HomeMy WebLinkAbout2015-04-20 City Council Summary Minutes
04/20/2015 117- 266
Special Meeting
April 20, 2015
Closed Session .......................................................................................268
1. CONFERENCE WITH LABOR NEGOTIATORS ........................................268
Study Session ........................................................................................269
2. Joint Study Session of the City Council and the Utilities Advisory
Commission. ..................................................................................269
3. Annual Earth Day Report Study Session and Sustainability/Climate
Action Plan (S/CAP) Update. ............................................................283
City Manager Comments .........................................................................313
Oral Communications ..............................................................................317
Minutes Approval ....................................................................................323
4. February 23, 2015, March 2, 2015, and March 9, 2015 .......................323
Consent Calendar ...................................................................................323
5. Finance Committee Recommends Adoption of a Budget Amendment
Ordinance 5321 entitled “Budget Amendment Ordinance of the Council
of the City of Palo Alto Amending the Budget for Fiscal Year 2015 to
Adjust Budgeted Revenues and Expenditures in Accordance with the
Recommendations in the FY 2015 Midyear Budget Review Report and
to Adopt a Resolution 9503 entitled “Resolution of the Council of the
City of Palo Alto to Amend the Compensation Plan for the
Management/Professional Group to Add a Principal Attorney.” .............323
6. Staff Recommendation that the City Council Adopt Resolution 9504
entitled “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Amending
Gas Rate Schedule G-10 (Compressed Natural Gas Service) to Recover
Cap-and-Trade Regulatory Compliance Costs and Approving New Palo
AltoGreen Gas Rate Schedule G-10-G (Compressed Natural Green Gas
Service).” ......................................................................................323
7. Approval of Three Contracts with: 1) Delta Dental for Dental Claim
Administration; 2) Vision Service Plan for Vision Claim Administration
and Fully Insured Vision Plan; and 3) Life Insurance Company of North
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America (CIGNA) for Underwriting of the City of Palo Alto’s Group Life,
Accidental Death and Dismemberment (AD&D), and Long Term
Disability Insurance (LTD) Plans for up to Three Years for Each
Contract. .......................................................................................323
8. Approval of Loan Documents and Agreements Providing $1,000,000 for
the Rehabilitation of the Stevenson House and Adoption of Budget
Amendment Ordinance 5322 entitled “Budget Amendment Ordinance
of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Appropriating Funds from the
Residential Housing In-Lieu Fund for this Purpose.” ............................324
9. Adoption of Amended Ordinance Amending Chapter 9.14 (Smoking
and Tobacco Regulations) of the Palo Alto Municipal Code to Establish
New Outdoor Smoking Restrictions in Commercial Areas and Outdoor
Dining. ..........................................................................................324
10. PUBLIC HEARING: Adoption of Ordinances Amending Chapters 16.14,
16.17, and 16.18 to Adopt Local Amendments to the California Green
Building Code and the California Energy Code. ...................................324
11. Colleagues’ Memo from Mayor Holman, Council Members Burt, Schmid,
and Wolbach Regarding Strengthening City Engagement with
Neighborhoods (Continued from March 16, 2015)...............................344
12. Discussion and Appointment of a Council Member to the Board of
Directors of the Bay Area Water Supply & Conservation Agency
(BAWSCA) and the Bay Area Regional Water System Financing
Authority. ......................................................................................346
Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements ........................347
Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 11:17 P.M. ...........................348
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The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council
Chambers at 5:32 P.M.
Present: Berman, Burt, DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Kniss, Scharff, Schmid,
Wolbach arrived at 6:00 P.M.
Absent:
Utilities Advisory Commission:
Present: Cook, Eglash, Foster, Hall arrived at 6:49 P.M., Melton,
Waldfogel
Absent: Chang
Closed Session
MOTION: Council Member Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member
Berman to go into Closed Session.
MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Wolbach absent
Council went into Closed Session at 5:32 P.M.
1. CONFERENCE WITH LABOR NEGOTIATORS
City Designated Representatives: City Manager and his designees
pursuant to Merit System Rules and Regulations (James Keene, Molly
Stump, Kathy Shen, Melissa Tronquet, Dania Torres Wong, Sandra
Blanch, David Ramberg, Joe Saccio, Walter Rossmann, Eric Nickel,
Dennis Burns)
Employee Organizations: Palo Alto Police Officers Association
(PAPOA); International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), Local 1319
Authority: Government Code Section 54957.6(a).
The Council reconvened from the Closed Session at 6:37 P.M.
Mayor Holman: We are now reconvening after a Closed Session about labor
negotiations. There's no reportable action from that portion of the meeting.
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Study Session
2. Joint Study Session of the City Council and the Utilities Advisory
Commission.
Mayor Holman: Commissioners, thank you very much for joining us this
evening. You have information that you would like to share with us and
questions for us as well. I look to the Chair, Jon Foster, to start this
discussion. Thank you.
Jonathan Foster, Utilities Advisory Commission, Chair: Mayor Holman, thank
you very much for that introduction and for inviting us all to join you this
evening as we do periodically every year to 18 months or so. It's a great
opportunity to hear from individual members of the City Council on the
utility issues of priority to you. Let me start with a few words myself. The
City of Palo Alto is unique in California in operating all utilities municipally,
our electric, our gas, our water and our wastewater. We're unique in that
respect. We are, as many people know, a very green-friendly City, and we
are also a very innovative City. Those things come together wonderfully in
our municipal utility in providing an opportunity to be innovative in
sustainability in running a municipal utility. At the same time, I tend to
think of our utility in a pyramid structure. The very base of it is the need to
operate our utility safely, reliably and cost effectively. As Director Fong is
fond of reminding us, if we fail to do those things, all the nice things with
sustainability and everything else doesn't happen. It is obviously very
important that we continue that. We then move to the next layer of the
pyramid, which is the opportunity in Palo Alto to push the ball forward on
sustainability, renewable energy and energy efficiency which we have found
over time is cost effective for our residents, our ratepayers and our
businesses. That's great. The last piece of the pyramid is Palo Alto is
uniquely positioned to be a leader among communities around the United
States in setting an example for other communities and utilities on what can
be done to use less fossil fuels in a cost-effective way for ratepayers. We
have a wonderful opportunity here. What has worked very well in these
discussions in the past is for individual members of the UAC and City Council
to share the thoughts on their mind, what topics are of interest to them, what would you all like to see us work on over the next year. With that, we
can go around or however you want to do it, Mayor Holman.
Mayor Holman: First we would go to other Commission Members and see if
they have questions that they would like Council Members to answer or
points that they would like to make that maybe accentuate the need for the question or something that they're particularly satisfied with that the
Commission has undertaken. We have two Commissioners who are going to
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be leaving the Commission. Maybe it would be particularly appropriate to
have them make comments. Asher, would you care to go? Not to put you
on the spot, but I'm putting you on the spot.
Asher Waldfogel, Utilities Advisory Commissioner: Thank you, Mayor
Holman. I really don't have anything to add to that introduction. I want to
thank the members of this Council for the opportunity to spend the last
couple of years devoting my first Wednesday nights of every month to the
Utilities Advisory Commission (UAC) for a couple of years.
Mayor Holman: Thank you. Other Commissioners?
John Melton, Utilities Advisory Commissioner: I have a couple of things I
would like to recommend to Council as I am leaving the Commission. This is
perhaps my last chance to say some things to you that I think are
important. The first is following up on the comments about the importance
of reliability in the utilities. I really believe that is the thing that our customers look to us for first, reliability. The water has to flow; the
electricity has to flow; the wastewater has to flow. Cost effectiveness is
good, but reliability is the top thing. In that context, five years after we
learned the lesson of having a single point connection, we still have not
gotten our second point connection in our electric supply. Doing whatever it
takes to get Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and Department of
Energy (DOE) and Western all lined up so that we can make a connection
out on the west side is perhaps the most important thing that needs to be
done. I would ask that the new UAC and this Council push on that as hard
as they can. The second thing I would like to say is 11 years ago, when I
first joined the UAC, my first vote on the UAC was to make a
recommendation to Council on whether or not we should pursue Fiber to the
Premises, at that time called fiber to the home. It's only been 11 years,
folks. I know there are things on the table. By the way, the first vote I took
where I voted yes and said, "Let's do it," that proposal fell apart over a legal
issue that came to the surface. Since then there have been several other
pushes at that, all of which haven't gone anywhere. We're now in the
middle of another push, and we've got City Staff developing a proposal.
We've got Google considering us as a possibility. We've got other carriers that all of a sudden recognized that Google is going to be a competitor, and
they're starting to compete. Comcast, Verizon and such. I would urge
Council to make this the last run. Either do it now—if that's what the
analysis turns out to be the right thing to do; that hasn't been determined
yet—or accept the fact that we've missed the boat and it's too late to do a municipal fiber project. The commercial world of Google and Comcast and
Verizon and all of those guys are going to do it, and they are going to take
care of it. There will be Fiber to the Premises, but it won't be a municipal
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project. It will be in the commercial world. If that's the decision now, then
let's take that off the table and not spend any more time working on another
round.
Mayor Holman: Thank you very much, and thank you for your service. I
thought I saw another light down there. Yes, go right ahead.
James Cook, Utilities Advisory Commissioner: Thank you so much for
having us and meeting with us tonight. I love the work that we do on the
UAC, and it's great to be able to get some guidance from you all on things
that we ought to focus on. I've particularly enjoyed serving with
Commissioner Melton and Commissioner Waldfogel, both of whom I've
learned to listen closely to. I echo what they say. In addition to the second
connection to the grid and determining what we do on Fiber to the Premises
and what the UAC should be doing there, I'd also like your thoughts on fuel
switching. The last five years or so that I've been on the UAC, the City has done an incredible job of moving to a more sustainable and green Electric
Utility, leading the country in that way and leading the world in many ways.
A lot of us are looking to what do we do next, so we've turned our Palo Alto
Green into Palo Alto Green Gas. I'm wondering if there's a next step there
and want to see if you have advice on that. Finally, something that we've
done in the past that goes with utilities and has been great for the aesthetic
of the City is undergrounding. As far as I know, we're in some sort of nether
world; I'm not sure what we're doing about undergrounding. Obviously
we've reaped the benefits of undergrounding in certain neighborhoods.
People like it. I'd like to see us finish the job and do the rest of the City. I'd
like to see what your thoughts are on that. Thank you again for meeting
with us.
Garth Hall, Utilities Advisory Commissioner: Good evening, City Council
Members and fellow Commissioners. Thanks very much for having us at this
meeting. I'm Garth Hall. I've been a Commissioner, I'm coming onto my
third year. I really appreciate this meeting. One of the fun things for me
just over the last year or so is to realize what progress the City has made on
the electric side in terms of its green footprint. We're probably amongst the
leaders in the United States, never mind California. It's been a joy to see Chief Sustainability Officer Gil Friend appointed by the City Council to take
on a role of what else can we do. One of the key things for us to look for is
where do we go from here. We could become a lot more efficient with our
natural gas usage. There's no doubt about it. Fuel switching, Commissioner
Cook mentioned, is one avenue, but other things too. Also in the idea of reducing the footprint in greenhouse gas in transportation, that may seem
like not a utility function, but I believe it can be and maybe should be.
When you think about the opportunity to move towards electric cars, you
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see them more and more on the road these days. It's not that we have to
subsidize anything to do with purchases of cars; that is done by the market.
There may be a consideration around pricing for electricity to encourage
further penetration of electric usage, and thereby reduce the greenhouse
footprint of the City. That and many other areas in the areas of water
recycling and so on, there's just a lot more to be done. The other thing, just
an aspect of the Fiber to the Premises, it's been obvious to many that it's
not only an efficiency thing and providing what consumers want in the City,
but it also is a greenhouse footprint reducing strategy. The more folks who
are able to communicate effectively from their homes or businesses without
travel, the better off we all are in terms of burning up fuel in order to get
around. It's yet another strategy for us to adopt. Thanks very much.
Mayor Holman: Thank you. Looks like we'll be coming to Council Members
now for questions and consideration of the points that have been mentioned this evening and the ones that are lined out in the Staff Report that was
worked on with the Chair and Vice Chair and the Commission in terms of
what topics they would like to have addressed. Council Members.
Council Member Kniss: If I could pick up on what John Melton just said. He
talked about it going back 11 years; it goes back 20 years, John. That's
when we first had a website. Your point is so well taken; if we're going to do
it, do it. If not, let's absolutely let whatever company may come in. Some
company will come in. There'll be absolutely no question. As you've said,
Google is going in a whole variety of different directions. They certainly
have made impacts in a variety of places. One of the cities that we've talked
about but haven't really discussed recently is Chattanooga which has made
theirs very effective in a variety of different ways in addition to having some
emergency response pieces to it as well. That is absolutely what we need to
take up with a real sense of purpose. I'm glad you mentioned it in particular
tonight, because we need to be reminded all the time that that's out there
and in play. Thanks, and thanks for everything you've all done who are
going off as well.
Vice Mayor Schmid: I'd like to just follow up on a comment that Chair
Foster made about governance. Utilities is a funny part of the City for us. It makes up half the Budget, but our daily life with the utilities is very limited.
The issues that come in utilities are usually major capital investments over
time that necessitate a broad perspective on the issues, the five years we've
come to the five-year forecast in the future. It's very hard when utility
issues come to the Council in spotty ways to be able to draw on the expertise that the UAC does. I have urged many times that you produce
verbatim minutes. I have noted that to watch a UAC meeting takes three
hours and, if you have the verbatim minutes, maybe in 20 minutes you can
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get to a lot of good wisdom and foresight that we don't have. Maybe an
option is to think through how you can reach us and the wider community in
a more effective way. I might suggest to you in lieu of verbatim minutes of
every time you send a recommendation to Council insert in it the place on
the media tape where the discussion of the UAC takes place; not the
presentations or the public comments, but where you as the Commission are
discussing back and forth or with Staff issues. That way we can get the
essence of your argument. I find that to have a group like yours that has
such experience and that is sharing with the community, it's important that
you reach out to us and help us with that insight that you have.
Council Member Burt: First, thanks to all of you for the work that you do
and the contributions you make and the thorough analysis that we
consistently receive from you. I want to touch on topics that several of you
raised. First, on what Commissioner Melton had raised about the criticality of the second or western connection from PG&E to provide adequate
reliability in the event of a severe event. I'm trying to remember. It's now
been two or three years, maybe, since we saw our last report on that. I'd
like to see not only an update of where we are, but a set of alternatives on
how to resolve it. If we're looking at the cost and it's significant, then we as
a City may have to look at what would be the rate impact for that additional
reliability. We lay it on the table and decide whether we're willing to do it.
We're 20, now 20-plus percent below PG&E on electricity costs. If we have
to bite the bullet and take some portion of that to have the reliability, we'd
get heat on it in the near term, but we'd get big heat if we lose power again.
Second, on the fuel switching, I hope you're going to stick around because
tonight's agenda is going to be talking about our Climate Action Plan in
which this is a major component as we look long term how does any city or
government get to 80 percent reduction, what's more 100 percent, without
this. This is how to get there. Nobody's had to face that until now, because
nobody really had a plan. We had a bunch of aspirations around 80 percent
reduction, but nobody really has had a plan. We now can begin to formulate
that. More specifically, I'm interested in us looking now at whether we
should acquire additional renewable power purchase agreements beyond what we've booked for the electric power demand we currently have, but to
begin to look at opportunistic, good deals like we've had. This is why we've
done so well; we've been very opportunistic on our buys. That would meet
whatever increase in demand of electricity we'll have going forward for fuel
switching. It'll build over time and we'll certainly offset some of that through better efficiency. Second, as we have our oldest renewable contracts
expiring, with the very low rates that we have now, it would be prudent to
seriously examine booking some additional contracts. They take generally
several years before they come online. Finally, on the Fiber to the Premise,
I've been concerned that we as a City have been over-enamored with
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chasing the Google unicorn. That has been dangled out in front of us for
three years and it may eventually happen, but I certainly don't want to have
us hold back because we keep thinking this magical thing's going to fall in
our laps from Google. I don't know if it's a unicorn or it's Lucy pulling the
football out from in front of Charlie Brown. In any event, I want to see us
look at moving forward now. If Google's got something that they will
commit to in the near term, great. Otherwise, I'm not for holding and
waiting for them. Maybe if we actually lay it on the line, we'll see that they'll
get off the dime. If not, we've got $20 million to leverage, and almost no
other city has that to work for the premise program. If anybody can do it,
we should with our demographics and those dollars.
Council Member DuBois: Thanks again for serving. John and Asher are
finishing up; I appreciate your service. As a new Council Member, I would
appreciate, the next time you guys come, some kind of presentation, a summary of accomplishments and some of your issues and questions.
That'd be useful. A lot of groups do that when we have these joint
meetings. Personally, I'm very interested in water reuse and how Palo Alto
can move forward in that area. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. I'm
also very interested in Fiber to the Premise. I won't repeat what
Commissioner Burt said, but it was a good summary. I did attend one of
your recent meetings, and there seemed to be some question about whether
the UAC should be discussing fiber. Maybe we can clarify that. I would like
to see you guys review our progress in fiber both on the Google initiative
and the City-owned service. I would love to see you guys do that regularly
and send your recommendations to us, because it's a complicated issue. On
fuel switching and sustainability, that same night you guys had a preview of
what we're going to get tonight. You guys had some interesting comments.
I particularly appreciated some of the comments on how do you manage the
transition and what are the economics of that, particularly if we're trying to
switch from gas to electricity. We have these big hairy goals, these
reductions we want to get to. If you guys could give us feedback on how
you do that in a way that makes economic sense, that'd be very useful.
Thank you.
Council Member Scharff: Thank you. I'd also like to thank Commissioner
Melton and Commissioner Waldfogel for their service. I've enjoyed working
with you on the UAC and been really impressed by both the contributions
you guys have made. This is really a fantastic Commission. I'm always
really impressed with the thoughtfulness and analysis that you guys do. Keep up the good work; you really do a great job. When it comes to
undergrounding, since you mentioned that, I thought I'd mention that as
well. I also think we should put that to the people of Palo Alto. Obviously,
it's very expensive. I've heard really large numbers to underground the
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whole City. I do think and have thought for a long time that what we should
do is put this issue to rest and go to the voters and say, "This is what it'll
cost. This is what'll it cost in surcharge on your utility bill. Do you want to
do it or not?" If they want to do it, then we should do it. If not, we
shouldn’t do it. That would be the way to deal with that. I'd like to see the
UAC take this issue up and come up with a recommendation of how to
resolve this issue. We hear in the community that they've been promised
undergrounding, they never get it, that kind of stuff. Currently, there is no
plan to underground. There's a few places left where, who pays for it? I
forget. Who pays 40 percent of the cost or whatever it is?
Valerie Fong, Utilities Director: It's typically split between the
Communications Utility and the Electric Utility, like say AT&T.
Council Member Scharff: It's AT&T paying 40 percent. There's very few
places left, if I recall, right?
Ms. Fong: Correct.
Council Member Scharff: The other thing I did want to say, because we
hardly ever say it, is I've gotten to know a lot of other Utility Directors
through Norther California Power Agency (NCPA), Municipal Utility Directors.
While Val's not perfect, she is very, very good. I want to say, Val, that you
do a great job. We're actually very lucky to have Val. I wanted to give a
shout out to you and tell you what a great job you do. I appreciate it. I
support the Fiber to the Premises discussion. I'm not going to repeat what
people said, but I'd like to see that move forward expeditiously. I do think
the UAC is the right place to take that up and start looking at different
options and start vetting them. Obviously we want to get this done. Google
is a very intriguing option, but who knows when that's coming about? We
also want to make sure we do it right. If we do it wrong, there are a
number of disasters out there. In the rush to say how wonderful it is, let's
not forget that this can go all wrong, and we need to do it in a thoughtful
and careful and deliberate manner. Given our fiber ring, it's easy to pop up,
maybe easy is too strong a word. It's very possible to pop up enterprise
class Wi-Fi in places. We've had certain hotspots that we've started rolling
out in the City. The more we do that, that's great. I'd also like to see us move forward with more Wi-Fi spots around. Eventually I'd like all of
California Avenue and Downtown to have great enterprise-class Wi-Fi. That
would be fantastic. What else did I want to say? Anything else? No, I think
that's about it. Anyway, thank you all for your service. Really appreciate it.
Council Member Berman: I'll try not to repeat what a lot of my colleagues have said. First off, thank you guys very much...
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Mayor Holman: Except since we can't take motions, it is good for you to
state what you support for the Commissioners to look at. Then they can
count noses and say there's support from Council for something.
Council Member Berman: Very good point. I'll make that really easy. I
support everything that my colleagues have brought up tonight. First of all,
thank you guys. The City's utilities are the foundation of the community and
something that a lot of folks, including myself, half the time don't
understand. We're really lucky to have you guys serving the community.
The rates that we have and the reliability that we have are a testament to
the work that you guys put in. We are at an "all hands on deck" point as a
community. It was great that we got to a 100-percent Carbon-Neutral
Electricity Portfolio, but then we realized 30 percent of our greenhouse gas
emissions still come from natural gas and 60 percent come from
transportation. What's next? It's not like we can stop and pat ourselves on the back and pretend like it's a job well done. We have to keep moving
forward and keep finding ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The
fuel switching is going to be incredibly important and complicated. It's
alluded to in our item on the Sustainability/Climate Action Plan about how,
as we pursue that, it's going to create a lot of complications in terms of rate
structures, in terms of the amount of natural gas that we provide dwindles
but the cost for infrastructure stays the same. There are all sorts of issues
that we're going to have to work through, that we're going to rely on you
guys to help us figure out. We have to do that if we're going to get to our
80 percent or 100 percent carbon-neutral community, which should be our
goal. Water Council Member DuBois brought up. Becoming more efficient
and increasing our water recycling capabilities is something we need to start
pursuing. We need to be the leader on that front now. We've been the
leader on getting a Carbon-Neutral Electricity Portfolio. Now we need to
show other communities what we can do in terms of being more efficient
and being creative in increasing supply of water. I don't want to repeat
everything. Council Member Burt's point about taking advantage of
additional solar purchase possibilities, there's a chart on Packet Page 20 of
our Packet tonight that shows how over time certain supplies are going to expire and we need to have plans in the works years in advance to replace
those as opposed to having to rely on Renewable Energy Certificates (REC)
again like this chart shows. That's something we should definitely keep an
eye out for, good, advantageous opportunities. Municipal fiber, important.
Creating a second point connection is incredibly important. I'm intrigued by the UAC's role in helping us reduce our transportation greenhouse gas
emissions. Any ideas that you guys have I want to hear. They might not be
feasible or I might not agree with them, but please don't hesitate to bring
them to our attention. We're going to have get really creative if we're going
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to try to chase a very ambitious goal. That's good enough for now. Thank
you, guys.
Council Member Wolbach: First, thank you to the entire Commission for
amazing work. We just interviewed for people to replace the two outgoing
Commissioners. Thank you both for your exceptional work and service.
They have big shoes to fill. We haven't picked yet, but we have some
fantastic applicants. It really speaks also to the nature of our community,
that we do have such phenomenal applicants, people with tremendous
breadth of experience, skill and intelligence and commitment to civic service
that are willing to dedicate their time free of charge to helping us supervise
and guide our utilities which is, as Chair Foster said, unique here in Palo Alto
and such an asset for us. Just going down the list of some of these things
that were discussed that I'll say, "Me too" to. Fiber, yes and we should do it
quickly. I agree with Council Member Burt's comments on that. On communications, yes. This is a large issue for us in general. Time-stamping
Commission meetings, reports that come to us so that we can quickly look
up when those comments were said or recommendations were made during
a video, so we can go and watch the actual video if it seems relevant to us,
that would be really useful but might be more for Staff to work on as well.
Sorry guys. Also as a new Council Member, this being my first time meeting
with you, having a presentation or just a written report in advance of the
meeting from the Commission before we have our next joint Study Session
would be great. Electricity, yes. Let's definitely move seriously to explore
another connection point. It is vitally important. On natural gas, it hasn't
been discussed a lot tonight. I haven't made up my mind yet. Some people
think we should move to being a natural gas-free City. I'm not there yet,
but I am open to that consideration. I know you have a lot on your plate,
but I hope that you're looking at ways to reduce natural gas use. On water,
in addition to water efficiency and water reuse, something that I would
envision being a big long-term project that would incorporate Public Works,
Planning and Utilities is being a world-class leader in rainwater capture.
Those are my comments for now. Thanks.
Mayor Holman: Commissioner Eglash, do you have comments or thoughts?
Mr. Eglash: Sure. Did you want the rest of the Council to finish speaking?
Mayor Holman: Go right ahead.
Mr. Eglash: Thanks to all of you for your comments and input tonight.
These annual meetings are a huge treat for us to hear directly from you and
share our thoughts directly with you, as opposed to the way we usually do this through inferring things through lots of written communication. Thanks
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a lot. This is great. I wanted to comment briefly on a governance question
about the way the UAC and the City Council work with each other. I also
wanted to comment on fuel switching, but I won't try to touch on everything
else that everyone's talked about tonight. Several years ago when I first
joined the UAC, I had this idea that our proper interaction with City Council
was to be an unbiased advisory body, like the Congressional Budget Office
or some kind of bipartisan commission. Many of you and your predecessors
told me clearly that that was not what was most helpful to you. You wanted
us to behave as if we were responsible for running the City in the most
responsible way possible and make decisions. Even though those decisions
are advisory to the City Council, that was what was most helpful and most
efficient for you to be able to look at us taking distinct positions on matters,
but then give you something very specific that you could either agree with or
disagree with, in any case, something that was as black and white and tangible as possible. As a Commission over the last several years, we've
taken that to heart. All of us approach each of these issues imagining that
we are responsible for the ultimately decision, the role that in fact the City
Council has, trying to make the right decision, trying to articulate for the
minutes and the record why we're doing that. I hope that's proved useful to
those of you who have been around for several years and sounds about right
to those of you who are new to the Council. I invite any of you to comment
on that in a moment. I wanted to take a moment on fuel switching, because
it is one of the most complex issues we've faced in many years. I believe
and have discussed publicly that we have experts around that can help us
get to the right decision on this one. I am personally as strong an advocate
for sustainability as there is anywhere, but it needs to be done thoughtfully
and in a way that doesn't create superficial headlines of sustainability but
does genuinely help the planet and does protect our ratepayers at the same
time. The fuel switching issue is that we have a zero carbon electric supply;
therefore, perhaps it makes sense to switch from gas to electricity for
heating our houses and heating our domestic hot water. That's the fuel
switching question. Most of our furnaces and water heaters today are gas-
fired. That has a carbon footprint associated with it. The argument goes if we can move to our zero carbon electric supply for space heating and water
heating, that ought to reduce our carbon footprint. That sounds pretty
simple. Why is it complicated? Our electricity comes from the western grid
of the United States. That grid is more than 60 percent powered by gas.
We quite correctly say that our electricity isn't, because we're purchasing enough zero carbon electricity in a few RECs and offsets to true it up to 100
percent. That's true on a spreadsheet basis, but the grid that we get our
electricity from is still predominantly gas-fired. That's one reason why it's
complicated. It's also complicated from an electric rate point of view. This
will push our homeowners into higher electric tiers, so we'll have to re-
engineer the rates appropriately, much like the problem that happened when
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people bought Electric Vehicles (EV). The thing that changes it dramatically
is new heat pump-based furnaces are remarkably more efficient than old
electric furnaces. Fuel switching would have probably made no sense at all
as recently as five or ten years ago. As anyone who has shopped for a
furnace recently knows, new furnaces based on heat pump technology are
incredibly more efficient than old ones, and the same unit works as a heater
and as an air conditioner. They're both very efficient. Indeed, maybe this
makes a lot of sense, but it's still a dynamic situation. Sustained drought
means there's going to be less hydroelectric energy. That's going to put
more burden on gas-fired power plants. It's still true that solar is not a good
match for our 24-hour load profile. The only reason we can survive with so
much solar in Palo Alto is we get our electricity off of the grid through PG&E,
a grid that's balanced with the help of gas turbines. That's the sort of thing
that's on my mind as we consider this issue. The approach I bring to it and one that I encourage all of us to bring to it is that it's not just about a
headline that allows us to brag to the world that we've reduced our carbon
footprint, but that we've done it in a thoughtful and meaningful way. Part of
helping to get there can be to reach out to some experts in the community
who know more than any of us. Thanks a lot for this opportunity and the
opportunity to serve and work with you.
Mayor Holman: Thank you so very much for your comments, Commissioner
Eglash.
Council Member Filseth: A couple of brief ones here. First of all, I too would
like to thank everybody on the Advisory Commission for this. The utilities is
really fundamental with so many people in Palo Alto, and there's such a
huge amount of money involved and City funds involved in this. The role of
the citizens' advisory commission is important. Thank you all very much for
contributing your time and intellectual investment into this. Just a couple of
things. I appreciate Commissioner Melton's comments on priorities. I
agree. Reliability in keeping the power on and the water running has got to
be absolutely top priority. In terms of how do we move forward on that and
how much will it cost and explain the costs, as Council Member Burt
commented, is really important. I've lived here for 25 years, and every year or two we get a new report from the United States Geological Survey
(USGS) that says the probability of a major earthquake in the bay area has
increased. It's coming, so we need to be secure. That's obviously not the
only source. In terms of Fiber to the Premises, pending the analysis of
course, my inclination is that irrespective of whether we choose to work with a Google or an AT&T or somebody like that, the City ought to own the
physical infrastructure. Anything you need to dig a trench for, the City
ought to own, irrespective of whether we do something with the other folks
or not, because it's natural monopoly territory just like a power grid. I have
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a couple of questions on fuel switching, but I might leave them until the next
session. Thanks.
Council Member Wolbach: I want to echo what Council Member Filseth just
said about the importance of us having control and options for control
ownership over our utilities infrastructure, including potentially fiber optics,
beyond what our current infrastructure is.
Mayor Holman: I'll join my colleagues in supporting several of these things.
There's been much said about fiber. There's nothing been said about fiber
that I disagree with. I would welcome your recommendations and expertise
in that regard. A redundant electricity source, that's been something I've
been passionate about and committed to for I don't know how many years,
certainly since the Tesla incident. I appreciate any advice and advancement
of that facility. It would be a huge improvement to our community and a
safety valve for us. Electric undergrounding, agree that we should be addressing that. It's been stalled for a good number of years now. It comes
up frequently by members of the community. That would be something also
that I would look for your counsel on. When it comes to water, is there
anything that is now in an ongoing fashion any more important than
addressing water issues? Gray water, I was at an event yesterday evening,
and somebody from another community talked about they were doing a
significant remodel and wanted to install a gray water system at their home,
but it was just too expensive. They are still quite expensive. Anything that
we can do try to advance that; recommendations for rebates, anything that
you can come up, any kind of calculus in terms of what the payback is in
terms of savings, payback in terms of rebates utilized if the money's put out
there. It is an aspect of our home use that isn't being utilized currently.
Other than that, obviously the reliability of utilities is a first priority and we
absolutely take it for granted. Although she's not perfect because none of
us are, the head of the Utilities Department, Val, we are very lucky to have
you. We don't take you or the Utilities Staff or this Commission for granted.
You do excellent work and keep our utilities on. It's easy to take some of
these things for granted. You flip a switch or turn on a valve, and things run
for us. We don't take it for granted and we should never do that. Fuel switching, yes. That's it in terms of what I would like to see the Commission
work on and recommendation to the Council. I would encourage you, if you
do have questions about wanting direction from Council, do not be shy about
asking.
Council Member Scharff: I had a brief follow-up on Commissioner Eglash's comments. I would fully associate my opinions with Commissioner Eglash
on fuel switching. It's incredibly complicated. One of my concerns, as we
go down this path, is that we actually get clearer regulatory advice from our
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counsel in understanding where we are on this. I was struck by Council
Member Wolbach's comment that, I'm not ready to shut down our Gas Utility
but I might get there. I hope I didn't misquote you; that's what I roughly
heard you say. There's a big transition between where we are now and—as
we move away from natural gas if we go in that direction—if we're 20
percent above PG&E, 30 percent, are people going to start saying, "We want
gas. We want to disband the Palo Alto Gas Utility and go with PG&E." Right
now it's very aspirational, very half-baked unless what we're talking about is
on the margins moving people very slowly towards changing their heaters
for electric ones, efficient ones. If that's what we're talking about, that's
great. If we're talking about something more radical, we haven't thought
this through yet. Not to mention that we might be able to get there and
think it through, but right now we're being very aspirational. These are
serious and extremely complex and difficult issues. I'm really glad we have the UAC to vet these for us.
Council Member Burt: Since that's such an important topic and we've gone
a little deeper on that, I don't view it as either aspirational nor an immediate
aggressive plan. It's neither. We're beginning a deliberate process. We're
at the early stages of a deliberate process. At that front end, the transition
will be slow, and that's probably a good thing because at that frontend we
don't yet have the visibility toward solving all of those critical and
complicated elements to it. Just because we don't have those solutions in
sight doesn't mean that they aren't going to be emerging as we move this
ball forward. Just five years ago, conventional wisdom was that we were
going to have a very hard time getting to 33 percent renewables, because of
all the trend lines on renewable costs going up. We've seen the technology
changes. We have nations like Germany that are ahead of the curve on
renewable adoption from where we are, and they're pushing the envelope
right now on smart grid systems, on storage and on distributed generation
as being real fundamental legs of being able to move further in that
direction. We will doubtless identify even more barriers as we get further
along. I've become less conservative over time in thinking that we have to
have identified our solutions before we start moving down a path. The changes in technology in this arena have been so radical and are on the
horizon going to address these problems. We may be somewhat at the
forefront of this. I think we will help identify and solve those problems. I'm
not supportive of capricious actions that are, therefore, bragging rights, but
I am supportive of an aggressive program that will push us into being leaders on solving those remaining problems.
Chair Foster: Council Members, thank you very much for all your feedback.
It really has been very, very helpful. I think it's going to provide excellent
guidance for us in the year ahead. Let me just make a couple of comments
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on points that have been raised. With respect to Fiber to the Premises
(FTTP), we hear the message loud and clear. Our role in that has not been
active over the last couple of years, because of other citizen advisory groups
and others that have been involved, which is great. We will take your words
to heart and reinvigorate or reengage in that area. One other point I
wanted to raise. We have an interesting jurisdictional issue, because our
jurisdiction, as the City Attorney will remind us, is the utilities only. When
we talk about things like transportation, for example, although that goes to
sustainability, that actually is not utilities. In areas like the City's Climate
Action Plan, as well, we don't technically have jurisdiction there. We have a
very good relationship with the City's Chief Sustainability Officer, who kindly
comes and pays us a visit to fill us in on what he is doing. The City's Chief
Information Officer has come and talked about fiber. It is something to
think about, whether the current jurisdictional bounds of the UAC are the right ones or whether adjustment should be thought of. I don't think we're
in a position to make a recommendation, but it is something both the UAC
and the City Council can think about in the months ahead. That's it. Thanks
again.
Wynn Grcich: Hi. I was listening to a lot of the things that you were talking
about. The one thing under utilities, I hope that water and sewer lines are
part of that. I go to many City Councils and I hear about Millbrae had five
water mains break in one day. You're talking about an earthquake
happening. When you put chloramine and fluoride in the drinking water, this
stuff is so corrosive, the pipes are leaching lead, they're disintegrating.
They're putting these poisons in the water in already corroded pipes. What
you really need to do is have some kind of Ordinance that you're going to
replace so many miles of pipe every year. I know Burlingame, California
was sued for dumping lead and arsenic in the bay, and they had to replace
100 miles of sewer lines. They jacked up the water prices so high on
everybody to replace the pipes, and it was going to take 20 years to do. I
guess that's 20 miles a year, right. I spoke to one of the water people in
Marin, and they said they have on their books that they replace five miles a
year. If you're really concerned about an earthquake, I would think that your water and sewer lines are a big deal. People think, because out of sight
out of mind, you're only going to replace them when they leak. Alameda
County Water District just jacked up their water rates, and there's a big
stink over that. I think that's kind of funny, because they claim that they
have over 800 leaks a year. They are going to put some of that money into replacing the pipes, but they haven't really spent it on it yet. When you
were talking about using reclaimed water, yesterday in the newspaper in the
east bay, you can call the water company and they'll come to your house
and water your lawn with recycled toilet water. They put it in a big tank and
take it to your house, and they'll water your yard for you. It was in the
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paper. I've seen a lot of weird things. If you have vegetables and stuff, I
wouldn't use that water because when they recycle the toilet water, they use
2.5 times stronger bleach than Clorox in that recycled toilet water. Now that
we're blending our drinking water with recycled water and more people are
getting sick, I would think that more people would be concerned about
replacing the pipes so that we can go to alternative technology to disinfect
the water without putting any poison in it. If people value their lives, the
last thing you want to do is be drinking and recycling the toilet water,
because you're taking other people's medicines and that causes a lot of
other problems on top of that. Most of the diseases, Dr. Wynn Parker said in
Chloramine Causes Collateral Health Damage, you're not only drinking
someone else's medicine, you're drinking their disease. The water and
sewer line should be mandatory to have that on some kind of book to
replace so many miles every year. In the last ten years, I've taken a lot of college courses, and I've had five college books that say it's going to take
over 16 trillion to replace the water and sewer lines nationwide. This would
create a lot of jobs and it would do a lot of things. Just remember all those
people that are coming to Google and Facebook, they all use the toilet, don't
they? Bring them and they will come, then you're not going to have any
water to flush it down. In this news article today, it says that your City, Palo
Alto, has to reduce your water consumption 24 percent. When you think
about this, there's no more water to buy, and people are turning to their
toilets.
Mayor Holman: Commissioners, thank you again for your service, for your
coming tonight. We really appreciate your comments, your questions and
your service. Thank you all very much.
3. Annual Earth Day Report Study Session and Sustainability/Climate
Action Plan (S/CAP) Update.
Mayor Holman: Before we go to Staff, I have something here to share with
you all and to recognize. As we celebrate the 45th anniversary of Earth Day
on Wednesday, the Council would like to recognize and give kudos to several
Gunn High School (Gunn) students who showed great leadership in getting
water bottle filling stations installed at Gunn as a way to reduce creek litter and prevent waste from bottled water sold in vending machines. Funded by
a grant from the City Public Works Watershed Protection Program, the
students came up with the idea, assessed the current impact of litter from
water bottles, worked with Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD)
maintenance staff to get new units installed, and are providing outreach to students. Next fall, students will assess litter reduction as a result of
installing these water bottle filling stations. Two of the students, Josh
Kaplan and Aitan Grossman, and their advisor, Carole Langston, are here
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tonight. Would you please stand and we'll acknowledge your leadership and
efforts? Is Ms. Langston here? If you will come down to the podium, the
City Clerk has something for the three of you in recognition of your efforts.
Thank you for your leadership, your initiative. We look forward to the
results. Thank you very much. Gil, would you care to start your
presentation?
Gil Friend, Chief Sustainability Officer: Thank you, Mayor Holman. Mayor
Holman, Vice Mayor Schmid, Council Members, citizens, I'm Gil Friend. I'm
the Chief Sustainability Officer for the City. You created the Office of
Sustainability about a year and a half ago to bring focus to the City's many
sustainability efforts and to help set a direction for the next phase of Palo
Alto's sustainability leadership. We're here tonight to summarize what we've
been doing, discuss where we might be going and to invite your guidance on
the work that's ahead. Before I start, I'd like to acknowledge my Staff, Benjamin Privitt and Sarah Isabel Moe here at the dais with me, as well as
about 20 members of City Staff who have worked on this report including
Shiva Swaminathan from Utilities, Julie Weiss from Public Works and quite a
number of others. Over the next 15 or 20 minutes, I'd like to walk through
these topics: to look at the trends both broadly and in this community; the
status of our work, the approaches that we're taking in moving forward on
Sustainability and the Climate Action Plan; and share some observations
about where we are and some of the actions that stand before us; and of
course talk about next steps. Let me start with some trends. I want to also
acknowledge the City Attorney's office who has advised us and guided us on
this presentation and noticed that there are a number of legal issues that
we're going to have to look at as we move into these conversations. I want
to offer that disclaimer here. We're in a world that's getting a lot hotter.
We're in the western United States, where it's getting a lot wetter. We're in
a utility industry that's getting riskier. This chart shows the weather-related
utility outages over the last 20 years in the United States. We're in an
environment where cities are getting bolder in the kinds of actions that
they're taking. These are goals of the C-40 cities around the world. I call
out Melbourne, Australia and Copenhagen, Denmark who have set goals of 100 percent climate neutrality, in the case of Copenhagen by 2025 and in
the case of Melbourne by 2020. Here in California and just in the last few
months as we've been putting this report together, we've seen a number of
bold declarations from our leaders. Governor Brown has set new energy
policy targets for California. President Obama has set them for the United States. Governor Brown in the last couple of weeks set new water goals
including the reduction targets that we are grappling with now on Staff.
Some of our colleague communities. Los Angeles, California just in the last
month released their Climate Action Plan which includes in addition to
looking at a mode shift of 50 percent out of private vehicles—imagine that
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for Los Angeles—but also capturing 50 percent of water needs from local
resources. Vancouver, Canada is going to be 100 percent renewable over a
similar interval. In this period, we've done a lot. There's more than 150
sustainability initiatives across City departments. You have many of those
detailed in Attachment D of your report. All of them are chronicled in a
SharePoint database, ranging from local solar to the electrification question
that a number of you spoke about before in rolling out a sustainability
dashboard to give us more visibility into our performance across the City.
We continue to make progress on reducing our greenhouse gas emissions,
down now about 37 percent from 1990 levels on our way to the State's 80
percent target. You can see that transportation and natural gas remain the
big dogs in that race. Interestingly enough, Vehicle Miles Traveled, (VMT),
have gone up in the last couple of years as we come out of the recession.
Because of changes in the fleet and technology, greenhouse gas emissions have fluctuated a little bit but not changed very much. It's an indication of
some of the external factors that bear on our work here as well as the ones
that we control ourselves. We've seen progress on reducing water use,
progress on our Zero Waste Strategy. You'll notice here flat in the last few
years, but we're about to roll out residential and commercial composting in
the next year or two as well as increased efforts around construction and
demolition waste to start to bring those numbers toward the 90 percent
target that you set for us. Lots more in the pipeline. I'm not going to read
these; just to give you a sense of the range of activity that's going on across
our organization. How are we doing in relation to the strategic goals? You
could say that we're on track. If we are able to continue our 2005-2012 rate
of reduction of emissions, we could actually hit the State's 80 percent by
2050 goal. There's an if there. That's if we can maintain that pace of
improvement. In fact our pace of improvement is not steady. This is
showing you the rate of change in natural gas, electricity and water across
our three different customer classes. It's not consistent. It's not a
controlled process. This is something that we have an opportunity to work
on in the coming years to tighten that up. We're trying to bring all this
together in the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan, which is an opportunity for you to choose the goals that we will pursue, set the
trajectory that we'll pursue that on, and build out the roadmap that will
guide the implementation. As I've talked with you about before, we've
developed scenarios, have done an expert charrette, held an ideas expo
open to the community, benchmarked the plans and work of other cities. We are now deep into the analysis phase of looking at technical feasibility,
economic feasibility and the impacts that would result from combinations of
measures, so we can bring you back a grounded set of strategies for your
consideration later this spring in building out the roadmap. We've got
coming up in May the Comprehensive Plan Summit. The intersection of the
Climate Plan and the Comprehensive Plan are critical. We'll be also hosting
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a virtual online summit for the community both in the weeks before and
following the Comprehensive Plan Summit and are hoping to bring draft
recommendations to you late in June before you go on recess. Some of the
key elements or domains of action that we're looking at are electrification or
fuel switching as we sometimes refer to it; the larger challenge of mobility
and walkability; issues around water; and the question of finance, not just
how do we pay for this, but how do we structure the financial instruments
that build the logic that we want into the decisions that we make. We're
operating under a premise that the City Manager has articulated that we go
first. In other words, we don't ask the community to do things that we don't
do ourselves, since we try to lead by example wherever possible. We'll
default to green and we've begun this in our procurement process, moving
from the environmentally preferable purchase policy that you all created
some years ago which said buy the environmentally preferable where it is possible to turn that around and say, "Let's start with that. Let's buy the
environmentally preferable." That's where we start. Where it's not
appropriate, where it's not cost effective, where it doesn't fit duty
requirements, let's of course adapt. We've begun that in a simple measure
with office products, recycled paper and toners. We've rolled it out into the
fleet procurement, moving from, Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), as our
vehicle of choice for sedans to electric vehicles as our vehicle of choice. We
think that could save us $1,000-$1,500 per vehicle. Always looking for the
economic as well as sustainability advantage going together where we can.
We think it's also important to look very strongly at performance-based
regulation; not prescriptive regulation that tells people what to do, but
performance regulation that says, "Here's the targets that we need to hit.
Find the best and most creative and most effective way to do that." We
need to do all this in a way that protects the common wealth, the ecological
resources, the ecosystem services that sustain this community. We need to
consider the impact of consumption. These are things that we are not
directly responsible for. The impact of airplane flights taken by people in
this community probably exceeds the carbon impact of our natural gas use.
The impact through the supply chain of the food that we buy and eat probably exceeds the impact of the road transportation. These aren't things
that the City is responsible for but, if the community really cares about
climate and carbon futures, it's something we're going to want to discuss in
coming years. As you've heard some discussion in the previous Study
Session, there's questions about the future of the utility, in fact what many people are calling the utility of the future. Let me address that last one in
some detail, because it's a big issue and it's a new one that's very much on
people's minds. There's a gathering storm facing this industry. Don't take
my word for it; these are observations from Citicorp, Union Bank of
Switzerland (UBS), Barclays, Bank of America. They are seeing major
structural threats facing the utility industry as we see the rise of cost-
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effective solar, local storage and so forth. Utility bonds will under-perform
the market is the prediction of one of these financial institutions. One of the
reasons for this is a phenomenon called grid defection. We're seeing a
threshold approaching soon where the combined price of local solar and local
storage could be competitive with grid-provided power. In many
jurisdictions, we're seeing people wanting to get off the grid to become their
own utilities. In other parts of the country, investor-owned utilities are
fighting this trend. Here in Palo Alto with the municipal utility, we have the
opportunity to think about how we use that trend and lead it and contribute
to it in a way that is healthy for our utility, but that's going to be a big
challenge to think through. There are big trends that are driving this. This
is a projected cost curve of electric vehicles with a 200-mile range. I could
show you similar curves for the cost of photovoltaics, battery-powered
autonomous vehicles, sensor technology. Exponential rates of change in a half dozen key technologies that will shift the fundamental economics of this
industry potentially. Certainly something we need to consider as part of our
planning. This is the State of California's forecast on solar forecasts as
another example. All these curves have this kind of shape. These raise big
questions that we would do well to start considering before we have to
consider them, so that we can chart our own destiny rather than react to
events or shocks that hit us. Many of these issues affect some of the
concerns you expressed before about reliability. The impact of micro-grids,
for example, on grid stability is something to consider. Fundamentally we
need to look at what is the business model of a utility company in this kind
of possible future. Do we continue to buy, broker and distribute energy as
we've been doing? Do we deliver efficiency services as a commodity that we
sell? Do we sell and manage distributed generation and storage? That
doesn't cannibalize our business, but becomes part of our business. Do we
sell management, service, financing and data? It's an open question to
think about how do we reposition this organization in what may be a
dramatically changing business environment in this industry. Let me zoom
out for the last couple of minutes here. These are big questions. They are
challenging ones. They're things that many people think are impossible, but we know that barriers can fall. When Roger Bannister broke the four-minute
mile in 1954, the record had stayed steady for nine years at four minutes
and 13 seconds. Once he broke that record in '54, within six months
somebody else broke it and broke it at 3:57. Within 18 months, four other
people broke it in the same race. Once barriers fall, they sometimes fall very quickly. Let me step back another step and come back to the question
we've talked about before of why sustainability matters. At a very direct
level, this is a matter of mitigating our risks. We're facing risks around
climate, drought and business disruption. We need to build resilience, the
ability of the City to withstand shocks and stress that may come at us from
these and other factors. There are rewards here in terms of quality of life,
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economic benefits, innovation driver, the leadership that we have played in
the region and the world, and the influence that we are able to provide to
other communities. As we've talked about many times before, this is the
right thing to do. I would note that whether to do the right thing is not an
economic decision. It's a moral decision that we make or don't make. How
to do the right thing, when to do it, those are economic decisions and we
need to make those very carefully and diligently. The path ahead of us
requires some bold moves, most fundamentally with the greenhouse gas
goals we want to set. We need to be looking at moving not just to reducing
impacts but net positive buildings, as will be required by the State of
California in just a few years; and more agility in the way that we operate so
that we can be experimental and learn quickly on a faster learning cycle.
Frankly a lot of the things that we need to do, a lot of the opportunities
ahead of us, no one has done yet. No one's quite sure how to do them. We need to learn as we go and find a safe and appropriate way to do that. A lot
of this will come down to behavior change. Some of it is policy. Some of it
is technology. Much of it is the choices that our citizens choose to make in
our personal lives. How do we most effectively support and encourage those
changes? How do we innovate the kind of financial structures that enable us
to do this work? We have many levers. Some of them we've used before:
utility incentives, legal mandates, Ordinances and regulations, new services
to provide. The example that we set with our own procurement and some
edgier ideas that we're hearing around the community around carbon pricing
and carbon taxes as possible alternatives to look at. Microsoft, you may
know, has established an internal carbon pricing regime where part of their
internal cost allocations include cost of carbon. It's accelerated their
reductions and saved them real money. We're talking with them about how
they've done that and whether or not that might be appropriate for us.
Several of you mentioned Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) and offsets
before. We've done this very successfully with electricity to use RECs as a
bridge to a climate neutral electricity strategy, voluntary program, action of
Council offsetting 100 percent of our electricity and then building a Carbon-
Neutral Portfolio over four years. We could conceivably do the same thing with natural gas. We have a voluntary program underway now, Palo Alto
Green Gas. We could offset the entire gas emissions and be a carbon-
neutral utility by an action that you take. We could build a trajectory to
taking out the impact of natural gas. Let me be clear. I am not an advocate
for electrification or fuel switching. I am an advocate for a carbon-neutral City, and that's one of the critical issues that we need to look at. Steps
ahead. We'll need to discuss and ultimately adopt a Sustainability and
Climate Action Plan. Again, we'll be bringing that to you later in June. I
would encourage you, though, to think about goals that you might set in
advance of adopting a complete plan. The California goal of 80 percent
reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050 may be something for us to say,
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"Yeah, we'll do at least that." How much more we'll do is to be determined
by further analysis. We're evaluating electrification strategies. We'll be
back to you, as you requested, probably in May with a plan of action about
how to pursue that diligently. We're exploring development of mobility as a
service pilot both locally and with other partners in the region. We need to
explore the implications of changes to the Utilities business model. You'll be
deciding tonight on the new Green Building Ordinance and Energy Reach
Code. Peter Pirnejad and his team will be starting immediately following
that adoption on the next Code cycle, continuing to ratchet up our standards
and services. I mentioned new financing strategies. The sustainability
dashboard work which just kicked off last week will give us a much more
comprehensive and granular and flexible view of our performance data, so
we can understand better what we're doing, where the leverage points are
and how effective we're being, to ultimately decide our trajectory for the next five, ten and twenty years. The question for us to ask as a small and
innovative city is are we a drop in the bucket in the face of the global
climate crisis or are we going to make waves. I'll stop there. I'd love to
hear your thoughts and your questions.
Council Member Kniss: Lots of thoughts at this point. One of the areas, Gil,
I'd like to push on right away is we are extremely enthusiastic about electric
cars. While I haven't gone electric yet, I've gone hybrid. We're all delighted
with our reduction of gas mileage. I've thought of this all the way through
your presentation. There is always a reaction in some way to that or
something is positive and something is negative. The negative to that is Gas
Tax and how do we maintain our highways. While we may not think of that
as a sustainable kind of concern when we're looking at this, it actually is
one. Pretty much the roads run on the Gas Tax. Without that Gas Tax, it's
going to be very difficult for us to continue that. What you're talking about
tonight are a number of tradeoffs and switches. That's one small one thing.
You've talked about natural gas and all clean electric. If you were listening
earlier, you could hear that was a discussion on the Council as to which
direction should we go, and not everyone feels the same way about giving
up natural gas and going to all clean electric. There's a cost. There's also any number of other ramifications. I really admire your reach and your push
and so forth, but there are certainly a number of equal and opposite
concerns that I thought of right away. I know you're going to get lots of
questions and lots of feedback from the rest of the Council as well. Some of
them have been doing this with the City for more years than Marc and I have. I appreciate the report and I hope we do make waves. I hope that is
our goal rather than being a drop in the bucket. I think we've already made
waves. That's one of the things that Palo Alto can feel really good about,
starting with Palo Alto Green. It's made a dent. One more thing, Mayor
Holman. Water which earlier tonight Council Member DuBois talked about,
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we're all very concerned with water. I notice Phil Bobel is here tonight. How
do we recycle it? Where will it go? How will it go there? It would seem as
though when we're discussing sustainability, that's probably one of the most
obvious concerns that we have right now. It's one of the ones that we see.
The electricity and the gas, we don't see except the results of. With water,
we're all very aware of what the water does for us, how we deal with the
water. Probably almost everyone in the community at this point is trying to
think, "What do we do for more water? How do we get down to our 24
percent?" I think we're actually at 20 percent though, if I recall. Am I right,
City Manager, we're at 20 percent?
James Keene, City Manager: As far as the target reduction that we have?
Council Member Kniss: Right.
Mr. Keene: That's going to be changed to 24 percent (crosstalk).
Council Member Kniss: Right, I know. I'm saying we're at 20 now, and...
Mr. Keene: No, last year we had hit 16 percent reduction which was the
highest performance, as we mentioned last week, of any city in Santa Clara
County.
Council Member Kniss: We have a way to go there as well. Lots of
thoughts. You've prompted lots of what-ifs as well. Thanks for your report.
Mr. Friend: Thank you, Council Member. Let me just say two things very
briefly, because I want to hear other people's thoughts as well. On the point
you raised of many of these issues having equal and opposite drivers, this is
part of how we approach all the issues that we're looking at. We don't see
the opposites as tradeoffs. It's not a matter of choosing between economic
well-being and climate well-being. The challenge is to say both of those are
important. How do we then invent solutions that address them both well?
That's easier said than done. Once that frame is on the table, sometimes
that can be done. That's the way we approach all these issues. With regard
to water, the focus for City Staff and the community right now is how do we
hit the immediate target that the State has set for us. How do we do this 24
percent goal right now? That's certainly the priority, at least for the next
few months. We also need to begin to think about the long range strategic
implications here. There was an article in Science magazine two weeks ago that estimated 80-plus percent chance of multi-decadal mega drought in the
west in the latter half of this century. That's not right now, but that's what
may be ahead of us. It implies very profound structural changes in how we
do things in California. We don't drop everything and think about that now;
that's down the road. We also don't wait until that hits us to think about it.
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The reason I say that is that some of the things that we would consider for
that longer range eventuality might actually be beneficial for us now in the
shorter terms. Those are the kinds of questions that we are looking at in the
Climate Plan process. Thank you for your thoughts.
Council Member Wolbach: Thank you very much for the report. One thing
that, as you heard, I mentioned during our immediately prior to this Study
Session with the Utilities Advisory Commission was the issue of rainwater
capture. As I alluded to, this is something that probably incorporates
multiple departments. You might be well poised to help facilitate at least a
discussion about this. I'm curious if you have any thoughts that you'd like to
share about rainwater capture, whether from storm drains, from properties,
in the design of new buildings and future design of our streets, etc.
Mr. Friend: Rainwater capture is certainly one of the options that we need
to consider. As I mentioned before, Los Angeles is looking at getting 50 percent of their water use from rainwater capture. You look at a city like Los
Angeles (LA), about three-quarters of the city is paved; most of their rainfall
goes not just down the drain to the sea but through sewage treatment
plants to the sea, incurring great expense. They're seeing really significant
economic benefit from shifting that strategy to a capture and storage
strategy. We might want to look at that. We're already incorporating gray
water readiness into the Green Building Ordinance. In the coming
Ordinance, we'll be looking at net zero water as well as net zero energy.
There are of course questions of when and how, what are the mechanisms,
how do you ensure that it's cost effective, how do we ensure that the
tradeoffs can deliver on the requirements that we put forward. We're
already seeing a number of net zero water buildings being built in the west.
Somebody made a design decision to figure out how to do that. With a
combination of efficiency of water use, water capture and water recycling off
and onsite—in the building itself, not down to a sewage treatment plant and
back—we're seeing the beginnings of the development of that kind of
building technology. Certainly something we should look at. If we do move
to a more mobility-based strategy and if that in fact requires less parking
garages and less road surfaces to provide the mobility benefits that the community needs, then one of the possible benefits is you have more land
available for water capture among the other kinds of functions that land can
serve. Decarbonizing may be tied into de-paving; we'll see how that goes.
In all the things we're looking at, we need to consider what are the local
resources that we have. The sun that falls on the community. The rain that falls on the community. How do we capture and use those resources most
effectively right here?
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Phil Bobel, Public Works Assistant Director: Gil, could I add one thing—Phil
Bobel, Public Works—about rainwater capture that we just saw today that
was very exciting and the driver for it? I don't know if you've seen where
they took out the old Bloomingdale's and now they've built the new
Bloomingdale's. One thing they're putting right where the old
Bloomingdale's was is two 30,000-gallon underground cisterns or tanks for
rainwater capture. These will be the two largest, certainly in our neck of the
woods. They did it because our Statewide regulations that we enforce
locally require that when you build a new structure of a certain size and
prevent the infiltration of water, you have to offset that essentially. Their
choice was to try to offset it like we did at Mitchell Park with swales and
green features that would absorb the water, they decided they didn't have
the space to do that, so they built these huge underground tanks. It's
probably a harbinger of things to come.
Council Member Wolbach: Thank you very much. I encourage Staff and my
colleagues to continue thinking about how we can do this in a really effective
way and how to make this a priority moving forward. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Schmid: I wanted to thank you for your presentation tonight
and the report. I loved the data that you presented in it, both the historical
context and perspective as well as a look at where we're going. Look
forward to your new database that you say will be ready in a week or so.
Mr. Friend: Let me clarify. We started work on it last week. It's going to be
two or three months to have that up and running.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Good. To get the community onboard with what we're
doing, that's the type of thing that would work well. I certainly would
emphasize the issue of water. We are tied to the south Sierras, and you
have a very startling figure in there of a warming climate. Since our water
is stored through snow, it's very upsetting that even if we have wet winters,
if it doesn't come down in snow in the south Sierras, we will feel and
experience that. We experience it not just in our water flows and access to
water, but in hydro power. We are very dependent on hydro power, and so
we're very sensitive to the flows and our need to go to the grid in times
where the hydro power is not available. The other thing that I found very interesting in your presentation was your connection to the Summit and the
Comprehensive Plan as you are coinciding some of your work and your
public outreach with the Comprehensive Summit and our work on the
Comprehensive. I would encourage that the sustainability effort and the
Comprehensive effort try and coordinate as much as possible. I am concerned in a wider thing that we don't just focus on our boundaries and
draw a boundary about what we do and the rest of the world is out there,
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but that we get engaged with the State Demographer's Office. The State
Demographer has been reassessing the long-term outlook for California and
reducing growth projections over time, which is very important for a
sustainable state. The Plan bay area, which is connected to the State
Demographer's Office, is beginning their update for 2017. They have their
first public meetings next month. What happens in the bay area is
important to us and our role. It ties into our Comprehensive Plan and our
role in bay area growth. Our tendency in the last decade has been to be a
leader of job creation in the bay area and probably in California. I note that
in the last six or seven years now that the growth of housing in Palo Alto is
between one-third and one-half of the growth in jobs that is taking place in
Palo Alto. We are creating a greater deficit between employed residents in
the City and jobs in the City. While we can focus on green buildings for new
office space and be very efficient during the workday, people are leaving the City to live elsewhere where their spending on cars, on gas, on other parts
of the sustainable world is not the same as us. The question is what impact
are we having by having a jobs-housing imbalance as great as it is. A
coordination between our sustainability work and our Comprehensive Plan
work would be very effective in the long run of creating not just beneficial
impacts here but impacts that help our neighbors, help the bay area, help
the State of California reach a sustainable level that makes sense. I would
encourage you as we go through that process that you try and reach out and
make connections. Thank you.
Council Member Burt: Let me first dive into the water issue. In one sense
it's perhaps an even greater challenge. I also think it may be a more
achievable challenge to overcome. We know that we not only have the
drought today that is potentially a harbinger of what the future may be, but
I was at a local government commission conference where three panelists
among the top water experts in the State made a point that was striking to
me. We know now from historical data that the 20th century was the
wettest century in the last millennia in California. When we talk about a new
future on water, it's actually more drastic than that. Our baseline in which
the State essentially established both our expectations for water availability and the allocations commensurate with what we thought would be the
normal water availability was based upon a century that was anomalous.
Our baseline is much worse than we thought. That's the bad news. The
good news is that this is probably an area that solutions are within sight.
The drought may be driving us and spurring us to act sooner and more aggressively than we otherwise would have, but the opportunities are still
the same. We already have been working on a plan to drastically expand
our non-potable recycled water. We have Phil Bobel here who can give us
more insight on that. That was going to be a major new water system
distribution up Page Mill Road for irrigation and potentially toilet water for all
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those jobs primarily. We now have to look at whether it's wisest to spend
those tens of millions of dollars on a water distribution system parallel to our
potable water distribution system, or to invest it in advanced recycling
technology of potable water that would either be percolated back into the
ground or blended or other decisions that we have on the horizon. These
are really important decisions and ones that we need to begin to agendize
and give some at least preliminary policy direction which will probably mean
initiating studies, perhaps by the Santa Clara Valley Water District to give us
a data-based foundation for alternatives in which way we should go. Right
now we aren't taking either direction because we're like deer caught in the
headlights. We don't know which of these major capital investments to go
down, and we need to begin to tackle that. That coupled with water
efficiency use in the homes, water recapture that we've heard about through
gray water and otherwise, and then water efficiency in our landscaping which is an even bigger factor. It's not smart to grow rice in the desert. It's
not long term very smart to have big lawns that we don't have insects and
birds that can rely off of natural ecosystems in our vegetation, but instead
they're green, sterile land. They look great. They feel cool. They aren't
progressive. We should have them where they're recreational and people
actually use them. To have big landscapes for decorative lawns is probably
not a wise solution. We're going to need to move in that direction. That
alone is a big impact. The water issue is imminently solvable as much as it
feels overwhelming in the midst of this drought. I want to talk about a
couple of the other aspects that we've been addressing. The notion of
renewable energy credits, whether they be electricity or gas, we treated
them as a bridge for our renewable electricity supply. That's the way we
should think of them in natural gas. They're not the long-term solution, but
they may help us get from where we are to where we are intending to go. I
also want to encourage Staff to look at within our natural gas another partial
solution, which is renewable natural gas. There are supplies available. We
have Compressed Natural Gas dispensing for vehicles, our municipal fleet
and for the public. My understanding is this is a no-cost impact alternative.
I'm frankly disappointed we haven't yet moved anywhere on evaluating that. I want to encourage Staff to look at renewable natural gas. We, for
instance, use it as part of our renewable energy from landfill natural gas.
These are the sorts of sources that are now being able to be purchased for
natural gas. We may have a multifaceted approach on this fuel switching
and gas, which is switching to heat pumps and other electric-based utilities and renewable natural gas and building efficiency that reduces the need for
use of natural gas. As I was saying earlier with the Utilities Advisory
Commission (UAC), we may not have the end solution in sight, but we can
begin moving down that path. If it's getting 25 percent reduction in our
natural gas in the next five to ten years, then at that time we start looking
at what's the plan for the remainder. I want to look at the broad goal. Gil
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has had this stretch goal or moon shot that he's described. We should as a
Council look at when we agendize a policy setting action item on this. If I
look at the data, I believe that our 80 percent reduction is from a 1990
baseline. We've achieved as of 2014 38 percent reduction in 24 years. If
we merely continue the trend we've been on, we would have 80 percent
reduction in 2040. Not 2050 but 2040, 25 years from now. 80 percent by
2040 is not a stretch goal at all. That's just keeping the trend line we're on.
I would encourage us to set a goal not less aggressive than 80 percent by
2040. Perhaps we set two goals: that and 100 percent by 2050 with maybe
80 percent by 2030 as a stretch goal. Something along those lines. Let's
begin to consider that. For almost all other cities and states and countries,
80 percent by 2050 is an aspiration. They are not on the path to coming
close to that. We're actually on that path to achieve it by 2040. We
shouldn't take our foot off the gas so to speak. We should stay on that path. As was stated earlier, in our transportation we have 60 percent of our
greenhouse gases from transportation because we eliminated our electricity.
It's not because the transportation went up. We just took the electricity out
of the equation. I just wanted to make sure everybody's clear on that,
because I've seen those numbers get tossed around. I would like to also see
data, and it may just be projections. I'm still waiting to see good data on
what's the level of adoption of zero emission vehicles today, advanced
emission vehicles like hybrids today, what are the trend lines, what have
they been in our community, and what do people anticipate purchasing as
their next vehicle based upon what will be the cost of those vehicles that are
projected. If somebody's told that you can buy an electric vehicle for
$25,000 within a few years and you say, "What vehicle do you expect to buy
in five years if it's going to be at competitive pricing or nearly so," I suspect
we're going to see a very high adoption. Then we can use that and say,
"What's the life of our vehicle fleet and how long will it take to turnover all of
our older vehicles and get the bulk of them out of our fleet." That also is a
pretty obtainable goal. We're only going to facilitate that on the margins.
We're going to make sure that we have policies in place to have adequate
electric charging, that we've thought about smart grid systems and metering systems so it's off-hour charging of cars rather than peak hour, a number of
measures that facilitate that. We won't have to be the primary drivers.
That's a combination of the broader economic trends and what are the
intrinsic characteristics of our community, which is a community that largely
shares that value structure and has disposable income so that people are acting on their values sooner than many other people do. They have the
values, and we have more ability to act on those than most communities.
Because of those things, especially our financial ability as a City and as a
community, that doesn't mean that everybody is going to be able to do this
as rapidly as we can. We shouldn't go bragging about some of the things
that result from our own affluence. We can lead and we can identify
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obstacles, including regulatory and legal obstacles. Our local legislators
have said that they are ready and raring to address whatever obstacles we
identify are in the way of us being able to achieve these objectives. because
they know that we are setting trends that others will be attempting to follow
in short order behind that. We're not going to be long-term outliers. We're
just going to be ahead of the curve and help achieve that curve. Thanks for
all this good work. We have a lot before us, but we have a basis for
optimization in our goals in both our greenhouse gases and a sustainable
water system. Technology and innovation allow us to have within our sights
some major achievements and continue to have this done at low cost. I'll
add one note that it looks, and we want to see the data, like the recycling of
the water is likely to be at lower cost than we're paying for Hetch Hetchy.
It'll actually reduce our water cost. Just like our renewables, we're having
100 percent clean energy in our electricity, and we're at 20 percent below Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E). This assumption that we're going to have
tradeoffs between our environmental goals and our economic goals just
doesn't appear to be the case. Thanks.
Council Member Berman: A couple of quick questions. Thank you, guys,
very much for all the work that you've done and all the work that we're
going to ask you to do in the future. On Staff Report Page eight, Packet
Page 13, there's a chart, Figure 1, Greenhouse Gas Emissions for City
Operations by Activity Category. You allude to the fact that greenhouse gas
emissions have increased a bit for building and other facilities in large part
because some facilities have come online that were previously offline. We
can all understand that. I didn't see, and maybe I missed, a more thorough
explanation for why the solid waste facility's greenhouse gas emissions have
gone up 2X over two years ago.
Mr. Friend: Is Phil Bobel still here? Phil, can I bring you up?
Mr. Bobel: I'm not how you're concluding that we've gone up twice.
Council Member Berman: I could be completely misinterpreting the—it's on
Packet Page 13.
Mr. Bobel: Let us look at that. That doesn't compute for me.
Council Member Berman: Got you. That works for me. Thank you. Page 12 of the report, Packet Page 17, now I'm missing it. I just can't read what
that bottom left quadrant is on the pie chart.
Mr. Friend: The bottom left of the pie is air travel. About 21 percent of the
total. These are estimates based on aggregate numbers in the region, I
believe. They're not specific to here. We'll be trying to drill in and get
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tighter numbers on some of these, working with University California, (UC)
Berkeley and some others in the coming year.
Council Member Berman: Thank you. Even as estimates this was incredibly
informative, especially as we talk a lot about natural gas. Space heating and
water heating, I understood those were the two big drivers, but I didn't fully
comprehend the great majority of our natural gas usage. I didn't compute
the numbers, but it's 13 out of 15 percent. Quick math, that's 88 percent or
something like that. It's a huge amount.
Mr. Friend: Cooking, which is the thing that people often throw up as an
objection to electrification, is a very small piece of the puzzle. To be clear,
water heating is going to be easier to get at than space heating. Those two
together are the lion's share of that.
Council Member Berman: Is that because the technology for water heating
has improved or become more efficient? Why is that?
Mr. Friend: It's because of the availability of heat pump water heaters, that
was alluded to earlier. If you think about space heating, it involves a lot
having to do with the structure of a building.
Council Member Berman: Makes sense. On Page 15, going along with what
Council Member Burt was talking about in terms of the purpose of RECs as a
bridge, it looks like on this chart that as of today we're going to have to rely
on RECs again in about ten years.
Mr. Friend: No, you can read this differently. These are the large solar
purchases that we have in place. We're going to have to make additional
large solar purchases going forward. That's one conclusion to draw from
this. The other factor is that below the zero line is hydro. About 50 percent
of our portfolio is hydroelectric. The strategy is premised on stable
hydroelectric supplies. That's the question we need to think about there.
What if those supplies are not stable, how does that affect the strategy
going forward or how do we prepare for that contingency?
Council Member Berman: It just tells us that, as we talked about in the
Study Session with the UAC, we need to stay proactive on identifying good
options and opportunities. One of the things that was brought up earlier
was landscaping and big lawns and are those a thing of the past to the extent that everyone has them today. A couple of us got an email from a
frustrated resident who alluded to the lawn outside of the Rinconada Library,
which I haven't had a chance to drive by since I received the email so I
haven't looked at it recently myself. Have we done an analysis of all the
different kinds of aesthetic lawns that aren't used functionally as lawns on
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City property and thought about better, more efficient uses for those
spaces?
Mr. Friend: We in fact have. We just had several meetings about that
today. The City is developing its own water plan, the same as we're asking
everybody else in the service area to do, that will withdraw water from
primarily ornamental uses, ornamental turf. In the case of turf for playing
fields, that will probably be protected because there are safety issues
involved there. Other more selective, careful choices across the entire
landscape that we manage.
Council Member Berman: Remind me what in specific you want us to
address tonight? You've given us a lot of information. A lot of it is
incredibly helpful. I want to make sure that I provide you feedback, if there
are certain things that you're looking for feedback on.
Mr. Friend: All the comments so far have been enormously helpful. We want to hear your mind on these issues. There's a lot of pieces of this
puzzle, so grab the pieces that are most interesting to you. If there's any
one thing I would request your guidance on, it's this question of what kind of
goals do we want to think about. Do we want to sign onto the State of
California 80 by '50 which is a completely reasonable option to do? Do we
want to do something somewhat more aggressive or greatly more
aggressive? I don't expect you to have a decision on that until you see the
specifics of what might be required. Getting a sense of how you think about
that, what questions come to mind for you as you think about it, what would
help guide you in making that evaluation, that would be very helpful to us
right now.
Council Member Berman: Council Member Burt spoke about how the trends
that we've had in terms of Green House Gas (GHG) reductions since 1990
and how we've made great progress. I'm assuming that a lot of that
progress was the low-hanging fruit. If not, then great because that means
there's a lot of low-hanging fruit left to grab. I agree that we should at least
plan to stay on that trend line, if not be more accelerated than we already
have been, if it's 80 percent reductions by 2040 or a couple of years before
2040, if that's to push us to go harder and faster and stronger than we've been going. The need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions hasn't
abated; it hasn't gone away. We need to keep on going along the trend that
we are, getting more creative. I'm going to feel like I'm repeating myself in
a minute because of the conversation we just had with the Utilities Advisory
Commission. I'm going to try to resist from doing that. Obviously fuel switching or electrification is something that a lot of us are interested in.
We're fully cognizant of the fact that there are going to be complications
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along the way that we have to be very aware of and have a conversation
about. It's definitely something that I'm interested in. Council Member
Wolbach's point about rainwater capture, I'm curious about that. I might go
check out what Stanford's doing. It's definitely something that we need to
consider. I'm encouraged to hear Council Member Burt think that this is a
very achievable problem that we have. Let's try to move as fast as possible
in coming up with a plan. Maybe we can serve as a role model to other
communities about the easy ways to either be more efficient with our water
usage or create supply through water recycling. That plus everything I said
during the UAC Study Session are my thoughts. I'm also curious to hear
from the audience. I don't know if 90 percent of you guys are Staff. I don't
think you are, because I recognize some resident faces from out there. I'm
impressed by how many folks are here from the community who clearly are
passionate and care about this. That gives us and Staff a sense of the priority that this is for Palo Alto.
Council Member Filseth: Thanks very much. Thank you, guys, for putting
together all this data. I wanted to ask a question about fuel switching. In
Page 19 of the Packet, there's a chart that looks like this. If you look at the
top one which is natural gas consumption, it looks to me like about one-third
of our natural gas consumption is residential, and the other two-thirds is a
combination of commercial and municipal, mostly commercial. The question
I had was most of the dialog that I've heard about natural gas usage
reduction has been about heat pump water heaters and clothes dryers and
things like that. All that's residential kind of stuff, I assume. Are we looking
at measures that would impact the two-thirds that's used by commercial as
well as just residential?
Mr. Friend: Yes, we are. The proposed plan that we'll bring back to you will
talk across the board of this entire fleet of natural gas uses. Many of our
commercial customers, certainly the larger ones, are already at work on
these issues. Utilities has programs working with customers on demand
reduction. You're right to point out that clearly two-thirds of natural gas,
half the water, 80 percent of electricity is from commercial sector. That has
to be addressed as part of any plan.
Council Member DuBois: On water, I'd like to emphasize, echo two of the
points that have been made. If there are ways to accelerate recycled water
in the City, there's interest in that. Also maybe ramping up incentives on
water-efficient landscaping. We already have some, but maybe there's more
we can do in that area. Council Member Berman pointed out the one chart about the Scope 3 emissions, things that are outside the City like air travel,
food supply. I was interested in a chart from the appendix, Page two of
Appendix A, which was from the old plan that broke it down and included a
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lot of those external uses. Are we going to be seeing an update of this chart
as part of your plan? The total greenhouse gases and breakdown by
commuting patterns and that kind of thing.
Mr. Friend: Our intention at this point is to include it in the Climate Action
Plan. We don't include it in the reporting, because it's not part of the
reporting protocols that are expected of us as a City. We report on the
things that we have control over. As a community with a commitment to
dealing with the climate crises, it needs to be part of our conversation.
Council Member DuBois: You just answered my next question. When we
talk about 80 percent reduction, it's not from this total greenhouse gas. It
includes things like food supply. It's only on the stuff within the community?
Mr. Friend: The way cities have been doing it, as I understand it, is not to
include that, but to report on the reportable components of Scope 1 and 2,
what we burn and the energy we buy but not the food and air travel. This is a place where we have the option to decide to do it the way everybody else
has done it or to broaden the scope. It's an open question for us. It's a lot
harder, as you can imagine, to think about how we get at those, because
those are very much behaviorally rooted.
Council Member DuBois: Commuting, is that all one and two whether it's
within the City or in and out?
Mr. Friend: Commuting is one and two, and you see that on the road travel
part of the charges.
Council Member DuBois: No matter where that commuting is, it's included.
Mr. Friend: Yes.
Council Member DuBois: Does that include people cutting through town and
going...
Mr. Friend: No. The transportation model looks at people traveling into Palo
Alto, out of Palo Alto and within Palo Alto. It doesn't count people traveling
through.
Council Member DuBois: Thank you for clarifying that. In this appendix,
there was an interesting example of using landfill gas to drive the bio-solids
incinerator. It was a great win-win. Do we still have low-hanging fruit,
those kinds of win-wins, or is most of the low hanging fruit picked already?
Mr. Friend: In my experience, if you play your cards right, the tree has a
way of bending over and giving you more of that low-hanging fruit once
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you've gathered the first crop of it. There's still more to be done as the
economics shift, as we get smarter, as technologies change. We'll continue
to look at that, both improving operations within existing technologies as
well as looking for technology replacement, where that makes sense.
Council Member DuBois: I get the sense you're asking us to get to the point
of agreeing to a big goal or what the goal is. I'd like to see a goal that's
supported by facts. Not that we'll know everything up front, but hopefully
it'll be supported to a large portion. I don't want us to get caught up in this
abstract goal without understanding the economics behind it, how technically
reasonable it is. We can be cutting edge, but we need to understand how
far over the edge we are and how we leverage the power of the market in
terms of innovation. We have a unique opportunity to be a test bed. We
have this utility; we should be easier to work with than the larger utilities.
Hopefully innovators come to us and see us that way. As it's been said at the UAC meeting, we need to keep the lights on, we need to have
reasonable rates for our payers. We all want to be progressive. If we try
and fail, that's not the example we want to be. Obviously you're going to
come back with a more detailed plan. In thinking about what the goal
should be, continuing the improvements we've been making is not
necessarily a given. It's not easy to keep continually making those
improvements. It's going to be harder and harder to eke out returns; it's
going to cost more; it's going to require more focus. I don't assume
necessarily we're on the path. If you look at our progress, it hasn't really
been a smooth curve. It's been starts and stops, which you would expect.
There was a short discussion here about net zero and performance-based
goals. The way I read it, it was a choice between prescriptive approaches
and performance-based approaches. I'd like to see us do both. When we
get to things like land use, we talk about zoning for what we want. We
could zone for what we want and we could set performance requirements
and targets. I don't necessarily see them as an either/or choice. Thanks.
Mr. Friend: Thank you, Council Member. Could I respond to a couple of the
points?
Mayor Holman: Absolutely.
Mr. Friends: Thank you for the clarification. Performance-based goals not
versus prescriptive, there's a combination of both of those. There's new
territory for us to explore in performance-based. That was the point we
were trying to make there. I agree with you that continuing the trajectory
we've been on is not a given. It requires commitment and diligence to do that. The trajectory that Council Member Burt referred to before includes
the one-year big drop of eliminating the electricity footprint. It's averaged
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out over all those years, but that's not something that we get to do every
year. It'll take some diligent focus here. I do respectfully disagree with
your assumption that it's going to get harder and more expensive to make
these changes in the future. That's not borne out by experience in other
cities and in companies around the world. We'll have to see the specifics.
To your point that we need to look at the specifics, absolutely so. We will
bring you as many of those as we can, as fully buttressed as we can. Let's
be clear; if we're going to do a 25-year plan, say to 2040 as Council Member
Burt suggested, we're not going to be able to nail down every piece of that
plan. The horizon recedes; we can say with a lot of clarify what the next five
years would be, perhaps the next ten year, but who knows what the
technologies will be on the table in 15 years. You're going to face a pretty
interesting challenge, which is choosing a direction in which you have very
substantial certainty about our ability to fulfill it or possibly setting a goal that is a challenge where the direction is clear, where every step of the road
is not yet clear and you basically challenge Staff to say, "80 by '40, or
whatever the number is, figure it out and come back to us periodically with
specific plans that are documented, grounded, analyzed," and we move
step-by-step to filling that in. That's the challenge there. Last thing very
briefly. It's really important and a number of you have raised it. You talked
about the opportunity to be a test bed but not at the expense of keeping the
lights on, total agreement there. My first conversation a year and a half ago
with Val Fong—Val, if you're here, I hope you'll permit me to say this—Val
said, "Before you say anything, I want to make it clear to you that I will not
entertain any suggestion that compromises reliability, quality or safety." I
said, "Absolutely not. I will never suggest anything that does." I just want
to question the assumption that many people share that the kinds of change
we're talking about necessarily mean compromising those values. They
don't; we won't.
Council Member DuBois: Thanks for that clarification.
Council Member Scharff: Thank you, and thank you for the report. The first
thing I wanted to highlight since no one else has yet is the mobility as a
service, where you say user centric, all the design designed to solve the transportation, congestion, parking problems in a multimodal, subscription-
based service-level solution. What I assume you mean in all this jargon is
that you're going to make it easy to get around in a simple way, right?
Mr. Friend: Right.
Council Member Scharff: When I was looking at what constitutes our greenhouse gas emissions, transportation obviously dwarfs everything else.
Obviously if we had a simple way to get people out of their cars, that makes
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the biggest difference. I've got to say, the trends are in that direction. I
know it seems funny. I was at a conference a little while back where
someone showed a slide. I don't remember the exact thing, but it was
something like in 1900 there were all these horse and buggies on the
streets. Like five years later, there's no horse and buggies. What that told
me is that rapid change can occur. The combination of self-driving cars,
what we're seeing with Uber, once you have self-driving cars, it becomes
fairly clear you don't need parking garages. You send your car somewhere
else, where it becomes easy. Suddenly, you don't need to own a car,
because all cars are Ubers at that point. Why own one when they're self-
driving and they come and pick you up and take you where you want to go.
It becomes a mass transit system? There's all sorts of things you see there.
A combination of that with smart cars where you have self-driving cars but
they can drive almost bumper to bumper. You double your capacity on the roads. You then make them all electric, and suddenly what you have is a
mass transit system based on the automobile. We're done with that. The
future could be very bright in lots of ways of all of that. I agree with you
and disagree with you at the same time in that if we're looking out to 2040,
we're going to see huge technical innovations. One of the crazy ones that
you could have is electricity becoming so cheap through solar. I'm watching
it fall; solar is getting more and more competitive where it's going to be
cheaper than brown power in the not too distant future. When I saw that
our avoided cost on solar is 10 cents and something, when I joined Council I
don't remember what the number was, but it was something much, much
higher. I think it was double that. That's just my recollection. I don't know
if you know.
Mr. Friend: I don't, but it was probably more than double that, I would
imagine.
Council Member Scharff: In five years, we've seen this radical shift in where
solar is. Yes, go buy as many power purchase agreements as we can. We
need to do that. That's easy. It seems that my experience on some of this
stuff has been that the low-hanging fruit gets taken early on. You're the one
who just pointed out that we had a big drop based on going carbon neutral. Those big drops are hard to necessarily come by. You can't recreate the
ones you've just taken. What you really need to get another big drop is
some sort of technology breakthrough or innovation to get a big change.
When you see all of that, it's good and smart to plan aggressively for 2040.
It's good to have a stretch goal. What you do in the next five years should be realistic and achievable. You hope that the technology comes along. I
could envision a world where electricity is so cheap that we use hydrogen
gas rather than natural gas for those few items that you need natural gas-
type things for. At that point you wouldn't have any emissions based on
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that, because you're splitting water. We're going to be okay. I wanted to
ask you on the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan (S/CAP), somewhere
in the report it says you're bringing it in the spring of 2015. Any sense of
when that is?
Mr. Friend: I'm working with the City Manager on dates, but we expect it
would be one of your last meetings before you go on recess.
Council Member Scharff: In terms of water, there does seem to be large
opportunities in terms of water these days. That is something that is
achievable. We can show tangible results in fairly short order. I would be
supportive of spending some resources on looking at that. Thanks a lot for
the report. I'm looking forward to what you come up with in the S/CAP.
Mayor Holman: A number of comments here. I'll go through them pretty
quickly. Air travel, a comment was made that that's outside of Palo Alto. It
really isn't, because we generate a lot of that air travel here. We come and go ourselves and we have people that come to our community to visit on
business or pleasure or whatever. I don't know how best you can capture
that, but it really is partly Palo Alto too. It's local as well as regional. Do
you have any idea about how you'd capture that?
Mr. Friend: Capturing it precisely, no. Capturing it approximately, we're
starting to work with a research outfit at UC, Berkeley that uses census data
and economic analysis to impute estimated greenhouse gas emissions. We'll
get a better estimate from that hybrid input/output analysis for those of you
who care to dig into that. Getting a precise measure of it is hard, just as
getting a precise measure of transportation is hard. This is modeled
estimates. That's why we call these reductions an estimate; we don't know
exactly who drives how much at this point. We're using regional models to
estimate what those mixes are here. We're not going to get precise on
these numbers. I would encourage you to keep in mind that any of the
greenhouse gas estimates are probably plus or minus 10 percent. Maybe
plus or minus 20 percent accurate is about as good as anybody does. The
more important question is what do we want to do about that. Do we want
to in effect take responsibility for air travel emissions that this community
generates? If so, then we need to start thinking about this is a realm where we don't have control over the technology, we do have a conversation in the
community about the personal choices about how we travel.
Mayor Holman: Thank you. I was thinking, reading this, that for a couple of
years or so at least, I don't remember the name of the book anymore, but
there were other models. I could go online and calculate your own carbon impact, your own carbon footprint. We don't promote that or even mention
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it anymore. It's not necessarily going to change things dramatically, but it
can raise consciousness. What a lot of this is about is just mindfulness.
That's what a lot of it is about. Landscape and water. I agree with a
number of the comments that have been made, Council Member Burt's
comments about landscape in particular. There's something that's missing
for me just by reference. That is that there doesn't seem to be an
acknowledgement that as we try to conserve water in our landscape and
convert from grass to other plantings, that we need to consider habitat. I
just don't see it referenced. The Urban Forest Master Plan is coming to us in
the not too distance future. I've forgotten exactly what date. When we're
talking about conserving water in the landscape, we aren't talking about how
trees need water. We need to integrate that. We don't want to have
unintended consequences because one document isn't referring to another,
isn't integrating in it the essential portions of what another document contains. Habitat and our canopy needing water. Habitat is not just pick a
ground animal, but it's also habitat for those pollinators that we rely on for
just that, pollination. Gil, you're not going to be surprised at this. I've
mentioned this before. I mentioned it this morning. Our Construction and
Demolition (C&D), we talk about low-hanging fruit. We've had a C&D
Ordinance, Construction and Demolition Ordinance, since 2004. The chart
that's in your presentation, I think there's one similar to it in the Packet,
shows that we are pretty flat on the last three years. We even had a little
bit of a spike four years ago about C&D and landfill diversion. I was told
previously that in Palo Alto that's due to construction activities. That would
be consistent with what I know San Francisco's numbers are. Their numbers
are also flat because of construction activities. You may hear a little bit of
my frustration in this, because year after year I raise this. Phil Bobel is so
familiar with me saying these things. While we have this low-hanging fruit,
we know that new materials cause impacts because of their manufacture.
The last numbers that I saw, I don't know if these is current or not, new
materials are transported seven times, all that transportation, before they
reach their final destination. Reclaimed materials can be reutilized either
onsite or on another site, requires no new manufacture and most likely more local delivery to a new site. Sites that are completely demolished require
water to water down the site to keep the dust down. It's another impact of
solely demolition. If you salvage, you don't take nearly as much water
because very little dust is created. Only when you're dealing with the
concrete do you have that much dust creation. I talked about the City has a robust green building program, the new Green Building Ordinance, all of
that. We're not recognizing the embedded energy in existing materials and
existing buildings. We don't do anything that I can see to encourage
adaptive reuse of buildings. There are a lot of occasions where it could.
Look at our new Rinconada Library. That's a great example. Not always is
that possible, of course, but I don't see us encouraging that. It is low-
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hanging fruit at a minimum to encourage salvage. I don't need to remind
anybody here, but maybe I do, that the environmental triangle is reduce,
reuse, recycle. The Staff Report on Packet Page 23 has a very short
paragraph about zero waste, does not even mention salvage. It mentions
recycling. I want an answer from Gil and from Peter, why it is that when I
stop by a construction site and ask what they've been told about salvage,
the answer is, "What are you talking about? We're recycling everything
here." Why is this? I am frustrated with this, because it is year after year I
ask this, when we've had a C&D Ordinance since 2004.
Mr. Friend: Since you invited Peter to speak to this, let me ask him to come
up too. This is something we need to look at more carefully. I don't know
what the breakdown numbers are on that. I don't know yet how much of
our remaining 10 percent toward the 90-percent goal would come from C&D
versus composting and the other measure we're undertaking. I agree with you that this is an important measure. The way that you have framed it,
looking at some of the systems costs of embedded energy, the water
required, the transportation demand engendered is really important. If we
have programs that aren't showing up as taking effect on the job site, we
may have programs in place, but if people don't know about them or aren't
interacting with them or they're not being adequately supported, then that's
something we need to take a look at.
Mayor Holman: There are two houses just a block away from me that were
totally demolished. I asked both of those contractors what they knew about
salvage. Neither one of them knew anything about salvage. I'm serious in
wanting to get this in place. Why isn't it in place when it is an Ordinance
that we have?
Peter Pirnejad, Development Services Director: Good evening. Let me first
say that's a great question. It is something that is on our minds. We have a
very aggressive C&D Ordinance. We've seen a lot of improvement in how
much material is recycled. When we looked at our C&D Ordinance two years
ago, we realized we needed to do more in the way of encouraging buildings
to be reused. The issues is it takes a lot more time and a lot more energy
for contractors to do that. What we've done to incentivize that work is allow for the issuance of a demolition permit well in advance of their building
permit to start the construction so that they have plenty time to start the
deconstruction process. We've talked at length about the tax incentives of
using those recyclable materials. In fact, Judith Wasserman, a close
contributor to the work that we've done at the Development Center, has great examples and statistics and metrics about how much money can be
saved in some of these "older" homes that are being torn down. Again, it's
an educational process. We are pushing for the community to take more
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time, slow down and look at the value that's embedded from a monetary
perspective as well as from a greenhouse gas perspective in these existing
structures. In fact, before you tonight we'll be bringing a Green Building
Ordinance Amendment that mandates Tier 1 and Tier 2 construction
techniques which demolition, again, is embedded in that Ordinance as well.
We'll continue to press that and encourage applicants to take the time to do
the deconstruction and in every way, shape and form provide them the
leeway and the training and methods to take advantage of that.
Mayor Holman: When it's in our Ordinance, why aren't we requiring it? Why
aren't we going further? I'm a little concerned about saying that you're
giving demolition permits prior to building permits, because we just flipped
that a few years ago for very good reasons. It takes a little bit longer, but
some of the other things we put in requirements also take longer, but we're
not allowing for "we'll let you start construction earlier because of those things." It seems like there's a real disconnect here.
Mr. Pirnejad: One of the areas that we identified during our green building
retreat was deconstruction. We prioritized that with input from the Green
Building Advisory Group. It is one of the things that we're going to be taking
a closer look at. This year, we were mainly focused on water and energy. It
is something that we can take a closer look at going into this next Code
cycle.
Mayor Holman: Not to hit you guys over the head, but I'm going to hit you
over the head. It's 11 years, 11 years. Phil, you have some comments?
Mr. Bobel: In defense of Peter. One thing that's going on here is we could
be increasing, I think we are, our percentage of material that gets reused,
recycled. Yet, the economy is going gangbusters right now. That's what
you were alluding to. We've got these two offsetting effects. That's one
thing that we have to realize is going on. There's our overall chart, it
happens to be up there. You see that same thing happening there. Our
diversion looks like it's going down a little bit. This is the overall diversion,
not just the C&D diversion. The same thing hit us here. The economy got a
lot better; we had a lot more occupancy in the buildings. Frankly, we got a
lot more trash. That's one factor. If I could just say one thing on the dust control and the use of water. That's a great point. In fact, we were just
talking about it today and that we need to get more aggressive there. We
probably need to suspend the use of potable water on dust control. That's
something I'm personally going to see is there some road block, is there
some reason for not doing that. We haven't thought of any yet in the six hours since it occurred to a bunch of us that we needed to do that. They
can either use recycled water, yes, they have to drive all the way to the
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sewage treatment plant, but life's tough. They can use the water from one
of our pumping sites. There are two now in Palo Alto as of today that are
pumping groundwater and can be reused. They can send a truck over there
if it's more convenient than our sewage treatment plant. The third thing I
wanted to say in response to one of your points was the tree angle. We're
tuned into that. What Community Services Department (CSD) is trying to
do in their park-by-park analysis is look at two ways of looking at turf. One
is what does it take to keep the turf alive and do we want to keep that
particular piece of turf alive. Secondly, what does it take to keep the trees
growing? Probably it takes a lot less to keep the trees growing. Probably
two waterings a month can keep the trees growing. I just wanted to point
out that where the trees are in the middle of the lawn, we're not ignoring
that. In fact you'll see it in our analysis.
Mayor Holman: Thank you for that. I hope there'll be some different news to report the next time.
Sven Thesen: Good evening Council Members. Sven Thesen, Palo Alto
resident, chemical engineer, owner of project green home, net zero energy,
part-time consultant to the City on electric vehicles, climate activist and loud
mouth. First, the bad news, the trends. The trends are as true as your cell
phone mostly works. That's the bad news. Climate change, the battle we're
losing. Every year our carbon emissions as a society go up. As such, I'd like
to show one graph that I've put up as a presentation. This is California
emissions cumulatively for 2012. As an engineer what I like to work on is
the 80 percent solution. What is the biggest problem? Once that slide goes
up, you'll see it's actually transportation. Worse, it's our light-duty vehicles.
Unfortunately it's really hard to see, but it's 120 megatons per year of light-
duty vehicles. It's all about what Greg and Pat talked about. How do we get
out of our light-duty vehicles? Two great things are happening as Greg and
Pat alluded to, which is changes in our transportation, both technology and
stereotypes. I'm 50; I had a car when I was 16. I had my driver's license
when I was 15. I bet you guys did too. My nephew, who's 21, still doesn't
have his driver's license. This is noted by all the major automobile
manufacturers, that they are losing the number of people who are buying cars. We have Uber; we have Lyft; we will have self-driving cars. The
problem is we will have them in five or ten years. Right now we need to
slow down that bus that we're all riding on into that cliff, so we can do as
much as possible to solve that 80-percentile problem. Residential, I feel
really good about having this net zero energy ultra-low carbon household, but it doesn't really matter compared to how much that dark green is over
there. Only a very small component of that is heavy-duty trucks. A
miniscule component is airplane rides. That's important. We have a
potential solution by converting our transportation. The sooner we do it the
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better to get those middle and late adopters in. Education and adoption. I
challenge all of you to get into an Electric Vehicles (EV) as soon as possible.
I want to talk about water, but I also want to talk about the good news in
getting out of those cars and the technology. The total cost of ownership for
those electric vehicles right now is cheaper than a conventional vehicle.
Water and energy, we want to talk about economics, because that's
important. There are more people employed in the solar industry in
California than are employed by PG&E, SoCal Edison and San Diego Gas and
Electric. Our three major utilities in the State employ fewer people than the
solar industry does now. Where has that blossomed in the last five years?
Water. This is the City's water use right here for residences. Residences
use roughly half the water out of Gil's report. Thank you.
Steve Raney: Good evening, Council. Let's definitely go for the moon shot.
I wanted to ask if Council has an opinion about adding some kind of initiative on housing. For example, low impact housing micro units. Taking
something that can make some waves, that can really scale where there's a
lot less driving per capita in those new homes and a lot fewer cars. They
could also have a very green building design as well, such as the Patrick
Kennedy micro units up there. Potentially you could follow Stanford West's
green housing preference to reduce commuting, build that in as well. Take a
parcel like 27 University, everybody bikes to Stanford for their job and then
they spend their money in Downtown and they don't have much need to
drive. It's affordable by design. Thank you for your consideration.
Timothy Gray: Good evening. Tim Gray. I wanted to make sure that we
keep a global look at the greenhouse gas and this whole topic. Oftentimes,
people get into thinking that we're going to reduce the gas here. Maybe that
doesn't tie in with what happens in China or the rest of the world. If we can
take more of a global look. For example, if each of us would just, I'm not
sure what the statistics are, reduce our meat consumption by 50 percent,
it's the equivalent of having every single resident in Palo Alto switch from a
Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) to a Prius. That would be a tremendous
accomplishment. Just a little conversation with the community about other
impacts besides the micro projects that we would want to showcase. I'll just leave it at that for the sake of time. Take a bigger look at the issue and let's
not get into something that we do right here to produce pride in being
green. For example, look at the cost of batteries in electric cars. Let's go
back to the manufacturing of the savings as well as what happens right here
in Palo Alto.
Wynn Grcich: Hi. I was at the Earth Day Festival in San Francisco on 22nd
and Mission on Saturday. I was protesting the chem trails. There's going to
be a huge global march this Saturday on it. This is something when you're
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talking about what's happening with this climate change, yeah, we could
have more water. Stanford has a grant with National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) to spray those chem trails, which is geo-engineering
the weather. If you look up on YouTube, they have a video called Geo-
Engineering Lawsuit, and everybody should be looking this up to see what
we can do to stop this drought. If they stop geo-engineering the weather,
then we would have more water. Secondly, there's more legislation that
needs to be passed. In naturalnews.com on April 18th United States (US)
government allows powerful corporations to sell California's water with no
permits and no reporting during the drought. We could save water right
there, if we go after this and make sure that our government doesn't do
this. Nestle is being sued right now, because their permits have not been
renewed. Their privatizing of the water and bottled water, they're selling it
out. While we're sitting here turning our water to toilet to tap, we have these corporations that are selling bottled water elsewhere and not to us.
That's one way we can get rid of it, if everybody got involved in this.
Secondly, the fact is you're talking about dust. You can put tarps down
when you do construction and roll it up like carpet. That'll keep some of it
down, where you don't need to use water. Paul Gardner from East Palo Alto
used to have a company that did this stuff when they took...
Mayor Holman: Deconstruction is the word I think you're looking for.
Ms. Grcich: The demolition, that's what he would do. He's now moved to
San Mateo. If you hire him, then the East Palo Alto people would get the
jobs, because they work for him. Another thing too is that you're talking
about cars. What's going to happen when all these cars that have batteries
get in wrecks? Where's the dump for all the battery acid that's going to be
coming out of this? Here you're talking about carbon credits and all this
stuff, where's going to be the waste dump for that? I can't imagine if a
Tesla car gets in an accident and it can't be repaired that we're going to
create more of a problem. Most of all, when you're turning toilet to tap and
you're doing this thing with taking your sewage sludge and turning it into
mulch, you've got copper in it. When you recycle the toilet water, you're
going to have copper in your recycled toilet water. I'm going to put this on public record. You can all check it out. Copper causes gastrointestinal
distress. It causes Alzheimer's. It causes Parkinson's. The fact is it causes
kidney damage. When you're turning to toilet water even though you think
it's cheaper, Dr. Wynn Parker's been on the radio for the last eight years
talking about recycled toilet water. He did Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) research at Stanford and he wrote Chloramine Causes Collateral Health
Damage. You might think this is a cheap outlook to recycled toilet water,
but you can't get all the stuff out. When you use these toxic poisons, this is
the Swan report done on chlorine, how it sterilizes people and causes
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miscarriages. This is the other one saying that fluoride is your next
contraceptive. I'm going to put this on here and you can see what the water
in recycled toilet water will do. It'll increase cancer death rates.
Bret Andersen: I'm Brent, a Palo Alto resident and member of the Green
Ribbon Task Force from way back as well as Carbon Free Palo Alto. I wanted
to mention two things in terms of connection with this whole effort. One
would be to look at the potential effects of telepresence on transportation
and greenhouse gases and the connection of that to the City's new vision for
utilities bringing perhaps broadband communications into that, having that
get funded in part by telepresence services. Telepresence is not just
business meetings and reducing carbon at the corporate level, but also
dispensing medical services, not having to do those errands that you would
normally do for service providers that can be just in the same town, across
town. For example, my visits from south Palo Alto to Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) for a dermatology check or whatever it is that can be
done via telepresence these days. There's a connection there that we
should look at in terms of how fast we could eliminate some of those trips.
The other area would be to look at the cooperation regionally and not pass
up in a sense opportunities with organizations that are making that effort to
provide alternatives to car transportation. Namely here, I'm talking about
Bus Rapid Transit where we have a regional organization that is looking to
invest a substantial amount to improve the alternative infrastructure
including bicycling and pedestrian. We should look more carefully as a City
even though we have traffic models that show it might provide some
additional traffic for car transportation. Let's make an effort to work
communally with these other cities to build these infrastructure components
that allow us to make the transition away from car culture. Whether that
car is electric or gas doesn't matter if you're still energizing those cars
through fossil fuels or potentially creating the traffic, the health, the safety
and the congestion issues. I would urge the Council to take the default
green approach when we're dealing with these external entities that have
good ideas and projects to invest in.
Stephanie Munoz: Good evening, Council Members. Some 50 years ago after the second World War, our country made a huge investment in
education and in homebuilding to honor the veterans of that war. It was so
well received that ever since we've been on a growth spiral, up, up, up. It's
almost been like a religion. That was the most important thing, to have
growth and lots of jobs, lots of good jobs, and lots of everything. Get rid of the old one and buy a new one. Even 50 years ago, Santa Clara County was
saying to us, "One of the problems with low income housing is the people
are just staying in their houses and they're not buying new houses and
leaving the old ones for lower income people to use." Gee whiz, I didn't
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know. These past few weeks, we've seen a little bit of a change in outlook.
Instead of saying, "Let's get rid of those poor people. Let's get rid of those
old buildings. Build new buildings. Get rich new people." People are saying,
"Wait a minute. We don't want to get rid of those poor people. We don't
want to get rid of those old buildings. They're actually useful. Why can't we
have new buildings also? Why can't we use the old buildings for something
else?" We're pretty much stuck in a throwaway mindset. It's been a month
since I looked at the gym at Palo Alto High School and realized that there
was no reason why it had to be demolished. None. I had thought it was in
the middle of a cluster of buildings, and they wanted to put a new one in.
It's not; it's out there. Anyway, I would like to suggest that you spend a
little bit of time thinking about what will happen if we have depression and
deflation. Some of this stuff will be all to the good. A lot of solar will help,
because we won't have to spend so much on energy. That would be good. It would be good if right now in addition to the work on new construction
and new requirements, you help people do something with their old houses
to make them energy efficient and water efficient. I have a tenant and I
said, "You could have maybe an extra shower if we took out the tub." She
said, "I really like the tub." Nobody is even thinking about some kind of a
pump where that tub water could water the apricot trees. Nobody's even
looking at it. You guys should. It would be a big help to everybody, a big
savings. Thanks so much. Good night.
Mike Francois: Good evening, City Council. Mike Francois, your next door
neighbor from East Palo Alto. Just a couple of comments. This has to do
with recycled water, the first one. It says infants below the age of six
months who drink water containing nitrates in the excess of mcl will become
seriously ill and if untreated may die. Symptoms include shortness of breath
and blue baby syndrome. Erosion of natural deposits discharged from
refineries and factories, run off from landfills and lands, run off from fertilizer
use, leaching from septic tanks, sewage, erosion of natural deposits. This is
from nitrate and nitrogen, which is basically ammonia. Ammonia is put in
water, as we know, to kill the smell and kill the germs. We know that.
These are things you should consider. Also, you're talking about vehicle transportation. Tata Motors last year out of India, and India as we know
went further than the United States has even been in space. They've
actually gone to Mars. The United States should be monitoring them,
because their technology is way out there. Tata Motors has developed a
vehicle that runs on air. People laugh at that. They also laughed at running off of cooking oil for a while there. In fact KFC, they laughed at that but that
came to be. Wynn Parker, Republican Broadcasting Network, who is a 15-
year student at Stanford who has studied science and law, comes on the
radio every Sunday morning from 8:00 to 11:00 A.M. He talks about all this
stuff you are talking about. He talks about where it's going, who's
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developing it, who's ahead of it and why they aren't developing it and who is
stopping it. If any of you are interested, try one Sunday morning. You can
call in live and tell him who you are or don't tell him who you are. You can
ask him a question about these things, and he will tell you his version. It
may line up with yours. Thank you.
Mayor Holman: Thank you. Thank you to Staff with the notable exception.
You're doing a great job, leading us well. You're covering a lot of bases.
Really appreciate all of your effort in so many regards. Thank you.
Mr. Friend: Thank you, Mayor Holman.
City Manager Comments
James Keene, City Manager: Thank you. Madam Mayor, Members of the
Council. A number of items to report on. First of all, the California Avenue
Streetscape is nearing the finish line. Construction crews will be putting the
finishing touches on items such as the lighting and landscaping over the next week. No grass landscaping, of course. The new fountain on the plaza will
be installed tomorrow. Mark your calendars, Thursday, May 7th at 2:30 P.M.
for a celebration with the local merchants where the City will officially
commemorate and cut the ribbon on California Avenue. I did want to share
that Palo Alto local Matt Schlegel, who you met a few weeks ago,
successfully completed the Kasumigaura marathon in our Sister City
Tsuchiura, Japan over the weekend. Reports suggest he had a wonderful
time. I don't know if that meant during the marathon or after the marathon.
He reported his time of 4:25 was pretty close to his goal of a ten-minute
mile. We look forward to hearing from him and seeing photos on his return
to Palo Alto. I again wanted to go into a little more detail when we were
talking about water. On March 17th the State Water Resources Control
Board adopted emergency drought regulations that limit landscape irrigation
with potable water. Our recommendations on how to enforce these rules are
scheduled for the May 11th Council meeting. Our City's been actively
collaborating with other water agencies and cities in the bay area to
implement a two-day-a-week irrigation limit with even addresses watering
on Tuesdays and Fridays and those with odd addresses on Mondays and
Thursdays. We'll be bringing this to the Council for formal action. As I mentioned earlier, on top of the March 17th emergency drought regulations,
Governor Brown declared a statewide mandatory 25 use reduction. Our
reduction target has been increased from 20 to 24 percent from the 2013
usage levels. The State Board is expected to act on those new emergency
water use regulations by May 7th. Mandatory reduction targets would become effective on June 1st. As you know, we already have water use
regulations in place that restrict water use and some uses of clean, drinking
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water in fountains, irrigation during the day, washing vehicles, etc. The City
will continue to enforce these regulations in addition to new actions. As I
mentioned earlier, we as a community reduced our water use by 16 percent
from 2013 levels last year. City facilities reduced water use by 27 percent.
Up-to-date information can be found at cityofpaloalto.org/water. I know in
this environment the Council and Staff is hearing from a lot of our citizens
who are concerned about this issue with different questions recently of
dewatering new construction sites, landscaping, leaking systems, etc. We'll
be developing some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and some
information. We'll put those both on the website, and we'll share them with
the Council so that there's a better understanding about these problems or
issues and the City's response to them. I'll have that out shortly. The City
has released a Draft Environmental Impact Report for the potential project
to expand our recycled water system. Council Member Burt, amongst others, mentioned it during the discussions earlier. This is a project that
would deliver recycled water produced by the Regional Water Quality Control
Plant to parks and commercial customers in and near the Stanford Research
Park. Public comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) will
be accepted until June 4th. There will be public meetings scheduled for May
19th and 21st. More information will be posted on the City's website. I did
want to share that at the Adobe Creek undercrossing, City crews have
completed the cleanup and fence installation of the Benjamin Lefkowitz
Bicycle Pedestrian Undercrossing. The gates reopened last week. As you
may be aware, they typically remain open until October 16th and close upon
the arrival of the first significant storm. Work at the Palo Alto Airport started
last week to make needed repairs on the runway and adjacent taxiways.
The first of three phases was completed with rubber and marking removal,
crack sealing and runway pavement repairs. Phase 2 involves micro-
surfacing and painting, pavement markings during two all-day closures of
the runway and taxiways, tomorrow and Wednesday. The improvements
that we expect to begin seeing with the City's takeover of the Airport are
taking place. I did want to point out to the Council that at your desks you've
got a copy of the Fiscal Year 2016-25 general Long Range Financial Forecast. We'll be having that on your agenda. Next Wednesday we'll be presenting
you the fiscal Operating Budget and Capital Budget that are informed very
much by that forecast. I also did want to share with the Council as a whole,
I know at least Mayor Holman was able to attend an important regional
event here in the bay area this past weekend which was a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. Participation from a
number of different organizations on that particular occasion, so we want to
thank the Mayor for attendance there. I had two other things real quick. I
know that Council has had the opportunity individually to meet Ed Shikada,
who has been appointed as an Interim Assistant City Manager. I thought I
would formally introduce him to the Council. I'd ask Ed to come up for a
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minute and say howdy to the Council as a whole. In typical Palo Alto
fashion, I brought him on and then left for a conference for a week. Just
threw him into the pool, which is the way things work here. Ed.
Ed Shikada, Interim Assistant City Manager: Thank you, Jim. I just again
want to express my appreciation to be a part of this team. I have, in
approaching two weeks, been onboard, getting up to speed on issues. Jim's
description of jump in and start swimming and try to keep up with the
stream is a good, accurate one. Just with this evening's discussion as a
good example, while the issues may be familiar cross the valley that cities
are grappling with, the City Palo Alto's certainly ambition as well as ability to
act is extraordinary. I look forward to working with you in support of the
City Manager and the organization, advancing your priorities.
Mayor Holman: Howdy, Ed.
Mr. Shikada: Howdy.
Mr. Keene: Lastly, obviously this past week we had a magical event out at
the Mitchell Park area with the formal opening of the Mitchell Park bridge.
Mayor, I would turn it over to you since you have some important
accoutrements and comments to make.
Mayor Holman: Thank you, City Manager. It was a great event. It's a great
playground. If you haven't been, I encourage anyone, any age, any
capability to visit. It was truly a magical day. There were hundreds of
people there. Council Member Kniss, Council Member Burt and Council
Member Filseth were there as well. Rob de Geus, who I do not see here
right now, was there. He and I and Council Member Burt accepted the key
to the Magical Bridge. Council Member Burt, because when he was Mayor,
that's when this project first came to light. On the back of the key it says,
"Only with each inclusive space will real magic in our town take place." It is
indeed a magical place. There's been some quotes and articles. If you were
there and talking with people, you could see mothers that were able to visit
a playground with their children for the first time ever, children who were
siblings were able to play with each other for the first time. It was a
remarkable, remarkable day. Very possibly it has a broader impact than
they had ever imagined because of its inclusive perspective. Congratulations to Jill Asher and Olenka Villarreal especially on a tremendous outcome and
their insight in including Royston who's the designer of Mitchell Park
originally and Royston is the architect who designed the Magical Bridge
Playground. Great success. City Manager, your comments stimulated a
couple of questions by colleagues, Council Member Scharff and Council Member Filseth.
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04/20/2015 117- 316
Council Member Scharff: Thank you. I just wanted to comment on the
California Avenue things and ask you, first of all, when do we anticipate it
being finished?
Mr. Keene: The report I have from Staff is sometime over the next two
weeks. The final landscaping and some of the furniture and that sort thing
will be done.
Council Member Scharff: I wanted to say I saw the Light Emitting Diode
(LED) light there. I think it looks great. Those bollards look fantastic, the
little rock bollards. It's shaping up nicely. The one thing I did notice and I
figure we're going to fix it, but in case we don't and it slips through the
cracks, I've noticed that the newspaper racks are now off in the middle of
the sidewalk because we've extended the sidewalks. They need to be
moved out. It could be something that slips through, so I thought maybe
we could look at that.
Mr. Keene: Yes. Thank you for pointing that out.
Council Member Filseth: Thanks very much. I'm going to try to be brief
here, because I'm going to go off the ranch for a minute. Regarding the
State water mandates, discussed here, I have really complicated feelings
about this. Very clearly we're going to need to take these kinds of steps. A
little later this evening we're going to discuss Green Building Code and so
forth. Everybody in this state knows that residential water consumption is a
tiny fraction of the water used in the state. 80 percent of it is agricultural.
That's one or two percent of the State Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and a
lot of that's exported. In The Mercury News this morning, I read that the
state almond crop, of which 70 percent is exported overseas, consumes
more annual water than all private indoor water use such as showers and
cooking and toilets that we're discussing in our Code here. The Governor's
mandates don't really touch this 80 percent. They're not really addressing
much of the problem. We're going to take a chunk out of the 20 percent,
but it's not going to make much difference. It also sends a terrible message.
I'm going to exaggerate a lot here. This is going to be absolutely as
pejorative as possible. Basically it suggests that every drop of water that we
save is essentially a corporate subsidy of somebody growing commercial cash crops. By itself, the Governor's mandate will be given...
Mayor Holman: Council Member Filseth?
Council Member Filseth: I'm going to close in a second here. It's a terrible
policy and it's worse Public Relations (PR). I assume Sacramento is
anticipating cities are going to scream. We should scream and stomp our feet. We should push back on this. Until Sacramento takes the next step,
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we're going to take these measures, but they're not going to make a huge
difference. Thanks.
Oral Communications
Wynn Grcich: Hi. Last week I was in Millbrae when they were talking about
the Armenian holocaust. I thought it was to throw everybody off of what
was happening right here. We're having our own holocaust. When our
government has the right to put fluoridation and chloramine in our drinking
water and they know it increases cancer death rates, what I put on your
public record tonight, that used to be on the San Francisco Public Utilities
Commission (PUC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) safe drinking
water studies. Ira Ruskin way back when, when they started adding the
ammonia to the drinking water knowing it was going to increase cancer
death rates, they pulled it off. They told everybody that to his surprise there
was no State and Federal studies done on chloramine. Yet, Wynn Parker had the Federal studies that was given to him by Pat Martell when she was
the head of the San Francisco PUC in 2003, and he wrote Chloramine Causes
Collateral Health Damage. I do encourage you to listen to his show, because
he's talking about the recycled toilet water. For the last ten years, we're on
the death threat right now. This is going to kill a lot more people. When
you drink recycled toilet water, you drink it and you're drinking someone
else's medicines and their diseases. Think about this. One-third of the
population's already sterile. One-third of the population is also on
antidepressants. Most of the antidepressants have fluoride in it. Prozac is
97 percent fluoride. Listen to this. This is from Beyond a Pale Horse, Page
225. Using drugs and hypnosis on mental patients is a process called Orion.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) inculcated these desires in people to
open fire on school yards, thus inflaming the anti-gun lobbying. This plan
was well under way so far working perfectly that the middle class is begging
the government to do away with the Second Amendment. The shooters
were all ex-mental patients or currently mental patients who were all on the
drug Prozac. This drug when taking with certain doses increases serotonin
levels in patients causing extreme violence. Coupled with hypnotic
suggestion through electromagnet brain implant or microwave or EFL intrusion, you get a mass murderer ending up in every case with suicide of
the perpetrator. This has been going on. This book was written in 1991.
You know all this is happening. Now we have Columbine locks on the
schools. We have recycled toilet water and you're drinking everybody else's
medicine, while you're continuing to add fluoride to the water. Also think about this. When it's mellow yellow, that ammonia in the drinking water is
also going to be full of more ammonia and nitrogen, right? Then you don't
have the extra water to make it diluted when you recycle it. We know it
causes blue baby syndrome. Mike just read that to you, and you also have
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the paper that I put on public record. I do encourage you to listen to Wynn
Parker. He can tell you more about it. One other thing too is Abby Martin
explains why fluoride is poison. This is on YouTube. She actually shows you
on Earth Day that we're drinking the air pollution from the fertilizer industry
in China to reduce cavities. If people knew that, they would be ticked off. If
you're drinking this with lead and arsenic in it, who wants to give lead and
arsenic to their children? We know from the Harvard studies, when it lowers
children's Intelligence Quotients (IQ), which you have the Harvard studies
that I put on public record, why isn't anybody trying to stop this?
Stephanie Munoz: Good evening again, Council Members. I've looked with
some bemusement at the movement to have a higher minimum wage at the
very same time when we're doing a large number of things to harm poor
workers, like telling them they can't sleep in their cars and not having any
kind of shelter for them and making the price of homes too much for them. It seems to me that before we raise the minimum we should have that
assessment of the businesses that's going to come in order to have a
business license. We should ask the workers as well as the employers about
the effects of the minimum wage on their job and their business. We don't
have to go by scare stories from Oakland. We should realize that all of the
upward trend of the economy and the houses and the businesses and the
money is not going to be mitigated by taking a piece out of Baskin and
Robbins and your local taqueria. Instead what the cities of this country
should do is stand up on their hind legs and say to the government, "We
want single payer." That is we want the Social Security money to go into
the health insurance instead of sending that health insurance money to the
investment companies, to the insurance investment companies to put more
money in the economy. The people are really suffering from not having the
health insurance that they have paid for with their taxes. This is a good
time to look at it, because we're looking at the difficulties of being poor
workers. That's what's driving the call for a greater minimum wage. Those
difficulties are real. I would like to suggest to you that their suffering would
be greatly mitigated if we had national health insurance, so that all the
money that the workers and the employers are putting into health would go into health. It would be a safety net for everybody in the country. This is
probably the best time to look at it, when we're looking at the enormous
inequalities in wealth and in salaries and the enormous suffering of the poor.
Thank you very much.
Mike Francois: I'm going to speak on a subject that came to my attention last week. It was on Assembly Bill 277. That was last week. It came in the
news, people up in Sacramento protesting mandatory vaccinations which
Governor Brown signed. He's not forcing people with religious beliefs, but
he did sign it. He also approved fracking. Something's wrong with him. It
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was stopped on April 15th after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke in Sacramento
to the public. Stay aware, because it will be brought back like the
biochemical creation bill. If you remember, that was Assembly Bill 2283,
and it came in 2011. They wanted to melt down bodies, in a liquid form,
and pour it down the drain. It came to the Assembly, and they turned it
down. They listened and they brought it back again and they turned it
down. Twice in 2011 they turned it down. You have to pay attention. They
want to cremate dead bodies into a liquid form and pour it down the drain
like they do in Florida and some of the other eastern and southern states.
According to Brown, it was stopped in 2011, like I said, twice. Stopping it
again, the vaccinations will sneak in again. Stay diligent, pay attention. No
one person or no group of people have a right to tell you how to vaccinate
your children or your cousins or your family. A lot of you here that sit right
up there that look and laugh and whisper, you weren't vaccinated with all this. Who says that vaccinations work? The only people who need
vaccinations are the people who come here illegally, who are allowed to stay
who carry diseases. That should be mandatory, not mandatory driver's
licenses. They should take vaccinations because they are bringing a lot of
diseases to the schools. Also, Wynn Parker, that Wynn talks about, a San
Mateo county resident, like I said from 8:00 to 11:00 Sunday mornings. He
will talk about vaccinations if you ask. He will tell you about them. Stanford
taught him well. He once won the smartest man in the United States back in
the '70s. The know-it-all guy. What is it called, Wynn? The question and
answer man. He answers questions in law and medicine. He passed, he
won, he has some answers. If you just listen to him one time on a Sunday
and just hear him out, 8:00 to 11:00, Republic Broadcasting Network (RBN)
live on your computer. Look him up, Parker Pathways. Thank you. Last
thing, I've got a few more seconds.
Mayor Holman: You have three seconds left.
Mr. Francois: Thank you.
Richard Yan: Hello, Council. My name is Richard Yan, and I am a
participant of the I Medicine Club at Gunn. We have researched extensively
on the problems of trichloroethylene (TCE), which is a carcinogen that has permeated through a lot of our groundwater supplies. We believe it is the
entire community's responsibility to try and resolve this problem. TCE is a
carcinogen that was used extensively in Palo Alto from the 1960s to 1980s
as an industrial solvent. It was frequently spilled into the groundwater
where it still remains today. This very groundwater could be a potential source of drinking water if the California drought continues. TCE is very
harmful, even in small concentrations. The accepted amount is five parts
per billion; although, some experts believe that lower doses can cause
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cancer. According to Dr. Samuel Goldman of the Parkinson's Institute,
research shows a significant link between Parkinson's disease and also TCE.
The most infamous TCE plume in Palo Alto is the California-Olive-Emerson
(COE) plume located at the superfund site. It is very large and contains two
HP facilities and also a medical facility as well. It contains the HP facility
located at 6202-640 Page Mill Road and a former Varian Medical Systems,
Inc., facility at 601 California Avenue. It also contains the former HP facility
at 395 Page Mill Road. It is only 15 feet underground, so this can cause
cancer to a lot of people who are living above. It extends from Alma and
Oregon Expressway to the HP headquarters and encompasses part of
Stanford-Palo Alto community playing fields. It sits directly above the Santa
Clara groundwater basin. This could again be used as a source of drinking
water as the California drought continues. Thank you.
Alex Holsinger: I'm also part of the Investigative Medicine Club at Gunn High School. As Richard mentioned, there are a number of spills of
chemicals. TCE isn't the only toxic chemical; there are also TCE cousins
such as tetrachloroethylene (PERC) or PERC and trichloroethane know as
TCA. Using an online map provided by the company Terradex, the following
spills have been mapped. Like Richard mentioned the Fairchild
superconductor site, which is right next to our high school. We can see it
from where we do our club, the site effected. The spill contains the following
chemicals: tetrachloroethylene, xylene and trichloroethane TCA, and the list
goes on. Another confirmed spill is the Palo Alto landfill. It's located east of
Highway 101. It encompasses part of the Baylands. Spills found by the
outer ring of monitoring well network. These chemicals are unnamed, but
they are certainly harmful and very shallow in the groundwater. These
chemicals may cause cancer and birth defects. Two other sites on
Middlefield Road are at Colorado Avenue, a small site only 7.7 feet under the
ground. The plume hazards are lung disease and others. The known
chemicals include gasoline. Another is at Tallway, 9.1 feet underground and
contains the same. Five plumes exist along East Charleston Boulevard and
Fabian Way, located directly underneath the condo housing complex, the
industrial center and a Costco shopping center. They're located at a depth of 6.5 to 9.1 feet under the ground. Health hazards include cancer,
developmental disabilities, lung disease and various other diseases from the
aforementioned chemicals as well as volatile organic compounds. Additional
plumes exist under El Camino Way near the Foothills in the hills and under
Town and Country Village. Thank you.
Brent Man: Hi. I'm also part of the Gunn I Med Club. We found out one of
the main dangers is that even though we've known that in the future this
could contaminate our drinking water from the drought, at the current time
this groundwater could accumulate in underground structures such as
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garages. When they evaporate, they release these toxins into the air, so
you breathe it in. These toxins as aforementioned can cause many diseases
such as cancer, Parkinson's and even birth defects. Since 1993, Mountain
View Ordinances have required newly constructed buildings to have vapor
barriers. These vapor barriers prevent TCE gas from entering living spaces;
however, Palo Alto does not have any official law that holds construction to
the same level of Building Code which endangers the lives of our residents.
In addition, residential buildings built over these contaminated sites in
Mountain View are not allowed to have underground parking for basements.
Yet, in Palo Alto underground garages are common in contaminated areas
and there are no restrictions to prevent this from happening. We feel this is
something that must be changed. The Environmental Protection Agency
(EP) has aggressively cleaned up much of the contamination across 101
freeway from Moffett Field, often using new methods such as bioremediation. Nothing of the sort has happened in Palo Alto. Palo Alto
also uses an outdated 20-year-old pump and treat system. According to an
associate from the EPA and the United States Navy, TCE will take 100 years
or a century to fully remove these in this treatment. The system has also
caused TCE buildup in some wells. As citizens in Palo Alto, we are very
concerned about the safety of our City and our loved ones. We understand
that the City's officials are doing everything they can to ensure that the
situation is remedied. It is our hope that the City of Palo Alto will consider
the following measures to help counter the prevalence of TCE and other
groundwater contaminants. A, require inter-sampling around TCE hotspots.
Buildings with TCE levels above the accepted safety level of five parts per
billion must be treated and have vapor barriers installed. B, require new
buildings to have proper vapor barriers to prevent soil gas from entering
buildings. C, prohibit underground garages for all new construction over
contaminated sites. Thank you for taking the time to listen to our
presentation.
Mayor Holman: Before you leave the podium, Brent, you have some other
people with you that look like might be your colleagues in this endeavor.
Mr. Man: Yes, they're all part of our club.
Mayor Holman: Would you care to introduce them all?
Mr. Man: Sure. We have Richard and Alex who spoke before me. We have
Zach Stewart, a junior. We have Zach Holsinger; he's a sophomore and
Alex's twin. We also have Jay Lee and David Chin. They're both
sophomores like me.
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Mayor Holman: Thank you all very much for coming. I believe you sent
your comments to all of the Council Members, I do believe.
Mr. Man: Yes, I did.
Mayor Holman: If you come to the rail and see the City Clerk, he has
something for each of you.
Mr. Man: Thank you.
Bob Wenzlau: My name's Bob Wenzlau. Perhaps I was a tiny instigator in
what we enjoyed tonight. The high school students are showing what it's
like to be civically engaged and equally applying science. I'm the Chief
Executive Officer (CEO) of Terradex. What we've been working on for about
ten years is to improve the mapping of these groundwater plumes. I wanted
to make a couple of comments. Number one, the students in their research
were right on that we actually can look to what the City of Mountain View's
been doing and study their Ordinances. Another thing that the City of Mountain View does that I think is worthwhile is that they've worked to have
their planning department be more informed of the occurrence and having
accurate maps of where the groundwater plumes are. This is something that
I've been working with Staff. Better planning decisions can be made if we
have better mapping. One of the challenges we have in this space is that
the responsible parties are not obligated to turn in maps that local
government can use. I've been working a little at the State level to ask that
there be uniform mapping obligated on RPs when they turn in maps, so that
the local government can have a unified map so that they can make
informed discretionary decisions. Finally, another initiative that we've been
working on is more collaboration between local government, our different
cities, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Santa Clara County Environmental Health.
Environmental Health can provide a resource to the discretionary planners
so that they can make informed decisions about land use. Not every
discretionary planner can be informed and smart as to these environmental
hazards. Equally we've watched Santa Clara Valley Water District come into
this, because they've been starting to recognize that the northern part of the
county, even though we view the shallow groundwater as not being a
resource, is going to need to be looked at this way. Again, I wanted to reinforce what the students brought forward today. I wanted to elaborate
on it for a moment, because they've hit upon a vital and important topic in
our City. Thank you very much.
Mayor Holman: Thank you for being a mentor to these young people.
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Minutes Approval
4. February 23, 2015, March 2, 2015, and March 9, 2015
MOTION: Vice Mayor Schmid moved, seconded by Council Member
Wolbach to approve the minutes of February 23, March 2 and 9, 2015.
MOTION PASSED: 9-0
Consent Calendar
Mayor Holman: There was a communication at places regarding Item
Number 5.
MOTION: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Council Member
DuBois to approve Agenda Item Numbers 5-9.
5. Finance Committee Recommends Adoption of a Budget Amendment
Ordinance 5321 entitled “Budget Amendment Ordinance of the Council
of the City of Palo Alto Amending the Budget for Fiscal Year 2015 to
Adjust Budgeted Revenues and Expenditures in Accordance with the
Recommendations in the FY 2015 Midyear Budget Review Report and
to Adopt a Resolution 9503 entitled “Resolution of the Council of the
City of Palo Alto to Amend the Compensation Plan for the
Management/Professional Group to Add a Principal Attorney.”
6. Staff Recommendation that the City Council Adopt Resolution 9504
entitled “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Amending
Gas Rate Schedule G-10 (Compressed Natural Gas Service) to Recover
Cap-and-Trade Regulatory Compliance Costs and Approving New Palo
AltoGreen Gas Rate Schedule G-10-G (Compressed Natural Green Gas
Service).”
7. Approval of Three Contracts with: 1) Delta Dental for Dental Claim
Administration; 2) Vision Service Plan for Vision Claim Administration
and Fully Insured Vision Plan; and 3) Life Insurance Company of North
America (CIGNA) for Underwriting of the City of Palo Alto’s Group Life,
Accidental Death and Dismemberment (AD&D), and Long Term
Disability Insurance (LTD) Plans for up to Three Years for Each
Contract.
8. Approval of Loan Documents and Agreements Providing $1,000,000 for
the Rehabilitation of the Stevenson House and Adoption of Budget Amendment Ordinance 5322 entitled “Budget Amendment Ordinance
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04/20/2015 117- 324
of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Appropriating Funds from the
Residential Housing In-Lieu Fund for this Purpose.”
9. Adoption of Amended Ordinance Amending Chapter 9.14 (Smoking
and Tobacco Regulations) of the Palo Alto Municipal Code to Establish
New Outdoor Smoking Restrictions in Commercial Areas and Outdoor
Dining.
MOTION PASSED: 9-0
Action Item
10. PUBLIC HEARING: Adoption of Ordinances Amending Chapters 16.14,
16.17, and 16.18 to Adopt Local Amendments to the California Green
Building Code and the California Energy Code.
Peter Pirnejad, Development Services Director: Good evening. Thank you
again for welcoming us back to the Council. We were at Policy and Services.
We will go through this presentation again with some modifications. First,
let me start with some acknowledgements quickly. Let me first say thank
you to the Green Building Advisory Group (GBAG) who has been
instrumental in the efforts that we've undertaken over the last few years.
The Green Building Advisory Group members, such as Sven Thesen, were
instrumental in meeting and conferring and talking about prioritizing all the
measures that we're talking about today and the work that's gone forward
since then. Melanie Jacobsen, to my right, worked closely with us on our
green building communication, our website, our outreach, connecting
directly with customers, interpreting the Code and being a local expert, if
you will, on all things green building and energy and introducing us to the
leaders in the industry relative to energy and green building. To her right is
Farhad Farahmand from Total Resource Cost (TRC). He has been our
consultant working on the Cost Effectiveness Study as well providing some
expertise in the area of energy efficiency. His firm has been working
collaboratively and closely with the California Energy Commission as they roll
out the newest standards which will be taking effect in a year and a half.
We're ahead of that tidal wave, as I like to say, but it's closely nipping at our
heels. I also wanted to thank Gil Friend who's been a collaboration partner
in this effort, very much involved in our efforts relative to the Green Building Advisory Group, our retreat that we had in August of last year as well as a
good friend to help bounce ideas off of. We've worked closely with Planning
and Community Environment, Utilities, Public Works in the formation of this
Green Building and Energy Code. I would be remiss not to thank them for
their efforts as well. With that, let me direct your attention to the PowerPoint. Before you is the recommended motion, sometimes it's helpful
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04/20/2015 117- 325
to have it. It'll be at the end of the PowerPoint as well. First, let me just
quickly go over an outline of what we will cover today. The scope of the
Green Building and Energy Code Ordinance. We'll explain what are the two
Ordinances that we're asking the Council to make findings and provide a
motion on. We'll go through the background of the green building and
energy policies here in Palo Alto. We'll quickly go over our leadership
awards in sustainability. We'll talk about a timeline relative to green
building and net zero energy as it relates to the State. We'll quickly go over
our Energy Reach Code Ordinance proposal with the changes, which at that
point I'll hand it off to Melanie Jacobsen. She'll review that as well as our
Green Building Code Ordinance proposed changes, which as you should
know reflect the changes recommended by the Policy and Services. Since
then we've been busy and hard at work meeting again with the Green
Building Advisory Group. Those members that had submitted comments, we reached across and collaborated with them again, met with the Green
Building Advisory Group two times since the time we met with Policy and
Services and incorporated those findings and recommendations into the
work that you have before you tonight. Finally, we'll go over quickly the
future policy priorities as we move into a quick turnaround from this meeting
and revisit our Green Building and Energy Code yet again in preparation for
when this next Code cycle comes back around, practically a year from this
June. With that, let's quickly go over it. The Green Building Ordinance
versus the Energy Code. There's two Ordinances. They're separate
chapters of the Building Code. The first is the Green Building Ordinance
which covers site design, water efficiency, materials, etc. Second and apart
from that is the Energy Code. It's a separate part of the Building Code, Part
six. It covers energy efficiency and energy efficiency only. Unlike the Green
Building Code, we need to make findings in order to enforce the Reach Code,
as we refer to it. You'll hear that terminology being used when we're
exceeding the minimum base Code. In order to enforce a Reach Code, you
need to do a Cost Effectiveness Study and file such study with the California
Energy Commission which is what we've done with the help of TRC. With
that, the quick background. The history of the Green Building and Energy Ordinance takes us back to 2008, when the State offered its Green Building
Code as optional. We, in fact, took that upon ourselves, being the
innovative City that we are, and enforced it. Since then we've continued to
raise the bar, doing Energy Reach Codes, green building amendments,
modifications to that Code, making local amendments to that body of work and enforcing it more rigorous every year and every Code cycle and mid-
Code cycle. Before you today is another revision to the Green Building and
Energy Code. We don't shy away from stretching ourselves to ensure that
our green building stock, both existing as well as new, not only meets but
exceeds both State and national standards. The Green Building Advisory
Group that we refer to as the GBAG, has been meeting for over a year,
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04/20/2015 117- 326
vetting the efforts that are before you tonight. We've been talking about
green building initiatives. We've been talking Energy Code updates, leaving
no stone unturned on where we might improve in the area of green building,
water efficiency, deconstruction, energy efficiency, etc. We've been having
monthly meetings literally for over a year, talking in detail about all these
different topics, and there is quite a few. It's difficult to attain in one
meeting once a month, so in mid-part of last year we decided to have a
retreat. We went to a conference room in City Hall and met for an entire
day, had multiple facilitators as well as a visual facilitator to help discuss the
body of work that we had before us, prioritize them and identify where the
City fell in the leadership scale that we created ourselves. We polled the
group of members, stakeholders that were there, which led to the work that
is before you tonight. That day-long retreat, again, was in August of last
year. We've been hard at work doing the Cost Effectiveness Study and other Ordinance measures to get before you tonight. Continuing on that
background, let's see. Since the Green Building Advisory Group, we've met
two times since we met with Policy and Services back on the 10th of March.
We made two minor adjustments based on the recommendations that your
Committee provided us, which included some added language in terms of
infeasibility. In the event that a contractor cannot meet the letter of the
law, we have developed a system that we've worked through the City
Attorney's Office, how they might meet the intent of the Green Building and
Energy Efficiency Code if and when it is infeasible. We've developed that
criteria inside the Ordinance. Finally, based on the recommendations of
Policy and Services, we clarified all the Tier 1 and Tier 2 local amendments.
The Green Building Code is a standard edition, then a Tier 1 and a Tier 2.
The Tier 1 and Tier 2 were reviewed item by item to ensure there weren't
any internal conflicts as well as weren't any conflicts with our existing green
building enforcement as we hold today. Staff has drafted before you tonight
and in your Packet the report as well as various attachments. The first is
the Energy Ordinance. You'll find the Green Building Ordinance. The
supporting documentation to those is the Energy Cost Effectiveness Study
prepared by TRC. Finally in response to Policy and Services, we did a laundry to landscape valve cost estimate, just to give you a sense of how
much it costs to put one of these diverter valves in. We'll get into that in a
few minutes in the presentation. Recent leadership awards that the
Development Services Department in cooperation with other departments
have been able to receive that really speak to this work and the effort that we've been able to achieve is first and foremost the award for sustainability
provided to us by Acterra, the Business Environmental Award. Phil Bobel
had mentioned this in a City Manager conference some weeks back. We're
very proud to have received that award in cooperation with the various other
departments in the City. Green building was a part of that. We recently
were awarded the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) Class
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04/20/2015 117- 327
1 Community through the Building Code enforcement grading system. As
you know, we're a Class 1 organization now, which means that the residents
and property owners in Palo Alto get the benefit from reduced insurance rate
as well as be assured that their buildings will withstand impacts such as fire
and hazardous events such as earthquakes better and more resiliently than
buildings that are less than Class 1. We were awarded the Most Electric
Vehicle Ready Community back in 2013 and our Green Building Leadership
Award received in 2013 reflect the advancement that we've made in green
building. This is the visual facilitation diagram that we produced at our
green building retreat. It speaks to the direction. It gives a nice narrative
that we use to follow the discussion. We talked about water, emissions,
energy, materials and waste and indoor air quality, all of which were
identified, prioritized and pursued. This quickly is a timeline of our efforts.
On the top you'll notice the timeline from 2014 all the way through to 2050. In bold, 2016 and 2019 represent Code cycles. I take that back. The green
buttons represent the Code cycles. That's 2015, which just passed; 2017 is
the next Code cycle; and 2019 is the Code cycle after that. Those represent
the Code cycles that we need to be in advance of, so our Ordinances have to
include all the local amendments. We need to go through the adoption
language in advance of those goals. That's what drives all of this effort to
make sure that our Green Building and Energy Codes are adopted well in
advance of those periods in time, those January 1st deadlines. Step one is
before you tonight. That's the Green Building and Energy Reach Code. Step
two is the Zero Net Energy Code which will be coming before you in advance
of 2017. Hopefully by June 2016 we'll have that wrapped up, which means
we have to start that work immediately after we finish this effort before you.
That Step two is going to be focused on zero net residential energy. We're
going to study where to draw that line and pursue Zero Net Energy through
the mandate of solar power on rooftops as well as identifying what is cost
effective, which we'll get into. Finally, Step 3 we're calling a roll out. This is
in advance of the 2030 goal established by the State which identifies when
we want to try to be Zero Net Energy for commercial buildings, a much
higher threshold to achieve. Technology still has a ways to go to catch up with that, but we are going to try to see how we might advance and beat
that deadline here in Palo Alto. Again, it's a rolling effort. We will start that
after 2017 when we adopt the next step. Below, at the bottom, you'll find
the three projects that this is paralleling; the Comprehensive Plan, the
Sustainability/Climate Action Plan which Gil made mention of, as well as the electrification study or the fuel switching study that's currently under way.
All three of those efforts are aligned with the work that we're doing. We
collaborate regularly with those departments to make sure that we're on the
same page. Training and outreach was a big focus in this effort. It's the
reason that we received the ISO Class 1 rating. We need to educate the
construction, the architectural, and the engineering community about these
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efforts. It is one thing to design a building; it is something else to actually
build it. We can't underestimate how difficult it is for a construction
community that's been building buildings one way for decades, which is now
being asked to build it a different way. This leads to cost overruns, delays
and other things. We're trying to get ahead of that by training and reaching
out to the community of contractors, engineers and architects to make sure
that they're aware of how to build these things, which is not in your
traditional way. As this Code reads, it's focused on the construction of the
shell of the building. It stays clear of any mechanical requirements such as
Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems, heat pumps and
other things. That's because that is what we're going to be seeing in this
next Code cycle, which requires that contractors understand the science of
building buildings. There needs to be a press from us as leaders in this
space, ahead of all other municipalities, to educate the construction community on what it is that we're expecting them to do above and beyond
all of our surrounding cities. We take that mandate seriously, and we will
talk a little bit about what we're doing to achieve that. The first is our new
green building webpage has been overhauled, thanks to the hard work of
Melanie, which has a lot of informative Pages and forms and documentation.
We've also included in our green building handbook that we're providing as
part of the Construction Guidelines. Our community presentations and guest
speakers that we're having on a quarterly basis, we're going to have
speakers every month going forward to talk about where the bar is in Palo
Alto and how to achieve some of these measures that we're implementing.
We have a Green Building Advisory Group, the GBAG that I mentioned,
which we meet regularly. Our Development Center has commercials now. If
you go down to the Development Center (DC), you'll see a large monitor
displaying commercials educating and directing people to where they can get
more information. Finally, we published a Development Services newsletter.
If you aren't a recipient of that, please let us know. We'll be happy to add
you to the mailing list. Not only does it have information about what we're
doing as a department, but also construction updates. With that, I'm going
to pass the baton over to Melanie. She'll quickly go through our Energy Reach Code Ordinance. If you have any questions, feel free.
Melanie Jacobsen: Thank you, Peter. Honorable Council, thank you for
hearing this Ordinance today. The two Ordinances before you are broken
out between the Energy Reach Code Ordinance and the Green Building
Ordinance. The Energy Reach Code Ordinance improvements include three primary amendments above the baseline State Energy Code. We're calling it
the new Reach Code Ordinance, because it does reach beyond what is
minimum. What's proposed for new construction is a 15 percent
improvement over the baseline State requirements. That's increased
stringency over State requirements by 15 percent for all single-family, all
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04/20/2015 117- 329
multifamily and all commercial projects. Those findings have been
supported by this Cost Effectiveness Study that Peter mentioned. That's
also included in your Packet. That explores the different angles in which
those goals can be achieved. Since the Code is a performance-based
standard, it looks at several different options as to how those requirements
can be achieved. The Cost Effectiveness Study doesn't cover the breadth of
all potential measures. It really is more than one report could even cover,
but it does outline certain measures that are specific to our climate zone and
typical building practices that are included in Palo Alto. That's what we
based that regulation language on. In addition, renovation projects 1,000
square feet or greater, we're going to have two options for compliance.
Option 1 is the performance standard which increases the stringency over
the State requirements by five percent for single-family, 10 percent for
multifamily and five percent for commercial. Similarly, there'll be an Option 2 for prescriptive measures which presents a list of cost-effective measures
that independently are cost effective, on their own as opposed to a
performance package which looks at all those measures combined together
on a single building. With that, we'll go onto the next slide here which
outlines the additional measures. Also in the Reach Code Ordinance, we
have solar-ready infrastructure for new homes. This is an amendment
above and beyond the State Energy Code, again included in the Cost
Effectiveness Study. We're proposing to designate 500 square feet of room
on the roof for future installation of a solar panel system. It wouldn't be an
actual mandate of a full system. It would be the solar-ready infrastructure
to essentially eliminate the barriers for entry for a homeowner. The
Ordinance also proposes the installation of conduit from the electrical panel
up to the roof line, again to eliminate the barrier to entry for a future
installation. One item that has been a challenge that we've been working in
collaboration with Urban Forestry on is working on exceptions for properties
with protected trees. We want to make sure that the new policies that we
propose are in sync with our existing policies. We've worked through a
number of items with that, and we'll continue that conversation forward with
our future priorities that Peter will be going over. In addition, during the Policy and Services meeting on March 10th, Council Member Burt and the
Policy and Services Committee requested that we draft a carefully
constructed infeasibility clause. Since this is a progressive Ordinance, we
want to propose an exemption to allow Staff to permit alternative measures
where strict compliance is not feasible or cost effective. We have included that, and that is in the Ordinance before you. Also included in the second
reading of the Ordinance will be a small amendment which basically clarifies
language on subdivisions. That will be included in the second reading. One
of the items that the Policy and Services Committee requested was an
analysis of the greenhouse gas savings associated with the Energy Reach
Code Ordinance. That has been prepared in the Cost Effectiveness Study
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04/20/2015 117- 330
and in this slide before you today. What this slide aims to capture is just a
digestible understanding of the greenhouse gas savings associated with this
Energy Reach Code. I'll have Farhad explain that a little bit more. Basically
what you're looking at is the greenhouse gas savings avoided for the natural
gas associated with buildings. Since our electricity stock is carbon neutral,
there are no greenhouse gases associated with those emissions. This is only
associated with natural gas. He'll get into that in just a moment. I'll pass
this is over.
Farhad Farahmand, TRC Energy Services: Honorable Council, I'll just briefly
interject to describe in detail this chart. As Melanie mentioned, it describes
the avoided emissions due to the set of measures that we studied in our
analysis associated with the Reach Code. The gray bar on the left side
represents the typical emissions associated with a building that minimally
complies with the Statewide energy efficiency standards. The bar on the right represents the tons of CO2 emitted with the Palo Alto Reach Code, the
measures that we studied in our analysis. The little dots above those bars
represent the percentage savings. Going from, for example, multifamily
eight tons of CO2 emitted per new multifamily construction down to about
five represents 32 percent savings in greenhouse gas emissions. As Melanie
mentioned, these are based only on natural gas. That's why they vary from
the 15 percent savings that the Reach Code prescribes. The measures that
we studied affected electricity consumption, natural gas consumption, a little
differently for each prototype, so 20 percent, 32 percent, eight percent.
That's why they're fluctuating from that 15 percent value. Nonresidential
buildings show an eight percent reduction, mostly because the residential
measures that we researched were domestic hot water focused, and there's
just generally less consumption of domestic hot water in nonresidential
buildings. There's only an eight percent greenhouse gas savings there.
That's pretty much it.
Ms. Jacobsen: Thank you, Farhad. That concludes our summary of the
Energy Reach Code. We'll now go onto the Green Building Ordinance
improvements. The first item that the Green Building Ordinance proposes is
using residential CalGreen, what we call voluntary tiers. It mandates the use of the State-developed Tier 1 and Tier 2 system. Based on a project's
scope of work, it would trigger either a Tier 1 or a Tier 2 system. One of the
items that the Policy and Services Committee requested is that we work
through some of the clarifications that the Green Building Advisory
Committee wanted to include. We have done that. We've met with them twice since the Policy and Services Committee. Their comments are
reflected in the Ordinance before you tonight. In addition, the Ordinance
with the adoption of the Tier 1 and Tier 2 system, the use of the third-party
certification program Build It Green is retracted. We still will promote the
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use of third-party rating systems, just not necessarily as an enforcement
tool. The second item in the Green Building Ordinance improvement list is
inclusion of laundry to landscape ready infrastructure. Essentially the
requirement includes the installation of a diverter valve on the back of
washing machine fixtures in new construction projects. I've a graphic on the
next slide that will show you. In addition, we have outlined increased water
efficiency measures lowering the square footage requirement trigger for
increased efficiency standards for irrigation on both residential and
nonresidential projects. The graphic before you outlines a conceptual
diagram of a laundry to landscape ready system. Laundry to landscape is a
simple concept of taking the laundry water that's been used and sending it
out to the lawn for irrigation. In the proposed requirements, the item that is
included in the proposed requirement is the installation of the diverter valve
at the clothes washer drain line which is outlined in the red circle that you see in front of you. The actual laundry to landscape piping and irrigation
installation will remain voluntary. The intention behind this portion of the
Ordinance amendment is to again eliminate the barrier to entry for those
who want to go that step beyond and install a gray water. We're not
mandating any use of gray water at this time, just for the infrastructure to
be included as part of a new construction project. With that, I'll send it back
over to Peter to talk about our future priorities.
Mr. Pirnejad: Just to close things up, we wanted to just quickly go over
where we're going to go next after tonight. We are going to reconvene the
Green Building Advisory Group to talk about a solar electric mandate and
think about ways that we could make that cost effective. We're going to be
thinking about a Zero Net Energy design mandate as we look into residential
buildings becoming Zero Net Energy. We're going to continue conversations
with the Electric Utility about electrification. We are going to be revisiting
our electric vehicle policy for remodeled and existing homes. From the
water perspective, now that we've received the response from the Executive
Order, we are going to be taking a closer look at how our new construction
can respond to our new environment through cistern mandates, recirculation
pumps, gray water systems that are a little bit more aggressive, and elimination of lawns. All things that we can think about and investigate.
What's before you tonight is the following motions to adopt our Green
Building and Energy Codes. With that, we would welcome any questions
that you might have. Thank you for your time.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Just a quick question. Certain parts of town are in flood districts. By mandate with a certain refurbishing, remodel of the
home, they have to raise it three feet. Does this affect that mandate at all?
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04/20/2015 117- 332
Mr. Pirnejad: Could you repeat the mandate? The mandate to raise the
homes?
Vice Mayor Schmid: They have to raise them three feet from ground level if
they have a remodeling, rebuilding.
Mr. Pirnejad: Any home that affects 1,000 square feet or more is going to
be subject to the Green Building Ordinance.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Does it work the other way around, that you reduce the
square footage from 1,200 to 1,000, would that affect remodels of 1,000
feet where it would not have before?
Ms. Jacobsen: The remodel criteria looks at the energy-using systems of the
building. If you have a remodel that's 1,200 going to 1,000, if it's altering
some of the energy-using systems, two of the four main energy-using
systems of a typical home, then it would be triggered. The fact that it's
being raised wouldn't impact the energy performance of the building.
Vice Mayor Schmid: The impact is on the home remodel, where you want to
remodel your home, but you don't necessarily want to get involved in raising
the whole structure. Are you putting a bigger mandate on?
Mayor Holman: Can Staff answer that please?
Mr. Pirnejad: I'm trying to conceptualize the question. Maybe if you could
rephrase it.
Council Member Burt: If I understand it correctly. Basically if you do a
remodel above the 1,000 square feet and you're in the floodplain, that's
what triggers having to elevate. This doesn't change the trigger point for
that. It does mean that like any other home that is remodeled above 1,000
square feet, certain of these things would occur, but no different.
Vice Mayor Schmid: My question is, is the remodel driven at 1,000 square
feet for the raising three feet.
Council Member Burt: Either way, this doesn't change what drives elevating
a home. This is just about the green energy. We still have whatever we
have in the Code about what triggers elevating a home in a floodplain.
Mayor Holman: Does that answer your question? Before we go to any
motions, I also should acknowledge that we have one public speaker.
Questions and comments, and then we'll go to the public and then come back for motions.
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04/20/2015 117- 333
Council Member Burt: That was the main reason I hit my light. The
Committee had five different small requests of Staff to look at modifying
what was presented to the Committee. To their credit, they went through
these, reconvened the Green Building Advisory Group, went through all of
these in just over a month. That's pretty fast work. I'm not sure that we
expected that you'd come to the full Council with resolution on all those.
That was very good. You'll see on Page 698 of the Packet the two additional
items that we've asked be evaluated going forward. We'll hear back next
year on those, I assume.
Mr. Pirnejad: That's correct.
Council Member Burt: Lots of good, hard work on this.
Council Member Scharff: I was going to make the motion. Go to the public.
Mayor Holman: No motions yet. Council Member Kniss, you're waiting?
Council Member Kniss: Council Member Scharff just did.
Council Member Wolbach: I just wanted to second what Council Member
Burt said. I thank you for great work in turning it around so fast. I really
appreciate what Staff's done here.
Council Member Filseth: Thanks. I've got three questions, hopefully short.
First of all, the Tier 1, Tier 2 thing which looks to me like it's in Section
A4.106.9. Does that mean you can't have a lawn? How does that work?
It's the 25 percent, 10 percent thing.
Ms. Jacobsen: I think you're referring to the lawn measure.
Council Member Filseth: Yeah, Page 707 of the Packet.
Ms. Jacobsen: Yes, I know which one you're referring to. The way that the
tiers work is that based on the scope of the project, Tier 1 or Tier 2 will be
triggered based on the scope. Tier 1 is for remodels over 1,000 square feet.
Tier 2 is for new construction. Within those tiers, you get to select a certain
number of measures that make sense for the project. In each category
specifically for water, there's 14 measures that you can choose from. That
turf item is one of them. You can choose that if it makes sense for the
project. We do have mandates for the actual efficiency of the overall Water
Budget. Each home or new construction project or renovation will need to
put together a Water Budget as a performance requirement. Based on the square footage, how much landscape there is, the types of plantings that are
specified including the type of irrigation that's specified, the designer will get
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a Budget in which to use that water on. That's really the methodology that
the State requires and what we've adopted above and beyond the minimum
thresholds.
Council Member Filseth: What does the State require versus what do we
require?
Ms. Jacobsen: The State requires that we adopt what's called the Model
Water Ordinance. It's all based on turf. Turf is the maximum amount of
water that's used. I don't have it right in front of me, but it's approximately
45 to 55 percent of what's called evapotranspiration (ETo), which is
essentially turf, that's the technical term. We have adopted 65 and 55
percent above that baseline. That's included in the Ordinance before you as
a mandate. The tiers, which are the optional "choose from a list of items."
Council Member Filseth: If I understand what you said, at one level it's
optional. On the other hand, you don't have an infinite number of options. You have to pick something off the menu.
Ms. Jacobsen: That's correct.
Council Member Filseth: If you decide you want a lawn, you have to cut
somewhere else.
Ms. Jacobsen: That's correct. The way that our Budget is written, lawns are
becoming much less popular, due to the fact that they need so much water.
That's definitely one of the things that the GBAG has discussed, how can we
bring something before you that eliminates lawns or minimizes them to the
maximum degree.
Council Member Filseth: My second question has to do with the solar ready
on the roof. You designate 500 square feet, and you put a conduit there and
some bracing or something like that. There was a line about an exception
for protected trees. I assume that implies there's non-protected trees too.
Is it conceivable this would force you to cut down some trees?
Ms. Jacobsen: That's a great question. That's what we've been working
closely with the Urban Forestry Division on. There is already existing
legislation in the Solar Shade Act of 2009, that says whatever was there first
trumps shade. If a tree was existing and somebody installed a solar panel
system, the rights would be the tree owner and vice versa. If the solar panel was installed and then the tree was planted and grew up, the solar
panel owner would have the rights.
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04/20/2015 117- 335
Council Member Filseth: If I understand that right, then it might prohibit
you from planting a big tree or letting it grow real high if you already have
solar there. If the tree was already there, then you don't have to cut it
down.
Ms. Jacobsen: It doesn't prohibit. It's more of if we have to get involved
with pruning existing trees, we want to know about that ahead of time
before we mandate a solar panel system next to an existing tree.
Mr. Pirnejad: It doesn't mandate that you cut down any trees. The Code
won't mandate any tree cutting. It just provides an avenue for there to be a
conversation about who gets the priority. Non-protected trees.
Council Member Filseth: There's not a circumstance in which you would
have to cut down a tree or force your neighbor to cut down a tree or
something like that?
Ms. Jacobsen: No. That's exactly what the Solar Shade Act addresses. Most protected trees will prevail over a solar system in the proposed
mandate, what we'll be setting.
Council Member Filseth: I have one more question. You folks have done a
whale of a lot of work here. Did you look at all at embedded greenhouse gas
emissions of construction materials used in these things? I think I saw a
reference somewhere to concrete use or something like that. If you did
that, did you come up with any numbers?
Ms. Jacobsen: There is an option in one of the tiers to do a life cycle cost
analysis, which looks at that very subject. The industry is right in the
infancy of those types of analyses. We have highlighted it as an option if a
team wanted to go and do that work. We have outlined it as an innovative
option for them.
Mayor Holman: I have a couple of questions, one that you've sort of
addressed as a result of Council Member Filseth's question about trees. If
you aren't required to take down any trees, why is the language written
"exceptions for properties with protected trees?" As I recall the Solar Shade
Act, which by the way came about because of the efforts of one of our City
employees who went to battle to protect their trees. I don't recall that
referring to just protected trees or redwoods, those happen to be. Why does this say "protected trees"?
Ms. Jacobsen: That's an excellent question. The challenge around the solar
mandate or the solar ready proposed language also looks at the local Palo
Alto Ordinance and the Solar Shade Act. Those two items would have to
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04/20/2015 117- 336
work in tandem. We'll have to work closely with the Urban Forestry Division
to make sure that both of those legislations are coordinated with this effort.
It's both. "Protected" would be protected under our Tree Protection
Ordinance and protected under the Solar Shade Act.
Mayor Holman: I don't see that that's how this is written. This says, "for
properties with protected trees in sync with the Solar Shade Act." It seems
to me that the language should be something more akin to "exceptions for
properties with protected trees and protection of trees in sync with the Solar
Shade Act." "Protected trees" seems like it shouldn’t be there. It seems like
it limits the protections.
Ms. Jacobsen: We'll have to talk with our Urban Forestry partners and get
back to you exactly on the details of that language. That's what came out of
our meetings with them. We can certainly look into it and make sure that
we've looked at it from all angles.
Mayor Holman: But we're here to vote on this tonight. That's one question.
I had a question about cement use. On the one hand, I'm happy that we
can reduce, because cement is the biggest polluter in manufacture of any
construction material whatsoever. When you're talking about "products
used to replace cement in concrete mix designs," you're talking about fly
ash, slag and you mention a couple of others. I'm sure you've looked at
this, but I want to make sure. When we build basements here, they have to
be built like ships that go underground. Are these formulas for concrete just
for foundations or for basements and foundations? I'm not clear on the
utilization of this exactly.
Ms. Jacobsen: In terms of reduction in cement use, it's about the volume of
cement that's being used. It wouldn't necessarily be specific to the
application of the cement. If there's X cubic tons of cement used, it would
be based on that amount. The civil and structural engineer would determine
what would be structurally sound for those items.
Mayor Holman: Okay, I guess. It's not very clear.
Male: What page are you on?
Mayor Holman: It's Packet Page 711. It's not very clear here what the
application is. It doesn't seem to address both issues. Council Member Scharff, do you have a question? We have two members of the public.
Council Member Scharff: I do have a question. I wanted to follow up since
you're asking us to vote tonight. Mayor Holman made two good points.
When we came up with reduction in cement uses as an example, was that
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04/20/2015 117- 337
vetted by building industry people who said, "Most people in Palo Alto want
to build a basement where they're allowed to." What effect does that have
on their ability to do so? I assume we're not making it difficult to build a
basement.
Ms. Jacobsen: No, we're not. The reduction in cement use is one of the
proposed elective measures. If it makes sense for the design team, they
can choose that from a list of options based on the scope of the project. If it
makes sense to go for this particular elective, then the design team can do
so and move forward with the design using this as a guideline.
Council Member Scharff: What's stuff like fly ash and slag and silica fume
and rice hull ash?
Ms. Jacobsen: Those are byproducts of different industrial processes that
typically go to the landfill. These items can be reused within concrete,
cement to minimize the other aggregate that gets added.
Council Member Scharff: They replace the sand is what you're suggesting?
Ms. Jacobsen: Yes. It goes in part of the mix design.
Council Member Burt: If I recall correctly, the first three materials are
industrial wastes, and the fourth one is an agricultural waste. It's a pretty
progressive utilization of waste material to replace the cement.
Council Member Scharff: You have a menu of options, the question becomes
if you can't reduce your cement by 25 percent, do you know if you then use
the fly ash or slag or silica fume, stuff like that? Do those have the same
properties of regular cement for water tightness and for a basement and all
of that? Is it just a cost issue? Is it more expensive to use fly ash and that
kind of stuff? What's the issue?
Ms. Jacobsen: Over the last ten years or so, this has become much more
popular in designing construction. Some teams might not choose this option
because the cure time is typically a little bit longer. It takes longer for it to
dry. Some teams would go against using it for that particular reason, if
they're on a timeline. Some structural engineers will tell you that this is
standard practice, and they'll use it. Other say they prefer the conventional
methods. There's a range of options. That's why we've elected to make it
an elective and not a mandate.
Council Member Scharff: This is a broad question. The Ordinance is really
complicated. There's no way I, as a City Council Member, can understand
it's unintended consequences. Obviously I like the intended consequences,
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04/20/2015 117- 338
which is reduction of greenhouse gas. What I wanted to ask you is any
sense at all that we're driving towards a particular style of home on this?
For instance, flat roofs are going to be much easier because of the solar
requirements than having more Spanish style or Mediterranean or colonial or
craftsman or something like that. That would be a concern of mine, if we're
going to drive Palo Alto to look like a bunch of flat-roofed houses in a
modern style. If that's what people want to choose, that's fine. That's my
concern. Are we doing that? Are we somehow limiting something that
people typically do, build a basement for instance? Anything like that that
we're going to change the way the built environment in Palo Alto looks,
ignoring landscaping for a minute. I mean a style of house you build and
that kind of stuff.
Mr. Pirnejad: Based on our interactions with the Green Building Advisory
Group which is made up of a variety of different architects, both residential and commercial, we didn't get any of that feedback from them. It's more
"it's getting harder to build the home" and "it's getting harder to find
contractors that know how to construct the home in a way that meets our
tightness test." It's really that more than anything.
Council Member Scharff: When you say a "tightness test," what does that
mean?
Mr. Pirnejad: Imagine a house as a balloon with holes in it versus no holes
in it. We're trying to get the balloon to be as tight as possible, so it doesn't
lose any energy when it's being heated and cooled.
Council Member Scharff: Got it. In terms of the landscaping, we're driving
towards less lawn. That's what it looks like. You're allowed some lawn, but
driving towards less lawn. Are we allowing artificial turf and that kind of
stuff?
Mr. Pirnejad: Sure.
Council Member Scharff: Do we have any concerns that if we fill all the
backyards with artificial turf, that we're creating deserts?
Mr. Pirnejad: We’re not mandating the artificial lawns. We're mandating the
reduced water use. We always advocate for drought-tolerant landscaping.
That seems to be the growing trend. The artificial turf has its life expectancy and other, like you mentioned, problems. Like I said, we're
seeing more of the passive alternatives.
Public Hearing opened at 10:51 P.M.
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04/20/2015 117- 339
Eric Keng: Thank you. My name's Eric Keng. I'm 20 years resident in Palo
Alto also architect. I practice most of my career in this City. First of all, I
agree with the direction that we're going toward green building and energy.
I do urge the Council to consider why do we need to mix these two
amendments together. Can we consider them separately? I can see the
whole policy preparation. Where's the professional input? The architects,
the contractor, the engineer. It's purely laboratory test results. I'm not
sure if you fully understand. I'm only talking about the energy part. The
green building, no comment. The 15 percent impact, what exactly is? If we
only use the Cost Effectiveness Study, there's some factors being left out.
When we increase the insulation from, because of that, two by four or two
by six, the square footage for a 2,500-square-foot house drops about 30
square feet. In Palo Alto, 30 square feet, most residents know how much
that will cost. Will that be a cost effect? Also, when we put the tankless water heater into it, the Utility Department will ask us to upgrade the gas
line. Is that a cost effect being considered? You're not just buying a
tankless water heater. If half of the block using tankless, can the Utility
Department infrastructure support the instantaneous demand on the gas
supply? That's something we really need to study, to put it into the study
and present it to you to make decision. Sounds like I’m against this 15
percent. Last year's Energy Code upgrade, the State already upgrade 23
percent stringent than the previous years. We're adding another 15 percent,
which really is a big impact to the industry. I did a quick study. I know this
is very late. I asked my Title 24 to do a quick study of how we can comply,
a new house to meet the 15 percent. Three categories we have to do.
Tankless water heater, insulated attic space and the third area is
miscellaneous. Throughout the project, we have to do Low E glass. We
have to increase all the insulation we can. We cannot to do the house
without the attic. Flat-roof house considered a cathedral. We don't have
that insulated attic credit into it. That means if you build a flat house, pretty
much you're not going to meet 15 percent. The case study didn't study that.
I urge you to spend more time, to have professional input from the other
side of the industry. We're hands on this every day. Give the impact to you, give the results to you, that you consider this energy amendment.
Thank you.
Mr. Farahmand: May I have a chance to respond to that comment? Thank
you. Thank you, sir, for that comment. I understand your concerns. I
would just like to add that the measures that we studied for the residential prototypes in this study are going to be in some form or shape required by
the 2017 California Energy Commission standards. They're going to be
Statewide laws. They're going to be the baseline that's going to be effective
January 1, 2017. There's been a breadth of research done for these
measures going from two by four to two by six. There's been a lot of
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04/20/2015 117- 340
feedback from the building industry voicing similar concerns, but also
saying, "This is the direction that we need to go." There are going to be
some leaps that we have to make to get there, but they're going to have to
be worth it. The upgrade of pipe costs, thank you for bringing that up. That
was brought up at a Green Building Advisory Group meeting after the first
draft of this report was issued. We have since added that cost in for
alternations, in other words having to increase the size of that pipe for an
instantaneous water heater. We still found that to be cost effective. I
encourage you to look in the appendix for that analysis. The same with the
attics. It's been vetted with the industry; it's been discussed. There are
different measures for different climate zones for that 2017 Code that's
impending. For this climate zone, it should work.
Mr. Keng: Why can't we just wait until 2017? Why do we have to act
(inaudible)?
Stephanie Munoz: Good evening, Council Members. I'd like to get one
principle at least before trying to get through the maze of conflicting
interests that surround that issue. The principle I'd you to observe is if there
is something you want people to do, take care not to put a financial
disincentive toward their doing it. A few years ago I investigated solar. I
discovered that the City of Palo Alto had a rather high permit fee for the
solar, which I thought was astonishing. I dropped the project and never
followed through. Perhaps that has changed. Just in general, I'd like to
recommend that as your first principle. The second is to try and get the
people onboard for what you want to do and not have it come as a surprise,
say a year or two down the line when they could have made a change for
less money. I don't know if you realize it; you guys are in a high bracket. It
doesn't apply to us anymore, because we lost the big house in Palo Alto. We
still have little rentals in other places. I've discovered from talking to people
around starting with San Francisco and Mountain View and Santa Cruz and
other places, that there has been a tendency after Prop 13 for towns to get
revenue from permits. This was forbidden by an initiative called Proposition
218. You probably know this. Cities may not charge more for the permit
than the cost of implementing it, the cost of examining it. That's a rule that's more honored in the breach than in the observance. You know what
you need is an ombudsman that people could go to when they find that they
are being whipsawed by arrangements that are sent down from on high. It
can be quite difficult just for an—okay. I'll be glad to speak to the people in
charge later about that. Thank you very much.
Public Hearing closed at 10:59 P.M.
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04/20/2015 117- 341
Council Member Scharff: I'll make the motion in just a second. I did have
just one question. Do we look at how much this is going to add to the cost
of a home?
Mr. Pirnejad: Since it's a performance-based Code, it really depends on
what you do and how you want to meet the impacts. What we did
determine was, based on a couple of different models, that every model we
studied was cost effective at 15 percent above baseline amortized over 30
years. In every scenario we studied...
Council Member Scharff: You mean cost effective that you actually saved
money on it, is that what you mean?
Mr. Pirnejad: Right.
Council Member Scharff: Is that what you mean by cost effective?
Mr. Farahmand: Correct, yeah.
Council Member Scharff: What you do, it costs a bunch upfront, but if you amortize that over 30 years, then you'll save money. Did you get a number
for roughly what it adds to the cost of some base home, say a 1,500-square-
foot home? I was just curious if you had a number.
Mr. Farahmand: Yeah. The prototypes that we ran for single-family
residential which is an average 2,400-square-foot home, it would add about
$2,100 (crosstalk).
Council Member Scharff: About $2,000.
Mr. Farahmand: Yeah.
Council Member Scharff: Thank you. I can see that you put huge amounts
of effort into this. We really appreciate that. You guys seem to really
understand what was going on. I felt really comfortable with your answers.
MOTION: Council Member Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member
Burt to adopt:
1) An Ordinance repealing and restating Palo Alto Municipal Code Chapter
16.14 to adopt and amend the 2013 California Green Building Standards
Code, Title 24, Chapter 11, of the California Code of Regulations; and
2) An Ordinance repealing PAMC Chapters 16.17 and 16.18 and restating
Chapter 16.17 to adopt and amend the 2013 California Energy Code, Title
24, Chapter 6, of the California Code of Regulations.
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04/20/2015 117- 342
Council Member Scharff: Thanks again and to the work of the Group. You
did turn this around. Thanks to Policy and Services. I saw they had some
really good responses that they had you guys include into this.
Council Member Burt: When we look back at what California has done 30-
plus years ago with Title 24, I think it is, legislation and all of those
progressive maneuvers and initiatives that ended up driving better building
practices have now been adopted nationally and now widely recognized to
have been very cost effective in the long term. This is in that same path.
The State continues to move forward. We looked at what things we could do
sooner that would not have any significant negative impacts. We felt that
we could do these. It's a good measure, and it's going to be sound practice
for the long term. Thanks.
Mayor Holman: I have one, maybe two things. One is I would like to add
an Amendment. I’m doing this because of the various reasons that you brought up and that I brought up.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to direct Staff to return with updates to these
Ordinances including any concerns generated by the Ordinances within
eighteen months.
Council Member Scharff: That's fine.
Council Member Burt: Can I ask Staff a question?
Mayor Holman: Sure.
Council Member Burt: We had the update to the Ordinance coming, so this
would add just a review of any unintended impacts. That could just be
folded in with the update of the Ordinance?
Mr. Pirnejad: If that would meet the intent. Our hope would be that we
could bring back the Amendment. It would be a little bit longer than a year,
if that'd be okay. It would be about a year and a half, but we could bring
back a summary in advance of that, if that would please the Council. Our
intent is to bring back a new revised Ordinance in a year and a half which
would fall in line with this next Code cycle.
Council Member Burt: If the Amendment could be revised to 18 months,
that would be most efficient.
Mayor Holman: That's okay with me.
Council Member Burt: Accepted.
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04/20/2015 117- 343
James Keene, City Manager: Just to clarify. I'm assuming that as it relates
to this review, it's both based on how we've gathered feedback of issues and
that review period for people to have the opportunity to comment. We
wouldn't necessarily have to go through detail, detail, detail review. It's
much more of an exception, problematic, what have we heard about things
that aren't working.
Mayor Holman: Yes, I still have concerns about trees. Council Member
Scharff...
Council Member Scharff: It should say, "Staff will return with updates to
these Ordinances with any concerns that have been raised within 18
months." It should say what the updates should be. We're not mandating
that you update the Ordinance if there's no...
Mayor Holman: That's correct.
Mr. Keene: Thank you.
Mr. Pirnejad: To address your concern, Mayor Holman, our anticipation
would be to prepare an administrative guideline to address some of the
potential inconsistencies in the trees. We could bring that as well.
Mayor Holman: The Amendment should read "with any concerns generated
by the Ordinances."
MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 9-0
Mayor Holman: Thank you to Staff. It's a lot of hard work. Also thanks to
Policy and Services. Thank you.
Council Member Burt: It's after 11:00.
Mayor Holman: This has already been continued once.
Council Member Burt: We have a policy on how we address commencing
items after a certain hour, right?
Mayor Holman: Let me ask Council Members. We have one member of the
public who is here to speak to this item. This has already been continued
once. Are Council Members willing to stay? In the Bay Area Water Supply
and Conservation Agency (BAWSCA) item, there is a May meeting coming
up. We could put this on the next agenda, though, the BAWSCA
appointment.
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04/20/2015 117- 344
11. Colleagues’ Memo from Mayor Holman, Council Members Burt, Schmid,
and Wolbach Regarding Strengthening City Engagement with
Neighborhoods (Continued from March 16, 2015).
Mayor Holman: Is there any strong objection to taking up Item Number 11
this evening? It's already been continued once, and it is probably a quick
items.
Mayor Holman: Do we have eight others who are willing to take this item
up?
Council Member Burt: We should have a time limit on it.
Mayor Holman: We have a time limit of 30. Can we say a time limit of 15
minutes on it? Is that agreeable to Council Members?
Council Member Scharff: Just make a motion to refer it out to Policy and
Services. I think that trumps other motions, if I recall our procedures. That
way we can continue moving this forward. That's going to be the outcome of this item anyway at the end of the day.
Mayor Holman: You're making a motion before we hear from the member of
the public. We have a member of the public who wishes to speak. Then you
can make a motion. We can dispatch this pretty quickly.
Council Member Kniss: I second.
Council Member Berman: The article has already been written.
Doria Summa: I'll be brief. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. Doria
Summa, College Terrace. I am on the College Terrace Residents Association
Board of Directors, but I'm speaking tonight as an individual. In March when
this first came to Council, the College Terrace Residence Association (CTRA)
submitted a letter of support for the Colleagues' Memo before you tonight.
Since then, we've had an election; we have five new members. Our first
meeting will be Wednesday, so we haven't had a chance to revisit this with
the new board. I believe the goal of increasing neighborhood participation
and interaction between City government and neighborhoods is a laudable
goal and that the specific recommendations in the Memo represent a great
step forward towards reaching these goals. I'd like to offer my personal
support for the ideas expressed in the Colleagues' Memo. I would be
particularly interested in the opportunity for neighborhood associations to once again hold meetings in public facilities without the financial burdens of
having to rent the space and pay for insurance. There's not a one-size-fits-
all model for neighborhood associations. I also believe that the
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04/20/2015 117- 345
Memorandum provides flexibility for each neighborhood to choose the
structure that best fits their needs. I urge the Council to support the item,
to send it to Policy and Services for further consideration. Thanks.
MOTION: Council Member Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member
Wolbach to refer this item to the Policy and Services Committee.
Mayor Holman: I want to make one or two quick clarifications. The
ombudsman...
Council Member Scharff: Council Member Holman, under our rules on the
Motion, I don't mean to be so strict about it. The only thing we're allowed to
discuss is the propriety of referring it, not the substance of the Motion.
Mayor Holman: Can we not recommend things for the Committee to
consider when it is referred? I thought we could.
Council Member Scharff: I don't believe so. It says on this, "only as to
propriety of referring, not substance of referral."
Mayor Holman: City Attorney?
Council Member Scharff: I'm looking at the cheat sheet they provided us all.
Mayor Holman: I know in the past when there have been referrals....
Council Member Scharff: Go ahead. I'm telling you what it says.
Mayor Holman: I know in the past when we've sent things to Policy and
Services or Finance, we've talked about what we want them to think about
or consider when they do take it up. I know we've done that in the past.
Looking to City Attorney here. We're taking more time with this than it
would take me to make my comments.
Council Member Scharff: Go make your comments.
Mayor Holman: Just a little bit of a clarification about the ombudsman. The
ombudsman is not someone, from my perspective and my intention, to be
associated with a neighborhood association or any other organization
representing a neighborhood association. It says "a resource to individual
residents or perhaps business owners." It's an individual resource. The
other is that the Communications person, that Communications Officer is
just the person that the City would communicate with in terms of pushing
information out that would be of interest to a neighborhood organization.
That's hopefully a couple of clarifications to those items.
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04/20/2015 117- 346
MOTION PASSED: 9-0
12. Discussion and Appointment of a Council Member to the Board of
Directors of the Bay Area Water Supply & Conservation Agency
(BAWSCA) and the Bay Area Regional Water System Financing
Authority.
Mayor Holman: I'm asking for any volunteers for that assignment.
Council Member Kniss: It's a four-year assignment by the way.
Mayor Holman: Four, not three?
James Keene, City Manager: It's three or four; I can't remember which.
Mayor Holman: Vice Mayor Schmid, are you offering?
Vice Mayor Schmid: Yes, I would be willing to do it. I've been on the Santa
Clara Valley Water District Boards and Commission for five years. Happy to
follow up. If anyone else wants to, I'd be delighted.
Mayor Holman: Are there any other offers? I would really like to have an alternate.
Council Member Burt: Council Member Kniss said this is a four-year
assignment. How does that work with those of us who term out in a year
and a half?
Mayor Holman: I don't know this absolutely, but I would think that if a
Council Member is termed out while serving a term on Bay Area Water
Supply and Conservation Agency (BAWSCA), that you could also supplement
with somebody else. It doesn't mean the same person has to serve, does it?
Molly Stump, City Attorney: Council Members, I believe that this is an
unusual type of appointment that does not expire on leaving office in Palo
Alto.
Mayor Holman: Meaning that someone else could step in or not step in?
Ms. Stump: Meaning that the person could continue to serve.
Mayor Holman: You continue to serve even after leaving office.
Ms. Stump: Yes. Although, I believe that the Council does have the
authority to make an alternative appointment.
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04/20/2015 117- 347
Council Member Kniss: It's why Council Member Klein is still serving, ex-
Council Member.
Mayor Holman: Council Member Burt, did you get your question answered?
Council Member Burt: Yeah.
Council Member Wolbach: I was just going to point out as you'll see on Page
791 of the Packet, this person does not even need to be a member of our
City Council.
Council Member Filseth: I was going to say the same thing Cory said.
Mayor Holman: Do we have any offers for...
Council Member Scharff: I'll be the alternate.
MOTION: Vice Mayor Schmid moved, seconded by Council Member Scharff
to appoint Vice Mayor Schmid to the Board of Directors and Council Member
Scharff as Alternate of the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency
and the Bay Area Regional Water System Financing Authority.
MOTION PASSED: 9-0
Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements
Council Member Wolbach: I'll make this brief. Last week as Liaison to the
Palo Alto Housing Corporation, I attended the Palo Alto Housing
Corporation's annual meeting. It was a good meeting. A couple of things
out of that. One, there is a new organization starting in the region called
Silicon Valley at Home, focused on advocacy and education around
affordable housing in particular. Also a couple of comments from members
of the Board of the Palo Alto Housing Corporation. In relation to Planned
Community coming back to Council for discussion, at least one member of
the Palo Alto Housing Corporation Board pointed out that in their opinion
affordable housing is a public benefit. They also discussed density rules and
the need to have a certain level of density in order to successfully have
financing for affordable housing. If something like that or density
allowances aren't allowed in the future for affordable housing, they
suggested at least exploring ideas of something like an affordable housing
overlay to allow for higher density for affordable housing, if it's not done
through something like the Planned Community process. Also, I know we are still working on our own aspects of Buena Vista, but there was some
discussion of possible temporary or relocation sites on properties owned by
the Palo Alto Housing Corporation. Lastly, just anecdotally, they're also
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04/20/2015 117- 348
working on a project in Mountain View where the City of Mountain View
came back to them and asked them to add higher density to an affordable
housing project which was an interesting juxtaposition.
Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 11:17 P.M.
ATTEST: APPROVED:
City Clerk Mayor
NOTE: Sense minutes (synopsis) are prepared in accordance with Palo Alto
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