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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-10-09 Planning & Transportation Commission Verbatim Minutes_______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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: October 9, 2024 2 Council Chambers & Virtual 3 6:00 PM 4 5 Call to Order / Roll Call 6 6:00 pm 7 8 ROLL CALL 9 Chair Chang: Good evening, everyone. I'm going to call to order this regular meeting of the 10 Planning and Transportation Commission for Wednesday, October 9. Ms. Dao, could you please 11 call the roll? 12 13 Administrative Assistant Veronica Dao: Chair Chang? 14 15 Chair Chang: Here. 16 17 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Akin? 18 19 Commissioner Akin: Here. 20 21 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Lu? 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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: Here. 2 3 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Hechtman? 4 5 Commissioner Hechtman: Here. 6 7 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Summa? 8 9 Commissioner Summa: Here. 10 11 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Templeton? 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: Here. 14 15 Veronica Dao: We have a quorum. 16 17 Oral Communications 18 The public may speak to any item not on the agenda. Three (3) minutes per speaker.1,2 19 Chair Chang: Great. Our first order of business is public comment for items that are not on the 20 agenda. Are there any comment cards? 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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: I have two raised hands on Zoom. 2 3 Chair Chang: Okay. 4 5 Veronica Dao: First is from Liz Gardner. 6 7 Chair Chang: Go ahead, Ms. Gardner. 8 9 Liz Gardner: Thank you. Good evening. Hi, I'm sorry if I sound a little groggy here. I was up at 10 4:45 this morning. I reside at Related Mayfield Place, 2500 El Camino Real, where 71 families 11 reside with seniors, disabled, children, babies, where most of us are fulltime workers. I just 12 wanted to put in a – I don't know, a comment about the level of air noise and pollution over 13 here. I'm still not clear what neighborhood we belong to, whether we're Mayfield, whether 14 we're College Terrace, whether we're Stanford, or whether we're Palo Alto. We have a plethora 15 of noise problems over here, garbage pickups six days – six mornings a week between the hours 16 of 4:45 and 6:30. We have a Saturday 7 AM leaf blower pickup at Sandhill Properties. We have 17 Sysco fifth wheel trucks delivering at least three mornings a week, and that starts at 7 AM. We 18 have high-powered washers three hours a month going at Sonsini and Wilson. It's just loud, 19 noisy, polluted. We already – our quality of life is already diminished on an economic level. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 wanted to put it out there that I'm not alone in this. There is an extraordinary amount of 1 noise. There's gas-powered leaf blowers at all hours of the day and night here, and I'm not sure 2 what the noise ordinance update is. We're almost just wedged in here as residents of Palo Alto, 3 virtually ignored or just disappeared. We – there's these corporate businesses on all sides of us, 4 and we're – it's almost like we're not even legitimized. So Planning and Transportation, please, I 5 know we've had the El Camino redo, which by the way is beautiful. Of course the sidewalks 6 haven't been done yet, but that was also an issue where car fumes were getting trapped in our 7 apartments late – like 2:00 in the morning. We couldn't open our windows, and if they were 8 open and we closed, the petroleum got trapped in our units. There was no communication 9 about how to mitigate that from the City, which would've been really nice since kids and 10 families live here. Thank you. 11 12 Chair Chang: Thank you. I don't see the second raised hand. Do you? Oh, okay, I see. 13 14 Veronica Dao: Yeah, there – second person is Aram James. 15 16 Aram James: Okay, I would like to go by Avram Finkelstein and particularly until the genocide in 17 Gaza has ended, but that is – my great-grandfather's name was Abraham, or Avram, the 18 Hebrew, Finkelstein. I watched the debate last night in person for City Council. Doria, you got 19 an A, and I spoke with you at my home the last election cycle and you spoke with my son. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. don't agree with all of your positions by any stretch, but you're certainly gonna get my vote. 1 George, you were second, but a C would be what I would give you. Your delivery was mostly 2 very, very hyper and was difficult to follow it because of that and I was in the second row, but 3 you delivered some very good substantive responses. Cari and Keith, you both received D's. 4 Again, intelligent answers, but you were kind of looking down at your paperwork. You had flat 5 affects. Yeah, so that was the grades that we gave. 6 7 Okay, so back in May, I've written a number of articles that have been published, about three, 8 on the ongoing Gaza – and now of course the West Bank and Lebanon, the ongoing genocide by 9 the terrorist state of Israel. And as a joke, I can tell you this, I – and I'm open about this. I have a 10 little sign that I bring to the City Council meetings now, which is, "Eliminate the State of Israel." 11 So I'm certainly – that's my position. I think it should be a one-state solution. I condemn U.S. 12 aid. We're responsible for the killings and the bombing over there, and I'd like to know what 13 one of your or two of your or three of your positions are. I think most of you would probably be 14 quite reluctant to say anything against the Israel-first characters that this city is – we've got so 15 many Israel-first characters in this city, and it's an Israeli-occupied city. 16 17 And my point is this. I think many of you would – even if you were opposed to what's going on 18 and the genocide in Lebanon, in the West Bank, and in Gaza, would be afraid to even state that 19 because you know that the Israeli lobby would come down and smash your opportunity to do 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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. So I'm gonna – I'm still curious. Is there any one of you that's willing to say, "This slaughter 1 in Gaza is wrong. Our support, our tax dollars shouldn't be there," and if you're on the City 2 Council, will you have the gumption to open up the ceasefire discussion? That's not anti-3 Semitism. That is not. It simply should be the Council being willing to discuss it, have an open, 4 robust discussion and then put their rationale on the record. If they want to vote 7-nothing 5 against it, then so be it. At least have their reasoning. Thank you. 6 7 Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions 8 The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management. 9 Chair Chang: Thank you. Okay. Our next order of business is agenda changes, additions, and 10 deletions. 11 12 Assistant Director Jennifer Armer: No changes. 13 14 City Official Reports 15 1. Directors Report, Meeting Schedule and Assignments 16 Chair Chang: Thank you, Ms. Armer. And then now we've got city official reports. Would you 17 like to kick us off, Ms. Armer? 18 19 Jennifer Armer: Yes. Jennifer Armer, Assistant Director. And just a few updates and previews for 20 you. Next slide. We've got a few items scheduled for the October 30 meeting, Ordinance on 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Dark Skies and Lighting and Bird-Friendly Design and then a discussion of a potential study to 1 discuss the feasibility of Shared Micromobility Program, so that'll be an interesting discussion 2 with one of the representatives from our Transportation Division. And then in November and 3 December, we have a number of items there that have been listed in previous meetings. I will 4 note that in the upcoming meetings list that we distributed with the staff report packet, we do 5 have two tentative special meetings because of the conflicts with the holidays in November – 6 the second meeting in November and December. Please take a look at that and let us know if 7 either of those won't work for you. At this time, we do not have any items scheduled for 8 November 20, but we may have something that will be scheduled for December 18. Next slide. 9 And then the two items that we wanted to share with you about Council dates coming up. 10 Those actually are the same from our last meeting where we will have a discussion of the work 11 plan for Planning and Transportation Commission as well as the other commissions at City 12 Council on October 21, and then in November we hope to bring this Stream Corridor Ordinance 13 to Council depending on the results of this evening's discussion. Thank you. 14 15 Chair Chang: Do we have any questions for Ms. Armer? No? And then is Mr. Rius online 16 tonight? 17 18 Senior Engineer Rafael Rius, Office of Transportation: Yes. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Hi. 1 2 Rafael Rius: Thank you, Chair and Commissioners. Rafael Rius, Senior Engineer with the Office 3 of Transportation. Just a couple of updates for the Committee tonight, the first one about the El 4 Camino Real paving project that's being led by Caltrans. The southbound direction of El Camino 5 Real, the paving is complete. The northbound is partially complete, and we anticipate it being 6 fully completed, including the striping and signage, by this November or December. I know 7 there was an issue with some – with the no parking signs either being – the temporary no 8 parking signs, I should say, being either removed or discarded or stolen. Caltrans is working to 9 replace those this week, and our PD will be enforcing the no parking, but again, the permanent 10 signage should be done later this year. The next update I have is for the Rail Committee 11 meeting. There's no meeting for October, so the next Rail Committee meeting's going to be on 12 November 19. And Jennifer mentioned that we'll be bringing a parking program update in late 13 November, early December. They're the only updates I have for now. 14 15 Chair Chang: Okay. Do commissioners have any questions for Mr. Rius? No questions. All right. 16 17 Action Items 18 Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker. 19 20 2. Recommend City Council Adopt a Draft Ordinance Updating the Palo Alto Municipal 21 Code (PAMC) Section 18.40.140 (Stream Corridor Protection). Environmental 22 Assessment: Exempt pursuant to CEQA Guidelines Section 15308 (Actions for 23 Protection of the Environment). 24 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: So our first and only action item tonight is the next agenda item. It is to 2 recommend that the Council adopt a draft ordinance updating the Palo Alto Municipal Code 3 Section 18.40.140, Stream Corridor Protection, and it is exempt from CEQA. Oh, for the record, 4 Vice-Chair Reckdahl has arrived and is now present. Okay, so could we start with the staff 5 report for this? 6 7 Senior Planner Kelly Cha: Good evening, Chair, Vice-Chair, Commissioners. My name is Kelly 8 Cha. We have Kevin Gardiner from Good City Company for the presentation. 9 10 Kevin Gardiner, Consultant, Good City Company: Thank you. Good evening, Chair Chang and 11 members of the Commission. My name is Kevin Gardiner. I'm with Good City Company as a 12 consultant for the City of Palo Alto, and then also online this evening, should there be 13 questions, is Jim Martin, who has prepared the Existing Conditions Report for this study and is 14 available if there are questions from the Commission. Next. The staff recommendation is that 15 the Planning and Transportation Commission recommend the City Council adopt a draft 16 ordinance updating Palo Alto Municipal Code Section 18.40.140, which is the Stream Corridor 17 Protection Ordinance. Next. Looking at the timeline and community engagement, in fact this 18 goes all the way back to 2017 with the Comprehensive Plan update and the according programs 19 and policies that we'll be discussing this evening. But in terms of updating the ordinance itself, 20 we initiated this project in January of this year, did outreach with stakeholders in February. I'll 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. give a little more detail about that later. Community information session in March. The Existing 1 Conditions Report was posted in July, and then we had a study session with the PTC in August. 2 We were able to get feedback on key items that we had questions about, and hopefully those 3 have been reflected in the ordinance that's before you this evening. And then from here, as Ms. 4 Armer mentioned, this would go to City Council as the next step once Planning Commission – 5 Planning and Transportation Commission makes its recommendation. 6 7 This is a Council priority, updating the stream ordinance. It has been a priority for over three 8 years, so it's time and we're glad to have a draft ordinance in front of you. As mentioned, it 9 does go back to the 2017 Comprehensive Plan, including Policy N3.3, which calls for creek 10 protections from future structures and improving the habitat connectivity corridors. Next. As 11 we discussed in the meeting back in September – or sorry, August, there are a variety of creeks 12 in Palo Alto and the Comp Plan does provide some guidance toward those different types of 13 settings but also – and then the Existing Conditions Report drills down a little further and looks 14 at those particular site conditions. There's natural creeks, and we're going to divide those into 15 two different areas. There's natural creeks west of Foothill Expressway, which is really a more 16 urban setting. Then there's natural creeks east of Foothill Expressway in what we refer to as the 17 urbanized section of Palo Alto – portion of Palo Alto. And then channelized creeks and – 18 although the ordinance just calls them channelized creeks, we've added the word hardened 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. here just to really clarify these are engineered creek channels, and they are also found in the 1 urbanized parts of Palo Alto. Next. 2 3 So in terms of community engagement, we started with neighborhood association outreach. 4 The – me and my colleagues contacted all of the neighborhood associations, 15 in total, with 5 their contact of record and not only invited them to the virtual information session in March 6 but also offered meetings with the associations should they so desire. We had the virtual 7 information session in March, and a number of representatives from the neighborhood 8 associations did attend that. In that meeting, we did see – there was mixed support for the 9 increased setback, and then I could say there was concerns about balancing private property 10 development potential with riparian improvements. That's really the gist of it. But generally 11 support for the 150-foot setback west of Foothill Expressway. We've also had stakeholder 12 meetings with the San Francisquito Creek, JPA, Valley Water, Midpen Open Space, and the 13 Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter and Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society. And then for this most 14 recent meeting, there have been courtesy mail notices to property owners and tenants located 15 within 300 feet of any streams or creeks. Next. 16 17 So just to highlight a few – kind of the big pieces of the existing ordinance and guidelines and 18 standards, the existing ordinance has a Streamside Review Area of 50 feet from top of bank. 19 And that's regardless of location, so that's whether it's urbanized or rural foothills, and also 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. irregardless of the type of creek. Also consistently is a Slope Stability Protection Area of 20 feet 1 landward from the top of bank, and that also applies in all locations. Some of this came from 2 the Valley Water Resources Protection Collaborative Guidelines and Standards for Land Uses 3 near Streams. And later as we have this discussion, I will refer to that as the Collaborative 4 Guidelines, just to be shorthand. Those were developed as streamside review transitioned a 5 number of years ago from Valley Water to local jurisdictions, so they provided that guidance 6 and that has made its way into the existing ordinance. Next. The proposed ordinance picks up 7 where the current one has left off in establishing varying regulations within the setback, so it is 8 starting to get more context sensitive to the different terrain characteristics in Palo Alto. And 9 then there's also exemption opportunities for certain improvements for single-family 10 properties. Some of those are carried over from the existing ordinance. Some have come from 11 particularly the conversations that we had with the Commission back in August. And then 12 there's appropriate setbacks for conservation measures for undeveloped parcels and also a 13 two-tiered exception process. We'll go through that in a bit. 14 15 Just to compare the existing ordinance with the proposed draft, right now the existing 16 ordinance, as mentioned, has this 50-foot Streamside Review Area, and what is a Streamside 17 Review Area? It probably depends on who you talk to, and that has been an item of concern for 18 a lot of people. Is it a setback? Is it not a setback? What it is – at least how the ordinance has 19 been written, it is a review line, so anything within 50 feet of a stream or creek gets 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. heightened level of review. However, it's – some people, again, consider that a setback. Others 1 consider it not a setback. The Slope Stability Protection Area is 20 feet, and that, I think 2 probably everybody would agree, is a setback in that it's a no-build zone and it's – there's 3 measures in there to ensure that the creek banks are maintained with integrity. So next slide. 4 What we've done first is have a departure from the previously confusing Streamside Review 5 Area and instead call it a Streamside Setback, and that would be consistent with the direction in 6 the Comprehensive Plan. And then also it's just to clarify. I think people generally understand a 7 setback as they look at front yard, side yard, rear yard setbacks. It's generally an area where 8 there aren't structures but there are other uses that are allowed. And then the Slope Stability 9 Protection Area remains in the draft ordinance as well. 10 11 Then there's also, following Comp Plan direction, a Riparian Buffer. And the Comp Plan specifies 12 a 30-foot buffer for the portions of Palo Alto west of Foothill Expressway, and it does not have a 13 number but suggests looking at a Riparian Buffer for the urbanized areas. So the draft 14 ordinance basically duplicates the Slope Stability Area with a Riparian Buffer and has both of 15 them at 20 feet. West of Foothill Expressway, that Riparian Buffer is extended to 30 feet. So 16 we've done a compare and contrast with the existing ordinance and with the proposed. It's not 17 exactly an apples-to-oranges because of the difference between the Slope Stability Area versus 18 a setback, but for purposes of discussion, we'll at least kind of mention that. So for the rural 19 open space areas west of Foothill Expressway as well as the Baylands, currently the existing 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. ordinance has a Streamside Review Area of 50 feet and the Slope Stability Protection Area of 20 1 feet or 2:1 from the toe of the bank. The proposed ordinance follows the Comp Plan direction 2 with a 150-foot setback, so that would be a setback in the classic sense that most people 3 understand the term, and then the Riparian Buffer of 30 feet. So within the Riparian Buffer, 4 there's – it's really focused on preservation of native riparian vegetation. There's a little more 5 flexibility within the rest of that 150-foot setback. With culverted underground streams, you'll 6 see this consistently. Culverted underground means they are underground, we can't see them, 7 so they're in a pipe or a box culvert. So in that case, no setback or Riparian Buffer is proposed. 8 Next. 9 10 In the urbanized areas east of Foothill Expressway and west of Highway 101, referring again to 11 the existing ordinance, with a 50-foot review line, Streamside Review Area, and the 20-foot or 12 2:1 Slope Stability Protection Area, the proposed setback is 40 feet for natural streams and 13 channelized streams and a 20-foot Riparian Buffer, which would be just for the natural streams 14 and would coincide with the Slope Stability Protection Area. And just to mention where does 15 the 40-foot number come from, there's a couple of different places. One, that is a 16 recommendation from the Collaborative Guidelines for Natural Creeks in Santa Clara County. 17 For those looking for a second opinion, in the neighboring county, the San Mateo County Flood 18 Control Protection and Sea Level Rise Resiliency District, known as One Shoreline, recommends 19 a 35-foot creek setback. And that's to acknowledge really the burden that creeks and streams 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. may have in years ahead with climate change, with atmospheric rivers and extreme weather 1 and such, to basically provide a little more room to the stream to do what streams need to do 2 and keep new development out of harm's way. Next. So the applicability is that it would be in – 3 it applies to developments in all areas except for R-1 and R-2 and RMD districts, which have a 4 little more specific applicability. In those R-1, R-2, and RMD zoning districts, it only applies to 5 development that requires Discretionary Review or for development that proposes to encroach 6 further into the Streamside Setback than the existing condition. 7 8 Now there's a number of exemptions that are included, and some of this is carried over from 9 the existing ordinance. Some of this is from input from the PTC. So property separated from a 10 stream by a public street, some earthwork and landscaping to allow stream bank stability, 11 interior construction or alterations, utility service lateral replacements, and some retaining 12 walls. Also small storage buildings and the reason that's there is the small storage buildings that 13 are 120 square feet or less don't require Building Permits. So the intent was to not try to get in 14 the way of structures, such as Tuff Sheds or something that would not ordinarily require a 15 Building Permit. It also exempts building improvements that are not encroaching further into 16 the Stream Review Area, including rebuilding the same building footprint, and then also an 17 expansion of existing development along channelized streams in urbanized areas. And that's 18 with the provision that any of these expansions still need to comply with the underlying zoning, 19 so if there's a – whatever the side setback or rear setback is, those would still apply. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 So there's a two-tiered exception process. For Minor Exceptions, which would be – generally it 2 follows a process similar to the Home Improvement Exception process, so these would be for 3 unique situations, particularly where the Streamside Setback takes up a fairly significant portion 4 of a site or where there's existing conditions. It's provided for those low-density residential 5 developments in the R-1, R-2, and RMD districts. It would, under particular certain conditions, 6 allow a 15-foot encroachment into the required Streamside Setback. In some instances, it 7 would allow an average of existing setbacks from the adjoining properties, and it allows some 8 horizontal and vertical extensions. Then there's the Major Exception process, and this is a – kind 9 of a variation of what might in other circumstances be a variance. This is really meant to be for 10 extraordinarily unusual circumstances where the application of the requirements would really 11 inhibit the development of a site to the extent that they would not be able to have the same 12 enjoyment as their neighbors, so it's a higher bar. It does require Director approval, and then 13 there are findings, including a finding that there are no reasonable alternatives, that the 14 encroachment as proposed would not significantly harm streamside environment, and that 15 giving the exception would not negatively impact nearby properties. And this is really focused 16 on ensuring that all of the development capacity of a property is not taken by these regulations. 17 18 So as mentioned, we're looking to the Planning and Transportation Commission for 19 recommendations to the City Council, and with that, I think – is that the last one? So my contact 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. is there, both phone and email, and then the staff contact is Kelly Cha, Senior Planner here in 1 Palo Alto. As mentioned, also Jim Martin is here with us if there are questions about the 2 Existing Conditions Report or any of the conditions related therein. Thank you. 3 4 Chair Chang: Thank you, Mr. Gardiner. So what we'll do is do clarifying questions from the 5 Commission and then we can open it up for public comment. So we'll start with Commissioner 6 Akin. 7 8 Commissioner Akin: Thank you, Chair. Just an observation, in both math and construction, slope 9 is generally expressed as rise over run, so I was curious as to why the ordinance chooses to 10 express it the other way. Do we have a – was there a rationale for that, or is it just historic? 11 12 Kelly Cha: I think that – I think you're referring to the diagram that was included in the… 13 14 Commissioner Akin: I was getting to that next. 15 16 Kelly Cha: Okay. I think… 17 18 Commissioner Akin: But the choice of rise over run versus run over rise is used in several places. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Kelly Cha: I think that was a mistake. It's supposed to be flipped, so it should be rise over run. 1 The existing ordinance says horizontal over vertical, so it's rise over run, so it should be 2 corrected. 3 4 Commissioner Akin: Well, that's run over rise. Yeah, and you've already anticipated my next 5 question, which is – I refer to packet page 22 where the triangle diagram has a slope of 2 even 6 though the labels on the edges give it a slope of ½, so anyone reading this for the first time 7 without having gone through the language in the ordinance that explains that it's horizontal to 8 vertical, will be confused. So it would be nice if that could be patched up for the final version. 9 That's it. Thank you. 10 11 Chair Chang: Commissioner Hechtman? 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. Let's see. First question, really just a clarification. I'm 14 trying to understand this culverted/underground creek where the ordinance doesn't apply, 15 doesn't impose additional requirements. I think it's in the staff report. It seemed like to fall into 16 this category, it had to be a closed top basically, a pipe, rather than a concrete channel. Am I 17 understanding that right? So that a concrete channel is one form of an engineered creek, not a 18 culverted/underground creek. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Kevin Gardiner: That's correct. So – oops. That's correct. So – yeah, and really the purpose is if 1 it's underground in either a box culvert or a pipe, then there is not the ability to have the right 2 pairing of vegetation and the other matters that are of concern to the ordinance, so that's why 3 if it is underground, it's more or less exempt from the requirements here. 4 5 Jennifer Armer: And there is the channelized stream, which is the version that is open… 6 7 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. 8 9 Jennifer Armer: …but – right, so that is one of the categories in the draft ordinance… 10 11 Commissioner Hechtman: So is the… 12 13 Jennifer Armer: …as well. 14 15 Commissioner Hechtman: …channelized version the same as the engineered? Those are 16 synonymous terms, or do they have different meanings? 17 18 Jennifer Armer: Correct. So we have three categories, the natural stream, the channelized or 19 engineered, and the underground. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. All right. Thank you for that clarification. Next question regards 2 fences. In the draft ordinance, it says fences – in most instances, it says fences shall be pursuant 3 to – I think it's Section 16.24 of the ordinance. And I meant to review that before I came here 4 but I didn't, so can you remind me and the audience who might be interested in fences near 5 creeks, what are the general rules for fencing under 16.24 in Palo Alto? Do you need a permit? I 6 have a memory that maybe if it's 6 feet or less, I don't need a permit. 7 8 Kelly Cha: I think that might be correct. I'm not – I can't confirm the actual height. It might be 6 9 feet or 7 feet… 10 11 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. 12 13 Kelly Cha: …that requires a permit. And I think there's some different requirements in terms of 14 materials and design, but I can definitely get more details. 15 16 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. 17 18 Kevin Gardiner: And I'll just add, I know in the study session there was a lot of discussion over 19 fences, and Staff took that under consideration and generally took prior fence – with 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. exception of the wildlife fences west of Foothill Expressway, the fences are not covered in the 1 ordinance and instead it's just referring back to that code section, particularly because, as 2 mentioned, there's – a lot of the fences don't require Building Permits, so it did not seem like it 3 was – really made sense to include more fence standards in this chapter. 4 5 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. All right. Yeah, and I appreciate the cross reference rather than 6 putting in more regulations that may someday prove inconsistent with our general fence 7 regulations, so I like that approach. I want to pull up the two maps. The first one is on packet 8 page 31. It's the area where natural creek setback applies. Thank you, and if you can pull it 9 down so we can see the whole of the page? Okay. Go down even a – maybe you need to shrink 10 it a little bit. Right there. Yeah, I need you to be able to see the top. So I want to note here, 11 before we go back one page to 30, that what this appears to be showing is that this area is all 12 on the west end of town, if you will. It starts at Foothill and then covers the area west of 280, 13 and it doesn't – this map doesn't even show all of Palo Alto, but it gives me the impression that 14 the area where natural creek setback applies doesn't really affect any of the urbanized part of 15 Palo Alto. And if that is not the way this ordinance is going to work, I think that needs to be 16 fixed. But that's my impression. 17 18 And if we go back one page to page 30, which is another map – thank you. So this is just called 19 Creeks and Watersheds, and it doesn't show us where the natural creek setbacks apply as near 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. as I can tell. I think the function of this is to just identify the different watercourses that come 1 through the city and what their nature is. So I think as we move forward with this, we're going 2 to have to have excellent mapping because people, if they have a piece of property, they're 3 going to want to be able to go to a website and know whether this ordinance applies to them or 4 not, and if they see mapping that's inconsistent with that – like Map 31, if I lived on Edgewood, 5 I would say, "Oh, there is no natural watercourse," even though San Francisquito Creek is, I 6 think, considered a natural watercourse in at least parts of that run. So I think the mapping's 7 going to be really important. All right, those are my technical questions. Thank you. 8 9 Chair Chang: Vice-Chair Reckdahl? 10 11 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: I have a question about the exemptions. So east of 101, there's only a 12 couple of properties that even apply, and one of them is along Adobe Creek. And there it's 110 13 – the parcel itself is 110 feet and we have 150-foot setback, so would that be a Minor or a 14 Major Exception? 15 16 Kevin Gardiner: I'd expect that would be a Major, and that is a good example of what the Major 17 is for, where the standards just make such a big difference on – it goes so far deep into the 18 property that it's clear that the standards just wouldn't work for development on that property. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Reckdahl: And so what would the landowner have to do if they wanted to remodel 1 something, let's say, in that building? They would have to come and have a presentation. 2 Would there be fees associated with this? 3 4 Kevin Gardiner: If it's a remodel, they don't necessarily need an exception if it still fits within – 5 for example, if it's an interior remodel, that's exempt. If they're not going – if they're not 6 expanding any further toward the creek, that also would be exempt. Or even if they were to 7 tear down the building and rebuild it in the same footprint or build something in the same 8 footprint, that would also be exempt. So where they would need to ask for an exception would 9 be if they were expanding further toward the creek than existing conditions. 10 11 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay, very good. And we also have chosen the Foothill Expressway, but I 12 don't think – do we have any open streams? Isn't everything culverted between Foothill and 13 280? 14 15 Kelly Cha: We do have the San Fran-, between the 280 – I mean, not 280, Foothill and 101 or… 16 17 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: No, I'm… 18 19 Kelly Cha: …talking about… 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Reckdahl: …talking between Foothill Expressway and 280. 2 3 Kelly Cha: Let me check that. 4 5 Jennifer Armer: So that choice is actually based on the graphic from the Palo Alto 6 Comprehensive Plan that is on page 31 of the packet, and so that – the choice of that area was 7 coming directly from the Comp Plan. 8 9 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay, so it's just historical. Okay. And can you talk more about fences 10 within the urban area? Now this is between Foothill and 101. If someone has an existing fence, 11 they can keep it as is and… 12 13 Kevin Gardiner: That's correct. 14 15 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay, but then if they want to build an addition and move closer to the 16 creek, they can't go closer than 40 feet. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Kevin Gardiner: You can still have a fence within the setback but not within the 20-foot Slope 1 Stability Protection Area, so as long as they steer clear of the 20-foot Slope Stability Protection 2 Area, then a fence would be allowed. 3 4 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay, so if they have an existing fence right now at the property line and 5 they have something that's, let's say, 40 feet away – the back wall of their house is 40 feet 6 away, and they want to expand and go 30 feet away, can they keep their back fence? 7 8 Kevin Gardiner: I guess if it's existing. I mean, we're not telling them to take it out. But if they 9 were putting in a new fence, they would need to steer clear of the 20-foot Slope Stability 10 Protection Area. 11 12 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay, but the – so we have a 20-foot – so in the urban area, we have a 40-13 foot Streamside Setback and a 20-foot Riparian Buffer. So if someone has a house and their 14 back wall is 40 feet away – this is in the urban area – and they want to move 10 feet closer, 15 have that back wall go out 10 feet, is that allowed? Wouldn't that be going into the setback? 16 17 Kevin Gardiner: That would be encroaching into the setback, so it would be moving further 18 toward the creek than the current existing condition. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Reckdahl: Okay, so that would not be allowed at all. 1 2 Kevin Gardiner: Not without an exception or deviation. 3 4 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay, and that's where you could look at what the neighbors have and you 5 could average that out. And that would be a Minor Exception or… 6 7 Kevin Gardiner: That would be a Minor, yes. 8 9 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay. Okay, thank you. 10 11 Chair Chang: Commissioner Lu? 12 13 Commissioner Lu: I had a couple of technical questions, one also just – well, actually on the 14 differences between the exemptions and the exceptions. So on packet page 23 under the 15 exemptions, there's Exemption 8 that expansion of existing development along channelized 16 streams in urbanized areas would be exempted from this ordinance. Can you elaborate on that 17 a little bit and give some examples of like how that might apply to – yeah, just to existing 18 buildings along creeks? 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Kevin Gardiner: So for example, a lot of the homes along the channelized creeks have their side 1 yards along the creek as opposed to the back yard. So for example, if, let's say, somebody has a 2 very large side yard for some reason and then they wanted to expand – do a home addition, 3 they could expand toward the creek provided they're not going past whatever the zoning 4 setback would be ordinarily for that side yard. So as long as they're staying within the R-1 5 zoning envelope and there is room, then they could expand toward the creek. 6 7 Commissioner Lu: They could expand even into the setbacks unlike – I just want to square that 8 with what we were just talking about with Commissioner Reckdahl. 9 10 Kevin Gardiner: Yeah, in that case, they could because I think the intention is with the – if it's a 11 new house, then the intention is to have it set back 40 feet, but if this is an existing house and 12 it's being expanded within the zoning envelope that would otherwise be allowed, that would 13 still be allowed. 14 15 Commissioner Lu: Okay, got it. I think I got that. One more technical question. On packet page 16 25, there's a discussion on "Removed trees shall be replaced with native riparian trees following 17 the replacement ratios of the technical tree manual." So this is just entirely separate from our 18 Tree Protection Ordinance. It's just any tree, full stop, in the Riparian – or sorry, in the 19 Streamside Setback would need to be replaced according to the ratios there. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Kevin Gardiner: That's correct, and the distinction is because this is a creek habitat area, so it 2 may have some similarities to tree removal in a more conventional setting, but really the – this 3 is really a precious habitat along the creek, so the intention is that none of the vegetation 4 should be removed or if it is, then it follows those guidelines, but it's really meant to keep the 5 integrity of that vegetation. 6 7 Commissioner Lu: Okay, thank you. 8 9 Chair Chang: All right, I have a host of clarifying questions. So can you go through the 10 applicability again, because I think that's what's tripping us up a little bit. So it – packet page 22, 11 for the applicability, states that this ordinance essentially doesn't apply to R-1, R-2, and RMD 12 districts unless there is Discretionary Review or additional encroachment. Is that correct? So… 13 14 Kevin Gardiner: That's correct. 15 16 Chair Chang: Okay. So I think that's what's tripping us up, and I think that's also something that 17 was in the public comments where people were saying, "Oh, no, this is terrible." But if you're in 18 R-1, R-2, or RMD, it doesn't really change that much unless you have Discretionary Review 19 required. Okay. Good. Oh, so maybe you can help us. What types of issues would require 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Discretionary Review? Is this where you were talking about the second-story development? I 1 don't think we're all completely familiar with what types of things typically would require 2 Discretionary Review. 3 4 Kelly Cha: So I think these are listed in the existing ordinance, so it includes individual reviews 5 for second-story addition or modifications, anything that requires a Conditional Use Permit, 6 anything that requires some other – so individual reviews are like mostly for residential that 7 requires a second-story modification or addition, but we have added that additional encroach 8 further into Streamside Setback. That applies to some of the projects that may not require 9 Discretionary Review, so for instance, like there's some additions on the first story. Those 10 usually don't require Discretionary Review, and they go through Building Permits only. So we 11 have added those to capture and make sure that they also comply with the stream 12 requirements as well because when you're adding toward the stream, then we want to make 13 sure they also comply with the additional Riparian Buffer requirements and Streamside Setback 14 as well. 15 16 Chair Chang: Okay. There was a question that we asked last time this came before us for the 17 study session about how many parcels do we think would be affected by this, meaning – so if 18 I'm looking at the top of packet page 23, how many households are in the leftmost – look like 19 the leftmost photo – or leftmost figure, I mean. Do we know? 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Kelly Cha: I have the number. Let me get that. So maybe you can continue with [inaudible 2 55:47]. 3 4 Chair Chang: Okay, great. So while we're on that page, so I wanted to – the little labels – maybe 5 we can pull it up so that everybody can see. So this is the top of packet page 23. My question is 6 – so there's three diagrams. There's A, B, and C. My understanding is that, as currently written, 7 B is okay, meaning that if a homeowner had the medium gray structure and then they added 8 the black area, that would be allowed, and that C is not allowed, like the black structure would 9 not be allowed. 10 11 Jennifer Armer: Correct. Or would need to request one of the deviations. 12 13 Chair Chang: Okay, so the labeling is not entirely clear there in terms of – I don't think there's a 14 difference between – unless I'm not reading it correctly, it's not clear that C is not allowed but B 15 is. Like… 16 17 Kevin Gardiner: Understood. 18 19 Chair Chang: Okay, yeah. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Kevin Gardiner: Yeah. 2 3 Chair Chang: So one is a yes and the other's a no according to – like I think that was… 4 5 Kevin Gardiner: Yeah, it looks… 6 7 Chair Chang: …what you guys were trying to… 8 9 Kevin Gardiner: …it looks like the same caption was copied and… 10 11 Chair Chang: Oh, I think I see it now, now that it's electronic. There's an X. 12 13 Kevin Gardiner: Yeah, there's… 14 15 Commissioner Hechtman: It's crossed out. 16 17 Kevin Gardiner: …an X, yeah. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Oh, I couldn't – we couldn't see it in the hard copy. So now that makes a lot more 1 sense to me. 2 3 Jennifer Armer: But if that is the recommendation of the Commission, we could clarify that 4 language… 5 6 Chair Chang: I think that it's… 7 8 Jennifer Armer: …to make really clear, "This would be allowed. This would not." 9 10 Chair Chang: Right, that would be helpful, assuming we go that way, but I needed to clarify that 11 for myself before I understood what we were talking about. Okay, another clarifying question 12 is, we talk about the exceptions process, the HI-, so there's this two-level – the Minor 13 Exceptions and the Major Exceptions. Can you help us understand what is involved in getting 14 the Minor Exception? What is the HIE – what is the process going to look and feel like to a 15 homeowner? 16 17 Long Range Planning Manager Coleman Frick: Can I take it? So I think, in case it created any 18 confusion, it's basically structured like the HIE process that exists, but the intent of it is that it's 19 a ministerial approval process. So essentially what it means is unlike the Major Exception, 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. there's not findings required. It's just criteria. So it's, "Hey, if your property falls into one of 1 these criteria, then these are the allowable sort of menu of exceptions from what would 2 otherwise be allowed." 3 4 Chair Chang: Okay, so if I'm a homeowner and I'm trying to remodel and I want to do remodel B 5 in the picture, then all I do is submit my plans to the Planning Department, the same as I always 6 would, and the planner who reviews this is going to be the one giving me those exceptions 7 automatically just because they're allowed. Is that correct? 8 9 Coleman Frick: Yeah, so I think essentially correct. They may have to request an exception or 10 the planner would have to identify that an exception would be required, but that's something 11 that we can facilitate on the staff end. So the design of the structure is intended to make it easy 12 for homeowners or Staff to review these types of projects and make sure that it is pretty clear 13 what can be approved, and it's not like there's sort of findings that need to be made that maybe 14 kind of com-, it might make it more complex to do the process that way, so that was the 15 intent… 16 17 Chair Chang: Yeah, 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Coleman Frick: …is that it's, "If you fall under these categories, you will be granted these 1 exceptions." 2 3 Chair Chang: Okay, I'm just trying to understand, though, from like the property owner's 4 perspective, is it going to be more onerous? In other words, is there more paperwork required 5 or a different form or different evidence that needs to be provided than you would if you were 6 just simply doing the remodel today? 7 8 Coleman Frick: It's not intended to be that way. So it could just be wrapped into a Building 9 Permit process… 10 11 Chair Chang: Okay. 12 13 Coleman Frick: …for example, as part of the planning review of that Building Permit plan set. 14 15 Jennifer Armer: And just to jump in, if you take a look at the wording of that section of the draft 16 ordinance, it states that "if more than 40% of the parcel is covered by this Stream Setback and if 17 this would not result in the removal of existing riparian vegetation," so those should be pretty 18 clear to be able to show. So they would have to provide that additional information. Then 19 they're allowed up to three of the items listed in that section, and we've tried to be very clear 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. about what those specific exceptions could be. It's a menu of – I think it's at least six different 1 items that – or seven items that could be chosen from if you meet those first two criteria, so it 2 should be pretty straightforward as part of the Building Permit process. 3 4 Chair Chang: Okay. I'll save other stuff for the – this is helpful in terms of clarifying my 5 understanding. I'll save comments till later, but I did want to ask if Ms. Cha had looked up the 6 number of parcels. 7 8 Kelly Cha: So with the data we have, I just want to put some caveat that we don't have top-of-9 bank information but we do have center line information, so we used that and applied the 10 proposed buffers and setback distance, and that comes out to be about 900 total of 920 11 properties within City of Palo Alto. 12 13 Chair Chang: Thank you, that's very helpful information. 14 15 Jennifer Armer: But that doesn't necessarily mean that the existing structures encroach into the 16 area. That's just, it would touch that number of parcels. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Right, understood. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you for the clarification. Okay, I 1 have more questions. Okay, so on – I saw that there was a public comment that asked if this 2 ordinance addresses lighting or bird safety anywhere, and is the answer no? 3 4 Kelly Cha: No, because we have that coming up on October 30, and we have a lighting standard 5 included in the lighting section – lighting ordinance. So we… 6 7 Chair Chang: So there's… 8 9 Kelly Cha: …have a… 10 11 Chair Chang: …specific streamside requirements. 12 13 Kelly Cha: Right, we do have streamside lighting, so lighting near streams, and we have 14 provisions included in the lighting ordinance. 15 16 Chair Chang: Okay, thank you. I was trying to remember where we decided to include that 17 particular piece, whether it was this or the other one. Thank you. And then on packet page 17, 18 there was a comment about – the report mentions a public comment about somebody who 19 attended a – somebody who submitted a comment but emphasized the need for flood control 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. east of Foothill, and I'm trying – so the report says, "One person supported 150-foot setback 1 west of Foothill but emphasized the need for flood control measures east of Foothill due to 2 denser development." So my question to Staff is, this is not a tradeoff, right? It's not a 3 either/or. We can do both. I'm trying to understand if this 150-foot setback – well, that's west 4 of Foothill, but I'm trying to understand if the current ordinance would preclude any flood 5 protection measures. 6 7 Kelly Cha: So the existing Slope Stability Protection Area is basically the measure that we have 8 to protect the bank stability. So that is continuing to – we're actually continuing the 9 requirement with the draft ordinance, so that's not going to go away. So that is one measure, 10 and also we're having a little bit bigger setback available as well, so that'll also mitigate some of 11 the flood concerns. 12 13 Chair Chang: Okay, but I guess what I'm saying is that it's – the way it's phrased, it seemed that 14 the person thought that in working on this ordinance, it would prevent us from working on 15 additional flood control measures. Is that even a legitimate tradeoff? It's not, correct? Okay, so 16 – thank you. That's all I wanted to make sure. Okay. Then I have a question on packet page 20. 17 It talks about the – at the very bottom – there's A, B, and C at the bottom of packet page 20, 18 and it talks about the presence of a stream and how it's determined. And I just got really 19 confused here because I was thinking about the study session where you showed us two maps 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. done by different agencies that looked dramatically different, and I think during the study 1 session we said we needed to resolve how we determine the existence of a stream. So is that 2 resolved now based on – like so we're going to use the – what do we do when two different 3 maps show different things? 4 5 Kevin Gardiner: So it does offer – it's one or more of the following, so if there are conflicts, I 6 mean it's meeting one – it's on one of the maps. When in doubt, the one that's probably most 7 relevant to a particular property would be the survey of a property by a licensed land surveyor, 8 and that's typically done with a new development anyway. That would be the most kind of local 9 version. Otherwise we're relying on GIS maps, which – they're better than nothing, but an 10 actual land survey is going to be more precise. 11 12 Chair Chang: Okay, but what I'm trying to understand is, if I'm a property owner and I don't see 13 a stream there because I didn't know that there's a – I mean, there's no stream there, it's not 14 wet right now, and then it turns out that actually there's a stream there according to one of 15 these maps, then what would I be governed by? 16 17 Kelly Cha: So I think to supplement the response that Kevin provided, most of these concerns – 18 the discrepancies are in Foothills where most of the natural creeks are located. And in the 19 Foothills, majority of the land covered by zoning district – the Open Space Zoning District 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. majority of the Foothill area, and that particular zoning district requires a Site Design Review, I 1 believe. That's the permit name. And as part of the requirement of that review, it requires 2 some environmental assessment due to its condition, open space and greenery and some 3 environmental concerns. So with that, we require usually – we ask for a technical study, 4 biological resources technical study. That's where we find special species in some of these top-5 of-the-bank river locations. Those are all identified in that particular technical study that we 6 probably will primarily base the location of the creek from that particular study, and that's done 7 by a qualified biologist or some other professionals. 8 9 Chair Chang: Okay, but you're saying that then sort of the discrepancy between the two maps – 10 I just remember very clearly seeing two maps, they were very different, and you're saying that 11 the differences were mostly in the… 12 13 Kelly Cha: West of Foothill Expressway. 14 15 Chair Chang: …rural areas. 16 17 Kelly Cha: Yeah. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Okay. All right. Still a little concerned there, but we'll talk about that later. And 1 then – sorry. Does anybody else have any lights because I'm trying to find all my – oh, okay. 2 Also a question on packet page 25. So I'm trying to understand the intent of iii versus iv under 3 packet page 25. Well, I'm just confused because the section is titled – the section beginning on 4 packet page 24 is titled Streamside Setback Requirements, and then it talks about vegetation 5 and it says that, "Only native riparian vegetation shall be planted between the top of banks of a 6 stream or within the Riparian Buffer." That makes sense to me. But then the next roman 7 numeral says, "Installation of new ornamental landscaping shall be allowed, provided plantings 8 are not invasive species." And so I'm assuming that that is meant to address the space between 9 the Riparian Buffer and where the Streamside Setback ends, but it just gets sort of confusing, I 10 think. So can you tell me if I'm understanding that correctly? 11 12 Kevin Gardiner: You are. So I'm kind of jotting that down that that could be helpful to clarify 13 and that it's exactly that. Within the 20-foot riparian corridor is just to be the riparian 14 vegetation, and then within the balance of the setback or the remainder of the setback, 15 ornamental is allowed, provided it's not invasive and would not threaten that riparian corridor. 16 17 Chair Chang: Okay. And then I think this is my last question, is on packet page 27. Let's see, it's 18 number 4Ai. So it talks about, "Minor deviations shall be granted under all of the following 19 conditions." Is it all or any? I'm confused. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Kelly Cha: So the – if somebody is asking for a minor exception, the property or the project 2 would have to meet both conditions. 3 4 Chair Chang: Okay, so all. 5 6 Kelly Cha: Yes. 7 8 Chair Chang: Okay, thank you. Okay, so if there's a single plant that is like 39 feet from the – 9 sorry, I just – I mean, if somebody's trying to build there, they're going to remove all the 10 vegetation that's there, so kind of nothing would – am I incorrect to say that nothing would 11 actually ever meet that requirement or…? 12 13 Kevin Gardiner: So it would depend if it's considered riparian vegetation or ornamental. So if it's 14 riparian vegetation, it should not be removed, but… 15 16 Chair Chang: And how would they determine that, like a biological survey? Okay. All right. 17 That's my questions. Thank you. Does anybody else have any? Oh, I've got one from Vice-Chair 18 Reckdahl. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Reckdahl: Yeah, looking on packet page 23, it says, "The following properties – 1 projects are exempt," and they say, "Properties separated from the stream by a public street." 2 Does that include service roads, if the creek has a service road up top? 3 4 Kelly Cha: It's mainly for that area near the San Francisquito Creek. I think there's a park – I 5 think it's Thomas Hopkins… 6 7 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Yeah. 8 9 Kelly Cha: …Park. So that particular area has the stream, and then it's separated by an actual 10 street. I think we need to clarify whether service road would actually qualify for that. 11 12 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: So you don't know or… 13 14 Kelly Cha: We're uncertain, but we'll find out… 15 16 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay… 17 18 Kelly Cha: …and follow up. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Reckdahl: …because the service roads typically are 15 feet wide, so – well, we'll talk 1 about it once you find. 2 3 Coleman Frick: So just to understand the question, is the concern about if it's public versus 4 private service because I think in some cases it wouldn't be publically accessible if it's a… 5 6 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Well, for example, down by the San Francisquito Creek down at 101, 7 there's a trail – an open-to-the-public trail that's also used as a service road, and that's 15 feet 8 wide and that is between the creek and some properties. Are those properties subject to this or 9 not? And in Midtown, there is a service road that's run by the public. It's not open to the 10 general public, but it's publically owned. Is that – does that prevent those properties from being 11 impacted by this or not? 12 13 Jennifer Armer: So I think that's a good question. 14 15 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay. 16 17 Chair Chang: Commissioner Akin. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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: Thank you, Chair. This is a follow-up on Chair Chang's question about flood 1 control. And I had intended to cover this later, but I think it's better to follow it up now. The 2 Code Section 16.24, which talks about fences, that applies in the urbanized areas of the city, 3 has special provisions for the properties along Edgewood, which, among other things, allows 4 them to create like 10-foot walls. So the question I have is whether those provisions, which 5 appear to be there as part of flood control, are still compatible with the new ordinance that's 6 being proposed. 7 8 Kelly Cha: I think the intention is to apply the fences along San Francisquito Creek would – that 9 16.24 would still apply, but we can also look into that if that's a concern. 10 11 Commissioner Akin: Yeah, this is a – I don't remember the details of the wording. This is an odd 12 special provision in 16.24 for those properties on the area that the Water District has some 13 easement, so it's – it was completely unclear to me exactly which aspects of that would apply in 14 this case. 15 16 Kelly Cha: I think those were established because of the flood protection purposes, so I think it 17 would make sense to apply that particular provision here as well. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Akin: Okay, thank you. Just wanted to make sure there wasn't an incompatibility 1 that is being missed. 2 3 PUBLIC COMMENTS 4 Chair Chang: I don't see any additional lights from my fellow commissioners, so I think it's time 5 for public comment now. Ms. Dao, do we have comment cards? 6 7 Veronica Dao: Yes, I have two in person and three on Zoom. First in person is from Shani 8 Kleinhaus. 9 10 Shani Kleinhaus: Thank you. My name is Shani Kleinhaus. I'm a resident. I work for the Santa 11 Clara Valley Bird Alliance, used to be Audubon Society. I'm also a Parks and Recreation 12 commissioner. I do not speak for the Commission. I have a PhD in ecology and have done 13 tremendous amount of work on creek master plans and creek restoration and planning, 14 overseas and in U.S., so this is something I'm kind of familiar with. I was also on the Citizen 15 Advisory Commission when the policies that directed this to come were passed, and the intent 16 was really to protect the creeks. So I understand your questions, people have rights and they 17 should be able to do things on their properties, but I think there's some things we need to 18 consider. And so we submitted, the Sierra Club and our organization, a letter with a lot of 19 suggestions, and I've seen some of them repeated today in a the letter that Midpen sent you, 20 which I just received before I came in here. Creeks indicate quality of life, and we used to have 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. frogs, we used to have fish, we used to have all kinds of things in our – living in the creeks. Our 1 only beaver died last year because it was polluted. And when creeks – human uses, whether it's 2 using herbicides, ant poison, all of that is right next to the creek and sediment goes into the 3 creek, the quality degrades, goes to the Bay, we get algae bloom, and the fish die. So it's not 4 that simple to think, "Oh, it's 50 feet here or there." 5 6 And there was a study that was done by the Water Boards which is responsible for the 7 pollution. And they looked at all the different ordinances in the region, and they said that 8 estimates of effective buffer distances for sediment and nutrient – this doesn't even include 9 wildlife movement – most of the scientific studies suggest distance between 50 and 100 feet for 10 this purpose, and under any circumstances never less than 33. So we have 20, and so the 11 general plan suggests that let's go to 30. But in the Hillside, 30 collides with the need to remove 12 all the vegetation because of fires, so we need 60 to make sure we have both the protection for 13 the structures and the riparian corridor. I want to just comment on a couple of things. I hope 14 you [inaudible 1:18:55]. I know all of – I saw all of you – some of you last night. I know how 15 tired you are, but we worked really hard on this and I hope you had the time to read. 16 Exemption number 8, expansion of existing development along channelized streams in the 17 urbanized areas, this kind of goes against the idea of actually improving the streams in the 18 urbanized areas, like what they tried to do with Fry's. I'm not sugge-, it would be nice not to 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 it. I don't think you'll be able to do that, but at least maybe only exempt housing and not 1 other projects. 2 3 The other things that are of great concern because we've been seeing these in San Jose for so 4 long, when you allow a property that's between two other properties to use the average or 5 their line of the property, you basically nullify this whole thing. There's almost no properties 6 that don't have projects or properties already developed on all sides. I don't think you'll find 7 any. So at the very least in the Hillsides or anywhere that should not – that really creates a big 8 problem because you'll get to an average that one is 20 feet and the other is 25, and you're at 9 22, and we're back where we started. So that's not a good exception or exemption. We have so 10 many other comments, and I hope that you look at them very seriously and move them 11 forward. I hope this does move forward to City Council with our recommendations. One of the 12 concerns we've had is small sheds close to the creeks. That's where people put all the stuff that 13 you don't want next to a creek, all the toxic stuff, all the flammable stuff, all the things that if 14 there is a flood, they're going to go right into the Bay. Please don't allow storage sheds 15 anywhere. I think San Jose keeps them 200 feet away from creeks, all kinds of sheds that could 16 potentially have chemicals in them. I'm not sure about that, but I think it is. And Palo Alto can 17 do better. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. San Jose has a 100-foot setback anywhere in the city. They do have the averaging of the 1 properties nearby, but at the basis, it's 100 feet, and so – and the county, it's 150 feet in open 2 space. So please take care of our creeks. Thank you. 3 4 Chair Chang: Thank you. 5 6 Veronica Dao: Next is Jeffrey Shore. 7 8 Jeffrey Shore: Hi, my name is Jeffrey Shore. Good evening, Commissioners. I live on Edgewood 9 Drive, so it's apropos that I come here this evening. This handout attempts to lay out in 10 simplistic terms the situation that those of us on Edgewood face by reference to a struggling 11 interpretation of the ordinance or the proposed ordinance. Just for your background, I wanted 12 to explain. So after the 1998 flood, the parcel across the creek from where I live – I live at Greer 13 and Edgewood – was flooded. At that time, it was a mobile home park. About a year and a half 14 later, a developer picked it up and convinced the City of East Palo Alto that it should be a tall 15 apartment complex. And so they wanted to build up the building pad such that it would be 16 outside the flood plane, which created a diversion to our side of the creek. So therefore, the 17 decision was made that that property development had to go forward and in order to mitigate 18 the flood control – the flood risk to us, a flood wall should be put up. In addition, there was a – 19 this towering apartment complex, as a result of which [Dina Mosser 1:23:14], council member 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. at that time, arranged for a variance, a 10-foot variance. So that's what that fence is for, and 1 that's why it's exempted in that ordinance. 2 3 I would also draw your attention to packet page 28, the second to last sentence of Subsection F 4 as in Frank. There you see another exception to the lot size, and I'll explain how that applies 5 apparently in this context by reference to the diagram that I passed out. So the diagram is 6 intended to show in simplistic terms the entire lot that I own, and so my fee simple interest 7 goes to the middle of the creek. And before this project was put in place in 2002 to 8 accommodate the East Palo Alto development, there were easements in place in favor of the 9 Santa Clara Valley Water District, and that's represented by the arrow Pre-2002 Easement. And 10 then afterwards, they took more of our property, and so therefore, the arrow on the far left, 11 Post-2021 Easement. So what this ordinance does is it tries to alleviate the disadvantage that 12 we suffered. There were 15 parcels beginning at West Bayshore going about 1000 linear feet 13 up, just to try to reduce the disadvantage that we had by measuring the Streamside Setback by 14 reference – and the Riparian Buffer by reference to the line defining the Pre-2002 Easement. 15 Anyway, so what happened is they put a flood wall in. There's now a maintenance corridor 16 there. Nothing can grow there. They clear it out, and sometimes we have unhoused people in 17 that corridor. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 in any event, we put up our security fence, and what I'm trying to show here is that the 40-1 foot setback takes up, in my case, about 75 percent of my backyard, even with the advantage of 2 starting the setback, the 40-foot setback, at the old easement line. So there's – the old 3 easements were crooked because the creek moved, so if you're going to define setbacks by 4 reference to the old easement lines, you're going to run into problems as each applicant comes 5 before you. So I think it might be better to define by reference to the new easement lines, 6 which are defined by the current fences, even though that might be disadvantageous, and then 7 perhaps reduce the setback for those of us. The other thing is that I think it would be wise to 8 think about, as a policy matter, sweetening the opportunity for private property owners to 9 grant easements to the Water District for purposes of flood control by reference to these 10 development opportunities. And finally I think – in reference to some of the comments that the 11 commissioners have done today, I think it would be worth considering putting examples into 12 the regulations. This is quite common in the IRS, where they have a rule and then they have an 13 example. Thank you very much. 14 15 Chair Chang: Thank you, Mr. Shore. 16 17 Veronica Dao: Next is our Zoom speakers. First is Liz Gardner. 18 19 Chair Chang: Go ahead, Ms. Gardner. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Liz Gardner: Hi, yes, thank you. I have experience, 7 years, working at the Sacramento River 2 Preservation Trust. In listening to the discussion tonight, it's really kind of sad that a lot of this 3 discussion is about encroachment on private property for our watershed. I think that if we were 4 talking about these watersheds being our actual drinking water in Palo Alto, there would be a 5 very different discussion tonight, but because it's Hetch Hetchy that we drink, this is a different 6 discussion. So I did want to just talk a little bit about the contentious – or what I consider the 7 contentious area of California Avenue. From what I've researched is that Cal Ave, at least on 8 West Cal Ave, is a paved-over creek, which was once the Santa Rita Creek, which was also a fork 9 of the San Francisquito Creek. There's very little of the natural habitat left. In fact, you can't 10 even tell it was a creek unless you looked at certain things like the grates on the concrete or 11 how lush the grass is over at Sonsini and Wilson or there are some capped wells over there that 12 get monitored. California Avenue is actually still a habitat for the coyote and for golden eagles. I 13 have pictures. These wildlife have been traveling this creek for hundreds of years. And this is 14 just from my novice research. 15 16 What's going to happen with this? I've been hearing the discussion tonight that capped-over 17 creeks are not going to be included in this ordinance. West Cal Ave, or this section of SRP, 18 Stanford Research Park, College Terrace, Stanford, Mayfield – historic Mayfield, which has now 19 been paved over to allow for commercial corporate sites, such as Tesla and all kinds of – Sonsini 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Wilson and all kinds of corporations, and also the service road – what I'm going to call the 1 service road of Hanover that leads to California that leads to El Camino Real. California Avenue 2 West, which Google calls I guess South, I don't know why, but I think it goes back to the 3 topography of the Santa Rita Creek, is just very degraded. There's lots of semis, lots of fifth 4 wheels, lots of noise, vibration. There's actually a weight limit sign on Cal Ave that says nothing 5 over 2 tons. Well, that's not even adhered to because you've got all kinds of deliveries taking 6 place all day every day, including Saturdays. Sunday's an exemption, I guess. So I'm just here to 7 say that – let's include some paved-over creeks. Just to think that the Santa Rita Creek was 8 actually an overflow of the San Francisquito Creek, obviously that was a natural flood mitigation 9 that nature just did on its own. Now we're having to control floods because we do things like 10 covering over natural habitated creeks. 11 12 Is there – I just would like some recognition that – or some understanding about Cal Ave and 13 why – I guess, one, why this creek was covered over, why it's a paved street, why it's degraded, 14 and how can we restore some of its natural habitat to – obviously you're not going to take it up 15 and make it a creek again, but somehow where we're supporting the wildlife that I've seen that 16 still come along this creek and have for maybe even thousands of years. So I live at 2500 El 17 Camino Real, Related Mayfield Place. I'm right, I guess, on Mayfield, I'm not sure, but let's pay 18 attention to what was once there in our subterranean creeks that once really fed a beautiful 19 watershed and a natural habitat in the area. Thank you. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Thank you. Next speaker? 2 3 Veronica Dao: Yes, next is Dashiell Leeds. 4 5 Dashiell Leeds: Hello, my name is Dashiell Leeds. I'm the Conservation Coordinator for the 6 Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter. As Shani from the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance mentioned, 7 we sent an email with proposed recommendations for this ordinance, and we do hope you 8 consider them tonight. I'll be talking about a few key ones, some of which Shani has already 9 brought up. Section D, Exemption 6 currently provides a blanket exemption for storage 10 buildings no greater than 120 square feet. As Shani mentioned, these buildings often contain 11 hazardous, toxic, and flammable materials, and they're prone to being swept down the streams 12 during natural disasters. They're also vulnerable to fires and flooding, so we do hope you 13 remove this exemption. Section 4, Exception A, Minor Exceptions, Subsection 3, it allows for an 14 alternate stream setback to be the average of existing setbacks of the adjoining property or 15 properties rather than the stream setback requirement in Table 1. We think that this exception 16 threatens to negate the purpose of this ordinance. There are a lot of parcels along the creek 17 that are already developed, so this could become the default choice for all new development, 18 leading to the further reduction and constriction of the riparian corridor, so we do recommend 19 removing this exemption as well. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Section 1, Streamside Setback Requirements, C, Uses and Structures, Subsection 2 contains a 2 clause that allows for loading docks, trash enclosures, chemical storage areas, stationary noise-3 producing equipment to be located 50 feet from the top of bank and even closer than 50 feet 4 where setback requirements make compliance, quote, "impractical," end quote. None of these 5 structures or equipment should be permitted within this setback, and there should not be an 6 inherent exemption that allows them to be 50 feet from the top of the bank, so we do 7 recommend removing this section as well. Furthermore, the word impractical is subjective, so if 8 this allowance is to be considered at all, we do recommend replacing impractical with the word 9 impossible. But again we would like the section to be removed. 10 11 Section 3, Slope Stability Protection Area, Subsection B reads, "No structures or uses are 12 permitted within the Slope Stability Protection Area unless an exemption is granted by the 13 Director of Public Works or the applicant provides a geotechnical slope stability analysis 14 demonstrating that the proposed development would not threaten the stability of the stream 15 bank slope, require introduction of hardscape in order to maintain the stream bank slope, or be 16 at risk of damage from future bank stability or erosion and demonstrating how maintenance 17 and repair of the stream could be provided with proposed development place." This is also a 18 section we recommend removing. This ordinance is really broad, and it's much broader in its 19 intent to protect streams from hardening. All creeks meander, so this seems like a loophole 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 harden the creeks piece by piece and potentially eliminate riparian ecosystems over time. 1 It does contradict the Palo Alto 2030 Comprehensive Plan Policy N-3.2, which directs, quote, 2 "Prevent the further channelization and degradation of Palo Alto's creeks," end quote. Thank 3 you so much for your time and consideration. We do hope you look at all of the 4 recommendations contained in our email. We do hope you move this ordinance forward with 5 the proposed recommendations we've discussed tonight and sent to you. Thanks so much for 6 your time. 7 8 Chair Chang: Thank you, Mr. Leeds. 9 10 Veronica Dao: And last is Linnea. 11 12 Chair Chang: Go ahead. 13 14 Linnea Wickstrom: Hello, my name is Linnea Wickstrom. I live on Monroe Drive in Palo Alto, and 15 I back up to Adobe Creek, which of course you know is channelized. I'd just like to mention that 16 40 feet of setback would impact my ability to build an ADU because I sited my house to save 17 trees and I'd like to put an ADU in the backyard, but with 40 feet taken out of it, that would 18 probably be impossible. I didn't see any pictures that – or I didn't hear anything addressing 19 ADUs. I urge you to recommend a lesser setback than 40 feet. I consider that the same setback 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. for channelization and natural creeks seems not to consider a big difference even though I do 1 hear the climate change argument. I'm afraid that an ADU would be considered to be 2 development encroaching on the Stream Review Area and getting into city processes for 3 exceptions could get complicated. Like the speaker who talked about his property on 4 Edgewood, a 40-foot setback takes up a lot – a very large percentage of a long narrow lot, and it 5 would be great if they could – the pre-easement lines could be used because the last 25 feet of 6 my property extends to the middle of the channel. So I would appreciate your considering a 7 lesser setback or taking into account ADUs in the list of exceptions, which could be easily 8 allowed to encroach, partially at least, into the Stream Review Area. Thank you. 9 10 Chair Chang: Thank you, Ms. Wickstrom. All right, I… 11 12 Veronica Dao: Sorry, there was one last hand from Winter. 13 14 Chair Chang: Okay, let's take this one. But normally we don't take comments that pop up five 15 minutes after the staff presentation ends, but we'll – I'm going to allow this one. 16 17 Winter Dellenbach: Okay, I'm unmuted, right? 18 19 Chair Chang: 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Winter Dellenbach: Okay, and thank you for that. I did raise my hand and I hit something and 2 lowered it, so I apologize and thank you for being generous. So I'm concerned about Matadero 3 Creek. I'm not sure if it's even mentioned by name in staff report and stuff. I did really quickly 4 review the materials, so I may have missed some things and I apologize if I did. But nonetheless, 5 the natural Matadero Creek runs all through Barron Park. It should not be left out of your 6 thinking and this discussion. It is under threat from the massive development at Creekside Inn 7 and of course redevelopment within my neighborhood of who knows what. There's a lot split 8 right now that's directly on the creek right across the creek from Bol Park, so it was – it's not an 9 enormous lot. It's a lot split. They're building two, and I think one is an ADU, and it just worries 10 me. I think about runoff into the creek. I think about all kinds of things, but the creek flows year 11 round until near where it goes into its concrete culvert that runs across a good part of the city. 12 Its riparian corridor runs through Barron Park, of course, and protection of it is vital, as are the 13 banks of the creek. We need to do better, certainly, than our current ordinance, which is 14 unbelievably inadequate. 15 16 The letter from Bird Alliance and Sierra Club states, "Riparian corridors are valued 17 environmental resources whose integrity provides vital habitat and connectivity for fish, birds, 18 plants, and other wildlife." That is certainly our experience here in Barron Park as we woke up 19 one day so to speak and found two muskrats had built a little den in Matadero Creek just at 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. far end of Bol Park near the donkey paddock. Muskrats. So they were use-, they're not rats. 1 They used to be very plentiful all over the Bay Area, and then they were gone for the most part, 2 just gone. And that they had come back and come back to Palo Alto, made their way from the 3 Bay up the riparian corridor till they found a place that seemed good to them – who knows 4 muskrat thinking in terms of location of housing, but there you have it. This is an important 5 thing, to protect Matadero Creek. It supports all kinds of species, biodiversities from birds and 6 fish and various other things – birds large and small. I'm concerned about fences. So fences 7 being very close to creek banks, such as proposed at the Creekside Inn redevelopment, which 8 involves hundreds of units of housing, townhouses, and a large hotel. It also proposes an 9 underground garage, and I believe that underground garage is still sited about 10 feet from the 10 creek. So Matadero Creek runs diagonal across the entire Creekside Inn property, diagonal. 11 Plans show the underground – well, I already said that – about 10 feet away. 12 13 I'm concerned about exceptions. Exceptions should not be allowed to undermine the 14 protections in this ordinance as they easily do in our current ordinance. The proposed 15 ordinance states, "Applicants requesting a Major Exception –" now this is not a Minor 16 Exception, a Major Exception – "from a required stream setback must submit documentation 17 supporting all three findings." I'm not going to go into what the three findings are, but what I 18 want to know is, who makes these findings? It does not say, unless there's some other set of 19 ordinance, different code, that says, but who makes these findings? What is actually required 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 what level of expertise is needed to overcome bank, stream, and riparian corridor 1 protections? This lack of detail must be included in an updated or new ordinance. Major 2 Exceptions should require a high bar of proof and therefore seldom granted. Earth first. Natural 3 streams, their banks and riparian corridors, the biodiversity they sustain must be subject to 4 stringent protections within urban Palo Alto. Any new ordinance must reflect this. Thank you so 5 much. 6 7 Chair Chang: Thank you, Ms. Dellenbach. Okay, I think that concludes our public comments. So 8 now we're going to bring it back to the Commission for comments, and I've already got two 9 lights, so we'll have Commissioner Hechtman and then Commissioner Akin. 10 11 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you and thank you to the public for those comments. So I have 12 a lot to say about this draft ordinance, so much so that I think I'm going to need four rounds. So 13 I've broken up my remarks into four rounds to allow the other commissioners equal – I don't 14 know if they'll need equal time, but time. But I want to start with a disclosure, which I didn't 15 remember until he spoke here tonight. Shortly after our study session, I exchanged emails with 16 Mr. Shore who spoke to us tonight, resident of Edgewood, at that point there was no draft 17 ordinance. He expressed his concerns about what its contents might be, and he actually 18 reminded me that back when the flood wall he referenced was being constructed, Valley Water 19 acquired rights from property owners and my firm was involved in those acquisitions, although 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. my memory is I was not. I was doing other things and was not. Anyway, I wanted to disclose 1 that. 2 3 So in this first tranche of my comments, I really want to sort of go overalland say that I don't 4 believe that there is any way that this commission can act tonight in a way to give Staff 5 sufficient direction that this can move on to Council. I think there are going to be too many 6 revisions and clarifications and reworkings of this ordinance– it's not going to be the kind of 7 thing where we can say, "Make these changes," and go to Council. And I think in the questions 8 that I heard from other commissioners, I'm getting a flavor of that from other commissioners as 9 well. I'd feel differently about this ordinance if we were planning a new city and these are the 10 rules we want to protect these creeks as we start to build. But that's not what Palo Alto is, and 11 so what this really is, is going to be an overlay on the built environment that is Palo Alto from 12 Foothill to 101. And so maybe – parts of it I think probably will mostly work well, Foothill West, 13 but there are a lot of problems that I think need to be fixed that maybe aren't intended but 14 they will occur. They need to be fixed before this moves on to the Council. 15 16 And in a lot of our Planning Commission hearings where somebody's proposing to do 17 something on their property, we hear commissioners often talk about the impact this has on 18 the people next to whatever that thing is and discussions of quality of life. And I would submit 19 that tonight the quality-of-life issue is for the people next to the thing and the thing is any kind 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 watercourse other than a channelized underground watercourse to which this doesn't apply. 1 And according to the Existing Conditions Report, it looks like there are 10,000 parcels that are 2 adjacent to some watercourse. I wasn't clear on what Ms. Cha – the 900 or so. That was 3 obviously some subset. And frankly the numbers in the Existing Condition Report weren't 4 entirely clear to me, but it's a huge number of parcels that this is going to have an effect on. 5 And because that is so, I think that once we have an ordinance that the Planning Commission 6 can recommend to the Council, I think there's an intermediate step that needs to happen, and 7 that is a more robust public period, another community meeting perhaps, where people can 8 really understand with examples how this is going to affect their future use of their parcel, 9 which almost certainly is built because almost every parcel in Palo Alto is. 10 11 And so the only other point I wanted to make is, one of the written comments we got was on 12 the issue of streamside lighting, and I'm glad they brought that up because my memory is when 13 we were talking about lighting, we said, " we're going to have special rules for streams. Let's put 14 it with the stream rules." And now if we're going to do it the other way, that's okay with me, 15 but we don't want to just let it drop through a crack. So it's not here now, so let's make sure 16 that when we see the lighting ordinance, that there's a section for that. So I'm going to stop 17 there with my first round. Thank you. 18 19 Chair Chang: Commissioner Akin. And then we'll have Commissioner Summa. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Akin: Okay, thank you. Yes, there's a great deal to consider here, and I'm looking 2 forward to hearing what my fellow commissioners have to say. So I'll make it easy and just hit a 3 couple of more specific topics on this round, one on setbacks and one on fences. Those of us 4 who have survived the contextual setback process in other projects are very much aware of the 5 ratcheting effect that having the averaging of adjacent properties can have on what's possible 6 on a given property. One way out of this, of course, is to just do as a commenter suggested and 7 set the fixed large setback. If you are looking for a compromise between averaging and the 8 large fixed setback, then there are options available. The two that I think work the best are that 9 you allow the use of the average setback minus a fixed amount – I'm sorry, for the setback, 10 that's plus a fixed amount. So you might say, "Well, you can use the average plus 10 feet," and 11 over time, that will ratchet the setback away from the creek. A faster solution that achieves the 12 same end is the Zeno's paradox approach. You say, "You must go halfway between the average 13 and the fixed setback," but either way you offer some protection to the existing property 14 owners while achieving the goal of moving the construction away from the creek in the long 15 run. 16 17 Second comment is about fences. So let me talk about packet page 26, which talks about fences 18 in the Riparian Buffer Zone. So these are interesting fences. They don't keep animals or humans 19 in or out. They don't block any sound. They don't block any light. They're not on the property 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. line, so they don't mark the property line. So the question I have is, do these fences actually 1 serve any useful function, and if they don't, why are we allowing them at all? So I'm looking 2 forward to observations along those lines. Thank you. That's it for now. 3 4 Chair Chang: Commissioner Summa and then Templeton. 5 6 Commissioner Summa: So thank you to Staff and to our public speakers, and I want to say that I 7 agree with the comments made by my colleagues so far. And we got the Midpeninsula letter 8 very late today, which is not anybody – it's not our fault, and I noticed though that it does 9 coincide with many of the observations by Sierra Club and the newly named Bird Alliance. So I 10 think these are our experts, so I'm very troubled about – okay, so let me start over. I do think 11 we had enough last-minute notifications from public who were concerned in the built 12 urbanized part of Palo Alto, especially near channelized creeks, that 40 feet was not going to be 13 workable – 40-foot setback. Alternatively, I think that there are too many exceptions and 14 reductions of what we're proposing, especially where the – in our wildlife interface area and 15 our open space areas because we set these big standards and then we have all these possible 16 ways of reducing them that I don't think is very useful. Commissioner Akin mentioned two of 17 them. Both Midpen and Sierra Club mentioned a problem with very low fence would affect 18 endangered species. You cannot – I think somebody mentioned this, but I wasn't sure. You 19 need – in addition to the Riparian Border, which requires that we have riparian-appropriate 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. plantings in it, you need to have a 30-foot – elsewhere our code requires a 30-foot vacant-of-1 vegetation area for defense against fire, so altogether that means that's a 60-foot area, not a 2 30-foot area. So I think that needs to be clarified. 3 4 I think the Major Exceptions, I have a preference – I think Minor Exceptions are happening at 5 the Director's level. I think Major Exceptions should be a variance so the public can weigh in on 6 them. I have a problem with the average between – when we have a new standard for building 7 standards, we don't say, "Oh, but you can average it to the old standards on either side of you," 8 so I don't know why we would approach that here, especially in our most sensitive streamside 9 areas. And I think we should – I think we definitely need to go with more public outreach. I 10 think people didn't know this was going to hap-, I don't know if there's 920 affected properties 11 in the urbanized area or what Commissioner Hechtman said, which was considerably more, so I 12 think we need more information. And I'm very sad because I would like to advance this as 13 quickly as possible because it's long past due, but I'm not even sure we can – I don't even know 14 how to go through it unless we go through it line by line, which is always a terribly time-15 consuming thing to do. So those are my initial and certainly not all my thoughts this evening. 16 Thank you. 17 18 Chair Chang: Commissioner Templeton and then Reckdahl. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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. This is a question for Staff. What cities did you research 1 to base these proposed ordinance on? 2 3 Kevin Gardiner: We – probably about a dozen different cities. I will… 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: It's okay to mention them. 6 7 Kevin Gardiner: …say… 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: I mean, whatever you can think of. 10 11 Kevin Gardiner: Well, I can't think of them all – they were in the first staff report, so I can't think 12 of them all off hand. Closest to here would be San Jose, Santa Clara County, San Carlos, 13 Fremont… 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: That's good. Thank you. Yeah, because I'm having the same feeling 16 as several of my colleagues have mentioned that this is not close to being ready for Palo Alto, 17 and I'm trying to figure how we can do this without reinventing the wheel. I think some of the 18 suggestions are that have been made are pretty good, especially the chance for public to weigh 19 in, in a different setting. This might not be the right setting because we're going to end up doing 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. as Commissioner Summa said, going line by line, and that's a lot of time here in this space that 1 may not be the best use of any of our time. I guess my suggestion would be to look at cities that 2 are more closer to Palo Alto's size and geography, that's – I've done some work with Valley 3 Water, and in San Jose areas, it's very different just in terms of scale. And I'm wondering if we 4 might be able to learn something that would be useful from looking at those areas too. That's 5 not to say – I don't want to restart anything, but it might be possible to look at some areas that 6 are more similar to Palo Alto to get some inspiration. You did mention San Carlos, which I think 7 is probably a little smaller and more in the hilly, by-the-Bay kind of nature of Palo Alto, but I 8 wonder if there's other cities that could be inspiration as well. 9 10 I also know that at Valley Water, we looked at renaturalizing some creeks and riparian corridors 11 that might be interesting to take a look at from the perspective of what has worked and what 12 hasn't and what can we learn from that for here because we don't want to – I guess I don't 13 want to reinvent the wheel. I don't want to miss out on things that we have already learned in 14 other neighboring areas as we go into here because this is a lot and people in our community 15 will be very frustrated if we get it wrong. So there's going to be a lot of scrutinizing these 16 ordinances, so I hope that is an early direction of where we're going. I'll be standing by to see if 17 we have any more to add before we motion to continue or whatever we're going to do. Thank 18 you. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Okay, and we're going to have Vice-Chair Reckdahl and then Commissioner Lu. 1 2 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Yeah, so this is kind of both too little and too much. I think that in the 3 Foothills area – Shani's letter, I thought, was very good and she brought some very good points. 4 I think a lot of those could be incorporated into the west of Foothill and make that more strict. 5 We have more room there, so we can be more onerous on it. But on the other hand, in the 6 urban areas, especially against the channelized creeks, I think it's too much. I don't see 7 channelized creeks as being a hotbed of wildlife, and so I think we have to be more forgiving 8 there and not put as much restrictions on the landowners. Then the middle one is that in the 9 urban areas in natural creeks, I'm torn about that. I don't know how much of an impact this is 10 on landowners and I really – between outlook – outreach, public outreach and also just more 11 information. How big are these lots? Is 40 feet a big chunk of their lot? I don't think I have 12 enough information to decide whether what we're suggesting is going to be appropriate for 13 naturalized creeks in the urban area. So then – can you go to slide 17? I want to talk about 14 Major Exceptions. If someone had a lot, let's say on a natural creek in the urban area and they 15 thought what we were doing was too onerous, they would have to do a Major Exception here. 16 What – would there be fees associated with this? 17 18 Jennifer Armer: I don't believe we have any fees currently proposed with this. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Reckdahl: Okay. 1 2 Kelly Cha: So mostly it would have to be folded into the permits they would require to have that 3 proposed. So if it's a Discretionary Permit, it'll be part of that review. If it is a Building Permit, 4 it'll be part of that review as well. But for Major Exception, if for some reason the project 5 requires only Building Permit, that would have to actually turn into a Discretionary. 6 7 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay, and so what kind of delay would this be? 8 9 Kelly Cha: We cannot determine how much additional time would be added, but it'll be folded 10 into whatever the permit review timeline that this particular project… 11 12 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay, and… 13 14 Kelly Cha: …usually requires. 15 16 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: …I mean, these criteria, when I look on slide 17, they look reasonable, but 17 they seem kind of vague and it seems like it could be arbitrarily decided one way or another 18 depending on the people's bent. And so I just feel really unsettled looking at this. I understand 19 exception process is a good way of being flexible, but are we adding flexibility or are we adding 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. uncertainty? I'm not sure if we're doing a good service here or not. Anyway, those are my 1 comments. Thank you. 2 3 Chair Chang: Commissioner Lu. 4 5 Commissioner Lu: Thank you. I agree that we need more public outreach, and I agree that I 6 don't think this is ready for Council right now. I think there's a lot of details and also some 7 unpredictability of how those details pan out. I also agree with a lot of the comments so far. 8 Notably, I think removing the conflicts between the fire protection buffer and the setbacks here 9 makes a lot of sense and needs to be clarified. I think one exemption – the exemption I 10 mentioned earlier about expansion of existing development along channelized streams and 11 urbanized areas, that's doing a lot of work for me in terms of giving more flexibility while also 12 actually still protecting the environment, but I think that exemption, which is so powerful, is a 13 little bit vague and needs to be actually clarified. I'm not sure how that would cover a potential 14 ADU or how that would cover a potential commercial property that wanted to do a major 15 expansion, like we have warehouses and miscellaneous kind of buildings abutting the 16 channelized creeks by Matadero. I'm for flexibility, but I just don't understand what limits there 17 are in that exemption. So those were all the major comments for this round, so I'll cut it off 18 there. Thank you. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Okay, I was really excited about this, particularly – and I can see how hard Staff 1 and Mr. Gardiner have worked on this because I actually think that when you take it apart and 2 really look at the impacts, it seems pretty doable, so I know I'm kind of a little bit different from 3 my fellow commissioners that way. That said, because I don't fully understand everything, 4 that's where I really concur with a lot of what Vice-Chair Reckdahl said, specifically with respect 5 to how the ordinance impacts people in the impact properties between Foothill and 101. What 6 I'm really loathe to do though is – because I think we actually have agreement on the areas east 7 of 101 and west of Foothill and that's also the highest impact area to protect. We have already 8 seen come before the Commission in the time since the Comp Plan was adopted, I believe three 9 different projects in the open space with a creek running through them, and this ordinance 10 would've affected things. And at the time when these projects came before us, many of us said, 11 "Well, I guess our hands are little bit tied," because we hadn't updated the ordinance yet. 12 13 And so while I want public comment for the impact on the urbanized areas, I actually think – 14 with respect to west of Foothill and east of 101, I think we've got a pretty good ordinance, 15 especially if you take into account – if you take the public comments from Ms. Kleinhaus and 16 Mr. Leeds. I thought they were very, very thoughtful, particularly the one about the 60-foot 17 Riparian Buffer there. So I don't want to – I mean, we have already delayed many years. I don't 18 know how much longer we would delay. And really the bulk of the benefit here is in the wilder 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. areas, so I wonder if there's something that can be salvaged. It may not be practical, but those 1 are my thoughts for the initial round. Commissioner Templeton, then Hechtman. 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you, Chair. Yes, I guess that was – to your point, part of my 4 question is, some of these comments that are coming in from major organizations were not 5 among the list of things that were consulted to make these updates, and I'm just wondering if 6 you can speak to that as well. Thank you. Did you speak to any of the organizations that 7 submitted these suggestions? 8 9 Kevin Gardiner: Yes, we did. So the ordinance did try to include the direction from those 10 discussions. However, they did not have any ordinance to look at until now, so now they're able 11 to provide much more detail. So it was trying to capture the intent and the spirit from those 12 earlier meetings, but until you have something to mark up… 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: So like a first draft versus a final draft kind of situation. 15 16 Kevin Gardiner: Right, well, and initially the meetings were working on an ordinance were the 17 things we should be looking at, so it was a much broader, higher level discussion and we 18 weren't getting into the particulars of how many feet or what have you. It did include 19 discussion of the merits of why are setbacks important and how does it relate to the different 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. topographical conditions, things like that, riparian. So again the ordinance was trying to capture 1 those in a general sense, but it's the specifics that allows more particular comments like what 2 we've received since. 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. 5 6 Chair Chang: Commissioner Hechtman. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. So before I start round 2, I do want to say that in my 9 initial comments and these comments, I don't mean to imply that I don't think Staff made a 10 really strong first effort. We are balancing a lot of competing wants and needs here, and that's 11 a real challenge. And as Commissioner Templeton mentioned, we're not the first to do it, and 12 so we have the benefit of seeing how other places have done it. And I remember from the 13 study session being impressed by the thoroughness of the research that Staff and the 14 consultants had done to try to gather what was at that point the base information for starting 15 to construct the ordinance. So I do appreciate the work here and I come from a perspective of 16 somebody who works with ordinances like this a lot, and so maybe I see things that aren't 17 readily apparent and I want to bring those out, but it's not intended as any kind of criticism but 18 more really more collaboration. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 in the second round, what I want to talk about is the areas that are subject to the potential 1 150-foot setback, and really I don't have a lot else to say about the areas west of Foothill. Those 2 are largely large-acre lots, and there you have the origins of the watercourses, if you will, 3 whereas when we look at the area around 101 and east of 101, this is the confluence of these 4 big watersheds that are kind of funneled into these areas. And so I don't have a lot to say about 5 that area to the west of Foothill other than this 30-foot additional fire break setback, which I'm 6 familiar with, it sounds like what we're talking about there is we've got a 30-foot Riparian Buffer 7 and beyond that we have another 120 feet of Streamside Setback if I'm understanding right, or 8 maybe it's 100 feet and that's one of the issues we'll get to. But in any event, this 30-foot clear 9 space, which Fire requires in the high-fire areas, that would not be in addition – that would not 10 be behind the 150 but rather just behind the riparian area, this Riparian Buffer, so that you're 11 not clearing the riparian vegetation, and I think that seems logical and reasonable. 12 13 All right, so I'm really going to focus on this area around mostly east of 101 but not entirely. So 14 in our staff report – but this could actually apply both west and east. So our staff report 15 indicates – and again, the numbers in the Existing Conditions Report area little bit hard to 16 follow, but at least 31 parcels in this area of the 150 that are half acre or less. So just to remind 17 everybody, a 150 x 150-foot square is just barely over a half acre, and so that means if I am up 18 in the hills and I have a half-acre square on a creek, the Streamside Setback is going to cover all 19 of my property, and so no part of it is buildable. Now of course, properties aren't all square, 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. particularly up in the hills, but some of them are kind of long. We have seen actually some that 1 were longer along the creek than they were deep, and then there are some that are the other 2 way, so we could be looking at ½-acre to 2-acre parcels, of which I think there were quite a few 3 more, another 88 or something, where this could preclude development. 4 5 And so when we look at our ordinance about how to contend with that, it appears to me that 6 they're not going to qualify for a Minor Exception, and in my fourth round, I'm going to go 7 through the ordinance and explain why. And so they're going to be looking at a Major 8 Exception, and when we get to round four, I'll explain why we're not going to be able to make 9 those findings as currently written. And so that's a real problem, that we don't have a relief 10 valve when we're potentially making someone's property unbuildable through regulation, and 11 it's just a problem we need to fix in the drafting of the ordinance. 12 13 Now let me give you some examples of the way this ordinance is currently written around 101. 14 So I'm going to start on San Francisquito Creek. It has boxed culvert going under 101 when it 15 daylights on the other side. Of course, you've got East Palo Alto on one side. That's not the 16 subject of our ordinance. We're looking at the south side. So there's a flood wall there that 17 Valley Water built about four years ago, and the first reach of that flood wall is adjacent to what 18 is now a painting contractor, used to be a body shop and an upholstery shop. And that flood 19 wall rises at that point maybe 6 feet above the grade, and right behind that flood wall, there 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. about 10 feet of concrete and then 2 buildings. And then on the other side of those buildings is 1 a parking lot, and the parking lot kind of reaches around one side. And I believe that all of those 2 buildings are within 150 feet of the creek. The bank of the creek there would be the flood wall. 3 Now the purpose of the flood wall is to keep things passing to and fro, particularly keep the 4 flood water from going onto that property and the properties beyond it. And so the purposes 5 for this ordinance are to protect the quality of the creek water, and a property behind a flood 6 wall does not pose that risk. 7 8 So I don't think that property poses that risk, and yet it's subject to the ordinance. It's not 9 residentially zoned – low-density residentially zoned. It's subject to the ordinance, and so I think 10 to the extent they wanted to do something, again, the Minor Exception doesn't apply except to 11 minor low-density residential. So they're looking at the Major Exception, and for reasons I'll 12 explain later, it won't work. So you keep following the flood wall, now you go past Valley Water 13 property, and if they're concerned about your ordinance, they can come here and say so. But 14 then you pass the Valley Water property. Next you have the International School and the flood 15 wall is continuing, and now between the flood wall and the International School is a service 16 road that is unpaved. It's a gravel road, open to bikers and hikers, and I walk on it all the time. 17 And then there's a very tall fence and the International School, and I am pretty certain that a 18 substantial part of their buildings are within 150 feet of the flood wall, which is the top of bank 19 in that location. And again, that flood walls means that nothing that happens at International 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. School – which incidentally is kind of down lower and so its water, I don't think can even flow to 1 the creek if there was no flood wall – it can have no impact on the creek. 2 3 And once you get past that, you're at the Greer Ballpark and then the golf course past that as 4 the creek channel meanders toward the Bay. And so I question whether this ordinance should 5 even apply there at all, and related to that, I think that there should be in our ordinance a 6 definition of a flood wall and there should be an exemption for properties behind flood walls. 7 And that may well apply to the properties on Edgewood, the 15, I think we heard, properties 8 that have a flood wall, again, because the risks to the creek are not present in that situation. 9 The other example – oh, and I mentioned this road, this service road. We have a lot of these, 10 and I think that the exemption for properties separated from the creek by what currently says a 11 public street, it should apply to service roads, paved or unpaved. And a good example of that is, 12 if you look over at the Pinewood School, which is on the west side of 101 right next to a 13 channelized portion of Adobe Creek, I think, at that point, which has service roads on both sides 14 of it, and those are actually fenced in so only Valley Water can get in there. On the Pinewood 15 side, there's also a bike – they graciously, I think, provided us some land to make the extension 16 of the bike lane with the new bridge. 17 18 But again, in that situation, now that's a channelized creek at that point, I think, and this 19 addresses one of the concerns that one of our call-in speakers had that she was concerned 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. about an ADU along a channelized creek. And I do think that in the Exemption D8, Expansion of 1 Existing Development along Channelized Streams in Urbanized Areas, I think that might be – oh, 2 sorry, packet page 23, toward the bottom of the page. I think that exemption may protect that 3 particular concern of that particular person living in that particular location, but I think we need 4 to think about that. But I think that wherever there's a street, whether it's – a road, whether it's 5 a paved public road or a service road, we need to think about whether these things we're trying 6 to protect for the creek need to be protected in that scenario. So those are my comments on 7 the 150-foot setback areas. Thank you. 8 9 Chair Chang: Amazingly, I don't have any lights right now. So I'm listening to the very thoughtful 10 comments of all my fellow commissioners here, and I just have to say I'm so impressed with 11 everybody and I love serving with all of these people up here. So one of the ideas I have – I'm 12 trying to figure out how to proceed, and what I heard was that there is some consensus about 13 more public comments definitely for the urbanized area. And so I'm wondering if what's – I 14 don't know if this is consensus. This is my personal desire to have maybe one piece move more 15 quickly than the other piece because of both the benefit to the environment and also the much 16 decreased impact potentially for property owners, although Commissioner Hechtman did bring 17 up a lot of really good comments there. So what I'm wondering is if Staff can split this into two 18 parts of an ordinance, bring one back very quickly to us and then run the other one through 19 more public comment. But I don't think that – kind of from what I'm hearing so far, that any 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 is ready to go on to Council tonight, and so I'm – Ms. Armer, I'd love to hear your thoughts, 1 but also I'm just trying to read minds here and figure out what the consensus is, so I would like 2 to hear from my fellow commissioners after we hear from Ms. Armer too. 3 4 Jennifer Armer: Thank you for the opportunity just to provide some initial recommendations 5 from Staff's perspective. We would not recommend this be broken into two parts. There are 6 changes in definitions of terms and things here that it just would become too messy, from our 7 perspective, to try and break it into two parts, so that would be our recommendation. And then 8 just to make sure that there's a clear understanding, the previous outreach included a number 9 of different things but also included over 5500 mailers. While we always do hope for public 10 comment and public input, there's no way to force it, but we do try to do that outreach. And so 11 if there is specific additional suggestions that the Commission has, we can look into the 12 possibility of doing those things and whether there is budget available for that. And if there are 13 specific or even general changes that there's a consensus on, as much specificity and direction 14 at this point as possible, especially getting a poll vote or something would be very helpful. 15 16 Chair Chang: Okay, when you mentioned the public – the noticing for the 5500, is that the little 17 postcard that was sent probably – I mean, I received it about a week ago. 18 19 Jennifer Armer: Yes, that's correct. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Okay, I don't – I think the issue there is that the postcard wasn't – the implication 2 for somebody who lives right along the creek is pretty significant given the size of their parcel 3 and the size of the setback, and so it's pretty – I don't think that that was clear in the postcard. 4 And so that would be my concern, and I think that's what everybody else is saying. So 5 Commissioner Templeton? 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah, I feel exactly the same way and just want to know more about 8 the postcard, if that is meant to slow us down in terms of our concerns, because that is a small 9 number of households and I don't know how those households were chosen, and I have a lot of 10 questions. And that information is information that's good to know, but I'm not sure it's going 11 to change how we feel about getting public input. And it doesn't mean that you haven't 12 attempted to start that conversation, but we're trying to say you need – we need more time 13 and we need to see that information somehow summarized and incorporated, which you 14 haven't yet had time to do even if you had reached out to more people. So suggestions would 15 include some of the things that the Transportation team has done, and the NVCAP, for 16 example, had a session where we had invited people that were in a neighborhood impacted by 17 the conversation. So we could invite people to sessions about – maybe focused on each creek 18 area or whatever we want to – however we want to divide it. We could do the three divisions 19 that we have here, but being able to have a meeting where everybody can talk together 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. understand specific time and have enough notice to come down and participate. I think those 1 are some suggestions off the bat. Thank you. 2 3 Chair Chang: Commissioner Summa? 4 5 Commissioner Summa: Thank you very much. I think that people needed to see this version of 6 the ordinance to react to – one of you mentioned this, maybe Mr. Gardiner – to be able to have 7 response time. I think it was timing that was – not the lack of outreach, postcards, or the – I 8 think it said within the staff report, within 300 feet, postcards were sent out, but people didn't 9 have enough time to absorb it. But this is what always happens. This is a first – the first time the 10 public has really had an opportunity to see this, so I don't – I think what we need to do is 11 incorporate all the ideas you get tonight from the Commission but also very much from the 12 public and our organizations, Midpen, Sierra Club, Bird Alliance, all of those people. I want to 13 see all of those ideas incorporated, and what I think it amounts to – and we had very specific 14 analysis of east of 101 and some of the things there. I think one thing that may have been 15 missing was the travel of contaminants through groundwater in places where there's not a 16 direct – where there's a wall so some kind of escape of something we didn't want in a creek 17 wouldn't be able to get there, but there is a groundwater issue also. So I think we probably 18 have to think about that, but that analysis of that specific area was very clear, I thought. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 I think Commissioner Reckdahl put it well. We're doing too little in some places and 1 too much in some places, and I think that we need maps to – whoever brought up the map 2 issue at the beginning, I forget. I think we need maps that show our zones and the specific, 3 precise – so we can overlay the three areas, kind of east of 101, the area between 101 and 4 Foothill, and then the other one, so we can see. I mean, some of the problems wouldn't happen 5 in the open space zone necessarily where the lots are very – the parcels have a minimum large 6 size, but of course there's the configuration that Commissioner Hechtman mentioned. Some go 7 along the creeks and some don't, and so – but we have some between Foothill – some above 8 Foothill, west of Foothill that might in fact be sort of more urban typical-size lots that would be 9 affected more like the others. So I think we need to just get more information and consider this 10 a reasonable outreach for the first draft of the ordinance. 11 12 Chair Chang: It sounds like – so I think we're going to continue this is what we're saying. We'd 13 like to see it again. But it sounds like it would – Staff would benefit from another round of kind 14 of more specific comments about where each commissioner has some specific thoughts, so I 15 think we keep going and give the direction so that all those edits can be incorporated in 16 another round. Yes? 17 18 Jennifer Armer: Yeah, through the Chair, just in particular, we've had public comments that kind 19 of go in opposite directions, and so in particular when there are things like that, getting 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. clarification from the Commission so that Staff isn't choosing between those different 1 recommendations from the public. It wouldn't be feasible for us to implement all the public 2 comments because in many cases they conflict. 3 4 Chair Chang: So unfortunately we don't have a list of all of those things because that would 5 make it much easier for us to make sure that we gave you comments on this. So I don't – would 6 it – I'm trying to figure out procedurally like how to best do this because I'm pretty sure we 7 could all opine if we had a list. And I'm operating off of the list that is the Bird Alliance and 8 Sierra Club one, and I thought that was a pretty good starting point. But I don't know how we 9 should proceed. 10 11 Jennifer Armer: So I would start by observing that the increased protections in the areas that 12 are west of Foothill and east of 101, there seemed to, in many cases, be support for that, and 13 then there was an interest in maybe accommodating something that had less impact on 14 individual property owners in the urbanized area. And so giving that kind of – that indication of 15 generally where – the other caution that I would express in terms of the additional staff work 16 that might be requested is, with an ordinance like this, we're not going to be able to go parcel 17 by parcel to assess what the impact is. Really this is larger regulations. It is going to impact a lot 18 of different parcels in different ways, and that really is the reason for having these exception 19 processes within. And so if there is direction on how to better adjust those exceptions so that 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. helps you on your next review to move this forward, I think that is another area to consider. 1 Thank you. 2 3 Chair Chang: Commissioner Templeton, did you have something that you wanted to say? 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: Just I need to step away and pick up my son. Thank you. 6 7 Chair Chang: Okay. So then I think that the rest of us can continue with the comments because I 8 think we did prepare – I know that Commissioner Hechtman has some. I have some. I'm going 9 to go ahead right now because there's no lights, and I was going to say that – I'm break up my 10 comments into sort of the 150-feet areas – so the way I think about it is the three areas: open 11 space west of Foothill, between Foothill and 101, and 101 into the Baylands. And I think that if 12 we all kind of like group our comments that way, that will be helpful. That's what Commissioner 13 Hechtman has already started doing and what Commissioner Summa already alluded to. 14 15 So if I think about the open space area west of Foothill, there was the comment that 16 Commissioner Hechtman made about this potentially precluding – with the 150-feet 17 Streamside Setback, that it might preclude development. I'm not particularly concerned about 18 that because all those parcels up there, if I understand correctly – I might not be understanding 19 correctly, but if they're in open space, they have to come before – it's discretionary approval 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. anyway. And so that's where the exceptions process, I think, actually works decently well, with 1 maybe the comment that I actually think that if it's up in open space, it should require a 2 variance. Like it's a pretty big deal. Because the comment that I think Vice-Chair Reckdahl made 3 about who's the one making these findings, like it needs to be a pretty high bar, at least for me, 4 if it is up in the open space. That's not necessarily the case if it's in the urban areas, and I 5 haven't – I don't really know enough about the area for 101 that Commissioner Hechtman was 6 talking a lot about. So that's my comment about that area. I actually think that the vast majority 7 of the Sierra Club and the Bird Alliance's comments as they relate to the area west of Foothill 8 makes a lot of sense. Let somebody else have a turn now. Commissioner Hechtman? 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah, I'm going on round three, so I don't want to deprive somebody 11 else from a second round if there's anybody else. 12 13 Chair Chang: Well, why don't we – can I just suggest then that if anybody else has specific 14 comments about the section that Commissioner Hechtman and I have already spoken about 15 west of Foothills, if they could light it up right now, and then we'll kind of let Staff gather up all 16 those comments and then we'll go on to more. Okay, Commissioner Summa. 17 18 Commissioner Summa: Okay, I think I'm being repetitive, but I do agree that the comments 19 made from Midpen and Sierra Club Bird Alliance should be taken into consideration, and I think 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 they are experts in their field and that that is an area that we are most concerned with 1 when it comes to really having the most setbacks, etc. So… 2 3 Chair Chang: So can I ask for clarification for you, Commissioner Summa? When – so we're 4 talking about the comments from the Bird Alliance and the Sierra Club as they relate 5 specifically… 6 7 Commissioner Summa: And Midpen, yes… 8 9 Chair Chang: And Midpen… 10 11 Commissioner Summa: …as they… 12 13 Chair Chang: …as they relate speci-… 14 15 Commissioner Summa: …relate specifically to the 150-foot areas. 16 17 Chair Chang: Yes, the 100-foot – okay, so, great. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Summa: And I would also take into consideration Commissioner Hechtman's 1 comments about the area east of 101 because he seems to have very detailed knowledge of it. 2 So that's where I am on that. 3 4 Chair Chang: Great. Thank you. Okay, now we have Commissioner Lu. 5 6 Commissioner Lu: Yeah, just to react on one comment you said, Chair, was I think it is true that 7 there is a discretionary process where of course there's room to evaluate exceptions, like Major 8 Exceptions within the context, but given the high cost of getting a development project even 9 started, I think that would definitely have a strong chilling effect wherein it would be 10 extraordinarily risky to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that by default is 11 not allowed and would require a variance. So I think there's still some room in the Major 12 Exceptions to at least clarify explicitly how those exceptions would be handled in the context of 13 a general Open Space Review, but I also agree that there should be a – or that there can be a 14 high bar for building by creeks west of the Foothills. 15 16 Chair Chang: Okay. Commissioner Akin. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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: Yeah, I've heard a lot that I can support, but I'm going to withhold 1 comments because I think I really need to hear what Commissioner Hechtman is going to say in 2 the remaining rounds, so… 3 4 Chair Chang: Okay. Go ahead then, Commissioner Hechtman. 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay, so just to preview for everybody, I've got two tranches left. In 7 this next one, I want to talk about the area that is potentially subject to the 40-foot Streamside 8 Setback, and then in the last round, I actually want to go through the ordinance and point out a 9 lot of areas that I think need help, and that will help illuminate some of the issues I'm more 10 generally talking about in these earlier stages. So I'm going to talk about the Stream Setback in 11 the urbanized area now. And incidentally on the public comment/public participation issue, 12 when I started to read this staff report, it was one of the first things that occurred to me is, 13 "Wow, we really need to let the public know what's going on here," and when I got to the end 14 of the staff report, I was really happy to see – I shouldn't have been surprised – that Staff of 15 course was way ahead of this and had done a community information session back in March, 16 which is great, and that's our Staff here. But what I was talking about in my first group of 17 remarks, a public meeting, was that would've been a conceptual meeting back in March. You 18 didn't have an ordinance. You had ideas, and you wanted to talk to people about property 19 rights and environmental protection. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Well, now, we're building an ordinance, and what I had suggested in my first group of 2 comments is once we have an ordinance that at least the PTC feels comfortable recommending 3 to Council, this is a time when there should be a public outreach, not to go parcel by parcel to 4 tell people what it's going to do to them personally, but to have examples. There are some 5 typical examples you will be able to draw, different zoning types, so the people can see a close 6 enough example to their situation to understand what the impacts are going to be and so they 7 can voice their concerns or support. So that was really the concept I had in terms of the next 8 round of public participation, which I will acknowledge is an unusual step for Palo Alto or any… 9 10 Chair Chang: So Commissioner Hechtman, just to clarify, are you suggesting that after they 11 come back to the PTC… 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. 14 15 Chair Chang: …then they do the input? 16 17 Commissioner Hechtman: Right, because what I would like is to have the ordinance as far along 18 as it can be so that the information that the public gets at that is as close to final as at least the 19 PTC controls because what I'm expecting is when this is brought back, there'll be a revised 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. version of the ordinance, but we may tweak it and we may tweak it in meaningful ways. I hope 1 if we tweak it, it's in meaningful ways. And so the analysis that would be presented to a 2 property owner might be different if it happened before our tweaking meeting than after. So 3 that was my thought. I could be – I don't feel strongly that way, but aren't we going to want to 4 see the revised ordinance come back to us before we want the public to weigh in on it? 5 Shouldn't this meeting be the first time that they weigh in on it, the revised version? 6 7 Chair Chang: Yeah, I'm – so we do all sort – we did big zoning changes that have big changes for 8 everybody in Palo Alto and we didn't go through that process, so I think that part of – we said 9 before, part of the mission of the PTC is to hear the public comment. I worry about churning. In 10 other words, the PTC comes up with a lot of stuff and then we get the public to opine. Then I 11 just don't want to then have a whole other set of changes, and so that's all. That's my only 12 thought. So… 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. 15 16 Chair Chang: …I do understand, though, where your head is at, but my concern is churn. And I 17 want as much of the feedback to be incorporated – as much of the public comment feedback to 18 be incorporated into the next round of the ordinance because the reality is that the public at 19 large doesn't have the experience that we all do to be able to – the public at large is looking at 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. how it impacts my parcel, not how it impacts the city overall. And they don't have, for example, 1 your legal experience nor our experience kind of understanding unintended consequences, and 2 so I worry about churn. That's all. 3 4 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay, well, so I sort of made my pitch on public comment. 5 6 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Yeah, my thought would be, are we going to think of more things that the 7 public doesn't know or is the public going to inform us of stuff that we don't know, and which 8 flow of information right now at this point is bigger and we should do that first. 9 10 Chair Chang: I think that the public – having no ordinance to react to before, they had 11 principles. Now that we've seen what happened with the experts, the Sierra Club and the Bird 12 Alliance, and I'm guessing that members of the public would also – now that they understand 13 where this is headed, they would be able to tell us, okay, here – this direction is good or not 14 and be able to tell us what issues the ordinance needs to address. 15 16 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: I tend to agree with that. My only concern is – well, we'll see what 17 Commissioner Hechtman says about particularly the channelized creeks, if we make changes 18 there. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 guess my only reflection here is that – and again, I'm not sure how 1 to read the Existing Conditions Report, but there are like 6600 parcels, I think, that are affected 2 by this ordinance and we had three public speakers speaking about their property. Three. And 3 so it doesn't feel to me like the word has really gotten out. So anyway, let's – if I can, I want to 4 move on to my thoughts on the urbanized area. So first of all, I think that the Streamside 5 Setback Area should not be 40 feet; it should be 25. In our study session, we learned that most 6 of the neighboring cities in their urbanized areas were between 20 and 25, and there was some 7 talk – consideration in the staff report for that study session, about should it be 30, should it be 8 40? And I had asked the question there, what is it about our creeks here in Palo Alto that make 9 them more sensitive and more special than the creeks in these other neighboring cities that I 10 respect? Now I understand we got our 40 from a Water Collaborative Guideline and with input 11 from a Flood District at 35, and that, of course, makes perfect sense that they would want those 12 numbers because that's their mission. 13 14 But they have the luxury of having no skin in this particular game because the ordinance that 15 we would adopt would be the City's ordinance and the unhappy people would be city people 16 who are not complaining to the Water Collaborative or the Flood District. They're complaining 17 to the city council and our city manager and our city staff. So I haven't see any science in the 18 staff report that says that what other cities near us – and I think it was most of the local cities 19 with a couple exceptions, Menlo Park, Redwood City, Mountain View. I think a lot of those cities 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. were included in that list of 10 or 12, and so I think that absent a really good reason to be more 1 stringent, we should be at 25, which is on the upper range of that 20 to 25. And frankly, if we go 2 to 25 in the urbanized area, a lot of my other concerns disappear because we already have a 3 20-foot Slope Stabilization Area, so we're really talking about another 5 feet past that. All right. 4 5 So most of the 40-foot area is the – or the urbanized area is low-density residential. I think 6 about 75 percent of our property here in the city is that, but some is not. And so as I looked at 7 the development requirements, what is it that – so I own a single-family property in that 8 zoning. If I was on Edgewood, not by a flood wall if we exempt that, but along a creek, I'm going 9 to be generally exempt unless I need something with Development Review. And I think there 10 are a number of permits that might require Development Review, but the one that was 11 mentioned here by Staff was a second story. Well, land here in Palo Alto's very expensive, and 12 there are probably exceptions that I'm not thinking of, but it seems to me every time I see a 13 house get knocked down, a two-story building is being built. And so what that means is 14 wherever that happens along a watercourse that is natural, not channelized or underground, 15 they're not going to be exempt. They're going to have to go through the process, and building a 16 whole two-story house is not going to be a Minor Exception; it's going to be a Major. And when 17 I get to the next round, I'll show you again my problems with what is the Major Exception, and 18 there are issues with the Minor Exception too. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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's one of the triggers is it doesn't require a Discretionary Review. The other trigger that 1 can take away the exemption is that you propose to encroach further into the Streamside 2 Setback than the existing condition. So this is where we have the diagrams that Chair Chang 3 referenced, but what occurred to me is these diagrams seem solely focused on the house. And I 4 want to know about the other things that are often built behind a house, like a pool or a patio 5 or a deck or a gazebo or an ADU because I don't think, under the way this ordinance is written – 6 I think those fall into B, that my residential property next to the creek is not exempt because I 7 want an ADU behind my house. And again, because I'm not exempt, I have to either do a Minor 8 or Major Exemption, and in the next round, I'll get to why that's a problem. I'm still not – I think 9 when we come back we should have more clarity on the fences that would be allowed– are 10 fences allowed in the Streamside Setback Area? I think they are, at least with residential, but 11 I'm not clear on that and I didn't feel like Staff was 100-percent confident, so I'd like to 12 understand that. 13 14 And then I want to make sure that in the urbanized areas, wildlife – there's no circumstance 15 where somebody could lose their backyard security fence and have to put in a wildlife fence, 16 again in the urbanized area, because that is a non-security fence because it's as easy for a 17 burglar to climb over that fence as it is for a deer to hop it or a squirrel to go under it. So I am 18 concerned about that. And then sort of outside of the residential area, just the one example I'll 19 give that I thought of and then I saw in the comments today that actually I think the architect 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. had written about it, Creekside. I'm curious as to how this potential ordinance would impact a 1 nonresidential development, and Creekside's a good example. We have others that – we have a 2 lot of nonresidential property, and so when Staff comes back, I'd like an example or two, 3 however the ordinance is revised, how it would apply – and again, everything's built, so 4 somebody's going to be redeveloping. So if they want to redevelop, what limitations are they 5 going to have by virtue of their location adjacent to a creek that their neighbor across the street 6 doesn't have. So those are my urbanized area comments. 7 8 Kelly Cha: Can I ask maybe a clarification question with a couple of comments? So I do get that 9 the 25 feet is recommended – or preferred for the urbanized area for Streamside Setback. So 10 we currently have 40 feet and have a Minor Exception process that allows 15 feet 11 encroachment, which essentially makes 25 feet, so if we were to change the setback to 25 feet, 12 do you think that we would also have to revise the Minor Exception maybe requirements or… 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: You'd get rid of it. You'd get… 15 16 Kelly Cha: Just get rid of it… 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: …you wouldn't have to ask for it… 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Kelly Cha: …okay. 1 2 Commissioner Hechtman: …because it would be the boundary. 3 4 Kelly Cha: Okay. 5 6 Jennifer Armer: And just to jump in on that 25 feet, I think we would want to get a straw poll to 7 get a sense of whether there is support of that or not since that's been a recommendation from 8 one commissioner. 9 10 Chair Chang: Right. That actually – I was going to ask some questions to follow. Are you finished 11 for now? 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: I'm done with the… 14 15 Chair Chang: So then let me jump in… 16 17 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: …because I don't see other lights here. So I had two questions for Staff. One, how 1 does this all impact ADUs? Because there's California ADU laws too, so that's the first question. 2 3 Jennifer Armer: So ADUs are actually entirely governed by a different section of the code, so 4 this would not impact the construction of ADUs. 5 6 Chair Chang: Okay, thank you. That's very helpful because it addresses the concern for the 7 public comment, and I think it addresses one of Commissioner Hechtman's concerns that he 8 mentioned just now. The other question I have is specifically about that section – on the staff 9 report, it's the bottom of packet page 16, and I wrote a question to myself, "Does the – with the 10 15-feet encroachment, does this effectively make it a 25-foot?" And so can you explain how this 11 really – how Staff is envisioning how this would work? So again, I'm trying to understand. I'm a 12 homeowner. I have a house that doesn't go into the 40 feet. I want to remodel, and I want to 13 build now. So what does this process look like to me? And I want to go within – I want to use 14 the 15 feet. 15 16 Kelly Cha: So if we were to go with the current version, they would have to show that the 17 setback is actually covering more than 40 percent of the lot. So there will be some lots that 18 would be able to easily obtain that 15-feet encroachment, but there will be some lots that 19 wouldn't be able to because of that particular criteria or condition. So if we were to change this 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Streamside Setback, then it'll universally apply instead of asking to see whether that lot has 1 that… 2 3 Chair Chang: Forty percent. 4 5 Kelly Cha: …right, condition. 6 7 Chair Chang: So in terms of a straw poll, which is what Staff asked for on this particular 25 8 versus 40 feet, I actually like the way Staff has handled it right now. I thought it was very 9 thoughtful. I thought that the – I don't know about the exact 40-percent lot coverage, and this 10 is where I think I don't have enough information because I don't know how many lots we're 11 really talking about here. But I like, in theory, what we're doing here because it makes it so that 12 it's not overly onerous and we're trying to prevent buildings from continually going closer to the 13 creek, and for me, it's not – but this is where I'm not entirely sure of things. Like there's things 14 that have bigger impacts and lesser impacts, and – for example, light shining into the creek, 15 even if it's channelized, like that's not a good thing. We shouldn't do that. But then there might 16 be other things that are lesser impact, so I think I don't know enough, but philosophically, I 17 think the way that Staff is going about this makes sense and allows for people to enjoy their 18 property still without it being extraordinarily onerous. Like I think if somebody's remodeling, 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. they're already going through this process and we're not saying you have to go through a 1 variance hearing or anything like that. It's just part of the process. 2 3 I had one other thought about this. Oh, I would really like the ordinance to address other 4 structures like pools – and this is actually something particularly for the area west of 150 feet, 5 which I didn't mention earlier, but for everywhere. So I want to understand about decks, about 6 gravel, about pools, about sporting – like a tennis court or a basketball court or something, 7 paving. So I think those are things that I'd like to understand. Maybe some of it's already there, 8 and maybe some of it isn't. 9 10 Kevin Gardiner: And in fact, this would be helpful to get that kind of direction. So as the 11 ordinance is written right now, it says no structures within the 150 feet or 40 feet. If you look at 12 the definition of structures in the Municipal Code, it does include buildings, of course, but also 13 swimming pools, sports courts. I'm not sure it includes decks. Patios are not included. So that is 14 a reasonable question. Should swimming pools or sports courts in particular be allowed, and in 15 that case, we would want to use something other then the Muni Code definition of structures. 16 If that's not to be allowed, then saying structures are not allowed would cover pools and sports 17 courts as well. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Thank you. For me, at least – I'm just going to chime in really quickly since I started 1 this discussion. I think the – as written, that's the right intent. This is where I would make an 2 exception. For like a sports court that's not lighted and that has permeable ground that doesn't 3 then also destroy riparian vegetation, maybe that's okay. So I don't – it wouldn't be called a 4 sports court at that point. It'd be – it's different because it's not concrete, but like a patio, that's 5 probably appropriate if it's permeable and all of those things. So those are some of my 6 thoughts. At least directionally, I don't want to make it too onerous. I think Staff has done a 7 really good job actually of thinking about all of these things. Okay, that's it for me for right now 8 and then I've got – I don't even know what order these were, but I'm just going to say 9 Commissioner Summa, then Lu, then Reckdahl. 10 11 Commissioner Summa: I will associate myself with the Chair's comments just now to save time, 12 and I believe that definition of structures was something also that was a request from the Sierra 13 Club, et al. And so yeah, I wasn't worried about ADUs because law – the California State Law 14 says you can't prohibit – do anything that actually prohibits ADUs. What this would do would be 15 to suggest, "Oh, because you're near a creek, put your ADU somewhere else," but ultimately if 16 that was the only place to put an ADU, they get to put an ADU. And then Creekside, since that 17 application is already in, would this affect Creekside? 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Kelly Cha: I think there is already an application in, but I think it's still in review. There's no 1 actual – I'm not too sure whether they went through ARB reviews or not, but it's not yet 2 decided. There's no decision on it, but application is received that it's under review. 3 4 Commissioner Summa: Okay, so as we look at the area between 101 and Foothill, I want to 5 make sure that we are adequately protecting especially streams that are naturalized – natural 6 still, not naturalized. So there I think the 40 is appropriate unless it's – as the Chair said, unless 7 it's taking up – I'm not sure if 40 percent is the right amount of the lot, but that seems 8 reasonable to consider and Staff thought about it a lot, I'm sure. But I don't think we want to 9 necessarily diminish the setback, especially for natural creeks in the urbanized area. And one of 10 our callers talked about the importance of Matadero Creek in Barron Park, and that's a really 11 good example. So I would like to retain as much protection for natural creeks in the whole of 12 the city that we can, and I think that covers everything for me that's new that I haven't said. 13 14 Chair Chang: Commissioner Lu? 15 16 Commissioner Lu: Thank you. Just to clarify, can you walk over what exemptions apply to ADUs 17 and if anything – or if any of these setbacks apply? 18 19 Jennifer Armer: None of them apply. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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: Just good to confirm. 2 3 Jennifer Armer: Yeah, it's governed by a separate section of the code. If we still have Albert 4 online, he might be able to speak to this further, though I don't know if he's available. 5 6 Commissioner Lu: Okay. 7 8 Assistant City Attorney Albert Yang: Yeah, there's not much to add. None of these… 9 10 Commissioner Lu: Okay. 11 12 Albert Yang: …[inaudible 3:00:12] to ADUs. 13 14 Commissioner Lu: Yeah, I just wanted to confirm really explicitly that literally nothing applies. 15 So in the packet, 33 feet is the only reference I find to a science-based kind of buffer distance, 16 and that's on packet page 76. That references a couple of studies that are kind of cited in a 17 review, I guess, from 2002. Are we aware of any other science-based measures or any other 18 kind of ecologically-based measures for what an appropriate buffer distance is? 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Can we – as the Chair, let's hear from the expert in the room, the one with a PhD 1 in ecology. 2 3 Shani Kleinhaus: I know you love the answer "it depends." If you're only looking at 4 sedimentation and water quality, the 33 feet is the minimum. That was done from a lot of 5 different studies. That was the conclusion that the Water Board published. However, there's a 6 lot of other functions of a riparian setback. There's the wildlife movement, there's providing 7 habitat for birds and other creatures, there is the enjoyment of people of the riparian corridor, 8 so there's a lot of other issues. Usually people look at about 300 feet, and it depends on, again, 9 what kind of things you're looking at. Certain birds will not nest 20 – 270 feet from where 10 people are walking and talking and have a lot of activity. Others don't care at all and they'll – so 11 the recommendations are usually 100 feet minimum. And again, that's another compromise, 12 and all the numbers you see, they're all compromises because the studies depend on when 13 they were done, where they were done and so on. So the 25 feet, for example, of the 14 Collaborative, that was a compromise that was achieved by a lot of cities that got together in 15 2000 and came up with that. But later the Water District tried to change it because they knew it 16 wasn't enough, and they couldn't change it because they'll have to gather all these groups – all 17 these cities together again to reconsider it. So they published something that is – doesn't really 18 have the exact numbers but basically recommends wider setbacks. I hope that answers. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Thank you. 1 2 Kevin Gardiner: Also through the Chair, we do have James Martin, and if he is available, we 3 could ask and… 4 5 Chair Chang: Yes, we would love to hear… 6 7 Kevin Gardiner: …let me… 8 9 Chair Chang: …from Mr. Martin. 10 11 Kevin Gardiner: …just restate the question if I understand. It's the – are we asking about the – 12 where does the riparian setback – the Riparian Buffer dimension come from? 13 14 Commissioner Lu: Or if there are just any other science-based buffer distances that we can 15 reference. 16 17 Kevin Gardiner: Thank you. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jim Martin, Consultant, Environmental Collaborative: Hi, everyone this is Jim Marin with 1 Environmental Collaborative, and I worked on the Existing Conditions Report and been listening 2 in tonight, and I think we just had an excellent summary of the typical standards. There really 3 are no magic numbers that we can refer to. We know bigger is better around setbacks in 4 protecting habitat functions. I think the only thing I'd like to add is the importance of 5 recognizing and protecting the woody riparian vegetation where you have remnant or intact 6 trees and shrubs in particular, given their importance of shading and other functions along the 7 creek and along Matadero and other creeks that can be between Foothill and the freeway that 8 still either are intact or a remnant natural condition and the importance as part of this process 9 of making sure, through the setback consideration, that those remnant features or intact 10 features are protected along the stream corridor. So those setbacks that say the 100 feet, those 11 typically are beyond the footprint of the woody riparian vegetation. You can have that woody 12 riparian vegetation on the bank or at the top of bank or just beyond the top of bank, so in some 13 circumstances, especially in natural conditions west of Foothill, you've got a reasonable 14 protective standard with 150 feet. 15 16 And in listening to comments tonight, I understand the challenge with the number of parcels 17 within the urbanized part of the city. As part of the Existing Conditions, we did a couple of 18 samples in trying to capture how many parcels are we talking about along the designated 19 protected creeks and within a certain distance of setback, and we do have some GIS data 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. may be useful to dig into a little bit more. Obviously, conditions vary from parcel to parcel, but 1 there may be a way to look at some of that GIS data, especially in the urbanized areas where 2 we know where we have intact remnant vegetation, how many parcels are we talking about 3 compared to those areas that are channelized. And I got the sense from the Commission that 4 that might be useful in your deliberations. 5 6 Commissioner Lu: Yes, I agree that would definitely be useful to have some of the samples that 7 you already looked at and some of the context around those samples. I don't have a magic 8 number here, but it would be good to have at least a few kind of prototypical examples in each 9 of the sections that we're looking at. 10 11 Chair Chang: Commissioner Lu, can I ask a follow-up question? Okay. So because we – so one of 12 the questions that I had was, we talk about exempting properties that are across a public 13 street. And so I'm trying to understand the difference between that versus like a channelized 14 stream, to have 40 feet from a channelized stream. I'm trying to understand sort of the 15 ecological impact and why we chose to still have the same setback for a channelized stream 16 because there's a lot of those throughout Palo Alto, and I'd love to hear from Mr. Martin about 17 that. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jim Martin: I think in – the 40-foot channelized reach, I think that was in all likelihood related to 1 flood prevention and the need for possible future expansion of floodways. You have structures 2 there. It creates a further challenge in some future need of Valley Water District and the 3 easement that they hold through there. I think that number came out of part of the process 4 and receiving inputs in where to go. I agree where you've got a channelized condition, new 5 concrete, rock, certainly modified, bordered by gravel or paved maintenance road and a 6 cyclone fence, you're not going to have much habitat there, and the separation between the 7 maintenance road and the cyclone fence is similar to the separation that a paved public road 8 would create in terms of separating the habitat from nearby parcels. I hope that helps a little 9 bit. 10 11 Chair Chang: Yes, that helps. And I think that what we're hearing from the Commission is that as 12 Staff thinks about this, to maybe reexamine and look at specifically how we treat the setback 13 with respect to channelized – like that there's a different priority with respect to that 40 versus 14 25 for the naturalized terrains versus the channelized. 15 16 Jim Martin: Right. 17 18 Chair Chang: Okay. Thank you. And then I think – Commissioner Lu, was that it for you? Okay. 19 And then Commissioner – or Vice-Chair Reckdahl. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Reckdahl: Yeah. Great minds think alike. That was the route that I was going down. 2 Can you bring up the packet page 30? And look at the electronic version so it's color. Packet 3 page 30. Okay, and the important part is the color scheme. Green is historical, and blue is 4 natural creeks, and pink is channelized. And so we see a lot of pink here, and that's really the 5 rule, and the exception is the blue one. And so when I'm looking through the packet itself, 6 there's a nice description of the different things that – why are we doing this? And they talk 7 about things like riparian vegetation and habitat, and riparian corridors for wildlife, and 8 erosion, and preventing flooding. And all of those kind of disappear if you're talking about 9 channelized creeks. Granted they're not totally dead, but a lot of these issues that we're trying 10 to protect against are much, much less for channelized creeks. And so I think it would be really 11 good in the description to talk separately about why are we doing this for channelized creeks 12 and why are we doing this for natural creeks, and that will give us some insight into what are 13 we trying to solve. Okay. Thanks. 14 15 Chair Chang: Okay, I don't have any other lights here. So I know Commissioner Hechtman has a 16 whole other round, so would you like – are you ready? 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Okay, great. 1 2 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay, so in this round what I want to do is I want to walk through the 3 ordinance and just point out some concerns I have. Some of it is minor. Some of it I think is 4 pretty significant. And usually when I go through this exercise what I'm asking is for Staff to just 5 take it in and think about it as you think about what you're going to do on the ordinance, and 6 you may agree with a comment and want to make an adjustment. You may think it's fine the 7 way it is, and that's fine too. Part of my job is just to identify what I think might be an issue you 8 should look at. So the draft ordinance starts on packet page 19. Just a point that's going to be 9 relevant later, on packet page 21, we have the top of bank. We've got a couple of definitions for 10 naturalized streams. One is a stream with a defined bank, and I suspect that every stream in the 11 urbanized area is going to be a stream with a defined bank. And then you have streams without 12 a defined bank where the slope is less than 2:1, and maybe that happens in some locations 13 west, but that's going to be important when we get to packet page 24. All right. 14 15 So on to packet page 22. Commissioner Akin mentioned the 2:1 ratio needs to be looked at. I 16 had suggested a definition of flood wall here somewhere because this is the end of the 17 definition page because I'll mention flood wall comes up again later. When we get to packet 18 page 23, Exemptions, Exemption 1 is this issue of public street, service road, so that's where 19 you would consider that. When we get down to Exemption 8, expansion of existing 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 along channelized streams, I guess I'm not sure if that means I'm going to 1 remodel my structure– because that's an expansion of existing, or does it also include if I'm 2 going to tear down and rebuild? So I think that could be a little clearer. And then I had 3 suggested another Exemption 9, if your parcel's behind a flood wall. Turning to packet page 24, 4 we have Table 1. And the footnote under Table 1 is really why I brought your attention to the 5 definitions of stream with and without defined bank because those are two separate concepts, 6 but here when we're trying to figure out the Slope Stability Protection Area, it seems like we're 7 combining them and saying even though these are two different things, we're going to take 8 whichever one's greater here. 9 10 And so I really don't understand that, and I don't know, for example, if, in a place with a well-11 defined bank, the ratio of 2:1 is going to make a farther or shorter Slope Protection Area – or 12 actually it's really the starting point. It's always 20 feet, but it's really kind of the starting point. 13 So I think we could use a bit of clarification there. And related to that, you have just below that 14 a diagram for a stream with a defined bank, but you don't have a different one for a stream 15 without a defined bank even though you have both of those diagrams on packet page 22. And 16 so I'm not – but I don't have the expertise to know if you don't have a second one because it's 17 identical, just on kind of a longer plane, so you might want to consider whether you need that. 18 All right. Now I want to get to, starting at the bottom of packet page 24, the bottom half is 19 Streamside Review Elements, and this is really something that Chair Chang brought up early 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 meeting. So this is broken down into three pieces. Part 1 is Streamside Setback 1 Requirements, part 2 is Riparian Buffer, and then when you get over to page 26 at the very 2 bottom, part 3 is Slope Stability Protection Area. 3 4 So what I'm finding as I read through this is they all kind of mush together, and so what you 5 might want to consider is having the Streamside Setback requirements only apply to the slice 6 that's just the Streamside Setback and then have the Riparian Buffer only apply to the slice 7 between the Streamside Setback and the Slope Stability and then similarly on slope stability 8 because this way they're overlapping and potentially conflicting, the way it's done today. So 9 that's mostly an organizational thing. So top of page 25, this is, I presume, language copied 10 from someplace, but in that first paragraph, you twice use the word riparian corridor, which is 11 not a defined term. I think here you are talking about the area within the Streamside Setback 12 that's not yet the Riparian Buffer, but I'm not sure. Then the paragraph below that, 3i, is really a 13 Riparian Buffer requirement but you actually repeat it in the Riparian Buffer section, so I think 14 you can just get rid of it here. Let's see. When we get down to light reflectance value of 83, I do 15 want to acknowledge, we – I don't think anybody's talked about it here, but we got a comment 16 in the written correspondence that suggested that's a very bright light, it's a very bright color. I 17 don't know, but it's worth Staff – obviously we're trying to – so this really relates not to water 18 quality but to wildlife, and so maybe we should look about – I don't know where that figure 19 came from and maybe it's fine, but we should look at 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 But I'm also concerned that – well, what's confusing to me is – all right, so this is in the 2 Streamside Setback where I'm not supposed to have any buildings, but this is a requirement for 3 building finishes, and so does that only apply when I'm going by way of an exception and 4 invading the Streamside Setback or are you talking about imposing requirements actually 5 outside the Streamside Setback? Like even though the back wall of the house might be 20 feet 6 from the Stream Setback line, it still has to have this color reflectivity. So I think that needs to 7 be clarified. The grading, again, I saw a comment – which is D at the bottom of page 25. I saw a 8 comment from one of the written comments saying that we should really hold the line at 150 9 for grading. I just want to point out that if I'm allowed to have a house 150 feet from the top of 10 bank, to build that house I have to be able to move earth a little bit closer than the foundation, 11 which is 150 feet away, so a strict 150 feet wouldn't work, which is not to say that you 12 necessarily need a full 50 feet of grading work to build a house 150 feet from a creek. So that's 13 something you can – that comment you could look at. 14 15 Okay, top of page 26. Again we get into a couple uses of the word riparian corridor in the first 16 paragraph. Here I think it means Riparian Buffer because we're in the Riparian Buffer section, 17 but I'm not sure. And then let's see. When we get to the top of page 27, subpart A, again it's the 18 same as the footnote 1 to Table 1. We've got this greater of top of bank or 2:1, and I just don't 19 know how that works. Let's see. So I do have a question again. I don't need an answer. Just 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. something to think about. So the subparagraph B, top of page 27, requires an exemption for 1 any structure or use within the Slope Stability Protection Area. You have to have an exemption 2 granted. So one of the most typical things I would expect to see in a Slope Stability Protection 3 Area is a decaying fence or wall wanting to be replaced because that happens. People are 4 forever upgrading their fences that are falling down, particularly if you're along a creek where 5 people might be able to come into your yard. So does this mean – so that's one thing to – 6 because it's not a structure. I don't know if it's a use, but is that going to make me go through a 7 process to rebuild my fence? That's a topic another commissioner had raised earlier. Okay. 8 9 Now let's talk about the Minor Exceptions. I mentioned before I think there are some problems 10 with it. First of all, actually, all through this Minor Exception section, we refer to the Stream 11 Setback, where the defined term is Streamside Setback, so we want to fix that. But here, if – 12 okay, I've got a single-family house. I'm on a creek. I'm exempt, but I want something that has a 13 – requires Discretionary Review. Great, I can get a minor deviation if I can meet either of these 14 criteria. So the first one is the Streamside Setback covers more than 40 percent of the parcel. 15 Well, all right, so what that means is this only applies typically if my parcel is less than 100 feet 16 deep because if my parcel is 100 feet deep, 40 percent is 40 feet, and so the setback does not 17 cover more than 40 percent of my parcel. It covers exactly 40 percent. And at 101 feet, it's less 18 than 40. So this Minor Exception will not be available to any parcel 100 feet long or greater, and 19 I think that's a lot of parcels along the creeks. And you look at the second one, the deviation 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 result in the removal of any riparian vegetation. I think Commissioner Templeton 1 asked the question, so one plant is riparian vegetation. If I get a wildflower that blows over my 2 fence, I don't think I can use this. 3 4 So I think we have to look – the intent here is to set a low bar for minor things, and I think that's 5 right. We want to do that, but we have to think about a bar that actually works for at least most 6 of the creekside parcels in Palo Alto. Okay, now let me get to the Major exceptions. So here 7 again, if I want to build my – if I got a house and I can't qualify for my Minor Exception, I roll 8 into a Major Exception, so now I have to be able to make these three findings. And incidentally 9 we should be focusing – there was a slide here that kind of summarized these points, but I think 10 the actual language they use here is important because it will be the law. So first is there is no 11 reasonable alternative that avoids or reduces the encroachment into the setback area. So let 12 me give you an example of that one. It's the one that Vice-Chair Reckdahl brought up early in 13 the meeting. On the other side of 101, right next to Adobe Creek, there's a bike path and then 14 there's a narrow parcel 110 feet wide with a building sitting on it. It's a two-story office 15 building. It's 1960s, maybe early 70s built, and so the parcel's only 110 feet wide. The building is 16 probably 80 feet wide, 70 feet wide, whatever. 17 18 So that building will get rebuilt someday, and here if they want to rebuild – and this ordinance 19 applies to them and they're going to need a Major Exception because their property is 100 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. percent in the 150 feet, and so now they propose just to put what they had. Well, all right, I'm a 1 wildlife advocate and I'm going to say, "Wait a minute, they're proposing an 80-foot wide 2 building. I can reduce the encroachment into the setback area by making it 70 feet wide, and I 3 can further reduce it to make it 60 or 50 or so on." And I've actually had this issue on variances 4 in litigation, so we have to have a more finite requirement here that is not going to engender 5 litigation and fights over people's ability to use their property. Okay. The second item, a 6 reduced setback will not significantly reduce or adversely impact the streamside environment. 7 Well, that to me is the biologist’s full employment act, and I'm sure they'll be very grateful 8 because the only way to establish this is with a biologist report, $3- to $10,000. Maybe that's 9 worth it on a big commercial building like the one on Adobe Creek, but I know if I'm just trying 10 to build a two-story house, I'm going to be pretty annoyed to have to pay that when none of my 11 neighbors do. So we should think about what level of proof are we looking for there. 12 13 And then the third one, this is just an invitation for a neighborhood fight. It will not be 14 detrimental or injurious to properties that are adjacent, upstream, downstream, or on the 15 opposite bank. Well, if I'm on a stream, there are hundreds of properties in both directions, so 16 everybody gets a voice. These things – again, and in my hypothetical, I'm trying to build a two-17 story building, a two-story house, and I have to go through this gauntlet. Again, I think that the 18 idea is to have a workable set of findings that would allow somebody to build a two-story house 19 that's sensitive to its near-creek location, but I don't think this is it, so I think it needs more 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. work. And that was the last of my comments on things that I would like Staff to look at and 1 consider further as they work on the ordinance. Thank you. 2 3 Chair Chang: That was a very thorough and exhaustive list that captured most of my comments. 4 Does any – I don't see any lights, so I think we might be done. Anybody? 5 6 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Is there any straw polls that the Staff wants us to take? 7 8 Chair Chang: That's a good – yeah. Clarification and straw polls. 9 10 Jennifer Armer: So the one that we specifically asked for was the 25-foot, and what I heard was 11 that that was suggested but we had at least a couple other members who were not in support 12 of reducing from… 13 14 Chair Chang: Should we just do that right now? 15 16 Jennifer Armer: …40 to 25… 17 18 Chair Chang: Should we just go down the line? 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: …but maybe we can confirm that? 1 2 Chair Chang: Okay. So we've got Commissioner Hechtman's ideas and thoughts on that. 3 Commissioner Reckdahl? 4 5 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Well, some of this comes into why are we doing this, and if I have a 6 channelized creek and I have a solid back fence, why do we care whether it's 20 or 25 or 30 feet 7 away from that solid back fence? It's not going to be used as a corridor, so I guess I want to 8 know what is the purpose of the setback before I set the number. 9 10 Kelly Cha: Well, I think the setback is established because the purpose of the update is to create 11 some protection for the habitat area, but we have heard enough from the Planning and 12 Transportation Commission that maybe it is not – I don't want to say appropriate, but it's not 13 maybe appropriate for the urbanized area along channelized creeks and when there's a flood 14 wall already installed, so those are some of the things that Staff would like to get some 15 clarification. So I have five points maybe. If it's okay, maybe I can get some clear direction from 16 the Commission. I think we had heard clear voice from the Commission that more community 17 engagement would be preferred in the comments on the proposal especially because the initial 18 community engagement we had was on some high-level concepts. So I wanted to hear if that is 19 still the case from the Commission. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Should we just finish on the 25-feet first… 2 3 Kelly Cha: Oh, yes… 4 5 Chair Chang: …and then we'll go… 6 7 Kelly Cha: …okay. 8 9 Chair Chang: Yeah, okay. 10 11 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: And I know this is a hard question, and that's what I'm getting at. I'm not a 12 biologist, and it's hard for me to decide. I think the 25-foot was a reasonable split-the-baby, but 13 I don't know, would 30 be better, would 20 be better? Shani, do you want to – we can… 14 15 Jennifer Armer: If – sorry. I'll jump in with one additional comment. 16 17 Chair Chang: Yes. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: We did also, in addition to this idea of reducing that setback to 25 in urbanized 1 areas, hear some additional discussion about considering reduced setbacks for the channelized 2 streams, and I heard those as two separate items that were discussed, that there was maybe 3 more support for considering a reduced setback for the channelized streams… 4 5 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Mm-hm. 6 7 Jennifer Armer: …whereas we heard some strong voices advocating for retaining the 40-foot for 8 the natural streams but allowing the exception. Do you have… 9 10 Chair Chang: So is that specifically what you want to hear from Commissioner Reckdahl on like… 11 12 Jennifer Armer: So if your concern or your questions about the 40 versus 25 feet is influenced 13 by channelized versus natural… 14 15 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Oh, yeah. 16 17 Jennifer Armer: …then that could be very valuable input for us to receive. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Reckdahl: Yeah, so for me, again I'm not a biologist, but my impression is that a 1 channelized creek is not going to have the same riparian impacts as a natural creek. 2 3 Chair Chang: Okay, let's quickly hear from – you had asked for the biologist's input, so let's… 4 5 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Yeah. 6 7 Chair Chang: …go ahead and get that… 8 9 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: And… 10 11 Chair Chang: …since you're… 12 13 Jim Martin: Hi, this is… 14 15 Shani Kleinhaus: [Inaudible 3:32:41] – oh, me? 16 17 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Oh… 18 19 Jim Martin: Oh. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Jennifer Armer: So we do have Jim Martin available online, so we'll hear… 2 3 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay. 4 5 Jennifer Armer: …from him. 6 7 Jim Martin: I’m going first, I guess. So again, there's no magic number. I think it's important to 8 confirm what Valley Water's intention was with the guidance that formed the basis of the City's 9 original ordinance before the directive that we do away with any type of setback within 10 channelized reaches of the urban area. There may be other factors in addition to biological 11 resources, but from what I described before, if you've got a channelized condition that's got 12 maintenance roads on either side with a security cyclone fence and then property beyond that, 13 it's not to say that that channel and the emergent vegetation, the freshwater vegetation within 14 that channel isn't important. We heard testimony tonight about muskrats further upstream. 15 They obviously moved through that corridor. We've got birds and other wildlife that utilize that 16 corridor, but without the woody riparian at or beyond the top of bank, in my opinion 17 biologically, there's not a strong basis for a setback that would impinge on use of the private 18 property on the other side of that cyclone fence. But again, there are other factors that I think 19 are important to confirm in how that number was derived through the guidance process with 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Valley Water that formed the basis of the original ordinance. So I think that's something that 1 needs to be confirmed. 2 3 Chair Chang: I'm just going to ask Ms. Kleinhaus to come because she also knows a lot of the 4 context here. 5 6 Shani Kleinhaus: The urbanized/channelized concrete channels obviously have less value, but 7 they do have the vegetation inside. The Valley Water does not allow planting vegetation 15 feet 8 from their channels, so now you have a very narrow place where you could still plant a tree and 9 have some shade over the creek. So the reason for somewhat more if you want to go there, and 10 I'm not suggesting that I would know what to do in your spot right now, but there is value to a 11 little more because it can add some shade and it can add some vegetation. And the birds will 12 use it. The butterfly will use it. It creates a corridor even if it is a concrete channel. That was 13 something that – in consideration of the dog park at Mitchell Park, they added trees even 14 though it's a concrete channel there. Thank you. 15 16 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay. So my inclination is to reduce it on channelized creeks, and 25 17 seems a reasonable number, especially if you're limited 15 feet without planting. That seems 18 right then, so I would support 25. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: And what's your thought on the naturalized? 1 2 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: In a perfect world, we'd have more, but I'm really worried in the urban 3 areas that this is going to impact the houses, so I don't know. I think it's something that we 4 have to consider, and I think – convince me. Or maybe convince yourself first and then convince 5 me. 6 7 Kelly Cha: For the natural creek, for your consideration, maybe you make a decision on whether 8 the properties behind the flood walls, whether they're going to be exempt or not as 9 Commissioner Hechtman suggested. Maybe that might help the Commission to make the 10 decision on whether reduced setback would be better or not on natural creeks. 11 12 Chair Chang: Well, I think let's just kind of – you heard the thoughts of each person, so we're 13 not experts, so let's move on to Commissioner Akin. You've heard from me already. 14 15 Commissioner Akin: Yeah, I'm similarly inclined. On the hardened channelized creeks in the 16 urban area, 25 feet seems sufficient. I feel maybe a little more strongly than what I just heard 17 that for the natural creeks even in the urbanized areas, 40 feet is a good idea. So, thank you. 18 19 Chair Chang: Did you already opine, Commissioner Summa? 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Summa: I think I have opined more than once, but since they can use the 2 exception to get the 25 feet, I would consider that reasonable at this point for the hard 3 channelized creeks, and I think 40 is appropriate for natural creeks. 4 5 Chair Chang: And Commissioner Lu? 6 7 Commissioner Lu: I agree with 25 in the context of channelized creeks. I think it's worth 8 considering whether areas east of 101 also are, in practice, sufficiently urbanized based on 9 what we've heard so far to make those 25 feet as well instead of 150. I think 40 feet is 10 reasonable for naturalized creeks. I think really anything 33 and above is reasonable for me. 11 Like I would have some personal flexibility here. I would need to actually catch up on some of 12 the science. And was there any question about flood walls? Like the question was whether we 13 would also consider 25 feet in the context of flood walls? 14 15 Coleman Frick: I think if I may, the question was whether there could be an exception that's 16 supported broadly across the Commission for properties that abut a flood wall as long as we 17 can kind of nail the definition of a flood wall. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: I'm just going to chime in for the Commission there. I think we heard pretty good 1 unanimity on that idea, yes. So yes, exceptions for flood walls and a definition, please. 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: Exemption. 4 5 Chair Chang: Sorry… 6 7 Commissioner Hechtman: Exemption rather than exception. 8 9 Chair Chang: …exemptions, yes. Thank you. So hopefully that gives you the information that you 10 needed for that piece. Were there other significant issues that you didn't get enough clarity on 11 already that we can help you with? 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: I thought Ms. Cha was starting a list of five. 14 15 Chair Chang: Yes. 16 17 Kelly Cha: I think the community engagement, I think we heard it clear enough, so we'll 18 definitely consider that. I think we've heard about reduced setback, so that's good. Exemption 19 on flood wall properties, that's also clear. We may need some clarity on fences, but maybe PTC 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 need additional information on fences before considering, so we can maybe provide 1 additional information in the next meeting. Another – I think Mr. Frick has another one, but 2 another one I would like to confirm is whether PTC would agree increasing the riparian area 3 within the foothills or west of Foothill and east of 101 area to 60 feet as some of the comment 4 letters have suggested. 5 6 Chair Chang: I think – Commissioner Akin? 7 8 Commissioner Akin: Yeah, just the need for the 30-foot Riparian Buffer and the 30-foot fire 9 break is, I think, well established, but be careful about doing that by simply defining the 10 Riparian Buffer as 60 feet because so many other constraints apply to that region. 11 12 Chair Chang: But other than that, I think that there was consensus that Staff should look 13 carefully at that, yes. Go ahead, Mr. Frick. 14 15 Coleman Frick: Oh, I just wanted to clarify on the fences. So if there was clear direction or 16 opinions on whether that should also be an exemption for, let's say, existing fences or that type 17 of structure within, whether it's the stream setback area or the riparian area, that could be 18 helpful information to kind of bring back. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Can I ask Staff for how Staff arrived at this conclusion because there's – I'm sure 1 Staff was thinking about the balance between what should be grandfathered in, what should be 2 done if somebody wants to reconstruct a fence, as well as wildlife mobility and security for 3 humans. So in coming up with the current ordinance, what was Staff's process? That's what I 4 would like to hear before we all opine because we would like to understand how you arrived at 5 the point that you arrived at now. 6 7 Kelly Cha: I think it was sort of a general kind of concept that Riparian Buffer area will be most 8 restrictive, so we were basically allowing wildlife fences only. I think that's how we have – and 9 then in the Streamside Setback, we will be a little bit more lenient, but we – that's why we have 10 kind of applied the 16.24, the Citywide Fence Requirement, instead of applying other 11 requirements or more restrictions on the fences there. But that's also something we can look 12 into with more information requested by the PTC and kind of decide – if there's any direction, 13 we would love to get them tonight, but if the PTC feels that there should be some additional 14 information, that additional information – what's needed would be very helpful as well. 15 16 Chair Chang: It sounds like what's needed here is some direction for what the PTC thinks about 17 fences in this area, and so maybe if we could each quickly talk about that because our 18 comments about fences were rather scattershot. So can we just go down the line again? 19 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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: Sure, so I'm pretty open – in the area west of Foothill, I'm 2 comfortable with – first of all, those are mostly larger acreage, and they're seldom fenced in 3 any kind of security way because they're open, and if somebody does want to fence, it's usually 4 more of an interior perimeter fencing anyway. And so I'm pretty comfortable with wildlife 5 fencing limitations within that 150-foot area that would be subject to whatever exceptions or – 6 I guess it would be a Major Exception. If somebody's going to build a house that ends up closer 7 because it needs to, then that fence would be a part of that Design Review. In the urbanized 8 area, I guess my belief is everybody that's on a creek already has a fence, and frankly before I 9 really sort of got deep into this process, I didn't even understand about this 20-foot Slope 10 Stability Setback because I think a lot of those fences are closer than 20 feet. I do. And so I think 11 if you want to make people feel like something's really being taken away from them, you make 12 them move their fence in 5 feet or 10 feet or 12 feet if their fence is falling down and they just 13 want to rebuild it. Again, I see people litigate that when one neighbor wants to move the fence 14 over because he thinks it's on his property, so I would be supportive of sort of grandfathering 15 those fences in and allowing them to be rebuilt to maintain their safety and attractiveness. 16 17 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Yeah, all my neighbors that have their fence along the channelized creek, 18 it's right up on the creek, right at the top of the bank, and they would be really upset if they had 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 move that back. And I don't think it would provide a lot of environmental benefit to move it 1 back, so I would – I think grandfathering is the right answer there. 2 3 Chair Chang: I haven't given it a lot of thought because I don't think I quite understand the 4 wildlife implications, because that's what we're talking about is wildlife here in the urbanized 5 area, but I do understand the property owners' security concerns because I was doing a creek 6 cleanup and saw no less than, I think, eight broken safes that were dumped into – down by like 7 Chaucer or something. So clearly there's people there sometimes, and so there's a real security 8 concern. So I'm just going to say that like philosophically that's where I am, and then I'm going 9 to let Staff come up with what they think is best. 10 11 Commissioner Akin: Okay, again, this varies a little bit depending on the area, but within west 12 of Foothills, as I said earlier, I really cannot see any justification for fencing within the Riparian 13 Buffer area itself, so I'm not inclined to support fencing there. Wildlife-safe, wildlife-friendly 14 fencing is, of course, perfectly okay in the remaining Streamside Setback Area and possibly 15 more substantial fencing in the 16.24 frame. In the urbanized areas, yeah, agree with the earlier 16 comments. My experience is also that fences tend to get as close to the property line or to the 17 creek as possible, and they probably have to be grandfathered in for this to be acceptable. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Summa: Well, I can see the points of grandfathering from the point of view of 1 making this acceptable, but it kind of bothers me because what we're trying to do is improve 2 our streamside protection. That was the point of all of this, so I am very ambivalent. And I 3 wanted to add something to the previous 40-foot versus 25-foot. I just wanted to add a 4 clarification that we were only talking about residential uses so that commercial uses were not 5 included. Okay. 6 7 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Correct. 8 9 Commissioner Summa: All right. I didn't know if anybody really said that clearly. So I'm just 10 going to have to – after Staff comes back with all their thoughtful analysis, I'm going to have to 11 decide because I don't want to water this down so much that we're losing the whole focus of 12 this, which was to acknowledge that our streamside protection setbacks were not adequate 13 actually. And I will say that I – anecdotally, I know how much the channelized creeks are used 14 by wildlife as habitat. Although it's a little sad compared to seeing an animal, a bird or other or 15 a wee muskrat in nature – in a natural setting, it's all they have. So I will decide – I am not 16 decided this evening, and I'm sorry I can't give you more of a definite, but I'm anxious to see 17 what you come up with. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 just wanted to confirm also for Exemption 7, building improvements that do 1 not expand the building footprint further into the Streamside Setback, that would apply to 2 fences but only the Streamside Setback, not any of the other like – right, and there is no 3 Riparian Buffer for channelized/urbanized streams. So would Exemption Number 7 already 4 cover existing fences? Would those fences be considered structures? 5 6 Jennifer Armer: I'll start by pointing out that that says building footprint, which generally is not 7 what I would envision… 8 9 Commissioner Lu: Ah. 10 11 Jennifer Armer: …for a fence, but I'm looking over at our other staff to see if there's anything 12 more to add. 13 14 Kelly Cha: I think it definitely needs some clarification, so we can come back with more clear 15 language on that to make sure that we don't have that kind of questions next time. 16 17 Commissioner Lu: Yeah, that'd be great. I think the structure/building distinction is subtle, like 18 was also discussed previously here, and yes, I think it is reasonable to allow residential fences 19 by channelized streams in urbanized areas. I would consider going a little bit further than 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. grandfathering even. Like if there happens to be like one empty lot or one lot that doesn't have 1 a fence, it seems peculiar to deprive them of the fence in the future, so I'd also throw that in. 2 3 Kelly Cha: So just to clarify that last comment, Commissioner Lu, you're staying that you are 4 inclined to allow fences for existing and proposed on properties along channelized creek. 5 6 Commissioner Lu: Yes… 7 8 Kelly Cha: Okay. 9 10 Commissioner Lu: …for residential properties. 11 12 Chair Chang: Okay, Commissioner – Vice-Chair Reckdahl. 13 14 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: One last thing about when we're talking about 25 feet or 40 feet, how far 15 the building is back from the creek, we're thinking of a small house, but what happens if this 16 now is a big wall of a house? And so should there be like a daylight plane or some step-back? 17 It'd be good if we can talk with the biologist – if Staff talks with the biologist and get their 18 professional opinion about does a big wall at 25 feet act differently than a smaller house at 25, 19 and if so, how do we enforce some type of daylight plane to protect 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Commissioner Summa? 2 3 Commissioner Summa: Oh, I just wanted to offer the observation that hedging could be an 4 option that will keep people out and provide privacy but will also let many species through. I 5 don't know if anybody's interested in pursuing that, but just an observation. 6 7 Commissioner Lu: Were there Valley Water objections to that? Yeah, were there issues with 8 Valley Water and plantings directly adjacent to channelized creeks? 9 10 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: I think it was… 11 12 Commissioner Lu: Or I guess… 13 14 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: …trees [inaudible 3:53:23]. 15 16 Commissioner Lu: …they're all grandfathered in. Yeah. Okay, thanks. Yeah. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Okay, I see no lights, so there is just one final comment I wanted to make. So all 1 my comments regarding the 40 versus 25 setback was specific to housing, not to other 2 developments. 3 4 Jennifer Armer: And when you say housing, are you talking about low-density housing or all 5 housing? 6 7 Chair Chang: I'm talking about low-density housing because the impact of many people and 8 many lights and many everything is much different. And we're not saying you can't do it, but I 9 think there's a different process or a little bit more process. Thank you. So are there – I know, I 10 just want to make sure we have no further comments. 11 12 Commissioner Hechtman: I think Ms. Cha was… 13 14 Chair Chang: Oh, Ms. Cha? 15 16 Kelly Cha: I'm sorry to delay the meeting more, but just one more maybe question to PTC. So 17 the Minor Exception only applies to low-density properties as well, so just wanted to make 18 sure, with the comment letter received from the Creekside property applicant, whether PTC 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. agrees that it stays as is or maybe we should broaden that to other zoning districts or other 1 types of developments. 2 3 Chair Chang: Yeah, maybe let's quickly talk about that. I think again Commissioner Hechtman 4 already talked about his concerns with respect to the Creekside and larger developments. Do 5 you want to… 6 7 Commissioner Hechtman: Well, I only raised the concern that it's not clear to me how this 8 ordinance is going to impact a location like that with a non-low-residential, and I didn't mean to 9 sort of call them out and ask for Staff to do a particular analysis. Really, my point was more 10 we're mostly talking about low-density residential, but a good chunk of our creekside property 11 is not that and so we should be looking at that too. So in terms of your question, it seems like 12 Staff built the Minor Exception process really for residential, low-density residential, and I'm 13 okay with that concept because most of the things that aren't low-density residential are going 14 to go – unless you're an SB 330 project, some kind of ministerial project, most of them are 15 going to go through some level of Design Review, and with appropriately worded Major 16 Exception findings, they can work through the process to a reasonable resolution. So to answer 17 your question, I'm satisfied that the Minor Exception be limited to the low-density residential. 18 19 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Yep. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Me too. 2 3 Commissioner Akin: Agreed. 4 5 Commissioner Summa: Yep. 6 7 Commissioner Lu: And existing multifamily, of which there is adjacent to creeks that might be in 8 R-1, R-2, or RMD Zoning, would we also cover that… 9 10 Kelly Cha: That… 11 12 Commissioner Lu: …just by the definition of the ordinance? Would we consider that basically 13 low-density housing for the purpose of this? 14 15 Kelly Cha: So we didn't – so the draft ordinance lists the zoning districts, not the type of 16 residential development, so in that case, if there's any multifamily development within those 17 zoning district, which is pretty rate, it would be applicable as well, as it's written. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Coleman Frick: So I just want to mention one thing is we probably will have to look into this in 1 more detail as well on the Staff side because, per certain regulations in our Housing Element, 2 we really have to look carefully at potential impacts to different types of residential 3 development based on how our regulations could or could not restrict certain things. So I think 4 when we come back to the PTC with the next revision of the ordinance, we can provide 5 additional details on that. That being said, if there's any further comments, I don't want to kind 6 of cut off that discussion but wanted to kind of provide a little bit of that context. 7 8 Chair Chang: I'm not seeing any other lights, so I think that we've exhausted our thoughts, so – 9 and ourselves, yes. So I think what we need is a motion to continue this to a date uncertain, 10 incorporating our feedback. So would anyb-, not only our feedback, sorry. Our feedback and 11 the feedback of the members of the public. Would anybody like to make a motion? Doria? Or 12 Allen? Sorry… 13 14 Commissioner Akin: Motion… 15 16 Chair Chang: …Commissioner Akin. 17 18 Commissioner Akin: …[inaudible 3:58:36]… 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Reckdahl: I have one more thing I forgot. 1 2 Commissioner Akin: Oh, go ahead. 3 4 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay. I thought Shani's letter was very good and I thought a lot of those 5 things should be incorporated, but that was just my own opinion. And did we need a straw poll 6 to talk about… 7 8 Commissioner Akin: I would – well, I would rather not because I found that, while I agreed with 9 about 80 percent of it, there were a number of other items that I thought needed more work, 10 so that turns into another long discussion. 11 12 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay, but what does Staff do then? Do they look at it and use their 13 judgment to determine what should be added or not? 14 15 Commissioner Akin: Yes, and the input we've given them tonight, which should address many of 16 the issues there that I was concerned about. 17 18 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay, fair enough. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: Okay, so motion? 1 2 Commissioner Akin: I move that we continue this item to a date uncertain. 3 4 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Second. 5 6 Chair Chang: Any further discussion from commissions – from commissioners? I'm so tired. All 7 right. Ms. Dao, could you call the vote? 8 9 Jennifer Armer: Because we have everyone in chambers, it could just be raised hands rather 10 than having to do role call. 11 12 Veronica Dao: Is it okay that… 13 14 Commissioner Summa: Albert gets upset. 15 16 Jennifer Armer: Unless Albert's online and has a different opinion. I don't want to change the 17 standard… 18 19 Chair Chang: Okay, so let'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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Jennifer Armer: …of what we do. 2 3 Chair Chang: …just note that – yeah, okay. He says yes. 4 5 Veronica Dao: Yes? Okay. 6 7 Chair Chang: So let's just do a voice vote. All in favor? 8 9 Commissioner Lu: Yes. 10 11 Chair Chang: Aye. 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: Aye. 14 15 Commissioner Summa: Aye. 16 17 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Aye. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Chang: All opposed? And any abstentions? And I'd just like to note that Commissioner 1 Templeton is not here, so the motion passes 6-0-1. Or I don't know what it is, but everybody 2 here passes the motion. 3 4 Veronica Dao: Thank you, Chair. The motion passes unanimously with Commissioner Templeton 5 absent. 6 7 APPROVAL OF MINUTES 8 Public Comment is Permitted. Three (3) minutes per speaker. 9 10 3. Approval of Planning & Transportation Commission Draft Verbatim Minutes of May 11 29, 2024 12 13 Chair Chang: Thank you. All right. On to the next agenda item, which is our minutes. So we need 14 to approve the minutes from May 29… 15 16 Commissioner Summa: I'll make a motion to approve minutes – draft for minutes as revised of 17 May 29. 18 19 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Second. 20 21 Chair Chang: Can we do voice vote on this? 22 23 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: Yes. 1 2 Chair Chang: Okay. All in favor? 3 4 Commissioner Akin: Aye. 5 6 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Aye. 7 8 Commissioner Summa: Aye. 9 10 Chair Chang: Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. That passes unanimously with 11 Commissioner Templeton absent. And we need to take them one by one, right? 12 13 Jennifer Armer: Yes. 14 15 16 4. Approval of Planning & Transportation Commission Draft Verbatim & Summary 17 Minutes of July 10, 2024 18 19 Commissioner Summa: I will move approval of draft verbatim minutes and summary minutes of 20 July 10 as revised. 21 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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: Second. 1 2 Chair Chang: Okay. Let's do our voice vote. All in favor? 3 4 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Aye. 5 6 Chair Chang: Aye. 7 8 Commissioner Summa: Aye. 9 10 Chair Chang: Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, motion passes unanimously with 11 Commissioner Templeton absent. And a final motion, please, for the last set of minutes? 12 13 14 5. Approval of Planning & Transportation Commission Draft Summary Minutes of August 15 14, 2024 16 17 Commissioner Summa: I will move – make a motion to move approval of the Planning and 18 Transportation Commission draft summary minutes as revised. 19 20 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Second. 21 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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: Second. 1 2 Chair Chang: Okay. 3 4 Commissioner Summa: Of August 14. 5 6 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Oh. 7 8 Chair Chang: Commissioner Summa made the motion. Commissioner Reckdahl seconded. And 9 let's take… 10 11 Commissioner Hechtman: Vice-Chair. 12 13 Chair Chang: Sorry? 14 15 Commissioner Hechtman: Vice-Chair Reckdahl. 16 17 Chair Chang: Oh, Vice-Chair Reckdahl, yes. Vice-Chair Reckdahl. All right. Let's take the voice 18 vote. All in favor? 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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: Aye. 1 2 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Aye. 3 4 Commissioner Summa: Aye. 5 6 Chair Chang: Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion passes unanimously with 7 Commissioner Templeton absent. 8 9 Commissioner Questions, Comments or Announcements 10 Chair Chang: Okay, commissioner questions, comments, and announcements or future 11 meetings and agendas. Oh, wait, there's a light. Commissioner Akin. 12 13 Commissioner Akin: Just a couple things. Don't forget tomorrow evening at 6 is the Downtown 14 Housing Plan Open House here in the Community Meeting Room, so for any of the public who's 15 listening and of course any of our commissioners who'd like to attend. And just thoughts for the 16 millions of people who are going through Hurricane Milton right now, including my sister Laura 17 and her husband Steve in Sarasota, so we're thinking about you. 18 19 Chair Chang: Thank you. All right, with that, our meeting is adjourned. Thank you, everyone. 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 ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 Adjournment 2 9:55 pm 3 4