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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2015-10-05 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL TRANSCRIPT Page 1 of 107 Regular Meeting October 5, 2015 The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council Chambers at 6:07 P.M. Present: Berman, Burt, DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Kniss, Scharff, Schmid, Wolbach arrived at 6:28 P.M. Absent: Study Session 1. Council Input for the Public Art Master Plan. Mayor Holman: Our first item this evening on the agenda is a Study Session looking for Council input on the Public Art Master Plan. We have Staff and a consultant here. Welcome. Elise DeMarzo: Thank you so much. My name is Elise DeMarzo. I'm the Director of the Public Art Program. I am joined by Rhyena Halpern, who is the Director of Arts and Sciences for the Community Services Department, and our consultant, Barbara Goldstein. The Public Art Program has been growing and professionalizing in recent years. With the passage of Percent for Art in Private Development, there will be more opportunities since there is more funding to do more public art programming throughout Palo Alto. We felt this was the ideal time to take on a Public Art Master Plan and really do that outreach to the community and find out what kinds of artwork do we want to have in this community, what are the spaces that could be identified, potential partnerships. We did a national search for public art master planners and were fortunate enough to have the team of Barbara Goldstein and Gail Goldman apply. It was the first time that they had actually partnered to do it. Both of them are nationally known in the field of public art. Barbara Goldstein until recently was the head of the public art program in San Jose. She's also run the program in Seattle and has written master plans for dozens of cities across the country. She also wrote the book on public art. It's a handbook for public art administrators; it's called Public Art by the Book. Gail Goldman, who unfortunately is unable to join us this evening, is also nationally known in the field. She has run the programs in San Diego and Colorado Council for the Arts. She has particular expertise in public art and private development. They really are sort of the dream TRANSCRIPT Page 2 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 team. Just overall, they began early this year getting community input, and they are in that process which Barbara will go over in a few minutes. We are hoping to complete the plan in March 2016 and are on target to do so. I'm going to turn it over to Barbara Goldstein now. Barbara Goldstein: Thank you very much for making the time in your schedule for this. I'm very pleased to be speaking to the Mayor and City Council, and I can't wait to hear what you have to say. This is basically where we are. The scope of the Master Plan is to develop a vision, identify partnerships, make recommendations about what types of art and where, evaluate the current collection, and make recommendations about the collection and maintenance. We are looking at a number of the policies. Some of them exist and needed to be updated. Other ones we're writing. Those include the murals policy, accession and deaccession, the code for Percent for Art in both public and private development, temporary artwork and the artist selection processes. We've had 32 interviews to date, 14 focus groups, a boot camp that included the City Staff and Commissioners, two advisory committee meetings. We developed an advisory committee that is made up of a cross-section of people from around the City that represent neighborhood groups and other key stakeholders and entities. We've had one Public Art Commission retreat. We also felt that not everybody likes to go to meetings, and so we thought it would be a really good idea to create a project that would go out to the community. We commissioned a team of artists called the Mobile Art Platform who have been going around the neighborhoods on their bicycles and gathering information, giving people photographs of themselves and capturing their ideas. We will be compiling those hundreds of people who participated in this, and the locations have been as diverse as the Magical Bridge Playground to Lytton Plaza and many other places. These are the kinds of things that we've heard about places where art should be located: California Avenue, University avenue, King Plaza, Rinconada Park and its new configuration, Cubberley Community Center, Midtown, south Palo Alto, Stanford Research Park, hiking and bike trails with an emphasis on environmental art. There are topics that we've heard that have come up time and time again. I believe that they'll be reinforced by what we hear from the MAP group. Supporting teens, caring for the environment, enlivening neighborhoods, creating an art- focused central gathering place where people can come together around the arts, commissioning pedestrian-friendly art particularly in places that are retail districts, installing temporary art, addressing commuters since your population grows substantially during the daytime, and locating art in unexpected places. Here are some examples of what these kinds of projects might do. In Seattle, we commissioned an artist to develop a piece at a community center that she made skateboard-friendly, so it's interactive. In Minneapolis, artists worked with teams to create murals. Environmental TRANSCRIPT Page 3 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 works could be as varied as this mobile wetland that's in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It's a piece that can be moved from one place to another and helps to sustain waterfowl and protect the shore. This piece by Buster Simpson in Portland that takes water off the roof of this bicycle rack and channels it into a cistern that creates a beautiful garden. Public art can enliven neighborhoods. Here are some examples. In Portland, this is a temporary work on the left-hand side. It's a big red ball that moves from one neighborhood to the other and people would follow. This tired hydrant in Bradenville, Florida. Here are some examples of art-focused gathering places. These can be temporary or permanent, but it's really interesting how artists' interventions can actually create a gathering place. On the left- hand side, you see a piece by Rebar which is a San Francisco-based artist group that create furniture that can just be plopped down in public spaces and then moved. On the upper left, you can see a temporary seating area that is done in the festival area in Quebec. On the right, just a typical art fair which you have some of and people want more. Pedestrian-friendly art can be something temporary like the laneways in Sydney, Australia where this artist simply painted the stairs in different colors or this piece in San Jose where an artist created projection art in an empty storefront. It can also take the form of things that are serial in nature. On the left-hand side is one of a series of the love letter murals that were done in Philadelphia on the Frankford subway line. Every place there's a stop, there's a really interesting mural, and they're all love letters. This has become an event in Philadelphia where on Valentine's Day people read love letters on the subway. This mobile art gallery in Montreal is a simple frame that allows curators to drop different elements of art into it, that can change very easily. It enlivens the streetscapes during the summer festival months. Public art can capture history. This is a project in West Seattle that is 8 miles long. It's a bunch of different interventions that placed art in the sidewalks, created viewers, created poetry in the sidewalks, and really told people the various aspects of Seattle's history from the history of the people to the geology to the topography to nature. This is a piece that deals with history in San Jose. It's on the paseo that connects the San Jose State University to Cesar Chavez Plaza. It's a commemoration of a very important person, Ernesto Galarza, who was a labor leader, a poet and a teacher in the university. It takes the form of a library bench with many artifacts about his life on it and then a series of insets in the sidewalk that are his words that lead from the university to the plaza. Temporary art has come up many times during our meetings. This is an example from 01 festival in San Jose a number of years ago. It's called A Champion Flock of Weed Eaters. It's a typical storage pod that was converted to look like a barn, and inside the barn was a gigantic mother sheep who had a mirror under her stomach with a video screen in it. You could check out the baby sheep and take them to different places as long as you sent photographs of them back to the mother TRANSCRIPT Page 4 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 sheep, so the people could see them. It also had a website so that you could follow the sheep wherever they went. This temporary project in Pittsburgh that changes every six months is called the Conflict Kitchen. Every six months this changes its appearances and serves food from a different country the United States is in conflict with. The exterior of the booth looks like fabric patterning from that country. The food comes wrapped in a wrapper that tells you the history of that place, the history of its food and the nature of our conflict with that country. At the end of the six months, there's some kind of special event. This is a dinner that was done between Pittsburgh and Kabul. It was a simultaneous dinner which was done over a web cast, so the people in Kabul and people in Pittsburgh were sharing the same meal and having a conversation with each other. It really breaks down barriers between people. Addressing commuters has been a very big issue when we've had our meetings. These are a couple of examples of how art can enliven commuter areas. A number of people have brought up the idea of creating art at the train stations or doing something that really welcomes people into the City through art and connects them to the people that live here. Putting art in unexpected places. This is a piece that was put in the Glow Festival in Santa Monica underneath the pier. It was there for one night, and it's a series of illuminated sculpture that looked like undersea creatures. They're made out of things like old plastic bags and electronic parts that bounce up and down as you go underneath the pier. It feels like you're under water. This temporary piece is a projection on a grain elevator in Minneapolis. Putting art in alleyways is an interesting thing to do. This is a very iconic piece that is in Pasadena. It's in a paseo behind the shopping district. It's only about 10 feet high, but it really has an iconic stature and is something that people really gravitate towards. Parking garages can be enlivened by art. This is an example that you're probably familiar with. It's the parking garage at San Jose airport. A hundred thousand people see it every day. It basically is made out of two layers of chain link fence and an image that is created on the chain link fence by snapping little plastic buttons onto the dividers between the chain link. It represents the hands of 54 different people in San Jose. They range from little kids to old people to people that were the head of internet start-up companies to orchardists. It represents a big variety of people waving at you. Here's another parking garage in Philadelphia that is a mural created in vinyl. It is images of dancers. Alleyways can be enlivened by public art. On the left-hand side we have something that's called Delirious Frites, Delirious French Fries, in Quebec. It's made out of many pool noodles. On the right, we've got a piece in Atlanta which is called Inversion with Sky. It's simply paper that is strung across the alleyway with projections of the daytime sky projected at night. Down below, an alleyway in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that's called Cell Phone Disco. It's an LED piece that is activated by the cell TRANSCRIPT Page 5 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 phones that people have in their pockets. Now, I'd like to hear from you. We did that really fast. Ms. DeMarzo: We did. Rhyena, did you want to add something briefly? Rhyena Halpern: I just wanted to add that we're also coordinating with the Public Arts Master Plan so that we're making sure that there is a line of communication from the Public Art Master Plan to the Parks and Rec Master Plan and the Comp Plan. Ms. Goldstein: Having talked to so many people that are community members, we really would like to hear from you as well, so that we can be sure that we get everybody's point of view. Mayor Holman: Thank you. We have one member of the public who would like to speak to us too. That's Jerry Hearn, and you'll have three minutes. Thank you, Jerry, for coming. Jerry Hearn: Thank you very much, Mayor Holman. A few thoughts on this. Thanks for the opportunity to speak on this tonight. We saw all those slides before, and they're really quite inspiring. I had the pleasure of being invited to sit in on a few focus groups and meetings. I want to commend Barbara and Gail for doing a wonderful job of collecting information and listening, and not just presenting. I think they got a lot of good input. During that period of time, it kind of made me think a lot about art. I'm not an artist; I don't consider myself an artist, but I'm an art aficionado. I do appreciate it. I thought instead of what is the value of art. I thought that, as a student and teacher of history, I always felt there was a critical tie between the art and the cultural values and norms of any given period. Art actually offers a window into understanding the mindset or the sight guides to that time and its connections to our time. Art is often the bridge between those things. Also as a teacher, I always saw art as another intelligence, another way of someone who is maybe perhaps not quite so verbal to participate in the social discourse and the discussions which was really critical to good citizenship. I think of art as a vehicle of understanding and expressing some deep knowledge and wisdom that cannot be captured in words. All this is to say that I appreciate and completely support the efforts of Palo Alto to secure a place in the public arena for artistic expression. I don't know what the process will be as this Master Plan moves forward, but I strongly suggest that it find a place in the Comprehensive Plan somewhere to ensure that this important element of a civil community continues to be respected and supported for the value it brings. Thank you very much. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Marc Berman. TRANSCRIPT Page 6 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member Berman: Thank you guys very much for the presentation and also clearly for the very robust outreach that you guys have conducted in the community and creative ways of getting input from folks that might not necessarily come to a scheduled meeting. I think that's a great idea. I just had a couple of kind of thoughts. You can take them or leave them. One of them I mentioned to the Art Commission when they were here a couple of months ago. Public art, I'm a huge fan. I think not only can public art kind of create something out of nothing and add a lot of value and kind of an opportunity for residents to stop and think and enjoy in an area that didn't have it before. I also think public art can be used to make something that might be a little bit ugly a little less so. One of the things I know has been a point of contention in the community and I drive by probably every other day is the affordable housing complex on the corner of Alma and Homer. I'm a huge fan of the project, but it kind of created these big walls right along the Caltrain corridor for a reason. It's to kind of mitigate the sound noise from Caltrain for the residents who live there. If there were something, some mural-type project or something like that that could turn what's currently just kind of big, blank walls into something a little bit aesthetically appealing, I'd be all for that and I think a lot of other folks would too. Another thing that I've begun to notice as we've taken some efforts along the Caltrain corridor is we're now noticing a lot of graffiti along the walls on the west side of the Caltrain tracks. There are I'm sure all sorts of safety issues there and other things that might kind of inhibit what we can do, but if there were ideas that folks had for how we could kind of beautify that area a little bit, that'd be a neat project. That's kind of all I've got. Thank you guys very much. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product in about six months. Mayor Holman: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: Hi. I did meet the mobile art team. That was very cool, nice guys, very engaging. I'm excited to see you guys doing that. I know you had south Palo Alto on your list. I'd say consider some of the parks in the south and also look at the southwest. We just talked about the Charleston-Arastradero corridor. I think that corridor on the way to Gunn High School could be an interesting place. There's not a lot of City things over in that area specifically. I don't know if it's done by the City or not; occasionally we have artist open houses. I think events like that are really interesting, where we just take advantage of all the artists that are resident here in Palo Alto. I'm looking forward to seeing the result of the Master Art Plan. I'm curious if there are what you guys would consider comparable cities and if there are kind of best practices we can pull from in terms of what cities would you compare us to and do they have master arts programs that we can kind of borrow from. TRANSCRIPT Page 7 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Ms. Goldstein: We've written quite a few of them. We're going to use the best practices that we've found in other places and apply some of them here. Some of the approaches that we're going to take here will be unique to Palo Alto, for sure. Council Member DuBois: Thanks. Mayor Holman: Council Member Burt. Council Member Burt: Thanks for all the work that's being done here. I wanted to focus on the topics that you list down at the bottom of packet page 6, page 2 of your report, and just add my support for a number of them. The first one is supporting teens. I know that we've had a lot of teen art events. Seeing this within the context of this report was causing me to ask where we might be able to expand that and maybe there are things going on that we simply need to be informed about. I certainly embrace it. Another one is caring for the environment and basically that's, in my mind, expressing our environmental value structure in our art. The enlivening neighborhoods. We don't tend to have so many opportunities to place art within neighborhoods. We may want to look more creatively at where that might exist. One thought that touches both the kids and the neighborhoods is school sites as being potential locations for public art. We've tended to do our thing and they do their thing. Maybe there's a way to cross those over. Art as a focused central gathering place, I think we've done pretty good things there. As this process kind of forces us to step back and really look at what opportunities are there, maybe this is a function you've already done, when you've looked at the mapping of the existing public art is just like when we look at where don't we have neighborhood parks that we're supposed to have; where don't we have public art in the community, and just geographically. That doesn't mean it makes it easy to find sites where it's missing. Part of the reason it may not be there is there aren't great sites, but it could mean that we work that much harder to try to find sites there. Another one was capturing history. Given the comparatively rich history of Palo Alto for a California city and for a city our size, we really don't have a great deal of our art that expresses and celebrates our history. By that I don't mean a bunch of classical-like statues of founding fathers. Nevertheless, we have this incredible history here. We have hopefully the Palo Alto History Museum and all of the thing that they've been looking at on what is significant in history in Palo Alto. I don't know whether there's been any collaboration between the History Museum and our Public Art Plan to look at where we might take things that they were and are intending to recognize within the History Museum and push them out to the community. Those are just my thoughts. Thank you for your work. What's the process TRANSCRIPT Page 8 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 in which this continues forward? I see we have a timeline. Will it be returning to the Council with a final measure in 2016? Ms. Halpern: In the spring of 2016. Council Member Burt: Thanks. Mayor Holman: Vice Mayor Schmid. Vice Mayor Schmid: Just a couple of thoughts to share. I'll start with economics. The Council made a big change a year or so ago, putting a fee on not just public facilities but private, both commercial and residential, of a modest size. I would assume that that should lead to a substantial increase in resources available. A Master Plan, maybe somewhere in the Master Plan there should be a description of resources and what new opportunities are created by that, how we should be thinking differently than we have in the past because we have more resources for it. I think that somewhere in there, when you come back in 2016, I'll look for that. In terms of the groups that might be interested, you have not listed specifically seniors. I know there has been some research that shows as people age, their aesthetic talents, sense, appreciation tends to become more focused, more important to them. We have an increasing number of seniors, and that will continue over the next decade. Seniors tend to become isolated, and art would be a wonderful way of engaging them in some ways or another of bringing out the talents they might be increasingly interested in. If you could think through maybe ways of reaching that senior community with some of your projects. I'd like to reiterate what Council Member Burt said about capturing history. I got an email from someone that had a picture of a statue of Steve Jobs. I said, "That's interesting." He said, "Yeah. This is in Budapest." He says, "There's nothing in Palo Alto." Why don't you capture a little bit of our history by places around town, all different parts of town, either people or events that took place that might be captured in a different way through art. I think that's a wonderful way of cooperation and looking to innovative ways of making people alert to what has gone on in their surroundings. Finally, reassessment of art. I know one of the traditions in Palo Alto is let's take this public space and add art to it. We have now taken all the exciting, visible places around town and there's art in there. Some of it is exciting and it becomes a part of your history with that place. Also, it can be clutter. After 10 or 20 years, you scratch your head and say, "Why is that there?" What about new artists who come along who could take that site and turn it into something different? I would encourage you to have some kind of five or ten-year reassessment of what's been there for ten years, is there some way of assessing how people are responding to it. Some people fall in love with things and things become part of that TRANSCRIPT Page 9 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 place. Others are just there. We don't want to block potential new artists by taking sites that might be existing for a piece that they have. One way of just thinking through, reassessing public art where it is and how long it belongs there. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Council Member Scharff. Council Member Scharff: Thank you. I'm really glad we're doing this Master Plan. I think that's a great idea. I appreciate all the effort. I know you guys put a lot of effort into this. I guess a couple of things. First of all, are we going to see this Master Plan and get to discuss some of the policy issues underlying it? We really aren't talking about any of the real policy issues except for a really, really high level. I want to make sure we get to see it, we get to talk about it, and that kind of stuff. Council Member Schmid was correct. We made a big increase in the budget by adding the extra percent for it. The question becomes when you do a Master Plan if we're going to do it for five years or ten years, I always like these things to be achievable. I don't want it to just be like a plan we then put in the drawer somewhere and we think it would be nice and it's aspirational. I want it to be real. That means that the plan should work with a budget. We should basically say this is the revenues we sort of expect within this range, this is how much we're going to use for. I mean, I like temporary art. I do. On the other hand, it's temporary and it goes away. The bigger the budget you have, the more I think you could spend on temporary art. The smaller the budget you have, the more I want to see something that lasts in Palo Alto because we have less budget. What I would like to see more of is what I would consider to be iconic pieces that people love in Palo Alto. We really haven't had, I think, a lot of those. We have some infamous pieces that people talk about. You mentioned the Working Men in Pasadena. People in Pasadena are really attached to that. Even I'd heard of it. I haven't been to Pasadena that often. You go to certain cities and people say, "You have to go see that piece of art." I'm not sure that happens in Palo Alto. I actually think the owls in Mitchell Park could easily achieve that status. I think they're wonderful. They have that really. The rusting metal sculptures around town, not so much. What I'm hoping we do is we think through how it all works with the budget, we have a plan that becomes implemented, and that we create some of those more iconic pieces, frankly. I think temporary art is fun too. It's funny. I was thinking of those stairs; I actually really like those stairs, but I'm not sure why they'd have to be temporary, if you go to the trouble of painting it. That's sort of a really cool thing. There's obviously those stair walks in San Francisco with all the tiles. They're not temporary. People love those. They go from all over the place to make those walks. I think clearly the tunnel, for instance, where Caltrain is—I thought there was some art we were thinking of putting in there. I've never TRANSCRIPT Page 10 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 seen anything go in there, so I don't know what happened to that. What happened to that? Ms. DeMarzo: The challenges in the tunnel were pretty great. Between the lead paint and the low lighting and whatnot, there's still a lot of challenges to be worked out to implement that project on the limited budget that was available. Ms. Halpern: We're trying to look at other options. We haven't given up. Council Member Scharff: I'm glad you haven't given up. It's not the most attractive entryway to Palo Alto. When you say a proactive vision, that's what you're talking about, allocating resources between these different items. All of them are important. I mean, supporting teens, caring for the environment, those kind of things are all really important. I don't disagree. The question is how do we come up with and what do we allocate and what are the priorities. For me bigger, more iconic—maybe bigger is the wrong word. Destination pieces that people will actually seek out to see is what I would prefer. I don't mean this negatively, but I think we all get caught up in whatever some other city is doing or whatever other people are doing at the moment. It can be a little faddish in art sometimes. I'm probably not putting that the right way. That's sort of what I was thinking. Things that we think will last and people will like long term. Anyway, thank you very much. Mayor Holman: Thank you. I concur with colleagues about the presentation and really very happy that we're doing this and strong support for that. To begin with, I guess just off the bat I'll say I concur with everything that Jerry Hearn said. This does deserve a very specific place in the Comprehensive Plan and reference in the Comprehensive Plan. The thing with some of our plans is they do exist and they stand, but they need to be integrated into the Comprehensive Plan too, that referral, that reference. That's one. You all know I'm a very strong supporter of art in the alleyways and changing that experience, so the alleyways are not just, like, you've got to get through them to get to your destination. That they're an experience themselves. They make for a safer environment in addition to a more pleasant environment. The role of art, because you asked that question. Art Commissioners have heard me say a number of times that I really appreciate functional art. There's a book that you at the table down there are probably all aware of called When Art Worked. It's a gorgeous book that's about WPA art and the role that WPA art played. It's art and architecture, how it not only provided jobs for people, but it also inspired people, it created gathering places. It's a wonderful book and really tells a story about what art can do in those times. I think we can apply some of TRANSCRIPT Page 11 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 that to these times too. It can be inspirational It can be entertaining. It can provide gathering places. It can be seasonal and temporary. I think it can also change—my feeling is, and we haven't gotten very far with this yet, I think it can also change something. There's the—I won't go there. We have the Caltrain tracks that have a number of different, not all positive, associational stories to them these days. I've been thinking about and talking with City Manager and some other folks about, like, what can we do at the tracks that will change that story, that will provide a place of inspiration and a positive message and not just here are the tracks, that they loom in our conscious and our awareness, and what happened here last. Let's try to change that story. There's more than one way to address these things. Going back to functional for a moment here. There's a wall along California Avenue at Molly Stone's that is just a blank, dead wall. It's true also on the other side of the street at—I've forgotten what the name of that development is. They're blank walls that, as you come from the train station at California Avenue up the street, are such great opportunities. While we can't use public funds to advertise, we can do something that's graphical and maybe helps support the activities there. Those are great opportunities. The Magical Bridge Playground has been looking to get a tree over one of their play areas. It's become infeasible, economically and physically, to plant a tree. I've been talking to them about maybe thinking about an artificial tree that's an art object that provides some shade. They're really looking for some shade. Maybe that's an opportunity too. Maybe it could be a public-private partnership or something of that nature. Peter Kageyami was here earlier in the year. He talks about surprise and delight. I really like that. Jim Keene will remember how there's one town—I can't remember where it was—that has, like, mice tucked around here and there around town. James Keene, City Manager: Greenville, South Carolina. Mayor Holman: You have a memory like I wish I had. Exactly. Palo Alto could do something—I don't want to copy that. There are opportunities of things that we could do. It could be miniature trees put around at places of historical interest. I'm a big fan of Perry the donkey. It could be miniature donkeys. Anyway, just kind of things like that. There are things that we can do to create neighborhood and do the surprise and delight too. I really love the little neighborhood libraries. I love things like that. They get response. I have a couple of friends that have them in front of their houses. The books in those turn over pretty darn regularly. It's just amazing. That kind of facility. Should we be looking at some kind of seasonal art. We have all kinds of different holidays. Can we do something to support the community in putting up seasonal art. Somebody mentioned Cubberley and arts district, I think. I've been wanting to create an arts district here for TRANSCRIPT Page 12 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 some time too and have talked with some of you about it. Whether that's at Cubberley, potentially at the Frye's site, wherever we end up doing that, I think we would be a richer community if we really had an arts district. I'm saying arts plural. It could be combination gallery and artist studio space. Again, it's arts plural. I think we'd be a much more dynamic community if we had something like that, especially as rents here are so very expensive. Two other things I'll mention. I see Council Member Kniss has put her light on, so thank you for that. I know I have them here. Something that I mentioned to Elise today and talked to Karen the other evening about is children's art. Children's art is so inspiring. It's so pure. It's so refreshing. Perhaps there are places around town that we could install children's art. We just had this wonderful exhibit recently at the Arts Center that was children's art. I was thinking the other evening that we want to get people to walk the stairs instead of take the elevators in City Hall. At the landings, we have these big boring walls that actually are great gallery space. Why don't we look at installing, I'm suggesting, some of the children's art there? It would be a great boost to people and encourage people to want to take the stairs. The last thing I think I'll mention is—two more things. Again, going to functional art. As a part of the Meet the Street event too, there's been some conversation about getting businesses to collaborate on reducing the number of dumpsters that they have. After all, people aren't paying for the dumpster; they're paying for the service. If we can reduce the number of dumpsters and enliven our alleyways, is there something we could do with the dumpsters themselves? Could we wrap them? Could we paint them? Are there different kinds dumpsters? That I don't know. Can we make the dumpsters more of an art piece rather than what we associate them with now? The same with newspaper racks, our trash cans. We have garbage cans in the community, but they really don't serve the function that I think some of us want them to serve. They function mostly as garbage cans. We don't have the multipurpose cans that also encourage recycling. The last thing I'll mention, I do promise you. In combination with collaboration with the History Museum that Council Member Burt mentioned and telling our story, we don't have—a lot of communities have history walks. My thinking is it could be a combination art and history walk, because the history can be told in artful ways. We don't have anything even close to that in our community. I did lie, because there is one more thing. For many years, I've wanted to create a miracle wall in Palo Alto. What made me think of it a long time ago was in Roman Holiday there's a wall that people go to. It was like, if you can have that kind of a wall, why can't you have a miracle wall? It could be an interactive wall where people really go and tell their story and it's a place of inspiration and hope. It could be done, I think, in a very artful way. Those really are my comments. Council Member Kniss, and then Council Member Scharff has something else. Council Member Kniss. Thank you for your patience. TRANSCRIPT Page 13 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member Kniss: Have any of you mentioned Greg Brown tonight? Mayor Holman: Not yet. Council Member Kniss: Among the things that I remember when we moved here was the surprise of the Greg Browns on the side of the walls. Initially people thought they were real, which was even more fun. Very sadly Greg is gone. Have we looked at doing something like that again? Does that kind of art, artist exist in our area and what would it take for us to do that? The Mayor just mentioned California Avenue where you come from under the overpass. That is a pretty blank area. What would it take there to do some Greg Brown-like types of things? It's easy to think of other kinds of realistic or other kinds of almost graffiti-like types of things. I think he was so unique. I don't know if he went into any other community. I never heard about it if he did. It certainly made us stand apart from other communities. That's my question. That's not a comment. I want to know have we thought of it and is it something we could do again. Ms. Goldstein: I love the idea of things that are serial in nature, that draw people from one place to another. I agree with you that the Greg Brown murals are one of the things that's absolutely unique about Palo Alto. We've heard a lot of people that are interested in the idea of work that is serial in nature, that encourages you to walk or move to discover new things through art. I'm quite sure that something like that will show up in the Master Plan. As far as do I know an artist that does that kind of work, I think that there are lots of artists out there that do work that is intriguing, that could maybe help you to solve a puzzle where you want to see what's going to come next. I think it's a great idea, and it is something that is unique to Palo Alto, so extending it into other neighborhoods, that general idea, is a very strong idea. Council Member Kniss: I hope we can pursue that, because I miss that happening. I thought that surprise. As far as I know, Greg thought up his own ideas. I don't think anyone said, "Put that grocery cart over there," or "Have the guy jumping out of the window at the bank," or whatever else there may be. I don't remember how that started. Do any of you remember? Jim, do you have any recollection? You didn't live here then. Do you know, Pat? Council Member Burt, step right up. Mr. Keene: No, I was not here at the time. Council Member Burt: (crosstalk) Greg Brown? Council Member Kniss: Yeah, I don't know. TRANSCRIPT Page 14 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member Burt: My recollection—I stumbled on it as a teen—was on a temporary construction site, plywood surrounding a site on or off University, was Spiro Agnew. Maybe I'm wrong, but that was—I still remember it to this day and didn't know who Greg Brown was or who did this, but I thought it was pretty funny. Council Member Kniss: (inaudible) thanks. I appreciate that. I didn't know. I think that—Karen mentioned this too—that surprise kind of thing or the feeling like you're in on it. You can say to somebody, "Look at that." They'll say, "Oh, my God. What happened to that guy?" Before suddenly somebody says, "It's just a painting." His were so realistic and so creative. Whimsical, different, catches your eye, that kind of thing. I hope we will continue on that path. Thanks. Mayor Holman: I think Elise can probably add to how Greg Brown's artwork came to be. Ms. DeMarzo: As I recall, they were supported by grant funds. Greg Brown was essentially the first artist in residence for public art here in Palo Alto. That was quite some time ago, and we were very fortunate ... Council Member Kniss: If it was Spiro Agnew's time, it was quite some time ago. Ms. DeMarzo: So many of them have survived, and it's a terrible loss to us that Greg is no longer with us. Mayor Holman: Indeed. Council Member Scharff, you had an addition? Council Member Scharff: I did. I was remiss on a couple of things I forgot to mention. Greg Brown was actually one of them. It was in my thing tonight. Are we protecting those Greg Brown murals? I mean, are we taking legal protection so that people can't tear those buildings down and not preserve the mural on a new building or that they have to maintain them? Are we doing anything about that? Ms. DeMarzo: So far the City has been maintaining them. For instance, the piece that is on the side of Restoration Hardware, we did have Greg Brown come several years ago and touch it up when it needed some help. There have been some instances where we were alerted to the fact that there was a plan to paint over them. So far we have been fortunate enough to talk to the owners and talk them out of it. Council Member Scharff: Do we need to pass any rules up here? Maybe we should. I mean, I'd be really upset if someone painted over it. I would hate TRANSCRIPT Page 15 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 for that to occur before we did something to stop that. This wasn't what I was going to talk about, but it just sort of left. Mayor Holman: Council Member Scharff, you either may not recall or perhaps were not at that meeting, but we had a conversation at the Council—it was not an agendized item—about landmarking Greg Brown's murals. Council Member Kniss also suggested support for that. Council Member Scharff: Good. I had forgotten that. As long as we're supporting that and doing that. Mayor Holman: There are challenges to that. We've had exchanges back and forth with Staff about how we might go about doing that. Council Member Scharff: Then I'll move on. I just wanted to make sure we thought about that. Mayor Holman: The interest is still there. Ms. Halpern: Our Master Plan will definitely address that issue. We can talk about it more now if you'd like to or you can wait. Either way. Council Member Scharff: Let me go onto my other issues. Ms. Halpern: It is complicated. Council Member Scharff: What I actually wanted to talk about was maintenance of the existing public art. For instance, we have that mural on the California Avenue tunnel. It's a great mural, but we're clearly not maintaining it. I don't know why we're not maintaining it. It's always easier to do new things; it's always more exciting to do new things. I am concerned that we're not putting the effort into maintaining our current public art. I'm very concerned about that. I did want to say that I really supported the Mayor's idea of, in the walk-ups in City Hall for instance, on those blank walls that you suggested. I would actually expand on that and say there's probably lots of places. I k now we have a vast collection of art somewhere that the public doesn't even see, that has been donated over the years and stuff. There are a lot of blank places like that around, that you may be able to put pieces of art. I was thinking you might want to think about that. I mean, it might not be the best place, like, the wall in City Hall walking up the stairs. That would be sort of unexpected and nice to see some different art. Mr. Keene: We could have pictures of City employees hanging by a thread or something down the wall or whatever. TRANSCRIPT Page 16 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member Scharff: I think that would be sort of fun, don't you? The little frivolous ... Council Member Filseth: But no Council Members. Council Member Scharff: That's really what I wanted to say. Thanks. Mayor Holman: We could have Greg Scharff's footprints going up the wall. Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: Just real briefly. First of all, thank you folks very much for doing all this. I think this is really cool, and I'm looking forward to seeing sort of the next phase of it. I just wanted to weigh in on the Greg Brown murals. We had the discussion briefly. Council Member Scharff brought up the concept of sort of a balance of things that are sort of iconic and lasting versus other things that rotate. For me those murals Downtown, sort of the whimsical and the flying saucer through the building and stuff like that, I think that's probably as close as we have in Palo Alto to something that's sort of iconic and sort of part of our DNA and so forth. I would weigh in on preservation of those. I wonder does Greg Brown have other work that's not in Palo Alto? Under the right circumstances, maybe we could get a hold of it and put it someplace else in south Palo Alto or elsewhere in the City. Just a thought. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Seeing no other lights, I think you can tell by the vast array and numerous comments that there's a lot of enthusiasm about the Public Arts Master Plan. Go forth and produce. Thank you all so much. Did you have any final comments you wanted to add? Ms. Halpern: Thank you. Ms. DeMarzo: Thank you very much. Ms. Goldstein: Very helpful. Mayor Holman: Thank you all. Thank you all a great deal. Ms. Halpern: Thank you for all your comments. Appreciate it. Council Member Kniss: Mayor Holman, could I ask one question? The original from the centennial in '94 was done by Greg Brown of the hats. Do you remember the hats in the poster? Mayor Holman: Mm-hmm. Council Member Kniss: Does that ring a bell? TRANSCRIPT Page 17 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Mayor Holman: Yes. Council Member Kniss: Does it ring a bell with anyone else? Mayor Holman: Yes, yes. Council Member Kniss: That was an original, and I don't know—there were many, many copies made of it. Many people had them hanging in their house. If anyone knows where the original is and why we don't have it up somewhere, that would really be helpful. Mayor Holman: If memory serves—Council Member Kniss, you'll remind me—I think the hats represented the different eras and different periods. Council Member Kniss: (inaudible) Mayor Holman: Yes. Council Member Kniss: They went from, I think, 1900 to 1994 as it turned out. Mayor Holman: It was emblematic of the centennial event. Thank you all very much. Special Orders of the Day 2. Resolution 9550 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Expressing Appreciation to Grant Kolling Upon His Retirement.” Mayor Holman: Council Members, our next two items are Special Orders of the Day. We have a Resolution of the City Council expressing appreciation to Grant Kolling upon his retirement. I've asked Council Member Scharff if he would read the resolution. I see Mr. Kolling coming into the chambers again. Council Member Scharff. Council Member Scharff: I just wanted to see where is Grant? I didn't see him. Oh, there he is. Mayor Holman: He's right there. Council Member Scharff: Welcome, Grant. I just wanted to say before I started, I really have enjoyed working with you over the years, as a fellow South African. He read the Resolution into the record. Thank you very much for your service, Grant. Mayor Holman: Before we invite Mr. Kolling to make any comments—I'm sure he has a few—we do need a motion for this. TRANSCRIPT Page 18 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member Scharff: I'll make the motion. Vice Mayor Schmid: So moved. Second. Mayor Holman: Motion by Council Member Scharff, second by Vice Mayor Schmid, to approve the Resolution. MOTION: Council Member Scharff moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Schmid to adopt the Resolution expressing appreciation to Grant Kolling upon his retirement. Mayor Holman: Vote on the board please. Council Member Kniss. Council Member Scharff: Maybe you could tell us a little bit about the European taxation. Sorry. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Mayor Holman: That passes unanimously. Thank you all. Mayor Holman: Mr. Kolling, would you care to make some comments? Grant Kolling: Yes, thank you. Good evening, Mayor Holman and Members of the Council. Thank you, Council Member Scharff. I think you had a question about European taxation. When I actually graduated from Hastings, I wanted to be a tax lawyer. After five years of practicing tax law, I decided I didn't have the temperament to be a tax lawyer, so I thought I'd do something else. I became a corporate lawyer before I decided my calling really was as a public agency attorney. I will take with me some great memories of working here in Palo Alto. It was a lot of fun. With all that you described that I've done, it almost feels like I've been working for at least 35 years. Time flies when you're having fun. Anyway, I appreciate the efforts. I was taking a friend through Palo Alto Downtown last weekend to have dinner at one of the local restaurants and was pointing out to her some of the projects I worked on over here in City Hall. It's good to see at least some of my handiwork. I'll take the credit for that. If there's only blame, you can pass that on to Molly Stump. Thank you very much. Mayor Holman: At the risk of a very bad joke, I'm sure we're all interested in what his next calling is. 3. United Nations Association Film Festival (UNAFF) Proclamation. Mayor Holman: Our second Special Order of the Day is today the United Nations Association Film Festival, UNAFF, Proclamation. Council Member Kniss will read the Proclamation. TRANSCRIPT Page 19 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member Kniss: Greetings. I've just been conferring with Tom next to me. Jasmina, if I get your name absolutely wrong, let me know. Do you want to say something before I do this? If not, I'll read it and then you get to comment on it. Okay? Jasmina Bojic: That's fine, Liz. Council Member Kniss read the Proclamation into the record. Ms. Bojic: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Liz, and thank you to the Members of the Council. It's always a pleasure being a part of the Palo Alto community for the 18 years and obviously being, I think, one of those celebrating moments to connect Stanford and Palo Alto and obviously East Palo Alto. There's just one small error, but you're correct that it's from October 15th to 26th. There is, I think, October 16th to 26th in one of those sentences. Council Member Kniss: I noticed they were different, right. Ms. Bojic: We'll correct that. Invite all the members of the community to join us. For all those years, the celebration of the education of this (inaudible) that they're bringing to our community is, I think, became our treasure. Obviously, what's happening around the world, it's happening in Palo Alto. We want to share this for 11 days. We are very happy. Before we receive from our wonderful Mayor this fantastic Proclamation, I just would like to show you the trailer for the film festival. If you can play that, 90 seconds, so you can see what is part of the festival. Thank you so much. Mayor Holman: (inaudible) Ms. Bojic: Thank you so much. Mayor Holman: You're very welcome. Ms. Bojic: Thank you so much again. We really greatly appreciate it. This is actually for our (inaudible) and to share with all the members of the (inaudible). [Video shown] Ms. Bojic: Thank you again. We hope to see you at the festival. I hope actually to see also some of you as members of the panel. I'm particularly thinking about that, joining us again for the panel about climate. Thank you so much again. Liz, as well. Thank you, and to the Mayor as well. Mayor Holman: Thank you very much. Great night for the arts tonight. TRANSCRIPT Page 20 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions Mayor Holman: With that, Council Members, we go to Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions, and we have none. City Manager Comments Mayor Holman: We go now to City Manager Comments. James Keene, City Manager: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Council Members. Just seeing Jasmina's short trailer puts our problems in perspective a little bit, seeing those pictures. October 4-10 is Fire Prevention Week, which was established to commemorate the great Chicago fire of 1871. If anybody wants to launch into the song, that's okay while I'm reading on. That tragic fire killed more than 250 people and left 100,000 people homeless. This year's theme is Here the Beep Where You Sleep. The Fire Department instructs our community members to install and test smoke alarms in every bedroom. Roughly half of home fire deaths result from fires reported between 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. when most people are asleep. Numerous community risk reduction activities are taking place throughout Palo Alto, including fire station open houses on Saturday, October 10th, and an employee safety fair open to all on October 19th. Palo Alto's drought and an update on trees, a matter of concern to folks across our community and, I know, the Council. There is good news and bad news when it comes to our conservation efforts in this drought. We've done a good job as we've repeatedly reported to Council on our conservation efforts. We've save about 34 percent compared to 2013 levels. We know that a number of our trees across the City are showing signs of stress. We are reminding our community that it is very important to continue watering trees. They're a critical part of our community. Trees lost today, obviously, would take decades to replace, if possible at all. The City itself has increased watering public and street trees and has launched a new Save Our Water and Our Trees campaign to inform people about proper tree care and irrigation. We're asking residents and businesses to help us in our efforts to protect and preserve our valuable resource as part of our City's green infrastructure. For more information on trees, water issues and the drought, please go to cityofpaloalto.org/water. Speaking of trees, leaf season is here. Starting on October 12th and continuing through mid February, streets in residential areas will be swept on a weekly basis instead of every other week. The Council will remember that a year or two ago we moved to every other week street sweeping, but always with the understanding that during the heavy leaf fall portion of the season we'd return to the once a week schedule. Residents can help our neighborhoods do that cleaning by doing three things. Park cars off the street on the weekly sweep day if possible. I do TRANSCRIPT Page 21 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 believe in Downtown north it's actually posted. Avoid putting leaves and yard trimmings in the street. Lastly, rake leaves off of storm drain gates during rain for our more energetic folks who are able to do that. Last Friday, the Human Relations Commission hosted a Summit on ending veterans' homelessness, bringing together local and national leaders to address this important topic. Following the welcome by Mayor Holman, Colonel Nicole Malachowski, Director of Joining Forces, the White House initiative on veterans' issues, and David Wilkinson, Director of the White House Office on Social Innovation and Civic Participation, addressed over 100 attendees at our local event. Also present were representatives of the VA and local and county homeless service agencies. Two veterans shared their stories of the difficulties after leaving the service and how they managed to overcome those challenges and move towards recovery and housing thanks to their own determination with the help of the VA. A highlight of the event was Mayor Holman's announcement that she will sign the White House Mayor's Challenge to end veterans' homelessness. Nationwide over 629 mayors and governors have signed on. Just a reminder that the City will be hosting a special Veterans Day event on November 9th. We'll have more details in the coming weeks as we get closer to that event. With fall also, we hosted the 20th anniversary of the Great Glass Pumpkin Patch last week. More than 5,000 people experienced live glass blowing and thousands of glass pumpkins in a diverse range of colors and shapes. It's the largest glass pumpkin patch in California and the only one that benefits local artists, the Palo Alto Art Center Foundation and the Bay Area Glass Institute. A reminder of a special event this week. The inaugural Meet the Street event will be held Downtown on Thursday, October 8th, from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. on Bryant, Ramona, Emerson and Waverley streets. That would be really between Hamilton and University for the most part. Is that correct? Mayor Holman: Emerson will go down to Forest. Mr. Keene: Emerson will go down to Forest, okay. Pedestrians can shop, dine or stroll, enjoy music, art and fashion in a fun-filled event that will highlight and support our businesses, some of whom include longstanding local businesses such as Bell's Books who will be celebrating their 80th anniversary that night, the Palo Alto Players who will be celebrating their 85th anniversary, not all of them were part of the original cast, and the Cardinal Hotel who will be celebrating nine decades in Palo Alto at their location. They will join in the celebration with many other Downtown businesses on the side streets. We look forward to seeing all of you there. For people in particular who often talk about let's have more pedestrian access or use and closure of the streets, this is a great event to come out and experience that in the Downtown. For more information, at the City's TRANSCRIPT Page 22 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 website, cityofpaloalto.org/meetthestreet. That's all I have to report. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Council Member Wolbach, question? We're canceling that question. Oral Communications Mayor Holman: We now go to Oral Communications. We have four speakers. Irene Kane to be followed by Dr. Leah Rogers. Is Irene Kane here? Not seeing her, we go to Dr. Leah Rogers, to be followed by Stephanie Munoz. Leah Rogers: I'm Leah Rogers. I have a degree in hydrogeology from Stanford. I'd like to address the issue of the dewatering. For most of my career at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, I modeled flow and transport in the subsurface. I've read the reports for 2004, 2008 and would like to make a couple of points for the Council about them. The first is that the zone of influence on the groundwater is much larger than, I think, the tens of feet that these reports suggest. We call this the cone of depression in the water table aquifer. If you look at the full range of possible hydrologic connectivities in the subsurface, it's quite likely to be on the order of hundreds of feet. If you might imagine this cone going out in all directions to not just the neighboring property, but maybe the neighboring two or three properties. I think that it's also good to look at the fact that there are often several of these dewatering projects going on in any neighborhood, and those can be cumulative effects. It might not impact the neighbor who is religiously watering every day against all City guidance, but the conscientious neighbor that's trying to do that 40 percent that the City Manager was talking about, that's really already got some pretty stressed landscaping. They might be the ones that find that they lose a tree or two or a hedge and not properly understand what the impact of the dewatering projects in their neighborhood were. The other point I'd like to make is that the idea that these rewetting processes are completely reversible is also very problematic to the degree that we have quite a few clays and such. Maybe some of you have done pottery and you started off with wet clay and you made a bowl and it was a very different entity after drying for a couple of days than the original clay that you were working with. Even if you put that in a bathtub full of water, it still isn't going to return in the same way to what it was before. This uneven rewetting which we call hysteretic soil compaction reeks havoc on foundations and such. It's quite plausible that some of the additional cracks in foundations and walls that neighbors have been noticing and complaining about do in fact find a great impact from the scale of these dewatering projects. In concluding, I'd like to second the TRANSCRIPT Page 23 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 letter from Dr. David Stonestrum that's on the public record about this issue, in sort of questioning in a very common sense sort of way if we have to dewater to this magnitude, is this something we really want to do to leave people open to the flooding and molds, perhaps. Good luck to the Council as they ask for additional information and put the onus on some of these developers to more adequately characterize what they're going to do and warn neighbors of how they can plan for that. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you very much. There's a question for the speaker. Vice Mayor Schmid. Vice Mayor Schmid: Yeah. I wonder if the speaker could provide some citations for the Council. Ms. Rogers: Citations, you mean ... Vice Mayor Schmid: You can send them in to the Clerk, but citations to research. Ms. Rogers: Certainly. What I was using for my calculations was the Darcy equation, a pretty standard calculation for draw-downs. Is that what you mean for something like—sure, I can certainly do that. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Stephanie Munoz to be followed by Keith Bennett. Stephanie Munoz: Good evening, Mayor Holman and Council Members. Last week when you discussed the wireless to the home, I didn't say anything because I'm a technological nincompoop. I really have nothing to contribute, I thought. When you started talking about public benefit, I do have something to say. There is nothing more important as a public benefit than better communication. Only two weeks ago, I missed out on tabling at a health fair because I didn't know about it. When I did know about it and called in, I had to send my credentials in by email, but my email was not working. I went down to the Mitchell Park, but Mitchell Park Library was closed down. At any rate, better communication is always better. You can always assume that the private company is in it to make money. Why shouldn't they? That's their business. It is not the business of the Council to allow the company to make money at the expense of less communication amongst the citizens. It would be better for the City to bear the cost, prudently of course, and then share it out amongst all the citizens so as to get better government from better advice. I have a couple more things to communicate. Number one, about the veterans. Why can't the 659 mayors demand of the Federal government that they house those veterans? House them well or even house them badly. Offer them some kind of housing. The TRANSCRIPT Page 24 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 City of Palo Alto did not conscript those people into the army and send them off to kill people. It was the Federal government, that is, all of the whole United States. It's everybody's obligation; they should just do it. The other thing that's a little bit more close to home is the question, if the Council can upzone at will, as it has done to the advantage of some and the detriment of others, why can't it downzone the same property. I know you can't discuss this either with me or among yourselves without putting it on the public agenda. I'd like you to put it on the public agenda, because I see a situation here with this trailer park in which these people are not exactly only renters. They're also homeowners and investors. The put up the investment money to put the structures on the land, then they supplied the workforce and the consumers which made a town out of what had before been bare land. To me, that's an investor just like me, just like you. I don't see why they can't be granted the fairness and the courtesy of being zoned what they started out as. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you. We have Keith Bennett to be followed by Peter Dreckmeier. Keith Bennett: Hello, my name is Keith Bennett. I'm a resident; I live on Webster in Palo Alto, on the edge of what I would like to call the dewatering zone. It's an issue of significant concern to me. I'd just like to give you a few facts. Based on the 2008 City Manager Report, for one basement typically 8-10 million gallons of water is pumped. This year there were 14 basements that were dewatered in an area of roughly 1 square mile. That's 126 million gallons of water. That's 18 million cubic feet. This water is pumped, and it is dumped down the storm drains. The water is useable. The City puts a pipe there for trucks to pick up, and they put taps. However, in practice only 1 or 2 percent of the water is actually used. Let me give you a perspective on how much water that is. It's enough to fill 50,400 2,500-gallon water tank trucks. It's enough to fill a football field including the end zones 275 feet deep. It's enough to supply 1,500 single- family homes in Palo Alto for water for one year based on the average monthly usage in July of 226 gallons per day. It is also enough to lower the water table in 50 percent porous clay soil by 13 inches over an area of 1 square mile. I don't believe that the 2008 report that says effects only go a few tens of feet are consistent with these kinds of numbers. The 2004 study, upon which the City policy is currently based, states that there may be impacts, as I mentioned, of a few tens of feet. It seems to me that considering the intensity of this dewatering, the localized impacts are probably significant. They can include ground settling. Dewatering is just that; it reduces soil moisture. Tree roots go down about 7 feet; the water table in that area is about 8 feet below ground. If you lower it by, let's say, 4 feet to make a basement, it is now out of the zone of the tree roots. I TRANSCRIPT Page 25 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 hope the City of Palo Alto will realize that due to the three-fold increase in the number of dewaterings, from an average five a year to 14 this year, that the current City policies are inappropriate and enact an immediate moratorium on new permits for the pumping of our groundwater for the construction of residential basements and to further study the effects. Only if such a study shows that the effects are negligible and City policies are revised to ensure mitigation of the effects should dewatering be permitted to continue. Those are my comments. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Peter Drekmeier to be followed by Gail Price. Peter Drekmeier: Good evening, Mayor Holman and esteemed Council. Peter Drekmeier, Fulton Street in Palo Alto. I too am here to talk a little bit about groundwater. It was an issue that I heard from a number of residents about when I was on the Council. I put some energy into learning more about the groundwater situation. There's a lot happening now, because of the drought and because of the State groundwater legislation from last year. Some really positive things happening in the area. First of all, thank you all for passing a resolution last year, or maybe it was earlier this year, acknowledging the importance of groundwater and the need for regional cooperation to make sure that it's managed sustainably. That groundwater basin is the deeper basin. That's the basin where East Palo Alto is looking to draw from to meet their basic needs, because they have a very poor allocation from the SFPUC. It's also the basin that San Mateo County is now doing a groundwater assessment on which, in part, you helped facilitate. The San Mateo plain basin, it's a sub-basin of the Santa Clara basin which is very well managed by the Water District. In San Mateo County, they don't have a similar agency. It's really wonderful that they're stepping up and we can all work together, because we have something called the San Francisquito cone that's fed primarily by San Francisquito Creek, that is of great importance to our area. It connects the communities that are also challenged by flooding, so the JPA communities. We need to manage that well. We also have a closer-to-the-surface groundwater basin that has basically been ignored. That's the issue that a couple of people spoke to you about today. The previous report basically said this basin fills pretty rapidly, we don't need to be too concerned about it, which brings up the idea of maybe we can use more of that surface groundwater for our parks and other irrigation uses. I think more importantly there is—I'm hearing from a lot of people in Palo Alto and Menlo Park and other neighboring communities about the impacts of dewatering and the settling of land and impacts to their properties, doors that don't open anymore, cracks in the structures. I think we're going to hear more and more about that. Also there's concern about impacts to vegetation in the area. One house, one dewatering project could lead to 8 million gallons of water being pumped into the storm drains. TRANSCRIPT Page 26 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 That's close to what we use in Palo Alto in one day. I mean, this is a really precious resource. Now, if we tap that water for other uses, we'd have to pay the Water District, but when you pump it for groundwater dewatering, there's no cost. I think the idea that this has a value is really important to the people of Palo Alto. I've heard from a number of people, "Why should I conserve when I see this hose that's draining a basement for months on end?" Thank you very much. Mayor Holman: Thank you. I should have said former Mayor Peter Drekmeier. Thank you for coming. Gail Price, former Council Member Gail Price. Gail Price: Thank you. I'm here to announce a social event. You all have received invitations. I'm the chair of the fourth annual Kiwanis Angel Award. It will be taking place on October 22nd. Several of you have responded yes, and I'm hoping we get 100 percent response rate. The award is going to be given to Barbara C. Klausner who is the Executive Director of DreamCatchers. DreamCatchers is an organization that supports, mentors and guides at-risk students in Palo Alto. We all know that the earlier support a student receives, the higher likelihood of success and really thriving in life and in education. We all know how important that is. Barbara is a former Palo Alto School Board Member. The online tickets, both for the benefit of the Council and the public, are available www.kiwanisangelaward.org. We look forward to seeing you there. All the funds received will go to support community-based organizations that develop programs and services for students and youth. We're very proud of this event. It's a really strong partnering event. I absolutely will be looking for you at the event on October 22nd. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you. What was that date again? Joan Marx will be our final speaker unless Irene Kane has reappeared. Joan Marx, welcome. Joan Marx: Thank you. Mayor Holman, Council Members, City Staff and fellow Palo Altans, I've come tonight to tell you that yesterday's Bike Palo Alto 2015 event, an annual Citywide green event which is partly sponsored by the City, was a rousing success. We had 658 riders. I'm sure you now that or you're learning that, but I don't know if you know that we also had 53 other Palo Altans who volunteered for this event. This was a grand, green community celebration. As you may know, the purpose of the event is to show residents the quiet streets and the street designs which make Palo Alto so bike-friendly, so amenable to getting around on your bike during the week, not just during the weekend. These are the bike boulevards, the bike bridge to El Palo Alto for example, the bike bridge to the Baylands, and the undercrossing at Homer under the railroad, and the bike path along the TRANSCRIPT Page 27 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 railroad which connects to that. Yesterday we gave people a choice of three routes, each of which showed off some street designs and quiet streets that Palo Altans could go along. On this day, we also had three treat stops along each of the three routes. That made nine treat stops in the City. At two of these, we had blender bikes, so that people could climb up, pedal away, and make their own smoothies. Yesterday, we also initiated a green pilot program, the frequent rider card which was given to each participant in Bike Palo Alto. Its purpose is to encourage people to go places they want to go, that they usually go which are local and where they can go by bicycle instead of using their car. By biking to a "merchant sponsor" and making a purchase, the cyclists will get an initial on one of ten spaces on the frequent rider card. When the tenth is filled, the cyclist will get a prize. We have 18 merchant sponsors who are backing this card, and they include two grocery stores, two hardware stores, coffee houses and—this is why I said "merchant sponsors"—all the Palo Alto libraries where you do not have to make a purchase. We are truly hoping to make this a beginning for a green cycling community celebration year round. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you. One more Oral Communications speaker who is David Coale. David Coale: Thank you, Mayor and City Council. I just wanted to piggy back on Joan's comments about Bike Palo Alto with a few numbers. With all the participants in the program, we pedaled 4,600 miles yesterday, saved more than 2 tons of CO2, saved probably 1,947 parking spaces and maybe 1,000 extra trips in terms of reducing congestion. As Joan was mentioning, we are piloting the frequent rider card, and we have rider cards for the Council. These are not necessarily free, because we expect you to ride to nine other places. I've given you one mark on the card already. The other thing I really wanted to thank you for was the City support in this program. Thank you very much. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Thank you, David. Minutes Approval 4. April 13, 2015, April 14, 2015, April 20, 2015, and April 27, 2015. Mayor Holman: With that, we go to Minutes Approval. We have Minutes from April 13, April 14, April 20 and April 27. Looking for a motion for approval of the Minutes. Council Member Wolbach: So moved. TRANSCRIPT Page 28 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Mayor Holman: Motion by Council Member Wolbach to approve the Minutes. Looking for a second. Council Member Burt: Second. Mayor Holman: Council Member Burt second. MOTION: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Council Member Burt to approve the April 13, 14, 20, and 27, 2015 Minutes. Mayor Holman: With that, vote on the board please. Those pass unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Consent Calendar Mayor Holman: Now, we go to Consent Calendar. City Manager Keene, I almost made you a Council Member. City Manager Keene, do you have comments on Number 9? James Keene, City Manager: Yes. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just real quickly. This is the VIMOC contract relating to the monitoring we're going to be doing on some pedestrian and bike routes. I did want to just make it clear that the imaging technology that we have through this contract will be incapable of identifying individuals and record keeping is very limited. I did hear a number of questions and comments, so I did want to ask the Council to go ahead and approve the direction on the contract as recommended with just this clarification that we would be pursuing adding some more explicit language that results in a full privacy policy to ensure that both the nature of the recordings and how they're transmitted and how long they're kept and those sorts of things are spelled out in the contract. I would ask for the Council's approval of Number 9 with the additional sort of direction to the Staff when we finalize the contract, I'd go ahead and be able to sign it. Thanks. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Council Member Kniss, did you have a comment or question? Council Member Kniss: Yes. Even though I will support an arrangement we have made, I am still going to consistently vote no on Number 10. We have a compromise we've gotten to as far as how Minutes will be included, but I am still not in agreement with how we are going to do them long term. I've forgotten how to vote no, so you can remind me. TRANSCRIPT Page 29 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Mayor Holman: Thank you for that. I see no other lights so, Council Member Kniss, what you will do is you will vote for the Consent Calendar if that's your desire on the rest of the items, and I'll just indicate that you registered a no vote on Number 10. Council Member Kniss: Good. Thank you. Mayor Holman: With that, Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I'll vote no on "10" as well. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Mayor Holman: We need a motion to approve the Consent Calendar then. Council Member Scharff: So moved. Council Member Wolbach: Second. Mayor Holman: Council Member Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach, to approve the Consent Calendar. MOTION: Council Member Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to approve Agenda Item Numbers 5-11, with direction to Staff to explore additional clarifying contract language to Agenda Item Number 9 providing additional privacy protection. 5. Approval of Amendment Number Three to Contract Number S13149314 With Truepoint Solutions, LLC in the Amount of $290,000 to Provide Support for Accela Software Applications and Blueprint Initiatives, for a Total Contract Amount Not to Exceed $942,800. 6. Approval of Amendment Number One to Contract Number C14153485 With Canopy, for an Additional Amount of $45,000 for the Second Year of a Three Year Term, for a Total Amount Not to Exceed $399,630 for Implementation of Urban Forest Master Plan Programs 1.D.i: 'Analysis of North-South Palo Alto Canopy Disparity', and 3.B.1: 'Recommendations for Reducing Tree and Sidewalk Conflicts'. 7. Resolutions 9552 and 9553 Entitled, “Resolutions of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Correcting Clerical Errors in Two Items Previously Approved as Part of the Fiscal Year 2016 Budget.” 8. Approval of a Contract with BKF Engineers for a Total Amount not to Exceed $538,547 for Design Services for the Embarcadero Road Corridor Improvements Project and Budget Amendment Ordinance TRANSCRIPT Page 30 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 5348 Entitled, “Budget Amendment Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo Alto for Fiscal Year 2016 to Provide an Additional Appropriation of $337,766 to the Embarcadero Road Corridor Improvements Project in the Capital Improvement Program (CIP) PL- 15001.” 9. Approval of a Contract With VIMOC Technologies for a Total of $100,000 to Install Parking Occupancy Sensors and Bicycle/Pedestrian Video Counters. 10. Ordinance 5349 Entitled, “Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo Alto 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 (FIRST READING: August 31, 2015 PASSED: 8-0 Kniss absent).” 11. Council Approval of Appointment of Terence Howzell to the Position of Principal Attorney. Mayor Holman: Vote on the board please. That passes unanimously with both Council Members Kniss and Council Member DuBois registering no votes on Item Number 10. MOTION FOR AGENDA ITEM NUMBERS 5-9, 11 PASSED: 9-0 MOTION FOR AGENDA ITEM NUMBER 10 PASSED: 7-2 DuBois, Kniss no Mayor Holman: As a part of the Consent Calendar, we approved the appointment of Terrence Howzell to the position of Principal Attorney. Is Mr. Howzell here? If you'd like to make some comments to address the Council, welcome. Terrence Howzell: Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Mr. Howzell: Good evening. My name is Terrence Howzell. I'm excited about joining the team and looking forward to serving the citizens of Palo Alto. Thank you. Council Member Kniss: Welcome. Mayor Holman: Will your reports be that brief? Thank you. Welcome aboard. TRANSCRIPT Page 31 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Action Items 12. Comprehensive Plan Update: Comprehensive Plan Structure and Goals/Vision Statements for Each Element and Related Direction to Staff and the Citizens Advisory Committee (Part II: Community Services & Facilities and Land Use & Community Design Elements). Mayor Holman: That takes us to our first Action Item this evening. That is Item Number 12, Comprehensive Plan Update which is the Comprehensive Plan structure and goals and vision statements for each element and related direction to Staff and the Citizens Advisory Committee, or CAC. This is Part 2, Community Services and Facilities and Land Use and Community Design Elements. That includes Policies L-8 for land use. Does Staff have a presentation? Looks like we're getting there. Thank you all. Jeremy Dennis, Advance Planning Manager: Thank you for your patience as we set up. Good evening, Mayor Holman and Members of the Council. My name is Jeremy Dennis. I'm the Advance Planning Manager for the City of Palo Alto. I'm joined by my boss, the Director of Planning and Community Engagement, Hillary Gitelman. A very quick PowerPoint for you. I can see it. Tonight is the second of three meetings that we have scheduled with you to discuss the Comp Plan. Tonight we're going to be discussing the Community Services and the Land Use Element, the vision statements and goals. I'm going to go through this very quickly, through this PowerPoint, as there's a lot to cover tonight. This is that discussion there. This is just a very quick timeline on our presentations to you. You can see October 5th; we're on the second one. We do have November 16th reserved for any follow-up with the Council if that is needed based on any of the conversations that we have tonight or the next meeting. Like we mentioned in our first meeting, it's our intention to take what we hear tonight and fold it into the ongoing Citizens Advisory Committee process as that body reviews the existing Comp Plan's policies and programs. Your direction tonight is obviously critical to that work. You're familiar with this slide. The process for the Comp Plan Update is shown here. What's important about this slide is the continual nature of the conversation between the Council, the community and Staff. Items related to the Comp Plan are reviewed and refined at multiple times by the community and its representatives, ensuring transparency and thoroughness. We believe this is a very thoughtful process to ensure that goal. Here's just a quick reminder of the structure of the overall organization of the Comp Plan elements. This is how the Comp Plan is currently structured. You have a vision statement. You have goals, and underneath each goal is a set of policies and programs that help implement that goal. You have material tonight that you've seen before. It's familiar to you; we used it last time. It's primarily a workbook. We hope you use it to compare the existing Comp Plan with the work that the TRANSCRIPT Page 32 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 PTC shared with the community in 2014 as well as any feedback you, the Council, provided in previous times. Part of tonight's work will be finalizing that feedback into specific direction for the Staff. With that, I'm going to jump right in. I'd like to start with the Community Services Element. We'd like direction on three items as seen here. The vision statement, the goals and Policy C-28. Policy C-28 is mentioned specifically within your Staff Report. That is the policy that provides the City's current principles on the location and development of new parks. The Staff Report has a recommendation to incorporate the guidelines—excuse me, shared our recommendation to incorporate the guidelines that are part of the upcoming Parks Master Plan. We hope that you will let us know what you think of that. Once we're finished with Community Services here, we're going to follow the structure for Land Use, vision statement, goals. We also have asked for some guidance on Policy L-8. With that, we're available to answer any questions that you may have. Happy to kick this off. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Council Members, we have 12 speaker cards. I have received just a handful of comments from members of the public that sometimes in the past we have entertained Council Member questions and then the members of the public could speak. Do Council Members have a preference or ... Female: Let's hear from the public. Male: Public. Mayor Holman: Go ahead and hear from the public next is what the Council's pleasure is. First we will have Hamilton Hitchings. You'll have three minutes, to be followed by Don Barr. Hamilton Hitchings: Good evening. My name is Hamilton Hitchings, and I'm a member of the Citizen Advisory Committee. While not speaking on behalf of the Committee, I want to reassure the Council that whatever you decide tonight, I will adhere to as a member of that Committee. I'm also a member of Palo Alto Forward and Palo Alto For Sensible Zoning. As a result, I've had an opportunity to hear a lot of concerns about growth and diverse visions for the future of Palo Alto. Tonight, I'm going to make recommendations that substantially address those concerns while trying to find as much common ground as possible. My first recommendation for the Land Use Element, vision and goals, is to raise the quality of construction for new office and multiunit residential buildings. Specifically, plan and zone for substantial growth that will reduce total car trips and miles driven, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve parking, and aesthetically enhance our neighborhoods and commercial areas. We also need to significantly lower TRANSCRIPT Page 33 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 our 3:1 jobs to housing ratio. Increasing office capacity brings in more out- of-town workers to Palo Alto. Every time we build office space instead of housing, we take away a housing opportunity from elderly, young folks, renters and out-of-town commuters. Please add a statement that we will prioritize multiunit housing over office development. Since market forces prefer office space over housing and in order to raise the quality of new office buildings, please add an office cap of 35,000 square feet per year with a competitive process to select the highest quality projects, a competitive process where the best projects, based on zoning compliance, parking, traffic, reduction of greenhouse gases, mixed use and neighborhood compatibility are selected. Please ensure this covers all of Palo Alto except for Stanford Research Park which should be capped on total car trips. We should also define a list of menu items for affordable housing so it is not used to add additional office space, increase traffic or reduce parking. Lastly, please do not raise height limits. Palo Alto's a great City, and we should plan for high quality buildings that address our most pressing needs. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you for coming this evening. Don Barr to be followed by Gail Price. Don Barr: Hi, folks. I'm Don Barr, Ramona Street. You want to guess what I want to talk about? We should be aware that according to a 2014 report of the National Interagency Council on Homelessness, and I quote, we know that just one person experiencing chronic homelessness can cost communities between $30,000 and $50,000 per year in emergency room visits, hospitalizations, jails, prisons, psychiatric centers, detox programs and other costly services, but solving the problem, connecting someone to permanent housing with supportive services they need to achieve health and stability, costs about $20,000 annually. Consistent with the 2015 report, Home Not Found, the cost of homelessness in Silicon Valley, which found that the top decile by cost of chronic homeless adults in Santa Clara County cost the public agencies approximately $46,000 per person per year. Based on these national and local data providing chronically homeless adults with permanent supportive housing costs about $20,000 per person per year and saves at least that much to the local government agencies if not twice that much. At the recent HRC meeting to discuss homeless veterans in Silicon Valley, leaders of the White House team addressing homelessness urged community governments and agencies "to adopt a pay for success model in which local government agencies," this is my words, and local government agencies assure local community service organizations that if they can document success in reducing the impact of homelessness through expanded permanent supportive housing and associated services, those governments would reimburse those agencies for the cost of providing TRANSCRIPT Page 34 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 services. What the White House didn't know—I actually talked to them and they weren't aware of it—was that the Opportunity Center for nine years has been providing permanent supportive housing to approximately 90 adults per year, most of whom were chronically homeless before entering. Over its nine years of operation, based upon these data, the Opportunity Center has saved the City of Palo Alto, the County of Santa Clara approximately $9 million. Look at the Comp Plan. Goal C-3 of the Comp Plan establishes the goal of "improved quality, quantity and affordability of social services particularly for children, youth, seniors and people with disabilities." Where are the homeless? Only in Policy C-20 does it say support and promote services addressing the needs of the unhoused community. That needs to be built on and expanded. The new Comp Plan must acknowledge the benefit the City receives from the provision of housing and services to the homeless through existing nonprofit organizations and must state explicitly and in detail the ways the City in collaboration with the County will carry out the pay for success model urged by White House spokespeople at the HRC meeting. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you for coming. Gail Price to be followed by Drew and Kristy Dennison. When you hear your name called, if you can come to the front, that would really help us a lot. Thank you. Gail Price: Good evening. My name's Gail Price; I'm a resident of Barron Park. I'm here to speak about the update of the Comprehensive Plan. We live in a great community. The Comprehensive Plan is a critical policy document. It is our chance to combine the qualities we enjoy now with new and creative ways to address issues now and in the future. Collectively we should and can do both. The Comprehensive Plan is a way to maintain and create a vibrant, creative and inclusive community. We need to imagine and act on a different vision of the future which embraces a mid-urban future of stellar architecture that supports a vibrant, creative, diverse and sustainable community, that meets the needs and aspirations of residents and businesses. With population and job increases regionally, the transportation challenges will continue. We need more flexible policies and programs. There are three areas I'd like to touch on; housing and land use is the first. My concern is that price and construction costs and zoning constraints will continue to limit our ability to create more and different housing options that can begin to address both current and future demand. Our community members, both property owners and renters, want choices. The extremely limited capacity and costly options will only get worse unless we provide incentives and re-imagine our future. The expansion of housing will help to reduce some prices. Housing types should include micro-units, small houses, accessory dwelling units and a range of co-housing options. We need to intensify development of all forms of multifamily housing adjacent to TRANSCRIPT Page 35 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 transportation corridors and services. The parking requirements of multifamily market rate and affordable housing should be reduced or eliminated. Other communities are doing this. Our land use and transportation decisions should meet our adopted sustainability and climate action goals. This includes consciously reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We need increased mobility for all ages. As you know, seniors, those are my cohorts, are not only robust but we're growing in numbers, and you will be there soon. The parking requirements of multifamily market rate and affordable housing should be reduced or eliminated, as I mentioned earlier. Reductions of parking requirements could be coupled with major investments in transit including public transit and public-private shuttles. Auto-free downtowns and comprehensive shuttles all over town should be a major priority. You've heard me say before that grade separation of Caltrain and BRT should be supported and prioritized. The challenging fact is we continue to be very auto centric, which has hampered our abilities to plan for a mid-urban future. I would also like you to address support of community services because economic disparity is increasing. We need more support in that area. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Drew and Kristy Dennison, which one of you will be speaking? Drew Dennison: (inaudible) Mayor Holman: Drew to be followed by Jennifer Hetterly. Mr. Dennison: Hello, City Council Members. I'm Drew Dennison, and this is my wife Kristy. We're residents of Palo Alto; we've lived here for about 2 1/2 years. I'm originally from the suburbs of Chicago, and Kristy's from about an hour north of Seattle. We met in college, and we decided to come out here for job opportunities. We really love living in Palo Alto. We like to take walks on Saturdays to Trader Joe's to buy our groceries. We recently were traveling, and we came back and said we're really glad we live in Palo Alto. We'd like to live here as long as we possibly can and raise a family here. One of the things we're most concerned about is the economic diversity of the City. We want our children to have a variety of friends with different backgrounds. We'd like them to play with the plumber's daughter and study with the teacher's son, if possible. We realize if we live here because of the current housing shortage, when we're here we're taking up a unit for those who are less fortunate will not be able to live and be part of this community. Were concerned that Palo Alto's increasingly becoming more and more monolithic as a community economically. We'd like to encourage the City Council and the Citizens Advisory Committee to use the land use portion of the Comprehensive Plan to increase the number of TRANSCRIPT Page 36 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 multifamily homes, particularly ones that are subsidized for people of more average means. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you very much. Jennifer Hetterly to be followed by Jane Wong. Jennifer Hetterly: Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council Members. My name's Jennifer Hetterly. I'm a member and former chair of the Parks and Recreation Commission. I'm here tonight to speak to Policy C-28 that sets per capita and proximity guidelines for urban park development. First though, I'd like to reiterate on behalf of the Commission that the intent of our memo about growth that was cited last week in the Palo Alto Weekly had a two-fold purpose. One, to shine light on the strains that population growth has and increasingly will impose on our parks and natural ecosystems. Two, to emphasize that investment in the preservation, maintenance and expansion of that vital infrastructure is fundamental to meeting the growing and changing needs of our population. Getting back to C-28, I'll speak for myself on this. I ask that you retain Policy C-28 within the body of the Comprehensive Plan. We're lucky to have extraordinary open space preserves that are well loved and well used, but they can't substitute for the neighborhood parks that give structure to our daily lives and our community interactions. Policy C-28 directs the City to look beyond the acreage of our open space and invest in the expansion of our urban park system. Its per capita and proximity targets define clear benchmarks to strive for that and support the culture of our community and the quality of life our residents want. With our population growing and our landscape becoming progressively dense, Policy C-28 and its underlying commitment to expanding the reach of our urban park system is increasingly important to serving core values and growing needs in our community. I hope you won't abandon that commitment or dilute it by sending it down to the level of the Parks and Rec Master Plan, a plan that will be incorporated only by reference in the City's principal policy document. While the Master Plan will be a useful tool for fleshing out the best ways to serve Policy C-28, the policy itself should stay firmly rooted in the Comprehensive Plan. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Jane Wang to be followed by Sarah Jansen. Jane Wong: Hello, my name is Jane Wong. I grew up in Palo Alto. I went to Gunn; I'm class of 2005. I currently rent in Barron Park with three other Gunn alums. It's kind of a constant topic of conversation among us about how bad the housing situation here is. I came here tonight to speak in favor of urging the creation of more housing, particularly in multifamily buildings. I also know several other Gunn alums who, in addition to never being able to own a house here, are also living at home with their parents and finding it TRANSCRIPT Page 37 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 very difficult to establish themselves as independent adults. There are more of us who can't afford to live in Palo Alto at all. It really sucks. This is the town we grew up in; we really love it. We'd like to keep on living here if we can. I think our right to live here is as good as anyone else's. A lot of us work in tech, and we can't really live because this is where the tech is. I think that's about it. Thanks. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Sarah Jansen to be followed by Bob Moss. Sarah Jansen: Hi. My name is Sarah Jansen. I moved here this summer with my 2-year-old daughter and my husband. I have another baby due in December. I just wanted to talk about moving here from Manhattan. I had never driven before. I moved to Downtown Palo Alto, walking distance to University Ave., because it was accessible for me. I could go to the park with my daughter. I can go to Whole Foods. I didn't need to get in the car if I didn't want to. I just think it's important to still have a vibrant Downtown area and to invest in your parks, because I've met many moms that are in similar situations than me. These are the things that are really important to us. I think it's important to attract young families that want to stay near where the jobs are, so they don't have to commute from San Francisco to get an urban vibe. Also, housing was an issue for us. It was very difficult to find affordable housing for our family in the Downtown area. I think that that is an issue you guys should definitely address. Thank you so much. Mayor Holman: Thank you. If I could invite anyone else who wants to speak to this item, to please turn in a card at this time. That would be helpful. Bob Moss to be followed by A.C. Johnston. Bob Moss: Thank you, Mayor Holman and Council Members. First I want to address Policy L-8. Staff is saying, "Do you want this to apply Citywide or just to nine specific areas?" In the response to Vice Mayor Schmid, they say that they're doing traffic studies Citywide under Policy L-8. It's logical to also talk about development Citywide under Policy L-8, not just in nine areas. Second, I'll talk a little bit about housing. Getting affordable housing in Palo Alto is extremely difficult because, as you probably know, the median housing price in Palo Alto of over 2.5 million for single-family units is the highest in the country and we don't have a lot of vacant land where you can build housing. How are we going to get it? Forty years ago, we said every development should have a percentage of affordable units. We did that and got over 1,000 affordable units over the decades. The State has come in and fiddled with that. Maybe we can take a look at how we can try to get more affordable units despite the State's interference. I'm not sure how we can do it, but I think it's worth looking at and having the City Attorney's TRANSCRIPT Page 38 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Office see if we can get something done effectively. Secondly, I saw an interesting article recently about small units in Hong Kong, where they're building apartments that are 200-400 square feet. People are living in them. I don't know if a 400-square-foot apartment in Palo Alto would be terribly popular. I think of some categories of people that might think it was fine and, if the rent was low enough, they'd live there. I think it's worth at least considering. I think we ought to take a look at that and see are there any ideas. For example, in commercial zones, could we put small apartments on the upper floors and would people be living there? Let's take a look at it and give it a try. Finally, we talk about rents and high rents in Palo Alto. You may not be aware of it but, some 30 years ago, we tried rent control in Palo Alto, and we found it was a real mess and didn't pursue it. If you want to consider it further, I can give you the background and what happened before and what the problems were. Maybe we can get around it now. I see some real problems with controlling the spiraling rents in Palo Alto. It is a problem, and it's been driving a lot of people out of town which causes traffic and parking problems. We have a lot of issues, especially with zoning, land use and transportation. One final thing, transportation. VTA does not have a bus that goes to the Caltrain Station on California Avenue. We should try to get them to put a bus line at the California Avenue transit station. Fight with them. Mayor Holman: Thank you a lot. A.C. Johnston to be followed by Jerilyn Moran. A.C. Johnston: Mayor Holman and City Council, my name is A.C. Johnston. I live in University South and I work in the Research Park. I'm here to urge that you adopt the land use and community design element that will encourage the addition of a broader range of housing options in Palo Alto. It's important both for the continued health of the community, for the diversity of the community that there be a broader range of options available, so that young people can live in Palo Alto, preferably close to jobs, so that City employees who serve our community can live in our community, and so that seniors who live in Palo Alto and want to downsize can do so without having to move out of our community. A broader range of housing options will create greater economic diversity and a more welcoming community and will also help, to the extent we can locate more housing near jobs, near shopping, near public transit, to mitigate the traffic impacts. It can be done as people have mentioned by having smaller units, allowing more granny units on smaller-sized lots. I think that the lack of housing options is causing us to lose talent in Palo Alto. Just last week we had a young lawyer in our office who gave notice and said he'd love to say, he'd love to work in Palo Alto, he simply can't afford to live here and he's moving to Portland. Losing talent like that, I think, will hurt our community in the TRANSCRIPT Page 39 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 long run. We can do something about it if we can improve our housing options. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Jerilyn Moran to be followed by Jeff Rench. Jerilyn Moran: Good evening. My name's Jerilyn Moran. I'm a resident here in Palo Alto. Thank you for listening tonight. I'm here as a person that grew up here. As a child, I graduated from Gunn High School and left the state of California. After many years, I've returned to help my mom. She's 90 years old. I'm glad to be back in the area. It's changed a lot over these 40, 50 years. I'm here to strongly encourage you in this arena where you're thinking about the Comprehensive Plan on a couple of important things, things that I think are very important. Number one is this climate change crisis is upon us. This Comprehensive Plan as a top priority needs to keep that in mind at every level. Every decision and project that comes up, we need to think about that. That includes transportation decisions, housing decisions, everything. Right now on this topic we're on, multiunit housing, to my understanding there's only zoning here for maybe 3 1/2 percent or so which I feel is very inadequate. When I lived here 40, 50 years ago, single unit homes and driving in a car was the way of life then. Many things have changed in Palo Alto and the world. It's not that way anymore. My mom is not in a position to find housing that's smaller from her original home here in Palo Alto. She can't afford or even find a small unit for a senior person without having to drive. She has to use a car, and she's 90. Our population is growing older, and so she's an example of the older population here that wants to stay here but can't necessarily do so. My children are millennials. They can't even consider living here now because of the expense, so they are elsewhere. Just in summary, I urge you strongly in this important time of decisions on the Comprehensive Plan here in the City to—again top priority make decisions with climate change minimization at the top, and specifically under that umbrella multiuse housing is sorely needed. Thank you very much. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Jeff Rench to be followed by Stephanie Munoz. Jeff Rench: Mayor Holman and Council Members, my name is Jeff Rench. I live in Barron Park. I've attended a number of the CAC meetings as an observer. I did use the digital commenter which they keep asking us to do, to make a few comments. Tonight I want to re-emphasize one of my digital comments that so far hasn't been implemented in the draft plan but I think is very important. When we speak of our community services, it's important to give an idea of who receives these services, children, youth, seniors, the disabled, those with low incomes, etc. I think it's very important to specifically name our homeless community and identify the continuing need TRANSCRIPT Page 40 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 to provide services so that they can get back on their feet. It is not that the City must provide homeless services itself, but that it must strive to ensure that these services do exist and do continue to exist. One way to do this would be the pay for services method that was discussed at last week's Homeless Veterans Summit where services are only paid for when the objectives have been achieved. It was very good to see Mayor Holman, Council Member Berman and Council Member Wolbach at this Summit, and to hear our Mayor commit to the nationwide effort to eradicate veterans homelessness. Services that our City provides, such as those provided at the Opportunity Center, are one way to help achieve this goal, and they can't be taken for granted. I really ask you, please do add a specific and explicit reference in the Plan, in C-1 I think it is, to the need for these services. Add that to the plan. In addition, I'm really in strong agreement with those tonight who are asking for more emphasis on housing. That's my main issue. It was pointed out Friday at the Veterans Summit that 249 of the veterans who received housing vouchers from the VA could not use them, because no housing was available for them anywhere. The shortage of housing stock is severely crippling our local community. Of course, it's not Palo Alto's problem in isolation, but we can take a leadership role in the region in trying to solve it. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you very much. Stephanie Munoz to be followed by DeAnn Warren. Stephanie Munoz: Good evening, Mayor Holman and Council Members. All I can say is I'm in complete agreement with every single word that every single speaker has spoken. May I summarize for you? We need more housing. The Council has to be more proactive in seeing to it that we have housing. We need more diversity of housing. I have a few suggestions. I'd like to suggest that—I'm going to ask if I can get up at 8:00 in the morning to see Senator Hill—everyone who applies for housing, either Section 8 housing or some other kind of subsidized housing, also tell whether he or she can live without a car or would like to live without a car or is indeed without a car to begin with. I think that might add a new classification to the people who could be housed. Second, I think you need to sit down and think of all the possibilities and all the available land that there is. First of all, there's the government. I heard a couple of weeks ago at a public gathering, someone who had spoken with the Mayor of Heidelberg, a town well known for being the wedding of one of our Council Members, I believe. This Mayor of Heidelberg said they don't have any homeless because they built all this housing and the people go into it and they pay for it just the way they'd pay for any other housing. I thought we could do that. Where did they build it? They built it on an used army base. Guess what? We have two unused army bases right next to us. We have Onizuka and we TRANSCRIPT Page 41 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 have Moffett Field. We could do something there, and we could get the government to. Then there's Stanford. You're letting Stanford get away with putting up that hospital and all those medical offices. I mean, I love Stanford. My dad graduated from Stanford, my grandson, my son. I love Stanford. You're letting them get away with not providing housing for those hospital workers. There are three shifts to every hospital worker. I would say that the school teachers, we could provide housing for City employees and for certain classifications of people. I think we should start with the school teachers. We have the land. We have the school teachers. We have to house the school teachers. There is no getting around it. You have to have school teachers. You can't just keep raising their salaries 100,000, 150,000 for each teacher. You can't do it. Think about it. Good luck. Mayor Holman: Thank you. DeAnn Warren to be followed by Susan Dennis. DeAnn Warren: Mayor Holman, Vice Mayor, Council Members. The first (crosstalk). Mayor Holman: Could you speak into the mike? Thank you. Ms. Warren: Thank you. First, thank you for the countless hours you put into serving our community. My interest is to persuade you to focus the land use vision and goals of the Comprehensive Plan to best address the urgent, long-term housing deficit in Palo Alto. It is old news that the shortage of housing in Palo Alto has become a crisis. I submit it would be addressed proactively now through the Land Use Element. I have several perspectives on this issue. I'm a family law specialist, and I'm seeing that the families that are separating at this point have a tremendous problem because they can't find replacement housing. This causes chaos as their children want to and need to continue to go to the local Palo Alto schools. The housing stock, obviously, needs to be increased for all the members of our community. Then I speak personally. Natalie, these two pictures are of my daughter Natalie at age 23 now, a millennial, and at 5 when we moved into our house in Palo Alto. She was then a dancing gypsy. My daughter is now successfully employed and earning a very good salary, but she cannot live here on her salary because rent in Palo Alto in the past four years has doubled and in the past 20 years since I moved here has quintupled. I came to Palo Alto 25 years ago as a single parent, a single woman and a professional starting my own business after leaving the County as a DA. For a period of time I was forced to live close to the poverty line as I built my business with a baby but was able to do so thanks to different forms of assistance in my community, Palo Alto. As a single parent after my daughter was born, I could afford to rent almost anywhere in the City. I lived with many others in an enormous house in Crescent Park, 100 years TRANSCRIPT Page 42 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 old. Then I moved for $1,600 a month into a two-bedroom rental house in Old Palo Alto, an ADU, an accessory dwelling unit. In 1997, when Natalie was 5, I inherited enough to buy a small house in Southgate. In those days, you could do it on a limited amount of money. Here we lived and thrived for the past 18 years. All that would be almost impossible now. Now I am a successful senior, but as part of a population that is exploding in size, the seniors, I want to see the City proactively plan for an increase in its senior population and add more small and other living units for both seniors and those who care for them, which is what others have spoken about at this point. We are the heart of Silicon Valley, known for its focus on the future and innovation. We live near Stanford. We need urban/suburban solutions to the housing crisis we face, neighborhoods with housing of different sizes for many people, single and family. Don't let Palo Alto become another gated community with no gate. Palo Alto must plan for a major change in housing in the next 15 years. Please focus the Land Use Element of the Comprehensive Plan on how to increase housing options for different groups and to make it a healthy future for this community. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Susie, excuse me, Susan Dennis to be followed by Steve, I believe it's Downing. Susan Dennis: Evening. Thank you all for being here and listening to all of the community input. I'm Susan Dennis; I'm a resident of Crescent Park. I've lived here for 24 years. I'm here to speak about expanding housing options, as has everyone else. In particular, I'd like to address encouraging accessory dwelling units, being small, full service dwelling units with bathrooms and kitchens both. In order to do this, I see that we need to further ease the current restrictions that we have including revisiting the setback requirements, lot coverage, parking requirements, among other things. Many lots in our community could be developed successfully both preserving the neighborhood feel and privacy, even when they are currently not in compliance with the zoning restrictions needed for sufficient accessory dwelling unit. I also see that we need to streamline the process so each individual doesn't have to reinvent the wheel and instead has advocates on the Staff to help see you through the process. This will require creative thinking and looking to other communities that have successfully done this already, Portland among many others. It'd be good to keep our community intact and varied and give the older generation another option to remain in place. We don't want a reprise of what happened about 15 years ago when we lost 25 teachers in a single year from Jordan Middle School, because the housing options were too limited and too expensive. I know you can't do anything about land cost, but you do have the power to do something about land use. I would just like to speak for in-fill development. I am not yet a granny, but I hope to be, and I would very much like to remain in the same TRANSCRIPT Page 43 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 community and maybe have one child, at least, nearby. Thank you very much. Mayor Holman: Thank you for coming. Steve Downing to be followed by Paula Wolfson. Steve Downing: Council, thank you for taking the time to listen to me. I've lived here in Silicon Valley for about ten years, worked Downtown for about eight, lived in Palo Alto for about five. I love Palo Alto, and I want to see it thrive. I'm here to talk about housing. A colleague of mine, this has happened with several of my colleagues, but one in particular was on my team. I'd been working with him very closely, told me a few months ago he was leaving the company, leaving town. I'm a huge advocate for Palo Alto. Sitting with him over beers, I asked him what was going on, what was behind this. I was fully ready to be an advocate for whatever was wrong. He told me, and he's in his 40s, that he would like to own a home someday. I had nothing for him. This is to say nothing about the people who are not making professional, white-collar money. This area is the headquarters of America's flagship technology companies. More importantly than that, it's their cradle. The housing throttling that I've seen happen here weakens the City, weakens the country thereby. I urge Council to talk to the CAC about what can be done to alleviate the housing crisis. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Paula Wolfson to be followed by Andrew Brackenberry. Paula Wolfson: Good evening. Hi, I'm Paula Wolfson and I'm actually the manager of social work services at Avenidas, our neighbor down Bryant Street. I could not not testify tonight. I've been at Avenidas for three years. Prior to that, I've lived mostly in Washington, DC, on Capitol Hill. There's a housing crisis there too, especially older adults and younger people who want to stay together. I'm not here to talk about stats or quote any geographic, demographic results from surveys. I just want to tell you some stories about my day. These include phone calls, personal consults, home visits. People are being split up. Seniors are leaving. Older adults are leaving. They're going to Portland, Oregon. They're going to the Midwest. They're going to places where they were raised, and where they still perhaps have friends or family from their childhood, because they cannot afford to stay here. They cannot afford the cost of private caregiving in the home. The hourly rates here are between $25-$35 for caregivers. All of the community care facilities have waiting lists, and they're very, very expensive. They're for people with discretionary income, $10,000 or more per month when you really figure in all the add-ons for incontinence care, transportation to the doctor. I've only been here three years, and I'm really confused. I'm wondering what the vision is of Palo Alto in this community. TRANSCRIPT Page 44 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 I've been to seminars at Stanford. I've been to the Longevity Institute. I know they have these wonderful design seminars, and I think last year the design winner invented a spoon that somebody can use so their hand will not tremble when they eat. I think we're only limited really by our imagination in this area. We have incredible resources. We need to partner up. There are ways to take care of these problems. We can do all of this. We can have group housing. We can have units. We just have to visualize what it is we want and how we want to live together to move forward. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you for coming. Andrew Brackenberry to be followed by, it looks like Marcello Golfieri. Andrew Brackenberry: Hello. Let' see. I want to thank you for allowing us to speak tonight. I'm a member of the community only by the grace of my parents, who still live in Palo Alto. I am staying with them. It's the only way I can afford to actually live here. I work in Palo Alto actually; I make a decent salary. I guess I maybe mistakenly thought as a kid it would be a goal to be able to live in my hometown. That's just not possible; and I've come to accept that. My parents will probably be leaving the community in the not too distant future. I graduated from Paly in '95, so I grew up in this City in the '80s and '90s. I'd say it was pretty pleasant. It was a time when neighbors would talk to each other. People would greet each other in the streets, talk for a few minutes. Kids would play basketball, throw the football back and forth. I hardly see that at all anymore. People obeyed the traffic signals; they stopped at stop signs. I don't really see that happening too much anymore. Let's see. Houses did not sit empty at the time. Houses usually had parents and children in them. In my parents' community, there were actually a number of houses that only had high school children living in them, which was mind-blowing to me. I don't quite know how that happens. Anyhow, I'm close with ten friends of mine, all graduated from Palo Alto High School. Everyone of us went to a great college, great graduate schools. Not one of the ten of us can live in this City. I don't even know if they would want to, those of them with kids, just because of the situation with the schools as well. When I was growing up here, we didn't have crossing guards or guards, I should say, at the train tracks all along Alma. That was not necessary at all. I guess—yeah, I'm disappointed, I should say. I think the City has changed a lot. I don't even really recognize it that much anymore. I probably won't be able to live here, but I just thought I'd come and share what I see happening. Thank you. Vice Mayor Schmid: Thank you. The next speaker is Marcello Golfieri, followed by William McCray. TRANSCRIPT Page 45 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Marcello Golfieri: Marcello. Anyway, I'm Italian; I actually moved here two years ago for work. I'm from Italy, close to Venice. I really like Venice. When people know you're from around Venice, they say that's a wonderful place. I say it's not really my thing because it's such a nice beautiful city, but nobody really Italian lives there anymore. It's just tourists. That's okay, because Venice is beautiful. It's an open air museum. Palo Alto wants to be alive. It's a live community and wants to keep going like that. You don't want to die like Venice did. That shouldn’t really happen. I used to live in Palo Alto, but I then moved out. Not because I couldn't afford it, because I am lucky enough to have enough salary to do that. It was because all of my closest friends left for wherever else because they couldn't afford it, even an astrophysicist working at Stanford as a post-doc. People that you wouldn't doubt, they actually left. If to stay here requires such a high-paying salary and that requires such competition even in high school. Then you have your kids jumping under a train to just get out of this system, I think something's really screwed up. I'm Italian; I'm not going to die in this place, but I really care where I live. I would really like to see a really, really live community. This is just so f'ed up. Thank you. Vice Mayor Schmid: Thank you very much for coming. Next speaker is William McCray, to be followed by Elaine Haight. William McCray: Hey there. I live by Greer Park. I'll try to keep this brief because my wife wants me home and actually people have agreed a lot more tonight than I expected. I'm glad we have this agreement. The next step, of course, is to do something. I had some very delicately crafted philosophical, ethical, political arguments. I don't think really think we have to argue if all know we need more housing. I would actually add we need all sorts of development, but I won't try to start an argument now. I'll take the win. Let's build more housing. I'm very happy about this. We have to do something about it. I will share some anecdotes, because I've come up before and talked about what Palo Alto is like for me and my coworkers. I've been interested recently to hear basically what it's like for the service workers. Three little tidbits from those conversations. One was someone moving to Sacramento, keeping his job here, commuting all the way to Palo Alto from Sacramento. I just can't imagine what that would be like. To me, if someone told you an hour or two before you start your job, just sit and don't do anything and then an hour or two after, just sit and don't do anything. It's something like 10-20 hours added onto your work week. It's not even a fulfilling 10-20 hours. It's 10-20 hours frustrated in a car. That's one. Another was someone who just couldn't make it work. She was living with her parents and had a kid, and there was no room for her, her husband, the kid and her parents. There wasn't a solution there. I don't know what's going to happen there. It was, "Do you have any advice for me?" My TRANSCRIPT Page 46 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 response was, "I'm sorry. I really don't. It's hard enough for me on my salary to figure out where I'm going to live if I want to be in this town, if I want to stay in this town. I can't imagine what it's like for you." I think it's interesting. The housing situation is tough on everyone. It's obviously more tough on some than others. I also think we know the solution; it's build more housing. It's build smaller housing. It's build the type of housing that people need. I was very, very happy to see the parking improvements start to come in. I'm glad that we're addressing the problems instead of seeing problems and throwing our hands up in the air and giving up. I look forward to more sort of creative approaches like that in combination with more housing. Thanks. Mayor Holman: Thank you. William McCray to be followed by Elaine Haight. I'm sorry. Elaine Haight. Elaine Haight: Hi. I've been living in Palo Alto for about 25 years, and I like to hear everybody say housing, housing, housing. I just have a couple of things to add. I want to thank you for putting in the Downtown parking permit program. It's been really fabulous. It really shows that you can effect change. You are in the unique position. You have such a great opportunity here. Everybody wants to develop in Palo Alto. All the developers are dying to build. You get to select exactly the proposal that you want. That's why we're all saying here, "You are the decision makers. You get to decide. Whatever you say." If you say to the developers, "We will only allow housing, no offices," they'll jump in and build housing. There's no question about it. Everybody wants to live here. If you say you can live here, but your car can't, people will live here and they will leave their cars behind. You get to decide what you want to incentivize and what you don't. The Downtown parking permit program has really disincentivized the driving their car into Downtown. That's a great quality of life benefit for everybody including the climate change that you were talking about, which was a great point to make. If ten years from now we're in this same situation, you guys are the ones. It's not Google's fault. It's not Facebook's fault. You are the ones that will decide whether we're going to have more housing here or not. The zoning is another one. As long as you assume that every house has to have a garage and every apartment has to have at least one parking space, you are telling people, "You can't live in Palo Alto without a car. We will not allow you to live in Palo Alto without a car." That's just, in my mind, it's not forward thinking. The forward thinking is we're going to get around without oil. We're going to not have so much traffic around here. We're going to have room for many more people to live in the same place where they work. We have the jobs, now we only need the housing. If we have the jobs, the housing, the shopping altogether, what did we leave out? Traffic. Please just try to consider all this great TRANSCRIPT Page 47 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 power you have right now and this fabulous opportunity, because the developers will do whatever you say. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Yes, Charles Lam to be followed by Doria Summa. Charles Lam: Good evening, Mayor Holman and Council Members. I'm Charles Lam, resident of Downtown North and homeowner. I'd just like to add that I attended the Palo Alto 2030 Summit last May. On our small, little table we had six people, was like a microcosm of Palo Alto, was very diverse and there wasn't much we could agree. The one thing we could agree was that the housing problem and the traffic problem can be a win-win situation if we actually increase housing in the Downtown transport centers. You could reduce traffic by reducing cars and even with spouses who don't work in Palo Alto, they can take transit. I would definitely see that as a kind of no-brainer, win-win. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Doria Summa to be followed by Jerry Schwartz. Doria Summa: Good evening, Mayor and City Council. Doria Summa, College Terrace resident, and also I'm a member of the CAC. I wasn't necessarily planning on speaking this evening, because I thought this was more of an opportunity for me to hear your discussion that will give us some direction about your goals and visions for the Comp Plan. I wasn't going to take it as an opportunity to advocate for my own points of view. I really appreciate many of the comments that were made. I know you already have a keen appreciation of the diversity of opinions on land use in Palo Alto. One general observation I wanted to make going forward with the Comp Plan, I hope that we will be able to emphasize internal consistency among the elements in the Comp Plan. A very simple example. If we're going to allow for more growth, we need policies that will show how we can have more growth without degradation of the environment, natural resources and air quality. Otherwise, it just creates inconsistency instead of consistency across the Comp Plan. I think we need a better Comp Plan, so it can be a better guiding document going forward. Just one last thing. I really appreciate many of the comments, but I don't think that the Council can make the housing prices in Palo Alto lower than they are, as much as we'd all like to. I think the housing prices have been driven by the commercial growth. Since the jobs/housing imbalance can never, at this point, realistically be corrected, I just want to emphasize keeping the quality of life as good as we can for everybody across the board. I think Palo Alto does a very good job compared to many of our neighbors in providing below market rate housing. That is something I would like continued, and also protecting our open spaces. Thank you. TRANSCRIPT Page 48 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Mayor Holman: Thank you for coming. Jerry Schwartz to be followed by Judy Kleinberg. Jerry Schwartz: I have a very unpopular point of view. I've said it before. I like tall buildings. The only solution to the housing in Palo Alto is to build multifamily, large buildings. As somebody earlier just said, if you allow it, the developers will build it. There was a proposal for a ten-story building recently that I liked. The only problem with it was it was offices, not housing. I would have said, "You can have your ten floors of offices, if you add ten floors of residences, apartments, condos, whatever." Of course, that would have been a total of 20. I understand that's a non-starter, but I just want to put that on the table. Mayor Holman: Judy Kleinberg, former Mayor Judy Kleinberg, to be followed by Pat Saffir. Judy Kleinberg: Good evening, Mayor Holman and City Council. I'm here as the CEO of the Chamber of Commerce. I have lovely written notes and I'm not going to read them, because everybody has said just about everything I would have said. Rather, I'm going to emphasize a couple of things. One is what is vision. It is to look into the future. You're not planning for next you; you're planning for a decade from now and beyond. Please think that way. Analyze what the future could be like, and plan for it with creative policies and incentives that encourage the kind of housing and transit and parking and schools and parks that you know will attract and retain the kind of people that give Palo Alto its incredible residents and employees. I encourage you to analyze millennials. What kind of housing do they want? Do they all want Eichlers with a big backyard or do they want a variety of kinds of housing that would be in multiuse buildings and that would include condominiums and shared housing? Do they all have family? No. There's a lot of people that live alone or would live with a partner or a roommate. What about seniors and the aging baby boomers and the already retired seniors? Where are they going to live? We have a vicious cycle which others have referred to, which is that seniors can't leave their homes and go down into something that's smaller because it's all too expensive, so they stay in their homes. That means the supply is smaller. That means the price then goes up. It's a vicious cycle and not a healthy one. Those are two things that I hope you will do. Again, thinking way into the future, study what millennials do, how do they work, where do they live, how do they want to live, what is happening to seniors, are we going to lose our seniors or they're just going to stay where they are and the housing prices, because there's no supply, will stay high. Finally, I just want to make this a little bit personal, so I'm not speaking as a Chamber executive right now. I think some of you know that I have children that live in Singapore, an TRANSCRIPT Page 49 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 executive with Twitter and an executive with Google. They would, I pray, someday they'd like to come back and live here. I've already been told they're never going to be able to live here. Singapore's not cheap, and you know that. They already said Palo Alto is ridiculous, and they wouldn't be able to live here which is a shame, a terrible shame. My daughter who is a gifted architect and building beautiful homes all over this town and others lives in Marin and commutes down here to build these homes. It's not a healthy situation. I know you're going to work hard to make this Comp Plan do the best it can to provide for that future. Thanks for your work on it. Mayor Holman: Thank you for coming. Pat Saffir to be followed by Shani Kleinhaus. Pat Saffir: I have a couple of very specific comments, but I think you'll see where my heart is from the comments. One of my major concerns in land use planning is providing sufficient sites to meet our housing needs. In connection with this, I see that the Staff Report suggests that an idea to include in the new Comp Plan is to limit conversion of retail to residential use. I know that we're concerned about our retail, but I still feel that this should be done on a case-to-case basis and not inserted into the Comp Plan as a principle. Along the same line, I like the PTC's suggestions for Goal L-1. Urban space is a limited resource. Development needs to be compact, and the best use made of land to balance natural resources and community needs. As you can see, I agree with many of the people here tonight. Our housing situation is critical, and we need to do something about it without ruining our town. I think we can do it. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Best to you. Shani Kleinhaus, to be followed by Arthur Keller. Shani Kleinhaus: Good evening, Mayor Holman and City Council. Shani Kleinhaus, and I'm speaking for myself as a resident of the City, not for the CAC, not for Audubon, just myself tonight. I looked at the current goals and the proposed PTC goals. It looks to me that all the existing goals can accommodate a lot of growth, a lot of housing that we do need. There is no need for consolidation that makes things a lot more vague and difficult in the future and a lot more open to interpretation which, I think, would cause a lot of difficulty in the future. I would think that some of those goals could just be kept as they are now, and that we do need a lot of housing. A couple of things about that. One is that I think housing should be limited to this side of 101, not on the other side. Part of that is because there is a reference here to climate change. I think for us the more immediate impact of climate change is sea level rise. We need to consider that when we think about land use and how we plan our City. Building on the other side of 101 will not— TRANSCRIPT Page 50 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 housing, I'm just talking about housing here—serve us well. We should be compacting how we build our housing close to our centers of transportation and community. There was in Goal L-6, back to my birds, well-designed buildings that create coherent development patterns and enhance City streets and public spaces. This is proposed to be consolidated into a more vague sustaining public places goal. I like that one; I like the buildings to be consistent. I would like them to be safe for birds. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Arthur Keller to be followed by our final speaker, Sea Reddy. Arthur Keller: Good evening, Madam Mayor and Council Members. I am the Co-Chair of the Comprehensive Plan Citizens Advisory Committee, but I'm just speaking on my own behalf, not on behalf of the Committee. I just want to make a couple of observations as I'm hearing the comments tonight. The first thing is that almost every speaker, I think every speaker, talked about housing. Only one speaker, that is former Mayor Judy Kleinberg, talked about schools. Maybe there's a housing/schools imbalance that we're increasingly having and that we should think about more. I also want to observe that people talked about the kinds of housing that is needed. I just want to give you some statistics on that that may be useful for your deliberations. Less than 4 percent of the housing units in Palo Alto are studio units. Less than 17 percent of the housing units in Palo Alto are one- bedroom. More than half of the households in Palo Alto are one or two persons. There's a lot of seniors, and no place for them to go. A lot of young people, and no place for them to go except sharing larger units. That's something to think about when we're deciding what kind of housing might be appropriate and what kind we might encourage. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Sea Reddy is our final speaker this evening. Sea Reddy: Good evening. I think we need to look at the housing situation and how we approach these things. More than ten times better than what we have today. We cannot isolate it and say this is only Palo Alto. We need to look at geographically our communities we have surrounding us. I don't see any difference between—I go a mile from Palo Alto, it's Menlo Park. We have similar issues, similar challenges, similar costs. I think we need to look at it as a region. Mountain View, Menlo Park, East Palo Alto. Try to uplift all the people and jobs, all the things we do. One of the things I think we need to seriously look at is taking the corporate money, the rich companies that have a lot of cash sitting around. They are growing, and they want to grow. They want to bring 1,000 people here, so I think we need to allow them to enter into the housing market and invest privately. I'm not saying that corporations should have their own buildings like in other countries, but they TRANSCRIPT Page 51 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 can invest. They can neutralize the supply and demand, so that when they hire people, they don't displace the people that are living already there. Things like that. I think we need to also allow people to earn more. All the owners are making a lot of money. I think greed cannot be the only thing. The owners are not the only ones that are making all the money. I think we need to go to $20 an hour wage (inaudible) and pay them more, so they can afford to pay $3,000, $4,000 for a one-bedroom. I don't think we want to change the quality of life. There's only so much land. We need to work with Stanford. It's only a City for about 60,000, 70,000 people. We can't be having 100,000, 200,000 people here; it's just not possible. I think that's the reality. We need a lot of capital that's coming from industry into the housing, not just the way that we're doing it, to allow a neutralizing, rapid inflation, 40 percent increase in the housing and all that. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you all. Thank you to all the members of the public who came this evening. Bringing this back to the Council then, we'll be addressing the Community Services and Facilities first as you can see on the screen. When we conclude that portion of the item, we will then look to see if we will be able to get through land use this evening or if we will need to continue that to another meeting, as was previously mentioned by Staff. I have lights from Council Member Berman and Council Member DuBois. Council Member Berman. Council Member Berman: I actually got all wrapped up in the public comments about the land use, and was prepared to talk about that. I'll wait and keep those comments until we get to that element. Mayor Holman: Thank you for that. Do understand it's just going to be more orderly if we do one at a time. Council Member Berman: Totally understand. Mayor Holman: As the Staff has on the screen. Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I think I'm going to attempt to address community services pretty quickly, so maybe we can move to land use. If it's okay, I've actually just emailed a motion to David. A couple of things, I guess. In terms of Policy C-28, the acreage per resident, I'm in favor of retaining that as is. We heard from one of the members of our Parks and Rec Commission; I've heard from some others. They prefer to see it both in the Comp Plan and the Master Plan. I think the quantitative parts of our Comp Plan are important. This is one of the few places where we have a kind of quantitative metric. I'm sure when the previous Comp Plan was written, it was very difficult to agree on these quantitative numbers, as it will be now. They were able to do it, and I think we need to try to do that as well. It's TRANSCRIPT Page 52 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 clear our community values environment, open space and parks. I think C- 28 is important. In terms of the vision for the Community Services Element, I agree with Staff's recommendation, which is in my motion here, to update the existing vision statement with minor revisions for Council review. I think we talked about this several months ago. I think the current vision is great, and we should largely keep it as is. In terms of structure of the goals and the organization, I have to say that I did attend the CAC discussion on this element. This was kind of my take-away which would be to keep in this element to have a mix of the current Comp Plan and the PTC version. My proposal here is that Goal C-1, efficient delivery, is pretty much as-is in the current plan. Goal 2 is customer service. Goal 3 would actually pull from the PTC draft. I called out here, I think it's important that this Comp Plan has a policy really focusing on developing Cubberley Community Center. I think we heard a little bit of that tonight. Goals 4 and 5 are new goals from the PTC draft. I did reorganize these a little bit, and I wanted to explain that to Staff. I think C-5, health and well being, was actually C-1 in the PTC draft. A lot of the confusion I'm seeing at the CAC meetings has to do with kind of comparing the old and the new. I think if you keep the numbering of the old elements and add the new elements as new numbers, you might just avoid confusion. That's the only reason I moved it down here to the bottom. That's my motion. It may be premature, but I thought I'd give it a shot. Mayor Holman: Is there a second? Council Member Filseth has seconded. MOTION: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Filseth to organize the Comprehensive Plan Update as follows: For the Community Services Element, direct Staff to update the existing Vision Statement with minor revisions for City Council review and adopt the following organization of: A. C1 – Efficient service delivery (Current); and B. C2 – Customer service (Current); and C. C3 – Maintaining Parks and Public Facilities (PTC) – CAC to discuss policy to focus on planning and development of Cubberley Community Center; and D. C4 – Planning for the Future (new); and E. C5 – Health and Well Being (new). Mayor Holman: Council Member DuBois, do you need to speak to your motion any further? TRANSCRIPT Page 53 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member DuBois: No. Mayor Holman: Council Member Filseth, speak to your second? Council Member Filseth: I agree that Policy C-28 ought to stay in the Comp Plan. I think park space is a quality of life issue for residents. I think people in this town really care about it. I think it's one of the things that's very important. Obviously, there's a tension between the cost of park space and the rate of growth of population in town. I think we just need to deal with that tension. Take it out of the Comp Plan and sort of hiding it doesn't mean the problem's going to go away. I think it needs to stay. Mayor Holman: Are there Council Members who have questions? Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: Yeah. I still need to digest all of the recommendations. A couple of things that I'll add to this discussion. First, I want to reiterate I do support retaining our goals around park space. I think that's an integral part of what makes Palo Alto a special place. It's no secret that I'm a huge advocate for adding greater housing supply at a variety of price points so that we can maintain the diversity and avoid a lot of the problems that were discussed this evening. I don't think that we should dismiss the need to maintain the park space and the open space, both the neighborhood parks and our beautiful open space parks both while, looking to increase housing options in Palo Alto. I absolutely think it's doable and essential. Part of quality of life is you don't have to commute from Sacramento to get to your job here after you grew up here. Part of your quality of life also means that you can enjoy a little bit of nature on a day- to-day basis and get away maybe on the weekends and go hiking at Baylands or Monte Bello or Foothills Park. I definitely support that recommendation from colleagues. A couple of other things I think we should—one thing in particular. I was actually pleased to hear somebody mention it this evening. It was something that was on my mind and I was planning to bring up, which is the unhoused. In either the old version of Goal C-3 or the new one, a number of highly important and at-risk populations are identified. We've identified the importance of services for those groups. In the old version it says "improved quality, quantity and affordability of social services, particularly for children, youth, seniors and people with disabilities." If we do retain the old version, I would just add two words, "the unhoused," to that list before the "and." You could also put that in the same place essentially if we go with the new language. It would say "this goal focuses on services for children, youth, seniors, the unhoused and persons with disabilities." That is the one big addition I would suggest making. I guess I'd offer that as a friendly amendment. TRANSCRIPT Page 54 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Mayor Holman: Could you restate your amendment please? Council Member Wolbach: Yeah. I want to make sure actually that I'm looking at the right place. Where actually is the new version of what was old C-3? Council Member DuBois: Again, this is pretty confusing. This is what our CAC group has been going through. I guess, I could let Jeremy do this. Actually everything you're referring to is included. I think it's in what I've listed as Goal C-4 and C-5. The policies around future planning and health and well being include everything that was in the old C-3. Council Member Wolbach: Perhaps Staff can identify where we would find that in Attachment A. Council Member DuBois: Page 8, the explanation in the middle. Council Member Kniss: It's with the green on the outside of it, page 8. The green Our Palo Alto Update. Council Member DuBois: You have to read that text, and it tells you where policies and programs got distributed to, based on version. If you see existing Goal 3 to new Goals C-1, C-4, which I made more confusing by renumbering them in my motion. Council Member Wolbach: I would note that C1 and C-4 remove specifically calling out those higher risk groups, at least as far as what I'm reading on pages 10 and 11. Council Member DuBois: They're all in—all the policies and programs are in there; they're just under these new headings. That's the confusing part. Council Member Wolbach: They were identified in the goals in the old Comp Plan, but have been moved down to ... Council Member DuBois: Now they're called ... Council Member Wolbach: ... policies, but are no longer listed (crosstalk). Council Member DuBois: They're called health and well being and planning for the future. Council Member Wolbach: Right. I would suggest that—I'm glad that there are policies still addressing them, but I still think that it's important that our goals highlight those high-need groups that we had previously identified as TRANSCRIPT Page 55 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 goals in our Comprehensive Plan. Again, seniors, children, youth and people with disabilities. I would add to that list the unhoused. Mayor Holman: Council Member DuBois, I think one of the things that would be helpful with this is that in your motion you don't acknowledge that what you're talking about here in C-1, C-2, C-3, etc., are goals. Council Member Wolbach: Yeah, because we're just talking about goals tonight with the exception of two policies. Correct? Mayor Holman: Correct. Mr. Dennis: Correct. Council Member DuBois: You'd put goals at the top ... Mayor Holman: Just to be clear going forward, it doesn't say goals anywhere. That's one thing. The other is you made a statement about retaining C-28, but that's also not referenced here. Just to be explicit, would you like to add that to your motion? Council Member DuBois: We can make it explicit. I figured it's there if we're not removing it. It would remain there. Mayor Holman: The question has been posed by Staff. I think, if you want your motion to be explicit, you should include it in your motion. If that's agreeable to you. Council Member DuBois: You could retain Policy C-28. Mayor Holman: Yes, that is Policy C-28. Council Member DuBois: I don't know if Staff wants to answer Council Member Wolbach about ... Mayor Holman: Before you go there, you're retaining Policy C-28. You're adding that to the motion. Council Member Filseth, are you good with that? Okay. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “Retain Policy C-28.” (New Part F) Mayor Holman: You're identifying these C1-5, you're identifying those as goals. Right? TRANSCRIPT Page 56 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member DuBois: Yeah. You could say "the following organization for the goals." Mayor Holman: That's good with you, Council Member Filseth? Okay. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “of Goals” after “the following organization.” Mayor Holman: Hillary. Hillary Gitelman, Planning and Community Environment Director: Hillary Gitelman, the Planning Director. Let me see if I can try and respond to the question that was raised about the groups that are currently referenced in Goal C-3, the existing Comp Plan Goal C-3. I'm on page 11, in the left-hand column. I think with the structure that Council Member DuBois is suggesting, those groups that are referenced in Goal C-3 could instead be referenced in Goal 5 about health and well-being. Male: (inaudible) Ms. Gitelman: Four and five? Male: (inaudible) Ms. Gitelman: Up to you. I don't know that you would have to do it in both places. Council Member DuBois: I'm saying if you're looking at page 11, at the top, in the middle there it says the policies and programs were distributed among the two new PTC goals, which are "4" and "5" in my proposal. Ms. Gitelman: That's right. I guess I'm suggesting if Council Member Wolbach's request is that the groups referenced be actually in the goal itself, that you could ... Council Member DuBois: Yeah, we could add it to C-5. Ms. Gitelman: ... choose to put it either in Goal 4 or 5. Council Member DuBois: Sure, right. Council Member Wolbach: To clarify my offer of a friendly amendment for the maker and the seconder. We would add—I'm agnostic about where we put it. I think under what you're calling C-5 and what Staff had given us, I think it would be C-1, that we there carry over the language about those TRANSCRIPT Page 57 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 specific groups and quality, quantity and affordability of those services for those groups, adding "the unhoused" to that existing list. Does that make sense? This is on Attachment A, page 11, top left corner. I had a couple of other quick questions, but I wanted to put that one out there first. Mr. Dennis: Staff understands what—we understand now. I wanted to acknowledge that. Mayor Holman: I do see how this could be confusing, because C1 and 4 also reference health and well-being. Council Member DuBois: That's acceptable. I would say that these are kind of shorthand for the goals—I didn't write out all the paragraphs of the goals. Council Member Wolbach: Right, I understand. The versions proposed by the PTC remove the preexisting language, so I want to make sure that we can reintroduce that language. Council Member DuBois: Right. It's okay with me. Mayor Holman: Council Member Filseth? Council Member Filseth: I think it's okay. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion at the end of Part E, “adding, ‘Improved Quality, Quantity, and Affordability of Social Services, particularly for all community members including Children, Youth, Seniors, the Unhoused, and People with Disabilities.’” Mayor Holman: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: A couple of other things. I'm a little ambivalent about highlighting Cubberley specifically here as in the goal section. I'm open to the idea. I kind of feel that that should be reserved for policy sections which is beyond the level of granularity, except for C-28, we were planning to do tonight. I'm a little ambivalent about that, but would be curious to hear, maker or seconder, their thoughts why it needs to be in the goals. Council Member DuBois: That was the intention. If Staff can—it's not to make it part of the goal, but to say that the CAC should discuss this as part of the policy discussion under that goal. Mr. Dennis: (inaudible) as part of policy discussion. TRANSCRIPT Page 58 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Mayor Holman: Jim. Council Member DuBois: (crosstalk) discuss policy ... James Keene, City Manager: Could we make a clarification on this process wise, because this language is a little incongruent with everything else that you had up there. It's sort of a follow-up action to the CAC. The CAC is still charged with reviewing and commenting on all of these goals. It's more like you're just expressing an interest in planning and development for Cubberley, number one. Council Member DuBois: Just within the timeframe of this Comp Plan. I wanted to call it out as getting particular focus. Mr. Keene: The only thing, if I just might add to that. I didn't hear a directive to the CAC to interfere with the work we're already beginning to do with the School District on the planning as if we had to await their work. We're going to be reporting to the City School Committee on work and that sort of thing. I think there's a way to mention Cubberley without so much calling out the CAC's individual work and then the Staff will just be sure when they all look at it, at all of the items. The CAC will be commenting on a bunch of things. Council Member Wolbach: I would suggest following Staff's suggestion there to maybe provide slightly less explicit direction around what we do with Cubberley at this point. Again, I'm with ... Male: This is a policy (inaudible). Council Member Wolbach: Yeah, yeah. Mayor Holman: Council Member DuBois, do you have any response to Council Member Wolbach's? Council Member DuBois: I can clarify the wording. Again, it's the CAC to discuss policy, which I don't think is particularly strong, but if we can make it ... Ms. Gitelman: Mayor Holman, maybe I could make a suggestion. We've added retain Policy C-28, which is about policies. Maybe this could be moved down as the final bullet in this motion about policy direction. Your main focus as a Council is on the goals, but there are two policy issues that you wanted to highlight, C-28 and that Cubberley should be addressed. Council Member DuBois: Sure. TRANSCRIPT Page 59 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member Wolbach: I think that would be good. Mayor Holman: That's good with Council Member Filseth? Okay. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to remove from the Motion Part C, “CAC to discuss policy to focus on planning and development of Cubberley Community Center” and add to the Motion, “Direct CAC to focus on the policy of planning and development of Cubberley Community Center.” (New Part G) Mayor Holman: Council Member Wolbach, do you have anything else? Jim. Mr. Keene: May I just? This is really not so much related to the Comp Plan, but the fact that we are working on options right now related to Cubberley, already following prior Council. I wouldn't want anybody to interpret this that we're supposed to stop and wait 'til this goes through the CAC and all of this before we're having dialog. I'm meeting actually with the School Superintendent tomorrow on this issue, just an example as a starting point. Thanks. Mayor Holman: Council Member Wolbach, are you complete? Council Member Wolbach: Just to clarify for City Clerk. I know they're working on a couple of things right now. Going back to my proposal for C-5. It was actually to add not just "and the unhoused," but it would be to add the language from the original Goal C-5 while also adding "and the unhoused." Mayor Holman: Council Member DuBois, is that ... Council Member DuBois: Yeah (inaudible). Council Member Wolbach: It just hadn't been reflected yet. I just wanted to make sure that we were all on the same page about that. I can work with ... Mayor Holman: Do you have anything else, Council Member Wolbach? Council Member Wolbach: Those are my only questions and recommendations for the time being. Mayor Holman: Council Member Scharff. Council Member Scharff: Thanks. Just so I understand. When you say, for instance, Goal C-3 up there, you're talking about the proposed goal. TRANSCRIPT Page 60 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Correct? It'd be "maintain parks and facilities" and then it'd be "recognizing intrinsic value and everyday importance." Page 11 of the ... Mayor Holman: Council Member DuBois? Council Member DuBois: Correct. (crosstalk). Council Member Scharff: The same with Goal C-4, it's the new goal. Right? The one right below it. Council Member DuBois: Correct. Council Member Scharff: C-1 then, it's the new goal as well? Council Member DuBois: My proposed C-1 is the—where it says "current," that means the existing. Council Member Scharff: What is the current existing goal? Council Member DuBois: The current C-1 is on page 10. Council Member Scharff: Right, but what does it say? Council Member DuBois: It's over here on the left side, effective and efficient delivery of community services. Council Member Scharff: That's all it is, right? It's that short. That's what I thought. Council Member DuBois: Yeah. Council Member Scharff: You like that one better than you like "engage the community, work with regional partners, reach out to school collaboration, (inaudible) business." Why? What's the ... Council Member DuBois: If you go read the—I don't have it all in front of me. Going through the element, reading the element, it's kind of the tone and the focus of that particular goal. For me, the policies and programs that were under the current C-1 were about efficiency in delivery of services, cost effectiveness. Those words that you just read got added, kind of took it in a different direction from the policies and programs in my opinion. Council Member Scharff: What you're really saying is the emphasis is on doing it cost effectively rather than reaching out. I'm just trying to understand. I guess I was reading the Staff Report and this. I didn't really focus on the tone of it, so I'm trying to understand what is different. TRANSCRIPT Page 61 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member DuBois: That's basically what was my take-away. Council Member Scharff: You're also on C-2, you're keeping a commitment to excellence and high quality customer service as opposed to distributing that goal, which is what they did. It's a little confusing. Council Member DuBois: Yeah. Again, it's useful to look at the policies and programs. If you only look at the goal in isolation, then you're just looking at kind of isolated words. Mayor Holman: Council Member Scharff? Council Member Scharff: I guess I'm just trying to figure out what the difference is between the proposed Goal C-5 and Goal C-2. I guess I'll ask Staff. What was the goal in changing that? Public service in Palo Alto versus the customer service goal. Ms. Gitelman: I'm sorry. You're talking about Goal C-1 in the existing? Council Member Scharff: No, I'm talking about Goal C-2. In Goal C-2 it says—what Council Member DuBois is suggesting is that we keep a commitment to excellence and high quality customer service among the City of Palo Alto City officials and employees. The proposed PTC goal was going to be Goal C-5 which was commit to providing high quality public service and to the manner in which those services are provided to our residents, businesses and visitors. I guess I was asking what Staff views as the difference. Ms. Gitelman: Our analysis in that middle column was—it's a reframing of the issue, trying to get really at a similar concept, but it's framed a different way. I don't think there's a right choice or a wrong choice. It really is a preference. Council Member Scharff: I'm not saying it's a right choice or a wrong choice. I'm asking what the choice is. Are you just saying the choice is irrelevant? If the choice is irrelevant, the choice ... Ms. Gitelman: I think it's wording. I really think it's mostly wording. Council Member Scharff: What does the words mean? What is the difference? You're going to be the one interpreting this. I mean, not to be difficult about this. You're Director of Planning. You're going to sit through, read these goals. Things are going to come before you. There's this wording and there's that wording. I'm really just trying to ask a simple question which is what difference does it make. How as I am a Council TRANSCRIPT Page 62 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Member supposed to choose between one versus the other if the Director of Planning tells me they can't make a decision, it means nothing. That's fine. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe it's irrelevant. I don't care. What does it mean? Ms. Gitelman: Just to clarify. It's unusual that we would like at a goal in isolation. In general, decision makers, Planning Director and Council, will look at the Comprehensive Plan as a whole when trying to analyze an individual project or a proposal. A wording difference in one specific goal in one specific element of the Comprehensive Plan is unlikely to have a material difference on a whole slew of decisions. We don't see a major difference between these two. It's really Council's preference. We're here to ask tonight which is your preference, the old version or the new version. Council Member Scharff: Putting aside Policy C-28 for the moment, because that actually seems to be somewhat of a policy choice that we might want to discuss. Would there be any difference—I'm not suggesting I'm going to do this—if I said I like the current proposed PTC organization and the current PTC goals? What would be the actual effect of that or would there be no effect? Is it just a random choice? I mean, now you're looking at all of those together. What policy decision am I making? Ms. Gitelman: If you look on packet page 154, you'll see the note at the bottom of the summary table there. We indicate that we really think that either organizational structure will work, but the PTC's emphasis on community health is something that really wasn't in the current version. That's something that should be addressed either by using the PTC's version or by adding that to the ... Council Member Scharff: Council Member DuBois is adding that. Ms. Gitelman: That's right. He's addressing that by blending the two. Council Member Scharff: What I'm asking you is with Council Member DuBois' motion, is there any policy choice that we're making that's different than what was in the way it was structured previously or is there no difference from a policy perspective? Ms. Gitelman: I really believe it's substantially similar. It's really a question of preference. We're here to ask the Council (crosstalk). Council Member Scharff: Can you think of a single policy choice that would be different? I feel like I'm now playing attorney. TRANSCRIPT Page 63 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Ms. Gitelman: If health and well-being is included, I don't think there's a difference. Council Member Scharff: Now, I guess I want to talk about Policy C-28 then. What I understood Staff to be saying in this is that we are doing the Parks and Recreation Trails, Open Space Master Plan. It's a technical issue. As we go through this and we develop that, there will be technical, substantive answers to the questions about how many park space per individual and other questions as well. If we just use the quantitative standards that were developed in the 1990s, we won't have the benefit of that. I guess what I was going to ask is were those 1990 era quantitative standards based on anything or where they basically Council and Staff just pulling out? Do we not remember what they were based on? Ms. Gitelman: I think it was based on national standards promulgated by the group that's cited in the Staff Report. They're just frankly dated. Our suggestion was if we're going to look at revising them, that we do that in the Parks Master Planning process. For now, we leave them as is. The park experts and the community, as part of the Park Master Planning effort, could look at updating them as needed at that time. Mr. Dennis: If I may add to that. There's been a substantial change in thinking in the parks community about whether or not the standards as they're currently reflected in the Comp Plan are the ones to use or ones not to us. Our recommendation in the Staff Report is pointing towards the Parks Master Planning process, because it will look into that in much more depth. That will give, I think, much more clarity to the kind of thinking that may be now available related to whether or not this makes sense or not. That's why we were pointing in that direction. We thought let's let them do their work, let's see what it says. That might make more sense than having a deliberative process without all of that information available to you today. Council Member Scharff: This would come back to us then? If we went the route that Staff suggested, this would come back to us? When is the—I guess the question is when is the Park Master Plan going to be done? Rob de Geus, Community Services Director: Good evening, Council Members. Rob de Geus, Director of Community Services. We hope to have a draft Master Plan to the Council for review in the spring of 2016. Council Member Scharff: Why should we make this decision now? Why are you asking us to make it tonight? What's the point? I mean, shouldn't we be waiting until we get the Parks Master Plan in the spring and we'd look at this and say ... TRANSCRIPT Page 64 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Ms. Gitelman: That's our recommendation ... Council Member Scharff: That's what you're suggesting. Ms. Gitelman: ... that we look at this in the context of that planning effort. They're running concurrently, so it's not a delay or anything. Council Member Scharff: What you're really asking is to defer that decision. Ms. Gitelman: That's right. Council Member Scharff: I guess the other question I had is—I forget. We have a certain number, metric, of park space per individual. We've basically ignored that over the last ten years. We haven't bought much new park space. Have we bought a lot of park space? Have we even focused on that? I mean, I know we've done some new parks. I know we've done Heritage Park. I know there's been some pocket parks and some other things. I just wanted to get a sense of where we were in those metrics and what they meant and how that works. Mr. de Geus: We've added some park space but not a lot. It's a built-out community, and there's limited opportunity for that. The metrics by the National Recreation and Parks Association—that's where it comes from—is to have 2 acres per 1,000 residents for neighborhood parks and 2 acres per 1,000 residents for district parks. The City has 1.64 acres for neighborhood parks and has .97 acres for district parks. It's significantly below that standard. If my calculation is correct, it's 70 to 80 acres below the standard. Council Member Scharff: How many, seven or eight? Mr. de Geus: Seventy. Council Member Scharff: Oh, 70, 70 acres below the standard. That's for neighborhood parks? Mr. de Geus: No ... Council Member Scharff: District parks. How (crosstalk). Mr. de Geus: ... district parks. We're much closer for the neighborhood parks. Council Member Scharff: How big is a district park? Mr. de Geus: Five acres or larger. TRANSCRIPT Page 65 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member Scharff: The fact that we just changed our former waste— what is it called again? I guess I'll just say the dump, landfill. Does that count towards that or not? Mr. de Geus: No, that's our open space. That's separate. Council Member Scharff: That's open space (crosstalk). Mr. de Geus: Correct. Mr. Keene: Could I just add to that? Council Member Scharff: Sure. Mr. Keene: If you looked at the open space or the regional park standard, what are our numbers? They've got to be really good. Mr. de Geus: Yes, they're very good for the open space parks, but that's different than a regional park which is really still in the urban area of the community, not in the open space on the outskirts. Council Member Scharff: I guess one of the interesting questions, if we're 70 acres—I'm curious on what we are on each, how that breaks down. Do you know what we are on neighborhood parks? Mr. de Geus: That's closer to—it's 70 acres total. It's about 20 acres short on the neighborhood parks. Council Member Scharff: Twenty acres short. Mr. de Geus: Something like that. For this standard. I think the question that Jeremy brought up, is this a good policy for the Comprehensive Plan, it may or may not be. It's not a very sharp focus for our community and the limits that we have and maybe the opportunities that we have. We may come back and have a more specific policy recommendation related to adding parks than a national standard like this one. Mayor Holman: Can I suggest something here? It seems like we're getting a little bit into the weeds, as Staff might say, in terms of the specific numbers. What we're really looking at here is a policy. Could I suggest, and you all decide, that the motion at least at this point in time says to retain Policy C-28, if that's the pleasure of the Council, we could still retain Policy C-28, but it be updated and informed by the Master Plan when it returns. Council Member Scharff: I actually was thinking something similar. TRANSCRIPT Page 66 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Mayor Holman: We could decide later if we wanted to remove it or not. That's the Council as a whole decision. Right now, we don't need to have great debate on whether to keep it or not. Council Member Scharff: I think we sort of do and sort of don't. I actually think that—where I was thinking about is I was really trying to inform my decision on this. I don't want to make the decision tonight, whether or not we should retain Policy C-28. I want it to be informed by the discussion that comes up. I see no urgency to make that decision. One of our Council Members, I actually think it was Council Member Burt, in one of our previous discussions when something similar came up, if we don't have to make the decision tonight on that issue, why put it into the policy right now? Why not wait, get that information? I would say let's defer that discussion of whether or not we should retain Policy C-28 until we have the information on the Parks Master Plan. I haven't heard any reason why we can't do that. Therefore, I guess I would offer an amendment that we defer the decision of whether to retain Policy C-28. I'm happy to have the CAC to discuss policy focus on planning development of Cubberley Community, but I would like to make that amendment. AMENDMENT: Council Member Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member XX to add to the Motion Part F, “defer decision whether to.” Mayor Holman: Council Member DuBois? Council Member DuBois: If I could just clarify with Staff. I think I understood and I think members of the public misunderstood. When I read the Staff Report, I guess, the implication I got was that we were removing C-28 and moving it to the Parks Master Plan. Ms. Gitelman: Thank you for the opportunity to clarify that. We were actually just saying let's look at updating the policy as part of the Parks Master Plan. We weren't saying remove it or retain. We're just saying we have park experts. They're focused on the parks issues. Let's let them do their thing and inform the ultimate disposition of this policy. Council Member DuBois: Right. I was definitely confused. I think at least one of the speakers said it should be in both documents. I think that's all we're saying. Again, in my original motion I just didn't say anything about C-28, assuming it would stay there. Again, I don't know that we need to say we defer. Do we need to say anything? Do we just ... Mayor Holman: Do you accept the amendment or not? Ms. Gitelman: Mayor Holman, if I can interject one more thought? TRANSCRIPT Page 67 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Mayor Holman: Surely. Ms. Gitelman: Part of our reason in raising this is we thought it would be useful for the Council to tell the CAC, "This is something we want in our purview. We, as the Council, would like to consider the future Policy C-28 when we get the information from the parks planning process. CAC, you don't need to worry about this one. We'll take this one." Council Member DuBois: I would accept an amendment about updating it. I don't think the question is whether we retain it or not. I think that's actually not what the amendment should say or what the original should say. I think it's that we want to update Policy C-28 based on Staff feedback. Council Member Scharff: Whether or not it should be updated. I'm happy to say whether or not it should be updated. I think that's probably better. Mayor Holman: The language then is update Policy C-28 based on Staff feedback ... Council Member Berman: And the Parks and Rec Master Plan process. Mayor Holman: ... and the Parks and Recreation Commission Master Plan. Council Member DuBois: Does that capture your proposal? Mayor Holman: Is that agreeable ... Council Member Scharff: Yeah. That solves my concern on that. Mayor Holman: That's agreeable to you, Tom? Council Member DuBois: That's acceptable. Mayor Holman: Council Member Filseth? Council Member Filseth: Yeah. I mean, I think that the motion which we were both supporting was responding to the perception that the Staff recommendation was take that policy out of the Comp Plan and that's what we wanted to prevent. AMENDMENT RESTATED AND INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion Part F at the beginning, “update” and at the end “based on Staff feedback and the Parks and Recreation Master Plan process.” Mayor Holman: Thank you. Can I ask just one clarifying question here too about "F?" You've got two things there currently that are kind of run TRANSCRIPT Page 68 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 together. You've got the CAC to discuss policy focus and planning and development of Community Cubberley Center. Shouldn't that be a "G?" I mean, it's confusing to have them together. I think "direct CAC," shouldn't that be "G?" Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: That's fine. Mayor Holman: For clarity. Council Member Filseth? Okay. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to replace in the Motion Part G, “direct CAC to focus on the policy of” with “CAC to discuss the.” Mayor Holman: Council Member Scharff, did you have anything else? Council Member Scharff: Just one brief comment. I do think that when we do put policies into the Comprehensive Plan, they should be somewhat achievable. I was sort of surprised to find out that we're 20 acres behind. I mean, I think if we put stuff in documents, we need to actually live up to that. If we decide that's what we're going to do, then we need to figure out ways to make that happen. That may mean buying property to build parks. I mean, that's what it may mean. Having higher park fees and doing that. I don't think that we should just put stuff in here because it makes us feel good and then not do it. Mayor Holman: I have Council Members Kniss, Berman, Vice Mayor Schmid, and Council Member Burt. Council Member Kniss. Council Member Kniss: I will try to keep some of this brief. I think we're doing also a lot of wordsmithing. I want to call out the new one about health and well being. The Mayor and I have been working on a separate project this year that deals with Healthy Cities. We have not dealt with this before. I think it's really important for the community to know that this talks about the quality, affordability, particularly for children, youth, seniors and so forth. There's far more information that's in our packet tonight. I think it's important that the community know that we're focusing on a different area. When you're talking about parks, you are talking about health. You're talking about places that you can hike or run or whatever you may want to do. As far as Council Member Scharff's policy statement regarding parks, if I heard you right Rob, you said we're at what? Twenty acres under? What are we guessing acreage runs in Palo Alto these days? Do you want me to make a guess? Mr. de Geus: It's very expensive. TRANSCRIPT Page 69 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member Kniss: Between 10 and 15 million an acre. At 10-15 million an acre, let me think if I can do the math quickly. This sounds like it might be an annual budget. I think that there has to be some reality in this as well as hope. I don't think buying 20 acres of parkland over the period that this is in place is realistic. I think we need to be far more realistic about the parkland that we have. We have some terrific parkland. Very few cities have 36 parks. Very few cities have Foothills. In fact, as you know it's not open to other cities, so that makes it quite definitive. That has 1,400 acres. Am I right? Fourteen hundred or 1,200, it's one of those two. That's a lot of open space. We've very, very fortunate to have that. Those are the things I want to call out. Tom, just to tell you, I'm still uncomfortable with telling the CAC to talk about the policy to focus on planning and development of Cubberley, especially since we hear that it's already underway. Jim, did you speak to that earlier? Mr. Keene: Yes, I did. Again, I'm worried that four months from now it could be a little confusing as to why the only directive to the CAC was on Cubberley. I'm just saying versus some way to call out Cubberley. I'm just saying we may make a lot of progress concurrent with a decision that the CAC is having. I'm not saying Cubberley isn't part of the core next five or ten years planning concerns that we should have. Mayor Holman: Council Member Kniss, do you have an amendment? Council Member Kniss: Would you be open to taking it away from being a direct focus from planning and development and to perhaps discuss the future development of Cubberley Community Center? Council Member DuBois: Yeah. That change sounds fine. Again, we're talking ten years. It's going to be a major effort. I just wanted to make sure it was called out. Council Member Kniss: I do think it will be, but I don't want the CAC to think they've got to go off into their meetings and start to plan for Cubberley. Council Member DuBois: They don't. It's already in there. There's already (crosstalk) in there. I just think it needs to be highlighted. Mayor Holman: Council Member Kniss, could you provide the wording please for your amendment.? Council Member Kniss: To take away the focus, but that they should discuss the development of Cubberley Community Center. Keep it very general at TRANSCRIPT Page 70 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 this point. I'd be comfortable with that, Tom, if you're okay with that. Thanks. Mayor Holman: Council Member Filseth: Council Member Kniss: Eric, are you okay with that? Council Member Filseth: Yeah, I am. Council Member DuBois: Discuss the planning and development. Council Member Filseth: I want to respond, if I can, briefly to Council Member Kniss' concerns on the Policy C-28. We're going to be a long time on Policy C-28. Council Member Kniss: You mean on 20 acres of park? Council Member Filseth: It's 70 acres. The nuance is 4 acres of district and neighborhood parks per 1,000 residents. Is that the right number instead of 3.9 or 4.1 and so forth? As the Staff points out, that's maybe the domain of experts. You don't have to be an expert to value parkland in this town. You don't have to be an expert to look at this and go, "The City's $700 million behind the Comp Plan on how much park space we have." What we really don't want to have happen is we say, "Okay, I guess we ought to change the number to 2.5 or something like that." Another 20 years go by, and we look and we're another X many hundred million dollars behind again. I think what this process needs is scrutiny and management on this. We need to make sure that if we're going to put something in the Comp Plan, we're going to stick to it. I think that's what the objective of all this is. Council Member Kniss: I wouldn't disagree with that, Council Member. However, I think that we have some reality here. We have some wonderful parks in town right now that are not in very good shape, that could be far improved. Some of our parks have been really brought up to snuff. They're very popular. Some others are just kind of languishing to be honest. I think that's one of the areas I would really concentrate on. Council Member Filseth: No disagreement. Mayor Holman: Council Member Kniss, do you have anything else? Council Member Kniss: That's probably enough. Mayor Holman: Jim, do you have something? TRANSCRIPT Page 71 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Mr. Keene: Yep. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Maybe we go back to "G" and clarify this again, just a little bit more. I think what you're getting at is you want to ensure that as a policy the planning and development of the Cubberley Community Center is called out. I don't know why the motion couldn't just say that. Forget the CAC for a second right now. You want to add a policy specifically identifying the need for the planning and development of the Cubberley Community Center. That's sort of in line with "F" in a way. That will also allow, when the CAC is looking at things, to be talking about those, that sort of thing. You've already ... Council Member DuBois: I was trying to be less prescriptive and leave it up to the CAC. That's the reason that was in there. Mr. Keene: They're not defining it. You're just calling for the importance for the planning and development. It allows for opportunities of finer grain discussion. Ms. Gitelman: I guess our suggestion was that it say "direct the CAC to incorporate a policy calling for planning for the future of Cubberley," something like that. Mayor Holman: That makes a lot of sense to be in the Comprehensive Plan, if Council Member DuBois is comfortable with that. Council Member DuBois: Again, there's already a policy in there talking about Cubberley Community Center. My point is in this next Comp Plan is when it should actually happen. I wanted to emphasize it. Mayor Holman: It is already happening, yeah. Council Member Berman. Vice Mayor Schmid. Council Member Burt, you're after Vice Mayor Schmid. Vice Mayor Schmid: I guess we're going to be asked to vote on this motion. I want to make sure that I understand what it means. "A" is C-1, efficient service and delivery, which is the same as the current C-1 with the word (crosstalk). Mr. Dennis: That's correct. Vice Mayor Schmid: C-2 is the same as the current C-2. Mr. Dennis: That is correct. Vice Mayor Schmid: C-3 is maintaining parks and public facilities, comes from the PTC proposal and it is C-3. Mr. Dennis: It's the PTC C-3 as well. TRANSCRIPT Page 72 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Vice Mayor Schmid: I guess if you put that in the motion, it's PTC C-3. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion Part C, “C3” after “PTC.” Vice Mayor Schmid: Number 4, Planning for the Future, is not new. Isn't it the PTC Number 4? Council Member DuBois: Yeah. That's more consistent. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to replace in the Motion Part D, “new” with “PTC C4.” Vice Mayor Schmid: Then the C-5, Health and Well-being, is not new. It's actually PTC Goal Number 1, adding a second sentence on it. Is that right? Okay, that's helpful. Mayor Holman: Hang on just for a second here. Let's see if David's got that. Also clarification for me. The PTC Goal 1, you've got improve quality, but what I see under PTC Goal 1, under health and well being, is prioritize implementation of programs and strategies. I'm unclear where the language is coming from that's in the original motion. Council Member DuBois, and kind of responding to ... Ms. Gitelman: Mayor Holman, if I could interject. I think Council Member Wolbach added some language and we just picked up a little too much in that Part E about C-5. If we just started with "particularly for children, youth, seniors, unhoused," it would work with the existing PTC Goal C-1 as a qualifier. See what I mean? The text that David's just highlighted. If we struck that, I think it would achieve what Council Member Wolbach was looking for which is reference to these particular groups in the PTC goal about helping (crosstalk). Mayor Holman: Council Member Wolbach is shaking his head no. Council Member Wolbach: May I respond to this? Mayor Holman: Yeah. Council Member Wolbach: That specific language that's highlighted, "improving the quality, quantity and affordability of social services," is not in the new C-1. It's not in the PTC C-1. I don't see that wording there. That's why I asked for that to be carried over and the maker and seconder approved of carrying over that language. Unless there's something I'm missing there. TRANSCRIPT Page 73 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Mayor Holman: On what page is that "improve quality, quantity and affordability of social services"? What page is that? Council Member Wolbach: It's page 11 of the Attachment A, at the top left corner. Ms. Gitelman: It's existing Goal 3. Mayor Holman: From the top left corner, okay. Council Member Wolbach: Existing C-3. Mayor Holman: It's existing; it's not new which is what Vice Mayor Schmid was pointing out. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to replace in the Motion Part E, “new” with “PTC C1.” Mayor Holman: Vice Mayor Schmid, I think you still have the floor. Vice Mayor Schmid: I wanted to make a comment on the Policy C-28 slightly different. C-28 is the only place in the Community Services Element that has a quantitative measure. What we are doing here is pushing the quantitative measure, which is population-based, out to the Parks Master Plan, so the Parks Master Plan will be discussing anything to do with demographics. I am concerned in the rest of the elements people are making a variety of demographic assumptions. Let me just give you three examples from material that we have gotten. The School District thinks there's going to be 200 new kids over the next ten years. The Palo Alto planning documents say there's going to be 9,000 new people in town over the next 20. Plan Bay Area says there's going to be 20,000 new people. Imagine trying to think through each of these goals we're talking about with demographic assumptions so different. The meaning of what we're doing begins to fuzz and disappear whether you're assuming 200 more kids in the City or 20,000 new people in the City. How can we attain these goals or even think clearly about achieving these goals if we don't have some demographic basis which we're sharing. I'm concerned that we're taking the only demographic element that's currently in the Plan out of it and turning it over to the Parks Master Plan. It seems to me some kind of set of demographic assumptions should be a critical part of our "strategic planning." Any comment? Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Vice Mayor Schmid. Just to clarify, we're not talking about taking Policy C-28 out. That was a misunderstanding. It would remain in place. What we're talking about doing is considering as part TRANSCRIPT Page 74 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 of the concurrent effort focused on parks, trails and open space—considering as part of that process whether it should be updated or revised in any way. Vice Mayor Schmid: I'm just concerned that the only demographic discussion will not be by the CAC or the Council. It will be done by the Parks Master Plan. Ms. Gitelman: Just to respond briefly. I think, as Vice Mayor Schmid is aware, we're working concurrently on a Draft EIR which will be available and discussed in January under our schedule. That EIR will have a section related to Community Services and Facilities, and it looks at potential impacts of growth anticipated during the build-out of the Comprehensive Plan on Community Services. We will have that kind of quantitative, analytical discussion in the context of the EIR. Vice Mayor Schmid: Great. That's good and important. That January date comes after, I believe, the CAC finishes their discussion and the Council finishes our discussion on the community services. Ms. Gitelman: Just to clarify, the CAC will have had their discussion on a draft that we will prepare following receipt of your direction this evening. The Council will not have concluded its deliberations on the Community Services and Facilities Element until sometime in 2016 when you receive the CAC's recommendation on the Comp Plan Elements. Vice Mayor Schmid: I guess it says here January 11th review of CAC work on community services, review by Council, final review. Mayor Holman: Can we just rely on Staff to update that schedule, so that we can sweep up consideration of C-28 pending the Master Plan? Ms. Gitelman: Happy to look at that schedule. Forgive me, I didn't see that on the schedule. We're happy to look at that. Mayor Holman: Anything else, Vice Mayor Schmid? Vice Mayor Schmid: Yeah. I just want to make the point that demographic assumptions are critical in making good policy choices. Mayor Holman: Council Member Burt. Council Member Burt: I wish I had been able to wade in earlier in the conversation to help try to set some context around this C-28 debate. All the way back when the '98 Comp Plan went through, there was discussion as that was being adopted and subsequently to it. I'm trying to remember as best I can the nature of the discussion. Here's my best shot at it. I've had TRANSCRIPT Page 75 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 concerns that a lot of elements of the Comp Plan appear to be directive, when in fact they're intended to be aspirational. That gets confusing. We have other places that we say "we will," a bunch of "shalls." They're really we will do things that we won't possibly achieve, is the way it essentially boils down. I made arguments way back then that it was misguided to say that we'd do things that we only wanted to move in that direction of. That was at the same time that I was one of the advocates pushing for a stronger park program and, in fact, the park fee program that we implemented that is inadequate, but we had none before then. We had debates about various things. Really a lot of the intention at that time was around going forward, new major development whether it would be designed around this kind of a goal of 2 acres per 1,000. At that time, the one that was on the horizon was the SOFA redevelopment as a result of the massive amount of Palo Alto Medical Foundation that was vacating, of a single landowner that did not have default development rights for that area which enabled the City to then push for a whole bunch of outcomes that were more consistent with our Comp Plan objectives which are actually just being adopted, concurrently with SOFA I. Elsewhere in the City, there was not an intention or a belief that we could retroactively backfill shortages in our existing neighborhood parks to fulfill that 2 acres per 1,000. I want to make sure everybody understands that, even though there's ambiguity in the present wording, it is not a case that we ignored the intent over the last 15, 17 years, nor that there ever was that intent. Now, what I want to see as we're moving forward we have better clarity that we're saying what we mean and subsequently meaning what we say. I also want to make sure that we're not misrepresenting out of kind of just reading in a literal sense what's before us and, with good intentions, misrepresenting what actually was there and what was intended there. Having said that, I still don't even know what direction this new cognizance that is emerging in parks and recreation community, where that might point us in relation to this. I'll leave it for this time there. The other thing is as this has really gotten more well organized even as it is a complex effort to make sense out of a whole bunch of things that were difficult to compare. What I started realizing is that we're comparing the current goals, which are more what I would describe as titles, and under the PTC goals they were a bit more of the narrative that under the current Comp Plan we have a title followed by a whole paragraph of narrative. We're comparing apples to oranges in this sense. We're saying, "Should we have the old"—for instance, I look under what was in the slides on page 10. Under Goal C-1, we have effective and efficient delivery of community services. Over to the right, we had a PTC goal of community partnerships. I was trying to figure out where is this community partnership statement which I felt needed to be rewritten and finally realized that under the current Goal C-1, it's in the paragraph of the narrative or its equivalent discussion is a portion of that narrative paragraph. This may be the correct thing to do. TRANSCRIPT Page 76 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 We're leaving it out altogether of the goal, because we're using the current one and no reference to community partnerships. We're not giving any direction on the narrative. I would not attempt to have us try to write that narrative from the dais, but we haven't given any guidance. Do we mean the narratives should include references to what we want in community partnerships is one portion of it, just as one example. I think we're leaving out an important part of this goal discussion. The goal discussion was all framed around what's in bold, essentially I'll call the titles but sometimes they go beyond titles, and comparing it to a PTC that seemed to be a hybrid between titles and narratives. I'm not sure we've had fully the right discussion. I think there's a lot of good things here in this motion, but I have apprehensions about this being the totality of our guidance if we're not going back and figuring out how do we reconcile what was the content in the prior narratives, is that the description of the goal that we mean to have for the next 15 years. We're giving no guidance there to speak of. In fact, in some ways by saying what we don't want from the old PTC recommendation, we're implying we don't want that in the narrative. It may be we just don't want it in the title. I hate to add this complexity. I kept struggling with this over the last hour as I was finding the merits in the motion and realizing there was a whole subject area that was being left out of the conversation. I don't know, first, whether Staff has any thoughts about what they intended to be done on the narrative. I'm assuming there would was still an intention to have narrative, but what would it contain? Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Council Member Burt, for that question. I guess I haven't given a lot of thought to the narrative yet. Maybe it would comfort you to know that when the CAC discussed this element, there was a lot of conversation about policies related to community partnerships. That concept of community partnerships would be dealt with at the policy level even if it's not explicit in the goal. I think the thought of the CAC members who contributed those thoughts is that that would be part of delivering the effective and efficient delivery of community services as articulated in this ... Council Member Burt: In the goal statements. On the one hand, I think there's merit to the goals being succinct. In the absence of that narrative, I think those goals could mean a lot different things to different people ten years from now. There may be an inference in the policies and programs what the goal meant, but those narrative paragraphs actually said here's what we mean by this goal. That leads to a rational flow to the policies and programs. I think the narrative is important. Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Council Member Burt. I didn't mean to suggest that we wouldn't have narratives. It's just we didn't bring them and not prepared to discuss them this evening, but you will have an opportunity to TRANSCRIPT Page 77 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 review the narratives that go with the goals and the policies and programs that the CAC recommend as a whole piece. That is something that will happen as part of this process. Council Member Burt: When and how would that happen? Ms. Gitelman: Currently, we're working on a draft that will be organized based on your direction this evening to go back to the CAC within the next couple of months. We'll take their input, and then we'll bring it back to the Council. We had been planning, as Vice Mayor Schmid indicated, to bring it back to Council for a check-in in January. If we decide to wait for the quantitative analysis, as Vice Mayor Schmid suggested, then it would potentially be a little later than January. Council Member Burt: How will you get a sense of what should be in the narrative? Ms. Gitelman: If the Council's directing us to use the existing goal, we look towards the existing narrative, updated to reflect any of the policy changes that the CAC is reflecting, but we're not going to lose the meaning of the existing if your direction is to use the existing goal. Council Member Burt: I can certainly see numerous circumstances where we may say the existing goal as a title is just fine. The narrative should have evolved between the last Comp Plan and the current Comp Plan. I don't hear of a process by which that would be discussed. Ms. Gitelman: The CAC will get a draft for their review. They will have an opportunity to discuss the narrative, the policies and the programs, prepare a recommendation that will come to Council. You will have an opportunity to discuss that at an early check-in. Then, when we've been through all of the elements with the CAC, it will again come back to the Council, and you will again have an opportunity to see the entire package, vision, goals, text, policies, programs. Mayor Holman: Council Member Burt, does that answer your question or not? Council Member Burt: I still have concerns whether we're giving adequate guidance to the CAC in that direction and whether we will have an adequate opportunity to have a thoughtful discussion around it. I think the process does not address that well enough. I guess I would like to add an amendment to direct Staff to return to the Council with—I don't want to get too descriptive here—for more substantive discussion of narratives supporting goals. TRANSCRIPT Page 78 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member Scharff: Second. Mayor Holman: First, Council Member DuBois, is that acceptable? You need your mike on, please. Council Member DuBois: I hit my light because I wanted to make a comment on what Council Member Burt was saying here. I think I'll decline and let it be voted on as a separate amendment. Mayor Holman: Okay. We have a second then by Council Member Scharff. AMENDMENT: Council Member Burt moved, seconded by Council Member Scharff to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to return to Council for more substantive discussion of narratives supporting Goals.” Mayor Holman: Council Member Burt, do you care to speak to your amendment any further? Council Member Burt: No. Mayor Holman: Council Member Scharff? Council Member Scharff: Yes. When I started speaking, I gave our Director of Planning a little bit of a hard time on this, because this is sort of what was bothering me. Council Member Burt crystallized it for me. We're looking at apples and oranges here, and that was what was bothering me. When you look at C-1, which is what we're doing, it's a title, effective and efficient delivery of community services. When we look at a retained PTC goal, it says for instance plan for a future in which our parks and libraries. Those are very different and they feel very different. The whole structure of the PTC is very different than the original one. It's a title versus a narrative. I assume when you say we're going to maintain parks and facilities, you're not just putting the title in red; it's the whole thing where it says Goal 3. The structure here feels wrong. It feels like we're mixing and matching and that you need some narrative to go with the other goals or you need to get rid of some of the narrative with the others. It just feels wrong. I do think Staff needs to come back and put some narrative to support these other goals. That gets back to my original question, which our Director couldn't answer, which is what is the policy difference in what that narrative is going to say of what we're doing now. I've got to be honest. I'm really disappointed that you can't answer the question. How are you going to write the narrative? Are you going to write the same narrative that the PTC had? Just put that as the narrative? Come back? You've told me there's no policy difference. If there's no policy difference in what I'm voting on, then the narrative part, it's going to be interesting to see what you write there. I'm really glad this TRANSCRIPT Page 79 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 is coming back, because I think there's probably some policy differences. I just have no clue what they are. I think until you write those goals out and write the narrative underneath it, I won't know. That's where I'm trying to play with. That's why I want to see this come back and understand it. The thing I hate to do most as a Council is to just vote on something and have no idea what I've really done. That's sort of a little bit where I feel I am. Mayor Holman: That's laudable. Hillary. Ms. Gitelman: Mayor Holman, if I could respond? Maybe we can step back for a moment and just talk big picture. What we were really hoping this evening is to get your guidance on the organizational structure of this element. The organizational structure is defined by the vision and goals. That's just the way the existing Comp Plan is written. The goals are as you see them. They tend to be in themselves a statement of what we aspire to, to use Council Member Burt's phrase. They are what they are. They are supported in the existing Comp Plan by narrative, by policies and programs. We are hoping to get sufficient direction from the Council so that we can assist and support the CAC in delving further into all of the structure of the plan that hangs under the vision and goals. We just cannot realistically do it all at once, and we can't do it in a single meeting. This is the way we've chosen to organize it. Council looks at goals. CAC looks at policies and programs. Then it all comes together. Nothing is going to happen without your review and participation. You can look at every piece of narrative that supports every goal, every policy and every program. You can look at it multiple times. I just realistically don't think we're going to be able to come back multiple times at this juncture without delaying the work of the CAC. Of course, that's your choice. If you want to take more time at this and extend the CAC's work, we can do that as well. We're trying to get some direction here on vision and goals. I do recognize the point that it's a little bit apples and oranges. The existing Comp Plan and the PTC's version are different, and that's why we were hoping that you would help us choose or blend. Council Member DuBois has made a great suggestion of how to blend. Our thought was that you were going to choose one or the other. A blend is fine too, but it does create this difficulty that they're a little bit different. Mayor Holman: I think Council Member Burt wants to clarify. Council Member Burt: Yeah. A couple of things. I appreciate the value of what's in the primary motion—I stated that already—in achieving the objective that you were looking for of providing the organization. Also, I deliberately did not stipulate a timeframe for Staff to return to the Council on this. You characterized it as if it was a timeframe before doing anything TRANSCRIPT Page 80 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 else. That's not there, and I didn't state it. Third, I continue to believe that the goals without the narrative in many cases are so ambiguous that they really don't provide their intent. Just effective and efficient delivery of community services is so far from what is in that following paragraph or what we might put in that paragraph going forward in terms of what does that mean, what do we want in those policies and programs that express what this goal in bold means. You're missing a big chunk of what this is about. I continue to say that whether we do it the way PTC did, which was attempting to make a wordier goal, or a more succinct goal, with a narrative which probably is the better to do it. One of the two of those needs to be done. Without this, I don't see how you can have a great alignment between the goal and the policies and programs because you don't exactly know what the goal means. Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Council Member Burt. I completely agree with your sentiments. If I could as a clarifying question. Would we be complying with this amendment if we brought the draft element back to Council after the CAC took a look at it in the January timeframe as we were planning? Council Member Burt: I think in my mind that would probably be fine. Part of what this implies in coming back is that there's going to be thought and discussion about what ought to be in the narrative, and not simply take the old narrative and assume that. The narrative's important. It's not an afterthought. It's really what puts the meat on the bone about what we mean by the goal that then gets translated into policies and programs. Mayor Holman: If we can try to move this along. It sounds like—I have five lights on this amendment. We're not going to be making much progress if we're stuck this much on this. Male: You can scratch mine off there. Mayor Holman: We have four lights. What I'm hearing is, it sounds like, that this could come back in the January timeframe. I'm looking for this to be corrected if I misstate something. This would come back in the January timeframe as was originally provided, that this could come back with the existing narrative and any language that the Staff views that might further clarify ... Ms. Gitelman: We're going to have to update the narrative as part of our work with the CAC. When the Council sees it again, you'll get the benefit of the CAC's work on policies and programs and some updated—it may be very similar to the existing, but we're going to take a look at the narrative and make sure that it reflects that it makes sense in today's context. TRANSCRIPT Page 81 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Mayor Holman: Remembering that these are goals. The CAC's looking at policies and programs. Ms. Gitelman: That's right. And the Council's recommendation on goals. The consolidated package will come back to the Council after the CAC has provided their guidance on policies and programs. Mayor Holman: What I'm trying to get a little bit of clarification on is what's coming back in terms of goals, and the narrative of that is the CAC is not going to be working on that. It would be ... Ms. Gitelman: The goals will be as the Council directs this evening. The policies and programs will be as the CAC directs or suggests. We will, as Staff, work with our team to make sure that the narrative is consistent with both. Mayor Holman: That's what I was trying to get at right there. Great. Thank you a lot. With that clarification, do Council Members DuBois, Filseth, Vice Mayor Schmid and Council Member Kniss need to speak to this amendment? Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I really have a different view on the whole thing. I'll make it quick. Council Member Kniss: You are the maker of the motion. Council Member DuBois: Council Member Burt kind of put forth ... Mayor Holman: We're speaking to the amendment, not the motion. Council Member DuBois: Yes. Exactly. He kind of put forth this view of goal and narrative. When I looked at the two versions, I took that as the goal, and that was my recommendation included what we're now calling the narrative. I was counting that as the goal. When Council Member Scharff asked me the difference between C-1 and I couldn't answer. When he went on and talked, I pulled it up. I thought, "Oh, yeah, that was the difference." It was the paragraph of text that I included as part of the goal. Again, when I wrote the motion, I was saying this was shorthand because I was thinking all this text was included. I may or may not support the motion. I'm comfortable with what our Planning Director said, which was when we say use the existing goal that we'll pull on the existing narrative. In the other draft, the PTC draft, there's a paragraph of goal and there is no narrative. I didn't take it as apples and oranges. I took it as the existing Comp Plan, the entire paragraph, versus the PTC version. I (inaudible) kind of really have TRANSCRIPT Page 82 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 the same framework that you have. I was pretty comfortable with that. That was the intent of my original motion. Mayor Holman: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: (inaudible) Mayor Holman: Question answered. Vice Mayor Schmid. Vice Mayor Schmid: I am very sympathetic to the fact that we're trying to build momentum and get the Comp Plan process underway and working efficiently. It seems to me this motion fits in not just with community services but with each of the elements. How do we integrate a narrative into the process. I'm very comfortable with using this as a model for each element that we've had what? Three hours we've been discussing and have had a chance not just to state the goal of ten words, but why we like that goal, what might be important, what characteristics we're thinking about. Staff taking that, preparing a memo for the CAC, them looking at both the goals and maybe the Staff narrative and the programs and policies. A lot of the narratives come at the program and policy level. When you come back to us in January, you will have a narrative built up over two three-hour meetings with the CAC and the Council. That would give us a template to work from when you do come back. If we could use this as a template for each element as we talk through it, it seems to me that we can keep the momentum going. We're not asking for other work, but maybe just more intensive activity in what we're doing. I would support the motion if the Staff feels that it is a process that can be done with each of the elements. Mr. Keene: Can I just say something here? When I read the motion that is up there and the amendment and then listening to Council Member DuBois, the Vice Mayor and even the comments from Council Member Burt and Council Member Scharff in the amendment, I don't see those things as incongruent as far as a direction to us. You've made some clarifications on the goals. You've said that you want us to come back with more substantive discussion even if it is, as Council Member DuBois says, on the existing one that has a narrative underneath it. Under the PTC, it's not broken out. Hillary is saying, "We're going to go back to the CAC. We're going to reconcile." As they drill down on the policies and program area, that has potential modifications on the narrative and the goal when we come back. Personally, I think that both perspectives could vote for the motion the way it is, and we'd have enough directive for the Staff to know what to do. That being said, before we're all done and we're already over your time, it would be good to make sure we're getting clear directive as to what you want us to do in the next Comp Plan meeting that we will come back on either the 26th TRANSCRIPT Page 83 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 or 2nd, and then we have another one in November scheduled on different elements of the plan. Mayor Holman: We will get there shortly, I think. Council Member Kniss, did you need to speak to the amendment? Council Member Kniss: I'm just having trouble realizing—I can't imagine you wouldn't come back to us with directly what this is. I don't think the amendment adds anything. I think I would just assume that you would come back to us with a more substantive discussion of the narrative. Am I incorrect? Ms. Gitelman: I think you're correct, Council Member Kniss. I think we've clarified that that's—our current schedule calls for us to come back with a complete package in January, another draft for the Council to look at that would include vision, goals, narrative, policies and programs. Council Member Kniss: Right. I'm fine without the amendment. Mayor Holman: I'm actually going to support the amendment, because I think it's kind of a no harm no foul. I think Staff and several people have said it's kind of saying the same thing, but I think it's maybe a little bit clarifying. The amendment is to add to the motion direct Staff to return to Council for more substantive discussion of narratives supporting goals. Vote on the board please. That passes on a 7-2 vote with Council Member Kniss and Council Member Wolbach voting no. AMENDMENT PASSED: 7-2 Kniss, Wolbach no Mayor Holman: We return now to the main motion. I see no lights. I do have just a smattering of things here, and then we need to look at our agenda. I would like to incorporate—we've had this discussion tonight on Policy C-28 having to do with the Parks Master Plan. I would like to incorporate as an amendment here "incorporate reference also to the Urban Forest Master Plan." Look to the maker of the motion to accept that. Council Member DuBois: In a goal or a policy? Mayor Holman: Yes. Council Member DuBois: Which? Mayor Holman: As a goal. Council Member DuBois: I think it's referenced in some policies already. If you want to call it out for a policy. TRANSCRIPT Page 84 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Mayor Holman: I'd like it called out as a goal just as Policy C-28 is. Make this Urban Forest Master Plan, so it's not a goal. Council Member DuBois: As a policy then, that's fine. Mayor Holman: As a policy, yeah. Are you good with that? Council Member DuBois: yeah. Mayor Holman: Council Member Filseth, you're good with that? Okay. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “incorporate reference to the Urban Forest Master Plan in a policy.” Mayor Holman: Then on "B" which is C-2, customer service. I hope this doesn't lead to a lot of discussion. I've been—I'm sorry. Hillary. Ms. Gitelman: I'm sorry. You just added an "I." At the end, you wanted it to say "incorporate reference to the Urban Forest Master Plan in a policy"? Mayor Holman: Yes. Thank you for that clarification. In "B," C-2, customer service. This is something I've always been troubled by. Several years ago there was really, I think, maybe a national movement to change public service really to customer service. I've always been troubled by that. As far as I'm concerned, the City only has one set of customers or maybe a couple, and that's like utility consumers are customers. Everybody else that we deliver services to are the public. I'm hoping we can change the dialog from customer service to public service or community service which is ... AMENDMENT: Mayor Holman moved, seconded by Council Member XX to replace in the Motion Part C, “Customer Service” with “Service the Public or Community Service.” Male: (inaudible) Mayor Holman: I'm sorry? Council Member Burt: Serve the public. Mayor Holman: Yeah, serve the public is fine too. Council Member DuBois? I'm trying to get away from customer service because it has implications that the customer is always right. Council Member DuBois: Again, when I looked at this goal, the "narrative" is very short here. I took that as part of the goal as well. I could read it to you real quickly. It's just Palo Alto is committed to providing high quality, TRANSCRIPT Page 85 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 responsive customer services to its residents and businesses, priorities reflected in policies and programs, and specifically address the intention of the City to reinforce a customer service ethic and changes in City Staff management techniques and performance review criteria and public service processes are proposed to impose the quality of service. There's a bunch of policies and programs about providing quality services using customer service metrics that made a lot of sense to me when I read it. I don't know if I want to kind of start wordsmithing. Mr. Keene: Madam Mayor? Mayor Holman: It's not wordsmithing. It is really a direction for the City. Jim. Mr. Keene: Rather than you guys get into a wordsmith battle here, I think we understand the tension between these two ideas. I think we could craft some language in the narrative that reconciles it. To be honest with you, I agree with your view that we're about public service. Without getting into it too much, there is an element of customer service, though, that's an aspect of that. We don't treat people as customers, but there are attitudes that are associated with the term customer service that we want to be sure we have. We don't want to be thinking that who we serve are customers. I mean, we've got citizens; we have these clients. I really think that we could take your intention on not limiting this to just the customer service kind of framework and frame it more public service. We still may be able to include some of these terms, though, in the subset. Mayor Holman: Could I offer then an "H" ... Mr. Keene: I've been working on this for 25 years. I actually know something about this. Mayor Holman: Could I add a "G" then, for the maker of the motion and seconder, that would be addressing the comments that I appreciate from City Manager Keene, that "Staff will address the tension between customer service and public service in framing goals and policies"? City Manager? Maker of the motion? Staff will address tension between the language of customer service and public service. Council Member DuBois: Yeah, that's fine. Mayor Holman: That's something you're—okay. Council Member Filseth? Council Member Filseth: I'm fine with it. (inaudible) TRANSCRIPT Page 86 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 AMENDMENT RESTATED AND INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “Staff will address tension between customer service and public service.” Mayor Holman: This one is a bit of a nit, but it's really kind of not. It is in "E" or C-5. We're talking about health and well being. It's words that were there before, but we aren't really providing social services "particularly for." We're providing social services "inclusive of." While it does maybe seem like a wordsmith, I think what is here is more limiting. "Inclusive of children, youth, seniors and unhoused" is more intentional than "particularly for" which is more limiting. Instead of "particularly for," it's "inclusive of." Eliminate "particularly for" and add "inclusive of." Council Member DuBois: Sure. Mayor Holman: Council Member Filseth? Okay, all right. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to replace in the Motion Part E, “particularly for” with “inclusive of.” Mayor Holman: I have one question for Staff. We've talked about parks, community services. Would the Comprehensive Plan be an appropriate place to have reference to maintaining current and relevant impact fees? The reason I bring it up is because we are not good about keeping our impact fee, rates if you will, current. Especially in a community like ours, I think it's important. Is the Comprehensive Plan some place where we could or should put a reference to that? Ms. Gitelman: Thank you for that question, Mayor Holman. I think we could have a policy to say maintain updated fees, but we couldn't get more explicit than that. It's not a regulatory or—I mean a general plan or a comprehensive plan isn't the place to actually set fees or adopt regulations. Mayor Holman: I understand that. It's just a matter of keeping them updated. That's what I'm talking about. Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, yeah. We have an interest in—our policy is to review and periodically update the fees as needed. Of course, yeah. That could be a policy. Mayor Holman: You think that should be at the policy level as opposed to the goal level then? Ms. Gitelman: That's right. I think that would be a policy. TRANSCRIPT Page 87 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Mayor Holman: You'll relate that then to the—excuse me. Council Members at the end of the dais. Excuse me. You'll refer that then to the CAC? You'll relate that, I mean, to the CAC? Ms. Gitelman: Be happy to. Mayor Holman: Sorry, but it's pretty loud on the other end of the dais. I'm sorry for that. I don't have any other comments. I see—Council Member Burt, your light's on? Council Member Burt: Yeah. I just want to go back to this change from "particularly"—this is in C-5—"children, youth and seniors and unhoused" to "inclusive of." Semantically that actually dilutes the statement. "Particularly" is an emphasis on. "Inclusive of" means including but not limited to. Certainly we don't mean to limit it, but it's a dilution. It's not an emphasis, what you just did there. It goes, I think, the opposite direction from what you intended. I would advocate it be returned to "particularly" or some other ... Council Member Scharff: Particularly for. Council Member Burt: Particularly for, yeah. Mayor Holman: From my interpretation of it, "particularly for" is limiting. You heard my comments before. At any rate ... Council Member Burt: No. It gives greater emphasis to those four categories than other categories. That's what it does. If your intention is to include other categories on that same par ... Mayor Holman: I see what you're saying. Council Member Burt: If you want to emphasize these four categories, "inclusive of" goes in the opposite direction. Mayor Holman: To Council Member DuBois, who's the maker of the motion, "inclusive of all community members including." I mean, we're really getting into wordsmithing here. Council Member Burt: It's not "including." Was your intention to broaden? Mayor Holman: Yes, yes. Because the focus (inaudible) be "particularly for," but that seemed to leave out a whole sector of the community. If you have better words, then I'm open to that. Council Member DuBois: I'll accept whatever gets us to a vote quicker. TRANSCRIPT Page 88 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member Burt: I think what would be best is to not try to resolve final wording tonight and simply to say that we want to include a broad range of community members and we also want to have an emphasis on these five categories. Those are, I think, the two objectives. I would recommend that we just have descriptive language and let ... Council Member DuBois: I think Staff understands. Council Member Burt: ... people hash out the wording later that reflects those intentions. Mayor Holman: The language that's on the board right now would sort of get us there if Council Member DuBois would accept that and then Council Member Filseth and ... Council Member DuBois: Yeah, I think Staff understands where we want to go here. That's fine. Mayor Holman: I see a light from Council Member Wolbach. Do you have something else. Council Member Wolbach: Yeah, actually tagging onto that one and then one other. I think the best compromise here, where it says "including," change the word "including" to "particularly." That way it provides ... Mayor Holman: We're going backwards, and I think we said we weren't going to be wordsmithing after this. Council Member Wolbach: I didn't say that. Council Member Burt: You got your word in. Council Member Wolbach: I'm proposing a compromise where we—the word "including" at the end of that line would become "particularly" if that's acceptable to the maker and the seconder. That way we keep the original language which I strongly preferred and I think Burt did as well, but adds the expansion that Mayor Holman suggested by making sure that we weren't leaving out the rest of the community. Mayor Holman: You're saying ... Council Member Wolbach: Would Council Members—my suggestion is a friendly amendment to change that word that's highlighted to "particularly for" or actually just "particularly." Mayor Holman: Council Member DuBois? TRANSCRIPT Page 89 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member Kniss: (inaudible) to go? Council Member Wolbach: No. It would retain the addition of "inclusive of all community members." That was the addition based on Mayor Holman's recommendation, but it would change the word "including" to "particularly." This would be the compromise. Mayor Holman: Council Member DuBois? Council Member DuBois: I'm tempted to say go back to the original motion and take the sentence as a separate amendment, but I'll accept "particularly" if that's the last change. Mayor Holman: Council Member Filseth? Okay. Council Member Burt: I certainly don't want inclusive (crosstalk). INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to replace in the Motion Part E, “including” with “particularly.” Mayor Holman: Is there anything else? Council Member Wolbach: Yes, actually. Going back to the Cubberley issue, I'm just worried that we're asking a lot of the CAC, and I'm worried that asking the CAC to dig too much into things as specific as Cubberley might be time consumptive. I am concerned about it mucking up the works of the ongoing discussions. If I could get—I thought we were stepping back from that a little bit, but that's still in there. I know that Staff has addressed this before. Mayor Holman: Are you suggesting—I'm sorry. Are you suggesting to ... Council Member Wolbach: I think that my recommendation was—recalling what Council Member DuBois said when he proposed this being included, he wanted to make sure that we didn't drop the ball on Cubberley. I agree. I think it's in there already. It's already in the Comprehensive Plan. My suggestion would be to change "direct the CAC to discuss" to "incorporate reference to the planning and development of Community Cubberley Center." Council Member DuBois: There are a lot of policies in this element. This element is where the policy on Cubberley currently lives. I was just trying to make a point that I think, again, it needs to happen in these next ten years. Hopefully the planning in the next five. I would like to leave this as is. It's not really changing anything that's already in there. TRANSCRIPT Page 90 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member Wolbach: It's just my concern is the creation of work for Staff getting in the way of ongoing negotiations (crosstalk). Council Member DuBois: They're going to talk about it. It's already in there as a policy. Mayor Holman: Hillary, is this creating any more work than what's already on the table? Council Member Wolbach: Or conflict in debate with the School District. Mayor Holman: It's fine to leave it in. Okay. Council Member Wolbach: Then I'll pull back my amendment and just scratch it. Mayor Holman: We have a motion ready to vote on. That is to—this is regarding the Community Services Element—direct Staff to update the existing vision statement with minor revisions for City Council review and adopt the following organization of goals: C-1, efficient service and delivery which is the current goal; C-2, customer service which is the current goal; C-3, maintaining parks and public facilities, which is the PTC proposed C-3; C-4, planning for the future, PTC's C-4; and C-5, health and well being, which is the Planning and Transportation Commission's C-1 adding improve quality, quantity and affordability of social services inclusive of all community members particularly children, youth, seniors, the unhoused, and people with disabilities; and "F" which is update Policy C-28 based on the Staff feedback and the Park and Recreation Master Plan process; and "G," direct the CAC to discuss the planning and development of Cubberley community Center; and "H," direct Staff to return to Council for more substantive discussion of narratives supporting goals; "I," incorporate reference to the Urban Forest Master Plan in a policy; and "J," Staff will address tensions between customer service and public service. With that, vote on the board. That passes unanimously. MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 9-0 Mayor Holman: Congratulations, Council, on that unanimous motion. It is 10:33. We have the other sections of this to address. As was mentioned earlier by City Manager, we can push the Land Use and Community Design Element forward to—I'm looking for the date. Ms. Gitelman: We had originally planned on November 2nd, but there's potentially an opportunity to move it to October 26. TRANSCRIPT Page 91 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Mr. Keene: We don't know that quite yet, but we will. I think we'll know by next week, Monday next week for certain, whether we can push it to the 26th. Vice Mayor Schmid: That's October 26th? Mayor Holman: Yes, yes. City Attorney, do we need a motion to continue this, I believe? Yes. Council Member Scharff: I'll move that we continue. Are we going to keep public comment open or close it? Mayor Holman: We can keep it open if you desire. Council Member Scharff: I was actually more wondering what the Council wanted to do. I'm sort of agnostic. I could (crosstalk). Council Member Kniss: Could we ask about continuing it forward without hearing from the public again on that item since they spoke tonight? Mayor Holman: We could to it either way. Council Member Scharff: I'll move that we close public comment (crosstalk) the motion. Mayor Holman: Molly, sorry, City Attorney. Molly Stump, City Attorney: Thank you. If I could be heard on the topic. Certainly when you recall the item, if there is anyone present who was not able to be here this evening and wishes to make public comment, you should hear from those folks. You can encourage people who have provided public comment not to provide additional comment or certainly not to repeat comments that they've made. The Council listens very carefully, and those comments have been noted in the record. You would hope not to hear from folks again with repetitious public comments. Mayor Holman: Council Member Scharff, would you care to ... Council Member Scharff: I'll amend it the way the City Attorney suggested we amend it. Council Member Kniss: I'll second it. Second. Mayor Holman: Your motion would be to continue the discussion of the Land Use and Community Design Elements to a date to be determined by City TRANSCRIPT Page 92 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Staff which would be either October 26 or November 2, and to continue public comment for those who have not already spoken to this item. Council Member Scharff: That's correct. Mayor Holman: Is that the intention of the seconder? Council Member Kniss: Let me ask this. The maker of the motion tonight is asking whether or not this could actually be continued next Tuesday or is that too heavy an agenda? That's the night that you're doing transportation. Given the timeliness of this, it would be helpful to do it next Tuesday, and perhaps leave one of the items for next Tuesday until another night. Mayor Holman: Personally and Staff will weigh in, go ahead. I'm not seeing how we can take this up in addition next Tuesday. Mr. Keene: You've got—the discussion on transportation includes high speed rail potentially EIR, Caltrain, the VTA transportation tax, other transportation funding options. Council Member Kniss: The answer is it doesn't work well for next Tuesday. Mayor Holman: It does not. It's already too full an agenda. Council Member Kniss: Then I'll continue to support the motion as it was made, and that answers the maker of this motion's question. MOTION: Council Member Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Kniss to continue the Land Use & Community Design Element to a date to be determined by City Staff and to continue public comment to those who have not spoken. Mayor Holman: Council Member DuBois, did you have your light on for that purpose? Council Member DuBois: (inaudible). Mayor Holman: With that, the motion is to continue Land Use and Community Design Element to October 26 or November 2 with non- repetitious public comment. That's one way of putting it. That passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Mayor Holman: Council Members, it is 10:37. We have two additional items, neither of which do we think are going to take very long. Are Council Members willing to push on to address Items 13 and 14? TRANSCRIPT Page 93 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member Scharff: Thirteen's the least timely. I think we should push on. Mayor Holman: Thirteen and 14. Are we going to continue with Items 13 and 14, Council Members? Okay. I'm hearing yes from everybody. 13. PUBLIC HEARING: Adoption of an Ordinance Making Permanent the Interim Measures to Eliminate Certain Parking Exemptions Within Downtown by Amending Municipal Code Chapters 18.18, Downtown Commercial (CD) District and 18.52, Parking and Loading Requirements; the Planning and Transportation Commission Recommended Adoption. Mayor Holman: Item 13 is a public hearing, adoption of an ordinance making permanent the interim measure to eliminate certain parking exceptions within Downtown by amending Municipal Code Chapters 18.18, Downtown Commercial (CD) District, and 18.52, Parking and Loading Requirements, and the Planning and Transportation Committee recommended adoption. Staff has a presentation, and also City Attorney has a comment to make. Molly Stump, City Attorney: Thank you. We don't have much of a presentation. We just want to introduce the topic with a couple of comments. Planning Director Hillary Gitelman may jump in with some additional statements. Council Members, this ordinance makes permanent a set of changes that you made two years ago to remove exemptions to various projects in the Downtown CD District. They were various exemptions that provided for parking that would not need to be either built onsite or funded through in lieu payments. The Council wished to remove those exemptions, thus, increasing the supply of parking, and did so with a series of two interim urgency ordinances. Those ordinances have a time period that they are extant for, and then they go away. This ordinance is a regular ordinance that would merely make permanent those changes to the Code that we in this community and landowners and developers have been living with now for two years. It makes no changes to the status quo. Again, it's the continuation of the parking rules situation that's been in place for two years now since Council removed those exemptions. Looks like the Planning Director has nothing further to add. We're here to answer questions. Thank you. Mayor Holman: We have one member of the public who would—Council Member Scharff, did you have a question? We have one member of the public who would like to speak to this item. Jeff Levinsky, and you'll have three minutes. TRANSCRIPT Page 94 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Public Hearing opened at 10:39 P.M. Jeff Levinsky: Good evening, Mayor Holman and Council Members. I wanted to thank the Staff for bringing this forward. It's great that you're looking at closing these loopholes permanently. I hope you go after other of the loopholes. I wanted to particularly tonight address several points in the ordinance before you. First of all, on packet page 214, they left in a sentence that says unless an new ordinance is adopted to permanently establish these provisions, these Zoning Code amendments shall sunset on November 4, 2015. That is next month. I think you'd probably want to remove that from the ordinance so that no one is confused that it may be self-expiring. On packet page 219, there's another error which is that although the intent of the ordinance was to remove the rule about vacant space not having to be parked, they left that in. It starts at the very last word of page 219. I think it starts "however," and it continues onto the next page. It is removed from another part of the ordinance, but not this particular part. The third change is one that's not exactly about parking, but it is about the rules that's there. If a building is up to 3.0 FAR and it's doing a historic renovation, it gets up to 25 percent bonus. If it's over 3.0 FAR, it gets a 50 percent bonus. That means if you have one extra square foot on your property, you get 25 percent more bonus which could be worth $1 million or more of TDR for one extra square foot. I don't know why the Code has such a discontinuity in it. If you can't fix that tonight by just omitting it or something, then my recommendation would be to add it to the omnibus zoning changes consideration that's going through the process, so that it could be fixed that way. Thank you. Mayor Holman: Thank you. We have a second member of the public who cares to speak to this. Stephanie Munoz. Stephanie Munoz: Good evening, Council Members, again. As I listened to this, I'm always impressed by how thorough you people are with all these ordinances. It really is inspiring. It does take a long time. Really it's something that you have to think about and that we're all going to have to live with for a long time. I'd say congratulations. I'm (inaudible) can't be. The concern I had though, as I was listening, is about where's the land for all of this going to come from. Is it squirreled away some place that we don't know about? I remember Council Member Klein a year or so ago saying we have a lot of land in Palo Alto that we don't—this isn't the last piece of land. Oh, really? That's a well-kept secret. If we don't have the land for it, I'm worried because everything you do seems to have the hidden agenda. There seems to be that unseen hand moving the Palo Alto City Council to perform actions, every single one of which increases the value of Palo Alto land. I'm not sure it's intentional. The thing is if you're increasing the value of the Palo Alto land, you better get the land early, first, before it TRANSCRIPT Page 95 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 goes up, up, up and it's out of the way. The second thing is in all of these places where there's going to be parks, you could have some housing on top of the community center or the little building that you're going to have. It wouldn't be in the way, and it could even have a different entrance. It needn't bother anybody. I look at the Mitchell Park Library. It's great; it's fine. You could have had housing on top of that Community Center easy. It wouldn't have bothered anybody, because you have the land around it which would provide that FAR, that Floor Allowance Ratio, that you want in order to make Palo Alto look like single-family homes that are surrounded by acreage. Give that some thought. Thank you. Bye. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Public Hearing closed at 10:45 P.M. Mayor Holman: City Attorney, would care to respond to first speaker's comments? Ms. Stump: Yes. First, I'd like to thank Jeff Levinsky for assisting us with proofreading. We can apparently always use a little extra help. We would like to ask that the Council eliminate Finding I on page 2 and also ... Mayor Holman: That's page 2 of the ordinance, of course, right? Ms. Stump: I'm sorry. That's packet page 214. That's the language unless the new ordinance is adopted. The second change was correctly identified by the speaker. At the bottom of page 219, eliminate the word "however" and then the first sentence essentially at the top of packet page 220, leaving the last sentence. The third comment is a new policy idea that we would like the opportunity to review. We would ask that that be set aside for now. We'll take a look at that and add it to a Code cleanup in the future if it's warranted. Thank you. Mayor Holman: If I could just—Council Member Scharff, I'll get to you in a just second. The reason for that being the 3.0 provision is there because— although I understand the concern of the speaker, Mr. Levinsky. It's there because if there is a building that's of a size of 3.0 FAR, it has to do with the cost of rehabilitating such a building. It would be extraordinary, and so this is to provide some funding to help provide for the funding of the rehabilitation of an extraordinarily large building. That's why it's there. Council Member Scharff. Council Member Scharff: I'm glad we're finally making these permanent. It's actually been a long discussion of getting rid of these parking exemptions. I'm glad we're moving forward. I'd like to make the motion TRANSCRIPT Page 96 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 that we approve the Staff recommendation, approve the ordinance with the changes suggested by the City Attorney, actually Mr. Levinsky. Thank you very much, Mr. Levinsky. Council Member Kniss: I'll second it. Mayor Holman: Motion by Council Member Scharff, second by Council Member Kniss. MOTION: Council Member Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Kniss to adopt an Ordinance to amend PAMC Chapters 18.18, Downtown Commercial (CD) District, and 18.52 (Parking and Loading Requirements), to permanently eliminate certain parking exemptions within the downtown area previously adopted by Council via Interim Ordinance No. 5214 that will otherwise “sunset” on November 4, 2015 with the following modifications: A. Section 1, Subsection I. “Unless a new ordinance is adopted to permanently establish these provisions, these zoning code amendments shall ‘sunset’ on November 4, 2015;” and B. Section 4, Subsection (4), “however, square footage which was developed for nonresidential purposes or which has been used for nonresidential purposes but which is not used for such purposes due to vacancy at the time of the engineer's report shall be included in the amount of floor area qualifying for this exemption. No exemption from parking requirements shall be available where a residential use changes to a nonresidential use, except pursuant to subsection (2).” Mayor Holman: Do you care to speak any further? Council Member Scharff: No. Mayor Holman: Council Member Kniss? Council Member Kniss: No, but it's really important that we've done this and that it's completed. Thank you, Staff, for bringing it forward. Jeff, did you just get hired? Mayor Holman: I need to clarify here. You made no reference to the 3.0 matter, so you did intend for that to come back again? Council Member Scharff: No. The City Attorney said that they were going to take a look at it. If it needed to be added in terms of the Code cleanup, at that point it would come back to us. If it doesn't need to come back, it doesn't need to come back. I was going to let Staff deal with that in terms of a Code cleanup. That was the suggestion. TRANSCRIPT Page 97 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Mayor Holman: I don't think it would be a Code cleanup. I think it's a policy discussion, if we choose to have it. Ms. Stump: It sounds like there are policy considerations. My suggestion would be that you allow the Staff to review it and if the Staff believes that it's something that we would professionally recommend, that we would bring that back to the Council in an appropriate forum. Even a policy cleanup is something that comes back to Council for full discussion. Mayor Holman: I guess what I was trying to get clarification on is, like, is it a policy concern of the Council. I did not hear it included in your motion. It's not a Code cleanup; it's a policy discussion. Council Member Scharff: I'm happy with what the City Attorney just suggested. Ms. Stump: Mayor Holman, also, the item is not on the agenda tonight. It really isn't suitable for a full discussion tonight, in addition to the fact that we're not prepared on the topic (crosstalk). Mayor Holman: Right. I just wanted to know if it was going to be included in the motion or not. Vice Mayor Schmid. Vice Mayor Schmid: City Attorney, where is that third reference? Hillary Gitelman, Planning and Community Environment Director: It's on packet page 215, subparagraph 5. Vice Mayor Schmid: 215, paragraph 5. Mayor Holman: Yes, Number 5. Vice Mayor Schmid: Thank you. Mayor Holman: I see no other lights. With that, we are ready to vote on the board. That passes unanimously. Thank you very much. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 14. Resolution 9551 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Combating Human Trafficking, Including Staff Training, Assistance in Identifying Vulnerable Populations and Legislative Advocacy.” Mayor Holman: We now can move to Item Number 14 which is a Colleagues Memo recommending adoption of a Resolution combating human trafficking including Staff training, assistance in identifying vulnerable populations and TRANSCRIPT Page 98 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 legislative advocacy. I have no members of the public who wish to speak to this item it appears. I have no public comment cards. Do we have a Staff presentation? No. Council Member Kniss, would you care to present the memo? Council Member Kniss: The memo is in front of you, which is Number 14. In addition, because I'm sure you've already read this, I want to mention a couple of other things. While I was at the conference last week, I spent a fair amount of time with somebody who has a great deal of knowledge in human trafficking. Among those things that I found out which I thought were intriguing and awful is that most of—it's usually women involved in human trafficking—are pretty much kids from California. They are kids who have been runaways. They are found by somebody in whatever big city they go to where they are—first of all, they're welcomed and clothed and given something to eat and made feel very comfortable. That is usually the path toward human trafficking. It is the kind of thing that we don't think really goes on. It actually does. It goes throughout the Peninsula on a regular basis. It's the kind of thing we simply never see. What this Proclamation does tonight is ask that we will essentially put some resources into it at this point. In particular, we're calling out the Super Bowl, because we know that—there's almost no question—they fly women in. I hate to absolutely just pick out women, but it is women. They will fly women in from all over the country in order to be part of the human trafficking. There is a—just to give you a little more information, because I was really surprised by it. There's something called the red book. Apparently one can call the red book and be guaranteed of a connectivity, which I found pretty shocking. I also began to feel rather innocent by the time I was done with this, with how little I actually knew about human trafficking. Most of you know that Sally Lieber is a real specialist in this, and so is Mayor Cat Carlton from Menlo Park. I'm giving you all this because it is a very serious problem. It will become more serious as we get into the holidays and go into the Super Bowl. We heard from several people. The Mayor asked me if I would bring this forward. I want to thank Council Members Scharff, Holman and Berman as well for supporting this and for understanding that this is a major problem in our community. With that I would move the Resolution and hopefully get a second. Mayor Holman: Second. Council Member Berman: Second. MOTION: Council Member Kniss moved, seconded by Mayor Holman to adopt a Resolution indicating our support for combatting human trafficking, TRANSCRIPT Page 99 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 additional Staff training, and identifying vulnerable populations, as well as promoting legislative advocacy. Council Member Kniss: The Resolution, which is in front of us, simply goes into more detail about what I just said. Probably the best way to put this is this is definitely involuntary domestic servitude. We may think these are kids who are from poor homes or who have other kinds of needs; these are sometimes the kids that you've known in your own community that were nice kids, who ended up in a really tough, tough spot. Thank you for that. We appreciate the support. Mayor Holman: I want to thank you, Council Member Kniss, for bringing this forward. You responded very quickly to the request and to communications we'd gotten also from outside. Thank you for that. Very happy to second the motion. There are sometimes things going on in communities that we're just not particularly aware of. I think vulnerable is a very unfortunate but appropriate word in this Resolution, the vulnerable populations. I think that absolutely is true. There are other things that go on in communities that just aren't as obvious and that we don't always want to address and, as leaders, we do really need to address. I look forward to Council Member, colleague support for the Resolution. I'm sure we will get that to add to training to help address this issue as we go forward. City Manager. James Keene, City Manager: Madam Mayor, if the Council would indulge me just quickly. Just in advance of this item coming forward, the Police Chief gave me an update on sort of current efforts already underway in the Police Department. First of all, we are participating in the Santa Clara County Task Force on Human Trafficking. We've assigned a detective as an ongoing Staff liaison to that group. Our department's already working with the Chamber of Commerce to encourage the hotel and hospitality community in Palo Alto to receive specialized training on how to identify human trafficking. This is a San Mateo County program, and we know that Judy Kleinberg with the Chamber is connected on this. Police have attended a County-sponsored workshop on the National Human Trafficking Resource Center. As anticipated in the item, we will be seeking training on human trafficking for police personnel prior to the Super Bowl and will liaise with the identified human trafficking work group within the Super Bowl 50 command structure. We'll keep you posted on other efforts. Council Member Kniss: Mayor Holman, could I add to that? Mayor Holman: Yes. Council Member Kniss: There is all of that going on. In particular, I know Menlo Park is working with all their hotels. I think what I'm hearing you say TRANSCRIPT Page 100 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 is the Chief says that we are also doing the same. That's one of the sources. There's a lot of training that's going on. There's a lot that's going on that we certainly don't see. Thank you for letting us know what the Chief was doing. Mayor Holman: Thank you for that. Just quickly, Council Member Kniss mentioned Sally Lieber who has been quite an advocate for this issue. I really want to thank her for keeping us at the forefront. Vice Mayor Schmid. Vice Mayor Schmid: It's very disturbing and very strong words. I guess I was surprised at the training, outreach. Enforcement makes sense, but there's implications that there is new legislation needed. Is that right? Is there anything locally that we should be sensitive to in terms of laws? Council Member Kniss: On new legislation? Council Member Berman: If I might. There was a State law that just got signed, I think, in the last couple of days extending the statute of limitations on certain crimes that are particularly related to human trafficking. I don't recall the details; I just saw a blip about it at some point in the last couple of days. That's the only legislation I'm aware of. Vice Mayor Schmid: I guess if there's anything we should be aware of on the legislative side ... Council Member Kniss: There's nothing I know that's live right now, other than what Marc just referenced. That would kind of be a vague reference to this. There's nothing that I know beyond that. I know in the past Sally Lieber did carry legislation regarding this. Vice Mayor Schmid: Thank you. Mayor Holman: Council Member Berman, did you have something else to say. Council Member Berman: Yeah, just quickly. I'm glad Sally Lieber got a shout-out, because she's been advocating for this for years. I also want to thank—we all got handwritten letters from residents two different times over the past couple of months. I thought that was a really impressive thing that highlighted for me how many folks in the community care about this. I also want to give a shout-out to the Palo Alto Weekly. For those of you who haven't read it, there was a great article, looks like the May 8th edition this year. The Palo Alto Weekly had a great article by Sue Dremann, "Hidden in plain sight, Human trafficking reaches in Palo Alto, Silicon Valley." I'm not going to read everything that's in it. At the end, they give tips for how to identify victims, the industries victims are in, questions to ask a person you TRANSCRIPT Page 101 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 suspect is being trafficked. This is a crime that happens in plain sight, that folks won't realize is happening. Council Member Kniss was spot on that a lot of it is domestic. Not all of it, but a lot of it. It spikes around big events. I think with having Levi's Stadium in town, the Super Bowl will see a spike, but there was the WWE huge event they had that had massive amounts of people coming in. More people staying in hotels than the hotels were prepared for. That's the times that they engage in human trafficking and brining folks against their will. If anybody hasn't read it, I encourage you to check it out. The May 8th edition. This was just something that—the more articles there are about it, the more folks are aware about it, the greater likelihood that things will be seen and noticed and caught. I think it's great. I really hope that it's picked up in the local press, just because a big part of it is trying to educate our residents about it. Mayor Holman: Thank you. I see no other lights. We are ready to vote on the board to adopt a Resolution indicating our support for combating human trafficking, additional Staff training and identifying vulnerable populations as well as promoting legislative advocacy. Vote on the board please. That passes unanimously. Thank you colleagues. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs Mayor Holman: It is 11:00. It is time for Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs. City Manager. James Keene, City Manager: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Council Members. I just have an info update under this item. As you know, and I think there was a fair amount of emails to the Council, there's a bill that passed out of the Legislature that's on the Governor's desk right now, AB 744, that requires local governments at the request of a developer who wants to receive a density bonus to reduce the minimum parking requirements for a housing development to 0.5 spaces per unit if it's 100 percent affordable and within a half a mile of a major transit stop, such as a Caltrain station. However, there's no clause in the bill that regulates the ratio of vehicles per unit that a resident can actually own and other sorts of issues. This could lead to a scenario where multiple affordable housing projects are developed with an insufficient parking ratio, just as an example. Since it could be potentially signed any day, we worked with our legislative advocate, Townsend Public Affairs, to draft a letter that the Mayor could sign requesting that the Governor veto AB 744. Even without the details that I was just highlighting there, it runs contrary to one of the Council's key legislative guiding principles adopted by you, which is to protect local government discretion and oppose legislation that reduces the ability of local TRANSCRIPT Page 102 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 government to determine how best to effectively operate local activities. I did want to let you know that that would be going out. That's all I have to report. Mayor Holman: Thank you for that. Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements Mayor Holman: We move to Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements. I know some of my colleagues were at the League of Cities conference in San Jose. I see lights from Council Members Kniss, Wolbach, and Vice Mayor Schmid and Council Member DuBois and now Council Member Berman. Council Member Kniss, would you care to ... Council Member Kniss: I thought it was a particularly good conference. I want to recommend to you two things in particular that are actually, as far as I could tell, being videoed and should be online. The two keynotes were a fellow named Greg Lucas, who is the librarian for the State, the State Librarian. Did any of the rest of you hear him? Did you, Cory? Yeah. He was fun. He was interesting. As they said, he makes a case for libraries in this century that is hard to be denied. He really talks about it as kind of the heartbeat of the community, the center of what's going on and what brings communities together. He's lots of fun. I think you'd enjoy watching him. If you'll bear with me a minute, I want to read you about the next one which was Cam Marston, who is from Mobile, Alabama. He had one of the most interesting talks I've heard. I don't think any of the rest of you did hear it. Did you hear it? He'll describe it this way: "Only yesterday Gen X entered the workplace and managers were perplexed with their behavior. Today Gen Xers are the managers and are struggling to accommodate and retain the millennial generation, as in Gen Y. Millennials are the single largest generation in the workplace. They're fluent with technological communications. They don't prefer it; they mandate it. Their ability to empathize in person has been stymied due to an increase in handheld technology." I love that part of it. That was so much fun. "Still very relevant are the boomers—you know who you are—who are busier than they ever thought they'd be at this point in their lives and careers." As this says, get tips on working with and for different generations. He is one of the funniest, I thought. What did you think, Tom? Council Member DuBois: (inaudible). Council Member Kniss: I had more laughs from him than I think I had all week long. I've asked Beth if she could find out whether or not these videos are available online through the League. I'm guessing they are, because they were videoing them. TRANSCRIPT Page 103 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 James Keene, City Manager: Council Member Kniss, could you just text me that? Council Member Kniss: Pardon? Mr. Keene: Could you just text me that? I'm just kidding. Council Member Kniss: Yeah. In fact, I'll send you these two things. Is that not fun? Council Member DuBois: It'd be great to have him come in and speak. Council Member Kniss: I realize why I have some trouble with some of you. It was a big help. Mr. Keene: Yeah, the room's loaded with them. Council Member Kniss: The rest of the conference had a lot on a whole variety of things. I was in the emergency preparedness one. The fellow who was giving it said, "Anybody here from Palo Alto or Mountain View?" Yes. He said, "I can't improve on what Palo Alto and Mountain View have done." He said, "Their ability not only to respond, but also"—I didn't realize this, Jim; everything comes out on Twitter. I've got to confess I'm not on Twitter. I've got to get on Twitter in a hurry apparently. Mr. Keene: You need to follow the PAPD Twitter feed. Council Member Kniss: That's what they talked about. Mr. Keene: We do it in conjunction with Mountain View. We have the second highest Twitter following of a police department in the country. Council Member Kniss: It was announced at the conference. I've forgotten who it was talking about it, but he couldn't have been more positive about the Palo Alto Police Department and their ability to communicate in a hurry. It's very impressive. Lastly, thank you in particular to Council Member Burt who showed up at 7:30 on, maybe closer to 8:00, on Friday morning when I was elected president of the Peninsula Division of the League. Thank you all for your support. Look forward to sending me any of your requests that you have for the State committees. That's one of the things that the local League presidents do. Mayor Holman: Congratulations. Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: A couple of things. On Thursday at the League, I made it kind of—at least the afternoon, I made sort of a law enforcement TRANSCRIPT Page 104 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 and surveillance technology afternoon. I first attended a discussion on drones and drone technology and what that means for cities, both with governmental and private drones. After that I joined City Attorney Molly Stump and also her new fellow who has joined her office, our first Legal Fellow in Palo Alto. I joined them for the City Attorney's conference which was in the same building. It was interesting that the only place where you actually had desks and people doing work while listening to presentations was the City Attorney's, at least that I saw. I joined them for a discussion about privacy and surveillance technology. Following that, I sat in on a discussion, for those of us without desks, on emerging issues in law enforcement which also highlighted use of body-worn cameras, etc. With all these together, it highlighted the importance of recognizing emerging technology and what it means for us, especially with city applications. I want to thank City Manager Jim Keene and Assistant City Manager Ed Shikada and others who responded to my questions on very short order regarding Item Number 9 on tonight's agenda and addressing my concerns there. Thank you for that. Also will just mention that I did hear really high regard expressed by a number of people who I encountered from around the state about Jim Keene, Molly Stump, Eric Nickel our Fire Chief, and also Dennis Burns our Police Chief, who are well recognized as experts in their respective fields. I think they deserve public recognition for that. Council Member Kniss: I heard the same and would underscore it. Mayor Holman: Glow. Vice Mayor Schmid. Mr. Keene: (inaudible) prophet in their hometown, as the saying goes. Council Member Kniss: Once you get out of town, they really like you. Vice Mayor Schmid: Just a quick report on the BAWSCA meeting. BAWSCA is the 24 Bay Area cities that get their water from Hetch Hetchy through San Francisco. They had a summary of the conservation program and goals. Over the summer, the 24 cities have done a wonderful job achieving conservation rates from 24 to 31 percent. One troubling data point came. They have been collecting combinations of dryness and warmth at Hetch Hetchy for 100 years. The four-year average of this year was the worst in the 100-year history. Disturbing note about the long-term outlook in the South Sierra. Mayor Holman: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I'll keep it quick. Again, the League of Cities conference was great. Went to a variety of topics. Also went to the drone policy talk which was interesting. I went to one on labor negotiations. In TRANSCRIPT Page 105 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 the Expo Center, there were two companies. I think they were both new to California. I don't know if this is something you know about, but I was going to pass it on, Jim. They're actually are hired by cities to find retail partners. That's their whole business. I'll pass that information on to you. It seemed pretty interesting. When it comes to grocery stores, they basically can target any kind of retailer. The keynote with Cam Marston was pretty interesting. A second point, kind of more of a question. I think I'd like us to discuss the Super Bowl and kind of the opportunities and impacts. It's coming up soon. I forget if the AFC team is going to practice at Stanford. It seems like it's a big opportunity for our business community. Potentially we could have some enforcement issues. We may have some Airbnb issues. I don't know if it would make sense to put it on the agenda as a Study Session or just get an information report. It seems like an opportunity that we should talk about. Council Member Kniss: I think big Airbnb issues, and that should be one of our concerns. It was discussed a lot at the conference. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Council Member Scharff. Council Member Scharff: Thanks. A couple of things. First is the ongoing saga of ABAG and MTC. ABAG actually has an—I wouldn't call it an emergency, but a special executive board meeting on the 13th, next week. I now have two things to do that night, I guess. One in Oakland and one here. I can't do both. They're going to continue to discuss whether or not MTC should—MTC, as you know, has threatened to defund ABAG, essentially, which would basically make ABAG fall apart and go out of business. We're having an emergency meeting to discuss that. MTC is then having their own meeting two or three weeks later. I think it's October 23rd, maybe it's ten days, eleven days. I guess, if we want to have any impact on that, I just want everyone to realize that at the next MTC meeting things are likely to happen. If I was a betting man, I would probably bet that MTC defunds ABAG, if I had to guess on it. I could be wrong; I think it's pretty close. They've gotten a lot of push-back. I actually think this is a fairly big deal. MTC is a lot less representative than ABAG. At least every city in the Bay Area gets to send representatives. There are very few of us; there's virtually no chance for a Council Member like ourselves to be on MTC. It can happen, but it's very, very rare. ABAG is a lot more representative and has a lot more Council Members from a wide variety of cities. From that perspective, it's probably bad for us, frankly. On the positive side, it's probably more efficient in many ways to have MTC run things. ABAG is much more transparent, believe it or not, but much more inefficient. Male: (inaudible). TRANSCRIPT Page 106 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 Council Member Scharff: Right. MTC is very top down, run by their executive director with a fairly heavy hand and cities have very little input into that. They have huge amounts of money. Where I would come out on that is I would support ABAG if it was really my decision, if I could call it. I think maybe we might want—I think our Staff may want to think a little bit about that and maybe send a letter and that kind of stuff. If anyone strongly disagrees with that, I think you should speak up because time is of the essence. I just wanted to throw that out. The second thing is it's been—I guess in 30 days it'll have been a year since our last election, when we had the TOT on the ballot and the infrastructure. We made a number of promises to the citizens about what we would do and where we would go with infrastructure. I as a Council Member do not have it in my head where we are on that. I really think it's time for an update and time for a sense, so that when people ask me where we are on that, I can tell them that we're working on it, what we're doing and what the timeline is. I'd like to get that at some point fairly soon. Mayor Holman: Thank you. Council Member Berman. Council Member Berman: Thank you. I agree with comments that Council Member Scharff made about the MTC/ABAG kerfuffle at least in terms of Staff spending some more time digging into it. If we as a Council need a way in, then let's have that conversation. I obviously second the infrastructure remarks. I think it's coming back to us at some point soon. Maybe you want to give us a quick update. Mr. Keene: I actually talked to the Staff today even about that and a number of issues as far a Study Session at a minimum with the Council. It's very timely. We'll get it on your agenda. Council Member Berman: I've got more comments for it once we have that Study Session. I wanted to give a huge thank you to two members of the Human Relations Commission, Mehdi Alhassani and Greer Stone. This event came up and was alluded to earlier today. They put on a Veterans Homelessness Summit on Friday afternoon at the Mitchell Park Library. I just want to single them out because they were the ones on the Human Relations Commission that led the effort. I also want to thank Staff that supported them and probably frankly did 80 percent of the work to organize the event. Although, I know Mehdi and Greer were working really hard on it and they had a great turnout. Got this Colonel Malachowski from the First Lady's initiative out here which was awesome. Got the head of, like, Social Innovation at the White House, something to that effect, who had a lot of energy and a lot of good ideas. There were a lot of nonprofits there that had great discussions that unfortunately I couldn't stick around for. Hopefully it TRANSCRIPT Page 107 of 107 City Council Meeting Transcript: 10/5/15 was really informative and helpful for everybody. Hopefully we can move forward. Santa Clara County has the greatest percentage of unhoused veterans, I think, in the country which is not a badge of honor. We need to do all we can to try to address that. Just huge thanks to Mehdi and Greer for picking that up and running with it. Mayor Holman: Thank you for mentioning that. Just to add to that, this is the second large, I would say, Human Relations Commission summit they've had. They had one on senior issues last year. They have one coming up, I think, in about a month about domestic violence. The first two have been really phenomenal, well worth the time. I would encourage anyone in the community and Council Members as well to attend any of the HRC summits. They are really phenomenal. It is a very hard-working, conscientious and dedicated Commission. We're very fortunate to have them. I see no other lights, so ... Mr. Keene: Madam Mayor? Mayor Holman: Yes. Mr. Keene: Would the Council just indulge me? I just thought I'd end on a light note. Council Member Kniss' comment about our Police Department's Twitter feed. Not only on pushing out information and emergency stuff, they do a really good job at, but they also have a very kind of humanizing voice and a sense of humor at times. In their Twitter feeds with the public, one of them a couple of months ago was—or last year—tweeting out a picture saying we're setting up a traffic stop on Embarcadero for speeders, watch out, setting it up at 4:00 p.m. At 5:00 p.m. they tweet later with a picture of somebody pulled over and said, obviously he's not following us on Twitter. There was another one with a box of doughnuts that had been stuck on the back of a police car, and they said obvious entrapment? Anyway, it's a nice time. Mayor Holman: Thank you. With that happy note, meeting is adjourned. Thank you all. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 11:19 P.M.