have any break at all between now and Christmas Day, and I was 8
wondering, is that something that we're planning to discuss at some point? 9
10
Amy French: Well, I hadn't planned on discussing anything in the near future, but certainly, any 11
time a member is planning some kind of absence, that's something we can entertain and mark 12
in our calendars. I won't – will not be in control of the agendas after a certain point, likely 13
August, so just putting that out there. 14
15
Commissioner Templeton: Okay. Well, I'm specifically thinking between now and August, so I 16
don't know if we want to have any time off in the summer, but – and I don't know how we have 17
to agendize to discuss it, so I'm bringing it up right now. If we can discuss it, great. 18
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Amy French: I'm happy to discuss it if the board so wishes. Certainly, July, the Council takes a 2
break, but Planning Commission doesn't have to. August is another opportunity for a break. I 3
don't know if one meeting suffices. We haven't taken anything but one meeting this year, off, 4
which was Valentine's Day. 5
6
Commissioner Templeton: That's true. Yeah. Well, and we've had other meetings pop on as 7
joint meetings. So all right. Well, that's a question for the Chair if we want to discuss it now or 8
at a future week. 9
10
Chair Summa: We can probably discuss – does it need to be agendized, Ms. French, or can we 11
discuss it in our comments at the – comment and discussions at the end? 12
13
Albert Yang: Yeah, it would be appropriate to discuss that at the end of the agenda. 14
15
Chair Summa: Okay. We can do that whenever the board wants to. 16
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Templeton: Cool. Thanks. 2
3
Chair Summa: We can do it tonight if people want to. 4
5
Commissioner Templeton: Yeah, sure. Thank you. 6
7
Chair Summa: Okay. Any other questions for staff? Okay. I'm not seeing anything. Thank you 8
very much for your presentations. We're now going to move on to Study Session for our Retail 9
Strategies. And I think the – I don't think staff has a presentation, but I think the consultant 10
does. 11
12
Study Session 13
2. Retail Study Session Retail Strategies 14
15
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Amy French: That's correct. The consultant will be bringing up their presentation unless they 1
want us to bring it up. We've sent it out to the board – but let us know, Dan – I see Dan's 2
appearing on screen – and we had this concept whereby the Ad Hoc Committee members 3
would be taking turns with the presentation, so let's get that uploaded, and then we can talk 4
further. Dan, do you need us to upload that, or do you have it uploaded on your end? 5
6
Senior Associate Dan Wery, Michael Baker International: I should be sharing it now, hopefully. 7
Tell me if it – you can see it. 8
9
Amy French: Yes, we can see it. 10
11
Dan Wery: Okay. Great. Yeah, good evening, PTC members and Chair. Thanks, Amy. I'm Dan 12
Wery from Michael Baker International. In this slideshow, unlike our others, we used our prior 13
PowerPoint slides, but we really incorporated the draft recommendations and questions from 14
the last couple of Ad Hoc – PTC Ad Hoc working group meetings, so you'll see this information 15
shortly. Let me get on the right page here. There we go. This is just what our overall goal is. This 16
hasn't changed, but there were three sets of recommendations from the PTC Ad Hoc 17
Committee, and I've got slides for each one here. And I don't know if Allen or Keith or Bryna 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.
want to go through them and present them, or if you'd like me to run through them, I can do 1
that too. 2
3
Chair Summa: Go ahead. 4
5
Vice-Chair Chang: I think we can quickly set some context for some of it in terms of how we 6
came up for some of these things. The context that I wanted to set is that these are draft 7
recommendations and I guess weren't necessarily quite meant – I don't think that they were 8
worded in a way that's precise in terms of how Commissioner Akin and Reckdahl – 9
Commissioner Reckdahl and I were thinking about these. They require – written as they are, it – 10
I think there needs to be a little bit more context regarding them. I think the headline here is 11
supposed to read, "Simplify Rules," and so, with that, the context that I also want to arrive at – I 12
think it's in a later slide of yours showing the timeline. What we're trying to get to the City 13
Council by June 10th, and which will come to us on May – in our May 8th meeting is the 14
consultant's final report, and that is going to include recommendations that are not as specific, 15
as down to the level of the actual code changes or [inaudible 15:08] changes. It's meant to be 16
some principles to explore. As we came up with these draft recommendations, we didn't – 17
there's not been an investigation that explores what the full implication is of making some of 18
these recommendations, so the idea, though, is that the recommendations would go before 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.
City Council. Once City Council says, "Yes, we like this. We like the idea of exploring this 1
recommendation," then it will go back to staff, who would then look at the actual ordinance 2
changes that would happen, and then it will come again to the PTC, so to get to the very – to 3
get to the specifics that would actually enact the change. That's the context of this. And then, I 4
think Commissioner Akin has a few more words to add. 5
6
Commissioner Akin: Thank you, Vice-Chair. Yeah, you've covered a lot of what I wanted to say. 7
The Ad Hoc met on April 12th to work out a list of proposals and questions, because we had a 8
meeting with Michael Baker on the 16th. We spent a few hours discussing what we'd heard 9
from [inaudible 16:30] and Dan and some business owners, as well as the previous PTC 10
meetings. Thank you, particularly, to Ms. French, for fast tracking the minutes from the meeting 11
of the 27th, because a lot of the context you look – you need to look at is in those minutes, the 12
motivations for these discussions. At the Ad Hoc on the 12th, Vice-Chair Chang and 13
Commissioner Reckdahl took notes, and I boiled them down to eliminate the redundancies and 14
then arranged them into themes that you see here to help manage the complexity, and that's 15
the summary you see in today's packet. This is just an outline that was intended for discussion 16
on the 16th with Michael Baker and the Ad Hoc. It assumes an awful lot of context, which Vice-17
Chair Chang has discussed, and it's not a formal proposal on its own, so I am sure things will 18
have to be explained, and some are going to be added, and some are going be dropped even 19
before it goes on to the next step. There's a big issue that's not discussed at all, which 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.
parking, which will come up in subsequent meetings, and so we should not spend time on those 1
issues tonight, but perhaps we can go through one theme at a time and give everyone – all the 2
commissioners a chance to ask questions or suggest changes. 3
4
Vice-Chair Chang: This is supposed to be a study session; usually, we have a presentation, 5
followed by public comment, and so I'm trying to figure out the best way to do this given that 6
each of these recommendations has some context around them. I don't know if staff – beyond 7
these three buckets and then the subsequent questions, was there more to the presentation 8
that Michael Baker wants to talk about first, and then we can loop back and slowly – more 9
slowly go through just the rationale behind some of these ideas? 10
11
Dan Wery, Senior Associate, Michael Baker International: Sure. I think, to provide a little 12
context, again, the last time we met as the full PTC, was on March 27th, and that meeting, we 13
were – we had a good, healthy discussion – actually, go back two meetings. March 14th was, if 14
you recall, a late-night meeting, and we really went through a lot of recommendations and 15
observations that we had, as consultants for the City, that led to a healthy discussion on March 16
27th, and I think that led to trying to distill and collect all those ideas from the minutes. That's 17
what Allen had just mentioned, trying to distill those down, and so I think, from our 18
recommendations – and I can pull up that other slide presentation from the 14th and the 27th – 19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
we had groups of recommendations, different approaches, and when Allen consolidated the 1
PTC's comments from the 27th and then rolled that into discussion at the Ad Hoc Committee 2
Meetings, and it came into three different groups, so slightly different organization. But I'll hit 3
these three slides, for broader context, and then we can come back – maybe that will help 4
understand the whole presentation. This slide was the first set of recommendations, and that 5
was all geared around simplifying the rules. The second set was with the objective of reducing 6
uncertainty, and there's a whole – you can see a whole series of recommendations there. And 7
the third major group was to relax certain restrictions, and we'll get into those. We were really 8
pretty excited, and I think staff was as well, that the level of discussion that you had back on the 9
27th, as the full PTC, and then the subsequent Ad Hoc meetings, because we felt that you really 10
had a lot of guidance and recommendations to share with City Council, so I think that's really – 11
this is the heart of it. And I'll just say that we talked about the next steps. We showed this a 12
little bit. The idea is to try to get through the zoning recommendations tonight. We are working 13
on a full report right now. We've been working on it since – well, a long time but all week long 14
since the last Ad Hoc meeting – plans to get that to staff and then out to the full PTC in time for 15
consideration for the Ad Hoc on April 30th and then for the – that will go out in your packets for 16
the PTC before May 8th, so you have a chance to look at the full report. And the idea of that 17
report is to wrap this up. All the things we've talked about throughout the process, we've put it 18
all in one place, and then, ideally, have a recommendation from May 8th from PTC to hand off 19
to City Council for their June 10th hearing. In addition to these three sets of recommendations, 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 were some additional recommendations that are beyond the zoning, which is beyond the 1
scope of what [inaudible 22:04], and I are here for, but they were still good ideas, so it was 2
important to record those and collect those and make sure they are part of the ongoing 3
strategy and implementation. There was also a series of 10 or 11 questions, and so we provided 4
– I think these were intended to provide a little more context and background to some of the 5
recommendations. There were certain things that Ad Hoc members weren't confident of or 6
sure of or wanted additional information to make sure that the recommendations had a proper 7
understanding and context, so we can go through those, as well. Those, I believe, were in your 8
packet. We've cleaned them up a little bit here for these slides, but again, questions about 9
what's allowed and for – what qualifies as retail or retail-like, so we provided that information 10
and some details there. What's included in offices? There are different definitions of offices. 11
Are they all the same? Are they managed the same? Their answer is no. There are certain, 12
different types of offices that are called out separately for a variety of reasons, and they are 13
regulated separately throughout the code. I'll just go through these, and then we can go back to 14
the beginning. There was some questions about take-out and some opportunities to be more 15
flexible with take-out uses. Apparently, take-out uses require a conditional use permit in the 16
retail zones, so we included the definition here and just clarified that they do require a CUP, 17
and I think the idea there at the Ad Hoc level was we don't need a CUP. We can come back to 18
that. And then, some were more general questions; what types of businesses are dependent on 19
foot traffic, and should we attempt to try to co-locate these together for synergy and vitality? 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
And then, another question was does the municipal code currently constrain any hours of 1
operation. There are some restrictions for certain uses that, again, trigger a CUP between – for 2
uses that operate between 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM. There is a question about the history of the 3
nail salon. We weren't able – we weren't – [inaudible 24:24] and I weren't able to address that 4
– just a few more questions here. And then there's the – wanted to understand the history and 5
background to a fairly recent proposal for medical retail in the Town and Country area that was 6
rejected, and I think Amy might have a little more background on that – some other questions 7
about whether there's any other constraints on co-location of uses – some multiple uses within 8
a site or sometimes a use within a use, so that's really these questions, seven and eight. Last 9
two – last couple of slides, there was a question about something that I had referred to as an 10
option and a recommendation, which was to focus on outcomes instead of listening to each 11
and every type of use and the definitions, and that was an approach that the city of San Diego 12
took with respect to encouraging active uses, and so we included that definition in here, and 13
we discussed that, as well, at the Ad Hoc meetings. And that was one of our recommendations, 14
previously, is to include a performance-based use that would be open to uses that we might not 15
think of today, things that might come up. They might be new and innovative uses, for example. 16
This would give you the opportunity to allow those without having to amend the code or go 17
through a variance or a deviation. The last two questions that PTC had were "What about sales 18
tax relief," and I think this is outside of the zoning. This may be one of those other economic 19
development pursuits and programs that might want to be considered, but the idea was – 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.
was an idea, I think, that wanted to be explored a little bit. And then the last one was a 1
question about, again, getting back to what qualifies as a retail use, or a restaurant, and so Amy 2
had provided some more information on those. Hopefully that provides a little bit of context of 3
where we were since the last full PTC meeting, and on the 27th, we presented a whole series of 4
recommendations, and there was a good, healthy discussion, and again, that led to the Ad Hoc 5
Committee recommendations. I'll go back to the top. And again, they're grouped in these 6
clusters, so – I'll stop there, if anybody has any questions, and then we can talk and start to look 7
at the specific recommendations, and we can provide some more context for each of those. 8
9
Chair Summa: Okay. Thank you for that. 10
11
Amy French: If I may, just on the question of nail salons, you can think of me as the resource on 12
nails because I have that information, so if it comes up. 13
14
Chair Summa: Thank you for that offer. In – if anybody has a real quick question, a clarifying 15
question, otherwise, I think we should go to the public and then bring it back for discussion. 16
We'll just simply – the idea was turn it over to the Ad Hoc and go through their 17
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
recommendations and get feedback on them. Do we have any members of the public wishing 1
to speak? 2
3
Veronica Dao: Yes, one raised hand on Zoom. 4
5
Chair Summa: Okay. I'm not seeing any lights up here, so why don't we open the public hearing, 6
please? 7
8
PUBLIC COMMENT 9
10
Veronica Dao: Sure. Let me get the [inaudible 28:11]. We have one on Zoom from John Shenk. 11
12
Chair Summa: Thank you. Go ahead, Mr. Shenk. 13
14
John Shenk: Am I up? Here we go. 15
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Chair Summa: Yep. 2
3
John Shenk: Hey, thank you all. John Shenk with Thoits Brothers. We – Thoits Brothers has been 4
a member of the University Avenue community for, wow, probably 140 years, and we also own 5
property in the Cal Ave. neighborhood. And I want to thank you all for your robust dive into the 6
critical issues of retail and economic vibrancy and helping support the neighborhoods we all 7
hope would exist in our downtowns, if you will. I want to remind you of an important factor 8
that came to light when the City did a survey, at least of the University Ave. retailers a few 9
years ago, right in the early phase of the COVID impacts, and the conclusion was that 70 to 80 10
percent of the retailers' sales were from the daytime population. Those were the office 11
workers. They were the ones who were filling the hotels during the week. They had the 12
breakfasts, the lunches, the dinners, the bar tabs, et cetera, and the other miscellaneous 13
pharmacy purchases, et cetera. It was a massive percentage. And obviously, during the – 14
especially the early days of the impacts of COVID, we didn't have any office workers, and that 15
drove big shifts to what people perceived as viable retail. We were all shopping from home; 16
food was being delivered home, et cetera. And I want you to remember that we ought to also 17
be thinking about, when it comes to our codes and zonings, what is the City doing to, I don't 18
know, roll out the red carpet for office employees to come back, to repopulate. We have a lot 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.
of restrictions on office, and we ought to be cognizant of those when we are trying to support 1
our retailers. We also need to think about – well, you guys are. You're looking at the RPO, the – 2
and look at the boundaries, especially in University Avenue; and I know you are, but I strongly 3
encourage you to stay focused on that. There's parts of our area that, north of [inaudible 4
31:02], it's really a terrible area for retail, per se, and we used to have – a part of the zoning 5
ordinance was – we thought of it as a relief valve. When retail vacancies reached a percentage, 6
they were – those spaces were allowed to be filled by non-retail, or office uses if there was a 7
demand for that too. Just keep the overall feeling and vibrancy alive. We need to also really be 8
careful about the uses that require CUPs, and thank you for looking at that. And my last one is 9
that the parklets – and I know a lot of work has gone into the parklets, but parklets and closed 10
streets are not friends of retail vibrancy, and we – I know that's well down the path, but we've 11
got to be very careful about that and aware of how it continues to evolve, so we can support 12
our overall retail vibrancy. And I thank you all; I've been reading all your minutes and watching 13
things and really appreciate how thoughtfully you are approaching all of this. Thank you. 14
15
Chair Summa: Thank you so much for your comments. And I guess we have no other public 16
speakers, so we'll bring it back to the Commission. 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: Okay. Great. I think if we can pull back up the first slide that – of draft 1
recommendations, which is Simplify the Rules, the process that we were thinking about for 2
going through all of these would be for us to quickly go through – us meaning Commissioners 3
Akin, Reckdahl, and myself – to quickly go through these to explain the context for what these 4
actually mean, and then to get feedback from the PTC as a whole, and then to do that for each 5
of these three buckets of draft recommendations and then find out if there's additional things 6
that maybe don't fit into one of these buckets that would be – and – that we should also discuss 7
ideas from the rest of the Commission because we're sure that the rest of the Commission will 8
provide more ideas than our three heads could. Okay. To start with this – 9
Commissioner Reckdahl: One more comment. 10
11
Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. 12
13
Commissioner Reckdahl: Some of these are really long term, and some of them are short term. 14
15
Vice-Chair Chang: That's right. 16
17
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Reckdahl: We want to hear feedback. We're listening. And so tell us what you 1
think. Even if they're long term, we want to know what we should be working towards and 2
what we shouldn't be. 3
4
Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. One of Michael Baker – For number 1, one of Michael Baker 5
International's ideas was to have a table that explains our zoning rules. We already have a 6
table, actually. It's just a bit out of date, so we should definitely improve that. That's the first 7
recommendation. The second one was the – around relaxing the definitions in the code. Many 8
of them, they'll say, like, "Retail uses such as blank, blank, blank, blank," and it's a long laundry 9
list, and it says that it's including these and not excluding other things, but some of them are 10
pretty outdated. There's a mention about film developing businesses. There's also – there's 11
actually other categories that we should look at because there's also retail-like, as well as 12
intensive retail and – I can't – extensive retail. And it may be that we – the code is built over 13
time, and it just takes a long time to read through those definitions and understand where one 14
fits. It's – we're suggesting that we take – not necessarily relax, but clean up the definitions 15
perhaps partially – yeah, clean up the definitions and perhaps move in a little bit more of a 16
direction as Mr. Wery was suggesting, where we are aiming for the results rather than trying to 17
define every single, possible retail or retail-like use that there could be. The third one, we – as it 18
turns out, it's not an issue that there are no restrictions that are greater for retail than there are 19
for restaurants, so that's irrelevant now. The fourth one Mr. Wery already mentioned. It's 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
related to definitions, also. There's this take-out definition, and especially during COVID but 1
even prior to COVID, every restaurant had take-out, so it may not be a relevant definition, but I 2
think we would need staff to explain to us what the implications would be, like where that 3
definition is referred to and what we were – what the – what we, as a city, were initially trying 4
to do when we were defining take-out. And then the fifth one is we have a lot of districts and 5
overlay. We have a ground floor area, a pedestrian area, a retail area; they all will overlap, and 6
so it's very confusing. And so I think we would need – it was difficult for the three of us, as we 7
were reading the code, to understand where is what, and what is allowed where, and it's 8
confusing for staff, as well. And again, Michael Baker international had referred to this as being 9
a bit of a mess; it is difficult to understand. But this is a larger – this is one of those long-term 10
projects because it has a lot of implications that are not just for retail. There's building code and 11
all sorts of things that also refer to these districts, and so our sense, our hope, would be that we 12
could collapse some of these overlays and districts to simplify things or maybe make them their 13
own zones if we need to preserve them, much longer term effort that's not going to be 14
immediately solved because I think it would be a lot of work for staff. Those – that's this bucket. 15
Does – do either Commissioners Reckdahl or Akin have anything to add? And then we can ask 16
the rest of the Commission what feedback they have. 17
18
Commissioner Akin: I don't think so. I'm looking just to make sure. Originally, when I wrote 19
these lists, I had in mind ordering them from specific short-term to general long-term, and in 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.
this case, that idea is followed reasonably well; some of the others, not so much. But yeah, the 1
expectation is that number five and number six, here, are multi-year projects, so they're not 2
things that we would expect to have impact quickly. 3
4
Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. So then, with that, I want to ask the rest of the Commission if you have 5
thoughts, ideas, reactions to any of these, then now is the time to – if there's a little bit of 6
wordsmithing or a principle that you want to capture in this that wasn't captured in my verbal 7
description, because we know that some of it wasn't captured on the slide, please give that 8
feedback now because MBI is working on their report. 9
10
Chair Summa: I'm not – oh, I see a light. Go ahead, Commissioner Lu. 11
12
Commissioner Lu: Oh, just extremely brief comment – I think this list looks great. I was also 13
reading through the code and the rules around take-out seem especially nonsensical and also, 14
especially constraining to a lot of different pop ups and uses that I've enjoyed and are great in 15
other cities, like little ice cream windows next to parks or other pop ups that just sell out of the 16
window of some other business and would wholeheartedly not just consider removing 17
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
restrictions, but I think the take-out restrictions could be generally removed. Yeah, I'll save 1
other comments for the other sections. 2
3
Chair Summa: Commissioner Hechtman. 4
5
Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you, Chair. This is a study session, so it wasn't necessary for 6
me to reconstitute myself, but I wanted to let the Commission know that I did read the minutes 7
of the March 27th meeting and appreciated the robust explanation of the Ad Hoc's work and the 8
robust discussion that followed. I also want to commend the Ad Hoc group for a remarkable 9
member of hours and really a great process and product to date. I think the – given the 10
complexity of what we're dealing with, this concept of three buckets is, I think, a really excellent 11
format to take to the City Council and for the public to understand. I appreciate all the work 12
that's been done to bring us to this point. I'm supportive – excluding item number 3, here, in 13
the Simplified Rules, I'm supportive of all five of the remaining items. Consistent with what 14
Commissioner Akin just said, I was thinking that in packaging this for the City Council in this 15
particular list, for items five and six, you might just want to put a parenthetical after each of 16
those that says, " Long-term" or something like that, so that when the Council first reads this, 17
they know that we are thinking this is not an overnight activity. So those are my only – that's all 18
– my only suggestions on this first bucket. Thank you. 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.
1
Chair Summa: Okay. Commissioner Templeton. 2
3
Commissioner Templeton: Thanks. Good presentation, Bryna. Thank you for, Vice-Chair, for 4
helping us understand what you guys are working on. This is a nit to pick, but going off of what 5
commissioner Akin said earlier, if this is not an ordered list for any reason, then it should be a 6
bulleted list, because I read this in the order of importance. I think commissioner Akin wanted 7
to read it in order of urgency to implement or something like that, and he is going to speak up, 8
but just – that's my only comment here. It's just the presentation format. 9
10
Commissioner Akin: Yeah, actually, they were numbered so that during the discussion with MBI 11
we could identify them by number when we were talking about them. That was it. 12
13
Commissioner Templeton: Well – and maybe then, letters. I don't know, but it does make 14
sense. I see what you're saying. I just – It's honestly hard to compare. These each are very 15
different, and impact is not something we understand, right, so I think that would be better if 16
we could indicate that with our presentation, somehow. Not that I'm going to have the solution 17
– just wanted to suggest that. Thanks. 18
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Chair Summa: I'm not seeing other lights right at the moment. But I will say that I also think – 2
well, thanks to the Ad Hoc. And I also think breaking it down into three, which doesn't include 3
beyond zoning, but that can be presented differently, I think. The only one that I'm very 4
concerned with – about, after eliminating three, is the way two is worded "relax definitions in 5
the Palo Alto Municipal Code; many seem overly complex and specific", is mighty broad, so I 6
think we would want it – I understand that this is going to go in a general way to Council, and 7
they'll probably send it back to us, but I think they will need – I think we can be more specific 8
there and agree that identifying those last two is really long-term municipal code fixes that are 9
out of the scope, kind of, of the Council's goals for immediately helping retail, so identifying 10
them as such, clearly, would improve the usability to the Council, I think. 11
12
Commissioner Akin: Oh, I'll say, one thing that we discussed was [inaudible 44:17] in the code 13
when it lists explicitly all these, it removes a lot of uncertainty. We really liked the idea of 14
saying, "What's the outcome," but that may cause staff to have to use more time, so we're 15
balancing those two, and it's – in some ways, it would be very nice to say, "Anything that has a 16
lot of pedestrian use you can have in this location," but now, who interprets what that – what 17
meets that threshold? And so that's what the old fashioned – just listing out all the different, 18
explicit options, in a lot of ways, saves staff time. So... 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.
1
Chair Summa: Yeah, I think that might be true, but there are uses that we just don't see, 2
including trade schools on University Avenue and things like that that are just kind of – don't 3
make sense anymore. But also, I think having some wiggle room for uses that don't fall into any 4
categories could be important too. 5
6
Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. Great. I think that's – I will say that with respect to relaxing definitions, 7
there's specific definitions that, I think, need to be looked at, and so, when we recommend this 8
to Council, we can specify which ones we're thinking about. For example, in Title 18, this is not 9
supposed to be exhaustive, right now. It's commercial recreation, and it's not necessarily 10
relaxed. It's like, revisit, I think, would be the right word – revisit definitions. Many seem overly 11
specific and complex. Yeah. So it's commercial recreation, eating and drinking service, personal 12
services, retail service, including the intensive and extensive retail services, retail-like use, take 13
out service. That's the list. It's five or six different numbered definitions in Title 18. That's the 14
specificity that we should – we realized – this wasn't meant for public consumption necessarily, 15
but we did want to share our thoughts. And so, when I read it with that eye of looking at it for 16
public consumption, my goodness, this is not clear at all. Hopefully that – with that additional 17
explanation, would that address your concerns, Chair, the ones that you voiced? 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: I think so, yes. I think when it comes back to us next, we should have more 1
specificity in there and then – because I think we'll want to do that for Council. Yeah. 2
3
Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. Great. Let's move on to the next bucket then. 4
5
Chair Summa: Yep. 6
7
Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. The next slide. 8
9
Dan Wery: If I could just mention one thing. One of the things with number 1 on this list was to 10
do the "What uses are allowed where", and that's really that comparative use schedule or use 11
table. That's also a great way to highlight those differences, those specific definitions, because 12
they're all listed in the table and most of them are defined. And then, also, it's a great way to 13
make those comparisons between the various zones, the CC, the CNCS, in particular, and then 14
also those – The combining districts, the R, and the GF, in particular. I think while those will take 15
more time and more effort, that first effort of doing that table is a great way to start because it 16
really highlights those issues, and it shows, "Well, why do we allow this here and no there," or 17
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
"Why do we require a CUP here, and it's permitted over there," so it's a really good tool to 1
facilitate those extra efforts, those efforts that will take a little longer. Anyway… 2
3
Vice-Chair Chang: I don't know if you're aware, but when I was hunting through our website, 4
there actually is a table on our website, but it's – the table, I don't believe, is included in the 5
code, and so I think that's what MBI is suggesting, that we could use a table in the code itself. Is 6
that right? 7
8
Dan Wery: Yeah, the code actually has multiple tables, and so it gets a little confusing because 9
there is overlap between those tables. They're not mutually exclusive, and so, when you think 10
you've got the answer in one table, you really need to go look at another, and so, for our 11
purposes, we created our own, and we'll – we're definitely going to provide that to staff, and 12
the intent is – actually, we have that in our draft report, so it's there as a point of reference and 13
comparison so you'll see what we're talking about there. And I think, again, it's a good way to 14
put it all in one place and then that direct comparison, typically, shows any gaps or flaws or 15
conflicts, and so it's a good way to do it. But yeah, the one that you're mentioning, Bryna, is, I 16
think, from 2007, but it had that benefit; it's just out of date now, so what we did is similar. It's 17
not – what we did is really focus on just those retail, retail-like, and personal service uses. That's 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.
where we were focusing and then, looking, again, at those limited districts. But yeah, updating 1
that table would be a great start. Okay. I'm going to move on to the next slide here. Okay. 2
3
Vice-Chair Chang: Commissioner Akin or Reckdahl, do you want to take this? I'm happy to, but it 4
was our three heads, so I want to make sure that one of you can speak, as well. 5
6
Commissioner Akin: All right. I'll take a stab at this and depend on my fellow commissioners and 7
the Ad Hoc to correct me when I'm wrong. The idea behind the first one – well, the idea behind 8
several of these are that CUPS are required more frequently than perhaps they need to be. And 9
a great deal of the uncertainty faced by business owners is, "Am I required to retain a CUP, and 10
if I am required, am I going to get one?" What can we do in order to reduce that uncertainty as 11
part of the process? Well, the easiest thing to do is to eliminate the need for CUPS and as many 12
uses as seem practical. For example, if a use really doesn't impact the street frontage, then 13
perhaps we don't need to require a CUP for it. The second case, if the situation exists, and this 14
is another one where we're not sure that it does, if you have a number of allowed uses, is there 15
any situation where combining those allowed uses might require a CUP. The canonical example 16
is do you want to put a restaurant in some – as an area in some other kind of business? Is that 17
going to trigger a CUP? We'd like to say, "Well, if you could have a restaurant next door and this 18
other type of business next door, then the combination should also be acceptable." A more 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.
general approach to this, a little more challenging but perhaps most effective in the long run, is 1
to eliminate CUPS in situations where there's an impact that needs mitigation. This is [inaudible 2
52:11] and miniature. If there's no impact that you believe is likely to require some special 3
action then perhaps the CUPS shouldn't be required. Another case that came up in – I think this 4
mostly was in the Cal Ave. discussion – eliminate rules based on the nearby business types or 5
sizes. And the issue there is that your nearby business types and sizes change over time and 6
could change between the time you decide to buy a property and when you get your 7
entitlement, so you want to eliminate that kind of uncertainty. To do that, you may have to 8
depend on market forces to correct the temporary accesses, so if you get too many bagel shops 9
or too many frozen yogurt shops in an area, you may just have to live with that for a few years 10
until things fall out. And this came up in the Cal Ave. discussion because, of course, on 11
University, we don't have that kind of issue, and we frequently have waves of fad businesses – 12
have had, over the years, and they all shook out without serious negative impact to the retail 13
environment, so we could trust that to apply in other areas, as well. Now, the hard one: rewrite 14
parts of the code to make sure unsuccessful changes aren't locked in. What you're looking for 15
here is the ability to encourage experiments, allow new retail uses or retail uses that haven't 16
been employed in an area previously, but if they fail, not to penalize the owner for having made 17
the attempt. And the example that came up earlier in the discussion of this was if you have an 18
office and you convert to retail, and the retail, and the retail then fails, the retail use fails, 19
should you be allowed to move back to an office use, and whatever you think about 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.
whatever you think the answer to that question should be, it's undeniable that it's very difficult 1
to do that according to the code that exists today because, for example, you might be tripped 2
up by the office cap. Solving this problem is another one of the, probably, multi-year efforts at 3
rewriting the code, but we felt that we had some consensus that it was of value, and so it 4
should be mentioned. Okay. Any questions on any of that? 5
6
Vice-Chair Chang: Just quickly add that numbers one, two, and three were – these were 7
principles that we had but of course, we don't know. We didn't have the data to see what CUPS 8
we have, what the impacts would be, and so this is where we would rely on staff and their 9
experience to determine if it's relevant, because maybe number two eliminates CUPS for 10
combinations of otherwise allowed uses is not relevant. So is it relevant, and then what the 11
impact would be before it actually became a change. 12
13
Commissioner Akin: Thanks. And that reminds me, on number one, perhaps some of the – one 14
of the MBI folks would remember this, but one of our city comparables had rules that 15
eliminated the use of CUPS for a certain depth from the street frontage, and that could be an 16
approach we might want to consider for this kind of rule. 17
Chair Summa: Oh, Commissioner Templeton? 18
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Templeton: Yeah, quick question. I assume these recommendations are solely 2
within the context of the retail discussion? We don't mean to eliminate CUPS, we mean – 3
4
Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. This is – all of this is solely within retail. 5
6
Commissioner Templeton: Just want to clarify. Thank you. 7
8
Vice-Chair Chang: That's a good clarification and a point about we were having an internal 9
conversation, and then this was – we're glad it's shared, but we didn't think carefully about 10
some of the implications. 11
12
Chair Summa: I'm – was less enthusiastic about this section, and that is because if you think 13
about how many CUPs that we've seen, depending on how long you've been serving them, it's – 14
we don't see them that frequently. I am not aware that they are a huge problem, but I know 15
that – I assume their main use is to regulate businesses that we might think we – because we 16
would be getting too many of them, which I understand you think the market will correct that 17
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
over time, but also, for uses that might have impacts on, I think, residential use nearby. I don't 1
see them as a big problem, and I don't know if there's ever been the case of an office 2
converting to retail. I don't – I didn't understand that example. If there's a better example to 3
explain that problem, what you think might – that problem might be? 4
5
Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah. The first generation of the RPO was during the dot com boom, 6
where we were seeing a lot of retail convert to an office. They put a rule in that if something 7
was ever retail, you couldn't switch to office over a certain period. There's a window of time, 8
which means that if you now have an office, and it's vacant, and you convert to retail, according 9
to that portion of the code, you can never go back to office. It's now covered under this first 10
RPO. 11
12
Chair Summa: Is that really an issue? 13
14
Commissioner Reckdahl: It's a one-way escalator. Well – but if we have an office that wants to 15
try it, we want to encourage retail. 16
17
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Summa: Right. 1
2
Commissioner Reckdahl: If they think they have a location that – where retail could work, I 3
think we should encourage that but right now, they don't because they would lose the office 4
permanently then. 5
6
Chair Summa: But there is an office on the ground floor in retail-protected areas, unless it's 7
grandfathered in. 8
9
Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah, exactly, one of those grandfathered areas. 10
11
Chair Summa: Yeah. 12
13
Commissioner Reckdahl: And just right out here, there's some retail – some offices just on the 14
first floor. 15
16
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Summa: Because the problem that we've had is the other way is not really legal – 1
conversion of what should be retailed office. 2
3
Commissioner Reckdahl: Yes. 4
5
Chair Summa: So… 6
7
Commissioner Reckdahl: We are not talking about that. We're talking about the one-way 8
escalator of once you go from office to retail, you lose the right to go back to office. 9
10
Chair Summa: Okay. 11
12
Vice-Chair Chang: Or for any use. Take, for example, the housing development that we just saw 13
on San Antonio. I think it was 800 San Antonio. They've included retail space, which is great. We 14
want to see them include that, but as currently written, our RPO disincentivizes that because 15
it's now permanently retail forever and ever and ever, and so if we want the experimentation, 16
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
obviously, the better solution, and we allude to this later on, is to have additional retail nodes, 1
like protective retail areas and concentrated areas on San Antonio, on El Camino, so that all 2
that – all the residents – new residents who will be coming in have some retail, also, but – so 3
that's the way to solve it. But right now, because we don't have those defined retail nodes, if 4
any individual developer wants to do some experimentation and put it in a retail space, it's 5
scary, because it's [inaudible 1:00:42]. It's going to be, now, assuming the RPO has not changed, 6
that is going to be – remain retail forever and ever and ever, even if it's not a viable spot. 7
8
Chair Summa: I don't know. I think – I'm wondering if staff has any idea of how many – any data 9
on CUPs, because I think they're a useful tool, and I remember at our last meeting, 10
Commissioner Lu thought they kept people from even applying because they were so daunting. 11
I don't know where that idea came from, exactly, or whether staff has any data, but it's my 12
opinion that mostly – and maybe staff has data on this too – when they're – once they're 13
applied for, they're mostly always granted. I don't ever remember one being – I remember not 14
voting for one or two, but I don't remember one being turned down. This – Ms. French? 15
16
Amy French: Anecdotally, I can say a lot of people leave that the public counter, saying, "Oh, I 17
don't want to pay $8,000 to come back and try for a CUP," and they go to a different location, 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.
so that happens a lot. I'm just saying, anecdotally. We don't see a lot of CUPs because we don't 1
get a lot of applications for CUPs. 2
Chair Summa: Okay. It would be good to get that – capture that data because it would really 3
show that it – the existence of CUPs is making people not apply, and that seems like a bigger 4
problem to solve than any that are listed here, actually. 5
6
Vice-Chair Chang: Well, the other issue is that we don't – we, the PTC, doesn't see the vast 7
majority of CUPs. Most of them are approved by the director. And what we've heard, 8
anecdotally, is from different business owners who have said that it takes a year to get a CUP, 9
and so if it takes a year to get a CUP – now, some – I don't know the – again, we don't have the 10
data and the – each situation is individual. There might be some applicant error. I don't know 11
what it is, but I have heard from a number of business owners that getting that CUP – especially 12
because a small business isn't used to reading code, isn't used to applying for things: there's a 13
typo; they don't answer one question that causes a delay. And every month of rent for a small 14
business is a really big – a small business like a mom and pop, that's just a month of rent to you 15
or me, and that's the impediment. If it really takes even one month or six months, not a year, 16
it's still a tremendous amount of money in terms of bottom line for that mom and pop and so 17
that, I think, is where – those are the anecdotal stories that we're hearing. 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: Okay. Well, I would encourage us to get more data on this area. And then, with 1
regards to "eliminate rules based on types or sizes of businesses nearby", is that just rules that 2
don't want too many nail salons – we always pick on nail salons – in one area, or what were you 3
thinking of, specifically, with that? 4
5
Commissioner Akin: Yeah, that's the canonical example. I don't think we really understand why, 6
but we have seen plenty of examples, in our comparison cities, of complex sets of rules that are 7
of this type, and what this is is a placeholder saying, "Do not go down this road." 8
9
Chair Summa: Okay, because I wasn't aware we had a lot of that. 10
11
Commissioner Akin: Yeah, and it would be a good idea not to follow that path. 12
13
Chair Summa: I'm not sure you need to make that a recommendation, then, If it's just... 14
15
Commissioner Akin: Oh, negative recommendations have value too. 16
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Chair Summa: Yeah, but it's not clear that's what you mean, so I would make that – I think we 2
need to make that clear if that's what you're saying. 3
4
Commissioner Akin: Perhaps the word avoid rather than… 5
6
Dan Wery: Right, that's what I was going to suggest too. 7
8
Chair Summa: Yeah, because I didn't think there were any, so I was confused. That's a good 9
clarification. What's that? Excuse me? 10
11
Amy French: There was a question in the slides that said, "What is the history of the nail" why 12
are we prohibiting nail salons? I don't know. I have some history of how that came to be, if you 13
would like. 14
15
Chair Summa: Certainly, we would love to hear that. 16
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Amy French: Okay. I'm going to share my screen. Okay, this is just showing a little bit of 2
research that I did regarding the nails and why are we here, why are we talking about nail 3
salons. It was the Council action in March of 2021 that was to prohibit allowing nail salons, 4
beauty shops, barber shops directly on California Ave. street-side facing, so they were, I guess, 5
welcoming for nails and hair on the side streets but not on the main frontage. Then, we got into 6
it with the Planning Commission in 2022, and then we got to that point where we were at the – 7
do we send this ordinance forward, or do we just keep it in the interim ordinance, so we kept it 8
in the interim ordinance. That's the nutshell – what happened. 9
10
Chair Summa: Sure. And that actually dovetails with reducing the boundaries so there won't be 11
side streets. We – I don't know. There's a lot of things involved but thank you for that. Any – I 12
see a light from Commissioner Akin and Commissioner Lu and a hand from Commissioner 13
Hechtman. 14
15
Commissioner Akin: Yeah, I'm sorry. I wanted to comment – follow up on something you asked 16
about. Could we have the list of recommendations in Group 2 back up again, please? Thank 17
you. Yeah, I'm sorry. It's lost. If it comes back to me, I'll let you know. 18
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Chair Summa: Commissioner Hechtman. 2
Dan Wery: If I may add one little bit about the CUPs. One technique is, if you have particular 3
concerns and/or even a history of CUPs for certain types of uses, often, you'll see that you've 4
got several typical conditions of approval that eliminate or mitigate the concerns with that 5
particular use or type of use. If you can articulate those, then you can make those typical 6
conditions standard, and if you've got those objective standards, then you're able to write them 7
into the code and avoid doing a CUP. It can be the use is subject to these special standards – 8
might be something if it's take-out or a take-out heavy use where there's outdoor dining, make 9
sure – a common concern is disposable plates and cleanliness of the outdoor areas – make sure 10
things aren't blowing away, and there's the adequate refuse control. That could be something 11
that can be written in, is the standard conditions, so that becomes an automatic condition of 12
the – of that particular use. That's just a technique to help move uses from a CUP level into a 13
permitted-by-a-right level subjected to special standards. I'll just throw that out there as a 14
technique. 15
16
Chair Summa: Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Lu. 17
18
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Lu: Yeah, a few comments and a few questions, I guess, just all, kind of, mixed 1
together. I think more data is definitely great and needed for me to get to a really firm place, 2
here, but I generally favor relaxing CUPs and think that the examples – or kind of the cases 3
enumerated here makes sense. Just for clarification, we're not saying that CUPs could be 4
prohibited. I think that was in the context of a formula retail conversation about how you could 5
get formula retail if you apply for a CUP. But imagine you're a pharmacy, and you want to rent 6
the Bank of the West space; you have to negotiate with the landlord; you have to draw pretty 7
expensive architectural plans; you have to pay 10K+ to even apply for the CUP. And if you're a 8
major project, like a pharmacy, it's probably going to go to appeal and go to public meeting, 9
and that's even more money and more time. And if you sign the lease and the CUP doesn't go 10
your way, and you know that such a major CUP will probably get appealed and go to public 11
hearing, then you might have to pay a breakup fee with your lease. If you don't, kind of, pre-12
sign a lease, then you'll also lose a bunch of leverage with the landlord. I think it just gets really 13
weird, and I couldn't imagine – I couldn't imagine a lot of pharmacies, for example, wanting to 14
take the risk to move on to Cal Ave. in that CUP-formula retail kind of world. But I think the 15
same thing applies, to a lesser extent, for other kinds of businesses too. I was looking at some 16
CUPs, and some of the CUPs are relatively small. It's like reconfiguring some of your outdoor 17
seating or, kind of, redoing your signs, or some of them are more major, like opening that 18
boxing gym on Cal Ave. There's a range. I would – based on the kind of examples I've seen in 19
building [inaudible 1:11:10], I don't really see a lot of particularly concerning CUPs that I feel 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.
like we would really need to remove, so I think, for simplicity, for fees for not discouraging 1
business, I generally agree with the first view. One question, though, from looking at building 2
[inaudible 1:11:30] – so that seems like most of the CUPs in downtown on Cal Ave. are for 3
alcohol, so it's restaurants, cafes wanting to serve beer and wine. Just to confirm, were we also 4
thinking that removing CUPs for beer and wine would also be included in 1 through 3? 5
Commissioner Akin: We did discuss that, but I'm not sure why it didn't make it into the list – 6
either of you? 7
8
Vice-Chair Chang: I think it's just oversight on our part. If… 9
10
Commissioner Akin: Right. 11
12
Vice-Chair Chang: …a restaurant – a full service restaurant is… 13
14
Commissioner Akin: Yeah, the… 15
16
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Vice-Chair Chang: …allowed, I know that, oftentimes, that alcohol permit, that is the hangup. 1
2
Commissioner Akin: Yeah, the only thing I remember bringing up to the contrary was the 3
concern about open carry, but that doesn't affect the CUPs for the and/or uses or, I suspect, 4
even the parklet uses under current rules. 5
Commissioner Lu: Yeah, I definitely would not – I would be very wary about relaxing open carry 6
in general. But I think if – within your own parklet, or within your own back patio or cafe space, 7
if you want to sell beer are alcohol, I'd support that. And actually, I know Santa Monica recently 8
allows beer and alcohol for food businesses by right, so there's no CUP or separate permit 9
required. Santa Monica even includes to-go alcohol, which I think is different from open carry. I 10
think it's – the concept is more like you can pick up a bottle of wine with your to-go dinner or a 11
well-bottled and well-sealed cocktail with your to-go dinner and not necessarily you can 12
consume that alcohol in the street. But yeah, I would be in favor of something in that direction, 13
like alcohol by right for food businesses during normal business hours. And personally, I'd also 14
support allowing that, including well-sealed, to-go containers. I think there Is some simple way 15
to write that up. 16
17
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Summa: Yeah, and I don't – there's a lot of state laws about alcohol and – about serving 1
alcohol that seems to be a holdover from a time when we were more judgmental perhaps 2
about people consuming alcohol and – so we'd have to be in – the only time I see a CUP for an 3
alcohol – the only time I remember is when it's at the business [inaudible 1:14:17] a residence, 4
and then it's just a concern about noise and that kind of thing. But I think that's – if – I do know 5
that a lot of the CUPs are for alcohol use, and so we should think about how we – our 6
recommendation around that. Commissioner Hechtman has his – oh, were you finished? Sorry. 7
8
Commissioner Lu: I had a couple more things. 9
10
Chair Summa: Go ahead. 11
12
Commissioner Lu: I'll just try to go quick… 13
14
Chair Summa: Go ahead. 15
16
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Lu: Yeah. I also wondered if we discussed temporary use permits at all? This 1
seems to be a smaller case, but I do see that businesses do periodically apply for temporary use 2
permits. They are $1600 for seemingly modest things, like grilling outside the front of Mollie 3
Stone's or Equinox putting their bicycles in the parking lot for a few one off-outdoor spin classes 4
and things like that. It's – that seems like a reasonable way to reduce uncertainty, as well, a 5
certain consideration. 6
7
Commissioner Reckdahl: We just didn't discuss that. I think that's an exception as opposed to 8
the rule, but as a long term goal, we might want to look at that. 9
10
Commissioner Lu: Yeah. 11
12
Commissioner Reckdahl: I don't quite understand the cost. Is it that we have to pay for staff 13
time? Is that what's – drives $1600 for the bikes in the parking lot? 14
15
Chair Summa: Sorry, I thought you were still on the CUP. 16
17
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Lu: Oh, temporary use permits. Apparently, they're... 1
2
Amy French: Oh, temporary use permits. Yeah. 3
4
Commissioner Lu: …quite the fee schedule there. 5
6
Amy French: So that's… 7
8
Commissioner Lu: Yeah. 9
10
Amy French: Temporary use permits often involve use of a tent, for instance, and those have to 11
go through fire department review for safety. There's some other things it involves, perhaps the 12
Police Department, as far as managing the circulation traffic and this kind of thing. I don't know 13
why it's set at the amount that it's set. Often, our fees go up incrementally year over year, so I 14
don't know – what started off as a nominal fee has just creeped up over time – to stay abreast 15
of… 16
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah. 2
3
Amy French: …just increases generally. 4
5
Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah. Okay. 6
7
Commissioner Lu: Yeah, my last comment there is that I saw Santa Monica has the default 8
length of their TUPs as 45 days, so same as Palo Alto, but they recently extended that to 180 9
days, so businesses that do get a TUP get more flexibility. And I saw that Santa Monica also – 10
the – maybe this is unique to Santa Monica – it's a more touristy city – allows ancillary 11
entertainment in a lot of businesses by right, so if a florist wants to have an open house, and I 12
don't know, have a band play or something, they don't have to get a TUP just to have live music 13
or – same with a restaurant or café or something like that. I think something like that, also, 14
might be a reasonable scope if we actually consider changing TUPs. 15
16
Chair Summa: Okay. Are you – is… 17
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Lu: Okay. 2
3
Chair Summa: Okay. Commissioner Hechtman. 4
5
Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. I want to start with a question for the Ad Hoc Committee, 6
and that is the five recommendations we are looking at here, in your ad hoc deliberation, were 7
there any of these that could be tackled in a relatively short period of time? Or were all of these 8
things that – we're really talking about revising the ordinance, and it would take some time. Are 9
all of these – are some short term and others long term? 10
Commissioner Reckdahl: We talked about low-hanging fruit. I don't think we consider this low 11
hanging fruit – medium hanging fruit. Do you agree with that? 12
13
Commissioner Akin: Yeah, especially the first three. The intent was that those could be 14
implemented in relatively short term. 15
16
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Hechtman: Okay, with the first bucket, as this gets refined, we might want to 1
indicate for Council what our anticipated timeline is for the various items. All right. So turning 2
to the items themselves, I'm supportive of 1, 2, 4, and 5 and want to talk about 3 but just a 3
point on 1 and 2, to the extent we're talking about alcohol sales. My understanding is alcohol 4
sales, whether it's a bottle in a convenience store or a drink or a bottle at a restaurant, all of 5
that is regulated by the state, by the ABC, and they look at impacts, and they impose 6
conditions. And I think it's something – I don't know that we need an answer today, but I think 7
that staff could work with Mr. Yang to see if the ABC's protections, through their conditions, is 8
sufficient, because I think that might be the explanation for why, as Commissioner Lu said, 9
Santa Monica has basically taken a hands off on the alcohol. It's not that people can do what 10
they want in Santa Monica with the alcohol; it's because the ABC has already imposed a set of 11
rules and they've determined that those are sufficient to protect the neighborhood. I think 12
that's something that we could look at related to 1 and 2. I really want to talk a little bit about 13
CUPs because this description of 3, eliminate CUPs except in situations where there is an impact 14
that needs mitigation, that is the description of what a CUP is, at least classically. In every 15
zoning designation, and we'll just focus on commercial retail, there's a list of uses that are 16
allowed by right, right? For those, you just need a building permit and go build out your space, 17
like a clothing store. But there are other uses that City Council has decided, "This is the kind of 18
use we want, but it has the potential for unusual impacts that could be undesirable, and so we 19
need to take a closer look at this kind of use and possibly condition it," and that's when 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.
require a conditional use permit. It's in a situation where there may be, because of the nature 1
of the use, an impact that needs, we say mitigation here, but it's conditioning, like hours of 2
operation or other kinds of things. When we're talking about reducing uncertainty, there should 3
virtually never be uncertainty over whether or not I'm going to get my CUP. It's a use that the 4
council has already decided is desirable. The only uncertainty is what are the conditions that 5
are going to be imposed, and can I live with those? There should never be, really, a discussion 6
of, "Well, we can turn them down if there are too many of them on the street." And the only 7
time where you – I would think, would see a possibility is if, for example, on Cal Ave., let's say, 8
an entertainment venue is allowed, but somebody controls a bunch of land, and they want to 9
propose a 6000-seat arena that would absolutely overwhelm everything else. In that situation, 10
you might turn it down because the impacts cannot be conditioned sufficiently to protect the 11
rest of the neighborhood. But outside of that outrageous suggestion, anybody applying for a 12
CUP, has to – should be justifiably confident they're going to get it; they just don't know what 13
the conditions will be. And the reason for that, and Commissioner Lu was talking a little bit 14
about it, is the economics of this. We've got an application fee that is, I heard Ms. French refer 15
to $8,000 and Commissioner Lu, something over $10,000, but that's actually the cheaper part of 16
the process because if I'm opening a clothing store, I'm going to spend about $20,000 just to 17
design the interior that gets – that I have to show the city. And if I'm doing something more 18
complicated, like a restaurant with a kitchen, then I'm putting up $50,000, $100,000 in the 19
paperwork that supports the application. No way are people going to do that if they think, "I 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
could get a no," right, that "I could waste that money." And if we ever did that, I think it would 1
have a chilling effect on what – on the marketplace for people who are willing to come in to 2
Palo Alto. If I'm going to invest the money, I need to know I'm going to get a yes, and I'm going 3
to reasonably expect conditions that I can live with. I think in situations where we don't 4
reasonably expect an impact that's going to need conditioning, we should absolutely eliminate 5
CUPs. And I think the biggest benefit of that is to draw in more applicants who we have 6
eliminated the fear that they are going to be turned away or obtain conditions that they can't 7
live with. I thought Mr. Wery's description of – I don't know if he meant to replace the – I think 8
he did – to replace CUPs, in some instances, with objective standards, so it's a matter of right, 9
but I have these particularized rules, and I have to decide if I can live with them or not. If I can't, 10
I'm not going to rent that space. If I can, I'm going to take that space down, and I'm going to 11
make my use following those rules. I think that's an excellent suggestion. Those are my 12
comments on bucket number 2. Thank you. 13
14
Chair Summa: Thank you. I have Akin, Templeton, and Chang. Oh, Akin and then Templeton. 15
16
Commissioner Akin: I'm just following up on the brain fart I had earlier. I couldn't remember 17
what to follow up on. But I think it's been done more ably by Commissioners Lu and Hechtman. 18
This bucket is about reducing uncertainty, and to the extent that a CUP introduces uncertainty, 19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
the – to the extent that the possibility of a CUP introduces uncertainty, then people might 1
simply not apply. That was the follow up to your earlier comments that I was trying to 2
remember. The key, here, is "the reducing uncertainty" bucket, not "simplifying the rules for 3
CUPS" bucket. 4
5
Chair Summa: Commissioner Templeton? 6
7
Commissioner Templeton: I think it's really good to bring us back to the point of this bucket and 8
to understand that reducing uncertainty is not the whole sense. It's so we can increase the 9
number of applicants, so – or desire to bring retail to our city. It might be too pithy for us to 10
understand the whole context with the current way it's done, but it's a really good point. The 11
point I wanted to make, I think maybe Commissioner Hechtman made it better than I will, but I 12
really appreciated what Commissioner Lu said about looking for best practices in other cities, 13
and if Santa Monica, which is in the same state as us, can do it, we can probably do it. Some of 14
those ideas that might have been daunting in the past might be overcome-able – I don't know 15
what the right word is there but – in our current times, especially if we see other cities 16
achieving more attractive circumstances – and if we want to pursue those. Thank you for 17
bringing those up. 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: I just wanted to say I really appreciated all the research that Commissioner Lu 1
did on this, and I think that a lot of his ideas are things that I would love to see us include, 2
including investigation about the alcohol permitting and what's going on with what we require 3
versus what might be covered by state law already. But also, we did not discuss the TUPs, the 4
temporary use permits, and I think they fall in much of the same bucket here, so it's how do we 5
reduce barriers there? It's not about, necessarily, reducing uncertainty, but it's about reducing 6
barriers and increasing vibrancy, because we've certainly heard from our residents that we 7
want more music, we want more – our retail areas to be more lively. And to the extent that a 8
business needs to apply for a permit in order to make things more lively – there may be good 9
reasons that they need to, like safety concerns, but to the extent that we can make it less costly 10
for a business to do that, or we may want to – I just think we should investigate it. We may 11
want to provide some waivers, or maybe it's once you have this permit, we extend the length of 12
it. I think those are very good ideas, cause if we think it's a good use, why have it expire at 45 13
days? Maybe we want it longer, and so we could consider changing the default to a longer date 14
and then letting – we could – I think we need to look at it. 15
16
Chair Summa: I agree, especially when it's temporary in what would otherwise be a vacant 17
retail space. We're not talking about a temporary use of a public park or something like that. 18
And if you wanted to stay longer than 45 days, it sounds like you would have to pay another – I 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.
forget how much it was – $1,600, which, to continue the use – which seems undesirable to 1
charge people again if they just want to stay longer. 2
Commissioner Lu: I will say I think the dynamics of CUPs – I'm – It's hard to piece together the 3
story from building [inaudible 1:29:40]. There aren't, actually, a lot of TUPs, and I think, to some 4
extent, maybe people would just post their events, anyways, and don't bother applying, So the 5
mileage that we get here, it's not totally clear, but maybe just out of cleaning things up and 6
making it simpler for those businesses that do go through the effort and actually do the TUP, 7
making it simpler for them. 8
9
Chair Summa: I don't have a memory of TUP's being used for pop-up or short-term business 10
very often. I have a memory more of them being used for a use in a public park or something, 11
and that would be different. I think we should – there's – we don't prohibit pop ups, but we 12
certainly don't want to make it difficult. Hmm? 13
14
Amy French: [Inaudible 1:30:27]. I just thought I might help the conversation by showing you 15
the fees for CUPs. I have the list here that I can just share with you because it does add a fee, 16
quite an extensive fee, if something is called up for hearing before the Planning and 17
Transportation Commission, so I'll show you that. And then to say something about the TUPs; a 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.
lot of the time, what we see is pumpkin patches and Christmas trees, that kind of temporary 1
use. I'm going to stop sharing the other screen and share my screen. This just shows when it's 2
alcohol added to a restaurant, often, we'll see – we'll get the restaurant in there with no CUP. 3
They get operating, and they apply for their CUP to add wine, beer, alcohol, and that's a $4,536 4
fee, so that's just for the alcohol service. If it's a late-night permit, that also is a fee, but that's 5
$8,000, I believe, because it doesn't say – it might not be for alcohol service. If you have a 6
business that goes after 10:00 that's not an alcohol service place, that would require a pretty 7
high price there. If it's called up, as I mentioned, to the Planning and Transportation 8
Commission for a hearing, they have to pay an – and it's somebody else that might be calling it 9
up, but the applicant is the one that has to pay the $14,000 extra, so that's quite expensive for 10
somebody that might be a neighbor that is concerned about the use, and then it does go to the 11
Council after that. 12
13
Commissioner Reckdahl: Do those stack, or is that – for example, if you have to have a hearing, 14
do you pay $8,000 plus 14,000 dollars, or is it just $14,000? 15
16
Amy French: I believe it's just $14,000 because it's normally an administrative application and 17
only when it's called up for hearing do they have to pay the additional… 18
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Albert Yang: I would expense it to both, actually. 2
3
Commissioner Templeton: How do you prevent frivolous calls like that just to burn people's 4
money? 5
6
Amy French: Yeah, we're not in the business of determining frivolous anything. It's just 7
somebody – if they pay, they – if they come in and… 8
9
Commissioner Templeton: Well, the fee structure certainly encourages – if anyone can call it, 10
and the applicant has to pay? 11
12
Amy French: But – right. It's not a cost that the appellant has to pay, I think, unless the 13
appellant is the applicant. 14
15
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Templeton: That's what I'm saying. That just makes it easy for someone to 1
punitively engage. That's a really interesting fee structure. 2
3
Albert Yang: Yeah, so we do have a fee that is paid by the appellant, as well. It's – but it's only 4
several hundred dollars, and I think the policy behind that was so that if a resident and 5
neighbor was aggrieved, that it wouldn't cost them thousands of dollars to have a hearing on 6
the issue. But that's the policy decision that the Council has made. And I guess I would just say 7
on all of these fees, the temporary use permit, why is it this amount? These are all based on 8
studies that have been done of how much staff time in various departments is required for 9
these applications, and we are not allowed to charge more than it costs us in staff time. 10
11
Chair Summa: Thank you for those thoughts. And then, I think we are done with this one. We 12
can move on to the next… 13
14
Vice-Chair Chang: No, we have one more. 15
16
Chair Summa: No, I know. We can move on to the next section. 17
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Vice-Chair Chang: Okay, sorry. Does Commissioner Akin want to take this one? It's up to you. I 2
can do it – cold-calling him. 3
4
Commissioner Reckdahl: I'll start, and you can chime in. For the RPO, we want to protect 5
resident-serving businesses, but there has been some structural changes between working 6
from home and also, Amazon and all that [inaudible 1:34:50]. The consultants believe that the 7
retail demand in Palo Alto has gone down. What are you going to do if that is the case? What 8
do you do with the extra space? And one thing you could do is have other resident-serving 9
businesses that aren't retail, that currently don't qualify in those areas, fill those spots. We're 10
not necessarily getting rid of resident-serving businesses; we're just changing the type that – in 11
those locations. But we also realize that there are some really pedestrian dominated businesses 12
that really need that walk-by business, and so we don't want to get rid of the RPO or loosen it 13
across the board but instead, we need to have two different areas, one primary, for example, 14
University Ave., and then secondary, maybe the – Hamilton. And then we keep the RPO pretty 15
much the same along the primary area but loosen it, go outside of it, to allow those vacancies 16
to fill but still provide businesses that residents need and want. These recommendations are 17
that, first of all, that if you have the frontage – and one thing, especially with niche businesses, 18
you may not need that full retail space. Right now, the RPO requires you to fill the whole entire 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.
business with retail but what if, instead, the first front half of the business is retail and the back 1
half is, let's say, goes to some therapist who wants to have a location there, that would be 2
permitted under this proposal. The second one, as I mentioned, the RPO would apply to 3
University Avenue, Cal Ave., and the neighborhood areas like Midtown, but then the secondary 4
areas outside of those would be loosened. And I… 5
6
Vice-Chair Chang: Can I just quickly add – so… 7
8
Commissioner Reckdahl: Yes, please. 9
10
Vice-Chair Chang: …I think we're saying that – as a philosophy is how I would look at the 11
recommendation too, which has the most – we – the most constraints or the most strict 12
application of the RPO, closest to the current RPO, we would want to keep on the University 13
Ave., Cal Ave. and CN zones, and as we start thinking about relaxing, then we could selectively 14
relax as we go out side streets or El Camino. It was more of a principle rather… 15
16
Commissioner Reckdahl: Exactly. 17
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Vice-Chair Chang: --- than a specific recommendation. Yeah. 2
3
Commissioner Reckdahl: And the principle has – the devil's in the details. What are the 4
boundaries of that primary? Is it just University? Is it a half a block of University? Downtown, 5
we have Emerson and Ramona and Bryant, which are very vibrant retail areas, and we may 6
want to include that, also, because if you have a vibrant area that requires a lot of pedestrians, 7
if a dental office goes in there, you go from having hundreds of customers per hour to a dozen 8
customers per hour, and so that could be – drastically change the foot traffic, so – but this is the 9
– as Bryna says, that this is the principle of the thing, and one is where is those boundaries of 10
that primary area, and the second thing is what will we allow in that secondary area? We talked 11
about a medical therapist but also, some things, like could you distinguish between a local 12
resident-serving lawyer, who does wills and estates, for example, as opposed to a law office 13
who just has East Coast businesses and really it's just an office. It's not a resident serving office. 14
That's difficult to do, but what is allowed in that secondary is an open question. Then, number 15
4, we talked about this last meeting, about on Cal Ave., right now, you can't have formula retail 16
of any type. For non-restaurants, we allow that. Anyone can come in; the gap can come into Cal 17
Ave. For number 5, right now, the threshold is 10, and we would loosen that, and there are 18
some examples: Coupa Café has nine; Il Fornaio chain has 18 restaurants, and so Il Fornaio 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.
would not be permitted right now on Cal Ave., but we would loosen that to allow chains like 1
that to be on Cal Ave. But McDonald's has 14,000, so we're – it still would be a relatively small 2
number of chains here, members in the chain. But also, if you wanted to have a larger chain, 3
you could still go through a CUP and make sure that it fits into the look and feel that you want 4
on Cal Ave. The other thing was that there was some commercial – constraints on commercial 5
recreation in the code, and we had some questions about that. And that would – we had 6
punted that over to the consultant, and they explained some of the reasons for it, but they are 7
arbitrary thresholds right now. 8
9
Vice-Chair Chang: Well, I just wanted to add that we asked the question, "If we relaxed it 10
beyond 1,800 square feet, what should it be instead" – oh, sorry, "If we wanted to lower the 11
threshold for a cup from $5,000 to something else, what's the right number?" and the number 12
that the consultants came back to us with was something more like $3,000, and so that's 13
something that we could consider doing. And I think just a quick – in terms of short term versus 14
long term, I'm not sure that these were ordered in that way. In other words, looking at any 15
tweaks to the RPO are actually the longer-term items. Removing constraints on non-formula – 16
or removing constraints on formula retail, those are things that we believe we could actually do 17
right away, and so this is the one – probably the – 4 and 5 are the lowest-hanging fruit that we 18
think we could, as the PTC, make a very specific recommendation to Council and hope that they 19
could immediately implement that, and it might immediately make some of our vacant retail 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.
spaces more attractive. That was one where the three of us thought could actually be fairly 1
easily immediately implemented because it affects one definition in our code; it's a very limited 2
section. 3
4
Commissioner Akin: And I guess I'd add just for non-restaurant formula retail, we believe there 5
is a trend towards smaller, more differentiated versions of large formula retailers going into 6
restricted spaces like this. The – it's Target that usually comes up in this discussion, isn't it? 7
Yeah, but there are others and, in fact, some – there was a Cushman and Wakefield study on 8
this suggesting that this is simply what has to happen as density goes up, that the space per 9
retail business goes down, and so if you have a fixed floor plate that you're trying to put retail 10
into, it means you're going to be putting smaller, more specialized retailers into that space. If 11
this analysis is correct, then that's the outcome we would be likely to see in places like Cal Ave. 12
if we relax the restraints on formula retail. 13
14
Chair Summa: I'm not seeing any lights. I'm in favor of visiting relaxing constraints on formula 15
on Col. Ave. I don't know that it will get us a bevy of applications, but it doesn't seem necessary 16
to me at the levels – it doesn't seem desirable at the level we do it. I think the question is about 17
changing, basically – the area of the RPO's is a pretty big discussion, but Council has already 18
done that downtown because they've – they allowed medical – retail-like medical on the side 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.
streets but not on University, so that might be one way to do it. I don't know that I'm as big on 1
– I think there's also a lot of vacancy in office buildings where neighborhood-serving businesses 2
could locate, so I don't know that that one is as attractive to me because it's not as if there's – 3
there's plenty of places for them to go right now too. They were pushed out by – especially on 4
Cal Ave. because it's my downtown. There was the big boom and tech there that supplied – 5
bought stuff and food and services during the day – also, drove out some of those smaller 6
neighborhood-serving businesses, so I don't think that one is as attractive to me, exactly. I see 7
that Commissioner Hechtman's hand is up. Commissioner Hechtman? 8
9
Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. I'm supportive of all of these concepts to relax 10
restrictions. I think as Vice Chair Chang mentioned perhaps a reordering of them to express to 11
the Council our expectation of what can be done soon, what's going to take more – and I'm 12
reading the first sentence of 2 and Item 3 together, so we are looking at – again, these are 13
concepts – retaining the RPO for these designated locations, but in those locations, number 3, 14
relaxing it for resident serving businesses. If I'm not understanding how those tied together 15
correctly, please let me know. I do want to focus, for a minute, on three and just the concept of 16
relaxing the RPO. One of the slides in the staff presentation had a definition of "retail-like", and 17
I wonder if we can pull that up for a minute. 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.
Dan Wery: Let's see. Was it in the questions? I think that's probably where it was. Here, let's 1
take out [inaudible 1:46:07]. 2
3
Commissioner Hechtman: Here we go. 4
5
Dan Wery: Here we are. Yeah. 6
7
Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. I think this is really what is informing that – or could be used to 8
inform that relaxation of the RPO, and one of the things that caught my eye when this was 9
shown – when we're talking about "retail-like", these are uses generally open to the public 10
during typical business hours. One of the examples, here, is hotels. At our last PTC meeting, we 11
dealt with an application for, essentially, expansion of a gym, an exercise facility on Cal Ave., 12
and some of the comments that came in from the public and from us, some of the 13
Commissioners, were, "That's not a use that's open to the public, and so you have a limited 14
access," but I wanted to point out that, as I did related to that item, that's not necessarily a bad 15
thing, because it's open to the public just like hotels are here, right? Anybody – any member of 16
the public can stay in the hotel. You have to pay a fee to do it, just like to be a member of a gym 17
or to take a class at a dance studio, but that doesn't mean it's not open to the public. It just 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.
means the public can't wander freely through all of the rooms. But even in those scenarios, 1
there's cross pollination, right? The people in the hotel frequent the stores. I'm staying in a 2
hotel right now, and I just walked half a block down the street and bought dinner from a 3
Chinese restaurant. They were grateful to have the hotel there, to deliver me – to give them 4
money. And that's how these retail-like uses, even when you can't wander through them, can 5
still be a part of the fabric that delivers foot traffic to the rest of the street. I think as we look at 6
the relaxing of the RPO, this is really a question of how much relaxation? How many of these, if 7
any, of these retail like – or how far should we push it to fill the stores – to fill the storefronts in 8
our – on University, on Cal Ave., with uses that will distribute – will bring people – a different 9
group of people there who will use the surrounding uses for the benefit of the whole block. I 10
think we can go back to the Primary Bucket 3 slide. And those are my comments. Thank you. 11
12
Vice-Chair Chang: Just to clarify, right now, the retail-like services are all allowed, currently, in 13
the RPO, I believe – almost all of them. There might be a few of them that require a CUP or – 14
but... 15
16
Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. 17
Chair Summa: Commissioner Lu? 18
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Commissioner Lu: Yeah, I had a few comments. I am also generally supportive of all of these. I 2
think the details on number 2/3, I'd want to figure out, of course, and see later. I'm generally 3
more of a retail maximalist, so I'm a little bit cautious about relaxing RPO along Lytton and 4
Hamilton, for example, but maybe Cambridge or El Camino, like that, could make sense. A 5
couple of slightly [inaudible 1:50:18], questions/potential suggestions: so I'm going to refer to 6
Santa Monica again. They published a cheat sheet in December of 2023, where they listed a 7
bunch of their retail ordinances, so I'm just drawing some inspiration and trying to bounce ideas 8
off of that. They had a reference to allowing vacancies – non-conforming vacancies that have 9
been vacant for more than a year to return to their previous use in a streamlined way, and I 10
think that it was also similar to something that [inaudible 1:50:57], French pulled up in the 11
context of nail salons. It was also a bullet point or an ordinance saying something that if a nail 12
salon is empty for a year, it could be refilled a year later. I wonder if there's some – if something 13
like that has legs. On Cal. Ave., especially, I imagine a lot of those buildings aren't conforming 14
or, just across the city, things might not be conforming for parking reasons or other 15
grandfathered-in reasons, and if they go vacant, can they still be refilled, or would they have to 16
spend thousands of dollars adding parking and correcting those deficiencies? Do we know if 17
that's a problem? If that made sense – I'm happy to try to explain it more concisely. 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.
Amy French: There are instances – because we have a section of the code, for instance, that 1
says if it was – there's a date in 2001 when we had the dot-com boom, where if there was an 2
office present in that space on that date, then there's – and forever after, basically, you can 3
have office, but – so it's not the Retail Protection Ordinance. It's the "Against Office Ordinance", 4
I call it. If it – so that's what I'm thinking of when you say that there are certain dates that you 5
have to prove that there was an office there. In fact, we have one on Cal Ave. right now that's 6
an office building. It can't even – it doesn't even look like it could accommodate retail, and it's 7
been an office building forever, but if somebody wants to go in and put office there – and what 8
if it's been vacated for a year? How can you put retail in that building? It just doesn't lend itself 9
to retail. It'll be a fail, right? 10
11
Commissioner Lu: Okay. I'm trying – well I – putting this in the retail context, I'm thinking about 12
the old ZombieRunner or the Varsity Theatre space. That space has no parking, of course, I 13
think, and prior to AB 2097, it would have needed to have parking, right? If it were vacant for a 14
year – yeah, how would that work? Could you still refill it? 15
16
Chair Summa: Yes, because there was a Parking Assessment District… 17
18
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Lu: Oh, okay. 1
2
Chair Summa: …so that – for Cal Ave. 3
4
Amy French: And even after the Assessment District ended, there was that restriction because 5
the code had parking ratios that were different for different uses, not like downtown where it's 6
a blended rate of one per 250. In Cal Ave., if you went from retail to restaurant, uh, oh, you 7
need one space for every 60 square feet of restaurant area, and so you couldn't put a 8
restaurant in there… 9
10
Commissioner Lu: Right. 11
12
Amy French: …because you didn't have enough parking. 13
14
Chair Summa: Yeah, that – and that was specific to Cal Ave., and I have spent seven years trying 15
to get rid of it, but the state did it for us… 16
17
Commissioner Lu: Okay. 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: …because it actually kept… 1
2
Commissioner Lu: Right. 3
4
Chair Summa: …businesses from going in because they had a different… 5
6
Commissioner Lu: Right. 7
8
Chair Summa: …it was not good, really. 9
10
Commissioner Lu: Right. 11
12
Chair Summa: So – but there is a law about – if vacancy – which Ms. French explained. If you 13
have 14
a non-conforming ground floor office use, if it's vacant for a year, you can't continue the office 15
use, but I don't think that happens very often. But – so that's – the concept of a vacancy 16
triggering an – the – triggering a change of use is one that is in the code. 17
18
Commissioner Lu: Okay. So – okay. So I can imagine there might be other [hedge 1:54:35] cases 19
that I can, kind of, think more and just try to look on Google Maps to think about whether this 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.
a real restriction and, potentially, follow up on. Yeah, I just wanted to air out the concept of if 1
something non-conforming goes vacant, can it still be refilled in a reasonable way. Okay, yeah, 2
and thank you. Those were my comments. 3
4
Chair Summa: Okay. Yes, Commissioner Chang [Vice-Chair Chang]. 5
6
Vice-Chair Chang: I had a thought because Commissioner Lu had raised it as an idea, and he 7
said, "Well, what about food halls? Are they allowed?" From my limited understanding, I think 8
they are allowed since you can have more than – you can have smaller spaces within – or 9
multiple tenants within one large space, and that is something to think about because, as the 10
Ad Hoc was discussing it, we were thinking, "Okay, if it's too big of a retail space for the way 11
retail, kind of, works today, what do we – do we really want to lock it in because it might be a 12
large retail space that nobody wants to fill. And we need to broaden our thinking to extend – 13
because the RPO is a city-wide ordinance, right? We might not want to change it for Cal Ave., 14
say, or University but what if there's a large space on El Camino or somewhere else or San 15
Antonio or something, and so the question – as we were thinking about relaxing it, potentially, 16
we were thinking about some of these other areas where, "Gee, it's a really big space. Would it 17
be so harmful to have retail-only in the front, I don't know, 50, 100, whatever the right number 18
of feet are for a certain square footage. Then, when you brought up the food hall idea, you 19
actually need big spaces for that, and if you start giving away all your big spaces, then 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.
preclude something like that from happening. That was just an interesting side effect to some 1
of these proposed principles and recommendations, that there might actually be these new 2
uses that are quite vibrant that we might want to have some big spaces for, so just a thought. 3
4
Commissioner Reckdahl: A big thing that we want to get is – are there any unanticipated 5
consequences that these proposals might bring up? 6
7
Chair Summa: Well, I can see one with the customer-facing frontage position, and that is that 8
we have had what we like to call "faux tail" examples where people have basically pretended 9
there was a non-retail use that wanted to locate in RPO, pretended – have stuff in the window 10
so it looks like they're selling stuff, but it's just – it's fake. It's just a front for the office behind it. 11
I won't mention any names, but – so, that – I would worry about that… 12
13
Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah, if you relax what's allowed in the back, and that's lucrative 14
enough, that will happen. 15
16
Chair Summa: Yeah. There's… 17
18
Commissioner Reckdahl: They'll have a strip 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.
Chair Summa: There's just a game to be played there, and it will happen, so I think that's my 1
biggest fear with that. And then – and we've seen that happen, anyway, and we know that 2
multiple businesses can share a space. They can – we don't prohibit that at all. You think about 3
Printers, Inc. It had four. 4
5
Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah, but RPO wouldn't allow that if that back portion was not retail. 6
7
Chair Summa: Yeah, if the – I can see a slippery – I can see danger in that one with fake retail. 8
9
Commissioner Reckdahl: And the other thing is we want to do no harm, right, the… 10
11
Chair Summa: Yeah. 12
13
Commissioner Reckdahl: …just like doctors – is that we don't have to do this all in one big bite, 14
and we can take some small steps along the way and see how it's going, and if that works well, 15
maybe extend that, and so keep that in mind too. 16
17
Chair Summa: Commissioner Lu, you had your light… 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Lu: I was thinking a little bit more about food halls. They are an amazing use that 1
I love whenever I travel and can actually go to a food hall. And it seems something that's so 2
specific, it might not actually be a good practice to make explicit in our zoning and even add 3
incentives in for our zoning because I imagine that some things are not totally clear, like the 4
food hall has a bunch of different uses; how do you calculate the square footage of each use 5
required for parking and things like that? There might be some ways to clarify or gently 6
incentivize it, but then, I guess, it's an open question whether it's even worth doing that 7
because it's just so specific for a use case that doesn't even exist in the city, that we don't have 8
applicants for. But yeah, that could be something to consider. Another, kind of, random one-off 9
thing to consider is, potentially, clarifying rules for rooftops. I know that Council did clarify rules 10
for rooftops in downtown in 2019 and, kind of, set some rules about like, "Oh, if you need 11
auxiliary square footage for stairwells," or "If your awning goes a little bit above the height 12
limit, then that's okay." I think there might be some reasonable, nice, chill rooftop on Cal Ave. 13
that's 30 feet high that literally wouldn't bother anybody, that could have rooftop use, that 14
could be clarified, but again, it's potentially too wonky or too specific to try to clarify or 15
incentivize something that no one is asking for so also, just want to throw that out there. 16
17
Chair Summa: I don't think it's – rooftop use is prohibited on Cal Ave… 18
19
Commissioner Lu: 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
Chair Summa: …is it? 2
3
Commissioner Lu: …but it's just clarifying it… 4
5
Chair Summa: Oh. 6
7
Commissioner Lu: …or gently incentivizing it with those clarifications. 8
9
Chair Summa: I think that the food – what did you call it, a food court? 10
11
Commissioner Lu: Food Hall. 12
13
Chair Summa: Food Hall – I think we have those from – we had one on Cal Ave. It went out of 14
business. It was five or six different… 15
16
Commissioner Akin: Had a Liddicoat's on University Ave. 17
18
Chair Summa: Yeah. I think we allow that. It's just – and we wouldn't discourage it already. 19
Anyone – anything else on this section? 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 Reckdahl: When we're talking about zoning and retail, the number of people 1
who mentioned Liddicoat's to me is amazing. People really love that, and I'm surprised that it – 2
Liddicoat's, the food hall that was downtown in University. 3
4
Commissioner Akin: Yes. Originally, it was a grocery store that went way back, and then it was 5
converted. A lot of that facility was used… 6
7
Chair Summa: [Inaudible 2:01:35]. 8
9
Commissioner Reckdahl: Oh. 10
11
Commissioner Akin: Yeah, okay – became Z Gallerie and then the Apple Store. 12
13
Chair Summa: Okay. Anything else on this section? Not seeing anyone – do you want to move 14
on 15
to Beyond Zoning? 16
17
Vice-Chair Chang: Sure. I think, for Beyond Zoning, you guys have all read the packet, so I might 18
flip it around, now, and just say – just open it up to commissioner questions or thoughts about 19
those items. 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: Okay. I had a question about – what number is it – five – which proactively 2
planned for new CN nodes on El Camino and San Antonio. I'm wondering what that means. 3
4
Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. I don't know that it should be specifically CN. It might be good – we 5
were – retail nodes, I think, is what we were thinking of, whether CN Zone is the right one for it, 6
I don't know. But the idea is that the retail on El Camino is somewhat spread out and is 7
interrupted, and so as we think about housing going in and wanting to make sure that there are 8
services for residents that are – new residents, as well as the current residents, because right 9
now, we haven't said there must be ground-floor retail in certain areas, and so what we're 10
going to end up with if we don't plan is just either podium parking along El Camino or housing, 11
which is also not that attractive for the people who live in the housing. If you look at 12
surrounding cities, like Menlo Park has a development, Redwood City has some, Cupertino and 13
Sunnyvale have many developments that are housing developments but then have ground-14
floor retail that makes it a really attractive place to live and that also serves non-residents, as 15
well. The thought is that if we specify that there's these blocks or this block that's all retail, that 16
that would be something that would be desirable for the city going forward, and so rather than 17
the current Retail Protection Ordinance, which says, "Everything along El Camino that's retail 18
must stay retail," maybe we want to focus on certain areas and then concentrate that so there's 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.
actually a node that makes it a place that's desirable to visit for all. That's the idea, so planning 1
is basically what that number is. 2
3
Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah. 4
5
Chair Summa: Well, I think you want to change it to retail nodes… 6
7
Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. 8
9
Chair Summa: …not CN, because… 10
11
Vice-Chair Chang: That's a good suggestion. Thank you. 12
13
Chair Summa: And then – yeah, and people have talked about that before as we – it was – I 14
believe it's referred to as a string of pearls, but that it didn't have to be retail the whole way, 15
which is basically Page Mill and South, but that we – and I think that's worth doing, but this ship 16
is sailing on San Antonio with regards to retail, and I believe the new zoning on El Camino 17
between Matadero and whatever, there – I don't think we require retail there, so if we're – we 18
– I think it's very important for these new developments, especially San Antonio, to have retail 19
but then, we should really require it. And in nodes, it makes some sense but… 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 Reckdahl: But one big thing is that if we are looking to relax RPO or widen the 2
variety of businesses that go in it, we may not want to do that broadly along all of El Camino. 3
We may want to concentrate, and say, "No, this is – we want this to be – we want critical mass 4
of retail at this location," but further up where it's more sparse, that would have more 5
freedom. 6
7
Chair Summa: Yeah. So that's interesting. I think that it's – I – the devil's in the details with that, 8
doing that right so – and then I think that's sales tax – I think that's all I have on Beyond Zoning. 9
Does anyone else have a comment? No? Okay. 10
11
Commissioner Akin: I just want to emphasize the first three. Mostly what we're talking about 12
here is restrictions, but we have – we should have a pallet of other options that are incentives, 13
and this is outside the scope of what PTC does, but it's an idea that needs to be captured for 14
Council to consider, and that's why it's here. I think the original one that came up was could we 15
attract specific business types by saying, "Let's offer sales tax relief to" pick a business type – 16
bookstores. You could then encourage a bookstore to establish on University Avenue? But the 17
concept is more general than that, and the idea of applying incentives to reduce vacancy rates 18
for retail also generalizes. There is this idea that one of the reasons to have housing – more 19
housing downtown is that it provides more customers for retail. But in fact, you could achieve 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.
better result more quickly, because it requires less physical redevelopment, by simply 1
encouraging more occupancy of offices that already exist. The general concept of finding 2
incentives to reduce vacancies is what's covered by these first two items. And then Vice-Chair 3
Chang said, "Well, we need to be specific and say, "You really need to think about whether a 4
general vacancy tax is a valuable thing to do." Our consultants from MBI have provided us with 5
a good bit of information on vacancy taxes for the retail case but – applies in other cases too, 6
and this is something Council should look into, or direct staff to look into. 7
8
Chair Summa: Yeah. I think it's something – and I see that Commissioner Hechtman's hand is 9
up. 10
11
Commissioner Hechtman: Just a quick stylistic suggestion. Again, as we move this toward 12
Council, since this group of ideas is outside of the PTC purview, maybe think of – the current 13
heading ties to the first three slides, but this is not really PTC recommendations as much as 14
considerations for Council beyond zoning, something like that, that just tells the Council that we 15
understand this is outside of our realm, but we thought about it and what – we thought you 16
should think about it too. 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. Any other comments? Okay. Then would you like to make any final 1
comments, wrap this item up? Okay, Ms. French, do you feel that this has been – given you 2
direction – I guess the Ad Hoc is still working. Is this good directions, so far, to keep us on track? 3
4
Amy French: I feel it is. Dan, is there any follow-up questions that you have? I know we'll be 5
seeing the Ad Hoc and talking about the next study piece of this, which is the parking and AB 6
2097 and the effect of that. Right. 7
8
Dan Wery: Yeah, I thought this was a really good discussion. I appreciate – I took, so far, four 9
pages of notes so very, very helpful, and I think this will definitely – even though some of these 10
may seem a little vague, it's a good direction, and then the details can be worked out with 11
specific draft amendments that follow these principles and go for these objectives, and then 12
you'll hear those again, obviously. I think there's some very good ones. I had one or two 13
thoughts just on the last idea in terms of nodes, and we can talk about this at the Ad Hoc too, 14
but how often we look at – when you've got a long corridor like this, trying to focus the retail on 15
the corners; those tend to be the best retail locations, and then those mid-block areas are more 16
suitable for the softer uses, the residential uses and things like that, so that's just a general 17
pattern that can lead to that string of pearls example, and so corners are very important. And 18
then, also, in terms of requiring ground floor retail and a mixed use development, again, maybe 19
in those nodes you might require it. In other areas, you might do what we call retail ready, 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 design it so that the space can be flexible and can change with the market so – because a 1
lot of times that market won't be there for years, but if you design it correctly, then if there is a 2
growth and a demand, then you've got a suitable space where somebody might come in and 3
put in a retail or a commercial use or something that requires, typically, a little more headroom, 4
for example, on the ground floor than just a standard residential unit, so a couple different 5
approaches we can talk about at the Ad Hoc Committee. But again, overall, I think really 6
productive, really good recommendations, very thoughtful. 7
8
Chair Summa: Okay. Thank you for that. Thank you to both our consultants and unless anybody 9
has anything else, I think that concludes this item. Thank you very much. Would the 10
Commission like to take a break or carry on? 11
12
Vice-Chair Chang: Break. 13
14
Chair Summa: Break? Okay, we'll take about a seven minute break. We'll be back at about 8:21 15
PM. 16
17
PTC took a seven-minute break, and all returned to session with all members present. 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: Okay. We're back, everyone, and we're on to the next item, item number 3, 1
which is our work plan. I think staff probably has a presentation. 2
3
3. Review and Adopt the Planning and Transportation Commission 2024-25 Work Plan 4
5
Amy French: Yes, just a brief presentation in your packet. We have some recommendations and 6
some goals and raving about our accomplishments, I'll just say. We've had a big year, and we're 7
talking about the fiscal year 2023 to '24. We're not done with it yet. In any case, this is the 8
recommendation that we would review the accomplishments of the past year's work plan 9
ending in – at the end of June and look at the goals for the next year. I'll say that we had 13 10
goals last year and looking at eight goals for the coming year. I think it's a reasonable number. 11
This is showing the analysis of that. These are the goals; there are four goals that are carried 12
forward with revisions: 3, 6, 7, and 13, and then we have a number of goals that, I believe, we 13
met or will be – will have been fulfilled during this term ending in the end of June, so that's on 14
the screen and in the packet, as well. Then we have our – just written out here, eight goals. 15
Within some of these goals, like state legislation implementation, we have certain things and 16
then, for instance, within the comprehensive plan policy or program implementation, we have 17
a lot of things. Then, housing element implementation, a lot of things to – things being 18
programs that we would bring back – not very descriptive, is it, but that's in the report. Also, I 19
did a quick check with all of the Council priorities and objectives to see how those relate to our 20
goals for the coming fiscal year and put that in the report, as well as on the screen. The Council 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.
priorities are: Economic Development and Transition; Climate Change and Natural 1
Environment; Housing for Social and Economic Balance – did I move it – and what's the last 2
one? Okay, here's – these are implementing housing production policies, which carries forward. 3
There's a bunch of those. Then, the renter protection policies, which we are finishing up in this 4
term. I think that takes care of it. I can go back to – if the Planning Commission would like to 5
talk, first, about the accomplishments, take a look at the plan. I didn't put the plan, itself, on 6
here, but you have it in your packet. 7
8
Chair Summa: Thank you for that. I don't know if anybody has any questions for staff, and if not, 9
we'll – I'll ask if there's any members of the public who wish to speak. I doubt it. 10
11
Veronica Dao: I have no requests to speak. 12
13
Chair Summa: No. Okay. Why don't we bring it back for discussion? Would anybody like to talk 14
about any of the items that Ms. French briefly went over or past achievements? I think there 15
was a fourth Council – wasn't there a fourth priority, which was diversity, equity, inclusiveness, 16
and belonging, I think? 17
18
Amy Franchere, and I didn't put that on because I don't think there were any related PTC tasks. 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: Okay. 1
Amy French: Sorry about that. 2
3
Chair Summa: Thanks. I see that Commissioner Akin has a light. 4
5
Commissioner Akin: Yeah, just a clarification first. Do you want to stick to accomplishments, or 6
do you also want to go ahead to comments on goals? 7
8
Chair Summa: I'm open to all and anything. 9
10
Commissioner Akin: Okay. All right well, this… 11
12
Amy French: Sorry, and I – should I – I should add that we do have Nate Baird here, who I asked 13
to come for the parking goals, so he is representing Transportation on the parking goal if you 14
have questions for Nate. Sorry to interrupt. 15
16
Chair Summa: Okay. Thank you for that. 17
18
Commissioner Akin: Great. Thank you. That's good to know. All right then. First of all, thank you 19
for a beautiful piece of simplification and organization here. I generated this long list of things I 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
wanted to see in the goals, and I kept, over and over again, finding you'd already covered them, 1
but I did have a few things that I wanted to ask about. One is simply typographical. I believe in 2
one place, we refer to retail ordinance updates – let's see, there's two… 3
4
Amy French: Can you refer to packet pages? That would be helpful. 5
6
Commissioner Akin: Working on that now. 7
8
Amy French: Oh, thank you. 9
10
Commissioner Akin: Okay. First, packet page 31, we have goal one listed as "Road Safety", but 11
on packet page 35, we have it listed as "Safe Streets for all: Safety Action Plan", and I liked 12
"Road Safety" better. I would recommend sticking with that. Also, on packet page 35, retail 13
ordinance updates, I wonder if we're actually looking at something more general than that. 14
Someone might read that and think it was only about the RPO so perhaps "retail development" 15
or "retail support", something along those lines. One question I have heard from the public 16
several times in the past year is about tree canopy improvement, particularly in South Palo Alto, 17
and I wondered if we wanted to call that out as either something in goal eight for the Comp 18
Plan or perhaps , that could be part of the Area Plan for San Antonio. Last one is Open Space 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.
Development; since we are behind on our nominal goal of open space per resident, perhaps 1
that should be named specifically for goal eight, as well. That's all I had. Thank you. 2
3
Vice-Chair Chang: Sorry, can you just repeat the last sentence that you said? I couldn't hear it. 4
5
Commissioner Akin: Sorry, about Open Space Development? Yeah, since we're behind on our 6
open space per resident goals, I was wondering if Open Space Development should be called at 7
as one of the specifics, along with the other Comp Plan goals in goal eight. 8
9
Chair Summa: Those were additions for goal eight that you… 10
11
Commissioner Akin: Well, the Open Space Development would be an addition for goal eight. 12
The Tree Canopy Improvement, I wasn't sure whether that should go into goal eight or whether 13
we should fold that into the San Antonio Area Plan, but yeah, get it captured somewhere since 14
that's come up as a public comment several times. That was it. Thank you. 15
16
Chair Summa: Okay. Thank You. Commissioner Hechtman. 17
18
Commissioner Hechtman: I want to start by confirming with staff that the Mission Statement at 19
the beginning of the new work plan is unchanged from the current work plan. 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
Amy French: Let's see. Packet page 34 is about the Commission. Is that what – I'm trying to find 2
what it – I don't see a Mission Statement. 3
4
Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah, About the Commission, then under that, the heading Current 5
Commission [inaudible 2:28:50]. 6
7
Amy French: Oh, there it is. Okay. 8
9
Commissioner Hechtman: Mission Statement, I presume… 10
11
Amy French: Have not changed that from the prior year Work Plan. 12
13
Commissioner Hechtman: Okay, good. I just wanted to confirm. I think if there was truth in 14
labeling, then this document should really be called Planning Staff Work Plan for PTC, because 15
the planning staff has really done all the work here, of looking at our current plan's goals, 16
figuring out which one we have or will have completed by the end of this fiscal cycle and then 17
carrying over some, teeing up some new ones, tying those to the Council objectives. It was a lot 18
of work and – even though it's our work plan, and we didn't have to do any of it so far other 19
than doing the things that are the accomplishments for this year, so I want to thank staff for 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. I think our primary function, here, other than to identify some of the nuances, as 1
Commissioner Akin just did, is, really, this is an opportunity for us to identify things that are not 2
on the menu that we think should be on our menu for the coming year. I think in our past 3
couple years with the work plan, that's been one of the most interesting parts of the somewhat 4
short dialogue we have when this item comes before us is if any of the Commissioners think, 5
"There's – something's not here," but at least that Commissioner has a real interest in engaging 6
us because so much of what we do is reactive. I don't actually have anything like that, but I'm 7
interested to see if any of my fellow Commissioners have looked at that and think that there's a 8
goal nine that we should really be making part of the work plan for the coming year. Thanks, 9
again, to staff. 10
11
Chair Summa: Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Chang [Vice-Chair Chang] and then 12
Commissioner Lu. 13
14
Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah, I had a – first of all, yes, thank you. This is excellent. Thank you so much 15
for all this work. I'm glad I didn't have to do it. I had a couple questions. The first one is for Area 16
Planning. When we say the San Antonio Road area, what does that include? Is it only San 17
Antonio Road, or does it also include all the ROLM and the GM area? 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.
Amy French: It's good that you're asking. We're engaging, currently, in a scope of work that 1
we're sending out for the RFP. We're – literally, today, we're looking at the maps to see where 2
those boundaries would be. We had two exercises recently regarding San Antonio and 3
boundaries. The first was the – we call it BASA: Bayshore, Alma, San Antonio, PDA that we got 4
approved and is now a thing, which snakes along Alma, and where it touches San Antonio. 5
There's a row of religious institution sites and then touches Elma and then goes along Elma and 6
out past 101 to capture the Homekey area, so we are using – looking to use that boundary in 7
our RFP to include that little piece along Alma, along San Antonio and then, yes, a bunch of the 8
GM, ROLM area south of San Antonio, as well as going up to Fabian and crossing over Fabian a 9
bit. 10
11
Vice-Chair Chang: Perfect. 12
13
Amy French: Yeah. 14
15
Vice-Chair Chang: Great, because – yeah, I wanted to hear that all of that South Palo Alto – 16
which we – area would be included in this effort, so that's perfect. Thank you. The other – the 17
next question I had was regarding the parking programs, and so this one's for Mr. Baird. I just 18
was wondering – because right now, on packet page 36, it's pretty general. It just says, 19
"Improve parking operations." I know a couple years ago, pre-pandemic, or at the beginning of 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
the pandemic, we heard a presentation at the PTC about a lot of different parking efforts, and 1
there was a Gant chart of when we would see different things. I'm wondering if you can just 2
add a little bit more color in here so that we, as the Commission, can understand what types of 3
projects are going to be coming towards us, or what are the big pieces of work that will be done 4
with respect to parking programs. 5
6
Nathan Baird, Transportation Manager, Office of Transportation: Sure. There's definitely – 7
certainly a lot in those previous items that we will still be considering and working through, but 8
the main piece that we'll be working on this year is taking a look at the downtown, in particular. 9
Of the works that we presented in the previous years, there was some policy updates that we 10
did focus primarily on the residential preferential programs, particularly with the pricing and 11
some other policies that we adjusted. What we want to do now is bring some attention to the 12
downtown, in particular, and we will need a parking vendor and some adjustment to our 13
enforcement teams to make some of the proposals possible. The main customer pain point that 14
we're dealing with in downtown is that you don't have any ability to stay beyond the two or 15
three hours. If you stay beyond two or three hours, you have to pay for a whole day, so we – 16
what we'd like to do is be able to bring in some mobile payment options or the ability to extend 17
your stay beyond those two or three hours. We're also looking at – we will also be looking at 18
whether we can introduce some curb – better curb management options in the downtown, and 19
we will just need a new vendor. Currently, the only permits we provide downtown are provided 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 Revenue Collections in the Administrative Services Department, so we'll need to bring on a 1
vendor to help us provide some more options. We'll be bringing again – we previously talked 2
about some of the adjustments to the muni code that we would need to provide some more 3
flexible permit options, so we'll be bringing that as part of the package, as well. Once we roll 4
out, part of that will include a customer survey that will be going out in the next couple weeks, 5
hopefully, to downtown visitors and business employees to just talk about what mobile 6
payment options would be preferred, what an extended – extending your stay might look like, 7
and then we'll bring on some vendors – hopefully have some vendors showcase what the 8
different options could be. We would bring to PTC some of those options and, also, some of the 9
muni code updates that we would need to make those options possible, and then from there, 10
we would hopefully bring someone on. Then, as things are successful, as things work out, we 11
would bring them to the rest of the city, potentially, or other commercial areas, at the very 12
least. Vice-Chair Chang: Okay, thank you. That's – so the downtown parking effort is slated for 13
next year, is that correct? Because… 14
15
Nathan Baird, Transportation Manager, Office of Transportation: Yeah. 16
17
Vice-Chair Chang: …I just remember us talking about automatic license plate readers and some 18
of those things, so that was all feeding into this effort. Is that right? 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.
Nathan Baird, Transportation Manager, Office of Transportation: Yeah. We did bring on the 1
license plate recognition into the RPPs. We would be looking at bringing similar enforcement 2
technology into the downtown, as well as part of learning from what we've done previously in 3
moving it forward. 4
5
Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. Thank you. Then, I had a final question or final comment about the 6
project goal eight and just a comment that I liked the additions, the – or the suggestions that 7
Commissioner Akin flagged around the tree canopy for South Paol Alto, as well as Open Space 8
Development. 9
10
Chair Summa: Commissioner Lu. 11
12
Commissioner Lu: Yes, thank you. I appreciate the goals. I appreciate the conciseness in just the 13
relatively clean, low number of goals that have a lot of depth. I had one specific question on 14
goal one, so Road Safety or Safe Streets for All, I guess, alternatively described. One thing that I 15
liked in this past year was – and this was truly a one-off – the Crescent Park Traffic Calming item 16
that we covered. That seems like an important part of overall road safety. Are there other plans 17
to actually hear items like that potentially covering Lincoln and Middlefield or other 18
intersections, and could that be included in the scope of goal one? 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.
Amy French: First of all, the Crescent Park, is that something just to back up to the 1
accomplishments? Is – that's – maybe I missed that because – in the accomplishments? I can 2
add that. 3
4
Commissioner Lu: Yeah, that can be – I think that is an accomplishment. We did – that did get 5
approved, right, by the Council? Yeah. 6
7
Amy French: You'd like me to specifically cite that. I don't have the Office of Transportation 8
head space to say whether that is something they could add to their work plan in the Office of 9
Transportation. I don't know, Nate, if you're still here, but if you know off the – there's different 10
segments of… 11
12
Nathan Baird, Transportation Manager, Office of Transportation: Yeah, I'm not really equipped 13
to address this question, unfortunately. 14
15
Commissioner Akin: I can say a little bit about Lincoln and Middlefield because I've talked to Mr. 16
Rius about it. The current thinking is that that's done. 17
18
Amy French: It's done? 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: There are no plans to do anything more at the moment. 1
2
Commissioner Templeton: Ms. French, I'm trying to understand what you said a moment ago. 3
Are you saying the Transportation Department didn't review our goals? 4
5
Amy French: Oh, I did. I met with Sylvia and Phillip, and I met with Nate to help me put this 6
together. That's why, for instance, Road Safety from last year's plan became Safe Streets for All, 7
Safety Action Plan as a title. Sylvia suggested that. 8
9
Commissioner Templeton: But for the accomplishments section, we think we just missed one. Is 10
that what – I'm trying to understand what you were saying [inaudible 2:39:58]. 11
12
Amy French: Yes, sorry, [inaudible 2:39:58] on the mic more. If I missed it – I might have missed 13
it. There was a lot to cram in a little tiny space with all those tiny fonts down there, so I can add 14
that if I missed it. 15
16
Commissioner Templeton: Okay, but you're saying that you guys did work on it and, probably, 17
this is a miss and not an absence of input from Transportation? 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.
Amy French: Yeah. No, I did. I mostly worked with them on the goals. I didn't have – I did send 1
them this to see if they had anything to add for the accomplishments, but I'm happy to, before 2
we package this for Council, to meet again with them, specifically, on the accomplishments. 3
4
Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. I guess what I'm trying to get at is we've been working really 5
hard over the past few years of making Transportation feel welcomed and invited and equal 6
partner in this Planning and Transportation Commission, and I'm getting really frustrated 7
because it seems like we're backsliding in some of these areas. I just want to invite them to be 8
present. This is really important stuff. Thank you. 9
10
Chair Summa: Commissioner Lu, were you finished? 11
12
Commissioner Lu: I guess, just a brief note. I would love for us to get to the point where we can 13
go through traffic calming measures and safety improvements really regularly, as a group. 14
That's news to me about Lincoln and Middlefield. I am somewhat disappointed, overall, that we 15
won't have opportunities to actually ship real safety improvements since the current goal 16
seems entirely scoped around the plan and not any of the other things that I think we, 17
theoretically, have in our budget or, theoretically, have some staff time for. I'm just not sure 18
why it's not part of the goal. 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.
Amy French: I just know that the thrust of the upcoming effort is, I think, super focused on the 1
Safe Streets for All Safety Action Plan. I think that's what I got from the folks I met, that that's 2
the focus. 3
4
Chair Summa: That could include a lot of different things also. I take your point about it wanting 5
to see it there explicitly. Commissioner Templeton, you have your… 6
7
Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. That is the item I want to discuss, as well. Is there 8
someone from the Transportation team who can weigh in, or do you want to represent – he 9
said he was exclusively for parking. 10
11
Amy French: Right. Nate is here for the parking item because that was – I had a request to have 12
that research. 13
14
Commissioner Templeton: Which is – thank you, Mr. Baird. Okay, Ms. French, I assume you're 15
going to wear your partnership hat with the Transportation team for these questions? I'm just 16
looking at project goal number one, and it sounds like several of us are concerned with this 17
area. I'm reading the high priority safety for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists is important, 18
reducing and/or eliminating injury and death resulting from collisions is important priority for 19
many residents. Are there any residents who are just for reducing deaths? Do we not want to 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
have an aspirational goal here? I'm not sure about the and/or. I'm trying to say can we say we 1
want to… 2
3
Amy French: It's at the pleasure of the Commission. It's your work plan. I know it's staff's work 4
plan too, but that's a phrase "reducing and/or eliminating injury and death." If you would like to 5
modify that, it's your… 6
7
Commissioner Templeton: Well, I'm trying to ask of – where it's from, and I understand you're 8
not prepared to answer that question, but I would invite my Commissioners to say what if we 9
were ambitious, here, in our goal and said we wanted to eliminate the deaths and severe 10
injuries? We only have injury here. I think we're talking about severe – so I would just 11
encourage us to try harder there. Then, for the lower priority, the challenges in this area are 12
addressed. Why is that a low – this frustrates me because I don't want to say it's important and 13
then not do anything about it. Those seem to me to be two parts of the same thing. I don't 14
understand why addressing those challenges that are causing collisions and severe injuries is a 15
second priority. I think that's what we're hearing from the other Commissioners, as well, 16
because we want to be specific. Perhaps the lower priority might be an ordered list of what 17
areas we address first, and that might address some of the concerns that Commissioner Akin 18
and Commissioner Lu and the others of us have, but currently, as written, it doesn't make a lot 19
of sense. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Amy French: Yeah, I guess this – my interpretation of this chart that they gave us as a template 2
– lower priority – the higher priorities are listed under that box and the lower priorities are – I 3
think that that's been interpreted as there are things that are lower priorities, but we're 4
handling them on ongoing basis as the lower priority part of this – I don't – I can't say what 5
those lower priority items are. 6
7
Commissioner Templeton: Please pass that feedback along to the… 8
9
Amy French: Sure. 10
11
Commissioner Templeton: …Department of Transportation because they need to show up for 12
stuff like this. I'm frustrated – I'm not frustrated with you – I'm just frustrated that we can't 13
have an actual dialogue with this time we've set aside on a light night. I hear what you're 14
saying. I think the intention is understood. I think for clarity's sake, we could do better with 15
these two things and specify what we're going to do to reduce, how we're going to reduce and 16
maybe even promote our plan that we have. Then, for the lower priority, I would suggest listing 17
through some projects and priorities that are in progress for this year that we're going to look 18
at. Presumably, those are known. That's my feedback. Thanks. 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.
Amy French: We can certainly bring – have the conversation and come back at the next 1
Planning Commission meeting – Planning and Transportation Commission meeting with 2
refinements to goal number one after conversations. 3
4
Commissioner Templeton: That's a great suggestion. I hope that can work out. Thank you. 5
6
Chair Summa: Okay. I agree with some of the comments already made by my colleagues, 7
especially Commissioner Akin's idea about adding tree and open space development and more 8
detail on parking. I think, the boundary, that was answered, actually. I appreciate the 9
conciseness of this document. It got unwieldly last year, and I really appreciate that you do it. 10
Also, I think – you – this is a template that was provided to everybody, so it's – what do you put 11
in the lower priority box? It's all a priority. And it's somewhat at fault of the template too. 12
13
Commissioner Templeton: Fair enough. I'm giving my feedback, nonetheless. 14
15
Chair Summa: Yeah. If we can refine that one a little, it sounds like we're pretty much where we 16
need to be. You need a motion, right? 17
18
Amy French: Oh, that would be great. 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: Is anybody ready to make a motion, or are there more comments? I wasn't 1
seeing any lights. 2
3
Vice-Chair Chang: Where was the staff… 4
5
Chair Summa: At page 28. 6
7
MOTION 8
9
Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. I move that we approve this work plan with the addition suggested by 10
Commissioner Akin, with a little bit more color in the parking programs and then with some 11
expansion and a lot more detail for project goal one. No more work there. 12
13
Chair Summa: Do I have a second? 14
15
SECOND 16
17
Commissioner Reckdahl: Second. 18
19
Chair Summa: Okay. Would you like to speak to your motion? 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
1
Vice-Chair Chang: I think it's [inaudible 2:48:48]. 2
3
Chair Summa: Okay. If there's no other discussion, I'll go – we can go ahead and call the vote. 4
5
VOTE 6
7
Veronica Dao: Commissioner Akin? 8
9
Commissioner Akin: Yes. 10
11
Veronica Dao: Vice-Chair Chang? 12
13
Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. 14
15
Veronica Dao: Commissioner Lu? 16
17
Commissioner Lu: Yes. 18
19
Veronica Dao: Commissioner Hechtman? 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: Yes. 2
3
Veronica Dao: Commissioner Reckdahl? 4
5
Commissioner Reckdahl: Yes. 6
7
Veronica Dao: Chair Summa? 8
9
Chair Summa: Yes. 10
11
Veronica Dao: Commissioner Templeton? 12
13
Commissioner Templeton: Yes. 14
15
Veronica Dao: Motion carries 7-0. 16
17
MOTION PASSED 7 (Summa, Chang, Lu, Hechtman, Templeton, Akin, Reckdahl) 7-0 18
Commission Action: Motion by Chang, seconded by Reckdahl. Pass 7-0 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: Thank you very much. All right. Moving on to our last item of the evening, item 1
four, and this is a study session on, basically, changes in state laws. I'm not sure what exactly… 2
3
4. Study Session: State Laws to be Implemented in Title 18 Revision 4
5
Amy French: Yes. I will share my screen… 6
7
Chair Summa: Okay. 8
9
Amy French: …and have a brief presentation. We have a plan. We have a set of laws. Starting – 10
excuse me while I get to – okay. I don't know if you all follow Alfred Twu. He just – he does 11
these wonderful illustrations of all the state laws that are – that have passed. He, of course, 12
tracks them through the year, and he has just released – and I can forward to you if you haven't 13
seen yet – his 2024 laws that are in the legislature. Lots of laws there and then, by the time the 14
– they get adopted, the list gets whittled down to the ones that were just adopted. This was 15
from 2023. We did provide to the Commission an informational report, back in November, of all 16
the 2023 laws that got adopted that were related to everything that we care about. What I just 17
pulled up here, for tonight, is just a couple of housing laws, as you know, having just passed our 18
housing element. We have a bunch of programs that we are going to be implementing coming 19
forward. We have our work plan on that, but there are some state laws here that we're focused 20
on and talking about getting something before you at the end of May, working with Albert, who 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.
is also on the call. This is just highlighting two of these, SB 4 and SB 684. SB 4 is affectionately 1
known as YIGBY, "Yes to God in my backyard," or something like that. That's where housing can 2
be – low-income housing on both college and religious institution sites. Then SB 684 is for faster 3
approvals on projects with up to 10 homes. I have just – I have a bunch of notes on each of 4
those that I can show on the screen, because we didn't produce a packet on this, but this gives 5
the highlights. These were effective as of this year, January 1st. This is the yes – the YIGBY law. 6
This sets out what the specifics are, and they can't do – we can't do more parking requirements 7
if it's within half a mile of high quality public transit. We've got streamlined design review using 8
ministerial criteria. Basically, it's objective standards again that we've got to tie into some of 9
these sites. Many of the religious sites are zoned R1, and our objective standards that were 10
passed that came through this group in ARB and went to Council were focused on other zones 11
besides R1, so that's that one. Then, 684 is regarding projects with 10 or fewer parcels and 10 12
or fewer residential units in zones allowing for multi-family residential and no larger than five 13
acres, so that's another one that we're looking at, and that's going to go into effect this July 1st. 14
I know it's a lot of text on the screen, not expecting you to digest it. Just a little sneak preview, 15
just wanted to quickly go over some other ones. These were effectively put into the ordinance 16
that you saw recently that is going to Council on May 6th, I believe, for approval. The Density 17
Bonus Laws in chapter 18.15. Then, we have some parking items. With AB 2097 from 2022, that 18
became effective in 2023, you're all familiar with the radius around the train stations and the 19
fact we can't require parking except for hotels and event centers or something – exactly 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.
but we have a code that talks about you have to put parking, and we have a code that talks 1
about if you have parking then there's some other – required parking there's some other things 2
you have to do, and so we have a couple of things I'm just putting in bullets that we would like 3
to discuss and maybe bring forward some tweaks to our zoning code related to AB 2097. So far, 4
we've done with that is maps that show the areas and handouts that give the overview, so we 5
have implemented it with information-education. There are some other laws from 2023 that go 6
into effect, are in effect now, or one that will go into effect in January of next year, and those 7
are on the screens, SB 712, AB 8894, AB 1308, AB 1317, so we're looking at those. Then, we just 8
have some cleanup items. You'll be seeing the NVCAP on May 8th, and we just – this is just an 9
example; when we're doing a zoning code for NVCAP, we want to – yeah, those are new zones, 10
right, zoning districts, and we have parts of our zoning code that, for instance, this one, 11
18.42.040 that calls out late-night uses need a CUP, and they don't mention the NVCAP zones 12
because they don't exist yet, so that's just an example of cleanup clarification. Then, here's one 13
that is of interest because it's about ADUs. By 2025, we want to have a program where we have 14
pre-approval of some floor plans, this kind of thing, and we're part of the Planning Collaborative 15
of Santa Clara County Cities' Association where we're sharing resources. This shows the web 16
page, here the cities association.org, that they have a calculator, they have some 17
recommendations, they have a gallery of ADU plans coming soon, coming your way. This whole 18
pre-reviewed plans for Code Compliance is the direction that we are going towards because of 19
this law so could make ADUs easier. I think that's – oh, that was the last one. That's my last 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.
slide. Albert, I don't know if you're hanging on with us still, that – have any comments on any of 1
this but – or if anyone has questions from the Commission. 2
3
Albert Yang: No, I'll just add that we'll be coming to the Commission soon with minor tweaks 4
and changes to our code to implement some of these ordinances. 5
6
Chair Summa: Okay. Well, thank you for the presentation. Questions, comments or just… 7
8
Commissioner Hechtman: Public Comment? 9
10
Chair Summa: Oh, thank you. Do we have any members of the public that would like to speak to 11
this? There's no one here. 12
13
Veronica Dao: No. I have no request. Oh, yes, one hand on Zoom. 14
15
Chair Summa: We have a hand? Okay. 16
17
Veronica Dao: Yes, from Leland Weisner. 18
19
PUBLIC COMMENTS 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.
Leland Wiesner: Hello. My name's Leland. Can you hear me? 1
2
Chair Summa: Yes, we can. Thank you. 3
4
Leland Wiesner: Okay. It's my first time participating as a listener. It looks – I'm pretty 5
impressed with the complexity that you guys are dealing with on all fronts and just to note my 6
interest is I'm a broker in the Palo Alto area and own some real estate on California Avenue, so 7
I'm getting very interested in all the different facets of discussion. I just very narrowly wanted 8
to bring back the 9
discussion on the CUP, and I know, anecdotally, many of the committee members mentioned it 10
not having a lot of data, so I just wanted to mention that I do have what I think is a little more 11
than anecdotal in that when we do offer to lease to retail people who – in California Avenue, 12
because of the various constraints, the formula of retail being foremost, we are leasing to 13
smaller tenants. They're mom and pop; they're smaller; sometimes, they're startups in that 14
sense, and they most definitely are dissuaded and probably don't even go towards getting 15
anywhere. They just walk away from our deals. They consistently see that price tag $8,000, the 16
uncertainty, and sometimes more, and they just walk away. In many cases, they ask us to pay, 17
and we just can't do that as brokers and/or owners, so I just wanted to mention that, in 18
particular. Ironically, it is probably the formula retail parties, if it was big box or even small box 19
retailers that could afford it, but since they're not allowed in California Avenue, it's 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
pigeonholed. Many of these retailers and the CUP finishes them off, if you want. I just want to 1
make sure it's at least clear from my perspective, as a landlord, as a broker, and as an active 2
participant, especially these days on California Avenue, that the CUP really is a huge, chilling 3
effect on attracting new tenants. I might add too, all these other discussions are wonderful to 4
hear because the dynamicism of what's going on is, I think – the committees and the council 5
need to understand as the economy's changed dramatically since COVID – we can almost talk 6
about it as pre-COVID/post-COVID – that these rules need to adjust to fit the economy, and 7
when the economy is booming like it has in the last 30 years or longer, it's great. You can have 8
all kinds of rules and restrictions, but if you want to attract new people when the economy isn't 9
doing well, you have to open up the streets, like California Avenue, in my opinion, needs to 10
open and all these other restrictions need to go away or be super streamlined and simplified. 11
Anyways, I just want to say thank you for all your effort and the complexity of it is sometimes 12
daunting, but we could use some help in getting these restrictions removed or at least very 13
much relaxed. 14
15
Chair Summa: Thank you very much for your comments. They actually, typically – you would 16
have had to make them when that agenda item – when we called for public speaking, but since 17
you were our only person to speak on this item, and you had something valuable for us here, 18
we wanted to hear what you had to say, anyway, but it would be better to try to do it at the 19
right time next time you speak with us. Thank you very much. Okay, that's our only member of 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
the public, so I'll bring it back to the Commission. Any comments, questions for staff? 1
Commissioner Hechtman. 2
3
Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you for the staff report. I felt that we got a little bit of an 4
education here, but what, I guess, struck me a little bit is the Planning staff has a lot on its plate, 5
and it took time to put these slides together. I know staff is already looking at these laws as 6
they move them toward whatever changes we need to see in our ordinance and, eventually, 7
we'll get a staff packet that says, "We need these changes in our ordinance to match up to 8
these state laws." I was wondering if it was really time-efficient for staff to have brought this 9
tonight. I appreciate you did, but I would also appreciate if it was just an item in Ms. French's 10
report that there's a bunch of new state laws coming or that have landed. We are working on 11
folding those into ordinances that you'll get later and that, maybe, would save staff some time. 12
That's my comment, is while I appreciate the education, I want you to be able to focus on the 13
things that are critical. I don't think that us hearing this report tonight was critical. Maybe staff 14
feels differently and clearly thought enough to bring it to us, but as you go forward, this was 15
unusual, I think – in my four years to get this kind of report. It's okay with me if you don't 16
deliver it in the future until it's packaged with the ordinance. 17
18
Chair Summa: Okay. Thank you for that. We did – the Chair and Vice-Chair did ask Ms. French if 19
she wanted to not have it tonight, since they really just – it's a placeholder, but I appreciate 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.
too. They were very anxious to bring it, so we said okay. I have two lights, Commissioner Chang 1
[Vice-Chair Chang] and then Commissioner Akin. No? 2
3
Vice-Chair Chang: Not me. 4
5
Chair Summa: No, okay. Commissioner Akin. 6
7
Commissioner Akin: Thank you, Chair. Just a quick question. I'm – one of the bills that attracted 8
my attention down at the Planning Commissioners Academy last month was SB 834, which 9
prohibits the use of parking permit programs in the AB 2097 areas, and I just wondered if we 10
had any update on current status for that? 11
12
Amy French: Sorry, can you repeat the bill? SB 834? 13
14
Commissioner Akin: 834. It may be in a suspense file now, for all I know, but… 15
16
Amy French: I can't recall if that's – I'm starting to track the ones that are in the legislation, 17
now, in the going – coming through now but not in place yet, so I don't know if what you're 18
speaking of is a 2023. 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.
Albert Yang: Yeah. It's a pending bill that our team will track as it goes through the process. It's 1
currently still live, but we don't know its chances. 2
3
Commissioner Akin: Okay. Thanks. That's all I really needed to know at this point. 4
5
Chair Summa: Any other comments or questions? Not seeing any, I think we can go ahead and 6
close this item. Thank you very much. There's no minutes, so we will – we're ready to adjourn 7
the meeting after comments, questions, and et cetera. 8
9
Vice-Chair Chang: I think Commissioner Templeton had the – I – we talked about discussing any 10
recess that we might take, so that's one thing we should do. 11
12
Commissioner Questions, Comments or Announcements 13
14
Chair Summa: Yes. This is a Commissioner questions, comments, announcements, so it's your 15
time. 16
17
Commissioner Templeton: Well, I hate to be between us and exiting, but I do want to just plan 18
ahead and see if there are times that we collectively think we're not going to have a quorum 19
and can plan on, and if that's not the case, then that's not the case, but I just wanted to discuss 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.
it. It has been quite a run here. We are not taking many – canceling many meetings, which I 1
think is great, but I do think that we might also want to have some time in the summer to do 2
the things that we need to do to stay fresh and happy with our work, so is anybody planning 3
take some time off in the summer? I'm wondering around July or August? 4
5
Vice-Chair Chang: I already know that I will not be here on July 31st. 6
7
Commissioner Akin: I don't have anything planned, but I'd certainly take advantage of it if there 8
were an opportunity. 9
10
Commissioner Templeton: I'm feeling the same way. I would sure love to plan something. For 11
me, it will be the end of the summer so late July, early August. I don't have the firm plan, so 12
they're not listed yet, but thank you for sharing, Vice-Chair, that you have a plan for the end of 13
July. Does anybody else already have plans that we want to share? 14
15
Chair Summa: Commissioner Hechtman does have his hand up, so maybe he does. 16
17
Commissioner Hechtman: I don't. I know that I don't have plans that would keep me away from 18
any – from the mid or late July or early August meetings, but I do think we should take a break, 19
because even if I don't have plans, I don't mind having one two-week interval where I don't 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 to prepare for and attend a meeting. That's a vacation. We're volunteers, and I think we 1
should have a vacation, and so whatever week a majority of the Commission wants to skip that 2
meeting, I would be supportive of that in the summer. 3
4
Commissioner Templeton: All right. Thank you. I'm going to just put my name down, and I can 5
always take my name off if I'm not actually out of town – this is very wishful thinking – for the 6
last July meeting and the first August meeting. Thank you. 7
8
Amy French: I'll just say if we do skip the July 31st meeting, then the gap between meetings is 9
July 10th to August 14th. That's four weeks off if that sounds good. That's just an example, 10
because we have five Wednesdays in July. 11
12
Commissioner Templeton: Yeah, it's one meeting. 13
14
Amy French: It's one meeting, but you get four weeks of break. 15
16
Commissioner Templeton: Yeah, I'm just thinking the first week of school. I'd like to take 17
vacation and, also, that first week of school is usually very rough for people with children in 18
school. 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.
Amy French: What's the first week of school? 1
2
Commissioner Templeton: The August 14th one. 3
4
Amy French: Okay. 5
6
Commissioner Templeton: That's okay. Not everybody has kids in school, but for now, I'm going 7
to put my name on both of those and hopefully I will be able to make one of them. 8
9
Chair Summa: Any other thoughts or – I'm always indifferent to taking a vacation, but I'm happy 10
to do so if that is – if everybody would like to. Commissioner Hechtman's hand is up again. 11
12
Commissioner Hechtman: Once we finish talking about taking a break, I have a different item 13
for this. 14
15
Chair Summa: Thank you. 16
17
Commissioner Templeton: Is there anybody who doesn't want to take a vacation or a – skip a 18
week at the end of July? 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: I'm just going to chime in here. I think we can proceed two ways. One is I – 1
speaking for myself, I will take my vacation when I need to. We are volunteers and – but I don't 2
– I think I'm indifferent as to whether we all schedule one. Obviously, if we know in advance, 3
that's, I think, very helpful for everybody to know in advance, so that's just – I request of my 4
colleagues that if we do know, then it's helpful because others may decide – if it becomes clear 5
that there's no quorum, then they could plan, then. I guess there's two paths that we can take; 6
one is that we schedule a week, and the other is that we just all act individually and… 7
8
Commissioner Templeton: You have not yet been burned by this approach, but it does happen 9
that sometimes they'll schedule your favorite project for the week you're out. 10
11
Vice-Chair Chang: Oh, I've been burned, and then I joined in the middle of my vacation. 12
13
Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. So is that what we want to do? I think – that's the reason I'm 14
bringing it up is sometimes we get caught by surprise in those situations. 15
16
Vice-Chair Chang: But at the same time, even if we scheduled a week, I'm not sure that I could – 17
my life is such that I could – so the reason why I'm hesitant to suggest that is because I, at least, 18
am in the position where, despite the best intentions, we might pick a week, and then I'm going 19
to have to miss something else, either, so it doesn't solve any problem for me. I would love to 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
hear of those two options, whether we do it Ad Hoc or whether we plan one, from each 1
Commissioner, what their preference is or whether they do not have a preference. 2
3
Commissioner Templeton: For me, it's absurd that we don't have any scheduled time off 4
between January and December. I think it's too much, and I know we're doing better about 5
having a lighter load in distributing our work across the PDC meetings, so good job to you guys, 6
but the time August comes around, it's tough to pick up the school supplies and read the 7
packet. There's usually a lot of stuff we're getting ready for Council when they're coming back. 8
I'm just – for me, I'd rather have a scheduled time off, and I think it's respectful of the 9
Commissioners to make sure that we have some time off. 10
11
Chair Summa: As I said, I don't have strong feelings about this. We never used to take – have 12
vacations because we only meet twice a month. It became a habit in the last few years. I don't 13
really care, but I do think there's value in everybody just living their lives and knowing that 14
when you have – other things come up, and you miss some meetings. I guess I have a slight 15
preference… 16
17
Commissioner Templeton: I think both for me. 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: …I have a slight preference for what Commissioner Chang suggested, but I 1
wouldn't want to stand in the way of anybody's vacation. 2
3
Commissioner Templeton: I don't think that that you're standing in the way of anyone's 4
vacation. I'm trying to suggest that we all take one meeting in the summer and don't meet. I 5
think that's what I'm trying to suggest. We had done this – I've been on a few years now, and 6
we had done this for many years, and the last couple years we haven't, and I think – we 7
understand. We've been coming back from COVID, and we have a lot of backlog to get through, 8
but also, it's a lot. I think it'd be nice to be able to, well, plan accordingly. That's all I'm saying. 9
I'm not trying to say some of the things you were implying. I'm not trying to say that we can't all 10
take our vacations on our own time. I'm not suggesting that. I'm actually trying to collaborate 11
and see if we can all agree on a time where we're not meeting. Thanks. 12
13
Vice-Chair Chang: Well, then selfishly, I'm totally open to that. I just never wanted to suggest it 14
because it – then I would continue to miss other meetings, but I'm happy to – and I would – I'm 15
happy to do that, and I would suggest the 31st because I'm already not going to be here. 16
17
Chair Summa: Any other comments? 18
19
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Hechtman: I wanted to ask Mr. Yang if we either need to or can address this by 1
motion, canceling a meeting? 2
3
Chair Summa: We don't need [inaudible 3:14:19]. 4
5
Albert Yang: It… 6
7
Commissioner Hechtman: Would it hurt to have a motion? 8
9
Albert Yang: It probably wouldn't. I'm not sure if we could do it under this item. 10
11
Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. 12
13
Albert Yang: Right, if this agenda item allows that type of action. 14
15
Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. 16
17
Albert Yang: My inclination is that it doesn't, because it's just for announcements, really. 18
19
Commissioner Hechtman: 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
Commissioner Templeton: It's not necessary, either, right? Ms. French sets the schedule. 2
3
Albert Yang: Right. 4
5
Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. Then, if we wanted to know whether we're having a meeting 6
on July 31st, do we just take an informal straw poll? How do we wrap this up tonight? 7
8
Vice-Chair Chang: Yes, let's [inaudible 3:15:02]. 9
10
Chair Summa: Commissioner Reckdahl, did you want to say something? 11
12
Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah, just good – best practices make sense to me to take off that first 13
week of school. That would seem to be a – if we have to pick one week, that seems like a 14
reasonable week to pick. 15
16
Chair Summa: That's the 31st? 17
18
Commissioner Reckdahl: 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.
Vice-Chair Chang: No. 1
2
Commissioner Reckdahl: That's the 14th. 3
4
Vice-Chair Chang: The following one. 5
6
Chair Summa: The following one? Is that date agreeable? 7
8
Commissioner Templeton: Well, not to all of us, but to me, yes. I was looking at both of those 9
dates. Bryna already has plans on the 31st, so I would accept either of those. 10
11
Chair Summa: Okay. So let's plan on one day off and have it be… 12
13
Vice-Chair Chang: Can we just do a straw poll, then, since we don't need a formal motion? My 14
straw poll motion is for the 31st to be our vacation meeting. Can we just go down the line and… 15
16
Chair Summa: Okay. Yes, yes, yes… 17
18
Commissioner Akin: I'm happy with either one. 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: Yes. Okay. Yes. So we will take the – and I see a thumb over there in the 1
mountains. We'll take the 31st and – as a vacation day, so none of us will be here. 2
3
Commissioner Templeton: Thank you for being open to that, Commissioners. 4
5
Chair Summa: Thank you very much. Now, Commissioner Hechtman has another item. 6
7
Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah… 8
9
Commissioner Reckdahl: I'll – one comment. This is something, probably, we should talk about, 10
let's say, in March or whatever. If people are planning their vacations, they know ahead of time. 11
Because now, we already have vacations planned, and if they're conflicting, they're conflicting. 12
In nine months, let's talk. 13
14
Chair Summa: Thank you. Commissioner Hechtman. 15
16
Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. So when I joined the Commission, we had a Commissioner Billy 17
Riggs, who was some kind of transportation guru, and I felt that we really had, within the 18
Commission, a lot of transportation expertise. He left toward the end of the first year, and since 19
then, I feel like there's a theme that has come up from time to time, and it came up again 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.
tonight, and that's – I want to – I'm just going to call it like a mild disappointment in our 1
relationship with the Transportation Division portion of the Planning Department. I'm 2
wondering if, under this concept of future meetings and agenda items, we really need a study 3
session with the – with Mr. Kamhi and other members of Transportation to either set 4
expectations or make things work better. I'm just wondering if that's something other 5
Commissioners think would be valuable at some future meeting when our agenda allows. 6
7
Chair Summa: I think that's a good suggestion, and I think it would satisfy some Commissioners. 8
Perhaps Ms. French can just keep that in mind for a night when we have very light agenda and 9
see if Transportation is available. Does that sound like a plan? 10
11
Amy French: I'm happy to reach out. Just to be clear, they used to be in the same department 12
as Planning, and now it's a different department, actually, so just in case the public is listening. 13
14
Chair Summa: Thank you. 15
16
Commissioner Templeton: I would add that some feedback I've heard from the Transportation 17
Department is that they don't usually intend to come in front of us unless they have to, and I 18
would love to, as Commissioner Hechtman said, I'd love to invite them and show our interest in 19
discussing and giving feedback and giving an opportunity for public comment to their – 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.
showcasing some of the major projects they're doing, because these are comments that 1
generate a lot of interest and shape a lot of our planning discussion, as well. It'd be nice to work 2
a little bit more tightly with them. I hope that however you decide to express it, it's showing our 3
interest. Thank you. 4
5
Chair Summa: Commissioner Chang. 6
7
Vice-Chair Chang: I'd like to reiterate that sentiment, also. I remember when I first joined the 8
Planning and Transportation Commission. Director Cammy was able to come at the beginning 9
of all the meetings, and I understand that he might be time constrained, but at least when we 10
had questions, and for the staff report, he was able to give a larger overview. Right now, Mr. 11
Rius is doing the best he can, and he does a call out to his department, but if they don't give 12
him talking points, then he doesn't know about what's going on in areas beyond his and then 13
when we have questions, unfortunately, there's nobody present who knows enough about 14
everything that the department is doing to be able to answer our questions. I guess I'm just – I 15
would invite a more complete – I'm trying to – a more complete information exchange, because 16
we are very interested. Thank you. 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: Yeah. Thank you, all, for that suggestion and solution. I think it's a good one. Any 1
other comments, questions, announcements? Who's bringing dessert next meeting? No, I'm 2
kidding. Okay then, I'm going to go ahead and adjourn this meeting. Thank you all very much. 3
4
ADJOURNMENT 5
9:22 PM 6
7
/nm 8