HomeMy WebLinkAbout2015-08-31 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL
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Special Meeting
August 31, 2015
The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council
Chambers at 6:05 P.M.
Present: Berman, Burt, DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Scharff arrived at 7:02
P.M., Schmid, Wolbach
Absent: Kniss
Mayor Holman: We do know that Council Member Scharff will be joining us
as the meeting progresses. There are a couple of things I need Council
Members to pay attention to this—if I could have all the Council Members'
attention please. We have some different agenda items this evening. One
of them is the appointment of one UAC member, and we have several
applicants also for the CAC, Community Advisory Committee for the
Comprehensive Plan. What we haven't done in the recent past but used to
do—and I think tonight is an appropriate time to reintroduce this—is for
Council Members to be able to make comments or a statement ahead of
voting on each of those items. You'll get to speak once; I think that's
appropriate and efficient. I'm asking Council Members—if you want to speak
for someone or speak to your perspective, you're welcome to do that. That's
not what we typically do, but what we will be doing this evening. Any
questions on that? Seems like not.
Study Session
1. Presentation of Palo Alto City Library Strategic Plan, 2015-2017.
Mayor Holman: Monique, welcome.
Monique LeConge-Ziesenhenne, Library Services Director: Good evening.
Thank you, Mayor and City Council. I'm Monique LeConge-Ziesenhenne, the
Library Director. Please forgive my laryngitis. It is actually getting better,
so we'll get through this half hour easily. We wanted to present to you the
Strategic Plan for the Library for the next three years and to give you a
background on how this was developed, why now and what we intend to do
with this Plan going forward. When I arrived in 2011, the Library had just
completed the renovation of the Downtown Library and were in the middle of
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Mitchell Park, getting ready for Rinconada. The buildings themselves were
the Strategic Plan; that was essentially our focus, how to move in and out.
Over that time, we took the opportunity to better understand the library
users' behaviors and also think about how we wanted to measure our
performance in an ongoing way. Having done all that and having completed
the construction projects, we knew that it was time for us to come up with a
plan to prepare us for a rapidly changing environment. We invited Jane
Light, a library consultant and retired library director, to come and assist us
with developing the Plan.
Jane Light, Consultant: Thank you, Monique. Mayor and Council, I talked a
lot with Monique about how to go about the Plan, and she reviewed and
pointed out to me all of the data that had already been gathered both
through the process of designing and planning these new buildings, but from
several other efforts that had been undertaken over time. It seemed like the data about the community was already in place, so she appointed a
committee of ten Library Staff members. We have a list of the committee
members. They were a very interesting group. Actually, they were a great
group, but it was a diverse group of Staff members from different locations
at different classifications, professional librarians, supervisors who are not
librarians, a very involved group. However, they were also a very busy
group because, at that very time, they were getting ready to open Mitchell
Park and Rinconada. We set up as efficient a process as we could, meeting
usually every other week for about an hour and a half, and talked about how
we could also involve the rest of the Staff in a less intense way. The group
set up part of the intranet where they could put up the notices of our
meetings and the results of our meetings. Once we had some draft items
for them to consider, posted those and asked people to respond. We got
some very thoughtful responses to those. We then had an all-Staff meeting
that was a very brief, two-hour, very fun and intense meeting to do a
Library analysis based on the initial work we'd done about the Library vision
and mission. The Staff really came up with some great ideas, not only about
what strengths and weaknesses were, but ways to mitigate the weaknesses
and build on the strengths. After that time, we completed the work and brought it back to the Staff to look at.
Ms. Ziesenhenne: I did want to point out that the list of the items provided
are in the Staff Report for this, as well as stakeholder interviews and other
information that we gathered. The reason that this is important for us is
that annually we have some challenges in terms of timing. In January, you all meet and you come up with the priorities that you're going to have for
the calendar year. We provide budget performance outcomes as part of the
budget cycle, so that runs July to June. The City Auditor's SEA report and
results of the surveys, that happens in the fall of each year. The Library
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Advisory Commission meets bimonthly, and they review the dashboard on
user behaviors and statistical information. The California State Library
requests additional data from us annually in the fall after their budget cycle
closes. We've got multiple times during the year when we need to provide
different bits of information, often very similar but not always. I wanted to
also point out that at places you have this year's draft version of our annual
statistics, how the Library has served you. As you look through it, you'll
notice that the two larger libraries were of course closed for periods of time.
Use and attendance have both gone up dramatically as well as using
meeting rooms, things like that. This all fed into the process that we had
with the Staff.
Ms. Light: We began by thinking about a vision and had a great discussion;
decided that we wanted to think about a vision for what kind of city the
Library Staff felt Palo Alto should be, not really what kind of Library the City should have; and came up with the vision that the City should be a
flourishing city where people achieve their dreams; and then developed a
mission statement from that which, in honor of my dearly departed mother,
I should say we recognize very much was grammatically interesting because
it starts out with a statement that the Library connects and strengthens the
diverse through knowledge, resources and opportunities, and then we
switched to the personal, we inspire and nurture innovation, discovery and
delight. Allowing discussion of that, people felt very strongly that that "we"
part was the passionate feelings that the Staff personally carry about what
kind of role they play in making the institution a viable and exciting one. We
reviewed the City values because, of course, those are the primary values
that the Staff lives with every day, but then went on to consider whether
there were some specific Library values that reflect the profession or the
residents of Palo Alto or this department, and came out with four. One is
access, providing free and open access. One was risk taking, challenging
the norm we set. Community building, fostering an engaged community.
Finally, embracing differences with diversity. Those became the kind of
baseline part of this Plan.
Ms. Ziesenhenne: Which then led us into the goals that we wanted to achieve. I'm not going to, thankfully I'm sure, read the PowerPoint, but I
am going to point out each goal, because I think they're important.
Certainly we thought a lot about what we wanted to achieve, to follow our
mission and meet that vision. Goal A is to create a variety of opportunities
for learning and to provide effective tools for improving all types of literacy. One of the advantages of having been in these multiple locations during the
construction has been the opportunity to experiment with different things,
such as lending Chromebooks, making different technologies available,
working on the MakerSpace, all of that. The various strategies are listed
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below here. Each year, we're looking at what are the specific work plan or
goal items that we are going to attempt to meet that activity. It could be a
grant-funded goal that helps us achieve one of these strategies. It could
also tie into the budget, where we have certain allocation of dollars to those
items. Goal B is to strengthen the community and the Library through
effective partnerships. The Library has long been a partner with both
nonprofits and for-profit businesses throughout the community. They've
supported us while we didn't have space for things like story time, so we did
pop-up story times at Tesla, at Pottery Barn, things like that, to help us
continue to serve the community, even though we were limited in terms of
space. Goal C, facilitate civic participation and effective community
engagement. One of the highlights of this will be revitalizing the volunteer
program which has continued steadily even though the spaces were small.
We have a large number of teens who volunteer at the library. That program, as you'll hear more throughout this year, is going to be refined
with more specific opportunities for volunteers to support services. Goal D is
to expand virtual customer experiences. In this community, I don't think
that we could be a Library without offering opportunities to learn about
technology, to learn about new services. This doesn't mean that the actual
book is not important to us. As you can tell from the circulation statistics,
we continue to be a prime lender of books. We want to be sure that
everyone in the community is able to access information when it's
convenient. Many of those electronic experiences are available 24 hours a
day. Goal E relates primarily to Staff. The group that met said, "We want to
foster a culture of excellence, continuous improvement and risk taking. We
want to attract the best employees and keep them here to work with our
community in the best way possible." Now, I'd like to invite Eric Howard,
our Assistant Library Director, up and he can talk for just a moment about
how the Plan is being used today.
Eric Howard, Library Services Assistant Director: Hi. I'm Eric Howard. I'm
the Assistant Director of the Library. We are really excited because we are
on the 8th, as you know, expanding our hours. This provided some really
great opportunities for us. We are able to hire some new Staff, and we took advantage of this opportunity to reorganize the Library and really streamline
it so that we're focusing with a lot of clarity on these goals. One of the
things that we started to do right away with Goal A and B, youth services,
which is really its own department in many ways, focuses on all those goals
we have in "A." They are beginning to take advantage fully of story time, recognizing this is a great opportunity to interact with parents and try to
inculcate skills in helping them develop literacy with children. We're
developing a curriculum behind that, so we can really connect with the
parents. Last week also, we kicked off our first ESL class. Part of the adult
services program is to develop a new Americans program. This class will
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allow us to survey them, discover their needs better and develop this
program throughout the year. Those are just a couple of examples. I'll be
happy to come back and report how we are pursuing this further throughout
the year. Our biggest hurdle right now, because of the passion that we have
behind it, is to remind the librarians that this is a three-year Plan; we don't
have to accomplish all of this over night. Right now they are working hard
to do that. Thank you.
Ms. Ziesenhenne: For us, this is a living document. The Library Advisory
Commission appointed a subcommittee to work with us on this through a
couple of different drafts. We revisit it annually as a group, and we will
continue to use our data as a way to gather information from all of our users
and constituents. We are always very eager to find out from the non-user
why they're not using us. That's just one of the ways we'll continue to follow
this. The LAC, I have to say, has been very diligent about following our user behavior, keeping up with user comments, encouraging us to find ways to
better respond to the community. As Eric pointed out, we will be adding the
expanded hours effective Tuesday, September 8th. You all have the new
handout about that. If you're interested in data, we have data galore, and
we have quite a few different resources that we're happy to make available.
Most of these items are available on the Library's website or through the City
and State library information. If you or anyone else in the community would
like to contact me, there's my contact information. We're happy to answer
any questions that you have.
Mayor Holman: Thank you very much. Colleagues, questions? I have one
member of the public who wishes to speak to this item. Questions? We can
do that first. Bob Moss, and you'll have three minutes.
Bob Moss, Library Advisory Commissioner: Thank you, Mayor Holman and
Council Members. As a member of the Library Commission, I want to
emphasize that we have been working closely with the Staff and with the
community to find out what the public wants in the way of Library services.
I think we've been providing it. We understand what people want and need
is changing over time, and we're trying to be ahead of it. I wanted to put it
in a little different perspective: the way the Palo Alto Library compares with other public libraries nationwide. You may not realize it, but last June the
American Library Association had their conference in San Francisco. It's the
first time they've met in San Francisco in 14 years. I attended the meetings
and spoke to a number of librarians nationwide. One of the things that
interested me was a lot of the programs and activities that they're talking about instituting, like having Maker for teens, having community rooms and
meeting rooms where teens and people can get together and study or talk or
just congregate, teen programs, programs and activities for children. These
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are all things that Palo Alto Library has been doing for years. When I talked
to some of the other librarians in other cities, they looked at me and said,
"You're doing that already? We're not going to do it until next year or the
year after. Wow." What I got out of that meeting was that there's a lot of
interest in changing the way libraries perform and what they offer in the way
of services and in the way of being meeting areas and congregating areas,
not just checking out books. A lot of libraries nationwide are having a
problem meeting those goals. Compared to the other libraries, we're doing
quite well. I was very impressed the responses I got from librarians from
other cities and other states and the fact that they recognize that Palo Alto is
doing quite well. The other thing that they were impressed with, how many
people are in Palo Alto? About 66,000. You have a couple of branches. No,
we have five branches. Oh, five branches. We've got one branch for
100,000 people. What's your budget? It's going to go up to $7.5 million. People would gasp. They are very impressed with the way that Palo Alto
recognizes the importance of libraries and supports them. I would like to
thank the Council for your encouragement and your support there, because
it's important to the community. We are setting a real goal for librarians all
over the country. We're doing it very well.
Mayor Holman: Thank you, Mr. Moss. Now, we'll return to Council.
Colleagues, questions?
Council Member DuBois: Hi. Thank you for the presentation. It's great to
have our new libraries open. I've been really enjoying Mitchell Library and
Rinconada as well. I have a question about—looking at your stats here—
kind of physical media and DVDs and CDs versus streaming. How significant
is the cost of maintaining a DVD collection and how do you guys see that
transitioning to streaming? Is streaming a lot less expensive or does it cost
the same for a library?
Ms. Ziesenhenne: Off the top of my head, I think, Diane (inaudible). We'll
have to get back to you. The amount that we spend on DVDs is actually
pretty minimal. We are trying to go to streaming as a format. The
streaming, we pay a flat rate for the entire year. Customers are limited
from three downloads per week. Potentially we could blow it out and run out, but for over three years right now we have not yet. You download the
music and then you keep it. You can put it in your iTunes. It belongs then
to you. The cost per song is about 99 cents to $2.49. It's cheaper than
buying a DVD because you're buying the whole DVD. They still remain
popular. I do occasionally get complaints, like "You're not buying enough new CDs."
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Council Member DuBois: When you come back, it'd be interesting also just
the cost of managing the physical media versus having these streaming
services.
Ms. Ziesenhenne: Sure, right. You have the Staff time to put it back on the
shelf and all of that.
Council Member DuBois: I'm also glad to see the increase in service hours.
I think consistency is important. People know when the Library's going to be
open. Again, when you guys come back later, a year from now or
whenever, I'd really like to know if you see a lot of students there at 9:00
p.m., at Mitchell and Rinconada in particular, and if it would make sense to
increase those hours or not. I don't know if you can answer this question,
but given our new libraries with self-checkout and all that stuff, how many
people need to be in a building to keep it open? A place like Mitchell.
Ms. Ziesenhenne: A building like Mitchell Park, actually we need to be very aware of security. It's easy for people to get inside upstairs and stay all
day, kind of hide out. We do have more Staff actually roaming, ensuring
that the facility is safe and is secure. We do what we can; we think of it as a
safe place. This is a relatively safe community, but we don't want anything
to happen. You need at least two or three people upstairs, several people
downstairs. Closing up the building at night is a key time, sort of herding
everyone out and making sure.
Council Member Burt: First, I'd like to say not only do I like the new
libraries, but everybody I talk with does. I ask people a lot and kind of get
one answer. They are really enthused about them. Some of my questions
actually have to do with dealing with our successes. First, I want to make
sure on this data sheet, are these years our fiscal years?
Ms. Ziesenhenne: These are our fiscal years, yes.
Council Member Burt: One interesting thing is the decline in Children's,
College Terrace and Downtown. Do you attribute that to people had shifted
there when Mitchell and Rinconada were closed and they're moving back?
Ms. Ziesenhenne: Yes, I do.
Council Member Burt: We only have those two years of comparison. How
does the current volume at Children's, College Terrace and Downtown compare to what it was before we did our Library renovations?
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Ms. Ziesenhenne: That's a good question. I'll have to go look that up. The
open data site has all of that. We have not loaded in the Fiscal Year 2015.
I'll provide an informational report with that update.
Council Member Burt: Kind of same thing on the total. Do you happen to
know where our 2015 stats are, compared?
Ms. Ziesenhenne: I think it's not the highest it's ever been. I think there
were a couple of years right before we closed where it might have been a
little bit higher.
Council Member Burt: Mitchell and Rinconada, I'm a little confused by the
parenthesized dates there. When did they reopen?
Ms. Ziesenhenne: Mitchell Park reopened, I think, November 6th or
November 7th. We did a soft opening, you remember, for both of those
libraries, so they were open a couple of weeks. Officially Rinconada opened
on February 14th, but it had been open since the 4th. The day after these dates is when the soft openings began.
Council Member Burt: Are we saying that from February 14th through
June 30th, it had—it was closed a lot. It was closed a portion of 2014 fiscal
year too.
Ms. Ziesenhenne: It was in a temporary location, so there was a temporary
building. Yes, it was only closed for three days in the switch to the
temporary.
Council Member Burt: Here's what I think would be meaningful in these
transition periods is the checkouts per day. We otherwise are comparing a
fragment of a year to a different fragment of a year. I just can't make any
sense of it. I don't think it's very meaningful to compare what we're doing
in the temporary location. It's really where we left off before we shut them
down for renovation and where we are now. That's what tells have we seen
a significant increase. I suspect we have, especially at Mitchell. It's
overwhelming.
Ms. Ziesenhenne: Yes, it is.
Council Member Burt: On the back page, I see the e-books and e-music
went up 15,000 percent. I'm guessing you're not expecting that trend line
to continue at that rate.
Ms. Ziesenhenne: No, no. That's why we put an asterisk, that it includes
the number of titles currently available at Freegal Music. We've asked the
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State Library for clarification. In the past when you have e-books, you're
paying for a certain number and you select them. We want to be clear on—
when you purchase CDs, you purchase a certain number. That one's
awaiting clarification, why it's still a draft.
Council Member Burt: One other thing is at Mitchell we have both the new
library and the new community center. You have a great teen room that's
very popular. Then we have a teen community center that is not very
popular yet. We have our Libraries and Community Services in two separate
departments. I know that you collaborate to some degree. I think what's
going on at the Mitchell Teen Center is an area that asks for even greater
collaboration. What was it? Yesterday, when we had the project anybody,
the team green program, which was a big hit. There were like 200 people
there. I asked a teen coming out of the library—he's probably a freshman in
high school or 8th grader—and asked him what he thought of the teen center. He said, "I haven't really gone there at all" and didn't know
anything. He loved the library; he spent a lot of time in the library there.
I'm not saying we should shoo him out of the library and get him over to the
teen center, but I'm saying there's an imbalance between how well the teen
center at the library has been received and pretty poorly a great potential in
the community center. I'll just leave it that I'd really like to see
collaboration and, kind of connected with that, as we've discussed there's a
question of MakerSpace at one of those two places. Is there any update or
do you have any further plans for any limited MakerSpace with the Library?
Ms. Ziesenhenne: We are planning Maker kits and Maker programs focused
on specific projects. Those will be happening at the Library. There will be, I
think, some Makey Makey kits that kids and teens will be able to checkout.
We've done some other programs around robotics and things like that. We
will continue that. CSD has assumed administration and working with the
teens in the MakeX Space. That's gone to CSD. It became an oversight
actual challenge, since there was no library at Cubberley anymore for the
Staff to be able to make sure no one was cutting off a finger or (crosstalk).
That didn't happen.
Council Member Burt: Yeah, it's a good space over there, but it's pretty isolated. The kids have to know it's there and go there specifically for that
purpose to be able to take advantage of it. Okay. Another thing that I've
heard from teens, certainly at the teen center and to some degree using the
library, is that a lot of high schoolers especially those in the north half of
Palo Alto think they don't have access to be able to get to Mitchell Library. As somebody who rides down Bryant there and finds it very convenient from
North Palo Alto, I'm a little surprised by that. We have a shuttle system that
goes down at least Middlefield. I have the sense from talking with the
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School District and teens that there's not a great awareness in the schools
about how to access Mitchell if you're coming from the north. I think that's
an opportunity for better communication to be able to—now that our main
library is pretty much at the far south end of town, we need to figure out
how we get the word out and provide a lot of maps. I frankly don't think it's
as big of a struggle as it's perceived, but we need to close that knowledge
gap. Finally, kind of two things related to the parking scene. One is we
hear from a lot of people about disappoint that they can't do auto drop-off.
Can you explain to us why that has been eliminated?
Ms. Ziesenhenne: The drive-up book drop which was at Rinconada, at Main
Library, was never included in the planning. Both of those libraries were
including the automated materials handling. I think there were a number of
reasons behind that. One, because of trying to reduce the use of cars to get
everywhere. One to also—at that time there had been cutbacks in Staff, so there was no intention that we would have additional Staff to go empty out
the thing. That's why we put the automated materials handling machine in,
to receive the items, sort them, get them ready to put back on the shelf.
I've done some checking. Most of the libraries who install an AMH don't
have a book drop. They don't have a drive-up drop. People have discovered
that, of course, there still is a drive-up book drop at Children's, because
Children's doesn't have automated materials. They have people physically
checking things in. If you drive behind Downtown Library, there is a book
drop right there less than two steps away. College Terrace also has a book
drop very close. We've actually been seeing increased returns at all of those
libraries. Not checkout, but returns.
Council Member Burt: I heard something very interesting in what you said.
Some people have discovered that they can drop them off. Why don't we ...
Ms. Ziesenhenne: We've been trying to, but it actually just makes a lot of
people crankier. They would just like to drive up and have the book drop.
Council Member Burt: Those are two issues. I'm not sure I disagree with
them. The fact that it was never in our plans, I don't find is a compelling
reason why we shouldn't have it. I don't quite understand how requiring
people to go park their car and use a parking space that's in competition and go up to the drop off is somehow eliminating a car trip.
Ms. Ziesenhenne: Right. I think that a lot of the folks who—I mean, there
is not enough parking at Mitchell Park if that's the one you're talking about.
The drop-off area is that area right in front of the owls that was intended to
be a quick drop-off. One thing that I have heard and have observed is a lot
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of people just parking there and camping out. I think we can certainly
investigate what would the cost be. I'd be happy to do that.
Council Member Burt: I think we should reexamine that issue. Finally, we
have EV charging stations at the Library. I live not too far from Rinconada.
I know of at least one neighbor who owns a Tesla and has a charger in his
garage, but chooses to park his car down at Rinconada because it's free
charging. I just don't get it. It's not only why should we be giving away
that electricity, but also we're inducing people to fill up our Library parking
spaces so that they can charge their vehicles. This goes to a broader
Citywide issue of at what point in time should we start moving away from
free EV charging. Given the parking competition at our libraries, I think we
should add that to something we reexamine sooner rather than later. That's
just a comment. Other than that, these are issues associated with some
real great successes. Thanks.
Vice Mayor Schmid: I'd just like to reiterate my colleague's comment that
the libraries are exciting places to be, and the general public is noticing that
and expressing that. One quick comment on the strategic aspect of what
you're doing. The data we have, as Pat mentioned, is Fiscal Year '14 and
'15. Of course, we're all very interested in what's happened since they
reopened. Is there quarterly data available on a monitored basis so that we
can see what happens when the two new libraries are open?
Ms. Ziesenhenne: We've included that with the LAC packet. We're happy to
pull out the information. We track it by month, so we can show you.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Maybe for the next quarter or something, it would be
helpful for the Council to see that. The only way of getting a future
projection is, I guess, through your budget, numbers in the budget
document. They seem to tell a story that checkouts will actually be a little
bit lower than they have been in the past when all the libraries were open.
Visits and meeting rooms will be dynamically growing. That seems to have a
strategic aspect to it, that the way we deliver services and what the
community uses the libraries for are not radically changing, but are going
through a transformation. I would think that the Strategic Plan would talk
about what your expectations are on this and what you're doing to adapt and how we can reach out and tell the community that there are new places
with new sets of activities available.
Ms. Ziesenhenne: I agree. Since it's a living document, it's something we
can work in and something we can continue to track as we go through.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Good. I think that's one of the exciting things coming up.
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Ms. Ziesenhenne: Yeah, I agree. I think that the meeting room use is
particularly notable. It's on the second page. To have gone from 994
meeting room uses or study room reservations in Fiscal Year 2014 which
really was only at the Downtown Library. That was the only place those
rooms were available. To have gone to over 3,500 shows unbelievable
growth. They're always busy. Yeah, I appreciate that comment. Thank
you.
Council Member Wolbach: I don't really have any questions. As the Council
liaison to the Library Advisory Commission, I get all my questions answered
at great meetings including the one last Thursday. I do see a couple of
members of the LAC here. I believe Commissioner McDougall in the back
and of course Bob Moss who spoke earlier. I just want to say thank you to
the Library Staff and the Library Advisory Commission. We've come a long
way in the last year. You think about the angst and concern about our libraries and the future and status of our libraries a year ago when we were
still trying to get reopened versus where we are now. It's remarkable
forward progress. I think it's very clear that—for those who predicted that
the internet would mean the death of libraries, as Commissioner Moss
pointed out, we're a leader in proving that hypothesis wrong. Keep up the
great work. Thanks.
Council Member Berman: Two just quick comments. One is I wanted to
agree with Council Member Burt's comment about the drive-up drop-off.
Glad to hear that you guys are going to take a new look at that. I think it's
something that could be a convenience for our residents. I understand why
it wasn't there in the first place maybe, but I think we've heard from enough
folks that they miss that convenience. If we can make it easier for them and
save parking spots, that's a value add. I smiled when I was flipping through
this actually in the packet. Was it—whenever it was. I saw the risk taking
value, which I thought was a great one. That definitely exemplifies our
libraries' kind of mentality up 'til now, which is why some of the comments
that Commissioner Moss made about things that we've done here in Palo
Alto years before other communities. I think it's great that you guys have
kind of put that down as a value. I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with in the future.
Ms. Ziesenhenne: Thank you. It's not something normally associated with
libraries or librarians, so we're very happy with that.
Mayor Holman: Thank you, colleagues. I have just a couple of things. One
is if it helps, I'm happy to also pile onto the drive-up drop-off. I don't think having them is going to encourage people to drive. I think it's just
something people are going to utilize when they drive. As to the EV parking
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spaces, I don't think those parking places are posted for library patrons only
and with a time limit. I think it would be appropriate to put that on there. I
don't disagree with the comment about giving away that service for free, but
I think also if they were posted for that, it kind of gives people the message
of, like, what the appropriateness is in terms of use. Quick question about
College Terrace. I think I know the answer to part of this, but if you would
indulge me. On the back side, you've got College Terrace and collections,
and you've got 20,000 items—I'm rounding off—20,500 items in the
collection there. Is that maximized to the space?
Ms. Ziesenhenne: You mean is that pretty much all it can hold?
Mayor Holman: Yes.
Ms. Ziesenhenne: I think it's actually more than technically it's supposed to
hold. We've done a lot with the children's collection there, because of the
adjacency with the daycare and the families using it. It may be that it's a lot of thinner books. It's pretty much a one-in-one-out kind of situation. When
we do the comparison for you, I'll include what the projected capacity was
when they did that. We use a system now for floating collections. When an
item's returned, it's just put on the shelf where it lives, so every day it
changes. I'll get you that information.
Mayor Holman: Going back to the front page here, the front side of this.
The College Terrace visits for customer count. It's 57,500 compared to
Rinconada which is 54 1/2 and understanding there that there was a month
that Rinconada was closed. We're changing the hours and days on the
libraries. I'm glad for the expanded hours, but we're cutting back College
Terrace, back to what it was previously. Right?
Ms. Ziesenhenne: No, actually College Terrace is going back to what it was
when we started construction. We changed that hours at College Terrace
while Main went to a temporary location, so that we could accommodate
more people. It was always projected to go back to ...
Mayor Holman: I think we're saying the same thing, but maybe I didn't say
it as clearly as you.
Ms. Ziesenhenne: Say it a different way, okay. Yes, it has gone back to
what it was.
Mayor Holman: My question is, if there were—that meant it was closed.
What was the schedule of College Terrace before these hours?
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Ms. Ziesenhenne: The additional day was that it was open on Thursdays.
Mayor Holman: College Terrace is projected to be closed on three days.
Previously, it was closed on two days, but it still had 57,500 visits. I look
forward to, when you come back next year for the budget, looking at ways
and what it would take to get College Terrace back open so it's open five
days a week and not four days a week. It seems to me like it's a very
popular and often-visited location, and it's kind of remote from all the
others. Right now, the most any of the other libraries is closed is two days
which is Downtown, but College Terrace is closed three days in spite of its
number of visits. If you can take a good hard look at that. Yes?
Ed Shikada, Assistant City Manager: Also, Mayor, if I could add also to
Council Members' comments on the EV charging parking. That has hit my
radar screen as well, and I understand it is in some ways tied to the
question of charging for the electricity. That said, I think there may be a procedural step we need to do in order to sign the parking spaces limited to
the three hours while charging which is consistent with what's done
Downtown. I'll follow up with Staff and get a report back to the Council.
Mayor Holman: Thank you. That concludes that item. Thank you for Staff
and for the LAC members for coming this evening.
2. Study Session Updating the Current Status of the Parks, Trails, Open
Space and Recreation Master Planning Process.
Mayor Holman: Staff, you're ready for presentation? Thank you.
Rob de Geus, Community Services Director: Good evening, Mayor Holman,
Council Members. Rob de Geus, Director of Community Services. Glad to
be here this evening to give you an update on the Parks, Trails, Open Space
and Recreation Facilities Master Plan. We've been working on this since
early 2014. We've been doing a lot of public outreach over that time. This
Study Session's intended to give you an update on the process and also get
some feedback from you, and an opportunity for you to ask questions of the
planning team. Staff's particularly interested in Council's input on the
principles and the draft criteria, as we wrote about in the Staff Report. I'd
like to introduce our team here. This is really a collaboration between Public
Works Department and the Community Services Department. From Public Works on the team, we have Peter Jensen, Landscape Architect, working as
project manager, and Senior Project Manager Elizabeth Ames. They're also
here. From Community Services, it's Daren Anderson, Division Manager of
Open Space and Parks, and myself and our MIG consultants right here. We
have Lauren Schmitt, a principal with MIG, and Ryan Mottau. He's a senior project manager. I also want to give thanks to the Parks and Recreation
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Commission. We discuss this Plan at every meeting and we have several ad
hoc committees from the Commission as well working on different parts of
the Plan. We have the Chair, Keith Reckdahl, here and I think he's going to
speak a little bit later as part of public comments. I think we have Pat
Markevitch in the back there as well. A big thanks to Pat Markevitch; she's
been a Commissioner for 11 years on the Parks and Recreation Commission.
This will be her last year. She doesn't want to be thanked, she says, but
she's been outstanding and a terrific partner supporting Parks and
Recreation. A couple of introductory remarks before I pass it on to our
consultants here. First, there was a question from Council Member Schmid
regarding the population growth and the assumptions of growth. I wanted
to assure the Council that the planning team is and will work closely with the
Planning Staff to ensure the population growth assumptions are consistent
with the Planning Staff's analysis and consistent with the Comprehensive Plan Update. The second thing I wanted to say was that the Staff Report
was relatively brief given the scope of this Plan. That was partly intentional
to see if we can get a focused discussion on the principles that we'll talk
about tonight. There's a lot more data to support the work that's been
happening. If you haven't visited cityofpaloalto.org/parksplan, I encourage
you to do that. There's probably 25 or so different reports that the Parks
Commission and MIG and Staff have worked on with the community. Lastly,
just recognize that this is a very important Plan to the Council, and we're
open to hearing feedback on how we can engage the Council further before
we bring the draft Plan to you sometime near the end of the calendar year
hopefully. With that, we'll jump into a quick presentation to give you more
orientation and context. I'll pass it on to Lauren Schmitt to kick it off.
Lauren Schmitt, MIG: Thank you for giving us this time tonight. For those
of you who were on the Council at the very beginning of this process, I
talked with some of you back then. I want to just call your attention to the
Plan purpose actually which we keep in mind as we move forward through a
really complex analysis and planning process. One of the things that was so
great about talking to you right at the beginning is you gave some wonderful
feedback about walkability and access to parks, other aspects of things that were on your mind that you'd like to see factored into the Plan. As we've
moved through this planning process, I'm really pleased to say that we've
found what you told us at the beginning really reflected a lot of what we've
been hearing about the community. We're going to give you an overview of
what we've been hearing and where we're going. As Rob said, we're kind of at a key point where we're starting development of recommendations. It's a
very opportune time to get your feedback and very timely. Ryan Mottau will
just give you an overview of what we've learned, show you also some of the
material that is available for digging deep, if you like to do that. Then we'll
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really want to spend most of our time in this session with your questions and
feedback.
Ryan Mottau, MIG: Moving on. What we have in front of us here, both Rob
and I, are two very thick binders of material that we assembled as a part of
this review process. It's really the amalgamation of all of the pieces that
we've been developing. This is a really wide variety of everything from
inventory data to your program participation data, fill rates and cancellations
of classes as well as our analysis on-site and in talking with the broader
community. The input process really was multilayered, many different
opportunities for people to come to us and for us to go to your community to
really talk about the many different topics here. Over 2,000 points of input
across these different activities; the list being on your screen. The details
really existing, as we said, on the website as well as in the reports. Some of
these things really include, as I said, both us asking the community to come to us and then going out into the parks, going to people where they're at,
with online interactions and really finding the ways to solicit as much
feedback from the broadest group as possible. One of these tools, always
an interesting and important one, is the online survey that we did. I'm just
kind of giving this as an example; although, it was one that had a large
number of individual responses. It really illuminated some interesting points
for us: the really strong interest and support for the bicycle and pedestrian
improvements that this community has made a big investment in; really
expanding the usefulness of parks through restrooms and wider accessibility
to those; the focus on fitness and health, again, lining up right with the
comments that we heard at the beginning of this process. To just sum up a
whole thread of comments, basically nature everywhere, where we can find
it, how we can enhance that across the system. In this analysis and in this
input process, what we really see is that we've identified a whole lot of a
universe of possibilities here. Possibilities to improve what is really
recognized as being an already great park system. One of the things that
we really want to focus this process on, as we've gone all the way through,
is how do we filter down from all of the possibilities to the things that really
make the most sense, that are the most practical, that are the most impactful. We start with that data. We're really driving all of this by finding
the qualitative and quantitative data that we can bring in front of our
planning, the experts that are on your Staff and in your community, serving
on your Parks and Recreation Commission, working through a really wide
variety of topics to identify what are the possibilities here. Again, just keeping that emphasis on. The website really does have a lot of the
background here, but it's also been a home for coordinating these efforts
and advertising the ongoing outreach process. One tool in this part of the
process in thinking about this data and the analysis is thinking about the
access that people have to the park and recreation system. We were able to
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do a pretty detailed analysis of walkability with this map showing in darker
brown the distance of a quarter mile walking along the streets, paths and
sidewalks from every park. In the yellow, a half mile. In the white, the
areas that are beyond that. This is one of the points of analysis that we
were using as we walked through this to identify where there are
opportunities looking forward. This filtering process really continues now
with shaping and forming those recommended actions, the potential actions
of this Plan that will start to flesh out the specific direction that this Plan will
go in. With that, I will pass it back over to you.
Ms. Schmitt: That brings us to the Plan framework. We have been with the
PRC over the last six months to really evaluate what does all this data mean,
what does it tell us about where this community wants to see itself in the
future, and how the park system can be even greater. With that, we've
crafted these seven principles that pull out of all those things that the community members, that the PRC, that you as Council have told us and
distilled them down to these principles. How these will be used is to help us
guide and shape the recommended actions. That's right where we are today
and why it's really, we think, very important and the PRC thought it was
very important to check in with you. We feel like we've landed on these
principles about the future park system that really align and are reflective of
where the community wants to go, but it's time to check in and see what all
of you think and also if you have any additional feedback. Where this will
take us next is as we shape these recommended actions, we'll then have a
prioritization step. These criteria have been drafted, again, with the PRC.
Right now, some of you may have gotten an email blast today inviting you to
participate in the community prioritization challenge, which is another online
opportunity. Earlier today, I mean, that blast went out today and people are
eager to weigh in here. We've already heard from over 100 people about
how they feel about where their own personal priorities are. That along with
an upcoming community workshop will help the sequencing, the timing,
what goes first, how much to focus in one area versus another. All of that
will be reflected in the final draft Plan, which we're targeting to have later
this fall.
Mr. de Geus: That concludes our brief presentation. We pass it back to
Council for questions, comments on the presentation specifically for our MIG
consultants or for the Staff that are here. Thank you.
Mayor Holman: Thank you. With that we have two speakers. Keith
Reckdahl as Chair of Parks and Rec, I'd appreciate any comments you have to make.
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Keith Reckdahl: Thank you. Good evening. As you mentioned, I am the
Chair of the Parks and Rec. I'm speaking for myself tonight; this hasn't
been cleared with the rest of the Commission. I suspect it's representative,
but no guarantees. On the Commission, we deal with a lot of "in the
trenches" work, where should the swing sets go, where should the picnic
tables go, that type of stuff. The questions that we're dealing with are
immediate, and they're very specific. Now, the Master Plan is almost just
the opposite. We're dealing with big-picture concerns and they're big-
picture concerns way in the future. It's really a change of pace for us. One
of the things that concerns us is that sometimes when you have the big-
picture study, they can be so nebulous that they don't provide anything
useful. Early on, we pushed back and really wanted the big-picture look, but
we wanted actionable data. We wanted something that, when we're
deciding where to put the swing sets or the community gardens, how many community gardens do we need and how many swing sets do we need. We
wanted data to go along with the big-picture recommendations. In specific,
what does the community want right now and how will the community be
changing and how will those needs be changing in the future? Those are the
two big issues that we wanted some support. Both the Staff and the
consultants, they've been very good in accommodating our requests. We've
made their life a little more hectic, but they've been very helpful. We
appreciate that. The two things that I really wanted to point out is over the
years we've had a lot of requests for bathrooms. Yet, when we go to the
park planning and outreach meetings, we have a lot of neighbors that say,
"Don't put a bathroom in our park." We want to know which is
representative, the people who are requesting the bathrooms or the people
who don't want them. This park survey that we did late last year was very
good. It provided very strong support for bathrooms, so now we know. It's
just not guessing from anecdotal responses; we have data that shows the
public really wants bathrooms. We're going to find that very useful. The
other thing is that we have limited budgets, and we can't do everything we
want. Now, what priority do we put on things? Do we put nature back in
the parks or do you put other things, soccer fields? What do the people want and what do the people need? This upcoming prioritization study will
be very useful, because it tells the community, you have a fixed amount of
money, tell us what your priorities are. Do you want to split them evenly?
Do you want to put all your money into soccer fields? Do you want to put all
your money into flowers in the parks? That's going to be very useful for us when we're planning future parks, to say what should we put in that park.
We've done a lot of work so far; there's still a lot of work left. We're
confident that we've made very good progress the last few months. We're
very optimistic that this Park Master Plan will give us something that's big
picture, stretch us, tell us information that we hadn't thought of. When
you're sitting on the Commission, it's kind of a mind thing; you always think
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the same things. To hear someone from the outside giving a fresh view,
fresh opinions, that will be useful and backing it up with hard data. We're
optimistic that we'll get the big-picture view, but also be able to get that
hard data that will help us in the trenches when we're deciding the mundane
details of parks. Thank you.
Mayor Holman: Thank you. Where did Commissioner Markevitch go? There
you are; you moved. Thank you for your service on the Commission, both
of you. Shani Kleinhaus, and you'll have three minutes.
Shani Kleinhaus, Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society: Good evening, Mayor
Holman, City Council. I'm Shani Kleinhaus. I speak for Santa Clara Valley
Audubon Society. We were part of the stakeholder group. From the start,
we asked to include the word "nature" or "biodiversity" or something in the
title of this Parks, Trails, Open Space and Recreation. We were told two
things. One is that open space covers nature. It doesn't really, because these days even sport fields that are made out of plastic are considered
open space. The other thing is that, "Nature is already there. We have all
these materials. We can't really change it." Inertia is hard to change, but
I'm asking that you do. I think the reason to add nature into this in some
capacity is because it translates into Plan framework. It's a good
framework, and I think it reflects a lot of the wonderful outreach that Staff
and the consultants did. A lot of that showed that people really care about
nature in Palo Alto. 75-plus percent supported having trees in the City that
are supportive of birds. This is not a trivial number. A lot of people want to
see nature in the City. I think that should actually start from the title and
trickle down throughout. It's not. It starts because it's not in the title. I'm
asking you to add that and add an eighth principle here. I'm not sure what
the word would be, "nature oriented" or "ecological" or something that would
actually bring in nature into the framework and not leave it as something
that we mitigate rather than integrate. Thank you.
Mayor Holman: Thank you. I don't see any lights yet, so I think I'm
actually going to take the prerogative of kicking this off. Having had a
conversation earlier with Staff on this item, I found the report while helpful
and encouraging on the one hand, also I found it to be a bit lacking in some areas. It seemed to confuse different components. We have parks. We
have open space. We have recreation facilities, meaning built structures. It
seemed to me, like with the principles that are on packet page 27, the
playful, healthy, sustainable, inclusive, accessible, flexible, balance. It
seemed like with those and also with the questions that were asked in each of those categories on that page and the next page, it seemed to not
differentiate between and among parks, open space and built recreation
facilities. I'll give you an example. Under sustainable on packet page 28, on
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the second question, it says minimize ongoing maintenance costs to achieve
quality experiences. I guess I'm not clear what that means, because how do
you minimize maintenance costs in open space areas, for instance? I can
see how you'd want to plan for efficiency when it comes to buildings, but I'm
not quite sure how that is. One of the principles again is flexible enough to
accommodate multiple uses across time. It makes me worry about our Park
Dedication Ordinance. Is that specific to buildings or is it specific to parks?
Are you including our open space? Some of these things I found confusing
and lacking in clarity. I don't want us to go forward without having the
discernment between and among those three aspects of our Parks Master
Plan. I know there's a lot more effort that went into this than is in this
report. What I'm relying on is the Staff Report to give me that snapshot
that tells me the picture. The community survey on packet page 32, for
instance, when I'm looking at this, it just gives me a snapshot of what looks to be questions about the built facilities. Gym-based sports, fitness classes,
yoga, zumba, clubs and classes organized around particular interests like
robotics and book clubs, fitness equipment, and those kinds of things. I
can't tell from this that it's only focused on built facilities or to what extent
it's focused on parks, but certainly not in open space. I just don't see that
differentiation. I don't see that grading or scaling in this. I didn't see a
summary of what Parks and Recreation Commission's input was. I won't go
on for a long time here. Some of these, I just think they're so critical for us
to have an understanding of how we're going forward, so we don't go down
a wrong path as we go forward. Packet page 34 under sustainability review,
it talks about drawing on best practices from other cities and agencies, the
site tour and inventory findings and Staff input. The sustainability review
evaluates the City's current policies, programs and practices and identifies
opportunities to increase sustainability across 13 indicators. It doesn't say
what those 13 indicators are. I found myself hungry for more, not needing
to go through 25 studies. I found myself wanting to know more about what
it is we're doing and what launch pad we're using to go forward. One other
things is, as Rob knows well, one of the Council Priorities is Healthy City
Healthy Community. I don't see any reference to that or any aspect of that in this and what the relationship is between health and happiness. There
was one other thing I was going to mention quickly, if I can find it. Oh,
yeah. Under the principles, which I think need a fair amount of work yet,
but I also thought maybe you just add one or you collapse some so you
don't have as many of them. It seemed to me like accessible and inclusive were essentially the same thing. I understand how they're differentiated,
but it seemed like they really were kind of the same thing. Those are kind of
my comments. No reference to habitat, ecosystems, education in any of the
principles. Like I say, I feel hungry for more about knowing where we're
going and the basis for where we're going.
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Council Member Burt: Thanks, and thanks to the Staff and Commission
who's been working away on this. I also found this a struggle to have
enough information for the Council to really go beyond a cursory overview.
We don't apparently see anything in here about, for instance, this extensive
survey except what's on packet page 32, which I couldn't even quite
understand that. It says how important is the enhancement or addition of
the following recreation programs and features in Palo Alto. Maybe I'll start
with that question. Just aside from it, I'm sure the survey covered a lot
more than that, and we just don't have any of that. We don't have it in a
summary. We don't have it in any kind of detail. Was this question asking
about what the City should provide in our parks, what the City should
provide as City services or what should be provided in Palo Alto regardless of
whether it's provided by the City or by private entities? I couldn't tell from
the title. It's page 32.
Mr. de Geus: Council Member Burt, thank you for the question. Really the
survey was focused on City services, City parks, recreation programs and
services. When you see the full survey which had, I think, 30-something
questions, the preamble let the person taking the survey know that context.
I see how if you just see this one question, that's not (crosstalk).
Council Member Burt: I don't even know that's how the question was
worded or how the results were worded. I saw a number of places where
frankly the wording is not very clearly. It sounds to me, where it says
features in Palo Alto, it meant by the City of Palo Alto. We have martial arts
and gymnasiums in Palo Alto that are not City owned or City services.
That's one example. I did want to follow on some of the themes that Mayor
Holman had spoken about. I'm concerned where we have our seven
principles, I'm not sure that these capture principles as best we can. Some
do and some may not. Like the last one is balance as a principle. I don't
know whether that should be a guiding principle on our parks. If we're
talking about providing recreation as a principle and providing natural habits
and ecosystems as principles, do we have to pit one against the other to
make it a principle? That's the way it's essentially been done here. We're
saying, "Maybe not pit. We'll try to balance them." I think we put out the principles of what we want and we don't have to say that they're competing
principles. They're principles. We recognize, and we may have some
guiding statement that we have to reconcile these and establish priorities,
but you don't kind of lump the opposition of two different things or
competition of two things under one principle. We don't have one about natural habitat and ecosystems as a principle in Palo Alto. This is a City that
has some very large, highly valued open space areas as a major part of our
park system. It's not a principle there. I heard Shani Kleinhaus speak about
this question of whether open space captures what we embrace about our
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natural habitats. I don't think it does. Whether we need to call them
natural open space or something that captures they're not just open space
of 1,000 soccer fields; it's open space of a natural ecosystem. That's the
importance of it. I was looking for kind of the input of the Parks and Rec
Commission. I assume that it's embodied in the report, but we couldn't see
what was Staff recommendation, what was Parks and Rec, what was the
consultants. As Council, we normally look at those different things. They
can be summarized in a report. We get that in Staff Reports very often.
We'll say, "Here's what Parks and Rec put in at this stage. Staff fully agrees
or Staff disagrees in this place." We couldn't see that. A couple of other
things. For instance, under this sustainable screening question, it had a
question of minimize ongoing maintenance costs to achieve quality
experiences. Were you envisioning that low maintenance costs result in
quality experiences? That's what "to achieve" means.
Mr. Mottau: Just to touch on that. There's a variety of questions that, I
think, you've laid out. To touch on the maintenance costs to achieve quality
experiences, this is about a couple of points that we heard really strongly.
One is that there's a strong recognition in this community that things that
are built, preserved, a part of the system need to have the adequate
resources to be well kept up. What we're trying to capture in this question
really is, is that balance of you do want to seek the efficiencies. You want to
seek out the maintenance efficiencies that are possible and to find those
quality indicators that are not about how much money we've spent on it or
whatever else, but what people are trying to get out of that experience,
what people are most valuing in that experience, I guess.
Council Member Burt: I take it that, if I'm understanding it correctly, this is
trying to say that minimize ongoing maintenance costs to assure there are
adequate financial resources so that quality experiences can be maintained.
You don't achieve a quality experience by reducing a maintenance cost.
Those are both things we want to do, and there may be some
interrelationship between the two. I think somebody needs to come and
look at the clarity of the language that's being used. I think some of this is
implicit to the writer but not the reader. For instance, under accessible it says fill holes in close to home access to an essential activity. Is that
meaning that we want to make sure that we have certain parks and
recreation capabilities near everybody?
Mr. Mottau: Yes.
Council Member Burt: That's a tough one. I looked and looked and rewrote it and rephrased it and guessed what you meant. First I'd substitute "to"
with "for," but I don't know what essential activities are versus—our parks
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and our recreational facilities are one of the most valued features of our
community, but I don't know how they're essential. That doesn't mean to in
any way diminish them, because I value them a whole bunch. I'm not sure
that essential is the right description. That does lead to something that I
think was real valuable. This particular map, that you displayed, is untitled.
I'll note that the color code isn't on the map, so somebody who reads it has
to have it explained to them. This is something that we had discussed in the
context of the last Comprehensive Plan and our Zoning Ordinance update,
when we implemented our park in-lieu fee to try, in part, to fill some of
these gaps which we really haven't done a very good job on. You did a
great job of identifying through these two different color codes where we
have gaps. I would, one, recommend that there be another map with an
additional overlay, not instead of these two, but the additional overlay is
schools and other public facilities. For instance, we have in one of the white areas, that is underserved in many ways, Ventura Community Center which
is not a school anymore and it's not a park and it has playing fields like a
park would have and it has community services and it's omitted. We have
other locations where we have parts of town that don't have parks where
young kids can get to a park without crossing a major thoroughfare, but
they might have several schools right nearby that they treat as parks.
That's not a one-for-one substitute for a park. When we look at how we're
serving the community or who is most in need of additional park services,
we at least want to have that in mind when we discuss these qualitative
issues. These comments are more—it's related to what you're doing but
also related to as we're moving forward with our Comprehensive Plan, and
that is how do we ever go about addressing some of these areas that we
have shortfalls in parks in certain areas of town? Either they're not large
enough or they don't have a park at all. I'll note that we've added a couple
of pocket parks over the last 10, 15 years on City-owned land that was
never thought of as available. One is on Hopkins Park; it's in one of these
white areas actually because it's small enough that it's not treated as a full
park. It's along the creek there, and it was just some vacant dirt pile that
was near the creek but not in the sensitive habitat area. We did something similar on Matadero Creek just in the last two years. We created a little
pocket park in Barron Park. The point out of that is in a fully built-out City
with a conception that there is no available land other than paying $10
million an acre to try and add parkland, and yet we have increased
population, and we have to continue to try to serve that population with additional parks, we need to look creatively at City-owned land and
repurposing it. There is land that everybody takes for granted; "that's
always been a power station" or whatever and how could it be utilized
differently whether it's thinking about not a park but a similar concept.
When we redid California Avenue and asked ourselves, "Why do we have
four lanes wide on a street that was closed off 50 years ago to traffic across
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the tracks," and situations like that. Dead-end streets that could instead be
used as additional public space, whether it's a park or some other public use.
I think that to do that—I remember when we were looking at places to
locate solar panels on City-owned land, and the Utilities Department said we
have no other land to do this on. I'm going, "You're kidding me. You're
looking at a different Google map from me." People get in their mindset and
just whatever is the status quo is what they think can't be changed. They
don't step away from it. I think engaging the community on asking where
they perceive not only the need but opportunities of asking, "What is that
plot of land over there that nobody uses?" I think we'll find some
opportunities. They won't be a total solution, but they'll be valuable ones at
$10 million an acre. Thanks.
Council Member Wolbach: Thanks very much for the presentation. I want
to echo a lot of the things that have been said by my colleagues. One where I disagree actually with Council Member Burt, I actually do like the priority of
balance in context, in recognizing that we don't want to sacrifice our natural
open space. I definitely agree that I think we could add "natural" to "open
space" and clarify that. We have a mix of open space. We have recreation
space. We have open parks. We have hopefully even more natural habitat
in our more urban parks and also recreation facilities. I think it's important
to say that going forward we're not going to drop any of them. For me,
that's what balance says, but I'm open to further discussion with my
colleagues about that. I do think there's some way of continuing to
emphasize that all of these are priorities. We've had all of them in the past,
and we're going to continue to encourage all of them in the future is
important. I'll add my voice to those calling for restrooms in all of our parks
that are not pocket-sized. I think that especially in any park where people
are expecting to take kids or somebody who has medical conditions or who
is older and needs to have quick access to a restroom, I think that's very
important. We've all seen an uptick in—I know that one of the concerns
with adding restroom facilities to our public spaces is that that may attract
people who don't have other access to a restroom facility. Judging by what
we've seen in the community frankly, if they don't have access, they're going to do their business somewhere. I'd rather they be doing it in a
proper restroom facility than in public, which is what we've been seeing. I
think that, on balance, having restrooms for everybody is a net benefit. It's
just good public health policy. A couple of things also that I want to
mention. What are we looking at for increasing the number of off-leash dog areas? Any news, thoughts? I'm not a dog owner myself, but I love pups.
Mr. de Geus: We've got a new dog owner right here. That was a theme
that came across in a lot of the different forums we had with the community.
More opportunity for off-leash dog areas and actually balanced across the
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community. Actually balance came up a lot from the community about the
diversity of interests that exist here in the community and within parks and
that needs to be balanced across the system.
Council Member Wolbach: Geographically, right?
Mr. de Geus: Yes.
Council Member Wolbach: I will second that very wholeheartedly. I just
want to make sure that we're very thoughtful about this, that we're not
going to be using crumb rubber fill for any artificial turf in Palo Alto.
Mr. de Geus: That's correct, we're not.
Council Member Wolbach: Very good. Just to build upon something Council
Member Burt was talking about as far as being—I would actually say be
proactive and opportunistic in looking for not only spaces but also funding
opportunities so that we can have more park space. Obviously, there's a
debate about how much Palo Alto is going to grow. The country's growing; global population's growing; the Bay Area population is growing, and Palo
Alto's population is going to grow by some degree. We need to make sure
that we continue to have an appropriate amount of park space and
recreation facilities accessible to Palo Altans no matter what part of the City
they live in and no matter how much our population grows. Just a couple of
things to suggest thinking about. Working closely with the Planning
Department in general, on the Comprehensive Plan in particular, but in
general working with the Planning Department. Even looking for ways to
work with—look for private funding if necessary. Making sure that the idea
of in any potential future developments that park space and/or recreation
facilities, space and/or funding, is included in what we expect. Especially for
looking at future precise or coordinated area plans, that we make sure that
park space and recreation facilities are included in the consideration there.
Also, on accessibility, I think accessibility is very important. One of my
concerns is the difficulty of residents in getting to our open space. Getting
to Baylands, if you live at the other end of Palo Alto; getting to Foothills Park
and also Monte Bello. Even though it's not managed by Palo Alto, it is within
Palo Alto City borders, correct? Monte Bello Open Space Preserve managed
by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District is within Palo Alto City borders. Not very easy to get to, and this is another maybe opportunity to
work with the transportation staff and be open to looking for private funding,
public funding, whatever it takes. I think that daily shuttles at least on the
weekends, if not every day, for our residents no matter where they live or at
least somewhere in the heart of Palo Alto to be able to get up to Foothills Park and potentially even to Monte Bello is worth serious exploration. I'm
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not sure if that's on the agenda right now. I want to make sure that even if
somebody doesn't drive or prefers not to drive a winding and, for many,
intimidating road, that they can enjoy that huge chunk of Palo Alto that's
otherwise closed to them. Those are my comments for now, except actually
I will just say as somebody who enjoys martial arts I was disappointed to
find so many people so opposed to martial arts in Palo Alto.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Thanks for all the work that has gone into this. I have
a particular interest, and I attended several of your workshops and
meetings, partook in your surveys, and found it a wonderful thing of
capturing what's on people's minds, what they would like to see, what they
enjoy, what's there. I know you have a rich data set. Particularly interested
in this because it's a Master Plan that takes us into the future. At the same
time, the Council is working on the Comprehensive Plan of trying to get us
into the future as well. I did, though, in reading through the material—it wasn't rich in context. In the last page of your document, you said, "We
have these binders filled with information." I went to the website and looked
and saw all the things you had there. The first thing that caught my eye
was something called demographic assumptions. I said, "Oh, great. This
will help us out with our Comp Plan thing to see where they are and where
we're going." I came to a dead halt on that document. The document, a
10-page document, details of demographics on page 1, paragraph 2, it says
projections show an increase of 20,000 residents over the next 20 years. I
said, "Wow. That is going to transform what this document is. How do you
deal with 20,000 new residents in a town of 65,000?" I went back and
looked through the document, and it actually doesn't say anything about
that. In fact, the only comment in the document says when we get to the
Comprehensive Plan, we're going to have to adapt C-28 which is the parks
per new resident, meaning that you're going to have to reduce it. Never any
other discussion about where are we going to find parkland in the City,
where are we going to find facilities, what do you do when numbers go up
25 percent above what they are now, 30 percent above what they are now.
I said, "Where did that number come from?" I went to the existing
conditions report. My understanding is this is the background information that is recommended for all Comprehensive Plan work including the Parks
Master Plan. "Oh," I said, "I'll find something here that tells us about
growth." Page 1016 has a chart showing job growth of approximately
19,000 over the relatively same time period that you have. The citation on
both of those documents were the same; City of Palo Alto and ABAG projections. They are the Plan Bay Area projections. It seems as though we
are using Plan Bay Area numbers as the background for our Comp Plan and
for pieces of our Comp Plan, such as the Master Plan. Now, if that's true,
you should be dealing upfront with the fact that we have a filled-out urban
area, and we are dramatically increasing the population in that. It has a
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major impact on open spaces and parks and recreation and so on. You think
you need spaces. One of the spaces that I looked for in here was Cubberley.
That's one of the few optional open spaces for recreation activity in the City.
I said, "Oh, they must have something strong to say about that." I looked
at another part of the existing conditions report under youth population. I
took school enrollment and out of Palo Alto school enrollment, it said over
that time period where we are growing by 20,000, school population was
going to be growing by 213 students, or at least a portion of that time
period. Now, there's a discrepancy there. We have been negotiating about
Cubberley for the last five years with the School District about let's get
something done there. The School District said, "We don't need to do
anything now." They are setting with a set of numbers from our reports that
there's not going to be any more kids. We are starting from a set of
numbers that says there's going to be probably 3,200 new kids in the District. No wonder we can't talk. No wonder we can't reach agreement.
How can we do a Master Plan of parks and open spaces and recreation when
we have such a discrepancy? Now, where does the discrepancy come from
and who's responsible? I think the City Council is responsible. I mean, it's
up to the City Council to sit down and say, "Look, here is a realistic
assessment of what we want in our Comprehensive Plan that you can work
with and use." We haven't done that. As a failsafe, we end up using "well
Plan Bay Area has numbers on Palo Alto. Let's use that." As I say, I looked
at this report and I came to a dead stop. I said, "I can't make a judgment
on a Plan framework, on where we're going, on the importance of
acquisition, how much money we have available per capita to spend on
these things." Should we think of a different mix of recreation good for a
more dense City? Those are critical questions that are at the basis of your
Master Plan, and we haven't given you a set of numbers. I guess my
recommendation would be go on hold for a time period and, maybe after the
Council deals with Item 14 tonight, we'll be able to at least address the issue
of does the Council have a stance on how densely populated a City we will
be living in. I guess that's my comment as a Council Member. Maybe come
back to us once the Council has gone through a session trying to deal with how dense a population we will have.
Council Member DuBois: Thank you for all the hard work. It really is
impressive. The website's impressive. I like the process, and I like the
data-driven approach quite a bit. I saw you at least talked about
incorporating capacity constraints. You talked about measuring kind of perception of quality. I think those are all great things. Now, you're going
to these prioritization exercises which, I think, is also a really important
step. I hope maybe we could use some of these things in our
Comprehensive Plan planning process as well. I think you've heard from a
couple of people. I don't want to pile on, because I think there's a lot of
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good work here. I did find the Staff Report a little lacking. It really wasn't
clear what questions you wanted us to address. I think more info on the
survey would be good. I happened to see some of that, and I think we hit
on it. It seemed like bathrooms and dog parks were pretty high up there.
On the principles, I agree it would be good to include something about
nature. I just wonder was that discussed and what was the discussion.
Mr. Mottau: It has been discussed. It's an idea that's been floating around.
It's not so much that there's not a recognition that nature is a critical part of
this system as kind of where the most effective statement of it sits. There's
a variety of actions that are very focused in that direction. When you guys
get a chance to look at the prioritization exercise, it kind of starts to frame
the next step of what those actions might look like. One of those areas of
action that we're seeing is really about integrating nature into Palo Alto
parks, kind of across the system. We've talked about that as being one of the messages that we heard really clearly. It has been a discussion. The
PRC members and we have had some pretty lively discussion about whether
it is something that weaves through several of these different principles or if
it is something that gets called out on its own. Ultimately where we were
falling out was at the principle level it made sense that it is actually woven
into a couple of different places and that they address that as well.
Ms. Schmitt: One of the things that came out very strongly from the public
was this idea that you have wonderful preserves and people really
appreciate those, but they want to see more and they want to see it integral
in the system and they want to see the programming and activation, maybe
not just in a building but out more in the parks. Really thinking about how
all of these features work together, that is the direction that's reflected in
these principles. It's been us, Staff and PRC working together which is why
it's time to get some other perspectives about is that the right direction.
That is where we landed.
Council Member DuBois: My two cents, I think I'd echo Council Member Burt
in that they don't need to compete against each other. I too find balanced
to be a reasonable principle, but I also think words are important and maybe
making nature explicit on this list would be a good thing as well. The Parks and Rec Commission had sent us a memo, and there was a little bit of
discussion about our falling behind our goal for the amount of parks per
resident. Is the plan to have some ideas on how we could either acquire,
expand our larger parks? I think the larger parks are critical, not just the
pocket parks, as a source for new parkland.
Mr. Mottau: I think the discussion around the map of park access was an
important one in that the first step of identifying where it would be that you
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would focus in, but then finding those alternatives. I think we've heard
some tonight, some of which we considered, some of which I really liked,
that we had not yet gotten to. The step of identifying how can we grow this
system, it's not going to be a "we need 10 more acres of parkland, so I'm
going to go buy 10 acres of land somewhere." We know that it's not that
simple of a solution, and that what we're looking for is incremental
additions, probably unique opportunities, and how do we best set up this
community to move on those when the opportunity arises. That's the
challenge in an environment of extremely high land values and extremely
limited availability.
Council Member DuBois: That is going to be an explicit part of the plan?
Mr. Mottau: Yes.
Council Member DuBois: Just to echo Council Member Schmid, I think what
forecast we use is critical. If you use one forecast, you have to acquire 40 acres of parkland. If you use another, it's 10 acres. I did see the response
to the question, but it wasn't clear to me which forecast you will use, I
guess, going forward. I guess Council Member Schmid's suggesting we need
to come up with that forecast. Do you guys have an idea?
Mr. de Geus: We're working closely with the Planning Staff on that. They're
doing quite a lot of work on assumptions of growth right now as part of the
Comprehensive Plan Update. They have a number of scenarios of growth
that they're working on, and one they think is much more realistic than we
see with ABAG. I believe they're still working on that. That's what we'll be
using when they finalize that work.
Council Member DuBois: Thank you.
Council Member Scharff: Thank you. I just wanted someone to walk me
through exactly how this works. We collect the data; we analyze it; we look
at opportunities. We go through that process, then we do the framework
and potential actions, and we have these seven principles. That's the
concept. Then we go ahead and use different criteria. One of those criteria
advances more than one principle. I'm guess I'm wondering this. We
decide that we have an opportunity to put in a new tennis court, and we
show that there's a gap in the number of tennis courts, or bocce courts or volleyball courts. If I run a tennis court or a bocce ball court or a volleyball
court through this principle system, I get we don't do it. Does it open up,
create opportunities for the use of the space? No. Does it introduce
imagine, whimsy and the unexpected? No, because it's a particular game.
Does it encourage unstructured, free play opportunities? The answer would be no. It's not playful. It would be healthy, provide a place to unwind and
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create space where families and neighbors meet. Is it inclusive? It probably
isn't. If you're playing tennis, it's probably not inclusive. Does it appeal to
an underrepresented user group? I don't know. Tennis players, bocce ball
players, volleyball players, I'm not sure that's what we mean. Does it
respond to the unique character of neighborhoods? I don't know. I'm not
sure it's accessible. I'm not sure it's inclusive. I'm pretty sure those things
aren't flexible. Balanced, supports the balance already in existence, I don't
think that's really what that means. I guess I'm trying to figure out how this
is really helpful to make decisions, practical decisions, when you're looking
at—I could run a swing set through this. I guess the question is how are
you going to use this in a practical way that makes any sense.
Mr. Mottau: One point that I would bring up is that it's actually pretty
critical that some things that come through this process don't meet the
criteria. A lot of what this is—I'm not speaking to your specific examples. A big part of what we're trying to do here is to help you make decisions about
a very limited and finite resource of land and a relatively limited and finite
resource of the cost to build and maintain other facilities. Finding the mix,
finding the balance that suits what we're hearing in the community. An
important part of this criteria system and the principle system is really about
finding what are the reasons that we wouldn't do things. In parks and
recreation as a field, there's usually a lot of reasons, often represented by a
number of people coming out and saying that they would really like to have
a particular facility. To critically evaluate that, we need to have some of the
reasons for what we are trying to accomplish across the entire system and
how do we ask those tough questions. Even though it seems like a good
idea that's put in front of us, how do we ask those type of questions of is
this the use we're going to put this land to for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years.
It is a difficult question. I think that we're trying to dial in what we would
like to see across the entire system. One of the things that I think that you
will find is that a lot of the things that already exist in the system or are
similar to things that exist in the system, people are saying, "We have some
of that. We would like to have some other things introduced. We would like
to have things spread a little bit more around the community and thought about in slightly different ways."
Ms. Schmitt: The other thing that we also heard is people would like—think
very carefully about giving up 10,000 square feet or an acre of land in a
park if it's going to be for one use. They realize that—even in talking to the
dog owners when we went out and did some follow-up, in a lot of communities people want massive dog parks. The dog owners here realize
there's a very limited land resource and they have pretty moderate requests
compared to what we see in a lot of communities. I think even your
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population understands that there are going to be tradeoffs in anything. It's
actually very refreshing.
Council Member Scharff: How do you capture that it's okay to have a tennis
court or a bocce ball court in this? Are we talking about applying these on a
system-wide or do we apply these principles to an individual project? If it's
system-wide, you could say we have the Magic Bridge Playground, so we
have some of that. We have a tennis court over here. You want diversity of
uses. You said it's important to capture that. What I'm not getting is if
people come back and someone proposes a bocce ball court or some game
like that, and someone says it doesn't meet this criteria. If that's true, then
I don't support this criteria, because I don't think it provides the flexibility.
On a system-wide basis, I think if you look at it holistically and say we have
X number of thousands of acres, we want to accommodate all these different
uses. When it comes to a practical choice, if people are going to apply these in a way like that, then maybe that's not the right criteria. I mean, I'm just
trying to figure out what we're going to use these for. That's really my
concern. I haven't given enough thought to think to myself—I'm trying to
figure out what system bias you are creating here. The system bias seems
to be for a swing set possibly, because it's unstructured free play, over a
more organized play. Maybe not. Maybe someone will argue a swing set is
a very structured organized play. I don't know. Maybe it's a slide because
the kid can do it by themselves as opposed to having two people. I'm just
curious as to what value, in terms of actually how you use this, that these
principles create.
Mr. de Geus: It's a great question, Council Member Scharff. We struggled
with it too, and the Parks and Recreation Commission has struggled with it.
We sort of want to do everything if we can. Every idea to increase or
enhance a park or a recreation facility, we want to do. It's a challenge. How
do we do that and filter ideas and interests so that we can take actions and
spend limited resources. We're working through that. These principles
represent the themes that we heard most often from most people that we
have been talking to over the last year. When they talked about their
individual parks, the park system, open space, recreation programs, facilities, these are the things that came up frequently and often that they
want to see in their system. That's sort of the first filter. We think about
competing ideas for what we might put in a park, whether it's bocce ball or
tennis or something else. This cannot be the only filter, because most
everything will probably fit in there in some way. Some might fit better than others, because they have more principles related to that particular idea. It
may get a little more emphasis there through that first filter, but then
there's a second filter which is the criteria which was also in the Staff Report
and you saw that and which is more specific about identified gaps in the
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system. An example might be community gardens, where they're mostly in
North Palo Alto. There's an obvious gap; there are not sufficient community
gardens in South Palo Alto.
Council Member Scharff: I guess that's more what I'd like to see. I'd like to
see it say things like—I'd like us to have the discussion about some of the
hard questions. Is every park going to be identical and have the same
things? This could lead to that, right? You want unstructured play. You
want these principles to be applied; therefore, you should pull out the bocce
ball or the tennis courts. Are we going to have a bocce ball court over here
and not over here because it's over there. People who have that interest
can ride their bikes to that. Are we going to basically apply these principles
in a system-wide park or are we going to apply them in a region or are we
going to apply them to each individual park? I think it makes a huge
difference in your outcomes, how you think about that. I mean, I think they're just policy choices. You could say every park has to be a walkable
distance to people and you have to meet these basic criteria that you set
forth here. Therefore, maybe we're pulling out tennis courts out of those
parks. You can say, "No, we're going to look at a region and you have to
have within biking distance X number." There's a bunch of parks that are in
biking distance, for instance, and everyone has it differently. I just think
that you need to have a sense of how you're going to apply these criteria
and what they really mean when you come up with existing gaps. I mean, a
community garden for instance is a very specific use that does not lead to
unstructured play, unless you want kids running around the garden pulling
things out. You might argue that you do not put community gardens under
these principles in. I guess I'm just trying to figure out how you're going to
use that. I'm not going to belabor the point anymore, but I don't think it's
very thoughtful from a practical point of view of how this applies when we
actually have to make decisions. If we're not going to use this to make
decisions and we're just going to use it as words, then fine, maybe that's
what you want to do.
Mayor Holman: I don't have other Council Member lights. I'm going to try
to summarize here. This is a Study Session, so we don't take motions. I think you've heard enough questions, enough hesitation, I guess you could
say, on the part of Council Members that we do need this to come back to us
so that we can get some clarity around these things. I look at packet page
26, and it says at this point we're moving from the data and needs summary
or Phase 1 to the action criteria and prioritizing phase which is Phase 2. The third and final phase which is upcoming is the Master Plan report. Until we
get the principles correct, we just can't move forward to a Master Plan. I
look at the Comprehensive Plan, which we're going to be looking at a little
bit later this evening. The Comp Plan is organized under vision, policy, goal
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and then actions. We're not close to actions yet. We've got to be clear on
what the principles are. I won't try to, by any means, recount Council
Members' comments. I think and hope that you've gotten enough query this
evening that you have enough information to come back with some clarity,
some more comprehensive information and some principles that we can live
with that are discerned by perhaps different kinds of park spaces that we
have and open space that we have. Yes, Rob.
Mr. de Geus: Thank you, Mayor Holman and Council Members, for the
feedback. Appreciate it. I think clearly the Staff Report doesn't fully reflect
all the work that's gone into this planning and the work that the Parks and
Rec Commission and Staff did. With your indulgence, we'll go back and
rethink the Staff Report, put a lot more in there and bring it back to Council.
I think you'll have a lot more comfort when we do that. We'll do that as
quickly as possible.
Mayor Holman: Really appreciate that. Also want to recognize all the effort
that's gone into this. I know there's been a lot. It's been acknowledged, I
think, that there has been a lot of effort going into this with Staff,
community and Parks and Rec Commission. It just needs to be distilled
more clearly in here, so we're comfortable and confident in how we're going
to move forward. We need to have a solid foundation. Thank you all very
much.
Special Orders of the Day
3. Appointment of One Candidate to the Utilities Advisory Commission for
One Unexpired Term Ending April 30, 2018.
Mayor Holman: Council Member Scharff, you weren't here at the time when
we started the meeting—Council Member Scharff. Council Member Scharff,
you weren't here at the beginning of the meeting when I mentioned that we
do have a couple of items tonight that are a bit unique in some ways, that
we are going to be making appointments. I gave the opening to Council
Members, should they wish, to make any statement, brief and one-time,
about either this item or the next item when we do CAC appointments.
Council Member Berman: (inaudible)
Mayor Holman: You could speak to both if you'd like.
Council Member DuBois: I'll kick it off real quick. Of the 12 candidates for
one position, we had several very strong candidates. Whoever is not
elected, I'd urge them to apply for other positions or get involved with our
Comp Plan. I really don't want to discourage people ...
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Council Member Burt: For UAC?
Council Member DuBois: UAC, PTC, whatever. For me, I'm going to be
voting for Mark Harrison. I really liked his utilities experience, Palo Alto,
Mountain View, and then his career as a teacher. I thought he brought a
very good perspective, a little bit different than what's on the UAC right now.
That was good as well.
Council Member Berman: I could just say ditto. When I was walking home,
I was just so impressed, pleased, happy. I think this is the second time this
has happened with the UAC, the number of ridiculously qualified, incredibly
strong candidates that have applied. I think I sent out a tweet that night
saying I could pick five or six of the eleven people that applied. I had the
pleasure of serving with Mark Harris on IBRC and really enjoyed. We've
stayed friends since, and I just saw the value that he adds to a big group
that's trying to get through kind of difficult issues. I think his background really lends itself well. I'll be supporting Mark.
Council Member Wolbach: I will be the third to say the same thing, that the
number of abundantly qualified people applying for the UAC was great to
see. We had 11 applicants. I think that they each would bring something
really valuable and useful. They all bring great experience. There were at
least three or four that I have had a really hard time narrowing down
between. Another half dozen that were supremely qualified. I will take the
liberty of repeating what Council Member DuBois said, that I strongly
encourage all of the applicants to continue to stay involved in Palo Alto
whether it's through City government opportunities or otherwise. After a lot
of deliberation about this, my first choice is going to be Marianne Wu. I
think that she brings a really interesting mix of technical and utility and
business experience that I think is very useful. I thought her to be an
outstanding communicator. If that wasn't enough, it wouldn't hurt to have a
little bit more diversity on the UAC, to be quite frank. Right now we have
five white guys and one white woman. As a white guy, I don't have a
problem with white guys; it's just it would be nice to see a little bit of
diversity. On top of that, Marianne did stand out through her qualifications
and her communication skills.
Council Member Scharff: I did actually watch all of the videos. I was really
impressed again with the outstanding candidates we had. We really did. For
me, Marianne Wu really stood out, but so did Arne Ballantine, frankly. I
thought Mark Harris did a good job, and Mr. Gupta did a really good job. For
me, those were the top four. I think we'll be lucky if we have any of the four. For me, I think I'm still struggling between Arne Ballantine and
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Marianne Wu. I'm not sure yet who I'll vote for on that. For me, it's those
top two.
Council Member Burt: I just want to echo that these are great candidates,
and we really want to see these candidates continue to ask to be considered
for future openings on the Utilities Commission, but also for other
community involvement. It's great when we see especially some people that
we haven't known at all before, and say, "Wow. What capable people," and
that they're interested in engaging the community. We have to figure out
ways to take advantage of that. I also found Mark Harris very capable,
Bhusan Gupta. I was very impressed with both Marianne Wu and Arne
Ballantine, as well as Hilary Gans. Tim Gray brings accounting experience,
and Jim Baer brought a wealth of commitment to sustainability in our
community. I was torn between a wealth of great candidates, but I found
Arne Ballantine to be really intriguing in bringing some exceptional capabilities. He'll be my first choice.
Council Member Filseth: Like everybody else here, this was a really, really
hard thing for me, because we had a plethora of very, very qualified
candidates. I mean, we had 11 or something like that. Most of them would
be a valuable add to the UAC as it is. That said, my top four, I had a very
hard time choosing between—it was the same as Council Member Scharff's.
Ultimately, my leaning is toward Mr. Ballantine who's system view and grasp
of the future of the energy business, I thought, were extremely compelling.
Mayor Holman: I appreciate my colleagues participating in this, which is not
what our usual process is, and appreciate the public's indulgence with us
taking a little bit more time. I just want to specifically emphasize that we
could pretty much double the size of the UAC with the quality of candidates
that we had in this application period. It's remarkable; it is stunning; and it
is so appreciated. It is a reflection of our community, the interest in
engagement and also the expertise that members of this community bring
forward. I had four, five, maybe six people that I really found very
interesting. On this particular occasion, my comments actually go with
Council Member Wolbach just because there were so many that were so
qualified and stated their cases so well and articulated their interest and expertise in the area of utilities. I will be voting for Marianne Wu. With
that, please fill out your ballots and put them up for the Clerk, please. While
the Clerk is calculating those votes, we'll move to Agenda Changes,
Additions and Deletions.
First Round of voting for one position on the Utilities Advisory Commission with a term ending April 30, 2018:
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Voting For James Baer: Burt, Filseth, Scharff
Voting For Arne Ballantine:
Voting For Louis “Lou” Borrego:
Voting For Ramarao Digumarthi: Schmid
Voting For Hilary Gans:
Voting For Timothy Gray:
Voting For Yidyabhusan “Bhusan” Gupta:
Voting For Mark Harris: Berman, DuBois
Voting For Natalia Kachenko:
Voting For Walter Loewenstein:
Voting For Marianne Wu: Holman, Wolbach
[Beth Minor, City Clerk, announced the results of the first ballot after City
Manager Comments.]
Second Round of voting for one position on the Utilities Advisory Commission
with a term ending April 30, 2018:
Voting For Arne Ballantine: Burt, Filseth, Scharff, Schmid
Voting For Mark Harris: Berman, DuBois, Holman
Voting For Marianne Wu: Wolbach
[Ms. Minor announced the results of the second ballot after the Consent
Calendar.]
Third Round of voting for one position on the Utilities Advisory Commission
with a term ending April 30, 2018:
Voting For Arne Ballantine: Burt, DuBois, Filseth, Holman,
Scharff, Schmid, Wolbach
Voting For Marianne Wu: Berman
[Ms. Minor announced the results of the third ballot after the Staff
presentation in Item Number 13.]
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Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions
Mayor Holman: I need Council Members' attention for this too, because
we're going to do something a little bit unusual. Not so unusual that we're
going to transpose Items Number 14 and 15. The reason for that is because
we'll have ballots to count. Because there are so many applicants, again, we
are blessed to have that many ballots. It's going to be a bit of time and
labor for the Clerks to be able to calculate all those ballots. If we left that to
the last item, we would just be sitting here waiting for them to count. What
we're going to do this evening, I would appreciate a motion to transpose
those two items or to switch Item 14 and 15. The other thing that we're
going to be doing is that we are going to be holding both of those items
open at the same time. City Attorney has suggested and agreed that we can
do that. The reason is because the two items are so closely interfaced, and
also because the City Clerk will be interjecting when they have a ballot to
report. This will take probably a few ballots to get down to five finalists.
Council Member DuBois: Just to clarify. Item 15 also included a discussion
about schedule. It wasn't just voting.
Mayor Holman: Yes, everything that's a part of Item 15 ...
Council Member DuBois: Will happen?
Mayor Holman: Will happen, yes. Would you like to make the motion to ...
Council Member Scharff: I'll move it.
Council Member DuBois: I'll second it.
Mayor Holman: We have a motion and a second to transpose Items Number
14 and 15. I would say also that the Planning Staff did contact all of the
applicants, so that they would know that we were doing this so they could be
here should they want to arrive earlier.
MOTION: Council Member Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member
DuBois to move Agenda Item Number 15- Appointment of Five Additional
Members… forward to be heard concurrently with Agenda Item Number 14-
Comprehensive Plan Update: Comprehensive Plan Structure and
Goals/Vision Statements for Each Element…
Council Member Berman: This seems like a good time, especially while
they're counting the ballots. I might have missed this in the Staff Report. What's our process going to be on the voting? Is it just top five or is there a
threshold they have to hit?
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Mayor Holman: We will get to that when we open Item Number 15, because
...
Council Member Berman: Curiosity was killing the cat.
Mayor Holman: ... I will be asking for Council Members' guidance and input
on how we go forward with that. We'll do that at that time.
Council Member Berman: I wasn't sure if it had been determined.
Mayor Holman: Thank you for the question. We have a vote on the floor to
transpose Items Number 14 and 15, so we'll reverse the order of those two.
All those in favor or opposed. That passes unanimously. Thank you,
colleagues.
MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Kniss absent
City Manager Comments
Ed Shikada, Assistant City Manager: Thank you, Mayor. Members of the
City Council, Ed Shikada, Assistant City Manager, sitting in for City Manager
Jim Keene this evening. It's actually been a pretty busy week in Palo Alto,
though pretty much I'll say a typical week in Palo Alto. A few items to
provide updates on related to the Caltrain fence upgrades, winter storm
preparations specifically related to San Francisquito Creek, our Residential
Permit Parking. I believe the Mayor will cover one additional topic. Let me
cover this quickly. In terms of the Caltrain Rail Corridor work, this week the
community will begin seeing some of the vegetation removal and temporary
fence installation along Alma Street. This is part of our work with Caltrain to
limit physical access to the tracks. Anticipate that crews will start to work
on the north end at Palo Alto Avenue and work their way to the south.
There will be temporary fencing, as I noted, installed as the vegetation
removal occurs in order to ensure no gaps. As the Council knows, some
areas where there is a substandard fence that's being removed or no fencing
at all, so that we will maintain a perimeter in the work area until the
permanent 8-foot, welded wire fencing with the winglets are installed.
Please be advised that as this work, beginning this week, starts that
construction will be proceeding along the right-most lane in the southbound
direction on Alma Street. There will be temporary periods of lane closures
along that southbound lane. It's expected that the construction, the installation of the permanent fencing, will be completed by the end of
September. We were able to really put together an expedited scheduled
with Caltrain. The additional anti-climb winglet will follow during the month
of October, so that we will be able to complete the entire project over the
next roughly 60 days. We'll continue to post updates on the City's website.
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On winter storm prep, again specifically related to San Francisquito Creek,
we started ongoing work. As the Council may have noticed, there is some
minor work that's been happening at the Pope-Chaucer Bridge at San
Francisquito Creek in order to fill a relatively small low spot in a berm. As
this work proceeds, we're coordinating with the City of Menlo Park, the Joint
Powers Authority and City of East Palo Alto in order to cover maintenance
work in preparation for the upcoming winter season. As Council knows, it
has been forecast as an El Nino year. There are dead or fallen trees which
will be removed as a majority of ongoing work as well as Staff having tagged
several invasive species in the channel. At this point, agencies have begun
divvying up the work that would occur in the creek during the month of
September. We're updating our community outreach information, and we'll
be providing additional proactive outreach to property owners along the
creek as well as through our website and mailers and utility bill inserts. There will be quite a bit of additional communication in the upcoming weeks.
Again the City's website is being updated with a particular page dedicated to
allowing residents or anyone to subscribe to receiving updates. As additional
information is available, we'll be posting and I'll be able to provide notices to
people electronically. The Joint Powers Authority is also developing a new
early flood watch website that will be debuting soon and functional in the
upcoming season. We'll provide additional information to the Council, in
particular in a upcoming Study Session in October to provide more details.
On the Downtown Residential Permit Parking Program, I know the Council
has received some communication from community members. Online permit
sales are ongoing, began two weeks ago. So far, more than 2,000 accounts
have been created, which is pretty phenomenal. As expected, there have
been some minor technical issues with the website. Overall, our contractor
has been quick and flexible in responding to these issues. Some instances,
application processing has taken longer than expected and typically occurs
within three to four business days. Also during periods of high call volume,
there has been instances with the voice mail system overrun during short
periods. Once again, consultant team is responding to the messages.
Where preferable, email is also an option through the City's registration website. To cover a couple of frequently asked questions. One on the topic
of the number of vehicles allowed for individual residents. Staff has received
some inquiries from residents with numerous vehicles or with more than a
couple of vehicles, including those parked on-street. Households may
request up to four permits free of charge and purchase two transferable guest passes, for a total of six permits per household. Households with
more than six cars will need to make other arrangements for extra vehicles
parked during the day. Also, as a reminder to the community related to the
Business Registry, businesses must be registered in the City's Business
Registry in order to be eligible for permits for employees. Residents will
need to show proof of residency in order to be eligible for the free residential
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permit. Staff has held four public sessions at this point to assist with
account setup and questions at the Downtown Library, Channing House and
Avenidas and has five additional sessions scheduled prior to start of the
program enforcement on September 15th. Once again, there's additional
information provided on the City's website. Finally, on GreenWaste. I
actually didn't note this one. GreenWaste automated collection, another
area of some activity with community interest. A recent contract
amendment with GreenWaste approved by the Council on June 15th
provided for the implementation of automated refuse collection in a number
of neighborhoods which has allowed the replacement of the oldest trucks
previously in use, purchased over a decade ago. New trucks will begin
operation tomorrow, September 1st, using fully automated loading arms to
pick up refuse containers on the street. Change in operation will reduce
personnel costs and improve cost effectiveness. GreenWaste is in contact with individual residents to address issues that may particularly affect areas
with high on-street parking. Both GreenWaste and City Staff is working with
individual residents to address any specific issues encountered along the
way. That concludes my report, Mayor and Council. I turn it back to the
Mayor.
Mayor Holman: Thank you, Mr. Shikada. With that, there is a statement to
be read here. As many of you know, the City has been working with the
County and Supervisor Joe Simitian and Caritas, a nonprofit that manages
mobile home parks, to put together a strong offer to buy Buena Vista and to
keep it as a mobile home park. After the City Council finished its legal
obligation to approve the owner's closure application and approve the
relocation payments, we the City set aside $14 1/2 million in funding for this
purpose, using funds from developer fees that can only be used for
affordable housing purposes. Last week, we learned that the residents had
filed a legal action which can occur as a last step in the closure process.
Under the circumstances, we are not surprised that the residents felt it
necessary to file this lawsuit to protect their interests in the event that the
park closed. Today we learned that the owner of Buena Vista Park, Joe
Jisser, has rejected Caritas' offer and accepted the City's closure determination. This is deeply disappointing. The residents of Buena Vista
are members of our community, and we know that the park closure will have
a tremendous impact on many of their lives. We do not know at this time if
and when the residents may receive a six-month notice to vacate the site or
if there is still a possibility that Mr. Jisser might reconsider Caritas' offer. Tonight on behalf of the Council, we want to reiterate our support for the
Buena Vista community and know that these developments are not the
outcome we were all hoping for. With that and no appropriate segue at all
at hand or visible, I look to the City Clerk to see if you have an outcome
from the first vote for the UAC candidates.
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Beth Minor, City Clerk: Mayor Holman, I do. We have no majority vote at
this time. We have Council Member Berman voting for Mark Harris; Council
Member Burt voting for Arne Ballantine; Council Member DuBois voting for
Mark Harris; Council Member Filseth voting for Arne Ballantine; Mayor
Holman voting for Marianne Wu; Council Member Scharff voting for Arne
Ballantine; Vice Mayor Schmid voting for Ramarao Digumarthi; and Council
Member Wolbach voting for Marianne Wu. We had three votes for Arne
Ballantine, one for Ramarao Digumarthi, two for Mark Harris, and two for
Marianne Wu.
Mayor Holman: Council Members, you heard the votes. Please place your
second ballot on the dais please.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Could you repeat the numbers again?
Mayor Holman: Just who got how many votes, not by name of Council
Member.
Ms. Minor: Arne Ballantine, three votes. Ramarao Digumarthi, one. Mark
Harris, two. Marianne Wu, two.
Oral Communications
Mayor Holman: I have no cards from members of the public to speak under
Oral Communications.
Consent Calendar
Mayor Holman: I have one speaker to speak to Item Number 5. City Clerk
has placed an at-places memo for Council Members to provide a bit of a
clarification to Item Number 11. City Clerk, would you like to go through
that or you want me to go through it while you're counting ballots? Okay.
Item Number 11—excuse me just a moment here. Item Number 11 is the
adoption of a revised Ordinance amending Section 2.040.160, City Council
Minutes, of Chapter 2.04, Council Organization and Procedure, of the Palo
Alto Municipal Code to require Action Minutes and a verbatim transcript of all
Council and Council Standing Committee meetings and delete the
requirement for Sense Minutes. When I went through this again these last
days, I noticed something that I think was the Council's intention. Forgive
me if not. If you look at packet page 153 under 2.04.160(b), three lines
down it says City Clerk shall post draft Action Minutes on the City website and transmit a copy to each Council Member. I believe that is consistent
with the Council Members' intention. If you turn to the next page, though,
under "C" it says—I'm going to try to combine this—a verbatim transcript of
the proceedings shall also be prepared as soon as possible after each Council
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meeting. Skipping down after the strikeouts, verbatim transcripts shall be
made publicly available digitally and hard copies available upon request. I
do remember that conversation. I believe the intention was digitally would
mean on the website. While this Clerk interprets that to mean on the
website, going forward with a different City Clerk and other Council
Members, it seemed that it would clarify this if we said, "made publicly
available on the website and hard copies available upon request." That's the
clarification that's been provided at-places. If colleagues agree with that,
then we're good. If I've misinterpreted the intention here, then I really
would like to hear back on that. I see no discrepancy with that. Thank you
to City Clerk and Council Members. We do have a speaker to speak to Item
Number 5, Jamie Beckett. You will have three minutes. Welcome.
Jamie Beckett, regarding Agenda Item Number 5: Hi. I'm here to talk
about the bike boulevard. I live at 2577 Park Boulevard in Palo Alto Central Condominium Complex. I'm here to speak for myself and many of my
neighbors in the complex, which is home to 140 families in all. I'm here to
say that we appreciate this plan and applaud it, especially the planned
crosswalk at Sherman and the recommended crosswalk at Grant. We
continue to have serious concerns about speeding on Park Boulevard, which
is unsafe to bikers and others. We want to urge the Council to take steps to
initiate some kind of enforcement in this area. We also want to voice our
continued strong support for an actual crosswalk, not a recommended one,
at Grant Avenue. Thank you.
Mayor Holman: Thank you. With that, we return to the Council and look for
a motion regarding the Consent Calendar. Council Members?
Vice Mayor Schmid: Move the Consent Calendar.
Mayor Holman: Council Member Burt beat you to the punch to move the
Consent Calendar and, Council Member Burt, with the at-places clarification
provided by the City Clerk.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Second.
Mayor Holman: Vice Mayor Scharff, excuse me, Vice Mayor Schmid
seconding that.
MOTION: Council Member Burt moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Schmid to approve Agenda Item Numbers 4-12 with modifications to Agenda Item
Number 11- Adoption of a Revised Ordinance Amending Section 2.040.160
(City Council Minutes)… as outlined in the At Place Memorandum, replacing
“digitally” with “on the website.”
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4. Approval of Amendment Number 2 to Contract Number C14153012
With Metropolitan Planning Group for Support of Planning Review of
Individual Review and Architectural Review Applications Due to
Increased Workload and Unanticipated Staff Vacancies, Increasing the
Contract by $350,000 for a Not to Exceed Amount of $500,000 Over a
Three Year Period.
5. Review and Approval of Concept Plan Line Alignments for Proposed
Bicycle and Pedestrian Improvements Along Park Boulevard and Wilkie
Way.
6. Approval of Amendment Number 1 to the Agreement With the
Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board for Rail Shuttle Bus
Administration to Extend the Term for One Year and Add $81,670 to
Provide Community Shuttle Service on the Existing Embarcadero
Shuttle Route from July 2015 Until June 2016.
7. Resolution 9544 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo
Alto to Incorporate a Side Letter With the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU) to Allow a Change in the Police Dispatcher
Schedule from a 4/11 Schedule to a 4/12 Flex Schedule.”
8. Park Improvement Ordinance 5342 Entitled, “Park Improvement
Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo Alto for the Pilot Batting
Cages Project at Former PASCO Site at the Baylands Athletic Center
(FIRST READING: August 17, 2015 PASSED: 8-0 Scharff absent).”
9. Park Improvement Ordinance 5343 Entitled, “Park Improvement
Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo Alto for Improvements at
Monroe Park (FIRST READING: August 17, 2015 PASSED: 8-0 Scharff
absent).”
10. Park Improvement Ordinance 5344 Entitled, “Park Improvement
Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo Alto for the Byxbee Park
Hills Interim Park Concepts (FIRST READING: August 17, 2015
PASSED: 8-0 Scharff absent).”
11. Adoption of a Revised Ordinance Amending Section 2.040.160 (City
Council Minutes) of Chapter 2.04 (Council Organization and Procedure)
of the Palo Alto Municipal Code to Require Action Minutes and a Verbatim Transcript of all Council and Council Standing Committee
Meetings, and Delete the Requirement for Sense Minutes.
12. Ordinance 5345 Entitled, “Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo
Alto Amending Chapter 16.17 of the Palo Alto Municipal Code to Adopt
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Local Amendments to the California Energy Code” modifying Ordinance
5326 (FIRST READING: August 17, 2015 PASSED: 8-0 Scharff absent).
Mayor Holman: Vote on the board please. That passes on an 8-0 vote with
Council Member Kniss absent.
MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Kniss absent
Mayor Holman: City Clerk, it looks like we need to go a third round. Would
you care to report out?
Beth Minor, City Clerk: You are correct, Madam Mayor. We have Council
Member Berman voting for Mark Harris; Council Member Burt voting for Arne
Ballantine; Council Member DuBois voting for Mark Harris; Council Member
Filseth voting for Arne Ballantine; Mayor Holman voting for Mark Harris;
Council Member Scharff voting for Arne Ballantine; Vice Mayor Schmid
voting for Arne Ballantine, Council Member Wolbach voting for Marianne Wu.
We had Arne Ballantine with four votes, Mark Harris with three, and Marianne Wu with one.
Mayor Holman: Council Members, we need to give one more go at this.
Council Member Wolbach has a procedural question.
Council Member Wolbach: It might be a little bit late now. I was just going
to suggest that we narrow it down to the two who had received the most
votes in the prior round.
Council Member Burt: You can do that.
Council Member Wolbach: I would encourage my colleagues to do that.
Mayor Holman: Council Members, please place your ballot on the dais. We
will open Item 13, and we will have the Clerk report in during this item as
they have results.
Action Items
13. Parks and Recreation Commission Recommendation Regarding Possible
Uses for the 7.7 Acre Area at Foothills Park.
Mayor Holman: Welcome back again, Mr. de Geus. You have a Staff
presentation?
Rob de Geus, Community Services Director: We do. Good evening, Mayor
Holman, Council Members. We are here this evening to follow up on the
possible use of the newly dedicated 7.7 acres of parkland at Foothills Park.
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Staff's been working with the Parks and Recreation Commission and the
public to determine recommended next steps. We ask the Council this
evening to approve the following course of action which is to complete the
Buckeye Creek hydrology study before making any specific
recommendations for possible future use of the newly dedicated parkland;
direct Staff to return to the Parks and Recreation Commission to finalize
recommendations for Council on the use of the 7.7 acres after the hydrology
study is complete; and direct Staff to evaluate the impacts of these
recommendations on the Acterra nursery that exists there. To give Council
some further context of the work that we've done so far, we have Daren
Anderson here. He's the Division Manager of Parks and Open Space and
Golf. Daren has been with the City—for how long, Daren?
Daren Anderson, Parks, Open Space and Golf Division Manager: Sixteen
years.
Mr. de Geus: Sixteen years. He was a Park Ranger, a Senior Park Ranger,
and knows the parks better than anyone and spent a lot of time up in
Foothills Park. He's done a tremendous amount of work on this, which I
appreciate. He's going to give us a little presentation here for the discussion
and action.
Mr. Anderson: Good evening. Thanks so much for giving me the
opportunity to share the Park and Recreation Commission's recommendation
and Staff's recommendation regarding the 7.7 acres. I want to start by
walking you through this aerial photograph of the site. Just to orient you—
I'm going to use the cursor if you can see it. In the bottom right, you can
see Oak Grove picnic area. Just to the left of that, the City's maintenance
yard, shop. As you enter into the 7.7-acre area, just to the left you'll see
this .53-acre section where Acterra has their nursery. This red line passing
through is the emergency access easement that must be maintained. It
passes right on through this 7.7-acre parcel and onto Los Trancos Road.
This entire site is bordered on three areas by private residences. There is a
home here, and another home on this end. This parcel was given to the City
in 1981 by the Lee family to be used for conservation and park and
recreation purposes. Between March and August 2014, Council dedicated this parcel as parkland and directed Staff to work with the Commission to
come up with a recommendation for the best uses of that land. Since fall of
2014, Staff and the Commission have worked very closely to develop ideas
for specific land use options. We started with public outreach. In October
2014, we conducted four Ranger-led tours of the facility, of the site. On October 18, a community meeting up at Foothills Park where 27 members of
the community participated and shared their thoughts and ideas on how best
to use this site. There were three major themes that came about in this
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public meeting. The first were recreational activities that might be a good
fit. Those included concepts like a camp ground, a group picnic area and
facilities for special events. The second major theme was restoration, and it
varied from concepts of restoring the site by planting native grasses and
trees to larger-scale restoration of dechannelizing Buckeye Creek, removing
the overburdened soil and trying to create one contiguous valley. The third
theme we heard is how important it is to retain the Acterra nursery on this
site. I'm going to briefly highlight some of the challenges of this site in
terms of development. One of the more significant challenges is the
hydrology of Buckeye Creek. This is a channelized creek that has its origins
in Foothills Park up by Towle Camp and passes through this 7.7-acre parcel.
It's experienced significant down-cutting and erosion problems. The erosion
has caused sediments to wash down the creek and deposit into the 7.7-acre
parcel during the rainy season. These collected sediments need to be removed to prevent flooding. The adjacent landowner that borders this site
has managed the sediment removal up 'til now, for many years. Since
1987, the caretaker for Mr. Arrillaga, Michael Wizawati [phonetic spelling],
has been the person who has performed this work and has been
instrumental in helping us understand exactly what's gone into that. The
City will be responsible for taking over that work unless an agreement is
made between the City and Mr. Arrillaga to manage the sediment removal.
The Fiscal Year '16 Capital Budget includes funding for this hydrology study
to study, analyze and provide recommendations to resolve the down-cutting
and erosion problems in the creek. Staff's working to initiate the study as
quickly as possible. We're developing the Request for Proposal this month
and plan on bringing the hydrology study recommendations once complete
to the Parks and Recreation Commission in June 2016. There are culverts in
this creek—this is another challenge—that need to be secured with fencing
and a gate to ensure that the potentially dangerous area is safe for people.
I'm going to toggle to the next screen and show you just a photo. The photo
on the left is a 6-foot diameter pipe. This is Buckeye Creek flowing just as it
exits the 7.7-acre property. This is down a steep embankment that people
could get down into. It's just an example of what we'd want to secure off with fencing, but probably provide a large enough gate to allow a backhoe to
get in and remove any debris that accumulates down there. The soil
conditions are another challenge for this site. The Lee family had used this
entire area to store overburden. These are the spoils and rocks from the
adjacent quarry that were not desired. This overburden is comprised of highly compacted soils and rock, and it covers the hillside and the valley.
It's estimated that there's about 5 feet of overburden on the valley floor.
These soils don't drain well and make it a challenge to grow trees and
vegetation; although, I will say it's not impossible. We've talked to that
caretaker who, again, has been on that site since 1987. He has grown trees,
but they have been stunted in growth. It has been a challenge to keep them
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alive and going. There are no electrical, water or sewer lines on this site, so
any infrastructure that would require these amenities would bear the burden
of extra expense. I guess the example I'd give is the nearest sewer line is
up at the Interpretive Center. I already pointed out that emergency access
easement runs through, and that would need to be maintained. We could
not build on top of it. That's for emergency response and evacuation of
Foothills Park. There's also environmental regulations that preclude any
permanent structures within 15 feet from the banks of Buckeye Creek.
Lastly, I'll just point out that the 7.7-acre area is again bordered by private
residences. Privacy and noise are a concern, and we have to factor in as we
plan. The Parks and Recreation Commission discussed the possible uses for
the 7.7-acre parcel on January 27 and again on February 25. The
Commission considered a number of different options including opening up
the site in advance of the hydrology study for public use, which would involve the Council directing Staff to put in the necessary fencing and gates
and perhaps adding a simple loop trail and a couple of park benches. This
option would cost about $50,000. That's $30,000 for the benches and about
$20,000 for that simple trail and these two park benches. However, after
careful consideration, the Commission voted unanimously to recommend
that we complete the hydrology study of Buckeye Creek in advance of
opening the site to the public. The basis for that recommendation stems
from the argument that completing the hydrology study first allow us to
understand how the possible solutions to correct the problems in this creek,
the erosion and the undercutting, may affect that 7.7 acres in advance of
investing and working in that site. The second point would be following best
management practices of designing and preparing new parkland prior to
opening up to the public. It provides a greater likelihood that we could
protect the park resources and provide park users with an experience they'll
enjoy. Lastly, I think I'd point out that waiting for the study to be completed
before designing the use for the site would allow us to benefit from the
analysis of the Parks Master Plan, which will be completed in advance of the
hydrology study. It helps put the needs and opportunities for this site in
context with the needs, opportunities and priorities for the entire park system. The Commission also recommended that the Acterra nursery lease
be renewed so that the expiration of the lease would coincide with the
approximate timeframe to complete the hydrology study. The lease was set
to expire early this month. In advance of that, Staff renewed the lease for
an additional five years, but included an option to terminate that lease with a 90-day notification. Staff's been working very closely with Acterra
throughout this entire process, and they're supportive of this
recommendation. Staff will work quickly to complete this Buckeye Creek
hydrology study and return to the Parks and Recreation Commission and to
the public to create a well-informed recommendation for the use of the 7.7
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acres for Council's consideration. That completes the presentation. We're
available for any questions.
Mayor Holman: Could you restate something. A least to a couple of us it
wasn't clear. You said that the Acterra lease was scheduled to expire this
month?
Mr. Anderson: Yes, the beginning of August.
Mayor Holman: Staff extended it for five years. I couldn't understand what
the ...
Mr. Anderson: I'm sorry. On April 23, the lease was renewed for an
additional five years. There was a condition in their existing lease that they
could add on five years with City Manager approval. It was done through
the Real Estate Department. An additional five years was added on. The
new lease is five years from April 23.
Mayor Holman: I'm not understanding then how that lease could terminate with the hydrology study being concluded.
Mr. Anderson: It's the clause that allows for a 90-day termination on either
party's part.
Mayor Holman: That's the part I didn't understand. That helps. I have no
public comment on this item. Chair Reckdahl, did you have any comments
that you wanted to make?
Male: (inaudible)
Mayor Holman: We do have cards; I just didn't have them yet. Before we
go to the public, do we have results of the UAC vote?
Beth Minor, City Clerk: Madam Mayor, we do. We have Council Member
Berman voting for Mark Harris; Council Member Burt voting for Arne
Ballantine; Council Member DuBois voting for Arne Ballantine; Council
Member Filseth voting for Arne Ballantine; Mayor Holman voting for Arne
Ballantine; Council Member Scharff voting for Arne Ballantine; Vice Mayor
Schmid voting for Arne Ballantine; and Council Member Wolbach voting for
Arne Ballantine. With seven votes, Arne Ballantine is appointed to the UAC.
Mayor Holman: It's like a heavyweight bout. Thank you, once again, to
everyone who applied. It obviously was a difficult choice to make. I do
encourage other people to stay involved and continue your interest in the City of Palo Alto, of course. Thank you to the City Clerks to finish that
voting. We have three speakers who wish to speak to this. Alexandra Von
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Feldt to be followed by Pat Markevitch and then Herb Borock. You'll each
have three minutes. Thank you.
Alexandra Von Feldt: Thank you. Good evening, counselors. I'm with
Acterra, and I'm their program director for our land stewardship program.
Over the years, I think I've spoken with most of you up here. Over the
years, we've been working with thousands of residents and volunteers to
help restore Palo Alto's open spaces and parks including Arastradero
Preserve, Foothills Park and San Francisquito Creek. We actually
participated in the walk that the Assistant City Manager mentioned, and we
found our sites for our coastal clean-up day that will come in October. I'm
speaking tonight in favor of the Parks and Rec Commission recommendation
as well as the Staff Report. We participated in several of the meetings that
Daren outlined as well as the site visits. They took a lot of different views
into consideration and really deliberated on this decision. We also support the hydrology study as hopefully the first step to restore Buckeye Creek.
We see a lot of value in it, not only from the habitat restoration but also it'll
help improve groundwater recharge and help with flood attenuation in the
park. We realize that the long-term vision, if we do restore the creek, will
probably have an impact on Acterra's nursery. We couldn't stay where we
are now, but we feel like the benefit is worth it. We've had such a good
working relationship with the City of Palo Alto, we think that we'd be able to
work with the Staff to find a more appropriate location in the future. Thank
you.
Pat Markevitch, Parks and Recreation Commissioner: Good evening, Council
Members, Mayor. I was a member of the ad hoc committee for the 7.7
acres. This was a fun project to work on. We had a lot of public outreach.
We had some pretty interesting ideas for that use. I think there was even
somebody who wanted to put horses in there and play (inaudible) for kids.
It was getting pretty crazy. We landed on our recommendation because
there were a number of limitations to the parcel. There's no on-site utilities.
We can't be within a certain amount of feet of Buckeye Creek. There is the
overburdened soil. I say to my friends that that parcel of land actually
makes my front lawn look good, because it's so bad. We recommend—again I'll just reiterate it—that we move forward with the hydrological study,
because that will drive the decision on what you want to do with the parcel.
It's very important that we have a yearly lease for Acterra to coincide with
completion of the hydrologic study. You heard about that earlier. Also, to
keep it closed until the study is complete, because there are some places in there that are just not safe. There's culverts and small children could fall in
and they're not gated off. It's just for safety reasons we need to keep that
closed for now. It's cost prohibitive to do some of the things that people
want to do. One was mentioned to move the maintenance yard to the back
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of that parcel. Right now it kind of keeps it separate from the rest. It's just
cost prohibitive. It would be probably millions of dollars to do that. I'm just
going to say again to please approve our recommendation. Thank you.
Herb Borock: Mayor Holman and Council Members, Commissioner
Markevitch repeated the Commission's recommendation for a one-year lease
with Acterra as stated in your Staff Report. It's just now at the last minute
that Staff is telling us that they signed a five-year lease renewal. As
Acterra's representative said, they have good relations with Staff. What
comes first are the City's organic documents including its Charter and the
use of parklands. I support the Staff recommendation and the Parks and
Rec's recommendation, because it gives Acterra the opportunity to locate
and secure an alternate location that is not dedicated to park purposes, so
that Acterra can continue its commercial restoration projects in San Mateo
and Santa Clara Counties that remove non-native plants, re-vegetate open space areas with natives and educate residents how their gardens can
support native flora and fauna. Acterra has been able to use the 7.7-acre
area that has been recently dedicated to parkland and added to Foothills
Park, because the previous City Manager neglected to seek park dedication.
Acterra's commercial business had expenses in the fiscal year ending
June 30, 2014 of $655,399. They clearly have the financial resources to
secure an alternate location, or Acterra may be able to use a location owned
by one of its other customers, for example, Google or the Midpeninsula
Regional Open Space District. Google is the Acterra customer located
closest to Acterra's office on East Bayshore Road. The Midpeninsula Open
Space District properties in Palo Alto cannot be dedicated to parkland by the
City Council because the City does not own or control them. Further, the
Council approved the Open Space District's request to remove Open Space
District land from the Williamson Act restrictions and protection to give the
Open Space District the flexibility to use its land for other purposes. It
seems to me that during this period when the study is being done, I hope it
would be a transition period where Acterra can find an alternate location
that's not on dedicated parkland to run its commercial business that at least
in the previous year was a $655,000 business. Thank you.
Mayor Holman: Thank you. That was our final speaker under this item. We
turn to Council Members now. I have Council Member Wolbach. I'm sorry,
Council Member Wolbach was second. Council Member DuBois was first.
Questions and comments.
Council Member DuBois: I'll be real brief. I did take one of the tours, and I participated in the brainstorming. There was a great turnout. In the report,
there was kind of two timelines on the hydrologist study. There's page 4
that suggests it'll be done in basically a year from today. Page 7 which it
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seems to be further out, just says Fiscal Year 2017 to go back to Parks and
Rec. Which timeframe is it?
Mr. Anderson: Thanks for that question. I apologize for the lack of clarity.
My understanding right now—I'm getting support from Public Works on this
particular component of this process as they have more expertise in
hydrology. They're working on setting up this scope of work with me. This
timeframe I got from them. My understanding is that, again, we would put
this RFP together this week and next week, finish that part. Issue a notice
to proceed in November of this year, and then be able to come back to the
Parks Commission with an actual list of possible recommendations in June
2016.
Council Member DuBois: For me, if that length of time was ten years, I
would have a different opinion on keeping it closed. If you can stick to that
schedule, I support the unanimous recommendation of our Parks and Rec Commission with that caveat that I'd like to see it come back in a year.
Thanks.
Council Member Scharff: I just wanted to follow up on Council Member
DuBois' question. Maybe I just didn't follow. June 2016 is when the
hydrology study is likely to be completed. From then on, we have to decide
what to do with it after we read the hydrology study. If that talked to
changing the creek to meander or something, I assume that would take a
substantial amount of time. Wouldn't you have to do at least an EIR or
wouldn't you have to do—I mean, aren't there all these riparian issues that
relate? Aren't creeks difficult to work in, I guess? I'm trying to figure out—
when Council Member DuBois said it could take ten years, it struck me that
it could take at least five years or six years to open it to the public. I didn't
think that was unrealistic if we move forward on this. I wanted to get your
sense of when you thought this would be open to the public.
Mr. de Geus: It all depends on the hydrology study. You're correct,
depending on what that tells us. If it tells us significant changes need to
happen to that creek, like realignment and other things, it could take quite
some time. As you know, permits and other things and working within a
creek bed to take (crosstalk).
Council Member Scharff: That's what I was getting at. I thought permits in
a creek bed were virtually an act of God. I am concerned this could be
closed for ten years. It did strike me that way. When I read the Staff
Report, I was unclear why you wouldn't go with alternative option, directing
the Staff to install the necessary fencing. I heard Commissioner Markevitch say it was a safety issue, but when I read the Staff Report, if we spend
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$30,000 on the fencing, it's no longer a safety issue. It struck me that the
issue is simply do we want to spend $51,000 and open this up to the public
and use it, see it, know it's there, have a sense that they've gotten some
benefit out of the 7.7 acres or is it not worth spending the $51,000 because
we're going to probably do something different. The first question is, if we
spend the $51,000, is it likely that any of that fencing would be reused by
the time five years from now or six years or ten years we get to deciding
what to do.
Mr. de Geus: It's possible. Without having the study done and knowing
what impacts it's going to have in terms of options on the site, it's hard to
say. I think some of the perimeter fencing would remain. It depends what
we do with the future of Acterra. It's unknown, Council Member Scharff.
Your bigger question is why don't we recommend opening it. My view is it
isn't a good use of funds. We've got 1,400 acres at Foothills Park, and we've got 15 miles of trails, a great lake and picnic areas and camping spaces.
This 7.7 acres and opening it up without a real plan for that location with a
simple ...
Council Member Scharff: You seem to have a plan. The plan is to have a
loop trail with two benches, so the public can go use it.
Mr. de Geus: That's very minimal.
Council Member Scharff: Yeah, it's very minimal. I agree. I wouldn't say
you don't have a plan.
Mr. de Geus: It's a short-term plan, and I don't think it adds much value to
the park. If we were to plan a park, that's not how we would do it. We
wouldn't put in a loop trail like that and simply slap it together.
Council Member Scharff: Do you think there's any value to the public being
able to actually have access while people think about what they want the
site to do? I mean, it's one thing to think about it in abstract. It's another
thing, as we discuss it for five to ten years, to be able to walk through it and
see it. Do you think there's any value to that?
Mr. de Geus: That's a good question. I think there's probably some value in
that if we can do it safely and if it's for that reason. Maybe that can be done
differently, though, with tours at certain times to get access to it, if that's the purpose to think about future use of the park as opposed to just it being
open and having people wander around 24/7.
Council Member Burt: I support the Staff recommendation. I do think that
once we have the hydrology study, that's the appropriate time to look at
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whether we do a short-term access measure that may be a right thing to do.
I look forward to—what? A year from now?—when we'll hopefully have that.
I do want to just take this opportunity to give some feedback on some of the
alternatives that are being considered. In the report, it talked a lot about
that this was essentially a quarry dumping ground as were some of the
hillsides adjacent to this. This means we have weak soils, and it further
reiterates that this is a goofy place to try to plant trees that need deep,
strong soils. The adjacent property owner who had the lease put redwoods
in which don't grow natively at this location anyway. I want to see natural
vegetation there, and I think it fits. If we look at Foothills Park, what we've
done wrong and what we've done right, we have tens of acres of irrigated
turf in Foothills Park. Some of it is used for recreation, and a lot is not. It's
just irrigated turf in a natural habitat. We don't exercise the stream-side
setbacks that are actually part of our current Comprehensive Plan. I'll just briefly say that one of my first actions as a Planning Commissioner 16, 17
years ago was with the Capital Improvement Plan, and they were going to
redo—they did redo all the turf in Foothills Park. We had just adopted a new
Comp Plan talking about a 100-foot stream-side setback. We were putting
irrigation and turf within 10 feet of a creek. I asked at that time if this was
going to be natural grasses or ornamental grasses, and the Staff response
was these grasses kind of grow wild after a while next to the creek. I was
pretty appalled. The reason I bring it up is because I think we have an
opportunity to look fresh and at the model of what's gone on in upper Wild
Horse Valley, where over the last several years Acterra and a whole lot of
community volunteers have removed all the thistle and invasive species
there and planted native wildflowers. For those who have not been up there
the last two years in springtime, it is just amazing. It is one of the most
remarkable sites in all of Palo Alto. It hasn't gotten the press. When we talk
about this 7.7 acres and different colleagues have kind of, last year and
previously, dumped on its opportunity, I think it's a great opportunity. We
shouldn't try to turn it into something else. It's a natural meadowland with
perhaps shrubbery and some trees on the fringes. I think everything else is
not only fighting against what would occur naturally there, but fighting against the soil conditions. I really encourage us to look at this. On the
stream-side permitting, there was also a year ago this discussion in the
report that seems like it's died down about this being a potential steelhead
spawning stream. It runs a very short time out of the year because of its
soil conditions and limited water, unlike Los Trancos Creek that it feeds into which runs all year long. This creek does not really contribute in any way to
that potential. I don't think we're going to have that problem, because
that's what drives stream permitting issues predominantly, is threatened
species.
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Vice Mayor Schmid: A couple of questions. The hydrology study will look at
the flow of Buckeye Creek through the park. Is that right?
Mr. Anderson: That's right. Through the park and through that 7.7 acres.
Vice Mayor Schmid: A lot of the sand that is brought comes out of the park
into the 7.7 acres. My feeling is that's a fairly complex study, and I would
guess that there's going to be three or four alternatives which might be
quite distinct and different with varying prices associated with it. Is that a
reasonable assumption?
Mr. Anderson: I believe so.
Vice Mayor Schmid: We have to think through the park itself, what we
want, what we're willing to invest for the long term, how to get back to its
environmental nature. Now if you go back a step to your Park Master Plan,
one of the things you've done is run a number of workshops, people
surveys, what do you want, what's missing, what would you like to see. Of course, you'd like to do the same thing with Foothills Park, run surveys,
workshops with people, what do you think and where are you going to go
with this. I would think it'd be very helpful that people's only experience
with the 7.7 acres now is to walk through a site that is prohibited, signs do
not enter here. You walk through for 50 feet and you have an 8-foot fence
where you can't see anything. Public participation will be minimal, unless
there's an opportunity for people to have some experience of that valley and
park. I guess I can see some real virtues to having a simple loop trail where
over the course of a year or maybe it's three years, as these decisions are
being thought of and made, having a group of people who actually
experience something and can look back on a summer evening up Wild
Horse Valley, can see the nice valley that is there or can see that it's just a
gravel pit. Who wants to spend money on a gravel pit? Those are choices
that people should participate in. It seems to me some kind of access, a
simple loop trail, would get over time hundreds of people to have some
experience of the space. Yeah, I think there's virtue in spending a few
dollars now to make that future choice, which is going to be a tough one,
more amenable. Let me just ask a practical question. There's a lot of
gravel, 5 feet of gravel, in there. Is there any value to that? I see people and companies with gravel trucks coming and utilizing gravel. Is there any
value or, even if there's not value, is there any use for that?
Mr. Anderson: That's a good question, and one I think you might have
mentioned in a previous meeting. I took note of that. We took a sample
down to Public Works Staff that manage the landfill and showed it to them and said, "Do you think there is value? Is there any place that will take this?
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Will you take this?" They said, "No. This is not of value. You'd probably
have to pay someone to take it." They did just a quick query of what we
might pay in trucking to get it out of the area. This doesn't include paying
someone to take it. Just the trucking, he estimated—this is crude, back of
the envelope--$160,000.
Vice Mayor Schmid: I assume when we get to the hydrology study, those
are issues we'd want to look at, as even to get it to a base, natural state to
have to do something. Thank you.
Mayor Holman: Just one or two things. I essentially support the Staff and
Parks and Rec recommendation. I do have concerns that go along with
Council Member Scharff's concerns, though, about really how long this is
going to be closed. I read about the compaction issue on the 2.1 acres
that's flat. The Staff Report keeps talking about it's the only place viable for
a structure. I don't know why we want to put a structure there necessarily. There seems to be a lot of focus on building a structure; that's not
necessarily where I am. Not to say I wouldn’t go there, but it's not
necessarily where I am. I do have a question. It seems that taking that
gravel area out, the compacted area out, is expensive. I'm wondering in
reading what the neighbor has done in terms of putting in a lot of redwood
compost to get trees to grow—again, I'm not suggesting that we try to grow
trees in that 2.1 acres. Is there any rationale that would say that we
shouldn't be taking loads of compost there as we have all these clippings
and stuff that get composted? Is there any reason we shouldn't be taking
some loads of compost there to start helping to build some soil there for
future natural plantings? Again, to kind of help us move forward in a next
step. Is there some reason that that might interfere with a future creek
plan?
Mr. Anderson: That's an excellent question. In general, I'm very supportive
and have seen positive results of using compost to alter the soil
substructure, so much so that I've read about farmers who year after year
compost areas that were once rock that eventually they could put their arm
up to their shoulder apparently. I haven't seen that in person but I've read
about it several times. I thought about this site being a candidate for that. One of the problems we've got is the elevations. I think naturally Foothills
Park used to slope down to that site, and we've raised it up 5 feet. My fear
is that by putting down a significant amount of compost over time, in
advance of this hydrology study and understanding exactly what the
possibilities are or recommendations may be, we might be taking a step in the wrong direction potentially. I'd almost rather wait to find out what we
hear from the hydrologists who look at the area, and then determine—if part
of the solution is taking that out, I would rather have not spent the time and
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energy to get the compost going if it's ultimately going to be removed. If
we learn that it is appropriate, then I think that would be the right course of
action, to bring out compost and slowly start to turn that soil and change it
and improve it.
Mayor Holman: I heard you say you have concerns about that. Do we know
that that would be an issue?
Mr. Anderson: No, I do not.
Mayor Holman: I guess what I would suggest is that we determine if it
would be an issue or not, because otherwise we're going to be a year behind
potentially. if we go forward, should we decide to put compost out there and
start, as you say, softening that area. The other thing is we could put sheep
or horses or something out there for a short period of time because of the
composting capability of animals. I mean, seriously. It's pretty much free.
I guess rather than just assume that—you have a knowledge base; I'm not denying that certainly. Rather than just going on what it seems like it might
be, let's find out if it would be an issue or not to start delivering some level
of compost out there to start working on de-compacting that soils in that
2.1-acre site. With that, motions? I see no other comments or questions.
Council Members, have a motion? No one's jumping to the fore.
Council Member Filseth: Move to accept the Staff Recommendation.
Council Member Wolbach: Second.
Mayor Holman: Motion by Council Member Filseth, second by Council
Member Wolbach, to follow Staff Recommendation.
MOTION: Council Member Filseth moved, seconded by Council Member
Wolbach to:
A. Complete the Buckeye Creek hydrology study before making any
specific recommendations for possible future use of the newly
dedicated parkland; and
B. Direct Staff to return to the Parks and Recreation Commission to
finalize a recommendation for Council on how to use the 7.7 acre
parcel after the hydrology study is complete; and
C. Direct Staff to evaluate the impacts of the recommendation to Council
on the Acterra Nursery lease, which includes a provision allowing for termination of the lease with a 90-day notification.
Mayor Holman: Council Member Filseth, care to speak to your motion?
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Council Member Filseth: Just briefly. I think there's a difference between
conservancy and recreation. As a municipality, for us they're clearly linked,
but they don't necessarily have to be in lockstep. The most important thing
is that the land be preserved, which it is. We're going to have it for a long,
long time. I don't see a need to rush into using it urgently. I think as was
pointed out, we've got much larger Foothills Park right next to it. We've got
Monte Bello Open Space Preserve and Los Trancos not too far up Page Mill.
I think we might as well take our time and proceed deliberately on this. It's
not going anywhere. Thanks.
Council Member Wolbach: I will just second everything that Council Member
Filseth said.
Vice Mayor Schmid: I'd propose an amendment, Number 4, which would be
an alternative option and would include the "1," "2," "3" on packet page 175.
That would install fencing and gates, install a simple loop trail and open the site to the public.
Mayor Holman: Ask the maker of the motion, do you accept that?
Council Member Filseth: I think I will not accept that.
Mayor Holman: Vice Mayor, you could float that as a separate amendment.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Okay, an amendment.
Council Member Scharff: I'll second it.
AMENDMENT: Vice Mayor Schmid moved, seconded by Council Member
Scharff to add to the Motion: Alternative option:
A. Install the necessary fencing and gates to ensure that the 7.7 acre
site, including the Acterra Nursery, is safe and secure; and
B. Install a simple loop trail and two park benches; and
C. Open the site to the public.
Mayor Holman: Vice Mayor, would you care to speak to your amendment?
Vice Mayor Schmid: I think as we move forward to make some very hard
decisions over the next two, three, four years, that we'd be engaged in this
that it's important that the public is an active participant in it. For a very
reasonable price, we could not only get that benefit but have the pleasure of
utilizing our 7.7-acre space in a unique environment. I think it is a bargain
to work for and well worth it.
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Council Member Scharff: For me, this really comes down to whether or not
it's worth the $50,000 to open this up, given that we're probably going to
have it closed for somewhere between five and ten years otherwise. I could
be wrong; obviously we could get it open earlier. Having been in Palo Alto,
I'm guessing we're probably north of that five years. There was a lot of
interest in this 7.7 acres by the community. I think that weighs to giving
people access to it. I hear that the fencing, we may be able to reuse it. If
that's the case, we're not wasting the money on that part. I'm pretty sure
we can reuse the benches. We may even be able to use some of the trail; I
don't know. I'd like people to be able to see it. I think it's important to
open it to the public and to get it out there. Otherwise, it just won't be. I'm
going to support the amendment.
Council Member Burt: I will be open to considering this action a year from
now when we have the hydrology report. I just think it's premature at this time. I'd love to be able to use it as soon as possible. I'm one of the people
who would probably use it pretty regularly, but I just think this is a
premature action. I want to see the hydrology report and begin to get
closer to an understanding of where we might be heading. I do think it will
be useful to allow the public access to it before we've implemented the full
plan. I'm going to be open to that consideration in a year.
Council Member Wolbach: Actually, I wanted to ask any of the
Commissioners present if they have any additional thoughts they'd like to
weigh in on this. I'm currently not supportive of the amendment. I
understand from the Staff Report, Staff and the Commission are not in favor
of this option. I just wanted to ask if either member of the Commission has
any further comments to add as far as why they're not supportive of that
alternative recommendation.
Keith Reckdahl, Parks and Recreation Commission Chair: I do see the
benefit of having access to it. I guess I would come down to we don't have
an infinite budget. If we could make the fencing and be assured that we
wouldn't be wasting a lot of money, if the fencing would be reused, then I
could be persuaded to support the fencing. If we're going to be putting up
fencing and it wouldn't be used down the road, then I'm not quite as confident that I'd support that.
Council Member Wolbach: I'm going to have to agree with Council Member
Burt. I think this is premature. I'm going to stick with the original motion
and oppose the amendment.
Mayor Holman: Let me also recognize Commissioner Crommie who is here.
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Deirdre Crommie, Parks and Recreation Commissioner: Hi there. I'm
Deirdre Crommie sitting on the Parks and Recreation Commission. I did not
sit on the ad hoc, but I'm a member of the Commission. I voted in favor of
our motion to do the hydrology study, because that's essential to move
forward on anything. We have to know what's going on there. I'm a real
big supporter on opening it up. It's not going to cost that much money to
put the fencing in there. I just think that we have to start envisioning that
area as integrated with our park because of really what Council Member
Schmid said, that we're going to have really hard decisions to make once the
study comes through. Just getting people in there to see it is going to be
important and also getting Acterra used to the concept that they might not
have that place long term. They're going to have to slowly kind of integrate
use. They're going to have to be a good neighbor to the residents of Palo
Alto, as they are, and figure out a way to open that up. I feel like we just get a lack of inertia when we can't actually see what's going on there. We
won't have the kind of engagement over the final decision-making unless we
open that up. I'd be in favor of that.
Ms. Markevitch: I'm actually not in favor of opening it up. There's really not
much to see there right now. There are safety issues. I'm always erring on
the side of fiscal "why are we spending this money when it doesn't make
sense." If we don't know if we're going to use it later on or not use it, to me
I'd rather just be the fiscally responsible one and say it's 50,000 here,
50,000 there. It adds up. Let's just not do that anymore. Thanks.
Mayor Holman: I see no other lights. This is a hard one, for me personally,
because it's land that we own. It's supposed to be open to the public. I'm
sympathetic to both sides of this. It's a very hard call for me. I'm more
prone to go with the Staff and Parks and Rec Commission recommendation,
but it's a close call for me.
Council Member Berman: I agree that it's a tough call. This is one instance
where I'm going to defer to our Commission and kind of respect the work
that they did on this. Hopefully we come back when the hydrology study is
done and reevaluate. I definitely see where everyone's coming from on this.
Mayor Holman: With that, we will vote on the board to install the necessary fencing and gates to ensure that the 7.7-acre site including the Acterra
nursery is safe and secure and install a simple loop trail and two park
benches and open the site to the public. Vote on the board please. That
amendment fails on a 3-5 vote with Council Member Scharff—I mis-voted. I
mis-voted. Could we correct my vote please? That's a negative vote. I mis-voted. That amendment fails on a 2-6 vote with Vice Mayor Schmid and
Council Member Scharff voting yes.
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AMENDMENT FAILED: 2-6 Scharff, Schmid yes
Mayor Holman: We return now to the main motion.
Council Member Scharff: I think it is important then that we come back
after the hydrology study and decide whether or not we want to open it up
at that point, like Council Member Burt said. I guess I would make an
amendment that Staff come back to us at the completion of the hydrology
study to evaluate whether or not we should open the land up to the public.
Mayor Holman: I'll second that. Care to speak to that?
Council Member Berman: Can he accept it?
Mayor Holman: That's right. I apologize. Yes. Council Member Filseth?
Council Member Filseth: Yeah, I accept it.
Mayor Holman: Council Member Wolbach?
Council Member Wolbach: I will accept that amendment. I think that's
prudent.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “Direct Staff to return within
three months after the completion of the hydrology study for options to
make the parkland open to the public.”
Council Member DuBois: Just wondering if we could just specify and say
September 2016. Once the hydrology study is done, it's going to go to our
Parks and Rec. I think it's reasonable it goes to them before it comes to us.
It wasn't clear if you wanted it to come to us first.
Council Member Scharff: You're asking me if it should come to us first?
Council Member DuBois: That's the way I interpreted what you said. I
didn't know if that's what you meant. I'm saying maybe just put a
timeframe on it instead.
Council Member Scharff: I'm happy to put a timeframe on it. It's just if
they don't have the hydrology study done, what good would it have to have
a timeframe on it? That's my only concern. I don't want it to get hung up in
Parks and Rec forever. I'm open to it going to Parks and Rec first. I think it
should.
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Council Member DuBois: It seemed like your concern was how much time it
would take.
Council Member Scharff: Right. I mean, I'd like to put it on it. I assume
they're going to do the hydrology study with all haste, and then they'll get it
to the Parks and Rec, and they'll get it back. I'm just nervous about saying
September if they don't have the hydrology study done. That's all.
Mr. de Geus: Maybe we could say something like within X months after the
hydrology study is complete.
Council Member Scharff: That would be ...
Mr. de Geus: I don't know what would be an appropriate timeline. Three
months?
Council Member Scharff: Three months, that's fine.
Mayor Holman: You're anticipating the hydrology study to take a year?
Mr. de Geus: That's what we're anticipating right now, yeah. If that changes, we'll let Council know.
Mayor Holman: Any other comments on the motion?
Council Member Wolbach: Is it necessary to stipulate that it would return to
Parks and Rec and then to Council or is the language as written fine?
Mayor Holman: The natural process would be it would go to Parks and Rec
Commission. They are the advisory group to the Council on these matters.
Council Member Wolbach: As expected. Just wanted to clarify. Thank you.
Mayor Holman: I'm going to support this. I also wanted to ask Staff if you
would do one thing. I'm not going to try to make it an amendment. If you
would just do an info item to us, or something of that nature, would you look
at in anticipation of opening this how we might start getting compost up
there and re-naturalizing that?
Mr. Anderson: Yes, I'll look into that.
Mayor Holman: And what the impacts of that might or might not be and the
issue that you raised earlier. With that, we have a motion in front of us with
no other Council Member lights. Motion by Council Member Filseth, Council
Member Wolbach, to complete the Buckeye Creek hydrology study before
making any specific recommendations for possible future use of the newly
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dedicated parkland; and direct Staff to return to the Parks and Rec
Commission to finalize a recommendation to Council on how to use the 7.7-
acre parcel after the hydrology study is complete; and direct Staff to
evaluate the impacts of the recommendation to Council and the Acterra
nursery lease which includes a provision allowing for termination of the lease
with a 90-day notification; and direct Staff to return within three months
after the completion of the hydrology study for options to make the parkland
open to the public. Vote on the board please. That passes on an 8-0 vote,
Council Member Kniss absent. Thank you, colleagues.
MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 8-0 Kniss absent
14. Comprehensive Plan Update: Comprehensive Plan Structure and
Goals/Vision Statements for Each Element (Part I: Community
Services & Facilities and Transportation Elements).
15. Appointment of Five Additional Members to the Comprehensive Plan Update Citizens Advisory Committee.
Mayor Holman: A couple of points of business here. One is that for Item
Number 15, which again is now being taken up first, the City Clerk is going
to provide ballots. Anticipate that we'll be going through a few ballots. City
Clerk, if you want to make any comments or I can ask Council Members first
for their thoughts. Council Member Berman, you had asked previously what
our process would be for the voting. A couple of thoughts are that people
who get no votes would not go forward to a second round. Potentially,
people who get one vote would not go forward to a second round, given how
many candidates we have. Since you asked the question earlier, I'll give the
floor to you to make any recommendations that you might want or ask any
questions you might want to, to inform us on your persuasion.
Council Member Berman: I have no recommendations, but thank you. I
guess one question I'd have is what is the goal to—what does somebody
need to get automatically chosen?
Mayor Holman: The goal is to get five people appointed, and they need five
votes to get appointed.
Council Member Berman: Yes, and they need five votes. Thank you.
Mayor Holman: Just like any Board or Commission. Correct, City Attorney? You haven't had a chance to say anything. I just thought I'd throw you
something. Anyone would need five votes.
Council Member Filseth: (inaudible)
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Mayor Holman: We have a sixth seat that is potentially open. There is
nothing agendized this evening to address that other opening, so we can do
nothing about that. For those who don't know, Mila Zelkha did submit her
resignation, and so there is another opening should we choose to fill it. That
would have to come back on a future calendar. Tonight we are dealing with
five openings. Council Members, I would like suggestions. Let's not make
this a drawn out thing. Council Member Scharff, do you have a suggestion
on no votes, one vote?
Council Member Scharff: I do. I think my suggestion would be that on the
first round that if you get no votes, then you don't come back to the second
round. If you only got one vote, you definitely come back to the second
round. After that, I think people will start seeing it, and I'm not sure we
need to cut it off after that. We could also cut it off that after the second
round if you only get one vote. Then when you move to the third round.
Mayor Holman: We could do a lot of things. I'd like a suggestion.
Council Member Scharff: My recommendation would be just that if you get
no votes, you're out. If you get one vote, you're in.
Mayor Holman: That is seconded by Council Member Filseth. Vice Mayor
Schmid.
Vice Mayor Schmid: No, I had the same question.
Council Member Burt: I like it in concept, but I'm trying to figure out how
the Clerk's going to do that logistically other than to strike out from nine
ballots everybody who didn't get a vote.
Mayor Holman: We did talk about this previously. Does City Clerk have a
response on how we might do this?
Beth Minor, City Clerk: That's correct, we were going to strike it out. Also,
what we're going to do is as the votes are tallied, we're going to put it up on
the overhead like it is up there now. The names will be deleted out, so we
can narrow the field.
Council Member Burt: Then maybe you don't have to strike it out on our—
we'll just be able to read it.
Council Member Wolbach: The City Attorney provided by email a suggestion
regarding holding a straw vote for the sixth spot which could then return to Council for approval in the future with a Staff recommendation. I'd like to
hear from the City Attorney on that suggestion.
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Molly Stump, City Attorney: Thank you, Council Member Wolbach. Mayor
Holman, it is correct that the item that's before you is for the five seats.
That's what the Council can take final action on tonight. Unexpectedly there
is another opening. If the Council finds it convenient, you could consider
this group of applicants and express a preference for filling a sixth vacancy,
decide if you want to do that or direct the City Manager to do that. If you
did want to identify someone who had the Council's support, we could then
bring that appointment back on a consent item on a future calendar. That
would streamline consideration of this item.
Council Member Wolbach: In light of that, what I'd suggest is that we
actually vote for six. Then when it comes time—my suggestion is we vote
for six. We select five and identify the sixth to be—we allow Staff to come
back with the sixth.
Mayor Holman: I would think that we can't vote for six because it's not agendized.
Ms. Stump: You can't take action on six tonight. The item's a little broader
than just the appointment of the five. It also includes the Council's input on
the work of the CAC and the schedule. If the Council wishes to identify a
sixth that we could bring back on consent, we can expedite then you having
another action item in the future. If you prefer, certainly there's no difficulty
at all if the Council prefers having a separate action item on a vacant
position at some point in the future.
Mayor Holman: Another way, of course, to approach this could be we vote
for the five, and then if it's close or not close for a sixth, then we can decide
at that point in time if we wanted to vote for a sixth in a straw poll kind of
manner.
Council Member Burt: I can go either way on this. I just want to say that
there was nothing magical about needing 22 voting members plus 3
nonvoting. We were trying to decide three to five additional members. We
should anticipate over the course of the next year and a half we will have
other members who will drop off. I think because it will be part way through
the process, we won't want to go through an exercise of adding members at
that time. That does lead to justification to maybe going through this tonight because it's at the last point in the beginning of the process where
we would be willing to add members. I don't feel a necessity to add this
sixth one. I could go either way.
Council Member Wolbach: If it pleases the Chair, again I would suggest that
we go with six votes and do it that way. Keep it clean. I'll admit one of the reasons I'm in favor of that is I've had a really hard time narrowing it down,
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like the UAC. We had a number of fantastic applicants. If it's not in the
Chair's prerogative to make the decision, I'd make it as a motion.
Ms. Stump: Madam Mayor, one way to do this if you wish to proceed that
way is to make the first five appointments that you then vote on, and you
make the appointments. The last one that comes into place, you consider
that to be a straw poll that we bring back on consent.
Mayor Holman: That also assumes though that we would want to appoint a
sixth one. We've not made that decision yet as a body.
Council Member DuBois: Thank you. I had the same point, but I would
actually make the motion that we vote for the five so it's clear who we are
taking action on tonight. Then we would separately vote for one that would
go on consent, a future agenda. I do think it's the appropriate time since
we're adding people right now versus people that might drop out of the
process six months from now.
Mayor Holman: Vice Mayor Schmid, are you wanting to second his motion?
Vice Mayor Schmid: Yeah, I will second Council Member Wolbach's motion.
Mayor Holman: So that's seconded by Vice Mayor Schmid, to vote for five
members for appointment.
MOTION: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Mayor Holman to
vote for five members for appointment to the Comprehensive Plan Update
Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC) and then vote for one additional member
for future appointment.
Mayor Holman: I see no other lights.
Council Member Berman: I'm confused.
Mayor Holman: What we are doing is we are—the motion is to vote for five
members for appointment to the CAC.
Council Member Berman: That was Council Member DuBois' motion. I
heard Vice Mayor Schmid second Council Member Wolbach's motion.
Mayor Holman: No, Vice Mayor ...
Vice Mayor Schmid: Yes.
Council Member DuBois: Yeah, he did.
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Vice Mayor Schmid: I seconded Council Member Wolbach's.
Mayor Holman: I didn't hear Council Member Wolbach have a motion.
Council Member Wolbach: Again, I was waiting to hear whether it was time
to make motions. If it's not the Chair's prerogative, I'll make one. It's up
on the board. If it pleases the Chair, I will speak to the motion.
Council Member Burt: We've got a substitute listed there too. I'm confused.
Council Member Wolbach: Which has not been seconded.
Council Member DuBois: Yeah. Was that a substitute to my motion? I'm
just concerned that we need to be clear about the five we're taking action
on. I'm not sure how you do that in a six-person vote. I still think we'd like
a majority, so my proposal is vote for five and then vote for one, and clarify
five we're taking action on, one we're taking a straw poll.
Hillary Gitelman, Planning and Community Environment Director: Mayor
Holman, if I can interject. Hillary Gitelman, the Planning Director. I think both motions are really the same. Council Member DuBois is just making it
clear that the five would be appointed this evening. The sixth would be
placed on consent to come back.
Mayor Holman: My point is we have not decided that we want to appoint a
sixth. That's my point. We've not decided we want to do that.
Ms. Gitelman: Both motions currently end up with six appointments. One
...
Council Member Wolbach: The big (inaudible).
Male: Cory wants to check six boxes. Tom wants to check five boxes.
Mayor Holman: Council Member DuBois is saying to vote for five members
and then vote for the—okay. That's what your motion is. They are the
same thing. Essentially.
Council Member DuBois: They are. Mine's more about process. I am
motioning that we vote for six.
Mayor Holman: Council Member DuBois, I haven't seen a second to your
substitute motion yet. Given that, we will be ...
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Council Member Burt: I'll second that. I want to make sure I'm
understanding it. We're going to vote for six. This is just a clarification of
Cory's. Why don't we just try and fold it in.
Council Member Wolbach: You know what? I'll accept it.
Council Member Burt: There we go.
Council Member Wolbach: I'll just accept it as a friendly amendment. The
more I think about it, I think he's right. That way it's clear to Staff which
one you come back with. I'll accept it as a friendly amendment and hope
that the Vice Mayor will as well. We can keep it easy.
Mayor Holman: We're going to have a hard time getting through this.
Council Member Filseth: Sorry. How many boxes do we check under the
motion?
Council Member Wolbach: Five.
Mayor Holman: Five.
Council Member Berman: Seven.
Mayor Holman: Five. Then we would return for a single vote.
Council Member Wolbach: We need to get the Vice Mayor to (inaudible).
Mayor Holman: That's acceptable—the original maker was—Vice Mayor
Schmid, is that acceptable to you as the seconder of the original motion?
Vice Mayor Schmid: Let me ask a question. Could we vote for six on the
first ballot in order to elect five?
Mayor Holman: No, this is to say that we're going to vote for five. We're
going to vote for five, and then we'll come back and vote for a sixth if we
want to do that. This is the cleanest approach, it seems that we have
decided.
Vice Mayor Schmid: The problem is we're reducing the number of votes that
we have on the first round which might eliminate ...
Mayor Holman: If you don't accept it, then we need a new seconder or float
this as a separate motion.
Vice Mayor Schmid: I would prefer to have six votes on the first round.
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Mayor Holman: You're removing your second?
Vice Mayor Schmid: Yes.
Mayor Holman: Council Member Wolbach has moved, seconded by—I need
a second—to vote for five members for appointment to the CAC and then
vote for one additional member for future appointment. We need a second
please. I'll second. Council Member Wolbach, do you care to speak to your
motion any more, any further? Presumably not. I don't need to speak to it.
Council Member Berman: One quick question. I'm just trying to remind
myself of when we set this up months ago. We did say that they all have to
be Palo Alto residents, correct?
Mayor Holman: Correct.
Vice Mayor Schmid: I propose a substitute motion in which the Council
Members vote for six members on the first round to appoint five.
Council Member Filseth: Second.
SUBSTITUTE MOTION: Vice Mayor Schmid moved, seconded by Council
Member Filseth to vote for six appointments, with five appointed, followed
by the future appointment of one additional member.
Mayor Holman: Do you need to speak to your motion?
Vice Mayor Schmid: I think we have over 50 candidates, and we want to
sort through and get a sense of where our colleagues are. It's beneficial on
the first round to have the total number of votes that we want ultimate
candidates. Just from a process point of view, it seems to make more
sense.
Council Member Filseth: Yeah, what he said.
Mayor Holman: Council Members, I see no more lights. Vote on the board
please.
Male: Which are we voting for?
Mayor Holman: We are voting for the substitute motion.
Council Member DuBois: It's not really a substitute. It's an amendment.
Council Member Berman: It's an amendment. It's an addition to the
process.
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Mayor Holman: It really is different. It is a substitute, I would say. I can
switch my vote over there. It's going to be easier to vote than it was to get
to this process. You can put me down as unanimous there. That passes on
an 8-0 with Council Member Kniss absent.
SUBSTITUTE MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Kniss absent
Mayor Holman: Council Members, do you have comments? Before we vote,
do you have any comments? Please be succinct. If not, we will just vote.
We are voting for six.
Council Member Berman: Just a quick comment on somebody who I'm not
voting for. I would have liked to, but I'm not voting for Kaloma Smith who's
the pastor at AME Zion Church on Middlefield Road, who I've gotten to know
a little bit over the past couple of months, who's doing a lot of good work in
the community. As Council Member Filseth noted, he doesn't live in Palo
Alto. I think he would have been a great addition, if that were available. I just want to recognize him and at least thank him for applying.
Mayor Holman: Thank you very much. While the Clerk is tabulating that
first round of votes, does Staff have a presentation? Again, we have open
Items 14 and 15 which means members of the public who care to speak to
either one of those items can submit their cards now. Hillary.
First Round of voting for six positions on the Comprehensive Plan Update
Citizens Advisory Committee:
Voting For Stacey Ashlund: Filseth
Voting For Joyce Beattie:
Voting For Sharlene Carlson:
Voting For Tony Carrasco:
Voting For Christy Dennison:
Voting For Drew Dennison: Scharff
Voting For Len Filppu: Burt, DuBois, Holman, Schmid
Voting For Marc Fleischmann:
Voting For James “Jim” Fox:
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Voting For Annette Glanckopf: Berman, Burt, DuBois, Holman, Scharff
Schmid
Voting For Timothy Gray:
Voting For Vered Hermannoff-Kranz:
Voting For Jennifer Hetterly: Burt, DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Schmid
Voting For Terry Holzemer: DuBois
Voting For John Hoston:
Voting For Jane Huang:
Voting For Kathy Johnson:
Voting For Edie Keating: Wolbach
Voting For Shani Kleinaus: Burt, Filseth, Holman, Schmid, Wolbach
Voting For Michelle Kraus: Scharff
Voting For Elizabeth Lasky:
Voting For Helen Li: Berman, Filseth, Wolbach
Voting For Michael Lipman:
Voting For Victoria Liu: Wolbach
Voting For Drew Maran:
Voting For Karen Marincovich:
Voting For Stephanie Martinson: Berman, Scharff
Voting For Jeffrey Miller:
Voting For Julia Moran: Berman, Scharff, Wolbach
Voting For William Morrison:
Voting For Bob Moss: DuBois, Scharff, Schmid
Voting For Mark Nadim: Burt, DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Schmid
Voting For Amanda Ross: Berman
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Voting For Jackie Schoelerman:
Voting For Iqbal Serang:
Voting For Kaloma Smith:
Voting For Kevin Stern: Berman, Wolbach
Voting For Peter Taskovich: Burt, Filseth, Holman
Voting For Emil Thomas:
Voting For Victoria Velkoff:
Voting For Judith Wasserman:
Voting For Elizabeth Wong:
Voting For Kerry Yarkin:
Voting For Dan R. Zalles:
Voting For Jon Zweig:
[Ms. Minor, announced the results of the first round of voting after the Staff
presentation.]
Second Round of voting for two positions on the Comprehensive Plan Update
Citizens Advisory Committee:
Voting For Len Filppu: Burt, DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Schmid
Voting For Julia Moran: Berman, Burt, Holman, Scharff, Wolbach
Voting For Bob Moss: Scharff, Schmid
Voting For Kevin Stern: Berman, Wolbach
Voting For Peter Taskovich: DuBois, Filseth
[Ms. Minor announced the results of the second round of voting later during
discussion of the items.]
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Mayor Holman. Hillary Gitelman, the Planning
Director. I'm here with Jeremy Dennis who's joining our team and really
going to be managing this Comprehensive Plan Update process from here on
out, I hope. While the balloting continues and before we start in the
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presentation that we've prepared for Item Number 14, let me just talk a
little bit about the schedule that's attached to the item on the CAC
membership. I draw your attention to the second part of the
recommendation there. In addition to making the appointments this
evening, we're hoping that the Council will consider adopting a motion
affirming that the resulting CAC is well equipped to fulfill its role. It would
just be great for the CAC as a whole to have your endorsement after having
gone through this process of having to add members to get a more balanced
group. That's for your consideration when we get to the end of this balloting
process. Now, with regards to the schedule, we did attach a revised
schedule based on input from the City Council at our last discussion. The
main change is we had direction from you that we shouldn't try and jam too
much onto each CAC meeting. What we've done is peel that apart a little
bit, and every CAC meeting will really only address one subject or one element of the Comprehensive Plan. The result is that the schedule extends
another four to six months into 2017. The other result is that we also have
time between the first brainstorming meeting about an element and when
the element comes back or the policies and programs come back to the
Committee for their review and action. We have time in there for a
subcommittee if the CAC would like to delegate a portion of their work to a
subcommittee as was indicated by the Council. I think at our last discussion
you suggested that we look at the process that was used for the IBRC.
Jeremy has spent a great deal of time looking into that, and we're prepared
to bring to the CAC a change to their rules that would allow them to do that
kind of off-camera subcommittee work. The subcommittees would still be
meeting in public, but it would allow them to get in deeper to some of the
subject matter than they would otherwise. That's what's behind the
schedule changes. We're happy, of course, to answer any questions you
have about the CAC schedule or about the interaction between the two
columns, the CAC and the Council. We know there may be additional
opportunities or additional necessities for the Council to weigh in on some of
these topics and to give direction to the CAC. I hope we left enough space
on the right-hand column that that will be something we can add as the need arises. As we indicated in the Staff Report, we're hoping that you will
as Council Members monitor the CAC's activity and, of course, let us know if
you think it's time to schedule one of those currently unspecified check-ins.
We'd be happy to do that. That's my presentation on this item. I think we'll
wait to hear back from you on schedule before we go into the slide presentation for Item Number 14.
Mayor Holman: I do have one member of the public who has turned in a
card, Gabriel Lewis. You'll have three minutes.
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Gabriel Lewis: Good evening, Mayor Holman, Council Members. My name's
Gabriel Lewis. I live on Grove Avenue in South Palo Alto. I just wanted to
make a quick comment tonight on a phrase that I kept noticing in the
Comprehensive Plan, "customer service." I noticed that some of the later
drafts to this Plan seemed to be using the phrase less. I just wanted to
express my support for that. I think it would be better not to use it at all.
Better phrases, I think, would be "public service," "serving citizens," or just
"service." I just kind of wanted to explain why I think that. I think it's
important that members of the government serve citizens, not customers. I
think this is a higher form of service than customer service. In purely
economic terms, customer service is simply a way in which a company
derives profit from its customers for the company shareholders by law. A
government, on the other hand, derives its sovereignty from its citizens and
is bound to serve them regardless of whether it is profitable to do so. That's a higher form of service. I would like to hold our government to the ideal
that befits a government and not a company. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Just a question on the interaction between the CAC and
the Council. I guess it's really essential that we work together on this and
move forward promptly on the issues. It seems to me that the Council has a
formal session dealing with the goals of each section, and then next meets
that section when everything comes to Council. There are particular
programs and policies that are controversial and extremely important in
their nature. One being L-8 that has a cap on the total growth in the City.
You mentioned another one tonight, the C-28, where you say, "We have to
make a decision on this." It seems to me there should be some opportunity
for the CAC to ask the Council, "There's two opinions on this. Could you give
some guidance to us?" Come to the Council and the Council have an
agendized time where it's just responses to the CAC. That way it gives a
chance for a dialog between the CAC and the Council, and the Council is
addressing critical issues as we move along. Does that make sense from a
procedural standpoint?
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Vice Mayor Schmid. I think that makes perfect
sense. Of course, if the CAC raises a question they want Council guidance on, we can add it to one of the agenda items we already have scheduled to
come to Council. For example, Policy L-8 I'm sure we'll be discussing when
we talk about the vision and goals for the Land Use and Community Design
Element. If we don't have a meeting upcoming where it's a natural fit, that's
an instance in which we would add something to the Council's agenda to the extent we can to get that feedback back to the CAC.
Vice Mayor Schmid: I guess I remember when we had our last discussion
about the CAC. We did mention—I thought it was in the motion—that if
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there was a certain number of members of the CAC who dissented from a
majority vote, that they could address the Council in some form and say,
"Here's a second point of view."
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you. Again, we've made a commitment in the rules
governing the CAC to report not just the majority opinion but the minority
opinion in the instance where the CAC takes an action and there's a minority
opinion. We'll record both in their meeting summaries. We've already made
that commitment.
Council Member DuBois: Some quick questions here. Let's see. Looking at
this schedule, we have Draft EIR in January. I guess you feel that's realistic.
Can you just explain what will happen at that meeting?
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you. That's really been one of the hardest parts of
this schedule, to kind of put into it these items, that one and the one about
the Housing Element. When do we have these discussions about some of these fundamental issues like Vice Mayor has been talking about,
projections? At this point, we think the analysis that we're doing of the
really broad planning scenarios will be done in time to get a Draft EIR on the
street in early January. We could have a really in-depth discussion about
population, housing and employment for a number of scenarios and inform a
discussion of projections, job growth, population growth, all of the impacts
associated with those. Then inform this discussion about Housing Element
sites in—we're showing it in February.
Council Member DuBois: That was my next question. We just did the
Housing Element. Originally there was an idea of some of these joint
meetings—you only have two here. I guess my question was why come
back with the Housing Element in February and should we do a joint session
on land use or some other topic.
Ms. Gitelman: Of course, we're open to suggestions. Our thought was that
this Council made a commitment when adopting the Housing Element to
take a very specific look at whether to eliminate some housing sites in the
north and add additional densities or new sites in—I'm sorry. Did I say that
wrong? In the south, and add additional densities or sites in the north.
Those concepts are represented by these big scenarios that will be analyzed in the EIR. It's really after the Draft EIR is available, but I think we could
get to a substantive discussion of that option and whether the Council
wishes to proceed along those lines. We might want to have a joint meeting
before this joint meeting. When we get a little closer, we'll be able to know
better, I think.
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Council Member DuBois: Basically, there'd be no other joint sessions for the
rest of 2016?
Ms. Gitelman: Our feeling is we can always add joint meetings if we need
them. We didn't want—I mean, your agendas are so jam-packed, we
wanted to put the meetings that we know have to happen, to make the
process that you've outlined to us work. We can add more if you see the
CAC going off-track, if they need direction from you or if you feel the need to
meet in joint session with them more frequently. We can certainly add
those.
Council Member DuBois: I did like the idea of kind of agendizing responses
to the CAC. That may cover that, I guess. The other thing I wanted to ask
or talk about a little bit—I appreciate the way you've spread out a lot of the
work and added a little bit of time. Would it make sense to add some
checkpoints in the schedule? Maybe during each of the Council things when we review a particular element, we actually have a checkpoint on the
schedule and decide then whether we need to add time or not. You could
give us a sense of is the CAC rushed. Rather than kind of locking to the
schedule and sticking with it the whole way, why don't we just put in a
couple of check-ins, and maybe six months from now we can say we need to
add a couple of months, and everybody just understands the schedule's
changed.
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you for that suggestion. I think our feeling is that that
will happen naturally. Every time we bring this back to the Council, there's
an opportunity for a course correction and an examination of where we are
in this process.
Council Member DuBois: I guess I'm asking to make it an explicit part of
each agenda, just a check-in on schedule.
Ms. Gitelman: Happy to do that. We do that on each one of the CAC
agendas. We kind of have an item at the end about how's it going and what
do we need to do different. We can certainly add that to your Council items.
The next one is currently scheduled for October 5th.
Mayor Holman: Council Members? Other questions, comments about
schedule, subcommittees, structure of subcommittees and how those will be selected? Will it be—I presume—let's just say land use and transportation,
it'll be one subcommittee? What if 20 people want to be on the land use
subcommittee? Could it be two and they come together with their
recommendations? I can see there might be one or two of these items that
might really have that much popularity associated with them.
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Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Mayor Holman. I think to some extent, this is
going to be up to the members of the CAC. Our recommendation to them, I
think, is going to be that the Chair and Co-Chair appoint subcommittees
based on people volunteering for those that they'd like to participate in.
That we try to limit the number to no more than one per element. Maybe
not all the elements will need subcommittees. All of this is up to the CAC to
tell us how they want to organize this. Our thought was that the CAC would
want to have their brainstorming meeting on each element to kind of flush
out the issues, and then they would want to develop a very specific charter
for the subcommittee and a deadline for the subcommittee so the
subcommittee knows exactly what they've been asked to do for the
Committee as a whole. That's a discussion we'll have with the CAC on
September 8th. Any other thoughts you have, we'd be happy to
communicate.
Mayor Holman: Just for clarity, the subcommittee meetings would also be
open to the public?
Ms. Gitelman: That's correct. The Council directed us to make those open
to the public, so we'll post the meeting schedule and make that known in
advance. We're still working out exactly how we can offer Staff support to
these subcommittees, but we'll figure that out.
Mayor Holman: I appreciate that, and I appreciate the challenge of it as
well. Thank you for bearing with us. It's much appreciated. One last just a
confirmation. Last time, I think, we eliminated anonymous comments,
didn't we? There was some means for people to make comments that were
not attributed to a writer.
Ms. Gitelman: I think the reference is to the digital commenter, so the
online document. That was Council's direction. Subsequent to that meeting,
I had a conversation with the folks who make Open City Hall work. They
understand it far better than I do. I'm going to have to get back to you on
that. I remember what it was. Sometimes it shows up as anonymous when
someone just hasn't filled out all the fields. The work-around that we had
come up with is just that the comment, if it comes in as anonymous, isn't
shared with the public. It comes to Staff only. In some cases, we may be able to tell that it's just that they didn't fill out all the fields. In some cases,
that might be harder. I don't know how you feel about that, but that's what
I learned subsequent to our discussion at the last meeting. It may not be
that people are anonymous; it may be that they just haven't filled out
everything they need to to be named as a commenter.
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Mayor Holman: It also seems like, though—is there a way to respond to the
person who is giving us comments and tell them, "You haven't filled out all
the fields for your comment to be accepted"? Otherwise, it's like someone
could game that by giving Staff anonymous comments. Nobody else knows
these comments are being made or what the content of it is. It doesn't feel
very open and transparent to me.
Ms. Gitelman: We absolutely try and do that. We try and respond where we
can and get people to fill out the fields necessary to be a named commenter.
Mayor Holman: If there can be some kind of—I don't know what that site
looks like particularly at this point in time, if there can be some notification.
It's like sometimes if you fill out a survey online, if their fields aren't—it's
stars by it, asterisks by fields that are required. If they're not, then your
comments aren't accepted. It seems like we could do it that as well. I'm
personally not comfortable with this aspect of—whether it's intended as anonymous or not, it just seems like it could be gamed.
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you. I think we understand your concerns. Let us
keep working on that issue.
Mayor Holman: I appreciate that.
Council Wolbach: I don't know if I want to put this in any motions that we
have tonight. I figured I'd just put it out there for consideration at least, by
Staff and by CAC members. If there are themes, if there are concepts or
there are particular issues that might fall under one particular element or
might not even be identified in an element, but might touch on multiple
elements, I would encourage the CAC, if they feel it's appropriate, to
consider subcommittees of that sort. They could touch on a broader theme
or a broader issue. Again, up to the CAC's discretion. I don't want to
micromanage them. I would just encourage them if they feel it's
appropriate. For instance, sea level rise or climate change in general that
influences multiple elements, I would not want to discourage them from
forming a subcommittee if they felt it prudent.
Ms. Gitelman: Understood. Thank you.
Mayor Holman: We also do have a tally from the City Clerks. A question
has arisen to my mind. If we vote for six ..
Male: (inaudible).
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Mayor Holman: Yeah. What if we vote for six, and there are tie votes. If
it's a tie, then how do we know who the sixth person is? I guess it doesn't
matter a lot. City Clerks, you have results?
Ms. Minor: I do have results. We have Council Member Berman voting for
Annette Glanckopf, Helen Li, Stephanie Martinson, Julia Moran, Amanda Ross
and Kevin Stern; Council Member Burt voting for Len Filppu, Annette
Glanckopf, Jennifer Hetterly, Shani Kleinhaus, Mark Nadim, and Peter
Taskovich; Council Member DuBois voting for Len Filppu, Annette Glanckopf,
Jennifer Hetterly, Terry Holzemer, Bob Moss and Mark Nadim. We have
Council Member Filseth voting for Stacey Ashlund, Jennifer Hetterly, Shani
Kleinhaus, Helen Li, Mark Nadim and Pater Taskovich; Mayor Holman voting
for Len Filppu, Annette Glanckopf, Jennifer Hetterly, Shani Kleinhaus, Mark
Nadim and Peter Taskovich; Council Member Scharff voting for Drew
Dennison, Annette Glanckopf, Michelle Kraus, Stephanie Martinson, Julia Moran and Bob Moss; Vice Mayor Schmid voting for Len Filppu, Annette
Glanckopf, Jennifer Hetterly, Shani Kleinhaus, Bob Moss and Mark Nadim;
Council Member Wolbach voting for Edie Keating, Shani Kleinhaus, Helen Li,
Victoria Liu, Julia Moran and Kevin Stern. We have Annette Glanckopf with
six votes, Jennifer Hetterly with five, Shani Kleinhaus with five, and Mark
Nadim with five. Those four are appointed. We have Stacey Ashlund with
one vote, Drew Dennison with one, Len Filppu with four, Edie Keating with
one, Michelle Kraus with one, Helen Li with three, Victoria Liu with one,
Stephanie Martinson with two, Julia Moran with three, Bob Moss with three,
Amanda Ross with one, Kevin Stern with three, and Peter Taskovich with
three. And Terry Holzemer with one.
Vice Mayor Schmid: That was seven votes.
Mayor Holman: Vice Mayor Schmid says that he had been accounted—seven
votes had been counted to him.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Yeah. Stern (inaudible).
Mayor Holman: Stern was not on his list, he says.
Council Member Berman: I think we had an opportunity to discuss why
we're going to vote for who we're going to vote for. I'd like to take this
opportunity to do that. I'm going to be voting for Kevin Stern and Julia Moran. I would really encourage my colleagues to do so also. We talked a
lot about the need for diversity on this Committee. Right now, with the
recent resignation, I think there are zero people on the Committee who are
renters. Both Julia Moran and Kevin Stern—who I don't know. I've never
met either of these people. I was impressed by their applications though—are renters from South Palo Alto. Julia is listed as 34. Kevin doesn't have
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an age, but he's got kids in Grades 4 and Grade 6. That at least puts him
likely on the younger side of life. I think it's really important to have that
diversity on this Committee. Right now, we have very few people my age,
frankly. We have zero renters. I think if we're going to put together a
Committee that represents the whole of our community, which is currently
45 percent renters and I don't know what percentage 35 and younger, but
more than one or two members we have on the Committee right now. I
think it would really behoove us to have that perspective on the Committee
that's going to make a Plan for the next 15 years of our town.
Council Member DuBois: Applying our filters, I guess the filters I'm applying
are South Palo Alto, demonstrated involvement in their community and their
neighborhood. I'm going to be voting this round first for Len Filppu. If you
don't know Len, I think he's either president or vice president of the
Fairmeadow Home Association, two kids in the schools, I think his wife teaches at Paly. I just think he's a good representative. He's kind of
embedded and active in the community. For similar reasons, I'll—he also
had four votes. Then Peter Taskovich had three votes. Similar reasons,
very active in a different South Palo Alto neighborhood, one that I don't
think is currently represented on the CAC.
Council Member Wolbach: I will also be voting for Kevin Stern and Julia
Moran. I also have never met either of them. Their applications seemed
very strong. They're both Palo Alto; I think, they're both young; and they're
both renters. Can’t overstate how important it is that the almost half of Palo
Altans who rent have at least some representation on this body. I think
we've done a good job with the four we've already picked. I think they're all
going to do a great job, and I think they have checked those boxes for
community involvement, etc. I think that Kevin Stern and Julia Moran, even
though they are relatively new to Palo Alto, have shown already an interest
and commitment to the community just judging from their application. If we
don't have any renters and mid to younger aged people, I'm very worried
that huge segments of the community are going to go underrepresented.
They are both from South Palo Alto. I would encourage my colleagues to,
especially after that first round, recognize what's still missing.
Council Member Burt: I just reread the applications from Julia Moran and
Kevin Stern. I am interested in making sure that we have at least a single
voice of renters represented. They're both South Palo Alto renters. I'm
going to cast one of my votes for Len Filppu and the other for Julia Moran.
Mayor Holman: I see no other comments. I'll be casting my first vote for Len Filppu. I've got three choices for the second vote. We'll see where that
comes down. Council Members, fill out your ballots please and put them on
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the dais. With that we return to where we were in terms of speaking to
process, subcommittees, schedule. Council Members.
Ms. Gitelman: Mayor Holman, I'd be happy to go to the next part of the
presentation if you think that's ...
Mayor Holman: Council Member Burt, on process?
Council Member Burt: Yeah. This issue about what happens if we have a tie
for the fifth, I think, is something we should address before we see the
outcome.
Mayor Holman: I think you're correct, yes.
Council Member Burt: I don't know. One tie-breaker concept would be, if
there was a tie, the person who got the most votes on the preceding ballot,
on the initial ballot. I'm open to anything else that is rational or semi-
rational. I do think we should decide it before we look at who it is.
Mayor Holman: One other possibility is we could do it on cumulative vote count.
Council Member Burt: On what?
Mayor Holman: One other possibility is cumulative vote count. First ballot
and second ballot.
Council Member Burt: Sure. Council Member DuBois, do you have thoughts
on this or something else?
Council Member DuBois: No, I was going to (inaudible) I had one more
thing on process before we (inaudible).
Mayor Holman: A process question, Council Member DuBois?
Council Member DuBois: Yeah. I wanted to talk to Item 15.
Mayor Holman: Council Member Wolbach, is your question or comment on
the vote count for the—okay.
Council Member Wolbach: Just in the off chance that there is also still a tie
with the cumulative vote count, as unlikely as it is, as a backup I'd say we
should just plan to flip a coin.
Mayor Holman: I think we should be a little more deliberative than that.
Are Council Members okay with a cumulative count for ...
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Council Member Scharff: This would only be if we're split four-four?
Mayor Holman: Four-four does not get us anyone. We have to have five
votes.
Council Member Scharff: Right. That's what I mean. If we're split—if we
don't have—you said if it was a tie. You mean if they get five votes for
every one (inaudible)?
Mayor Holman: Yeah, if we get two or three people that have five votes—we
can't get three people with five votes—then we would do cumulative votes.
Is that agreeable to people? Okay. All right, very good. Having resolved
that, Council Member DuBois, did you have something before ...
Council Member DuBois: Yeah. I just have a quick one I wanted to add to
Item 15. I had it originally down for the Item 14 discussion, but it's really
more process, so I think it'll get lost. I brought this up before. I think it's
really important that we have a way to prioritize or call the number of policies that come out. I was just going to suggest that when you bring an
element to us, maybe you develop a target for the number of policies you
think is reasonable in the timeframe. You bring the element to us that
comes out of the CAC, but you kind of show us what's above the line and
below the line. Like, they had 200 policies; I think we can do 75. Here's
some idea of priorities. Again, I'm just worried that we're going to expand
every element, and there's nothing in the schedule or process about kind of
the prioritization step.
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Council Member DuBois. I think actually the CAC
would welcome the Council's direction to err on the side of not adding
endlessly policies and programs, but to try and limit those. I think they'd
welcome that input.
Council Member DuBois: I'm asking when you come to us to have an idea of
their priorities, maybe a ranked order or some kind of system.
Ms. Gitelman: I'm not sure that we're going to get all the way to a ranking
or prioritization of policies. I hear what you're saying, and we can try and
identify those things that were clear consensus items that the CAC identified
as the most important issues or policies within the element and then those
that were less so.
Council Member DuBois: I'm just concerned, again, with the schedule. If
there's not a process, we can try that. I actually like the Parks and Rec, you
have $10, spend it on these 100 policies. That would at least give us some
data. Something to think about.
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Mayor Holman: With that, it looks like we don't have a tally yet. With that,
Hillary, you have a presentation on the other item. On original Item 14.
Ms. Gitelman: Yes. Thank you, Mayor Holman. Again, Hillary Gitelman and
Jeremy Dennis. We have a real brief PowerPoint for you here on this item
about vision statements and goals. We also have a workbook. I have to
apologize; it got to you late. It went out in your packet last week as
opposed to the week before. I hope you have it and found it useful. This is
one of three meetings related to the vision statements and goals for the
Comp Plan Update. The purpose of the meeting is really to provide guidance
to the Citizens Advisory Committee and to the Staff about this prioritization
issue as it affects goals, so the potential prioritization of Comp Plan goals,
this overall structure of the Comprehensive Plan. Both of these things are
things we've talked about a little before. Vision statements and goals for
each of the elements and then any other issues that the Council would like to bring up and direct us on. Tonight we're going to talk about Community
Services and Facilities and the Transportation Element. The Mayor
suggested that we prioritize the Transportation Element, because the CAC is
scheduled to discuss that element on September 8th. Then on October 5th,
we're currently scheduled to be back here for that discussion of the Land Use
and Community Design Element. As Vice Mayor Schmid indicated, there's at
least one policy we'll want to discuss with you in addition to the vision
statement and goals that night. Currently on November 2nd, we're
scheduled to be back here for a discussion of the vision statements and
goals for the Natural Environment Element and the Business and Economics
Element, and then this new Safety and Noise Element, which we're
suggesting a subset of the current Natural Environment Element. Our
premise here is, as you know, that the City Council will weigh in and decide
on vision statements and goals which are the kind of organizing or high-level
part of each of the elements of the Comprehensive Plan. The CAC will take
the first shot at crafting revisions to the policies and programs that
implement the goals. Ultimately, the City Council will review the CAC's work
and provide direction as needed. This is the process slide from the Summit
at the end of May. The schedule has been a little adjusted as we discussed to extend out until the middle of 2017 in an effort to ensure that the Citizens
Advisory Committee has enough time to do their work. The chart really
shows this process of interaction between the City Council and the CAC. It
also indicates, as I'm sure you know already, that the Staff will be working
on the supporting documents behind the scenes as this process moves forward. Before we talk about community services and transportation goals,
several of the Council Members raised this issue of how to prioritize among
the goals, recognizing that the current Comprehensive Plan really treats all
issues and elements equally, probably because of a provision in State law
that says you're really not allowed to make one section of the Comp Plan
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more important than others. The way it's set up in State law and in our Plan
currently, it's a vision that wise decision-making is in effect this process of
weighing potentially competing objectives. With that said, it is possible to
identify priorities or aids to decision-making where there might be conflicts
to give future decision-makers and members of the public some sense of
where the community's priorities lie. Two of the Council Members, Council
Member Filseth and DuBois, suggested this structure as a guide for
prioritization the last time we discussed this issue. It would be perfectly
appropriate to incorporate something like this in the introductory section of
the Comp Plan to indicate where it's not clear, where there are competing
priorities, the thought process of decision-makers. The community could be
guided by some set of principles like those illustrated in this diagram. I'm
sure the two Council Members could speak to it with more specifics and
more eloquently than I. Just going back. Our recommendation would be, if it's the Council's desire to do this, to include something like this in the
introductory section of the Plan. We'd be happy to draft some text for your
review at a later meeting. When it gets to the overall structure of the Plan
that's formed by the chapters or elements of the Plan, in the Staff Report we
have a chart that shows what the current elements are, what the PTC
recommended, and then a third column which is a slight variation. That's
shown up here on the right-hand column. Our recommendation differs from
the PTC version in that it separates out safety and noise into a separate
element. That's an idea that we heard from individual members of the
community and from some individual Council Members. It seemed to us to
be a valid approach, given the attention that both of these issues are getting
in the community and how much more we seem to have to say about both of
those issues these days. Within each element, the structure as you know is
defined by the vision statement specific to the element. The goals, the
policies and programs, if you look on packet page 351, you'll see a definition
of each of these terms. The workbook that we created for you, dated
August 27th, provides for each of the elements a short introductory section
about the element, its purpose and some background information. It
provides a one-page summary of the vision statement in the current element, the vision statement recommended by the Planning and
Transportation Commission and then what we heard from the Council the
last time we discussed these issues in April and what we felt your direction
was. After the section on vision, there's a summary of the goals. Again, the
structure of the current Comprehensive Plan and the structure recommended by the Planning and Transportation Commission with an explanation of the
changes. As we've all experienced as we started to try and use both
versions, the Planning and Transportation Commission made so many
organizational changes that it's not possible to really redline. This is
supposed to be a guide to explain the changes. After the summary of goals,
there's a more expanded comparison that uses the full text of the goals, and
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again a more expanded discussion of how the changes were developed and
recommended by the PTC. We also just wanted to acknowledge that the
City Council has access to additional information that obviously couldn't be
included in this little workbook. You received previously a summary of the
input on transportation, for example, that we received at the Summit that
was organized by some of our partners at Stanford University. You also had
a lengthy conversation of transportation investment priorities within the last
several meetings, and just at tonight's meeting you had a conversation
about the parks, trails and open space committee. There's a lot of
information that didn't make it into the book, but is available to you as you
give some thought to the goals and vision statements for the two elements
we're discussing this evening. As we mentioned, it's community services
and facilities and transportation. That concludes the presentation. I did
spend a little time this afternoon discussing with the Mayor whether it would be helpful to bring you a suggested motion. I'd be happy to share that with
you at some point, if you think it would be helpful. We're really here to get
your thoughts on all of these issues, prioritization, the structure and
organization of the Comprehensive Plan itself. Then for transportation and
community services and facilities, the visions statements and goals for each
of these elements. Thank you.
Mayor Holman: I believe we have a tally from the City Clerk.
Ms. Minor: We do, Madam Mayor. We have Council Member Berman voting
for Julia Moran and Kevin Stern; Council Member Burt voting for Len Filppu
and Julia Moran; Council Member DuBois voting for Len Filppu and Peter
Taskovich; Council Member Filseth voting for Len Filppu and Peter
Taskovich; Mayor Holman voting for Len Filppu and Julia Moran; Council
Member Scharff voting for Julia Moran and Bob Moss; Vice Mayor Schmid
voting for Len Filppu and Bob Moss; and Council Member Wolbach voting for
Julia Moran and Kevin Stern. We have Len Filppu with a cumulative vote
between the first and second of nine; and Julia Moran with a cumulative vote
of eight. We had—Len Filppu got five votes and Julia Moran got five votes.
The cumulative brought Len up to nine and Julia to eight.
Mayor Holman: It was a tie. With that, I'm going to make a motion that the Council confirm the addition of five additional members to the
Comprehensive Plan Update Citizens Advisory Committee. Those five
persons being Annette Ashton, Jennifer Hetterly, Shani Kleinhaus, Mark
Nadim, and Len Filppu.
Male: You said Annette (inaudible).
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Mayor Holman: I said Annette Ashton Glanckopf, same person. Sorry.
Based on the established criteria and applications received by the close of
business on August 25, 2015 and, two, affirm that the resulting CAC is well
equipped to fulfill its role with 21 voting members and three nonvoting
members appointed to review all relevant materials, accept and analyze
community input, and provide recommendations on desired updates to the
Plan's policies and programs, recognizing that the City Council will provide
direction on the Plan's structure, vision statements and goals and will be the
ultimate decision-maker on the Plan that is adopted. Three, direct Staff to
return to City Council on consent with an item appointing Julia Moran to the
CAC which will fill out the 21 voting member CAC.
Male: Twenty-two.
Mayor Holman: Twenty-two. What'd I say?
Council Member Wolbach: Second.
Mayor Holman: Twenty-two, that'll fill out the 22 voting member CAC.
Council Member Wolbach: Second.
Mayor Holman: Thank you for the second, Council Member Wolbach.
MOTION: Mayor Holman moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to:
A. Appoint Annette Glanckopf, Jennifer Hetterly, Shani Kleinaus, Mark
Nadim, and Len Filppu to the Comprehensive Plan Update Citizens
Advisory Committee (CAC) based on the established criteria and
applications received by the close of business on August 25, 2015; and
B. Affirm that the resulting CAC is well equipped to fulfill its role, with 21
voting members and 3 non-voting members appointed to review all
relevant materials, accept and analyze community input, and provide
recommendations on desired updates to the Plan’s policies and
programs, recognizing the City Council will provide direction on the
Plan structure, Vision Statements, and Goals, and will be the ultimate
decision makers on the Plan that is adopted; and
C. Direct Staff to return with a Consent Calendar Item appointing Julia
Moran to the CAC, which will fill out the 22 voting-member CAC.
Mayor Holman: I don't need to speak to this.
Council Member Wolbach: My understanding is that out of all the members of this group, we have one who is going to be deferred in being appointed
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for a couple of weeks, but hopefully we'll get it on there soon—who will
represent all of the renters in Palo Alto. It's almost half ...
Council Member Burt: No. The other 21 people will also represent
(inaudible).
Council Member Wolbach: I'm getting there. There's one who actually has
the direct experience of being a current renter in Palo Alto. She even
pointed out in her application that renters in Palo Alto, even if they have kids
in the schools, even if they have been here for a long time, often feel like
they're not really part of the community. They don't ...
Mayor Holman: Council Member Wolbach, we've taken the vote, so I'm
trying to get to understand what your point is.
Council Member Wolbach: I'm getting there. The point is I would really
strongly encourage all the members of the CAC to recognize that they have
an obligation to represent everybody in Palo Alto, just as we do here, and to go out of their way to consider the voices of those who are not represented
in their body.
Mayor Holman: I think at the very first meeting, it was pointed out that all
members of the CAC are to listen, entertain, engage, open their minds to
appreciating other people's perspectives and what other people have to offer
as well as their perspectives and opinions. That's what dialog is about.
That's how good outcomes are achieved. It's not just about one issue; it's
about all the issues. This is a dynamic process with dynamic individuals who
will surely be open minded to other people's perspectives and experiences. I
appreciate your bringing that up. That's the charge for all of the members.
Council Member DuBois: I know we want to get on to 14. Super quick. I
just want to say I really deeply appreciated all the applicants. It was really
clear a lot of people love Palo Alto. To Council Member Wolbach's point,
these are open public meetings. I would encourage anybody who applied, if
you did not get the votes—I see Bob Moss left, but I'm sure Bob will come to
the meetings. You can participate online. Please don't take it as a rejection.
We had over 50 people. Thanks.
Mayor Holman: Thank you for saying that, Council Member DuBois. With
that, we have this long motion on the board. Vote on the board please. That passes unanimously on an 8-0 vote with Council Member Kniss absent.
Thank you, colleagues, Council Members.
MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Kniss absent
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Mayor Holman: That actually pretty much concludes Item Number 15, but
we do still have both items open should we need to go back and forth.
Going back to Number 14. One thing I'm not sure that we said, and I
apologize because I've been going back and forth a bit. We talked earlier,
Staff and I talked earlier. We do want to focus on the land use and
transportation because that's what's coming to the CAC on the 8th. Is that
correct? Yes. I apologize if that's a restatement of something already said.
Council Member Burt: I guess I'd like to subsequently participate in the
discussion around those particular two elements, but I had a couple of
comments and questions at a higher level. That is for what sections we
should have. First is on this recommendation that we have the safety and
noise be one element. I had advocated that we break safety off from
natural and urban environment. It seems like noise is part of that urban
environment issue rather than a safety issue. I wasn't quite sure why we were putting it where it is. Also, I can see that the issue of noise is of an
increased importance in the community today, and that we'll give it greater
attention than we would have. Co-naming a section because we have a
present issue seems out of balance and reacting to a present circumstance
on something that is going to be an enduring document.
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Council Member Burt. Of course, this is up to the
Council. Our suggestion really grew out of the fact that safety and noise are
both elements that the State has identified. If we were going to try and
make natural environment a little smaller and more focused, they are the
two topics that could be pulled out and handled separately or together. If
the Council wishes to keep noise in natural and urban environment, that
would be perfectly okay too.
Council Member Burt: I would just say that I think that logically noise is a
subset of urban environment. The State programs don't have natural and
urban and environment, so we've created this section, and I just think the
elements are properly part of it. If an issue was balancing size of the
elements, that'd be one thing, but I don't think that's as important as
putting it in the right category. Second, I don't recall—this, Hillary, predates
you joining us—how the governance section got determined to be dropped and what happened to all of the goals, policies and programs in the
governance section.
Ms. Gitelman: Council Member Burt, thank you for that question. I actually
think the governance section wasn't dropped; it was deferred until after the
elements with goals, policies and programs could be worked on. The PTC, as I understood it, didn't get to that.
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Council Member Burt: The governance section has goals, policies and
programs.
Ms. Gitelman: I'm going from memory here, but I recollect that the
Commission's thought was that that could be completed at the end of the
process once the rest of the update ...
Council Member Burt: That isn't reflected, as I can see, in your report. I do
see that we have former Planning Commissioner Garber who, I think, was on
the subcommittee and maybe he would have some explanation. May I ask,
to the Chair, if we can hear from Dan Garber to see if he can shed any light
on what the PTC ...
Vice Mayor Schmid: Sure, that would be helpful.
Council Member Burt: ... thoughts were or the history of this. If you don't
know, that's okay too.
Dan Garber: I'd have to go back (inaudible).
Ms. Gitelman: We had always—from when I first arrived at the City, we'd
been talking about preparing a user's guide at the end of the process that
would contain some of the information that's currently in the governance
section. I think this was just something that the PTC hadn't gotten to yet.
Council Member Burt: I'll just add, I don't have a recollection—maybe Mayor
Holman will—of this having come to the Council for any policy decision to
eliminate the governance section. I'd like to open that back up to colleagues
on whether we should include it. I don't have any strong feelings on when in
the process. It could be at the end. That's different from dropping it, which
somehow it just happened without any deliberate decision-making
apparently going on other than—if Hillary has it right—it was thought to do it
at the end and the end ended up being that it got dropped off.
Ms. Gitelman: If I can interject. There was an implementation section too
which I know we'll have to create. In addition to a governance chapter,
there's an implementation chapter. I think the intention all along has been
to gather in that chapter all of the programs that are developed throughout
all of the elements and give them some prioritization and weighting. That
will be a very important exercise, but again one that probably can't be done
until we're a little farther along.
Council Member Burt: Right. The governance is different. It has vision,
goals, policies, programs, as I recall.
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Vice Mayor Schmid: Yeah, it does.
Council Member Burt: I'm not disagreeing with you on the value of the
implementation section, but I don't put them in the same category.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Council Member Burt, I think maybe Mr. Garber ...
Council Member Burt: Dan, did something come back to you?
Mr. Garber: It's a little late for things to be coming back to me. I actually
do not have a memory of taking it out. I do have a memory of discussing
it—this is now six years ago—and making recommendations with other
members of the PTC at that time. If it has been taken out, it's been done, I
think, since my time. My recollection is that was a fairly important piece;
although, it's significantly smaller. It's much more succinct and to the point
and gets into the actual implementation and use of the Plan.
Council Member Burt: Good. It sounds like it may have just been an
inadvertent omission from the Plan. The other kind of higher-level comment I have is about the hierarchy. I do find a value in having something along
the lines of what is proposed here. I want to make sure that a hierarchy is—
I don't know. I don't think I'd describe it at a values level, but it's
something in that neighborhood. I don't want it to be confused with a
prioritization schedule where someone says, "We don't do anything on public
transit or bike infrastructure or new services until we've done absolutely
everything in safety and electricity, for instance." I think that would be real
misguided. We have to work on what we mean by this hierarchy. I think of
it as—I don't know whether it's hierarchy of importance, but certainly not a
sequence or immediacy or a trumping of everything else. I think we have to
work on the context for the hierarchy; otherwise, it can subsequently be
misconstrued.
Council Member DuBois: If I can just ask a point of process, I guess. This is
a really big area, and we have—the proposed motion is different sections.
Could we maybe go through some short rounds and knock off pieces?
Council Member Burt started with the organization of the elements. Could
we just finish that topic before we move on and maybe vote on that as a
sub-motion?
Mayor Holman: Is that agreeable to Staff? Makes sense.
Council Member DuBois: I don't know if everybody has this handout at
places, but then we could tick off each of these in turn. Talk about
transportation, talk about ...
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Mayor Holman: Thank you for pointing that out. Colleagues do all have at
places some draft potential prioritization and motions that the Planning
Director crafted. It's got Item Number 14 stamped on it. Speaking to the
prioritization, as Council Member DuBois just spoke.
Council Member DuBois: Actually Council Member Burt went into the
organization, Number B. I was going to suggest we finish that off first. If I
could speak real quick to it?
Mayor Holman: Please.
Council Member DuBois: I liked the proposed number of elements, I guess,
with the addition of calling out the Governance Element. Just let me check
my notes real quick. I think that's it. Hopefully we can knock this one off
quickly.
Mayor Holman: Say that again, Council Member DuBois.
Council Member DuBois: Again, I like Staff's proposal for the number of elements. I think we need to add governance to the list. I am open to
where we want to put noise.
Mayor Holman: Are you putting that into a motion?
Council Member DuBois: I can. I guess I would move that we organize the
Comprehensive Plan Update into the elements suggested by Staff with the
addition of a Governance Element. If people want to propose an
amendment for noise, I'd be open to that.
Council Member Burt: I'll second it. I'll second the proposed motion.
MOTION: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member
Burt to organize the Comprehensive Plan Update with the Elements
recommended by Staff with the addition of Governance.
Mayor Holman: Motion by Council Member DuBois. Do you care to speak to
your motion?
Council Member DuBois: No.
Mayor Holman: Council Member Burt, care to speak to your second?
Council Member Burt: Yes. I would offer an amendment that we move
noise under urban environment.
Mayor Holman: Is that accepted by the maker?
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Council Member DuBois: I'll accept that.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “and include noise under
Urban Environment.”
Council Member Burt: I've already spoken to my reasons for that.
Council Member Wolbach: I was going to speak to the prioritization, Number
A, so I'll wait.
Mayor Holman: I see no lights to this motion then. We're missing two.
Council Member Berman: (inaudible)
Mayor Holman: True.
Council Member Berman: Are we bringing them up piece by piece?
Mayor Holman: We're breaking this into pieces.
Council Member Berman: Okay, and passing them. Got you. Then
(crosstalk) doesn't matter.
Mayor Holman: We're ticking off items.
Council Member Berman: We have a quorum.
Mayor Holman: We do have a quorum, so I think we'll go ahead and vote.
We don't have a ... Council Member Scharff and Filseth, we have a motion
on the floor that is moved by Council Member DuBois, seconded by Council
Member Burt, to organize the Comprehensive Plan Update with the elements
recommended by Staff with the addition of government, including noise
under urban environment.
Male: Governance.
Mayor Holman: Governance, yes, thank you. Governance. Including noise
under urban environment. It should be probably also "and include noise
under urban environment." If you were here or heard enough of the
conversation, feel free to vote on this. Seeing no other lights, so vote on
the board please. That passes on an 8-0 vote, Council Member Kniss
absent.
MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 8-0 Kniss absent
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Mayor Holman: Undertaking the next item. I had lights from the Vice Mayor
and from Council Member Wolbach.
Vice Mayor Schmid: I think Tom wanted to introduce his (inaudible).
Mayor Holman: Vice Mayor is deferring to you, Council Member DuBois.
Council Member DuBois: On what? On prioritization? Is that the topic we're
on now? Okay. We had a good bit of a discussion under the Parks Master
Plan discussion about what's the appropriate forecast. I kind of wanted to
introduce two ideas. There's this hierarchy which is really, I think—Council
Member Burt characterized it. It's not meant to say you do everything on
Level 1 and go to Level 2. It's really a framework for relative priorities. I
think we kind of understand, but we'll need to develop language. It's not
meant to be absolute necessarily. It's really meant to address the issue that
we hear over and over that there's something in the Comp Plan for
everyone, so nothing has any weight. This is an idea of a way to give some things relative weight to other things. In addition to that, at that same
meeting, Council Member Filseth passed out a quantitative model. I'd like to
bring that idea back in terms of not only this idea of kind of a diagram of
priorities, but also an idea of a quantitative framework that we can use and
maybe update along the way, to really understand impacts of the
Comprehensive Plan. I'm not suggesting that be necessarily within the
Comp Plan. I mean, we have a lot of other documents, like the Parks Master
Plan, child care services. There's a whole bunch of supplemental
documents. Maybe this idea of a quantitative model, a high-level model, not
that it's a precise forecast, would be part of that. That gets me back to kind
of the first part, which is what's the appropriate forecast for housing, for
jobs, for population. I understand that's part of the Draft EIR. It seems like
we need to agree to what that is pretty soon. I like the idea of adding into
the introduction perhaps kind of two overriding goals for the Comp Plan.
One would be this kind of hierarchy, general framework of priorities. The
second would be this quantitative model. That's kind of my concept, and I'd
love to hear what my colleagues think of that.
Ms. Gitelman: Mayor Holman, if I can just respond briefly. I think these are
both very important ideas. The idea of having a hierarchy that isn't something absolute, but that helps kind of with the weighting and
consideration when decisions are being made in the future and also this
necessity that we tie our planning process back to some kind of quantitative
framework that we all agree on. Usually that is something that grows out of
the EIR process and is memorialized in the CEQA findings and kind of the cumulative impacts assessment that happens. I think it would be unusual
for that to make it into the introductory section and to have that kind of
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quantitative framework in the introduction to a Comprehensive Plan. There's
no question that the EIR will live on as a companion to the Plan, and we can
reference it in some way within the Plan.
Council Member DuBois: For both those things, just to be clear. I'm not
proposing that framework. I'm proposing that Staff would go away and
come back with one. I think we would need to discuss it. The same thing
with this model. Again, something kind of high level, that maybe we look at
annually that's—not that we're doing a Draft EIR every year. It's kind of a
different, higher level thing.
Ms. Gitelman: For the Mayor, if I could ask another question. Do you think
it could be something that would be incorporated into this implementation
chapter at the end, where we outline all of the implementation programs and
attempt to prioritize those? If we use that as a platform for performance
measures and quantitative measures that grow out of the analysis, I think it might be a good nexus.
Council Member DuBois: Yeah, that sounds ...
Mayor Holman I don't see other Council Member lights going on. I have a
question pertaining to this. The hierarchy. Something that's always been of
interest to me is not only existing conditions, but a comparison of existing
conditions to where we were at the adoption of the last Comprehensive Plan.
I think that is an informative and critical, necessary piece of information,
data set actually, because it can tell us what we've done well, what we've
not done so well in terms of anticipating what the impacts are going to be.
That will inform the existing conditions. How did we get to the existing
conditions? If we're looking at this in terms of an upside down triangle,
there's a layer above this. If Staff could comment on that, I'd really
appreciate it. In terms of what the EIR is going to analyze and how we're
going to come to evaluating how we got where we are now; in other words,
how we got to what our existing conditions are.
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Mayor Holman. It's a very good question. We
don't typically in an environmental analysis go back in time. We start from
an existing baseline. It's just the way the law has been written and practice
has evolved. I think there is an opportunity within each element of the Comprehensive Plan itself. There's a narrative section that introduces each
element, that explains the vision and acts as an introduction to the goals,
policies and programs. I think there's an opportunity in each of those
narrative sections, if the Council desires, to have a little bridge back in time.
We're going to want to, in that section anyway, describe the basis of the current update in the earlier Plan. I think it would make sense to have
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something about how the world has changed and the City has changed in
those intervening years if it's relevant to the specific element. We'd be
happy to look at that and see if we could make that change.
Mayor Holman: Yes. I do certainly understand that EIRs don't typically go
there, but I think it would help inform us, as I said previously. How did we
get to an LOS F at a given intersection, when in the passage of the last
Comp Plan and its related EIR, that it was at a "C." It wasn't anticipated to
go to an "F." How did we get to a "C"? What were we not doing well that
we landed at a "C"? It could be any number of things; I don't need to go
through all of those.
Ms. Gitelman: Mayor Holman, if I can just interject. We do have, as you
know, this August 2014 existing conditions report. In the traffic area is one
area where we did go back in time. It does contain information from the
late 1990s EIR that was done back then to allow a comparison back in time. We weren't able to do that for all of the subjects, but for that one we were.
Mayor Holman: That's an obvious one. I was just using it as an example.
Council Member Wolbach: On the prioritization of goals and specifically the
hierarchy presented here, I'm open to the concept. I don't think I would
support this particular model that was presented, but I appreciate Council
Members Filseth and DuBois in bringing it forward. If I did understand
correctly, DuBois was suggesting that Staff would bring back something for a
more in-depth discussion at a later date, rather than adopting or rejecting or
spending a lot of time wordsmithing that particular hierarchy right now. I
would support that kind of discussion for a later date. If you would like input
before that comes back on things that maybe might be different from what's
listed in those items that we'd like to at least put up for consideration, let us
know if you want that tonight or if we can get that to you offline. Does that
make sense?
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Council Member Wolbach. I think this evening
we're really just looking for the Council's direction or consensus that this
kind of hierarchy or prioritization is something you would like to include in
the update. It wasn't included in the current Comp Plan. Just kind of that
general direction would be what we're looking for this evening, and then we can take a stab at something for you to react to.
Council Member Wolbach: Maybe I should have brought this up before our
last vote, but tying back to the structure and also the priorities. The way I
see it for the next—I'm curious if my colleagues feel the same. The way I
see it for this next generation, and so really the timeframe of this Comprehensive Plan, what I see is the four top issues, the four top
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priorities—you could add five or six—transportation—in no particular order—
transportation, housing cost, inequality and sea level rise and other impacts
from climate change, but sea level rise in particular. I see these as ones
that are new and different to some degree than we've seen in the past, that
are really, really at crisis points right now, that we need to take action on
very quickly. Even if we're not going to have tons of flooding tomorrow from
sea level rise, if we don't take action now, it poses a huge risk. I guess my
question for Staff and also for colleagues is, do you agree that those four are
the top challenges facing Palo Alto in the next decade. Do you think that
they need to be called out in a substantive way in the Comprehensive Plan?
Other things I would add onto that list would be earthquake risk and also
just making sure we're taking care of those who are at the margins. I
consider those to be more ongoing challenges that have existed in the past
and will continue to exist. Those four, the transportation problems, the housing cost problems, the inequality issues and the sea level risk are kind
of increasingly unique in their acuteness in this decade. Again, curious to
hear thoughts from colleagues and Staff about whether they agree and how
that needs to be called out in the Comp Plan.
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Council Member Wolbach. I think we had a
discussion in the past about the seven or eight themes or kind of
overarching issues that are identified in the introductory section of the
Comprehensive Plan. I think you'd find that those embrace the issues you
just mentioned in addition to some others that we're all aware of. The
drought and water conservation issues is one. Growth management and
kind of the rate of change and rate of growth is another one. I don't have
the seven or eight of them at my fingertips, but I think you're right to be
thinking sort of big picture, about what the main issues are. There is a place
in the Comprehensive Plan where we can address those. I think these are
topics that are going to come up in a variety of elements of the Plan.
Vice Mayor Schmid: I think that's an interesting notion, to identify four or
five major things. I keep coming back to one of them at the forefront of our
planning, and that's growth management. If we look at the Citizens Survey,
there's no question that over the last three years the citizen response to traffic, parking and land use has been dramatically different than any other
issue in the City. You mention the existing conditions report. On 1240,
yeah, we actually did have a traffic measurement between the beginning of
the old Plan and now. There's an increase of 53 percent in the standard
measures of traffic over that time. We started tonight talking about the Parks Master Plan, and that the basis of the Parks Master Plan was the
assumption that there'd be 20,000 new people over 20 years. Now, that's a
powerful assumption to move ahead on the basis of the Parks Master Plan.
If, again, you look in the existing conditions report, which is the background
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for what we're doing, that report at 1016 accepts the Plan Bay Area of
20,000 new workers over the next 20 years and 30,000 over the next 30
years. This type of assumption has an impact on every single process that
we go through in the Comp Plan. In the community services, assumptions
about basic growth are going to change C-28, C-6, C-7. Whole slews of
these programs are going to be affected by the assumptions we make. How
can we move ahead without some kind of agreement on the most basic
assumption for our City, which is growth management? Another example,
traffic. Every time we have an EIR on a traffic issue for any application, they
use the Palo Alto traffic model based upon Plan Bay Area. It basically says
there is no significant impact from any cumulative impact. Now, we had a
CEQA lawyer come in last week, last Wednesday, and he addressed the
question what about cumulative impacts. He said there is no court that
would ever allow a city to override a basic EIR, said the only way the City can do that is through their Comp Plan. There has to be a statement in the
Comp Plan. Now, did I hear that correctly from Mr. Jarvis?
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Vice Mayor Schmid. I think you're referring to
the discussion that we had with Mr. Jarvis about the level of service metric
and the use of that for analyzing significant impacts. The State has made a
change, so we're not going to be able to use level of service in EIRs
anymore, but we can include that standard as a performance standard in our
Comprehensive Plan.
Vice Mayor Schmid: There was a follow-up question about cumulative
impacts, how do you take account of cumulative impacts. He said ...
Ms. Gitelman: Mr. Jarvis made the point several times that the program-
level EIR for a General Plan or a Comprehensive Plan is the appropriate place
to analyze potential cumulative impacts and, by extension, to come up with
a performance standard and sort of a mitigation regime that you would then
have future projects have to buy into that scheme.
Vice Mayor Schmid: I guess my question here is, is this the appropriate
place to make a quantitative statement by the Council which is such a basic
assumption for every other element that we talk about, whether it's
transportation, community services, land use, business and economics. All has to work from the same set of assumptions. Isn't this the appropriate
time and place for the Council to make that basic assumption?
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Vice Mayor Schmid. That's a great question. Our
hope is that we can provide you with a Draft EIR that helps you make that
determination. As we discussed in December, we've come up with, based on some public workshops last summer, some really broad planning scenarios
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that test different amounts of growth on the housing and population side and
on the job side. When we have the Draft EIR with the impact analysis that
goes along with these broad planning scenarios, it should allow the Council
to make an informed decision about which of those growth scenarios you
would like to adopt and incorporate into the goals, policies and programs of
the Comprehensive Plan Update.
Vice Mayor Schmid: The planned EIR will come to the Council ...
Ms. Gitelman: January.
Vice Mayor Schmid: ... in January, three months after we have land use
discussion, transportation discussion, community services discussion. How
can we adequately deal with those issues without some base assumption?
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you. I completely understand the question. This is
unfortunately a necessity in most planning efforts, that you have to get
underway with a discussion of policy parameters, objectives, priorities, goals while the technical analysis is underway. There'll be an opportunity when
the technical analysis is complete to allow it to come into the discussion and
inform any conclusions that are made.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Could we get a working issue out since we're discussing
an interim limit of 50,000 and we're talking about a 15-year horizon? Can
we multiply 50 by 15 and say that's an interim target, interim assumption?
Ms. Gitelman: I'm sorry, Vice Mayor Schmid, we really can't do a back of
the envelope. That 50 is only office space. It's one portion of the jobs that
we're going to see over the next few years. We probably will have years in
the 15-year cycle where we don't see 50,000. We really should do this
right. I apologize that it just takes a long time to do these kind of technical
analyses. We will get that information to you so you can make informed
decisions. I think it's still useful to have the kind of policy-level discussion
we're having this evening and are going to have on October 5th and
November 2nd. It sets the stage. It means that we're kind of ready and
waiting for the information. When we have that information on the different
scenarios, we can make informed choices that will easily fit back into our
policy structure.
Vice Mayor Schmid: I'm worried that we're making informed choices based upon this pervasive assumption that Plan Bay Area is giving us a guideline to
work from. Each of our consultants seems to accept that as a basic
assumption. At some point, we have to say, "Let's look at it. Let's talk
about it. Let's vote on it."
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Ms. Gitelman: Thank you again, Vice Mayor Schmid. As we indicated in our
response to your Council questions, we do have a locally generated
projection of housing and population based on our historic track record of
unit production. That's what we're using in the Comprehensive Plan Update
and all our planning exercises. That's what we'll give to the parks and open
space folks for their use.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Oh, okay. From 1970 to 2014, the average rate of
population growth in Palo Alto has been 0.4 percent. Is that what we're
using?
Ms. Gitelman: We're using the annual unit production, average unit
production to get us a projection of housing growth. From there, we get to
population. We have a methodology on the population side. We don't have
an equivalent local methodology that's defensible on the jobs side, which is
part of the reason we've structured the EIR around these scenarios. It'll allow the Council to test and choose between these various jobs projections.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Are we using the time period 1970 to 2014?
Ms. Gitelman: I'd have to look back into the Housing Element that we
adopted in November of last year to tell you exactly what the timeframe is,
but it's in there. I can look that up as we go on.
Mayor Holman: Just to do a little bit of a time check here. We are at 11:00.
I think we have the issue of the hierarchy that Council Member DuBois
brought up earlier, that we have not actually acted on.
Council Member Berman: What are we doing?
Council Member Burt: Why don't we look at ...
Mayor Holman: And then we haven't gotten to our vision statements yet
either.
Council Member Burt: We have a choice on this hierarchy, whether we put it
in the implementation section which means we would not have to go through
a big debate about it tonight. We're still going to address the issue, but we
don't have to resolve it tonight.
Mayor Holman: I could agree with that.
Council Member Berman: I can agree with that too. What is our plan on
how to attack this at 11:00 at night?
Council Member Burt: It'll be determined by a motion.
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Council Member Berman: For all of this?
Council Member Burt: No. Oh, you mean the balance.
Mayor Holman: For each of these. If someone would care to make a
motion? Council Member DuBois, would you care to make a motion
regarding the hierarchy?
Council Member DuBois: Okay.
Mayor Holman: Not to take the floor away from you, Council Member
Berman. I'll be right back to you. I'm just trying to get us through some of
this stuff, so we can move on and focus on what you want to bring up.
Council Member DuBois: I actually emailed David. Here's my motion to
direct Staff to develop with Council new goals in the Comprehensive Plan
introduction that will introduce a priority framework and a high-level
quantitative framework that will be used to discuss impacts during the life of
the Comprehensive Plan. Is that clear?
Mayor Holman: I'm looking to Staff if that's clear to you.
Ms. Gitelman: Yeah. I thought we were going to talk about prioritization or
hierarchy instead of new goals. Then I was hoping that the quantitative
framework would be in the implementation section. We can try and draft an
introductory section like this.
Council Member Burt: Just a second. We don't have a second.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Second.
Mayor Holman: Vice Mayor Schmid seconded.
MOTION: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Schmid
to direct Staff to develop with Council, new Goals in the Comprehensive Plan
introduction that will introduce a priority framework and high-level
quantitative framework that will be used to discuss impacts during the life of
the Comprehensive Plan.
Mayor Holman: I'd like to hear the rest of what Director Gitelman had to
say.
Council Member DuBois: Basically it's asking you to come back with a
proposal.
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Ms. Gitelman: Yeah. We can try and draft an introductory section that
includes a priority—that's great—a priority framework. It's the high-level
quantitative framework that I don't really understand yet, but we can work
on that.
Council Member DuBois: Just to speak to this real quick. The City of
Calgary has a really interesting website that they use for their Comp Plan
process. They have a capacity model. I've been looking at that, and then
again Council Member Filseth kind of created another one that I think is a
good kind of template. Calgary, I think, is much more urban. I'm not
saying I agree with their results, but I really like the process. It looked
really interesting. In terms of the hierarchy and the framework, I think it is
a separate issue; it's not part of the motion. We probably do want to revisit
the themes at some point. I don't know that we finished that discussion.
That's just a side point.
Vice Mayor Schmid: I think this gives us a way of moving forward. I think
the Planning Director has indicated that there are things that can be
provided. This would be a good starting point.
Council Member Burt: I am interested in exploring the two elements of this
as I read it, which are a priority framework and a high-level quantitative
framework that would be used to—I would say not "discuss impacts," but it
would be to "guide impacts," both of them. I don't see this as being
appropriate in the introduction. I just don't follow that at all. It's about how
we would implement what we have in the Comp Plan. I would offer two
amendments. One would be instead of "in the Comprehensive Plan
introduction," it would read "in the Comprehensive Plan implementation
section."
Council Member DuBois: Just for clarification, maybe I'm getting caught up
in the terminology. The idea is that these would be overriding things that
would apply across elements.
Council Member Burt: I understand that.
Council Member DuBois: Is there an overall implementation section that's
not part of any element?
Council Member Burt: Yeah. If you look at the current Comp Plan, we have an implementation section.
Council Member DuBois: Each element also has implementation.
Council Member Burt: We have an overriding implementation section.
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Council Member DuBois: Could we point out that these exist in the
introduction and then have the content be in the implementation section?
Council Member Burt: Yeah, I'd be fine with that.
Council Member DuBois: I think the framework could be described in the
introduction.
Council Member Burt: If the introduction is an overview to the whole Comp
Plan and includes all the sections and a brief description of what's in the
Comp Plan, fine. I think where the substance of it would be would be in the
implementation section.
Mayor Holman: To complicate matters, hopefully not, could I suggest that
there's also a purpose of the Comprehensive Plan where it seems to me that
this might fit. If you'd entertain that.
Council Member Burt: I don't know if that's ...
Mayor Holman: I agree, I don't see it in the introduction.
Council Member Burt: I don't see it as a purpose of the Plan. It's how we
implement the Plan.
Council Member DuBois: I think Staff has heard the request. If we want to
change the wording to, I guess, have them come back. I actually propose
maybe parts of it would be in the introduction, parts would be in the
implementation.
Council Member Burt: I think all sections of the Comp Plan will be
summarized in brief in the introduction. I think it's kind of redundant on
that. They'll all be summarized. The right place to do this is the
implementation section. I want to offer that as substitute language. Where
it says "introduction," we substitute "implementation section."
Mayor Holman: Director Gitelman, do you have a thought on where the best
place for this would be? There's a debate going on whether it's in the
implementation or introduction.
Ms. Gitelman: I think Council Member Burt is right. The introduction will
sort of preface or indicate what is in the other sections. If it's in the
implementation section, it's still going to be mentioned in the introduction.
Council Member DuBois: Okay, I'll accept that.
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INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to replace in the Motion, “Introduction” with
“Implementation Section.”
Council Member Burt: The second is that I would actually strengthen this.
Where it says "will be used to discuss impacts," I would say "to guide."
Council Member DuBois: Yeah, that's fine.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Can I speak as the seconder?
Mayor Holman: Vice Mayor Schmid.
Vice Mayor Schmid: I guess I have a copy of the Comp Plan that was given
to me. The implementation section at the end says, "This will come later."
It's not in there. It seems to me the implementation is something that
comes after the Plan.
Ms. Gitelman: If you look at the implementation section of the existing Plan,
it contains all of the implementation programs from all of the elements, and it talks about prioritizing those, who's responsible for getting them done and
when they'll be accomplished. I mean, this is something we know we have
to do, but we can't do it until the CAC and the Council finish their work
identifying those programs.
Council Member Burt: Mine has the implementation section, so I don't know
which copy you have.
Vice Mayor Schmid: It seems to come after the elements have been done,
and then it decides how they will be implemented, rather than as a base
assumption that will drive what goes on in the elements.
Council Member Burt: May I just respond to that?
Vice Mayor Schmid: Yeah.
Council Member Burt: We're not governed by exactly how it was done 20
years ago. We can set however we want to do it. What the motion says is—
and we'll come back to this. At 11:15 with two sections of the Comp Plan
that we're supposed to yet discuss, I think all we need to do is frame tonight
that we want to have this sort of framework for how the Comp Plan policies
and programs will be implemented. I think that's a good accomplishment
tonight. We can determine when this would come back for more meat on
the bone.
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Vice Mayor Schmid: I guess the key thing is when does it come back. Does
it come back at the end or at the beginning of the process? How do you
interpret this?
Ms. Gitelman: At this point, our plan was not to bring back the sections of
the Comprehensive Plan for review until the CAC had finished their work,
with the exception of some of the work products that you'll see as the CAC
completes them. Transportation and land use principally. If this is a set of
paragraphs that the Council would like to see earlier in the process, we can
accommodate that.
Council Member Burt: I would go further. I think that this concept is
Council driven, and it would be tonight adopting it in concept. We'd simply
need to agendize a deeper discussion of how and when and what would be
the structure of it. For instance, I heard really to this inverted pyramid, we
have one proposal that said the top section should be existing conditions, and an alternative one that was talking the most pressing or top challenges
being the top of the pyramid. We have to have that whole discussion here.
I don't think we should try and solve that tonight, but I do think it should
come back to the Council. It doesn't have to be immediately, because we
don't have to resolve this ahead of every other discussion. We also don't
want to do it late in the process, because we want to begin to have it
integrate with the thought processes for each section as we go through.
Vice Mayor Schmid: I would go along if there was a timeframe that we
could ...
Council Member Burt: Let's keep it general. We can add to this that Staff—
here's proposed additional language. "Staff will return to the Council for an
agendized item within three to six months to discuss these elements."
Mayor Holman: Is that okay with the maker, Council Member DuBois?
Council Member DuBois: I was waiting for a reaction from the Planning
Director, if that timeframe is acceptable.
Council Member Burt: I don't see this as big Staff work. This is really a
deeper Council policy discussion.
Vice Mayor Schmid: What about (inaudible)?
Ms. Gitelman: Currently, we agendized to have one Comp Plan discussion, in-depth Council discussion of Comp Plan policies or goals, one in
September, on in October, one in November. We don't currently have one
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scheduled for December, so maybe we could do our December meeting on
this subject.
Council Member Burt: Depending on schedules, we might put it in with one
of the others. I don't see this as dominating the whole night. It's not going
to be a few minutes, but it's not going to be the whole meeting.
Mayor Holman: Council Member DuBois, are you good with that? Vice
Mayor Schmid, are you good with that? The amendment that's been offered,
the language that's been offered.
Vice Mayor Schmid: December was what you suggested. Is that correct?
Ms. Gitelman: I'm sorry?
Vice Mayor Schmid: December, you suggested.
Ms. Gitelman: I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.
Mayor Holman: Vice Mayor Schmid, I think the proposal is December or.
Council Member Burt has said he doesn't see this as an extensive discussion, so it could be worked in with one of the other times that the Comprehensive
Plan is brought forward and we can leave that to Staff to decide when there
might be time to work this in.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Before the end of the year?
Mayor Holman: Yes, because December was the ..
Vice Mayor Schmid: The outside date.
Ms. Gitelman: I think I mentioned December, because three to six months
sounds like it's perfectly doable.
Vice Mayor Schmid: Okay.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to replace in the Motion, “discuss” with “guide.”
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “and direct Staff to return to
Council with an agenized item within three to six months to discuss these
Elements.”
Mayor Holman: Council Member Berman, apologies that it's taken this long
to get back to you.
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Council Member Berman: No, it's fine. In regards to the prioritization of
goals which we'll discuss more at length later, obviously housing is the
massive omission.
Mayor Holman: At the moment, we have a motion on the floor to speak to.
Council Member Berman: Yeah, and I'm speaking to it. I won't support the
motion, because frankly I don't understand enough about the high-level
quantitative framework. I haven't looked at the Ontario model or Calgary
model. My concern is that we're going to get to a point where we're going to
create a point system that will attach to every project or whatever that
comes in front of the Council. I just don't know enough about that to
support that at this time. Maybe when it comes back, because I'm guessing
it'll get enough votes, I'll know more at that point and be supportive of it.
All I've heard is references to other cities' models that I haven't seen. I
haven't heard well enough how we'd implement that type of a framework and what that would really mean in practice. Until I hear that, I'm not
comfortable with it.
Council Member Filseth: Actually, I think Council Member Burt may have
answered my question. I just want to make sure that it's clear that the
framework is going to stay the purview of Council even though it's classified
as the implementation section, because the Council is supposed to be vision
and high—okay. That was my clarification.
Council Member Wolbach: Just to address kind of this question about how
much we're dictating tonight. I felt that the point was we're going to have a
more in-depth—we're just saying we want to have a discussion about this.
Looks like it'll probably happen in December. We want to think about it, talk
about it, give Staff a chance to bring it back before we vote in favor or
against it. We're not necessarily adopting it right now. We're certainly not
adopting that particular inverted pyramid tonight or the Calgary model
tonight. We're just asking Staff to look at those, come back with some
ideas, and we'll work on it from there. If that's where we're at, not dictating
any specifics and just asking for a chance to talk about it later, I can support
the motion.
Mayor Holman: I have one question about the motion, which otherwise I support. In the fourth line, it says quantitative framework that will be used
to guide impacts. I don't know what "guiding impacts" means. If I could
offer to the maker and seconder of the motion that it be "framework to be
used to evaluate and/or eliminate impacts." I just don't know what "guide
impacts" means.
Council Member DuBois: How about "guide decisions concerning impacts"?
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Council Member Burt: Yeah, that's really what I meant to say.
Mayor Holman: You're saying "guide ...
Council Member DuBois: Decisions concerning impacts.
Mayor Holman: I'm okay with that. Is that okay with you, Vice Mayor
Schmid?
Vice Mayor Schmid: Yes.
Mayor Holman: Guide decisions concerning impacts.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to replace in the Motion, “guide” with “guide
decisions concerning.”
Mayor Holman: With that, shall we vote on the board please. That passes
on a 7-1-0 vote with Council Member Berman voting no, Council Member
Kniss absent.
MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 7-1 Berman no, Kniss absent
Mayor Holman: With that, colleagues, can we move then to—we wanted to
address the transportation. A little time check here. It's 11:21. To the
transportation vision statement, then we have—transportation before
community services? Yes, because transportation is the one that is going to
the CAC on the 8th. That's the one that will be coming up to them first.
Director Gitelman, do you have any comment to make to kick us off?
Ms. Gitelman: Simply that if you look in the workbook, page 16, we
summarize the Council's input on the vision statement from April. Our
understanding of your direction was to develop a revised version of the
PTC's vision statement for transportation. This was one of just a couple of
elements where the Council felt that the PTC had done a good job in
simplifying. Maybe we could still add some thoughts to the vision statement
they came up with, but that it would be the basis for a revised version that
we'd bring back to you.
Council Member Burt: I'd like to frame this a little bit in the timeframe from
when the PTC reviewed this until where we are today as a Council and a
community and the Staff commitments. I think we've made a deeper
commitment than is reflected in the PTC recommendation or in the existing
Comp Plan. I'm not sure that—I'll look to others to maybe build on language, but I think it's along the lines that we're really talking about
building a comprehensive, sustainable transportation network. It would
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have a variety of aspects to it, perhaps as listed by the PTC. They aren't
incorrect; they may not be as deep or complete as we want. Maybe they're
complete enough and not a deep enough commitment. We need to make a
stronger statement that—in my mind, so much about what we'll do as a
community going forward is dependent on whether we can solve
transportation issues in our community in a way that enhances the quality of
the life of the community and enables many other things that otherwise will
be determined by lack of solving the transportation. Our other decisions will
get determined for us if we can't solve these transportation issues. On the
other hand, it presents a tremendous opportunity to really have a
transportation system that will actually enhance the quality of life of our
community. I think it's very fundamental, and I want the language to reflect
how important and fundamental it is.
Vice Mayor Schmid: It seems to me that we have two perspectives on transportation in the City. We have two development agreements with
Stanford, one on the Stanford Medical Center property and the other on the
Stanford Research Park. They are primarily employment centric. If you
looked at the relationship between jobs and employed residents in those two
areas, the ratio is about 32:1. If you look at the rest of Palo Alto, where we
are dealing with on a regular basis individual applications, we have a jobs to
employed residents ratio of less than 2:1. I think the quality of life impacts
in Palo Alto are primarily determined by how we deal with the Palo Alto side
of the equation. The transportation solutions on the two sides are very
different. On one side, in collaboration with Stanford and the development
agreements we have, we worry about issues like Caltrain, like Highway 280
and access routes and TDM programs. On the rest of the area, which is
affecting quality of life, we can talk about things like mixed use,
neighborhood streets, residential communities, biking, shuttles, so on. I
think we have two very different purviews when dealing with transportation.
I think it would be helpful to see the discussion of the Transportation
Element look and see where there are not two dramatically different sets of
issues that we, as a City, should be dealing with. The first one driven by
Stanford and the development agreements we have with Stanford. The second one more open to our purview of working other ideas or solutions.
Mayor Holman: Other colleagues to speak to the vision statement of
transportation?
Council Member DuBois: Just to the vision, not to the goals?
Mayor Holman: Just the vision at the moment.
Council Member DuBois: I'm good with the PTC version.
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Mayor Holman: You said you're good with the PTC version?
Council Member DuBois: Yeah.
Mayor Holman: Just to be clear, does that include or not include the Council
direction on April 27?
Council Member DuBois: I mean, I guess there wasn't really specific
language there. Yeah, using the PTC version as the base and incorporating
some of these comments that you're hearing. When we get to the goals, I'm
trying to figure out where it belongs. I think the one thing that's really
missing is a discussion about congestion relief. I mean, it's kind of a sub
thing. I think it's become an issue that it needs to be more of a top priority
on its own. I don't want to get into wordsmithing this vision. I think you've
heard feedback on that. When we get into goals, I kind of want to talk
about that.
Mayor Holman: Seeing no other lights from colleagues, I'm pretty emphatic that what the Council comments were from April 2015, that last bullet saying
to add back in the language of the existing vision statement, the adverse
impacts of automobile traffic on the environment in general and residential
streets in particular will be reduced. I think that's really important. I also
think that another sentence from the original or current vision statement is
very critical, which is—I guess it's the second sentence here. Streets will be
safe and attractive and designed to enhance the quality and aesthetics of
Palo Alto neighborhoods. I think that's also an important one to pick up,
because we don't otherwise talk about the aesthetic. The PTC version kind
of cuts to the chase in some ways. It also is kind of a sterilized version of
what the current one is. It takes out some of the heart and color and flavor
of what the current Comprehensive Plan has in it and has to offer and what
makes it such a good document.
Council Member Burt: Ready for a motion (inaudible).
Mayor Holman: The last one is to incorporate the last sentence which is, I
think, stronger and better than what the PTC version is, which is Palo Alto
recognize the regional nature of our transportation system and will be a
leader in seeking regional transportation solutions through long-term
planning. Council Member Scharff had his light on, and then Council Member Burt. Council Member Burt has indicated he has a motion.
Council Member Scharff: Good, I was going to make a motion. I actually
would move the PTC version, and I would also add that we focus on reducing
congestion. I don't mind what language you use, but I agreed with Council
Member DuBois on that.
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Council Member Burt: I don't disagree with you, but I have a more explicit
motion that I would be willing to make. I don't know whether you want to ..
Council Member Scharff: All right, go ahead (crosstalk).
Council Member Burt: That doesn't sound like a motion.
Mayor Holman: Are you withdrawing your motion?
Council Member Scharff: I think it does say—fine. Go ahead with your
motion.
Mayor Holman: I didn't hear a second.
MOTION: Council Member Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member XX
to incorporate the Planning and Transportation Commissions (PTC)
Transportation Element Vision Statement including a focus on reducing
congestion.
MOTION FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND.
Council Member Burt: All right. I won't attempt in this to construct the sequence of sentences or components, but give the elements to Staff and
they can come back with structuring it in a way that flows better, rather
than try and do that at this hour. The aspects are, first to start with the PTC
recommendation, but substitute for "maintain and promote," instead put
"build and maintain a comprehensive, sustainable" blah, blah. That's the
first portion. I'll let the Clerk catch up there. Second, to add over in the
City Council direction, the last part of the fourth bullet that begins "the
adverse impacts of automobile traffic" and the balance of that sentence. It
says "on the environment in general and residential streets in particular will
be reduced;" that's the congestion component. I have a third and fourth
aspect. One sec. I'm just letting them catch up. Third addition is from the
existing, the second sentence of it. "Streets will be safe and attractive, and
designed to enhance the quality and aesthetics of Palo Alto neighborhoods."
Great. The final is "Palo Alto recognizes"—I'm sorry. I should have—on the
original PTC I should have asked to have deleted the final section that says
"and supporting regional transit facilities and reduction of greenhouse gas
emissions." Delete that and substitute what I will provide you. Do you have
in front of you that PTC recommendation to draw language from or do you
need me to read it off? Do you have that available, David, the PTC? Okay. Then the final addition is the last sentence under the existing Plan. You start
to type there. "Palo Alto recognizes the regional nature" etc.
Mayor Holman: Do we have a second? I'll second.
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MOTION: Council Member Burt moved, seconded by Mayor Holman to
adopt as the Transportation Element Vision Statement:
A. Build and maintain a sustainable network of safe, accessible and
efficient transportation and parking solutions for all users and modes,
while protecting and enhancing the quality of life in Palo Alto
neighborhoods. Programs will include alternative and innovative
transportation processes; and
B. The adverse impacts of automobile traffic on the environment in
general and residential streets in particular, will be reduced; and
C. Streets will be safe and attractive, and designed to enhance the quality
and aesthetics of Palo Alto neighborhoods; and
D. Palo Alto recognizes the regional nature of our transportation system,
and will be a leader in seeking regional transportation solutions
through long-term planning.
Council Member Burt: To speak to it, I think this has a stronger overall
introduction that we are committing to a comprehensive program and then
draws some of the best elements of the Council direction and the prior vision
statement from the existing Comp Plan.
Mayor Holman: In speaking to the second, I appreciate the motion very
much. There is no reference to greenhouse gases.
Council Member Burt: Since that was substituted with that last "Palo Alto
recognizes" sentence from the old Comp Plan, "be a leader in seeking
regional transportation solutions and reduction of greenhouse gases through
long-term planning." I'm still going to defer to Staff to sculpt this when they
get it back. We just want to make sure we have the elements there.
Mayor Holman: I'm good with that and appreciate the motion.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion Section D, “to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions” after “transportation solutions.”
Council Member Burt: Cory was mentioning to me that really we don't even
want to limit it to greenhouse gases. We do have—maybe this is the place
to put it. In that first edition where it says "the adverse impacts of
automobile traffic on the environment in general and residential streets in particular will be reduced," that talks about other—yeah, maybe we'll break
it up that way. On the local level, we're talking about other environmental
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impacts. On the regional level, we look at greenhouse gases. It can be
structured any way. We just want to make sure that these parts are all
included in it.
Mayor Holman: Looking at the City Clerk, do you have the language? Do
you know where the language is to be pulled from? It's the existing
Comprehensive Plan.
Council Member Burt: Do you need me to show you (crosstalk)?
Mayor Holman: Yeah, Pat, can you help?
Council Member Burt: Sure.
Council Member Scharff: I'd like to add in as an amendment, where it ends
"the adverse impacts of automobile traffic on the environmental in general
and residential streets in particular will be reduced. Traffic flow will be
enhanced and traffic congestion reduced where possible."
Council Member Burt: I'm good with that.
Mayor Holman: I'm sure you're going to have to repeat that.
Council Member Scharff: I can repeat it.
Mayor Holman: Actually, if you have it in writing.
Council Member Scharff: I do.
Mayor Holman: If you have it in writing, it would be great if you could give
that to City Clerk.
Council Member Burt: (inaudible).
Council Member Scharff: I'll just repeat it. Traffic flow will be ...
Mayor Holman: Where are you putting this? Just to be clear.
Council Member Scharff: At the end of where it says "will be reduced." I
had "traffic flow will be enhanced and traffic congestion reduced where
possible."
Mayor Holman: Pat, as maker of the motion, Council Member Burt, you're
accepting that?
Council Member Burt: Yes.
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Mayor Holman: Could I try to get a little bit different language in that? I
look to you as the proposer of that. "Every reasonable effort will be made to
reduce traffic congestion."
Ms. Gitelman: Mayor Holman, if I can interject. We're happy to take all of
this input and—I think as Council Member Burt indicated, we're going to
need to do a little bit of ...
Mayor Holman: Okay. Good enough.
Ms. Gitelman: ... (crosstalk) and massaging. If we get into this level of
detail, we're never going to get home tonight.
Mayor Holman: You're right. Good enough. Good enough, okay.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion Section B, “traffic flow will be
enhanced and traffic congestion will be reduced where possible.”
Council Member Scharff: While I still have the floor, could we have a hard stop at midnight?
Mayor Holman: It is 12:38.
Council Member Scharff: No, it's 11:38.
Mayor Holman: Excuse me, it's 11:38.
Council Member Burt: We've got a whole other hour until 12:38.
Mayor Holman: 11:38. Let's see if we get to a reasonable time. We'll try to
end close to midnight. Council Member Filseth, did you want to comment on
this motion?
Council Member Filseth: No, I'm good.
Mayor Holman: I don't see any other lights. We are ready to vote on the
vision statement for transportation which is to start with Planning and
Transportation Commission recommendation, substituting for main and
promote. Main and promote, is that right? Maintain and promote. City
Clerk, on the third line down, it's "maintain and promote." Instead put
"build and maintain" and delete "practices." Delete "practices." Where does
that quote end? Somebody help me here, where that quote ends.
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Council Member Burt: David, let's go ahead and type in the portion of the
PTC recommendation, so it'll just be just the language we're keeping. Do
you want me to show you that?
Mayor Holman: It's just hard to follow at this point. Give us just a moment.
While he's doing that, Director Gitelman, looking to—if we get through the
vision but we don't get through the goals this evening, having the vision, is
that enough guidance to get you through the next CAC meeting?
Ms. Gitelman: I think that the CAC would appreciate having the Council's
direction on goals, because they're going to be crafting or discussing policies
and programs to implement those goals. Your direction could be as
straightforward as "we like the existing version" or "we like the PTC version"
or just tell us the elements of either that you'd like us to incorporate. I don't
think we have to get this level of specificity, but we would like to give the
CAC some sense of your direction on this.
Mayor Holman: All right, very good. We should hopefully soon be able to
vote on the vision for transportation. In the meantime, colleagues, think
about your comments for goals. Council Member Burt, are we close? Looks
like we are ... Okay. Council Member Burt moved, seconded by Mayor
Holman, to include starting with the Planning and Transportation
Commission recommendation, substituting for "to maintain and promote" ...
Council Member Burt: David, we were just going to only put in the language
that is there now. Instead of "build and maintain," we're going to say—oh,
yeah. Build and maintain—right, that's it. We don't even have to say start
with the Planning and Transportation.
Mayor Holman: We don't have to. It'd be amending the ...
Council Member Burt: No, we're just giving all the language. We don't even
have to say that anymore.
Mayor Holman: What you have written here then is the—as you want to ...
Council Member Burt: It's the whole thing.
Mayor Holman: To build and maintain a sustainable network of safe,
accessible and efficient transportation parking solutions for all users and
modes while protecting and enhancing quality of life in Palo Alto
neighborhoods. Programs will include alternative and innovative transportation processes. The adverse impacts of automobile traffic on the
environment in general and on residential streets in particular will be
reduced. Traffic flow will be enhanced and traffic congestion will be reduced
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where possible. Streets will be safe and attractive and designed to enhance
the quality and aesthetics of Palo Alto neighborhoods. Palo Alto recognizes
the regional nature of our transportation system and will be a leader in
seeking regional transportation solutions through long-term planning.
Council Member Burt: We didn't get in our greenhouse gases.
Mayor Holman: We lost greenhouse gases.
Council Member Burt: The adverse impacts, that's in there.
Mayor Holman: And will be a leader in ...
Council Member Burt: Down in the final sentence, David, it'll be "will be a
leader in seeking regional transportation solutions ...
Mayor Holman: To reduce greenhouse gases through ... Are we close
enough? I think the Staff understands where we're trying to get to.
Council Member Burt: Yeah, we'll let Staff work out the rest. Let's just go
with it.
Mayor Holman: Understanding that ...
Council Member Burt: This is not the final wording.
Mayor Holman: ... this is not the final wording, but this is the direction that
the Council's interested in going. Council Member DuBois, do you need to
comment on this motion? Your light's on. Okay, good. Voting on the board
on this motion. That passes on an 8-0 vote with Council Member Kniss
absent.
MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 8-0 Kniss absent
Mayor Holman: Going to goals. Council Member DuBois, that's what your
light's on for.
Council Member DuBois: See if I can move us through this one quickly. I
was generally aligned with Staff's recommendations of kind of starting with
the PTC, I guess, structure, kind of as outlined, combining some of the
current Plan into the new one. A couple of specific comments on proposed
T-3 residential street. I actually preferred the old wording which was
"neighborhood impacts." I actually wanted to propose a T-9 which I emailed
to David, which again was more specific around congestion relief. Again, in
our discussion at the previous meeting about transportation, we never really
got to our, I guess, goals or policy discussion. I guess, it sounds like there
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may be some agreement, but I just think it needs to be called out as a
focus. We keep talking about a lot of our bad intersections and things.
When you read the Transportation Element, there's nothing really in there
that focuses on congestion relief. My motion was to add a goal, T-9. I'm
open to wordsmithing as well, but "decrease congestion and improve
transportation efficiency with a priority on our worst intersections, our
business centers and our peak commute times including school traffic." That
was just my cut at it. I hope that sense comes across.
Council Member Scharff: I'll second it.
Council Member DuBois: I guess the rest of this motion would be to move
the Staff recommendation on the structure, which is primarily the PTC
version with Goal T-3 changed to "neighborhood impacts." Not that T-3;
that's the existing T-3. The new T-3.
MOTION: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Scharff to adopt Proposed Planning and Transportation Commission
Organization for the Transportation Element Goals with the following
modifications:
A. Add Goal T-9: Decrease congestion and improve transportation
efficiency with a priority on our worst intersections, our business
centers, and our peak commute times including school traffic; and
B. Change Goal T-3 to “Neighborhood Impacts.”
Mayor Holman: Do you want to speak to your motion any further?
Council Member DuBois: Yeah, I just want to make sure he gets it. I'll work
with David on that.
Council Member Scharff: Do you want me to speak to the motion?
Mayor Holman: Please.
Council Member Scharff: I think Council Member DuBois has it right. I think
Staff's recommendation is a good one. I do think we need to really focus on
decreasing the congestion. As he wrote it here, I think that's an excellent
addition, and I commend him for it.
Council Member Wolbach: Quick question for Staff. I was discussing this
with a colleague, and I just wanted some clarity. The language that we used
in giving our priorities to VTA, and it's mentioned here under Item 4 where it says "i.e., Caltrain grade separation." I just wanted to be clear. Does the
concept of Caltrain grade separations, when you use that phrase, when
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you're talking with planning people, VTA, herein Palo Alto, would that include
the possibility of a trench or a tunnel?
Ms. Gitelman: Yes.
Council Member Wolbach: That was my understanding. I was in a kind of
offline debate with a colleague about that. I just wanted to clarify that that
would not preclude and could include a trench or tunnel.
Ms. Gitelman: Yes.
Council Member Scharff: I can tell you when you're on these regional
bodies, they don't believe that. They think when you say grade separation,
they're thinking traditional grade separation like they're doing everywhere.
No one is thinking of giving Palo Alto a tunnel. If we want a tunnel, we need
to say tunnel. Otherwise, we are asking for grade separations, and that's
what they're going to talk about giving us. Then they're going to be really
upset when we have a community backlash. I recall when this came to Council and, I think, half the people here said we wouldn't do that. We
wouldn't have the eminent domain issues; we wouldn't lose the houses and
all that. I think we're going down a path on this to set ourselves up in a way
that's going to be disastrous, because we are not saying tunnel. We're
saying grade separation. Everyone else, I'm telling you, thinks Palo Alto
then wants grade separation, not a tunnel.
Council Member Burt: I would support language—I think to get us through
this shortly, once again, we should give Staff guidance on what we want as
opposed to trying to have perfect wordsmithing. I think that under our
grade separation section, we want to have language that clearly states that.
We've been interchanging tunnels with trench. Our policy has been trench.
So that we are embracing a trench approach where appropriate. That would
be one just amendment that would be essentially a guidance. Let me just
say that ...
Mayor Holman: To the City Clerk, if you can capture that.
Council Member DuBois: It's not a motion. It's really a policy. Trenching is
not a goal.
Council Member Burt: We have the trenching under a goal, don't we?
Council Member DuBois: I think it's a (inaudible).
Council Member Burt: Where is it?
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Council Member Wolbach: It's one of the ones proposed in the Staff
recommendation.
Council Member Burt: Whether it's a Staff recommendation or elsewhere in
here, let's get it down.
Ms. Gitelman: I think we definitely get the Council's direction on that. We
can make sure that that is included in the Transportation Element. I don't
know that it needs to be in the goals per se.
Council Member Burt: Okay. I don't care where it is. You had it in a draft
motion, so we're responding to that. If you don't think we need to include it
in our motion tonight, I ...
Ms. Gitelman: Given the lateness of the hour, I mean, we've got the
message.
Council Member Burt: I also wanted to raise that we've adopted a policy on
a 30 percent single-occupancy vehicle reduction for—I'm embarrassed. Whether it was Citywide or Downtown area, we adopted a policy. That's a
policy goal not within the Comp Plan. We adopted this as a goal as a Council
last year.
Mayor Holman: Would you repeat that please? We adopted ...
Council Member Burt: A 30 percent reduction in single-occupancy vehicles.
Whatever that existing goal is, that should roll over into Comp Plan goals
unless we choose to change it.
Ms. Gitelman: This might be an opportunity for me to make an observation.
We put the digital commenter out and have organized the Committee's
discussion with the anticipation that we would follow more closely the
existing goal structure. That's not to say we can't change it. I wanted to
make the observation that really in this one element, the two goal structures
are very similar. What happened between the current Comp Plan and the
PTC revisions is the first three goals in the current Comp Plan were
combined.
Council Member Burt: I don't see this one, so I would add that incorporate
existing Council policy on single-occupancy vehicle reduction. We don't even
have to figure out what this is right now.
Ms. Gitelman: I think that first goal on sustainability can be broadened to include a goal for single-occupant vehicle reduction ..
Council Member Burt: That's fine. I just want to move it on.
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Ms. Gitelman: ... TDM.
Council Member Burt: I just have to find out whether the maker and
seconder accept that.
Council Member DuBois: Again, I think you may be going to policy level
where it's already there. I'm good with it, but I'm not sure it's called out as
one of these (inaudible).
Mayor Holman: Council Member Scharff, you said as seconder you're good
with that? Okay.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “Incorporate existing
Council policy on single occupancy vehicle reduction.”
Council Member Burt: I'm looking at Goal T-7, mobility for people with
special needs. I think at a minimum we want to add seniors, called out
there. I think senior mobility is a major issue that we need to include in our thinking. I would offer mobility for seniors and people with special needs.
Council Member DuBois: It's T-6.
Council Member Burt: Oh, the current goal is T-6. The proposed goal would
be—I mean, the current goal is T-7, proposed goal is T-6. Just to add
seniors within that. I'm moving that as an amendment. People need to
respond.
Council Member DuBois: That's fine.
Council Member Scharff: That's fine.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “add to Goal T-6, ‘Mobility
for seniors and people with special needs.’”
Council Member Burt: Under proposed Goal T-4, that doesn't really seem to
capture anything in the—maybe this is once again a program—about
efficient and innovative parking. I mean, it's not just more parking that
we're talking about doing. It's this whole next generation of approaches to
parking.
Council Member Wolbach: Where was that?
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Council Member Burt: Proposed PTC goal of T-4, second from the bottom on
page 20. It could be "encourage attractive, convenient, efficient and
innovative private motor vehicle and bicycle parking facilities."
Mayor Holman: Council Member DuBois, are you okay with that?
Council Member DuBois: I was looking at it. I think we're venturing into
policies again. The description in the middle says that there are policies on
innovative parking management strategies, improve parking technologies. I
think a lot of that's in there.
Council Member Burt: We aren't saying which these are. We are already
saying it's got to be attractive and convenient, but we aren't saying efficient
or innovative. I'm not sure where that distinction lies.
Council Member DuBois: Okay. I mean, I'm fine with it.
Council Member Burt: I will add that I'm fine with subsequently through our
process getting a greater distinction between thinking through more thoughtfully what should be in goals, policies and programs. I just want to
make sure at this level key elements are captured, and then we can figure
out exactly where to put them subsequently. If that's okay.
Mayor Holman: Council Member Scharff, are you okay with that change?
Council Member Scharff: I'm okay with it.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “to add to Goal T-4,
‘Encourage attractive, convenient, efficient, and innovative parking
solutions.’”
Council Member Burt: Under the new proposed T-7, it says "influence the
shape and implementation of regional transportation policies." "Shape" just
doesn't seem like the right word. I don't know. Maybe they're meaning
form, I guess. I would encourage without trying to wordsmith it now—that
just doesn't seem ideal. We also have this big effort on mobility as a
service. That's not a policy so much as technologies in what we want.
We're trying to envision where we're going as really pursuing emerging
technologies. I really haven't seen that captured here. I would add
"transportation policies and technologies."
Council Member DuBois: Under regional?
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Council Member Burt: Yeah. It would be both local and regional. Like the
mobility as a service is being pursued as a County program through joint
venture.
Council Member DuBois: I think (inaudible) put it under sustainable
transportation.
Council Member Burt: Whatever, I don't care. I mean, I'm fine with figuring
out later where it belongs. I just want to get the concept out there that the
solutions are not just about policy. A big part of these solutions are about
new technologies. I just want to state clearly that's where we're going.
Mayor Holman: I think Council Member DuBois, since you don't seem to
have a preference for this, if it could be under sustainable transportation.
Whether that's Goal 1 or 2, we'll leave that to Staff. Transportation policies
and technologies ...
Council Member Burt: I'm agnostic on where to put it.
Mayor Holman: Okay. If Staff understands that. Are you including with
transportation policies and technologies things like last mile solutions?
Council Member Burt: A whole range of technologies that are emerging.
Council Member Wolbach: It's already mentioned in the Staff
recommendation.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “to add to Goal T-7, 'and
technologies’ after ‘transportation policies.’”
Council Member Burt: The final thing is on T-8, the airport, I just thought
that was a real weak goal. Just maintaining an airport with minimal
environmental offsite impacts. I don't want to try and figure out what
should be there. I just don't think it captures what should be the only goal
we have about our airport. I think we should have more thought to that.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “to direct Staff to add
additional language to Goal T-8.”
Council Member Wolbach: Actually, just picking up on this question of
where innovative transportation technologies goes. Looking at the new Goal
T-1, it looks like it wasn't all printed out there. At least in the version I got, it looks like an incomplete sentence. That might be where that was meant
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to go. It says yada, yada, yada, "and other methods to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions and the use of" blank.
Council Member Burt: Something.
Council Member Wolbach: I don't know what was supposed to go there, but
hopefully innovative transportation technologies would be included. I'll just
point that out and leave it there.
Council Member Scharff: Isn't it T-10, not T-8 (inaudible) airport?
Council Member Wolbach: New Goal T-8. Old Goal T-10.
Council Member Burt: New T-8.
Mayor Holman: Yeah, it's new T-8. Just one question on this. I keep trying
to look at this. If you go back and read further back here, it talks about
incorporating these existing—it does the same thing for community services.
Transportation among community services. I flipped back too far. We're
not eliminating other than what's indicated in this document, we're not eliminating any of the other transportation goals, right? I just want to make
sure we're not overlooking something.
Ms. Gitelman: I'm not sure I understand the question. We're trying to
choose the goal structure that we'll use for the draft. I think the suggestion
in the motion is we'll use the right-hand column here with a number of
changes that are articulated.
Mayor Holman: What I'm trying to just absolutely discern, though, is that all
current transportation goals have been addressed in this document. There
haven't been any that have been kind of set aside.
Ms. Gitelman: I think the PTC reorganized and expanded in this case. I
don't think any concept or idea was lost.
Mayor Holman: Just wanted to double check that from your perspective.
Vice Mayor Schmid: T-1, if I could suggest adding after "use of public
transportation," "mixed use zoning." The policies and programs under there
include housing near employment centers, housing near transit stations, and
so on. It seems that to get that in there, to add "mixed use zoning."
Mayor Holman: I'm not clear where you're wanting to add that. In the new
Goal 1, T-1?
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Vice Mayor Schmid: Yes, it's on page 19 under Goal T-1, sustainable
transportation.
Mayor Holman: Where are you wanting to insert?
Vice Mayor Schmid: Emphasizes walking, bicycling, use of public
transportation in mixed use zoning and other methods.
Mayor Holman: Council Member DuBois, are you accepting that?
Council Member DuBois: It feels like it belongs in the Housing Element. I'm
just not sure.
Vice Mayor Schmid: The programs and policies under there include things
like housing near employment centers, housing near stations.
Council Member DuBois: I'm sorry, say that again. What includes that?
Vice Mayor Schmid: The policies and programs under Goal T-1.
Council Member DuBois: I guess if they're in the policies, I'll accept it.
Mayor Holman: Council Member Scharff?
Council Member Scharff: We're talking about putting the words "mixed use"
...
Vice Mayor Schmid: Zoning.
Council Member Scharff: Mixed use zoning. Have we ever put something
like—where we define the zoning as going to be somewhere in the Comp
Plan? In the Transportation Element? I mean, if you tell me it's the right
place to put this stuff, I'd (inaudible) but it feels wrong. It just feels
intuitively wrong to me.
Ms. Gitelman: I mean, there is a nexus. I guess we could work with the
wording a little. Having a mix of uses tends to reduce car trips because
they're more link trips.
Council Member Scharff: That's true.
Ms. Gitelman: I think if you could give us the direction, we'll find a way to
make it—I wouldn't say maybe zoning, but a mix of uses does encourage
(crosstalk).
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Council Member Scharff: How about if we just said mixed uses? Would you
be all right with that?
Vice Mayor Schmid: Okay.
Council Member Scharff: Just take out the word zoning (inaudible).
Mayor Holman: Council Member DuBois?
Council Member DuBois: Yeah.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “to add to Goal T-1, ‘a mix
of uses’ after ‘public transportation.’”
Mayor Holman: A mix of uses I think is the term that Director—Vice Mayor
Schmid, is that all?
Vice Mayor Schmid: Yeah.
Council Member Filseth: I was just sort of feeling some of the same
discomfort that Council Member Scharff and DuBois are on this. It seems to me if we're going to talk about zoning, it ought to be in land use and ought
not be in transportation. Transportation should be about transportation.
Mayor Holman: But it has been accepted by the maker and the seconder.
Director will work with the wording there. I can see Council Member
Wolbach going for his light.
Council Member Wolbach: Just so we don't have too much of a contentious
vote here, is there any problem with highlighting this nexus between
transportation and land use in multiple elements of the Comprehensive Plan?
Ms. Gitelman: It's already highlighted to a great extent in the Land Use
Element.
Mayor Holman: I think with that, seeing no other lights, we'll vote on
transportation goals. Forgive me, I'm not going to read through all of this
because it's all so iterative and it wouldn't make too much sense to read
through it. Vote on the board please. Those edits pass on an 8-0 vote with
Council Member Kniss absent.
MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 8-0 Kniss absent
Mayor Holman: With that, it is 12:06. We move to Council Member
Questions, Comments and Announcements.
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Council Member DuBois: I'd like to move that we continue and just finish
out the community services. It's actually a pretty small element, and I think
we could power through it pretty quick if we were focused. The second
thing, I wanted to welcome Jeremy Dennis. I hadn't said that yet. I was
waiting 'til midnight to say that.
Mayor Holman: I too quickly moved to Council Member Questions,
Comments and Announcements. The City Clerk and I had talked earlier
about finding a place that we could continue community services. I think
people are tired. Even though you think we could power through it, I'm just
a little concerned because I think people are very tired.
Council Member DuBois: Had we decided to take it off?
Mayor Holman: City Clerk was looking for another date that we could take it
up.
Council Member DuBois: I hadn't realized we had made that decision.
Mayor Holman: We didn't make that decision. City Clerk, did you come up
with a date?
Ms. Minor: Not quite yet. We have changed. We're going to do a revised
agenda for September 9th, adding another Closed Session and extending the
labor negotiations to other units. September 15th, which is the agenda
coming out this week, we're making some changes to it and additions. On
the 21st, we have to add another Action Item to that one also. I don't have
a date yet that we can add this to.
Council Member DuBois: Could we go for 30 minutes and see if we finish it?
Mayor Holman: Director Gitelman, do we have—when is this going to the
CAC?
Ms. Gitelman: This is the one where the CAC already got ahead of the
Council on this. I don't think this one is as much of a priority as
transportation and land use. It's possible we could put it at the end at
November 2nd. Well, let me look at that schedule again.
Mayor Holman: While she's looking, Council Member Burt, did you have a
comment or question too?
Council Member Burt: I just wanted to report out on something.
Mayor Holman: We'll come back to you then.
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Ms. Gitelman: It would be nice if we could get Council direction on that in
the next 30 days or so, but I don't know when.
Mayor Holman: If we could do it within like, say, an hour, we'll find a place
to put it in rather than doing it this evening when people are just tired. I do
need a motion to continue the ...
Council Member Scharff: I'll move to continue.
Mayor Holman: Community services to a date uncertain?
Council Member Scharff: Community services to a date uncertain.
Council Member Wolbach: Second.
MOTION: Council Member Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member
Wolbach to continue the Community Services Element Goals and Vision
Statement to a date uncertain.
Mayor Holman: Do you need to speak any further to your motion?
Council Member Scharff: No.
Council Member Wolbach: No.
Mayor Holman: The motion is to continue community services' vision
statement and goals to a date uncertain. Vote on the board please. That
passes on an 8-0 vote, Council Member Kniss absent.
MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Kniss absent
15. Appointment of Five Additional Members to the Comprehensive Plan
Update Citizens Advisory Committee.
Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs
None.
Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements
Council Member Burt: First, a short one that I want to acknowledge a real
good event that Project Anybody staged yesterday at Mitchell. That was
yesterday or Saturday; my days are mixed up. Saturday, wasn't it? Yeah.
In any event, it had a couple hundred people. It was really completely teen
driven around basically environmental initiatives. It was a great event. The
teens who led the charge on this really deserve a lot of credit. Second, an
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important issue for the Council. I became aware in the last couple of weeks
that the High Speed Rail Authority, their Staff had taken to their Board a
proposal, which the Board adopted, to have a Request for Proposal for
Environmental Impact Report to be done for the Modesto to San Francisco
section. When I saw the agenda from the local policymaker group, it didn't
include it. I asked that it be agendized; it was. They brought forward Guy
Preston, who is the regional director for the High Speed Rail Authority for
this section. The group ended up having an extensive hour-long discussion
with him with virtually all the representatives expressing concern over both
the substance and the process by which this has been done. There was no
notification before this went to the High Speed Rail Authority that it was
being moved up. Basically it's reopened the issues. It really doesn't mean
that the Authority has funding to go ahead, but it will make this an open
issue on the Peninsula again. Tomorrow the Authority has a meeting in San Francisco to introduce this. I'll be attending that. Is it tomorrow? Excuse
me.
Council Member Wolbach: Today, Wednesday. It's Wednesday.
Council Member Burt: I'll keep you up to date on it. The Authority claimed
that they were moving forward because the other sections, the LA section,
had already had initiation of preliminary environmental study; however,
there's a lot of speculation that there may be other reasons behind it,
whether it's the challenges that they're having on the Tehachapi route in not
having an acceptable route or that they have a funding logjam in the Central
Valley and that they're having to move in this direction to still have enough
to progress on. They're not being very transparent, and that was frankly
one of the big pushes we made to the Authority, is to open up. We pushed
Caltrain as well, because clearly Caltrain had some foreknowledge of this,
and the local cities. Nothing was noticed to Caltrain's Board about this
change. I think the message was a pretty unified one by cities represented
at the meeting, that we want clear, open transparency. The good news,
though, is that I raised the issue in this entire process consideration that the
High Speed Rail Authority before the blended system had been adopted,
they had adopted context-sensitive solutions as the process for considering any design on the Peninsula. Guy Preston proceeded to say that he was
familiar with the process, thought very highly of it, thought it was a
solutions-oriented process, and that they would use elements of it in going
forward. I pushed harder and got him to agree to take back to the Authority
that we would like to see it specifically adopted as the process for this section if an EIR goes forward. It would be in parallel to an EIR. Basically,
it's something that is an identification of problems and solutions. It's a real
extensive process, and we can talk more about this later.
TRASNCRIPT
Page 127 of 127
City Council Meeting
Transcript: 8/31/15
Mayor Holman: Thank you for staying abreast of that and for bringing us up
to speed on it.
Council Member Berman: Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just want to kind of
implore you and all of us that we need to start getting control over our
meetings. This our third meeting after break. The first one went to 1:30.
The second one went 'til 12:30. It's now almost 12:15. We had practically
no public comment. The agenda's supposed to end at 11:00. We have
policies that say that we'll do check-ins at certain times. I don't know what
the solution is, but it's really tough to go to work in the morning and be
productive after these really early morning meetings.
Mayor Holman: Understand and appreciate that. When you take a look at
the agendas that we have and the things that we have to agendize, it's a
real challenge.
Council Member Berman: I think part of it is that we need meeting management. When we start off a half hour, 45 minutes behind schedule an
hour and a half into the meeting, I think they are improvements that we can
make above and beyond the agenda.
Mayor Holman: That's, of course, how long each of us speak is a part of
that too.
Council Member Berman: It is.
Mayor Holman: Assistant City Manager, City Attorney, anything to add?
Except just good night. Meeting adjourned.
Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 12:16 A.M.