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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016-02-22 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL TRANSCRIPT Page 1 of 88 Special Meeting February 22, 2016 The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council Chambers at 6:01 P.M. Present: Berman, Burt, DuBois, Filseth, Holman arrived at 7:25 P.M., Kniss, Scharff, Schmid, Wolbach Absent: Closed Session 1. CONFERENCE WITH LABOR NEGOTIATORS City Designated Representatives: City Manager and his Designees Pursuant to Merit System Rules and Regulations (James Keene, Molly Stump, Suzanne Mason, Rumi Portillo, Dania Torres Wong, Alison Hauk) Employee Organizations: Palo Alto Police Officers Association (PAPOA); Palo Alto Police Managers’ Association (PAPMA); Palo Alto Fire Chiefs’ Association (FCA); International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), Local 1319; Service Employees International Union, (SEIU) Local 521; Management, Professional and Confidential Employees; Utilities Management and Professional Association of Palo Alto (UMPAPA) Authority: Government Code Section 54957.6(a). Mayor Burt: Our first item on the Agenda is a Closed Session, a Conference with Labor Negotiators, the City representatives of the City Manager and his designees pursuant to Merit System Rules and Regulations, James Keene, Molly Stump, Suzanne Mason, Rumi Portillo, Dania Torres Wong, Alison Hauk, and the employee organizations, the Palo Alto Police Officers Association, Palo Alto Police Managers’ Association, Palo Alto Fire Chiefs’ Association, International Association of Fire Fighters Local 1319, Service Employees International Union Local 521.,Management, Professional and Confidential Employees, Utilities Management and Professional Association of Palo Alto. Do we have a Motion to hold a Closed Session on these items? Council Member Berman: So moved. Council Member Kniss: So moved. TRANSCRIPT Page 2 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Council Member Kniss Second. Mayor Burt: Motion by Council Member Berman, seconded by Council Member Kniss. We have no speakers. MOTION: Council Member Berman moved, seconded by Council Member Kniss to go into Closed Session. Mayor Burt: Please vote on the board. That passes unanimously with Council Member Holman absent. We will now go into Closed Session. MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Holman absent Council went into Closed Session at 6:02 P.M. Council returned from Closed Session at 7:15 P.M. Mayor Burt: At this time, the Council is returning from a Closed Session Item. We have no reportable action. Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions None. City Manager Comments Mayor Burt: Our next item on the Agenda is City Manager Comments. Mr. City Manager. James Keene, City Manager: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Council Members. A few items to report. First of all, Caltrans will begin Phase Two of the U.S. 101 San Francisquito Creek Bridge replacement project on March 2nd. The public will start to see changeable message signs on U.S. 101 and adjacent streets about upcoming traffic circulation changes associated with the construction work. Starting on April 4th, Caltrans will implement its signalized one-way traffic control on East Bayshore Road in Palo Alto and East Palo Alto between Pulgas Avenue and Laura Lane. During this phase, East Bayshore will be reduced to one lane in the vicinity of the creek with a temporary traffic signal system allowing one direction of traffic at a time. Bridge demolition and replacement work cannot begin within the creek channel until June 1st and must be completed by October 15th. One-way traffic will likely remain in place until October 30th. The northbound half of the existing East Bayshore Road and creek bridge will be demolished and reconstructed. During this phase of work, the center lanes of the U.S. 101 bridge will also be reconstructed. Construction crews will typically work between the hours of 7:00 A.M. to 3:30 P.M. Monday through Friday. Local TRANSCRIPT Page 3 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 residents and businesses may experience increased noise levels, and there likely will be significant traffic delays on Highway 101 as well as East Bayshore Road. Staff is working to ensure that proper signage is installed and that adjacent traffic signals are monitored to reduce the impacts to our residents. This is a State of California project. We do expect that there will be significant impacts to the intersection of Embarcadero Road and East Bayshore Road and plan to reach out to residents and businesses in the area. A bit of good news on the awards front. The Our Palo Alto 2030 Summit on the Comprehensive Plan held last, I think, May 30th has won an award from the Association of Environmental Professionals in its outstanding public involvement, education category. The award recognizes programs and organizations that increase the public's awareness of environmental issues and facilitates their role in the planning, analysis and review process. It also recognizes the level of participation, use of social media and technology. The Association of Environmental Professionals is a nonprofit association of public and private sector professionals with a common interest in serving the principles related to the California Environmental Quality Act, better known as CEQA. In addition, the City's digital commentator online tool that allows citizens to make comments and provide feedback on elements of the draft Comprehensive Plan has been accepted as a case study at the Alliance for Innovations Transforming Local Government conference in June. Kudos to Hillary and her Staff and other members of our Staff team who worked so hard on the Summit. For the second year in a row, the City of Palo Alto Utilities Department has been recognized with the Tree Line USA award by the National Arbor Day Foundation. This award highlights best practices for utility and vegetation management. Tree Line USA recognizes, in our case, our Utility for demonstrating how trees and utilities can coexist for community and citizens' benefits by exceeding the five core standards criteria that include quality tree care, annual worker training, tree planting and education, a tree-based conservation program, and its Arbor Day celebration. The Palo Alto Library's Link+ Program which allows library users to borrow items from the public and academic member libraries in California and Nevada will resume service on Thursday, February 25th. As you recall, the service had been suspended as part of the migration to the Sierra technology system. It will include some changes which will allow the Palo Alto City Library to both borrow and lend items as of February 25th, including media in addition to books. Link+ service pickup will now be offered at the Rinconada Library instead of the Mitchell Park Library. Link+ items may be returned to any branch at the service desk. Link+ checkouts and holds will now be integrated into customers' accounts on the web-based catalog. The length of Link+ lending period for media will be 21 days which is the same as books. For more information, folks can visit our Library website. Last Saturday morning, as you may recall, Palo Alto fire crews responded to a structure fire in a two-story home in the 1100 TRANSCRIPT Page 4 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 block of Bryant Avenue. The fire originated in the basement area and traveled in hidden void spaces into the attic. A labor intensive fire attacked by our Fire Department assisted by mutual aid resources confined the fire to the large home. Fortunately, there were no injuries to the residents or firefighters involved in fighting the blaze. It was a regional fire response, and thanks to many of our mutual aid jurisdictions. Just a point of information to share. Many of the older homes in Palo Alto, this one included, were constructed without built-in fire stops in the walls and attics. When a fire starts, it can travel hidden in the walls and pop out at locations distant from the original fire. A great deal of effort is needed to expose the wall, ceiling and attic spaces to cut off the fire and extinguish it. This type of construction was eliminated by the Fire Code in the mid-1950s for the obvious fire safety reasons. Two more things. Our community is cordially invited to the opening reception this Saturday, February 27th, of Alchemy, an inaugural 2016 community exhibit organized by the Cubberley Artists Studio Program artists. This exhibition celebrates artistic exchange and dialog within and between our neighboring communities and features a broad range of community perspectives and aesthetic expressions. It will be held at Cubberley from 6:00 to 8:00 P.M. this Saturday, February 27th. Last but not least, just a reminder to our community. All are invited to attend the Mayor's State of the City Address this Wednesday, February 24th, at 7:00 P.M.. It will be held in the El Palo Alto room—that's the large meeting space—at the Mitchell Park Community Center. That's 7:00 P.M. this Wednesday, February 24th, for the Mayor's State of the City address. That's all I have to report. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Oral Communications Mayor Burt: Our next item is Oral Communications. We have four speaker cards. Each member of the public is welcome to speak for up to three minutes. This would be on items that are not otherwise on the Agenda. Our first speaker is Cybele, to be followed by Ed Schmidt. It's Ed Schmidt, to be followed by Fred Balin. Ed Schmidt: Good evening. I'm Ed Schmidt, a resident of College Terrace. The residents of College Terrace have been good citizens and have responded to a questionable issue about toxic contamination in our neighborhood. You can read about it in the Weekly or you can listen to the next speaker. On a related health and safety subject, we are proud that our Council has pledged our City to be a leader in the sustainability movement and reduce greenhouse emissions over the next decade at a faster rate than any other nearby city. Yes, we are in a leadership role there, and we are on TRANSCRIPT Page 5 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 an accelerated path. Palo Alto has been the site of unprecedented technology development. Some of those early industries involved in the advances did not demonstrate an adequate policy on toxic contamination in their quest for a better future. Developers are attracted to Palo Alto in Silicon Valley. If they select the site that has a history of toxic contamination, then they have to balance profit versus adequate margins of safety from toxic materials for future occupants of the industrial and residential structures they build. Over the decades, biomedical research has learned more and more about the effects of toxic materials on humans and our surrounding environment. The risk assessments and the acceptable exposure levels get lower and lower. The City of Palo Alto has had two recent examples of developers desiring to construct on contaminated soil with an incomplete understanding of the risk level of contamination beneath the soon-to-be demolished structures. The Hewlett-_Packard (HP) building up at 1601 California Avenue and the old Beckman Facebook site at 1050 Page Mill Road. It is time for the Council to assert another leadership role and require that, one, developers must research or find a way to measure toxic contamination between old buildings before any demolition or construction is started. Two, the City adopt the most stringent assessment standards that any one of a number of agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), the Water Board, etc., may have proposed even if they have not been formally agreed upon. Three, the City withhold permission to proceed with any construction project until proper remediation operations have been satisfactorily completed. Let us start now to create that label 10 or 20 years henceforth for the City with the lowest carbon footprint and the lowest contaminated soil beneath it. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Fred Balin, to be followed by our final speaker, Amy Christel. Fred Balin: Thanks, Ed. hazmat timeline. 2005, Mayfield Development Agreement approval, soccer fields now, homes later. Upper Cal. Ave. slated for Stanford junior faculty on three parcels. Phase One hazmat assessments required and submitted to DTSC for the lower two parcels but not for the largest, 1601. Move ahead eight years to 2013. The lower two parcels are vacant. Soil samples are taken both in and outside their buildings. Phase Two studies are completed. DTSC requires no further action, but highlights a groundwater sample near 1601 that exceeds screening levels and indicating it stems from an up-gradient offsite source, 1601. 1601 remains occupied, but samples are taken outside the building and show high TCE levels near the adjacent lower parcel. Neither that information nor any 1601 site assessment is provided when the project comes back to the public in 2014 for architectural review and a subdivision map. Upon approval, the TRANSCRIPT Page 6 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 three parcel numbers ceased to exist in favor of 68 single-family lots and two condo complexes, an integrated development, University Terrace. Yet, construction is allowed to proceed on the lower part, and it continues today prior to any oversight agency approval, subsequent map revision or even certainty that homes will be built on the upper half of the acreage that has rested as an open field for months. Finally, word got out about why prior to that no member of the public was informed. No documents are made available, and there was no opportunity to require public participation in any voluntary cleanup agreement with DTSC. Particularly, people who might potentially be impacted by the contamination were cut out of the process. Folks pushed back. On January 6th, four members of DTSC came to Palo Alto to meet with the five members of our residents' association subcommittee. Stanford, their consultant and College Terrace Residents Association (CTRA) was also present. After that, we were allowed an opportunity to submit a follow-up to DTSC, which we did on the 27th, two documents also cc'd to Staff, Council and Stanford. What we have to say at this time about Stanford's risk assessment and plan to mitigate is all there. A related article appears in Friday's Weekly. Tonight, my message is this: do not allow this circumstance to happen again. As a first step, keep a close eye on the 1050 Page Mill Road project and stop any phasing or sequencing of development or tenant occupancy until all demolition, environmental assessment and any remediation and/or mitigation plans for the entire site are in place and approved by all oversight bodies and appropriate City Staff. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our final speaker is Amy Christel. Amy Christel: Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Tonight's packet includes the first Palo Alto Airport Noise Complaint Report since the City took over the airport 18 months ago. The Report demonstrates a low standard for protection of this and other communities. I see several deficiencies that need to be addressed by this Council and City management in a broader Airport Impact Report. Most notably, this Report offers no promise of improved noise mitigation. It assures that the airport has no control over pilots of general aviation aircraft. It omits any information about the types of aircraft, paths or altitudes that triggered complaints. The Noise Report does not count individual complainants within a household. Instead of reporting the small number of medical Angel Flights using the airport, these flights are reported as air taxi operations and combined with a greater number of non-medical flights. This is not transparency. The Report restates noise abatement measures that could be chosen by pilots, but omits any description of the actual noisy routes being used. I frequently track PAO flights well below the minimum safe altitude of 1,000 feet as far from the airport as Alma Street. These low flights are not considered safety violations TRANSCRIPT Page 7 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), because they are supposedly necessary for landing or take-off, but there is no definition of necessary. It is completely up to pilot discretion. A useful report would have included information about the types and noise characteristics of aircraft using Palo Alto Airport (PAO). Older aircraft have noise profiles akin to an ATV or a giant lawnmower, so that even if they comply with the recommended 1,500- foot altitude, they create significant noise. A new favorite, the ten- passenger PC12 turbo prop, out of PAO is notoriously loud upon landing approach. Helicopters are the noisiest of aircraft overall, yet we allow training at PAO, hovering. The Baylands Master Plan limits the intensity of operations at the Airport, but how is this intensity being quantified and defined? Using only numbers of operations at the airport without noting the type of aircraft is an insufficient measure of impact. Council should demand a report that includes analysis of operations at the airport including those not following suggested noise abatement and that show paths being used over neighborhoods for take-off and landing. The burden of those low over- flights and related pollution is borne by residents of Palo Alto and nearby communities, so homeowners and home buyers need access to data describing Palo Alto noise and pollution impacts. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. That concludes Oral Communication. Minutes Approval 2. Approval of Action Minutes for the January 30, February 1 and 8, 2016 Council Meetings. Mayor Burt: Our next item is approval of Minutes. We have Minutes in our packet for the date of February 1st and February 8th, 2016. Do we have a motion to approve? Council Member DuBois: So moved. Vice Mayor Scharff: Second. Mayor Burt: Motion by Council Member DuBois, seconded by Vice Mayor Scharff. Any discussion? MOTION: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Scharff to approve the Action Minutes for the January 30, February 1, and 8, 2016 Council Meetings. Council Member Kniss: Yes. Could I once again weigh in? Mayor Burt: Yes, Council Member Kniss. TRANSCRIPT Page 8 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Council Member Kniss: I will weigh in again. I think the Minutes we currently have are frankly useless except for seeing who made the Motion, what may have been added to it. There is no substance whatsoever to it. I know Tom and I both have regretted this before, and I'm regretting it again. I think we should have Minutes that are at least substantive. Mayor Burt: For a process to address that, I think we have our annual review of policies and procedures. It's within that, is that correct, Beth? Is the Minute frequency part of the policy and procedures? Beth Minor, City Clerk: No, it's not. Mayor Burt: This would take a Colleagues Memo to reconsider or ... Council Member Kniss: I think it does. Ms. Minor: Correct. Mayor Burt: That would be the process. Molly Stump, City Attorney: Mr. Mayor, it's in the Municipal Code. It could be amended by Ordinance. Mayor Burt: That would be the necessary process to address it. All those in favor, please vote on the board. That passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Consent Calendar Mayor Burt: We have one item on Consent. Do we have a motion to approve the Consent Calendar? Council Member Kniss: So moved. Council Member Berman: Second. Mayor Burt: Motion to approve by Council Member Kniss, seconded by Council Member Berman. No discussion, right? MOTION: Council Member Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Berman to approve Agenda Item Number 3. 3. Resolution 9576 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Approving the City of Palo Alto Utilities Legislative Policy Guidelines.” TRANSCRIPT Page 9 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Mayor Burt: Please vote on the board. That passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Action Items 4. Comprehensive Plan Update: Discussion Regarding Development of a Fifth Scenario With an Improved Jobs/Housing Balance for Inclusion in the Environmental Impact Report and the Overall Project Schedule. Mayor Burt: We can now move on to Item Number Four, our single Action Item tonight which is the Comprehensive Plan Update, a discussion regarding development of a fifth scenario with an improved jobs/housing balance for inclusion in the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) as well as discussion of the overall project schedule. Director Gitelman. Hillary Gitelman, Planning and Community Environment Director: Thank you. Mayor Burt and Council Members, Hillary Gitelman, the Planning Director. I'm joined by Jeremy Dennis. We're thrilled to be here this evening to talk about some real planning issues. We're going to talk about the Comprehensive Plan Update (Comp Plan Update) in two ways. One, the Council's requested an examination of a potential jobs/housing scenario. We're going to talk about that. Then we're going to talk about the overall process and schedule for the Comp Plan Update at the end. I have a bunch of charts and graphs. I'm going to try and keep this moving, and we can always go back if you have questions about specific slides. First, our goals for this evening. We wanted to provide you with some background on existing and possible future relationship of jobs and housing in Palo Alto and the region. We tend to express that ratio of jobs and housing by looking at jobs and employed residents. We'll talk about that in a minute as well. We want your guidance this evening on a potential goal or objective related to the jobs/housing balance for inclusion in the Comprehensive Plan Update; also, the potential policy levers that could be used to accomplish that goal; and the potential inclusion of a fifth scenario in the Environment Impact Report (EIR) process. Finally, we'd like to discuss any desired adjustments to the schedule and the process as it's been laid out thus far. Before we get started, just a few notes. The first one says the obvious, I think. The data you use for some of these calculations is really important, and projections are only projections. We're looking backwards in time here. We're looking at the present. We've used the best data we can find from the census, from Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), from other sources for that examination. Going forward, we've tried to use the best available projections, but projections are inherently uncertain. We know they're going to change. In preparing for this evening's conversation, I looked back at the TRANSCRIPT Page 10 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 2005 projections, and they were all wrong. These things are only as good as any crystal ball can be. Also, just to know quickly that one of the challenges in looking forward when calculating or projecting future employment is that employment and nonresidential development are not proportionally related. I'll show you a slide on that in a moment. Also, I wanted to note that we haven't done a fine-grained analysis of some of the policy levers and ideas that are included in the scenarios. Obviously we want the Council's input on some of those policy ideas. If they were to be included as programs in the Comprehensive Plan, we would then have to move to a finer-grained analysis and preparation of Zoning Ordinances and the like. Finally, this is an important point; it's been raised by some of the commenters in preparation for this evening's meeting. We haven't at this point analyzed a mitigated scenario. The Draft EIR that we discussed at one of our recent meetings uses four scenarios to lay out the potential impacts of the Comprehensive Plan Update. It also includes a whole suite of mitigation strategies including one in the transportation section that's a variation of a kind of trip cap for new development. We have not yet quantified what the mitigated effects of all those measures would be, but obviously we would expect any of the scenarios that are selected would have fewer impacts than have been shown in the EIR. Let me just start with some background on the City and the region, put this jobs and housing issue in some context. First, I have a slide that is mostly just for effect. This is really why we're all here talking about this. We all understand and just feel that job growth in the region since the end of the great recession has been pretty amazing. This booming economy has led to a pace of job growth that, I think, none of us have seen in many years. We just feel it as an important issue that must be addressed. This is the slide that shows over time the increase in employment in the City. This is the line that is a gentle slope on the bottom there. The green line is showing that over time the City has seen significant job growth from 78,000 jobs or so to about 95,000 jobs or so over the period that's shown on this graph. More importantly, just in the last four years on this slide we've added over six percent in those four years. We're experiencing job growth. The other part of this slide is showing kind of the ups and downs, those hills and valleys. That's the amount of nonresidential square footage that's been entitled in this timeframe. This is meant to illustrate that while there is a relationship, of course, between new development and job growth, it's not a proportional relationship. There are a lot of other issues that affect and determine job growth; the health of the economy, the amount of vacant space that's available and being absorbed, the sectors or the type of economic growth that's occurring, and many other factors. We'll have an opportunity to discuss this in more detail in the future when we get back to that policy issue around Policy L-8 in the Comprehensive Plan. Let's look at the regional context on the housing side. In the region, we've seen steady growth in housing and population over the TRANSCRIPT Page 11 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 time period shown here, 1990 to about 2014. We've also seen an increase in employed residents commensurate with that housing increase. On the bottom of this chart, you're seeing Santa Clara County. On the top of the chart, you're seeing the nine-county Bay Area region. In both cases, it's an upward trend. Looking at the City now, you see also an upward trend on housing, but we're kind of flat when it comes to employed residents. This reflects, I think, changing demographics among other things. There might be something in the data here, but we're seeing smaller household sizes, aging population. Even though we've added some dwelling units in this time period, we think that we're pretty flat in terms of the number of employed residents. If we look at the regional context on the jobs side and the ratio of jobs to employed residents, again Santa Clara County is along the bottom here, and the nine Bay Area counties, the total Bay region, is on the top. What you're seeing there is a good correlation between jobs and employed residents. In the county, it's pretty much a 1:1 ratio over time that hasn't changed a lot. In the Bay Area, the same thing. There's a little variation, but there's really not a lot of change in that ratio. In the City, it's quite a bit different. We see that there's a widening gap in this period that we're looking at between jobs and employed residents; getting to the present day when we have about a 3:1 ratio in 2014. The next slide is going to show that ratio both in the City and in the Bay Area and the County. The two lines at the bottom are the County of Santa Clara and the Bay Area as a whole. You see it's about a 1:1 ratio. There is the City at the top of the chart at the 3:1 ratio between jobs and employed residents. Here's my cartoon of where we are today. We have about 31,000 employed residents and about 95,000 jobs or a ratio of about 3:1 or 3.06. If we do nothing, in the year 2030 which is the horizon year of the Draft EIR, this is what we project will happen. This is under Scenario One which we're calling "business as usual." Under that scenario where we don't change anything in the Plan, we don't change anything in zoning, our projection is that the ratio will continue to get worse, that we'll get to a 3.2 ratio under that Scenario One. It's important to note one thing about this. The box on the left there that's showing employed residents, this projection of employed residents is based on our own Palo Alto-developed projection of new housing over this period. We use a lower projection of housing than Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) uses for the City. As a result, the number of employed residents we're projecting in 2030 is lower. That contributes to this high ratio. If we had just used ABAG projections, it wouldn't look quite so bad. There's one more slide here that looks at us in the context of the rest of the region. Again, you'll see our ratio is 3:1 and growing. The County as a whole and the Bay Area is staying around one. Let's talk about the future and the Comprehensive Plan Update. All of us recognized—we talked about this back in April of last year—that updating the Comprehensive Plan, this is really one of the reasons that we're doing this, why it's a Council TRANSCRIPT Page 12 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Priority. It's an opportunity to look at and manage the pace of growth in a meaningful way, look at these tradeoffs between jobs and housing, and take some affirmative policy actions to try and address this business as usual future that will happen to us if we do nothing. The Plan is still being developed as you know, but the Draft EIR advances the conversation by posing a number of scenarios, three additional scenarios in addition to business as usual. Scenario Two and Three include policies and programs that would slow job growth projected by ABAG. Scenarios Three and Four include policies and programs that would address or somewhat increase the housing that's developed. It's a range; although, all of them, Scenarios Two through Four, would basically perpetuate the ratio of today in terms of the jobs/housing balance. We'd stay around 3.0, 3.4, 3.6, something like that. As shown in the Staff Report, if you look at a hybrid between the scenario with the lowest job growth and the scenario with the highest housing development, you start to move the needle a little. Instead of being 3.3, 3.4, it would be more like a ratio of 2.88. One of the questions we have for the Council this evening is if you had to select a goal for the Comprehensive Plan, what would it be. Would it be something like just doing better than we're doing now? Would it be something like 2.88 or would it be even better than that? Equally as important, once you identify that goal that you would like to aspire to, what are the policy levers or programs that you'd like to include in the Comprehensive Plan Update to address that goal? This chart— this is repeated from the Staff Report that you received—shows some of the potential policy levers that were included in Scenarios Two, Three and Four in the Draft EIR. The policies fall into two categories. One category or policy is to slow the rate of job growth. The other category or policy is to encourage new housing. As the Staff Report explains, if you're going to affect the jobs/housing balance in a meaningful way, you have to do one of these two things or both of them. I'm just going to take a minute to walk down this list; I think it's pretty self-explanatory. On the policies or program levers that would potentially affect the rate of job growth, we assumed an annual limit on new Office/R&D development in two of the scenarios, Scenarios Two and Three. We assumed there would be some modest reduction in commercial Floor Area Ratio (FAR) in one of the zoning districts in town, the CC(2) which is near Cal. Ave. We assumed that could make some possible adjustments to remove commercial FAR and swap it out for residential FAR. Not a lot, but some modest adjustments in Downtown. We also assumed that we would put in place some kind of regulation. We suggested maybe a use permit that would allow us for the time to regulate new Office/R&D employment densities going forward. I know we're going to have some further questions about that. Happy to go into that in more detail in a minute. On the housing side, all of these scenarios assume we'll be implementing diligently our adopted Housing Element. Some of them also include creation and adoption of policies to encourage more smaller TRANSCRIPT Page 13 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 units, so it gets to the type of housing we want to create, micro units or small units. Some of the scenarios, actually two of them, would eliminate some of the housing sites in south Palo Alto. This was a program that the Council wanted in the Plan. We're going to talk about this further. On one of your March dates, we have a discussion focused on this issue, March 20- something. The scenarios look at exchanging those housing sites. In one case, you eliminate some sites and you increase the density on other existing sites. In another instance, you would eliminate those sites and add potential new sites along El Camino Real, including the frontage of the Research Park and the shopping center. We're testing both of those ideas. If you eliminate sites in the south, how would you make up for that loss of units? Would it be increasing densities or would it be finding new sites? Then a couple of the scenarios also suggest that you could potentially moderate or increase the height limit as a way to incentivize new housing, just up to 55 or 60 feet. Those are many of the ideas that are in these scenarios. We're obviously interested in whether the Council has additional policies or programs that should be included to address this goal, this ratio between jobs and housing. If there are things that you would like to add to that list, it'd be great. If you have some things that we could potentially add to the side of the list that slows jobs growth or on the alternate side that might increase housing production, both will have an impact on the bottom line when it comes to the jobs/housing balance. Just a few words on schedule. You know we've been at this Comp Plan Update for a long time. The current schedule is for us to complete the process and bring you a Comp Plan for adoption in May of 2017. That's the schedule you received in your packet. That schedule was distributed to you at the Council Retreat on January 30th. That's when you made the request to discuss it in more detail this evening. I included a couple of slides that are just a repeat of that schedule. The hard copy's in your packet, and I think it's much easier to read in that form. Essentially, you read down this table. The column on the left is showing the topics of Citizen Advisory Committee (CAC) meetings. The column on the right is showing the topics of City Council meetings, and the dates are in the middle. There have already been some changes to this schedule. The asterisks indicate that April 11th date for the public hearing on the Draft EIR has been moved to April 25th as a result. Because the CAC is doing some more work on transportation, that conversation is going to be moved out as well. We're happy to get the Council's thoughts on this schedule, the interaction between the CAC and the Council, and the schedule of meetings. I also wanted to pass on to you the CAC's desire to participate in the discussion of housing sites and programs. We had initially had a joint meeting between the CAC and the Council—actually I think it was scheduled for this evening, and then we had to reschedule it for this conversation. The CAC is still very interested in being part of these discussions. I've talked to some of the CAC members; they're interested in also talking about what a TRANSCRIPT Page 14 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 more effective structure could be for a joint meeting so it's not just each one of them gets up and says a few words, and then the dialog is just among the Council Members. We'd love your thoughts about that. Also wanted to pass on we've been working with our consultants at PlaceWorks, and they've indicated that we can analyze some additional scenarios, one or more additional scenarios, within the schedule that we've outlined here, but it would mean we would have to move pretty expeditiously. By the middle or end of May, we'd have to identify what those scenarios were in some detail to permit the analysis to proceed. Obviously there would be some budgetary impacts of that. That concludes the presentation. These are really the discussion questions that we hope will be useful to you after you hear from the public. Question Number One, should the Comp Plan include a goal or objective about reducing the City's ratio of jobs to employed residents? If so, what should that be? Number Two, what additional policies or programs should be considered to address this goal, if you'd like that goal? Should these be analyzed as a fifth scenario in the EIR? What adjustments, if any, are required to the schedule and process? Thank you very much. Mayor Burt: Thank you. We can proceed and have a brief round of technical questions of Staff before hearing from members of the public provided that Council Members can adhere to those guidelines. If we're going to do it, I'm going to exercise Chair control if we drift away from technical questions, which are not rhetorical in nature. Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: I appreciate the warning. On this chart, the key characteristics and impacts, Attachment B, I have a couple of questions here. On Page One under transportation impacts, for instance, City total motor vehicle trips, it says 2014 existing conditions 432,122. I wasn't sure for what units is this. Is this per day, per week? What does this represent? Ms. Gitelman: I'll have to look that up, but I will. Council Member Wolbach: While you're looking that up, my second question also is on the back of this same chart. Greenhouse gas, GHG, impacts, do these numbers account for commuters coming into Palo Alto for their jobs and then leaving at the end of the day, and the greenhouse gas impacts of their travel? Ms. Gitelman: The way greenhouse gas emissions are calculated for vehicle trips, we basically get credit or we get penalized for 100 percent of the emissions from trips that are internal to Palo Alto. For external-internal or internal-external trips, we get credit or penalized for 50 percent of those TRANSCRIPT Page 15 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 trips. We calculate the whole trip length and emissions, and then 50 percent of that is basically charged against us in our emissions inventory. Council Member Wolbach: You're still checking on the first one? Third question, I think it's my final question for now. In the policies to encourage housing identified and studied thus far in the Draft EIR, there's been some discussion about it in various venues. Has the Stanford Research Park and the opportunity for potential housing there or also at the Fry's site, were both of those included in the possible encouraging housing options? Ms. Gitelman: Yes. In fact, all of the scenarios include housing at the Fry's site because that site is included in our Housing Element currently. Scenarios Three and Four assume that we would have somewhat higher permitted densities on that site. I think it's currently zoned RM-35 and suggest that we could get additional units. If we remove the housing sites in the south, we could add some units there. Council Member Wolbach: That's what I thought. Thanks for that. Ms. Gitelman: On the Stanford Research Park, just Scenario Four assumes that we would and tests this idea of potentially adding housing sites in the Research Park along El Camino. Council Member Wolbach: That's right. Thank you for reminding me. It was just along El Camino Real, correct? Ms. Gitelman: Right. We weren't specific to sites, but somewhere in that area of that park; not way up in the outlying area. Jeremy tells me the answer to your first question is daily trips. Council Member Wolbach: That's daily. Thanks. Mayor Burt: Council Member Kniss. Council Member Kniss: I should be relatively short. None of the things that you mentioned is adjusting the height limit which has been almost part of the Ten Commandments for the City. Talk about, as you said, a slight adjustment, 55-60 feet. We have done, that I can think of, with several buildings in the City including the Jewish Community Center (JCC). What would it actually take to do that? As I recall, it is not an ordinance. Am I correct it is a policy? Help me out. It went in sometime in the '70s I think. Ms. Gitelman: I'm assuming that it would be an ordinance change. We would have to adopt a policy and an ordinance. Council Member Kniss: Is it actually an ordinance? Help us out. TRANSCRIPT Page 16 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Cara Silver, Senior Assistant City Attorney: There's certainly a Comp Plan policy regarding it. Also, some of the development districts themselves do have a 50-foot height limit as well. Council Member Kniss: Do we have an overall City ordinance on height limit? Ms. Silver: There isn't an overall City. It's designated in certain districts as a development standard. Council Member Kniss: It's not overall. If we really wanted to change it in some way, we would have to consider how to do that however you indicate we should do it. Correct? It probably would not be without a great deal of discussion. That has been in place, as I recall, maybe 40 years. Does that sound right? Anyone know? Can somebody find out? That would be really helpful. In my recollection, long before I was on the Council, the building that went up at Palo Alto Square, which is 12, 13, 14 stories, whatever it was, actually prompted the final 50-foot height limit. Except for very rare occasions, we have not addressed nor dealt with that. Yet, people have brought it up time and time again. It would be very helpful if we actually know what it would take to move that needle which is not very much, but certainly has been significant in the past. Thanks. Mayor Burt: Council Member Schmid. Council Member Schmid: Four scenarios give a range of outcomes. A year ago the Council had three meetings, I think 10 hours altogether, devoted to a development cap. That was between December and March. Agreed, I think, unanimously to set an annual cap at 50,000. Now, each of the four scenarios and including the fifth scenario are between three and five times the annual space limit. Why isn't there one of the scenarios that reflect the Council discussions of a year ago? Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Council Member Schmid. Actually both Scenario Two and Three reflect that concept of an annual cap. What you're seeing when you look at the square footage number is the already-entitled square footage at the Medical Center and 15 years worth of, from 2014 through 2030, potential growth with a limit of some kind. We have specifically crafted at least those two scenarios would have an annual limit of some kind in place and would conform to the Policy L-8 in the Comprehensive Plan. Mayor Burt: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: I think I have three questions. One is actually a request. It's a question and a request. The Level of Service (LOS) TRANSCRIPT Page 17 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 thresholds of significance that were used, is it our current City thresholds? The reason I'm asking is because—can the appendices also be put online? I don't have a port for a CD in my computer. Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Council Member Holman. I think the appendices are online. If they're not, of course, we can remedy that. One of the appendices does outline the significance thresholds that have been used. I apologize if you haven't been able to get to that somehow. I'll check on that and make sure it's up there, online. Council Member Holman: I looked a few times. It still isn't up there from my discovery. Are we using our current? Ms. Gitelman: The appendix explains what thresholds are used. We've tried to use the current thresholds, the ones that were adopted by Council back in—I don't remember quite how long ago. There have been some that we had to adjust based on changes in guidelines at the regional agencies and other changes in law and practice, and some that were just adjustments based on the fact that this is a plan and not a project. It's a little different than a project. I encourage you to review that appendix. I'll make sure you get access to it. If you have specific questions about why this threshold and why not that one, happy to answer those. Council Member Holman: The bigger question is we could change. This would be a good time if we were going to. This would be an appropriate time, I would think, to change what we use to review performance at intersections. Ms. Gitelman: We have included in the EIR analysis, as I'm sure you've seen, a number of metrics related to level of service, vehicle miles traveled, vehicle miles per capita and a whole bunch more. The Council could certainly give us direction to use an alternate metric. We could assess what the impacts of that would be on our contracts and schedule. Council Member Holman: Thank you. In the presentation referenced earlier and otherwise, I'm not clear how an EIR would analyze aspirational goals. Ms. Gitelman: Thank you for that question. I'm really asking what the Council would like to include in the Comp Plan itself. What I'm hoping is if the Council has some goal, some idea of what you think we should do in terms of turning around this trend we see in the jobs/housing balance, this would be a great time for us to know that so that we could include it in the Land Use and Community Design Element and in the work that we're going to do with the CAC on policies and programs in the Land Use Element. It would also help us define what this fifth scenario could be. What the goal is TRANSCRIPT Page 18 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 informs what these policy levers would have to be. What are the additional thoughts that you would have to—or policies or programs you would have to pursue to either slow the rate of job growth or increase the amount of housing produced. If you've set a goal, we'd need to know what those are. That's really what we would be analyzing in a fifth scenario. Council Member Holman: Listening to that, I hear that that's how it might work, but it doesn't translate for me on how we would use that information in doing the technical analysis in an EIR. Ms. Gitelman: Let me try and explain what we do. If you set a goal in the Comp Plan and you give us some idea of the policy levers, the policies and programs that you would want to put in place to achieve that goal, we would develop an assessment or a projection of what we think the jobs and housing resulting from those policy choices would be. That would be the basis of the analysis. Council Member Holman: The other thing is we've talked about from the beginning how we might use this aspect of Scenario Two with another aspect of Scenario Three or whatever. I've never really understood how you can mix and match, because things are to intricately associated, especially land use and transportation. I'm not sure how we mix and match. Ms. Gitelman: Council Member Holman, this is a suggestion that we've made that we could use these scenarios as a way to advance the policy discussions that the Council and community are having about transportation investments and about land use changes. If the Council wants to mix and match, they can do that. Then we would do basically what we're talking about doing for Scenario Five. We would analyze that new combination of things as your preferred scenario or preferred alternative after the public comment period on these four scenarios. Our consultant is saying that we can do this and circulate it for public comment within the schedule that we've outlined, if we're efficient and we define this scenario quickly in May. Council Member Holman: It really would be sort of like we're not really mixing and matching, we're just saying we want to do this from Scenario Two, we want to do this from Scenario Three, and now go analyze that. It's not really a mix and match in terms of impacts. It's a mix and match in terms of goals now that we have some idea of what the impacts might be. Ms. Gitelman: The characteristics of these scenarios. If I could just clarify. Apparently the appendices to the EIR are online at the website paloaltocompplan.org. The link to the appendices is within the table of contents. TRANSCRIPT Page 19 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Council Member Holman: I went to the City Agenda and looked at the Staff Report. That's where I looked. They weren't there. That's where I looked. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Council Member Schmid, you had a quick follow-up. Council Member Schmid: Yes. I did try and find Appendix H, which is a traffic report. It was not on the City website. I could go through "G," but I couldn't find "H." Ms. Gitelman: I'll check again. Apparently someone has found it. Mayor Burt: Vice Mayor Scharff. Vice Mayor Scharff: Thanks. The first question is do we take into account the growth of electric vehicles in all of this when we look at greenhouse gas reduction and we project it out based on what we're doing. Ms. Gitelman: Good question. Vice Mayor Scharff: We have the highest percentage, I believe. Ms. Gitelman: We have not taken credit for all of the kind of Palo Alto- specific measures that we think will be in the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan (S/CAP). We've included that as mitigation. As I said at the beginning, we haven't really run a mitigated scenario. We have taken credit for what changes in the fleet and the emission factors that the State, the Air Resources Board, has put in the standard methodology, but that's all. Vice Mayor Scharff: I'm trying to keep it to technical questions. What you're saying is we're not taking into account—put aside the S/CAP, the fact that we are purchasing at a certain rate which is increasing electric vehicles in Palo Alto. That's not included in any of the scenarios. Ms. Gitelman: We have simply included at this point what CARB ... Vice Mayor Scharff: Which we know to be wrong. Ms. Gitelman: ...is saying the State is achieving. We haven't included anything above that. Vice Mayor Scharff: When we look at the housing scenario, when we increase more housing, do we make any assumptions as to how many residents of those new housing units actually live in Palo Alto? Otherwise, it has no effect on commuting. In fact, it creates more traffic. If people live here, they walk to work or they bike to work or maybe make ... TRANSCRIPT Page 20 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Male: (inaudible) work here. Vice Mayor Scharff: Right, if they work here. Male: (inaudible) live here (inaudible). Vice Mayor Scharff: How many using housing units work here? I said live here; no wonder you looked at me like I'm an idiot. (crosstalk) Have we looked at that? Ms. Gitelman: This is interesting. What we did for 2030 is we had a projection of the number of dwelling units, and we translated that into the population based on average household size. We used the factor that ABAG uses to get from population to employed residents. Only about half of our population is actually working in Palo Alto. The others are retired, students and the like. It's ... Vice Mayor Scharff: When we say employed residents, those are employed residents in the City. Is that it? Ms. Gitelman: That's right. Vice Mayor Scharff: They're not just generally employed; they're employed in the City. Ms. Gitelman: No, no, no. They're just employed. They could be employed anywhere. Vice Mayor Scharff: They could be employed anywhere; that's what I thought. Ms. Gitelman: That's right. We don't know how many are employed in Palo Alto versus in Menlo Park. Vice Mayor Scharff: What we're saying is this EIR does not take into account how many employees are employed in Palo Alto and how many are employed in, say, San Jose or San Francisco. Ms. Gitelman: That's not entirely accurate either, because the analysis of traffic, for example, uses a travel forecast model that has in it origins and destinations all over the Bay Area. Based on our projections of where people are living and working, the model projects what the impacts will be. In the population and housing section of the EIR, you won't see broken out how many of those employed residents work in Palo Alto, but in the traffic impact section and therefore in the air and noise, that is factored into the modeling that's been done. TRANSCRIPT Page 21 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Vice Mayor Scharff: If we increase one housing unit—we increase 100 housing units, does traffic go up or does traffic go down? Ms. Gitelman: Traffic goes up when you add housing units and when you add nonresidential square footage. Vice Mayor Scharff: The other thing, I wanted to focus a little bit on is the transportation impacts. What I primarily wanted was the mode shares. I was struck that they're all actually very similar. It seems like very little changes under any of the scenarios. For instance, in the existing conditions, 7.9 percent of the people walk. At best, we get up to 8.6 in Scenario Four which is a bit of an outlier; otherwise, it's 8.1 and 8.2. What's driving that 8.6? What are we doing to have all these people walk? Ms. Gitelman: That level of detailed question, I should have our traffic engineers come and respond to that. I think what people are seeing in these numbers is a lot of similarity between the scenarios. We're getting ... Vice Mayor Scharff: Except Scenario Four. Ms. Gitelman: Scenario Four has an emphasis on sustainability measures and free transit passes and other things that start to change the results. I'd have to get the traffic engineers here to give you more information on what's a factor or an assumption in the model that really makes a difference. The free transit passes I know is one of them, and that's what's in Scenario Four. Vice Mayor Scharff: I would find that really helpful, because I don't really understand, from a technical point of view, how we drive down the impacts with these different scenarios which relates to the quality of life which relates to when you ask me what scenario I would like to see in a scenario, I'd like to see a scenario that solves impacts. I'm not sure how to understand that without that information. Ms. Gitelman: I really appreciate that question, and I understand where you're coming from. The idea of piling all the mitigations onto these scenarios and running that is really attractive, because we do have some very aggressive transportation mitigations. We'll ask our modelers to tell us kind of how that translates when we do that. Vice Mayor Scharff: We used our housing numbers. We used our historical rate of growth. Did you average—between 2000 and 2010, we had a certain number of housing units produced. From 2010 basically to 2000 and now, the last cycle, in this cycle of ABAG and the previous cycle of ABAG, they TRANSCRIPT Page 22 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 were completely different in the numbers we actually produced. How did you look at that? Did you average it or what did you do? Ms. Gitelman: The Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) allocations we got in those Housing Element cycles were very, very different. What we did to come up with the average in housing production is it's like a 40-year average. We went ... Vice Mayor Scharff: We took the 40-year average. Ms. Gitelman: Yeah, we went back a long time and calculated how many units per year over that long timeframe. It worked out to be 145, 149, something like that. Vice Mayor Scharff: That's the answer for that. For the job numbers, just so I understand this. What we did is we took the ABAG job numbers that they estimate for this RHNA cycle. Is that the ones we used? Did we use a 40-year average? What did we use for the ABAG numbers? Ms. Gitelman: The job numbers are from ABAG's Projections 2013. We took their job number for Scenario One and Scenario Four. Scenario Two and Three include policies to slow the rate of job growth, so we started to show lower. Vice Mayor Scharff: Wait, just so I understand. We took the ABAG numbers in 2013. ABAG put forward a number that they think will be there in 2030. Right? Ms. Gitelman: I'm sorry. It's the projections that were included in a document called Projections 2013. They did it in 2013. Vice Mayor Scharff: Right, but they're for 2030. Ms. Gitelman: They're going for 2030, yes. Vice Mayor Scharff: That's what I thought. There was a certain number of jobs that ABAG projected. We used those numbers for Scenarios One and what? Ms. Gitelman: "Four." Vice Mayor Scharff: "One" and "Four." For "Two" and "Three," we took the ABAG number and then we applied mitigations to the ABAG number to drive those numbers down. Is that how we did it? TRANSCRIPT Page 23 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Ms. Gitelman: That's right. The policy levers that I showed about slowing the rate of job growth, those were applied to the ABAG numbers, and they started to moderate that growth that's been projected by ABAG. Vice Mayor Scharff: Do we have any indication that the ABAG numbers are even in the ballpark? Clearly, their housing numbers are not in the ballpark. Ms. Gitelman: I've always thought the ABAG numbers are high. In this economy we're seeing right now, they're actually low. Over the next 15 years to 2030, I don't know. We have to use what we have. ABAG Projections 2013 is what we have. We don't have any local projection that we could use in lieu of that like we do on the housing side. Vice Mayor Scharff: Could we create our own? Could we hire a consultant and figure out good numbers? Ms. Gitelman: Our idea is that the Business Registry ultimately will yield the data to help us moderate census data and get a local projection that works. I think it would be difficult to do that now. We don't have the same track record on job data that we do on the housing side. Vice Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Mayor Burt: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: Thank you. First of all, this is really cool. Thank you very much. I have two questions about the attachment here. The first one is this number, 11,448. What's the right number? Ms. Gitelman: I'm sorry? Council Member Filseth: This number, let's see. Scenario Four, City and Statement of Intent (SOI) total vehicle miles traveled says 11,448. That's obviously not right. What's the right number? Ms. Gitelman: We issued a correction on that. If we're looking at City total vehicle miles traveled, Scenario 4 is 5,788,497. It was obviously a typo. Council Member Filseth: I understand. The second question is when I was going through this, I looked up all the numbers from Appendix H actually in the Staff Report. I don't see the City total motor vehicle trips. The numbers here are a lot different from the ones I saw. This must include more. Where do I find those numbers in the Staff Report? TRANSCRIPT Page 24 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Ms. Gitelman: I will have to look that up and get back to you. Your question is how do these numbers of total vehicle trips relate to what's in the book? Council Member Filseth: Yeah. In the book you've got statistics for drive- alone vehicles and vehicle trips and so forth. They don't match these numbers. I think there is probably more in here than there are in the (inaudible) where do I find these numbers. If you could find those, that'd be great because they're a lot different. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I just want to clarify that part of what we're being asked is whether we want to test scenarios that are outside the bounds that are found in this book. Ms. Gitelman: Right. Council Member DuBois: If we suggest a policy that lowers the impact, is that considered outside the bounds? Would it require a new EIR if it's better and not worse? Ms. Gitelman: I'm not sure I understand your question. Council Member DuBois: If we suggest a policy that maybe had slower job growth, does that have a negative environmental impact that would require a new EIR versus something that required more use of a resource? Ms. Gitelman: I think any change for better or for worse that constitutes a new kind of package of things, a new scenario, we would want to analyze and disclose to the public what the changes were, whether there were benefits or impacts. Council Member DuBois: Whether it's better or worse, if we go outside the bounds of the book, we're look at a new analysis. Ms. Gitelman: I think we would want to analyze that package of things, yes. Council Member DuBois: There was a lot of benefit, I guess, assigned to Transportation Demand Management (TDM) adoption. It looked like a fairly fixed assumption of success per part of this City. One of the things we could consider tonight may be testing what happens if TDM doesn't work quite so well. Assuming we got 40 percent reduction in Downtown, what happens if we don't see that? TRANSCRIPT Page 25 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Ms. Gitelman: You could certainly ask us to analyze something like that. I think our mitigation regime sets what we think is an achievable goal for different districts. In that mitigation measure Trans 1A, we say in these various district of the City you would achieve what we think is an aggressive but achievable goal. Council Member DuBois: It's not really a—I mean, you said aggressive but achievable. It's not necessarily, most likely—how would you quantify this? Ms. Gitelman: We asked our traffic consultants what would be an aggressive but achievable goal in Downtown and the Research Park and out on El Camino somewhere. They came up with what they thought a percentage reduction would be. The mitigation measure assumes that would be put in place as an enforceable performance standard on new development. On top of that, the development would have to offset any additional trips beyond that reduction through a variety of means. Council Member DuBois: I had a question. I think it's similar to what Greg Scharff was asking. I think part of the confusion has to come with this idea of the mix and match. When you look at like Scenario Four, we have all these sustainability things, but then the numbers overall kind of come out the same. I was looking at like Chapter Five which was the CEQA impacts. We're saying we're going to mix and match, but then the scenarios are evaluated kind of as is. The question is how are we supposed to interpret that and how is the public supposed to interpret that? It kind of gets lost that we're saying, "If we took all these sustainability items in 'Four' and applied to them another scenario, that scenario would be better." Ms. Gitelman: That's a point we make in the alternatives chapter of the EIR, if you've gotten to that section. We talk about the fact that you could take these sustainability measures in "Four" and combine them with some of the slow growth measures in "Two" and "Three" and end up with a hybrid and what that would do in terms of increasing or decreasing the impacts. That's an idea that we articulate in there. Our thought was all along that if the Council wants to go in a direction that is different than these scenarios, you tell us what scenario you'd like, and we will analyze that, and we'll be able to show you and the public what the results will be. Council Member DuBois: I think I heard you in answer to another question say that we might have another public comment period. Are we committed to that? It seems like we would almost have to do that. Ms. Gitelman: I think if you're going to identify another scenario that's outside these bounds of Scenarios 1-4, our assumption is we would do an TRANSCRIPT Page 26 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 analysis parallel to the one we've done already for these scenarios, and we would circulate that for public review before we proceed to the Final EIR. Council Member DuBois: We're still expecting people to comment within 90 days on these four. Ms. Gitelman: Yeah. We would like comments on this Draft EIR within 90 days. At the end of the 90-day period, we would have to quickly as a group land on what we think the additional or preferred scenario is. Then we would analyze that and circulate that document for another comment period before we proceed to the final. Council Member DuBois: Real quick, a couple of other areas. The greenhouse gas impacts, didn't appear that we included the impact of construction under greenhouse gas. Construction is considered another impact area. Is that right? Ms. Gitelman: I will have to look at that and get back to you. Council Member DuBois: The significant area of interest, basically Stanford. Do we get assumptions on their growth over that time period? Are we basically assuming it was fixed? Ms. Gitelman: Good question. We did not assume additional growth in the sphere beyond what's allowed in the General Use Permit (GUP). We already have an issue with Stanford proposing housing beyond what's in the GUP. We'll have to look at that. When we reevaluate whatever scenario the Council comes up with, we'll include that additional change in the analysis. Council Member DuBois: We know about that proposal. Did we have any discussion with them about their forecast to 2030? Ms. Gitelman: No. We've been relying on what the County has approved for them to this point. Council Member DuBois: I didn't see any analysis of High Speed Rail impact. Was it just assumed that either Caltrain or High Speed Rail would maximize use of the tracks? Ms. Gitelman: I'll have to ask the traffic consultants. I think in the traffic analysis of those intersections on Alma, they may have considered an increase in frequency, not designating which service would be using the tracks. I'll have to check that and get back to you. Council Member DuBois: Even in like noise and everything, I just wonder if we should consider High Speed Rail as an impact. On the housing, we TRANSCRIPT Page 27 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 basically said all scenarios no impact on schools. I was curious. When we look at building smaller units, do we try to model the effect of, say, seniors moving into smaller units and freeing up larger houses? If people want to downsize and we have this idea of building smaller units, is that part of the model? Ms. Gitelman: The school calculations are not a complicated model. We're looking at the number of multifamily units created and what the likely population in those units would be. I can get you more detail if... Council Member DuBois: They're not assuming that people—like, we free up our housing because people move from there into small units. Ms. Gitelman: It's not that sophisticated. Council Member DuBois: Two last questions here. Do we know how other cities regulate employment density? Ms. Gitelman: Really good question. We haven't done an exhaustive survey. I know from my personal experience that normally it's done as we suggested in the policy lever chart through the requirement for a use permit where you can attach conditions. Through those conditions, you can designate the number of employees. Just from a practical perspective, it creates a very difficult enforcement challenge. That, at least in my experience, is how that issue has been addressed. Council Member DuBois: Was there any consideration to policies that would impact kind of buying versus renting? Ms. Gitelman: I'm sorry? Council Member DuBois: I'm jumping around a little bit. Back to housing. When we talk about smaller units, was there any consideration or are there any differences in terms of an EIR between units that could be purchased and units that could be bought? Ms. Gitelman: There's really not a difference from the EIR perspective. We didn't get into that issue. Council Member DuBois: Thank you. Mayor Burt: Council Member Berman. Council Member Berman: Just one quick follow-up question to Council Member DuBois' question about the effects on greenhouse gases of new construction. When we do look into that, I hope we'll also look into the TRANSCRIPT Page 28 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 benefits of the new green building standards and the delta down from old buildings that are very poor with greenhouse gases versus a new building that's much more efficient. Mayor Burt: I have a few questions. First, when we look at our jobs/housing ratio which is a big deal throughout this document, I see from Slide Number 6 that we're referencing the source as the longitudinal employment household dynamics/US Census. I asked our economic development manager today what data we've received from our Business Registry. He said that we have so far about a 93 percent response rate and higher rate yet from larger businesses. The smaller ones have been the slowest to respond. I think he said a little over 80,000 jobs which is, I think, the first time that we've had an actual census within our City. Have we correlated our Business Registry data and integrated it in this document? Ms. Gitelman: Good question. I had a conversation with Mr. Fehrenbach today on this issue. I think it's actually a really interesting question. We're relying on census data, which is not always that intuitive and easy to get, because jobs are a hard data set to find and to use. The Business Registry asked a question of businesses about the maximum number of people onsite at any one time. The way the question was phrased for our businesses; they were asking if you have a business, what's the maximum number of people you're going to have there at any one time. That's a little different than how many employees do you have. I think the questions are different between the census and the Business Registry. We could, of course, change that, but there is a difference there. There's another difference in that there are some exemptions that apply to the Business Registry; the home-based businesses. I forget what all the other exemptions are. There's going to be some variation in that data. More than that, we didn't go into a more detailed analysis. We understanding there are differences, and there are some reasons for those differences. Mayor Burt: I'll wait until comments on that. On Slide Number 18, we have a set of possible policies to slow job growth. There's none there that address a topic that has been raised by the Council numerous times over the last years, but we haven't given any policy direction on it in part because we've been waiting for guidance from the City Attorney's Office on what is permissible in terms of being able to restrict jobs within existing buildings. This is all about new structures. Can the City Attorney give us any guidance on what levers are possible to turn in that regard? If so chose. Ms. Silver: Sure. I will take a stab at it. As a threshold matter, it's of course much easier to regulate new development. There are lots of mechanisms for regulating new development. This Council has already put TRANSCRIPT Page 29 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 in place levers for that. As for existing development, it's certainly more difficult to do that. If you use your zoning authority, property owners have a vested right to continue businesses that they have received entitlements for. It would be difficult to then regulate employment density and start to decrease employment density of existing businesses. As a result, cities really don't do that frequently with existing businesses. Mayor Burt: Can I ask a follow-up on that? When you say they have entitlements under existing zoning, say under existing zoning we anticipate four office workers per thousand. Are you saying that they have an entitlement that has no correlation to what we zoned for in that regard, but it's still an entitlement under zoning density? Ms. Silver: We would have to analyze each specific matter. Certainly there are some businesses that have received entitlements that anticipate a certain level of employment density, and they're increasing that level of anticipated density. In those situations, I think that it would be easier to regulate in terms of decreasing ... Mayor Burt: That's the nut. We're concerned with where we're seeing in certain circumstances significantly more densification than zoning anticipated. That's the thing I'm trying to ask about. Ms. Silver: In that area as to those categories of businesses, there could be some Code enforcement action that you can take. For instance, if they received a conditional use permit that regulated density and it said you can only have 100 employees onsite and they have 150, then you could take Code enforcement action. Mayor Burt: Barring a Conditional Use Permit, if we have just zoning—take it hypothetically—and we anticipated four employees per thousand in an office. I'll put a very extreme in it. Some business put in 20 per thousand. They're not parked for it. Whatever's the limit under the Fire Code and the use permit there. Say hypothetically they put in that many. Are you saying that we couldn't regulate that? We couldn't regulate and restrict them putting 20 employees per 1,000 square feet legally? Ms. Silver: Again, it really is fact determinative. It depends on what the actual development standards are in the existing Zoning Ordinance. It depends on the specific permit requirements, different... Mayor Burt: These are development standards anticipating four per thousand, right? Isn't that a development standard? That's our general office. That's the main thing we're talking about here. TRANSCRIPT Page 30 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Ms. Silver: Right, right. That's based on parking requirements. Four per thousand generally relates to parking requirements, not necessarily employees. If they have ten part-time employees—there are lots of different facts that make this type of regulation difficult. That being said, I think that there are certainly ways that you can explore that. It certainly has not been done by many other cities. Mayor Burt: I can tell you when I had a business in San Carlos, we were regulated on a multiplier times parking spots onsite. That was their routine method. When we come to discussion, I'm concerned that one of the major considerations that we may want to do in an alternative scenario we still don't have adequate guidance on whether we can turn certain levers or we can't. That's a big concern to me. I'll leave it at that for the moment. Under the bike mode share, I've heard previously that our bike commute was 9 or 10 percent. This says 2.8 on total trips. I think about our Safe Routes to School where we're 50 percent. Have we looked at school trips in this calculation as well? Ms. Gitelman: I think this is percentage of total trips out of the model, but I will get more detail for the Council on that. Mayor Burt: Vice Mayor Scharff asked about, for instance, the rate of Electric Vehicle (EV) adoption or otherwise. I understand that things that we may end up adopting with our Sustainability and Climate Action Plan when we do that may create different scenarios. I just want to make sure are we permitted to use Palo Alto-specific impacts in the calculation versus, say, a State one. If we have data that shows that our adoption of EVs is the highest in the country and gaining, are we permitted to use that in this analysis? Ms. Gitelman: Absolutely. It would be a question for the technical experts how to factor that in given the methodology and the emission factors that we've been given from CARB. We can certainly do that. I'm expecting to receive that comment on the Draft EIR. We can do that work in the final. Mayor Burt: Thank you. That concludes our questions. We now have 16 comment cards. If anyone else wishes to speak, they need to bring their cards forward now. We will be cutting it off. I see more cards coming. That's what I'm going to determine. I need to know how many cards. We have a total of 20 speakers. Colleagues, if we have three minutes per speaker, that's going to be an hour for public comment. That'll take us to a quarter to 10:00. Are we game to start our discussion at that time? It's liable to ... Male: That seems really late. TRANSCRIPT Page 31 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Mayor Burt: I think we're going to have to limit it to two minutes per speaker. If people can prepare on that basis. Our first speaker is Ben Lerner, to be followed by Jessica Clark. Welcome. Ben Lerner: Thank you for letting me speak. The Draft EIR of the Comp Plan describes four scenarios for future growth in Palo Alto and analyzes them as to their impacts on traffic congestion, air quality and other factors that affect our quality of life. Unfortunately, a study of these scenarios has shown them to have an adverse impact on Palo Alto's neighborhoods despite the mitigations they propose. We need a new scenario, and thank you for being open to that tonight. One that puts Palo Alto's neighborhoods first and prioritizes improving Palo Alto as a community for families and seniors with a high quality of life, excellent schools and parks, and so on. To that end, our new scenario should promote the following: minimal job growth; no housing growth beyond the ABAG-mandated Housing Element. The housing we add should be built for working families and low-income people, not for high- income executives and tech yuppies for which we have a lot of housing already. We should eliminate the need for commuters to park in residential neighborhoods. Let's develop a new scenario that improves the lives of our residents. As a final thought, I heard earlier tonight that you're open to engaging the consultants again. If you'll be engaging them, I'd like to suggest that you ask them to design a scenario that has no net adverse impacts. It'd be very useful to you guys on Council and to us residents to know what that would be. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. I should add that we try to discourage both clapping and cheering as well as booing, because both things, especially the booing, can intimidate folks. Even the clapping and cheering can intimidate speakers. We want everybody to feel comfortable in expressing their opinions. Our next speaker is Jessica Clark, to be followed by Elizabeth Snyder. Welcome. Jessica Clark: I had three minutes typed out, so it's going to get cut off. Here I go. My name is Jessica Clark, and I'm one of three generations living in Palo Alto, and I'm raising the fourth. I'm a licensed daycare provider, and my husband is a hospital respiratory therapist. My family is part of the Palo Alto fabric. I'm here tonight because the lack of housing options in Palo Alto has forced my family into crisis. Last month, our rent was raised 20 percent, nearly a $1,000 increase for our three-bedroom rental, making it impossible for our family of five to remain here long term. Over the years, we have been lucky to have housing here, and yet our housing instability has steadily increased. Although we have a short-term compromise with our landlord, realistically there's nowhere left for us to go when the clock runs out. Many people respond to my situation and say, "Why don't you and your TRANSCRIPT Page 32 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 family just move?" My response to them is why would we. You see, Palo Alto is my family's home; both my husband and I were born and raised here. I attended Nixon; he went to Palo Verde. We attended JLS together. He went to Paly; I went to Gunn. Our children now attend Palo Verde and JLS. This is where both our parents still live. My three siblings and their families live here. My cousins and their families live here. Most dear to my heart, my 100-year-old grandmother lives here. We stay because we value our family, friends and community. We all support and take care of one another. That's something that is priceless to us. Although we make a strong income for almost any other place in the country, we have been on the BMR list for almost five years and have barely moved up. If my family struggles to afford to put food on the table and buy clothes for our children, what about the families that are less fortunate than us? For families like mine and others, it's just near impossible to exist here. Palo Alto is pushing out an important group of people who created this vibrant community and continue to do it to this day; the teachers, hospital workers, childcare providers, law enforcement, firefighters. The City is sending us a message that says it does not value what we do for the community. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Elizabeth Snyder to be followed by Cheryl Lilienstein. Elizabeth Snyder: Hi. Thank you, thank you. I'm Beth. I'm operating under the assumption that we're all talking about the ratio of a concept of people like all of us living directly in Palo Alto and working directly in Palo Alto and how adjusting that ratio impacts really everything. I'm happy we're talking about this. Thank you. I love Palo Alto, and I couldn't think of another group of people, a better group of people or leaders who could care and actually do care about this concept that I think we're talking about. I'm only here to offer a principle that goes through my head every day as a parent, just like Jessica. It's very simple; it's not my own. I think we probably all feel it or know it intuitively. The principle is as follows. When we take care of that, our Earth in general and our environment here in Palo Alto, and we take of those who take care of us, for example, children's teachers, mental health counselors, our families' medical workers, fire, police, employees, administrative roles, service roles, childcare roles and many more, when we fundamentally take care of that and those that take care of us, we're taking care of us. That very principle addresses the question we have here. It would appear that, number one discussion question, should the Comp Plan include a goal about reducing the City's ratio. It would make sense to me, and I'm sure there's people much smarter than me who can look at this, that a ratio closer to 1:1 would give the greatest choice to all of the folks who want to live here and want to work here. It would appear to me that that would address really all the concerns, TRANSCRIPT Page 33 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 the environment. Other folks had mentioned do you want to have a good quality standard of living. Again, people smarter than me, people with the data. I'm happy to help in a volunteer capacity. I'd like to hear and see my children's teachers be able to live here too. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Cheryl Lilienstein, to be followed by—is it Amy Ashton? Cheryl Lilienstein: Good evening. I'm here as the President of Palo Altans for Sensible Zoning. What we see is that the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) shows that none of the four scenarios results in a Palo Alto that improves life for residents. All four scenarios result in unavoidable and significantly more traffic and pollution. I'm grateful that you are entertaining another scenario. What we would like to see in this fifth scenario is a focus on a scenario that improves traffic and pollution problems as a precondition for providing slow housing growth for specific categories of people. Those people are the people who, under present conditions, will never be able to buy here, typically defined as middle class, the clerical workers, City Staff, middle management, trades people, low-income workers, service workers and small business owners. I just want a heart-felt alignment with the two of you who spoke before me. We would like to also include seniors living here who don't own their houses or who still have mortgages yet want to retire, and the homeless. It's important that we deal with the greenhouse gas emissions, because none of the scenarios that are presented offer a mitigation that actually improves our lives. We are looking at a declining system. It looks as if the 3:1 jobs to housing ratio is really kind of a proxy that we're not actually talking about what are the environmental effects of having three times more people coming into our City every day. Those effects are we will have ever more pollution and every more traffic. That's the problem, I believe, we really need to solve. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Amy Ashton to be followed by Nisar Shaikh. Nisar Shaikh to be followed by John Kelley. Welcome. Nisar Shaikh: Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts. In 1978, when I came here from Chicago, I was told proudly that we have only two tall buildings. I think one on Palo Alto Square and one on University Avenue. The congestion, both foot traffic and car traffic, then it used to be only on the Stanford University. Now we are talking about more growth. Two scenarios come to my mind. One, we could be like Beverly Hills where tourists will be driving around showing the houses of rich and famous. In Randy Komisar's book, it talks about Portola Valley where in the morning expensive cars go out and beat-up workers' car come in. Palo Alto TRANSCRIPT Page 34 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 could be different streets in the daytime and different in the night time. In short, also when I walk around I see a lot of help wanted signs. I can't imagine any of those jobs people could live and work here. Still we don't want to grow. You have to come up with something very (inaudible) or magical to have affordable housing or whatever. Thanks. Mayor Burt: Thank you. John Kelley to be followed by Molly Cornfield. Welcome. John Kelley: Mayor Burt, Vice Mayor Scharff, Council Members. I forget when it was, but last fall I came to a meeting here where we were talking about ADUs. I kind of feel a little bit Ground Hog Day. I think we're back dealing fundamentally with the same issues. If you remember the people who spoke that night and if you heard Jessica Clark and others who, I think, will speak tonight, they've told you very, very clearly there is a problem with housing in Palo Alto. I think that if you do not put a scenario in the planning process which clearly addresses the need for more housing in this community, you're making a mistake and you're doing a disservice to the community. I would say on this discussion Question One, should the Comp Plan include a goal or objective reducing the City's ratio of jobs to employed residents. That's fundamentally the wrong question. You need to have a goal that says clearly we need to increase housing. We particularly need to increase housing that is more affordable and that creates diversity. I personally think that ADUs are a great way to do that. If I understand the numbers correctly, you have a demographic challenge and you have a policy opportunity. The demographic challenge is that there are a lot of people my age who want to stay in their houses. At some point over the next 15 years, I will probably enter the class of people who are not actively employed. I'd like to defer that as long as possible. That's going to happen. I'm probably going to stay in Palo Alto if I can. At the same time, if you build small housing, ADUs are a perfect way to do it. You're going to provide housing for people who can't afford larger houses, and you're going to provide housing for people who are actively employed, who are perhaps my son's age. The last thing I'd say to you tonight is that in addition to diversity, I would strongly, strongly, strongly urge you to embrace the principle of continuity. I think that's essentially what Jessica Clark is talking about. There are people on my street who are suffering rent increases, and they're having to move out even though they've lived here for generations. I think you should take Scenario Four, all the sustainability provisions of that, and add to it something that will aggressively add housing for Palo Alto. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Molly Cornfield to be followed by Steve Levy. Welcome. TRANSCRIPT Page 35 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Molly Cornfield: Hi. I'm really glad that you all are discussing this issue. Thank you so much. I recently moved back here with my husband, and I'm 25. We really didn't have the option to look for a place in Palo Alto. Right now, we're living with my parents which, as you can imagine, is not very fun. I know there are a lot of people like me who are young and want to live in Palo Alto and even work here. Personally, I don't like to drive for a few reasons. I'm not very good at it. For all of your sake, I try to stay off the road. When I work in Palo Alto, there's really no option for me to live within walking or biking distance, which I think is something that is really worth considering. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Steve Levy to be followed by Jeralyn Moran. Welcome. Steve Levy: I second really everything that John Kelley said about housing. I want to talk to you about traffic. I don't think any of you or any of the people in the audience hate jobs. We can have this discussion again after the Finance Report. What I think troubles people are the impacts of traffic and parking from the commuter imbalance. I would like you to craft Alternative Five that goes not just at the new development, but I think where Council Member Scharff was going, at really reducing the single occupancy and the car travel of the existing development. I would take the transportation policies in Scenario Four and add to them. I saw free transit passes for residents. How about subsidized transit passes for low-wage workers or any workers? I saw grade separation and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). How about running with Caltrain more service to California Avenue and shuttles to the Stanford Research Park? I saw paid parking Downtown, but how about really pricing the permits to provide incentives for people to move? I saw two garages in Alternative Four. Thank you for the Infrastructure Blue Ribbon Committee (IBRC). How about more garages if that solves the problem? I think jobs/housing balance is a misnomer. I think we have a commuting and parking imbalance which will be mostly solved, I suspect, by going after the behavior of the existing workers. That's what I would do in Alternative Five. Go full out to get those existing workers to change their behavior. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Jeralyn Moran to be followed by Bob Moss. Jeralyn Moran: Good evening. Thanks for listening to us tonight. I'm really grateful that this Council is considering a fifth option. I've looked at the first four, and they're just not adequately addressing what I feel is the top issue if you look at it from any angle. I'm most concerned about the critical need to decrease our greenhouse gas emissions as a City. In this case, the forced, long car commutes by so many workers in this City translates to the TRANSCRIPT Page 36 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 lack of local dense housing. You have right now the golden opportunity to do this through the promotion of local zoning adjustments, specific incentives for builders, and funding the Palo Alto Transportation Management Association. In my opinion, focusing on inhibiting job growth just accommodates longer-term economic stagnation and isolation as a community. It's a chance for us all to think big here while we can and making it possible for workers to actually live right here where they work. Smaller, denser units built vertically on top of retail businesses or granny units on already developed lots, etc., this kind of thing. While pushing the benefits of mode shifts in getting around, bikes, walking, scooters, etc. We have a mild climate that we're enjoying. There's no excuse. Please put climate change mitigation at the top of your planning list. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Bob Moss to be followed by Judy Kleinberg. Robert Moss: Thank you, Mayor Burt and Council Members. I thought it was interesting that the Staff Report said they didn't think any of the four options that the proposed were actually going to be adopted; we needed a fifth one. I think they're right. Let me give you a perspective. We are not going to solve the jobs/housing imbalance unless we have a better traffic problem. Traffic is bad. We ought to seriously consider reestablishing the bus system run by the City that we had in the 1907s, because Santa Clara County Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) does a terrible job. That will help. The data I have is about 20 years old, but at that time more than a quarter of the people who lived in Palo Alto also worked in Palo Alto. I'm sure that percentage has gone down because we have a higher ratio of seniors. We have more people commuting in. We aren't going to be able to solve that, because we're going to keep on moving more people in Palo Alto (inaudible) ages aren't working Palo Alto. How do we address this? I think the simplest way to do it is to reduce the number of jobs growing. If we can come up with a good system for preventing significant increases in job growth, that will solve most of the problem. One of the things that people talk about is building smaller units. If you're going to build smaller units, you'll probably put more of them into the same space. That's not going to help. Furthermore, small units by themselves do not reduce the number of people who live here. Have any of you ever been to the Tenement Museum in the lower east side of New York? The apartments were about 200 square feet. They had some data on the people who lived there in the 1870s. A family of four plus a boarder in less than 200 square feet. When prices for housing go up, the density goes up also. Are you aware of the fact that a few years ago we had an apartment in Ventura with over 20 people living in two bedrooms? We have a housing problem because of the cost, and we can't solve that here. TRANSCRIPT Page 37 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Mayor Burt: Former Mayor Judy Kleinberg to be followed by Dan Garber. Welcome. Judy Kleinberg: Thank you. Judy Kleinberg speaking for the Chamber of Commerce. The jobs/housing imbalance is of special concern to the business sector. So many of our employees can't find housing here and must travel long distances to work. Businesses struggle to find the employees needed to fill the jobs to support mostly our retail and hospitality businesses. You've seen the signs. You walk around Downtown; there's sings on every window looking for people. Because this is a critical challenge to businesses here, we encourage you to increase allowable housing densities and the number of housing units allowed near public transit. Transit-oriented development has been a part of our City's Comp Plan for decades, but little has been built. You can't just zone for development without analyzing whether any developer would build what you've zoned for. It has to make economic sense. If the City wants developers to build housing, it should encourage mixed use such as retail and housing or even office and housing or a combination of all three. It's not just affordable housing by the way; it's not just housing for low-income workers who obviously need it; but it's also housing affordable for a variety of people, as John Kelley and others have said. It's also housing for seniors who are stuck in their homes because they can't downsize because the housing they would move into is too expensive. They stay in their homes, lowering the supply, raising the prices. Allowing increased height limits to accommodate more units in carefully selected places is another idea which I think perhaps you ought to be looking at. I'm going to use my last moment to dispel a misstatement which is constantly said. I want to demystify this statement. It is a constant misstatement that it's the office workers that are creating the parking problems Downtown. The data that the City has, the data that has been already presented, that is credible data shows it is not the office workers that are creating that problem. Most of the office workers don't drive cars or they don't drive cars alone. They take public transit, walk or bike. It is the workers who can't afford the permits; it is the workers who are part-time or shift workers or the workers working in hospitality or working two hours here and there and they're working three jobs. It is those kinds of workers that we ought to be looking at to subsidize, to help, to keep them out of their cars or find a place for them. As you're looking at affordable housing, be looking at affordable parking solutions as well. The business community is here to work with you collaboratively. Please remember that. We're here to work together. Thanks. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Dan Garber to be followed by Justine Burt. Welcome. TRANSCRIPT Page 38 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Dan Garber: I'm Dan Garber. I'm the Co-Chair of the Citizen Advisory Committee (CAC). These comments are both mine and my Co-Chair, Arthur Keller's. Most of these comments were made at the Retreat, and I will remind you of them. They're all to do really with the schedule of the Committee. I had asked if it was the Council's intent to have the CAC follow or precede the Council's discussion about L-8. Perhaps the conversation this evening may actually make that question moot. As well as the updates to the schedule that were presented. I have not actually taken a look at that to see if they've changed since the Retreat. There is at least one Council Member that was interested in better coordinating discussions between the City Council and the CAC to try and find ways to have potentially outside speakers come in to allow us to focus debate and discussion in the CAC, which I continue to think is a very good idea. A reminder that we did take a straw poll, and there is interest on the CAC to have a joint meeting regarding housing. Finally, a new topic. Because of the limited amount of time that we've had, the sustainability subcommittee is out of sync with the subcommittee of the transportation committee. At some point, they need to be synced up, but we don't have a way of doing that within the existing schedule. If there's opportunities or ways that the Council would like that to be address, that would be of great interest to us as well. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Justine Burt to be followed by Stephanie Munoz. Welcome. Justine Burt: Good evening, Mayor Burt and City Council Members. I'm here to ask you to prioritize housing for moderate income families, to allow more densification within one mile of the train stations and along El Camino. You can do this within a 50-foot height limit. I suggest you look to Paris for an example of how this has been well done and why it should be done. They have two to five-story multifamily housing buildings. The metro trains and buses run every few minutes. Perhaps you all should take a research trip there. It might be a tax write-off. You can be reminded of what we should be aspiring to here in Palo Alto. It's a very healthy lifestyle. Whenever I'm there, I don't rent a car. I just take the metro and buses around. I eat baguettes and cheese and lemon tarts every day for 10 days straight days, and I still lose weight. It's a great lifestyle, and I encourage you to look beyond the resistant there is in Palo Alto to densification to a model for how it could be done. Help people get out of their cars by changing zoning, so people who work here can afford to live here as well. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Stephanie Munoz to be followed by David Coale. Stephanie Munoz: Good evening, City Council. I don't think anybody is opposing the idea that we need more housing in proportion to the jobs. TRANSCRIPT Page 39 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Thank you for looking at that, this problem, belatedly but looking at it. You have your work cut out for you. This week and these past two months, some odd things have happened. There was a woman in San Francisco who was denied an operation to help her limit her future family. She was required not to have this operation, a tubal ligation, which she had already paid for three times. She paid for it by her taxes. She paid for it by her insurance that she paid. She paid for it in her copayment. While our government was trying to make more population, our representatives who are perfectly reasonable representatives—they're centrists to the core—were saying that we need to improve immigration because we don't have enough college-trained, STEM-trained people. We have to bring them in from foreign countries. At the same time, one of the presidential candidates is saying we have to have universal healthcare and universal college education. Another candidate, very well qualified, says, "No, we can't have universal health. It wouldn't work. We can't have free college education." Not going to work. Try a little harder. Mayor Burt: Thank you. David Coale to be followed by Doria Summa. David Coale: Mayor and City Council, thank you very much for considering a fifth option. I think it's very pertinent in that the first four options were so close together, and even the sustainability one didn't even change the numbers very much. In addressing your questions up here, should the Comp Plan look for a smaller ratio, absolutely, without question. That they didn't look at that as a guiding thing in the first place is interesting. If we're really going to meet the numbers and integrate the S/CAP with the Comprehensive Plan, I think the answer to the second one would be a policy of achieving 80 percent greenhouse gas reduction by 2030. That would integrate these two plans. I think it would also speak to what most of the other speakers have tonight; greater housing in more areas and less jobs to meet this. With that one goal, I think you will integrate a lot of the statements here into achieving a Plan that's truly sustainable and more livable for Palo Altans. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Doria Summa to be followed by Lydia Kou. Welcome. Doria Summa: Good evening, Mayor and City Council, Staff. I wanted to mention that I am on the CAC, but of course I'm not speaking for the CAC tonight. I want to appreciate the Co-Chair's statements. The scheduling of this is really hard for Staff and everyone else, because there's kind of conflicting issues. We want to be pragmatic enough to get things done efficiently, but we also want to have the right result in the end. I'm really happy that you're going to be considering another scenario. I hope it will TRANSCRIPT Page 40 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 address the problems already mentioned here very eloquently about housing. I think the housing that we do create should be mostly for those who need subsidized housing, especially for those who are already a part of our community that we want to retain as neighbors. I think that needs to be done within the present height limitations and site development and Municipal Code so that we don't for everyone lose all the benefits of our already built-out community, and what a great place it is to live. I would emphasize in that that we should remember that every time we talk about getting rid of the 50-foot height limit, we are also talking about reducing view corridors for everyone and light. In addition, I think that we should not build more office unless the parking and transportation impacts can be totally mitigated. In other words, it's not the people being here that creates the problem, it's the traffic and parking issues that turn our streets into parking lots and make the traffic unbearable for everybody. So many people have spoken that I think that's the main things that I hope the Scenario Five will result in. Thanks. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Lydia Kou to be followed by Jeff Levinsky. Welcome. Lydia Kou: Thank you. Good evening. We all know Palo Alto has a really bad housing imbalance, as everybody has said. What you have before you are four scenarios. These scenarios will allow the imbalance to become even worse. We are asked to choose if it comes at a slower, moderate or faster rate. I think the scenarios are based upon assumptions that experience indicate will not hold up. Take the project proposed for the Olive Garden restaurant site. This project will have 13 condominiums and office space for what the City calculates will be 36 employees, almost three times the number of housing units, but this calculation is based on 250 square feet per employee which will have been reasonable if we were still in the late 20th century. What we have long seen on densities is they are two to three times that. This is going to have six to eight times more jobs than housing units. Does this make sense? You will hear or have heard—you have heard—that we should continue growth in the hope that we will eventually be able to partially remedy the additional problems you are asked to enable. Long experience have shown that such aspirations are rarely fulfilled. The consultant's report reflects dogma that's detached from the reality that we residents have experienced day in and day out for years. Even now with this dogma, the consultants couldn't even paint a rosy picture. You hear some people say that Palo Alto was irresponsible to have job concentrations without corresponding housing, but this is done because planners said that jobs around transit centers were needed to make transit viable. Now, they say that there are too many commuters, that we need to have much more housing around these transit centers and expect us Palo Altans to sacrifice TRANSCRIPT Page 41 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 our quality of life for these major employers and developers. Fanciful suppositions of how impacts can be mitigated have created a real credibility problem. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Jeff Levinsky to be followed by Arthur Keller. Welcome. Jeff Levinsky: Good evening Mayor Burt and Council Members. The DEIR clearly shows what many have said, namely that our City is looking at a very bleak future. In our endless pursuit of more, more, more, we've become growth-aholics in denial of how we are destroying ourselves, our City, our neighboring communities and our environment. We're so addicted to growth we can't see how it is robbing us of what made Palo Alto great. There's much talk tonight about the job/housing imbalance, but that imbalance isn't really the cause or solution to traffic. As I think you heard, we could have more housing, you can have more jobs, and you'll still get more traffic. It's really a distraction from the more important issues. Our City needs bold solutions, ones that significantly reduce our traffic congestion and our parking shortages. Timid steps won't help. The beauty contest for office space, though intended to encourage novel approaches, hasn't generated a single project that will actually reduce traffic. From where then will change come? It needs to come from you. Please take this moment to articulate new, far-reaching, creative strategies that will deliver true relief. There is no better time because your actions tonight will flow through the Comprehensive Plan discussions and become the laws that govern us for many years beyond. Consider requiring that all commercial development actually reduce traffic, parking and greenhouse gases. Mandate independent verification to guarantee compliance. Establish ongoing reduction goals for Staff, Commissioners and the press to monitor. Ratchet up requirements automatically if targets aren't met. With steps like these, you'll finally have a fifth scenario worth studying, because it will be worth achieving. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Arthur Keller to be followed by Neilson Buchanan. Welcome. Arthur Keller: Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council Members. Firstly, people talk about a jobs/housing ratio. It's really a jobs/housing/transportation triangle. In terms of the people who work here, the historical figures show that about a third of the people who live in Palo Alto who are employed work in Palo Alto. Just over half of the people who live in Palo Alto work in Palo Alto or an adjacent city including Stanford. Therefore, there will be people who we add to Palo Alto in these new housing that work elsewhere. We need to make sure that transportation solves their problems as well as TRANSCRIPT Page 42 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 bringing workers in here more efficiently. Therefore, we need to think in terms of systems dynamics. Systems dynamics indicates we have feedback loops that says that as we address impacts, we allow growth to increase. When we don't have impacts dealt with, the impacts get worse, then we slow down growth. We need to have some automatic mechanisms, because after all the Comp Plan is going to be here for the next 14 or 15 years and, based on the history, more than that. We need to basically think about how we set this up. There are school impacts we need to consider. Increasing enrollment, all the scenarios overfill our middle schools. The issues that there are five different ways that this impact the school enrollment, impacts our school budget and our population. Also, there's a question that was raised about the annual office cap and whether it included in the scenarios. What didn't come out from that is what level of annual office growth cap was included in the scenarios. Was it 50,000 square feet? Was it 100,000 square feet? What level of growth is an important question. While smaller housing units do tend to have a lower impact on schools as was mentioned, there are certainly consequent impacts there. We need to think carefully about what kind of housing we create, whether it's for low-income, whether it's for expensive pricing. We need to think about the impacts of those on schools. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Neilson Buchanan to be followed by our final speaker, Peter Stone. Neilson Buchanan: I would like to start by thanking Dave Garber and Arthur Keller and the committee that's been putting all this together. Last week I saw as my first chance to tune in on what's been accomplished with the work so far. Hillary, your Staff has done a very good job of wrestling a very, very slippery pig. I think it's maybe time for even more divergent thinking on the scenarios. There's a real danger of converging too quickly on all the opportunities that the future holds for Palo Alto. A fifth scenario is not bad. Even Steve Levy's suggestion about a sixth scenario, that divergent thinking may help everybody revert to the mean. Six scenarios is way too many. I think the process would then say here are the two or three ways that you really want to go when you shake this process all the way to its core. When you do get down to the two or three things that people in Palo Alto are going to resonate, I ask you to take another step to have fewer words and more pictures. This is really tough stuff to read through. I think about the meeting facilitators I've worked with over the years that would be drawing pictures of what people are talking about. Throwing in some of that iconology would really help the public understand where we're going. Let me just close very quickly with my personal family situation. When I moved to California, I made some quick decisions about where to live. I knew how much I was going to make and where I wanted to live. I let money dictate TRANSCRIPT Page 43 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 where I was going to live. Now that I'm older and live in Palo Alto where I did not start, I'm amazed at how many adults I know in Palo Alto that started elsewhere. Not many people started off in Palo Alto; they started in Sunnyvale to Los Altos to Mountain View, East Palo Alto, and finally got to where we want to live. In the case of four adult children in my family, only one lives in Palo Alto and, frankly, only one will ever live in Palo Alto. It's an income-driven thing and it's also a lifestyle. Three of the children, adults between 25 and 45, made personal decisions that they will never be able to live in the near vicinity, much less Palo Alto. That's a brutal reality. I appreciate people coming here thinking I want to live in Palo Alto whatever income level or whatever family circumstances dictate. My four children in my family did not choose the right parents, and they're not going to get enough money ever to live here. They have made rational decisions to live in the Foothills, to live in South San Francisco, to live in another state. Those are lessons I ask you all to think about. Palo Alto and the City Council cannot accommodate everybody that does want to live here, even our adult children who we love the most. Bye. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our final speaker is Peter Stone. Peter Stone: Mayor Burt, Council, Peter Stone speaking on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce. I can make this a little briefer by just incorporating by reference everything that John Kelley and Steve Levy said. I think they are both spot on. I'm concerned that the focus on the ratio may be a little bit misplaced, perhaps a poor proxy for what the real concerns are. The one that keeps getting the most articulation is housing. I think it's almost a consensus, which is amazing, that we need more housing for the people that live here now and being forced out; the people that work here and want to live here and can't. Unfortunately the reality that Neilson just articulates is something we all understand is a reality. We try to mitigate it; we should try to mitigate it. The other big prong of concern really isn't about how many jobs there are in the Palo Alto area. It's about the congestion and the pollution which is, of course, driven a lot by commuters. If that's your perspective, it leads you to a focus on trip reduction and bringing transportation into the second half of the 21st century as we conclude the upcoming Comp Plan period. I would just urge us to focus our attentions in those two directions and not fixate on the ratio per sue. I'm afraid we'll get into some counterproductive measures, Citywide zoning measures, for example to address reducing job growth which may be kind of a cure worse than a disease when it comes to really addressing housing and congestion. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. We will now return to the Council. We should be recognizing that there are two different items that the Staff has asked us to TRANSCRIPT Page 44 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 wade in on tonight. The first is the potential fifth scenario on the EIR. The second is the schedule and topics of the Citizen Advisory Committee and City Council meetings. I'd suggest that we break those up. We're now at 9:25. To reserve a half an hour to discuss the schedule; it may not take us a half an hour, but try to budget the next hour or so for the scenario discussion, and then leave a bit of time at the end to separately discuss the scheduling. I see the first Council Member is Council Member Schmid. Council Member Schmid: Is this comments and motions? Mayor Burt: Yes. Council Member Schmid: I want to thank everybody for coming and talking. It's an extremely important night, because in a way it defines the debate that we're engaging in and where it goes forward. I think the data given is very important. The one that jumps out at me is Slide 11. It says we now have a 3:1 ratio of jobs to employed residents, one of the highest in the country and dramatically higher than our neighbors in Santa Clara County or even in San Francisco. It hasn't always been that way. Actually the number from 1990, the 2010 jumped quite dramatically. I think the consequences are clear. Traffic, parking, density, cost of housing, I guess we've heard tonight, but it's very clear from the Citizen Survey that these are issues that are becoming more and more prominent and tricky. How do we grapple with them in dealing with them? Does changing the ratio of jobs to housing make a difference? I guess one of the things the data shows pretty clear is Palo Alto's ratio of employed residents to households has been constant for a while and remains very similar to Santa Clara County and our neighbors. We are not in a unique position of having a declining number of workers per household. I think it is clear that the commute is a problem, the 3:1 ratio. We are in a narrow strip of land. People can only come from the north and the south. It leads to congestion on both 280 and 101; the data shows are dramatically congested. The congestion in town is increasing. Again the data from the DEIR show congested streets in town. As a matter of fact, in the work we have done on 2555 Park and the recent Page Mill, traffic studies show that there's a number of other intersections around town that are not covered by the DEIR, that are or will be operating a "F" shortly. It seems to me that the clear message from the data is that we need to have a scenario with lower job creation. There was a mention that it's hard to go beneath what we have, because the Stanford health project has already been approved. I think it's easy to set that aside. That has its own Traffic Impact Analysis and Program. For the rest of the City, it would be important and effective, I think, to put a cap or ceiling on. I think that should be in proportion to what the Council has been working on. Over the last year, we've taken three important commercial areas and capped them at 50,000 TRANSCRIPT Page 45 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 on an annual basis. I think legally there's no problem with monitoring growth on an annual basis. It is certainly something we can do in our Comp Plan. I would propose that we put a cap on square footage in Palo Alto at 100,000 square feet per year. From that, I assume the health center is already included since we're talking about approving new projects in town. That is twice the annual cap that we have already established for the three major commercial areas. It would cover the other commercial areas around town. I guess I would propose that as a starting point for the fifth scenario. Mayor Burt: I don't hear a second at this time. MOTION: Council Member Schmid moved, seconded by Council Member XX to include a cap on the increase of square footage in Palo Alto at 100,000 square feet per year as part of a “fifth scenario”. MOTION FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND Mayor Burt: Are you done? Council Member Schmid: Yes. Mayor Burt: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: I'm not sure I'm ready to make a motion yet. A couple of comments. The year 1990 is the benchmark we use in the state of California for our target for greenhouse gases. Correct? When that was proposed as a target for greenhouse gas levels for the future, many people saw that as lofty or unrealistic. Is that fair to say? I would venture that the 1990 jobs/housing balance in Palo Alto is also lofty, and many will see it as unrealistic. I think that if we're going to have a fifth scenario that explores beyond the range of the four presented, which is why we asked to have discussion about a fifth scenario, I would venture that the 1990 levels would be a good place to look. You can see that on Slide 11, as Council Member Schmid pointed out, of the presentation. 2.47:1 jobs to employed residents is still a pretty strong ratio. That's still a lot of jobs for employed resident, but it's less severe than what we have today. It's about a 15 percent reduction in the ratio. It's not radically outside the range of what might be achievable if we address both sides of the imbalance. If we address both sides in an aggressive way, in a very thoughtful way. To speak to a number of the comments that were made, do it in a way which addresses the impacts of the housing growth which will inevitably be a part of this. What we would be talking about would be a lot less office over the term of this Comprehensive Plan, a lot less job growth than what we've seen over the last couple of decades. You'd inevitably have less of the negative impacts from that, but we'd also have to be really careful about how we add housing TRANSCRIPT Page 46 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 in a way that doesn't produce the negative impacts. There was a question earlier—I believe Council Member Scharff asked about the traffic impacts of housing. There's an assumption that I think is worth further exploration about how adding housing necessarily would contribute to traffic and parking. I don't accept those assumptions. I think that we're starting to talk at the Planning and Transportation Commission (P&TC) about second units, accessory dwelling units. The question of whether people who live in a neighborhood with a Residential Parking Program (RPP) would maybe not be eligible for as many street permits for parking if they add an ADU, that's part of the discussion. There's been the idea floated and I think we'll be discussing this more, the idea of Transit-Oriented Development of housing or housing with ground-floor retail without the density limits. You could build as many units in that space as you want within our height limit and size limits, but without any cars allowed on the site. I think that we're going to be exploring what are our legal capacities to restrict the cars associated with that kind of housing to give people who say they want to live a car-free lifestyle. As one of the speakers tonight said, give them a chance to prove it. Developers say that's what the market is demanding. A lot of millennials say that's what they want. A lot of seniors say that's what they want. There appears to be demand. I think it's time that we start exploring that in a pilot in the City regardless of our Comprehensive Plan. I think our Comprehensive Plan should focus on these. I mention these just as examples for how housing could potentially, if we're thoughtful, if we're creative, if we're listening to concerns of our residential neighborhoods, how we can add housing without all the assumed negative impacts that Staff currently assumes. I don't mean to beat up on Staff. I think you've put a tremendous amount of work in here. I really do appreciate it. As Council Member Filseth said, this is pretty cool stuff. There is a housing crisis destroying our community and Silicon Valley. It is less severe when you look at the nine counties of the Bay Area as a whole. The closer you get to Palo Alto and San Francisco, the worse it gets. We really are one of the epicenters of this problem. It does result from decades of adding jobs and being addicted to job growth, but not having the housing growth to go with it. The question is now do we want to turn around, do we want to reverse course on the trend of the last few decades, do we want to fulfill our legal but also our regional and our moral responsibility to allow housing to be built. We don't have to give housing to everybody. This is a common straw man argument used against housing advocates. People who say they want housing—millennials ask for housing, they're asking that they just be given it. What we do have a responsibility to do is stand out of the way. We can be smart about where it goes, how it goes, what kind of restrictions especially around traffic and parking are associated with housing. We have a moral obligation and, to a degree, a legal obligation to not block housing. I think that the evidence that we've seen about how much—even within our TRANSCRIPT Page 47 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 ABAG obligations, how many housing units we have not built. Even within our ABAG allocations speaks to the complexity and the difficulty of adding housing in Palo Alto. This also matches with the academic research which increasingly shows that complex planning processes and restrictive zoning lead to more difficulty in adding housing. There was something mentioned by the audience that tech yuppies have lots of housing. With all due respect, that is not accurate. A lot of so-called tech yuppies are middle class. They're being gentrified out of Palo Alto like other middle class workers, like teachers, like firefighters, etc. They're either moving into housing which otherwise would have been lower-income housing and pushing out those people or they are themselves, like other middle class people, moving to other communities nearby and causing gentrification there and tearing those communities apart while also not being able to remain in this community if they're a native. If we are going to explore a fifth scenario, I think that, as Neilson Buchanan was suggesting, it should be really different. We should really open this up. I'm not sure exactly how to phrase this into a motion. I'll leave that to my colleagues. I think we should have a range of options before us that doesn't close the door at this point. We're still in brainstorming phase which means we need to have options available. Mayor Burt: Vice Mayor Scharff. Vice Mayor Scharff: Thank you. I listened to a number of the speakers. I thought it was interesting that I thought Doria Summa and Steve Levy were saying similar things. I'll get back to that. I think what we need is a scenario about quality of life. I'm a little hesitant for us to put, like Vice Mayor Schmid suggested, caps on things. I think we need to be very clear about what we're trying to achieve, and tell Staff these are the goals we want as opposed to these are we achieve these goals. Staff's in a better position to come up with, in many ways, solutions than we are as we sit here at the dais. I think we should focus a lot on what do we want to achieve with us. One of the things I'm concerned about, first of all, is the focus on the jobs/housing imbalance. I actually think it's a straw man. Just as I think Doria Summa said we're not against jobs; we're not against people moving here. What we're against is the impacts of those jobs. We're opposed to the traffic, the congestion and the negative impacts that these things bring. I think the same is true of housing (inaudible) I asked the question. The more housing we build, the more people you have, the more traffic you have, the more congestion you have, the more impacts on the schools you have. On the other hand, housing provides a lot of benefit, and I think we should build more housing. I think we need to be clear about what we're trying to achieve. I actually appreciated a lot of the comments that Council Member Wolbach said in that as we look at this for Staff to go TRANSCRIPT Page 48 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 forward, I'd like to see a mitigated alternative that says we're going to add housing, but we're going to add housing in the Downtown area where there's an RPP in place, and we're not going to give any permits to those permits. Without any permits, they can't have any cars, or we don't expect them to have more than—because where are they going to park those cars. Are we going to actually then create problems by doing that because they will park way out further? We need to think about what are those. I'm hesitant to tell Staff what that would be. I think we need a quality of life scenario. I think we have to ask ourselves why do we care about the jobs/housing imbalance. The arguments people have made is we have a regional responsibility. We have an obligation to provide more housing, to do our regional part. There's some notion that you get people out of their cars by building housing next to jobs. Yet, we have no data on that. I think there's arguments that rental housing may do that close to job centers. Instead we create scenarios that don't show any of that. I actually think we need to think about what we really want to achieve here. I noticed in these scenarios people aren't really walking much more; they aren't biking more; they aren't using transit more. None of that. I think a lot of that is we're not using Palo Alto-specific data. Our model, therefore, is flawed. I was disappointed that we weren't using the EV data, frankly, because we have the highest concentration of EVs, I believe, in a city or close to it. I'd like to see us do that. I think the other thing we should also look at a little bit—if you're concerned about the jobs/housing imbalance, you should look at the SOI, the Sphere of Influence, which is much, much better. Then we should look at what Stanford's proposing to do. They're proposing to build—I forget. Is it 15,000 housing units or something like that? Mayor Burt: No, 3,000. Vice Mayor Scharff: Sorry, 3,000 housing units. How that would impact it and what that looks like. The other thing I think we've got to ask ourselves is ever since I've been on this Council, we have been fighting our ABAG numbers. We've been writing letters; we've been complaining about it. Frankly, the way the system is set up is that you get your allocation, and anything you don't use you can roll over. It's actually an incentive to zone for it and not use it. That's something that we've all taken advantage of, frankly. We didn't have a problem doing our Housing Element, because we didn't build it all the previous time, so we could roll over most of it. We got our ABAG numbers reduced, because we only put one Priority Development Area (PDA) in. Sunnyvale, for instance, put in I think five, so they got—I can't remember the numbers. They got so much more housing than we got. I sent it all to you at some point. We have to ask are we going to—I think the first question you should ask yourself is do you want to build more housing than you have your ABAG numbers. Do you want to actually build TRANSCRIPT Page 49 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 all your ABAG allocation? If so, how are you going to zone for your next allocation? Those are hard questions, but I think we need to think about them as a Council. I also think we really want to focus—I want a fifth scenario that creates a positive quality of life for Palo Alto. That's what I read online; that's what I heard speakers say. Over the next 15 years, we're degrading the quality of life in Palo Alto. Let's come up with a scenario that I call the Quality of Life Scenario. Therefore, I'm going to try a Motion. I don't think the Motion that I want to try is the be-all-and-end-all of it. I think Council Members should add things to it. I can't think of everything, and I'm not going to try. I think we should basically say that we want a scenario that adds the sustainability options but goes further to reduce the impacts such as traffic, parking, greenhouse gases. I'm sure there's a bunch of others. There's pollution, congestion. That we want to use Palo Alto data when possible. I think there were two sources of that. There was the source of the EVs. There's the source of the Business Registry. To the extent possible we want to be as Palo Alto-specific as possible. We want Staff to come up with a mitigated scenario that shows quality of life improving. I don't know what all those mitigations are. I think Staff should throw out as many as they can. That includes reducing job growth if that's doing it, putting housing ... Mayor Burt: Are you speaking to your Motion now? Vice Mayor Scharff: No, I'm putting the Motion together. You're right, I was falling into speaking to it a little bit. A scenario showing quality of life increasing. Then I want to integrate as much as possible the S/CAP into that scenario. Council Member DuBois: I'll second that. MOTION: Vice Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to direct Staff to develop a “fifth scenario” for analysis in a supplement to the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) that: A. Adds the sustainability options from the current scenarios, which reduce impacts, including traffic, greenhouse gas impacts, etc.; and B. Includes further mitigations for a scenario that improves the quality of life in Palo Alto by mitigating the impacts of future growth and development; and C. Wherever possible, the scenario will use Palo Alto specific data; and D. Where possible to integrate the Sustainability Climate Action Plan (S/CAP) in the fifth scenario. TRANSCRIPT Page 50 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Mayor Burt: Now do you want to speak to your Motion? Vice Mayor Scharff: I do. I think the important part for the Council—I'd appreciate if you'd help me out on this as much as possible. When we put this Motion together, to go in and add things to it, to have Staff look at stuff. I think the more we look at a positive scenario in here, the more we can show the community that we as a Council can have a vision for quality of life, the better of the community will be, the more trust we'll have in the community, and the less this will be a zero sum game. If we increase more housing, we have an impact on the schools. Come up with housing units that have less impact on the schools. Come up with housing units where people are not in their cars. Think about the impacts, and come up with a mitigated scenario that is positive for Palo Alto. Thanks. Mayor Burt: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: Was I up next and also speaking to my second? Both? Mayor Burt: Yes. Because a number of Council Members haven't been able to speak to the topic in general, I'll go ahead and encourage Council Members to do both, speak to the Motion and to add their broader comments. Council Member DuBois: I have some general comments, and then I had some potential amendments. Mayor Burt: Go right ahead. Council Member DuBois: First of all, thanks for the presentation. I think a lot of these charts were useful. I think there's a danger in sometimes we're looking at a short part of the curve. When you really look at a longer part, some of the curves are accelerating where we're actually getting into an even worse situation than it appears. I actually had similar comments to Council Member Scharff's, like what is our goal. I agree that jobs/housing is really a proxy. I think several people said it's a proxy. I think it's a proxy for the impacts that people are feeling living here. I disagree that it's just about traffic impacts. It's more than that. Ultimately, I think what we're talking about is a bigger picture of where we want Palo Alto to be. Do we want to be a commuter city and become even more of a commuter city? What does that look like? Do we want to be something else? Even if we're able to handle all the traffic, I think this jobs/housing proxy is really about what kind of City are we. I'd like to see a scenario—one thing we haven't really talked about is Downtown. How big of an employment center do we want Downtown to be? What kind of companies would we like to see there? TRANSCRIPT Page 51 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 I think we've had some discussion about large companies versus small companies. There's been some stories in the press that start-ups can no longer compete. I think that's going away from our traditional role. Palo Alto's been an incubator of a lot of companies in Silicon Valley. Traditionally, we've been more of a community with some start-ups. When those start- ups got big, they moved to the bigger office parks in the Bay Area. I think there's a question; do we want to continue that or do we want it to change? The goal ultimately is pretty similar to the Motion which is can we come up with a scenario that has no significant impacts, given our direction on slowing office growth, protecting local retail, a moderate amount of housing, protecting our urban forest and our parks and our schools. I'm adding this new idea of a place for smaller companies to thrive. I had very similar words to Council Member Scharff, can we have a scenario that improves the quality have. For me that means more of a balanced community. I think there is an issue with using these top-down forecasts and using more local data; it's more relevant. Part of that we touched on is redefining mixed use. We've been getting mixed use as predominantly office. If we had this idea of balance, can we redefine mixed use to provide more housing, more retail, less office? I also like some of the ideas from members of the public. I think this idea of self-regulation in the Comp Plan or some kind of triggering makes a lot of sense to me. I think part of the reason we got where we are is government moves at a certain pace, and we had a Comp Plan that worked for a long time. We hit a couple of intense growth periods, and it started to be built-out to the maximum amount possible. That hadn't happened before. If we had some ideas like some of these assumptions about the TDM. If we hit 40 percent Downtown, great. If we don't hit it, rather than just continue along maybe we should trigger some mechanisms that kick into place. The same thing with single occupancy vehicles. Let's put those things in, but what happens if we're moving along and we're not hitting those targets? I agree we should look to Staff to come back, but I was looking at—you guys provided us with a lot of numbers and charts. If we look at something like the household growth in Scenario 1 and 2 and we figured out an employee ratio based off of that, I think you end up with—applying the ratios in here, you end up with about 3,000 more employed residents. If we had a 2:1, it comes out to about 6,500 new jobs over the timeframe. I think we can translate that into an amount of office space, and we can plan for that. We can take a look at these assumptions and come up with a scenario that makes sense. Whether that translates into a hard cap or just policies that get us in that ballpark, I think we can figure that part out. I guess I'll add some amendments or offer some amendments to the Motion. Just give me a second to read what it says. I had Number One. I would be interested to see if we can come up with a scenario that has no significant impacts. I think that's kind of implied in Number Two. TRANSCRIPT Page 52 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Vice Mayor Scharff: That's the plan. I didn't want to say none, because there may be certain—I don't know. That's the goal. Council Member DuBois: Could we say close to no significant impacts? Vice Mayor Scharff: As much as feasible, if you want. Council Member DuBois: Yes. If we could add "mitigating the impacts of future growth and development as much as feasible." That's right before the semicolon. I don't know if you want to get into the certain scenarios, but I was looking at the housing growth from Scenario Two and jobs growth below Scenario Two. Vice Mayor Scharff: My vision here was for them to come back with a mitigated one. They'd provide us with what that looks like in terms of housing and in terms of office, frankly. That's really what I was thinking. What would it look like if it was fully mitigated? How many housing units could we have? How much office could we have? Would we have to have negative office growth? What does this all look like? Council Member DuBois: I guess I wanted to bring in this idea again that it's not just about mitigating but what kind of City do we want to have. One thing I would add is that they would propose a mechanism for enforcing densities in existing office buildings. I guess that would be Number Six. Vice Mayor Scharff: That may be a mitigation that they come up with. I don't want to say that they have to do that. What I heard was that it wasn't actually possible. That's what I heard from Cara. She was toeing around it. Council Member DuBois: She said it was with businesses. I'm wondering if when the lease renews or whatever. AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member XX to add to the Motion, “propose a mechanism to use in existing office buildings.” James Keene, City Manager: Thank you. What I thought was a really positive step in the Vice Mayor's Motion is it gives some value perspectives and some general direction that works. Tom, I think your comment about the nature or form of the Downtown employment is more in keeping with that as a kind of consideration without having to jump to the density issue that may be a way to deal with impacts of it. The quality or the diversity of the employment is a general statement that also gives us some direction if there's an interest. The other thing that's missing in my view right now is on the housing side, people have been speaking about the need for housing TRANSCRIPT Page 53 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 for other reasons than just—they're talking about the diversity of the community in some ways and the opportunity for people to be able to live in Palo Alto that seems to be—without explicit direction, if you were to ask us about quality of life, we would want to be factoring that in with these other directives. I do think something—you said that earlier when you were talking about Downtown employment, looking at how we'd redefine mixed use in a way to provide more opportunities for housing. That gives us pretty direction without getting us tied down on the way to do it initially. We would come back with different methods to reconcile these different issues of managing impact but also providing the opportunities that you want. Council Member DuBois: The thing I’m trying to avoid—I'm not look for a scenario that is massive amounts of housing, massive amounts of growth, but it's all mitigated. That's not where I'm at. That's not where you're at either. Vice Mayor Scharff: I actually don't believe that's possible. Council Member DuBois: How about an evaluating mechanism for enforcing densities in existing buildings? I would make that a point six. Molly Stump, City Attorney: Mr. Mayor, may I make a comment? Perhaps you'd consider the word "regulating" in place of "enforcing." One issue we really need to look at is our existing Code. Council Member DuBois: That's fine. Ms. Gitelman: You're talking about employment densities, right? Not just densities? Council Member DuBois: Yeah. Vice Mayor Scharff: Okay. AMENDMENT RESTATED AND INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “evaluating mechanisms for regulating employment densities in existing buildings.” (New Part E) Council Member DuBois: The last one I'd suggest was this idea of evaluating some regulation triggers if mitigation measures are failing. Again, this would be for Staff to come back with some ideas particularly around traffic and parking. Is that clear for ... Vice Mayor Scharff: Yep. The last one's fine. TRANSCRIPT Page 54 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “evaluating regulation triggers if mitigation measures are failing.” (New Part F) Mayor Burt: Can you clarify what you mean by a regulation trigger if mitigation measures are—I see. If mitigation measures, okay. Council Member DuBois; That's it. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Council Member Berman. Council Member Berman: Thank you. Thank you to everyone from the public who came and spoke and rightfully went home. I hope they're hanging out with their kids or spouses. The City Manager started to speak to some things that I wanted to talk about. We talk a lot about impact, and we talk a lot of traffic, and we talk a lot about parking, and we talk a lot about start-ups versus big companies. We haven't been talking a lot about people. It is Palo Altans, and it is people who live here now, and it's people who are being forced out of here. It's not just people's kids that want to come and move back home. It's families that are having their rents increase dramatically and are being forced to move away. I've been talking to a lot of people in the area about a lot of things. They say, "Why should I care? Why should I care about this? Why should I care about that? What I should about more housing?" The question that I ask them is what kind of a community do they want to live in and what kind of community do they want their kids to grow up in? Having grown up in Palo Alto, I know how important it was to me in the '80s and '90—Cory, can relate—to have friends from a vast array of socioeconomic backgrounds and what values that instills in you as a child growing up in Palo Alto. It is getting worse and worse and worse. The reason for that isn't because—the idea isn't that everybody should be able to move to Palo Alto and buy a home. I think that's what some people talk to. In terms of quality of life, what mechanisms do we use to evaluate the value of having some amount of socioeconomic diversity in your city? Maybe that's not a priority to folks; it is to me personally. I don't know how to quantify, but I know that we're losing it. We hear that from people time and time again who come and speak to Council and talk about how the price of their rent has gone up. There's a Staff Report in Mountain View tomorrow that's going to say that rents have increased 50 percent in Mountain View since 2011. I'm sure Palo Alto isn't any better. When we talk about it's impossible to have additional housing or we can't have that much more housing, if we can do it in a way that mitigates the impact of it, that's something that I think we should be open to. I think that's part of this EIR process and DEIR process, to throw crazy ideas out there and see what some back and see what might be possible. I fear that we're getting too TRANSCRIPT Page 55 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 preventative of things, and we're not taking advantage of this opportunity to evaluate a lot of different opportunities. Then have a discussion about what those impacts will be. I think this is okay with where it's going. I'm glad we avoided talking about having certain growth projections from the different scenarios, because I wouldn't have supported that. Vice Mayor Scharff, you talked about our ABAG numbers and how much of a frenzy we get in over them. You sent out something; I looked for it earlier, and I couldn't find it. Was it that Palo Alto had something like 2,000 units in our last ABAG allocation, right? Vice Mayor Scharff: 1,850. Council Member Berman: 1,850 from 2007 to 2014 or something like that. Do you remember what percentage we actually built? I think it was 34. . Vice Mayor Scharff: Yeah, that's about right. Council Member Berman: I could be wrong. 34 percent, 35 percent ... Vice Mayor Scharff: Mountain View and Sunnyvale built about 101, 104 percent. Somebody did point out to me that in the previous cycle, we built a lot. Council Member Berman: Let's take a look at the jobs to employed residents ratio and look at when things get bad. It's when we don't build the housing. That historical context would be helpful, seeing units of housing built every five years or so. It doesn't need to be annually. Let's not restrict ourselves to what we're able to look at and dream big about with this process. Maybe we wind up getting to a point where we decide we just can't accommodate that amount of housing. I think now is the time to try to see what's possible. Along those lines, I'd like to offer an amendment—no I'll offer it. It's essentially the opposite of "six." It's evaluating relaxing regulations if mitigation measure are hit, are accomplished. Vice Mayor Scharff: I'll accept that. Council Member Berman: If we do happen to achieve the gains that we're looking to achieve, I think we should acknowledge that and may reevaluate certain things. This is all obviously hypothetical, but I think it's something that we should consider. I don't know if the seconder accepts it. Council Member DuBois: Can you talk a little bit about how that would work? TRANSCRIPT Page 56 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Council Member Berman: Sure. Let's say our TMA efforts yield 60 percent decrease in single occupancy vehicle trips. Do we all of a sudden reevaluate what our parking per square foot of office space or housing or that kind of thing, regulations if it's clearly being shown that our Transportation Demand Management efforts are working? Council Member DuBois: When I proposed "six," I was specifically talking about transportation and parking. If we could add that clarification to "six" and "seven," I think I'd be okay with that. I think it's too large to say that you want to adjust (crosstalk) zoning or something like that. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “evaluating relaxing regulations if mitigation measures are succeeding.” (New Part G) Mayor Burt: Council Member DuBois, I'm not sure if they captured this. Is it evaluate transportation and parking regulations or transportation and parking mitigation measures? Council Member DuBois: It's both, I guess. Council Member Berman: I'd be fine with that for "seven." Obviously 10 years for now if things are going great and there's no traffic, people can have a different conversation then. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to Motion Parts F and G, “transportation and parking” after “evaluating.” Mayor Burt: Should we just combine these two and say if mitigation measures are—we're just talking about evaluating (crosstalk) are failing ... Council Member DuBois: Or succeeding. Mayor Burt: ... or exceeding expectations. Council Member Berman: Sure. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to combine and restate Parts F and G as, “evaluating transportation and parking regulation triggers if mitigation measures are failing or exceeding expectations.” (New Part F) Council Member Berman: That's all I have for now. Mayor Burt: Council Member Holman. TRANSCRIPT Page 57 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Council Member Holman: Thank you. I have a question, and I think I need Hillary for this. In the DEIR where the transportation and traffic is analyzed, question and comment. I can't remember what I got it from, but it was a study of Level of Service (LOS) done in 2001 by the City. What I notice in looking at this is that some of the intersections—I've heard nobody say that traffic's gotten better anywhere. I notice in a number of the intersections that are analyzed in the DEIR that the performance levels are actually better than they were in 2001. That's a concern to me. The other is that DEIR studies only 14 intersections. In 2001, we studied 21. One of our major intersections that's of great concern to everybody is Page Mill and 280, but it's not one of the intersections that's studied. I'll give you an example. El Camino and Page Mill, it's indicated here that these are A.M. and P.M. peak hours, but there's a "D" and an "E." In 2001, it was a "E+." I remember when we were reviewing a project for the, I believe, VTA lot—it may have either that or the project on Page Mill that was approved, but I think it was the VTA lot. The analysis at that time said that intersection was performing at an "F." I'm concerned about the accuracy of the LOS analysis both in terms of accuracy and in terms of the number of intersections it studies, in particular the omission of Page Mill and 280. Can you address any of that? In doing this analysis, did anybody go back to the EIR for the existing Comp Plan to look at what intersections were analyzed and what the performance was then? Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Council Member Holman, for those questions. I don't know if someone went back and looked at the old EIR. We collected new intersection data and developed a new travel forecast model that was validated using that existing data. There's really a new methodology here. It's not surprising that some of the intersections are different. Actually, those of us who were at the Silicon Valley Index presentation learned that the year 2000, 2001 were—in fact the speaker kept referring to 2000 as an anomaly. It was higher in terms of jobs than we are today. It was really a spike. There could be some characteristics around 2000, 2001 that you're seeing in that data. That would be an explanation for any difference. I'd have to have the engineers delve into it in more detail to get you a more specific answer about the results there. In terms of the number of intersections studied, as the Council knows, we're in this really critical period right now where the State is shifting away from level of service. We had resources to spend on transportation analysis, and we chose to spend those resources getting a variety of different metrics that we could display for the Council and the public with regard to transportation impacts. I think in the EIR you see more metrics, vehicle miles traveled, vehicle miles per capita, focused on transportation and mode share and trips, internal, external, all that stuff that wouldn't have been in a 2001 EIR. We had to choose intersections to analyze along with that. We chose 13 intersections that we TRANSCRIPT Page 58 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 think are representative and a good sample of the City. If the Council wanted us to study more, obviously we would just have to allocate the additional resources to do that. Council Member Holman: Thank you for the note about 2001. I guess what I'm responding to too is the fact that nobody seems to think that transportation or traffic has gotten any better since that period in time. The numbers are the numbers, but there is a recent thing about the Page Mill and El Camino. That was an "F" when that project came forward for analysis, but here it only shows it as being—wherever it was. It's only showing it as being a "D" and an "E." Those are concerns. Page Mill and 280, I think, would be a significant one. If we leave it out, we're being really remiss in what we're analyzing, because that's a bad intersection and we all get comments about that one regularly. I mentioned earlier about changing what we use as our threshold for impacts. Palo Alto has a much higher, for instance, threshold than Menlo Park. We use the foursecond; Menlo Park's a zero. 0.8, I'm sorry. A 0.8 in Menlo Park. I think this would be the time to change what we use for measuring our impacts. I'll come back to that in a moment. In terms of zoning for housing, yes, I believe it was 2004-2005 when housing was the go-to development. That's when we got the Hyatt Rickey's project was developed. It is the zone for what you want. Just because we zone for it and it doesn't get built at one point in time, if we zone for it, it can be built. When the market shifts, it will be at some point in time. When the market shifts, there the zoning is that accommodates it. A cautionary step there. Could I add in Number One here in the Motion—I think it is such a critical one. Could we add "noise" specifically there? The maker and seconder? I know it says "etc.," but could we add "noise" there specifically? Vice Mayor Scharff: Yeah, we could add "noise." INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to Motion Part A, “noise” after “greenhouse gas impacts.” Council Member Holman: Thank you. Number Six—wait a minute, it's actually not there. It's Number Two. It's kind of like a combination of Number Two and Number Six. Directing Staff to come up with further mitigations for a scenario that improves the quality of life in Palo Alto, I like that a lot. What we have trouble doing in Palo Alto—not that we're alone in this—is enforcing the mitigations. I think without identifying also what mitigation methodologies are, we're missing part of the thing here. We can say we're going to require TDM programs, for instance, for a project. If it isn't an enforceable TDM program, we're getting what we're getting now. TRANSCRIPT Page 59 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 What I'm looking for is probably a Number Two, "direct Staff to come up with further mitigations along with mitigation enforcement plan." AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member XX to add to Motion Part B, “along with mitigation enforcement measures” after “further mitigations.” Vice Mayor Scharff: I don't think that goes in an EIR. If I'm wrong, let me know. Council Member Holman: This isn't a new scenario that we're doing here. We're asking Staff to come back with this. If we can't have Staff come back with something that includes how they would enforce the mitigations—this isn't the DEIR version that we're looking at here. Vice Mayor Scharff: It's a supplement to the DEIR. Council Member Holman: I read this as Staff will develop a fifth scenario for analysis. What I'm looking at is the Staff to come back with their thoughts on how this might play out. When they come back with something to us before May, then we would develop the fifth scenario. I didn't think we were telling them right now this is what we want. Mayor Burt: Do you mean a mitigation enforcement plan or measures? Council Member Holman: Measures. Is your intention that this is the direction for the fifth scenario or for Staff to come back and give us their thoughts on this? Vice Mayor Scharff: It's a direction for the fifth scenario. Obviously everything Staff come up with, I would expect them to be able to enforce. Council Member Holman: Do we? Mr. Keene: I guess I was—if I might jump in. I was thinking that the Motion isn't assuming we would come back with the fifth scenario, but that we could come up with alternatives... Vice Mayor Scharff: Options. Mr. Keene: ...and options that begin to put more definition to the choice, and then you give us that direction. I get a little bit too concerned about having to make it super concrete at this stage. I just would not put a whole lot of doo dads on there. TRANSCRIPT Page 60 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Mayor Burt: If this was added "along with prospective mitigation enforcement measures?" AMENDMENT RESTATED AND INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to Motion Part B, “along with prospective mitigation enforcement measures” after “further mitigations.” Mr. Keene: That helps. I really think we're going to come back with some hydraulics about where the housing and the job piece is. Obviously you may feel differently if you could 100 percent mitigate something for transportation. It may affect the way you would set those number. Then I think you're going to have a more focused discussion on what the final fifth solution is that you want to settle on. Council Member Holman: That's what I thought the Motion was about. Ms. Gitelman: Can I just ... Council Member Holman: Thank you. What I was thinking that the Motion was about was what Jim just said. Ms. Gitelman: Could I just interject something? I want to make sure that we're on the same page. I don't want to over-promise or have the Council feel like we're going to be able to do more than I think we can do. We are not, I think, equipped to take the direction, develop a whole other range of scenarios and present you with a whole range of options, another four scenarios to bounce off each other and compare. I think we are fully ready to go back and look at the mitigation measures in the document, see if there's a way in compliance with Number Five and Number Six up there to make them a little more iterative, so they'll drive themselves to be better and better, and look at how to better integrate with the S/CAP and the like. I think our thought was we would come back to you with a package of things responsive to this direction that we think would constitute a good fifth scenario for the Council to tinker with and adjust. I'll just tell you right now, we can try to mitigate impacts of traffic, but a lot of the impacts that you're seeing in the book—the I-280 intersection is in there as a freeway ramp, not as an intersection. A lot of the impacts you're seeing is because we are part of a regional system. There's a lot of traffic in the area that has nothing to do with the job and housing growth that we're seeing as part of our scenarios. I'm committing we're going to do our best to come back with a mitigated scenario as a proposal to you for the fifth scenario. I just don't want to fool anybody that we're going to be able to get to no impacts. We just probably won't be able to get there on traffic. TRANSCRIPT Page 61 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Mr. Keene: Could we argue a little bit here between each other? I feel like this is one of the best conversations the Council has had as it relates to the Comp Plan about getting to the nub of the direction you want to see the City going in. Yet, we're not there yet. What has been happening is we've been developing some fairly fleshed out things, and we kind of come back. You can go that's not quite right. We put a lot of effort into that, and the need for a fifth scenario is a perfect example of that. I don't think we can go back with this idea of developing anything to the degree of what we have here already. What we need to be able to come back and say is, "Let's see. If we had this level of jobs and this"—take the range of housing that you have under the—the highest range of housing we have is a 15 percent increase over the next 15 years in the housing from the baseline. If you accepted something like that as a scenario, that's one percent more housing per year over 15 years. What would that start to look like as far as either mitigation conditions you might roughly want to think about? Same thing on the office side. You could really come back—I don't mean to be presumptuous. I think it's pretty clear where the Council is tending to want to go on less office and some degree of housing. The sooner we could get to that specifically, the better we could really start to imagine how we could both have those things happen in the Plan ultimately. Then try to say, "What are the other things we need to do to try to mitigate those things over time?" Then the TDM issues and if we end up having tax measures to fund things, all those things start to come together in a more meaningful way. I still think we need to come back a little bit more vaguely but with more meat on the bone about what is going to happen sooner than later. Then you give us more specific direction and say, "That's what we're looking for." I'm afraid that we would try to figure out right now again what the best one of those would be. We could still come back and you would say that wasn't quite it. Ms. Gitelman: If I can just make sure again we're on the page. We're trying to figure out what it is that we would analyze for you as a fifth scenario. I hope that's consistent with what you're saying. Are you saying we're going to analyze a bunch of stuff and then we're going to come back? Mr. Keene: I don't think the Council's in agreement. I'm sorry to be this presumptuous. I think there is a majority of the Council that would ultimately say, particularly if we can't significantly mitigate it or completely mitigate it, "We clearly want a jobs number that is less than what we have in any of the scenarios right now, growing in some fashion." We also understand there's a need for housing, and there may be a range of opinions that the Council has about what that housing number would be. Again, to the extent that some of those things can be mitigated, it allows some flexibility at what that level would be. You could almost pretty quickly get that clear, and then you direct us to go out and really flesh out everything. TRANSCRIPT Page 62 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 We'll be much more efficient and much more on target with what you're vision is as a Council as to where you want us to go. Council Member DuBois: Could I make a real quick comment? Council Member Holman: I've still got the floor, I think. Council Member DuBois: I think... Mayor Burt: (inaudible) Council Member DuBois: Thank you, Pat. I think what we're missing or what we started with was in the Motion there's nothing here that—in the Motion itself is outside what's already done in the book. I don't know if that's what you were asking for, Hillary. I think what Jim was saying was—I don't know if we need to be explicit. I explicitly was looking for an evaluation of job growth lower than anything in here. I don't know if we need to be that clear in the Motion. Vice Mayor Scharff: Happy to (inaudible) evaluation of job growth higher, and I think we should do an evaluation of housing higher. Council Member Holman: I've still got the floor, I believe. Mayor Burt: Let's return to Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: I think I agree with what you were saying, Council Member DuBois, and what City Manager was saying, that we're looking at less job creation, less office creation and more housing creation. We don't know to what extent. If we can add that, if the maker... Vice Mayor Scharff: You can add that. Mayor Burt: May I suggest language? In the existing V, if we simply changed it to "evaluate"—it shouldn't be evaluating in both "five" and "six." It should be "evaluate mechanisms for regulating employment growth including densities in existing buildings." Does that capture it? Vice Mayor Scharff: It does. Council Member Holman: Regulating doesn't say reduce current trend or current allowance. Council Member DuBois: If I could offer. I think what Pat said was fine, but it doesn't capture—in Number Two if we could say "a scenario that improves TRANSCRIPT Page 63 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 the quality of life in Palo Alto by mitigating the impacts of future growth and development assuming job growth below Scenario Two." Ms. Gitelman: Mayor Burt, if I could just ask a follow-up question to that? I think that's great and clear direction. The question is whether you could articulate how we might accomplish that beyond what you've said in Number Five? (crosstalk) Vice Mayor Scharff: (crosstalk) Mayor Burt: First we have to make sure the maker accepts it. Vice Mayor Scharff: Then I'm not going to accept that. What I really want you to do is to come up with—I don't want to tell you how we come up with that. If you can come up with it, great. I think assuming isn't—I would say "and look at job growth below Scenario Two." I'm not going to tell you how to do that. There may not be a mechanism to do that or there may be. You're the planner. AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member XX to add to Motion Part B, “assuming job growth below Scenario 2” after “growth and development.” Mayor Burt: I think we need to give more direction on our intent, and maybe the wording that was proposed is not perfect on that. AMENDMENT FAILED DUE TO LACK OF SECOND Ms. Gitelman: Mayor Burt, if I can respond to that? I think we are pretty clear in the Staff Report about the policy levers that we included already in Scenario 2 which has the lowest job growth, and some additional levers that could be included to reduce job growth further. Some of them are scary things. We're talking about down-zoning commercial areas of Palo Alto where property owners have an expectation of floor area ratio. I think we need to know from the Council just how aggressive you want us to be and whether those ideas we posited in the Report are things you want to pursue or whether you want to try and do it through this regulation of employment densities. Mayor Burt: May I offer a location where maybe that belongs better in "five?" If it was to say "evaluate mechanisms for regulating employment below Scenario Two." Say "including densities in existing buildings." Does that capture your intent? Vice Mayor Scharff: That's fine. TRANSCRIPT Page 64 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Council Member DuBois: I guess it works. It seems like we're mixing two different ideas in that sentence, but that's okay. Vice Mayor Scharff: Then we need to get rid of "assuming job growth below Scenario Two." INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to Motion Part E, “below Scenario 2 including” after “regulating employment.” Mayor Burt: Okay. Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: I think Number Five now is kind of mixing two things. We're talking about office development and then regulating employment. They're two different things. I think that doesn't strike what Council Member DuBois was after. It says "evaluate mechanisms for regulating employment densities in existing buildings." Another bullet would be "evaluate lower general office and R&D development than Scenario Two." That's what would make it clear. Mayor Burt: Do you really mean to limit it to general office and R&D or is it jobs? I think separating the two are fine, but I didn't know that the intent was specifically to those categories of employment. Council Member Holman: I'm just trying not to include retail and personal service. Generally how we've talked about office caps has been general office and R&D. Mayor Burt: That's a proposal to the maker and seconder. Council Member Holman: That would take it out of Number Five. Vice Mayor Scharff: I think we're getting beyond the intent which was if Staff can come up with a quality of life one without going to the more extreme measures which I have heard Hillary talk about, I think that's good. If you can only do it by coming up with the extreme measures, then go and suggest to us that this is what it'll take. That's want I want. That's the direction I want. I want to know what it is broadly. I'm not going to accept that. Council Member Holman: Is there a second, if I offer to separate the amendment? The reason is because I want it to be clear what the policy direction would be to Staff. Mayor Burt: You need to first see if you have a second before speaking to it. TRANSCRIPT Page 65 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Council Member Kniss: I'll second it. AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded Council Member Kniss to add to the Motion after Part E, “evaluate lower General Office and R/D development than Scenario 2” (New Part F) and remove from the Motion Part E, “below Scenario 2 including.” Council Member Holman: That means that it would come out of—that means that "Five" would go back to what it was before. Just briefly and quickly. It's not to try to be too prescriptive. Not really trying to be too prescriptive, just trying to give policy direction to Staff that our inclination is that we want to lower general office development in favor of housing. We don't even have to put in "in favor of housing," because we're reducing office development. Obviously we're in favor of housing too, I would think. Council Member Kniss? Mayor Burt: Council Member Kniss, did you want to speak to your second? Council Member Kniss: Yes, thank you. The reason I seconded this is that I think most of this is pretty general. I think probably that is exactly what we ought to look at. I think it is prescriptive, but I think it also gets very definitive, which we've been talking about kind of going all around the barn on this. That's really what we're talking about. Are we going to evaluate a general office and R&D development that is lower. Mayor Burt: There are two of us who haven't spoken in general terms at all on the subject. Council Member Filseth and myself, I think are the only two. Council Member Kniss: I don't (inaudible). Mayor Burt: And actually Council Member Kniss. If we go into a protracted debate on just this one amendment to the Motion, we're not going to get to complete our discussion tonight. What I want to encourage people is I'm not sure that we need to debate this to be able to vote on it. You have a right to do so, but I'd rather not clear the board. I think I better. This is just getting too confusing. What I'd like to do is encourage folks to not speak to this Motion unless they really feel a burning necessity to do so. I think it's pretty clear to everybody what this means and what the alternative means. We don't have to hear from nine of us to understand that. I'd encourage people to move forward. We'll vote on it, and then move on to the main Motion. If anybody feels the necessity to speak to it, hit your lights. We will just vote on the amendment which is basically a new "five." Is that what it is? Is that correct? TRANSCRIPT Page 66 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Council Member Holman: It doesn't replace "five." "Five" would change, though, because ... Mayor Burt: Yeah. It's a modified "five," right? Is that what we're looking at? Council Member Kniss: Mm-hmm. Council Member Holman: It wouldn't replace "five," because "five" has densities and buildings in it. Mayor Burt: Where is ... I see. It's down below now. I'm sorry. Council Member Holman: This would be a new ... Mayor Burt: It's down under amendment, and it's what's highlighted. Council Member Holman: Number Five would change if this passes. Mayor Burt: Let's vote on the board. Evaluate lower general office and R&D development than is in Scenario Number Two. That passes on a 5-4 vote with Council Members Schmid, DuBois, Burt, Kniss and Holman voting yes. AMENDMENT PASSED: 5-4 Berman, Filseth, Scharff, Wolbach no Mayor Burt: Now we come back to the main motion. Council Member Filseth, and then Kniss and then me. Council Member Holman: I did have one other thing which was to put on the board for Staff to come back with any comments having to do with reducing our LOS threshold to zero. Our impacts threshold to zero. Ms. Gitelman: I'm afraid we're not really following what your intention is. We do have the new State law that's going to prevent us from doing that. Mayor Burt: Let me see first whether we even have a second before we get Staff discussion on it. I don't hear a second. AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member XX to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to return with comments regarding reducing Level Of Service (LOS) impacts to zero.” AMENDMENT FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND Council Member Holman: The motion was to change the City's thresholds for measuring LOS impacts from our current level or current threshold to a TRANSCRIPT Page 67 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 zero second. 0.8 is what Menlo Park has, but we could go to zero. By the way, the State (crosstalk). Mayor Burt: I don't hear a second. Council Member Holman: CEQA has gone to Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT), but I think the Council has made comments about ... Mayor Burt: You're speaking to a motion that has not been seconded. Council Member Holman: No, I'm speaking to a comment that Hillary made. Mayor Burt: You offered a motion; we didn't get a second. Let's move on to Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: Thanks very much. I think we're way, way down in the weeds here. We may be below the weeds with the gophers. I agree with the City Manager that I think this is one of the most fundamental and important decisions we've had as a Council in our tenure of this Council. I think this is going very much the right direction. We're talking about objectives. I think the appropriate thing is to give Staff very broad direction on this as opposed to trying to engineer something in great detail. There are basically three axis here, three levers to pull, job growth, housing growth and mitigation. We've asked Staff to see what they can do to try to minimize impact on quality of life. I think that's entirely appropriate. The one thing that I would comment on that is I think this is really, really god stuff and really important stuff. This Council has asked for a quantitative dimension to this discussion to supplement what's been, up until now, a qualitative and even at some level religious discussion about where we ought to go. I think this is really good. It adds a dimension that's very valuable. The lesson from this is that all four scenarios make traffic, pollution, all kinds of things worse. Furthermore, it's very clear that the least impact of all these things comes from Scenario Two, the slow growth scenario. The most impact, if you discount Scenario One which is sort of tied, the most impact actually comes from Scenario Four which is the full on smart growth model. The lesson from that is that the negative impacts follow growth, and that no amount of mitigation can fully mitigate those things. That is what this study says. As we talk about this, we talk about the discussion we're having as how do we enforce mitigation and so forth. I think there's a trap here. Mitigation, you don't want to have it be a buzz term like clean coal or something like that. I realize I probably just made a lot of enemies in the fossil fuel business. Mitigation is not a have it all card that forces you not to make choices. I think the answer to this is we are going to have to make choices. You can't mitigate it all. That's where the levers are going to come. I think we need to give Staff the flexibility to TRANSCRIPT Page 68 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 come up with that. Clearly they're going to look at options below the Scenario Two job growth and so forth. The other reason that I think by extension this is really important is that this doesn't tell you—I think this is really fundamental. This doesn't tell you which scenario to take. You decide which scenario or combination of scenarios or combination of factors based on what you want to achieve. If your top priority is traffic and air pollution and so forth, then very clearly you're going to lean towards something closer to the Scenario Two side of the spectrum. If your top priority is that Palo Alto should compete with San Francisco and San Jose to get all the good tech jobs, then you're going to skew towards Scenario Four. The DEIR doesn't tell you which way to go. It's our job as Council—our job is vision, policy and oversight—to do that. That's really important because, whether we're like it not, we're going down the path of looking at what kind of city we want to be. That's why this is so important, because we're making decisions, but that's the direction we're going. For a long time, we've been at this crossroads or approaching a crossroads of what do we want to be. Historically Palo Alto has been a moderate density, family suburb with great schools and great services. If you want to continue that direction, then we've got to go the direction closer to what we're talking about tonight. Council Member Scharff's motion of the low impact scenario clearly points us towards that direction. If what you want here is to build a fourth regional metroplex in the Mid-Peninsula next to Stanford on Sand Hill Road, then you push for the aggressive growth scenario. That's not what we're doing here. Everybody needs to be cognizant that is sort of the direction that we're leaning. People need to understand that. I think most people want to do the former. I think most of us here understand that, and that's why we're going this direction. The last thing I want to say is I want to comment very briefly on housing. I'm going to ask Staff a question, but I don't think I'm going to propose an amendment. I think our direction to Staff should be very broad tonight. We are going to take up housing on March 23rd, I think. I assume that what I'm going to ask here is more appropriate for then. Given the great likelihood that the answer to the question Council Member Scharff has asked is going to come back and say in order to achieve the quality of life scenario, we're going to want to have relatively modest housing growth. I think everybody's sense is that the place we should try to help first and the place we should put our efforts is sort of on the lower and middle income sector. I think that's going to be consistent; we can't help everybody. I don't see a lot of value to the community in prioritizing a lot of new market rate housing. People who can afford to live here can work with that as it is today. If we are going to try to find ways of encouraging housing that facilitates middle and lower income—people who can't live here now, assuming there's no way you can build enough to lower the market price. I'm guessing that's a discussion we should have on the 21st as TRANSCRIPT Page 69 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 opposed to trying to put it in an amendment to this motion tonight. I want to ask Staff's opinion on that. Mr. Keene: We agree with you. I also take the opportunity to say that I think the overall way you've framed it, we agree with. This is still going to be an iterative process with the Council. We're going to come back with this assignment with stuff you like and stuff you don't like. I think it will be clearer than where you are right now. You'll be in a position to go shopping or mix and match in the way that you want to do it. Council Member Filseth: I didn't really want to have to make choices. Sorry, just kidding. Go ahead. Mr. Keene: The discussion that we have in March will help inform that dialog too as it relates to the housing component. Council Member Filseth: In that case, I will not make an amendment. I'll cede the floor. Thanks. Mayor Burt: Council Member Kniss. Council Member Kniss: I think we've come a long way. I don't disagree with Jim. There are a couple of things that I want to say in general and some history data. I don't know if we can turn back the sands of time. I'm not sure we can do that. Maybe we can stay in place. If we are going to talk about housing, as I look at it—Staff, I'm going to ask you this to nod and smile or something. I see that in 2000 we had about 26,000 units. Fifteen years later, we had about 29,000. In that length of time, our population went from 15,000 to 65,000. Is that right? Mayor Burt: (inaudible) Council Member Kniss: 55 to 65, did I say it the other way around? In that length of time what happened is that some locations came up because our economy was really in the dumps. We are making decisions about the next Comp Plan in an economy we have not seen probably every in this Valley. It's kind of like we're buying a new house, and both have fabulous jobs and we're both making lots of money. We say, "We really can afford that $2 million house." Male: (inaudible) Council Member Kniss: I was just thinking where would that $2 million house be? It wouldn't be here. It might be some place around us. (crosstalk). Sunnyvale. If we really are talking about adding housing, TRANSCRIPT Page 70 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 especially low income, especially that kind of middle of the road housing, you've got to think of where is the location going to be. What location? Where can you possibly find a location in Palo Alto? Let's say we'll try the accessory dwelling units. I feel so bad that I've been there and done that. I know what happens. Somebody is going to complain about the parking, because you've got more people living in the same area which I tend to think may also be happening in the whole Downtown region. I think more people are living per house, because it's so much more expensive. When your rent is 4,000 a month for a two-bedroom, you can certainly get two people in it, maybe you can even get three or four. Actually people used to do that. People really actually used to do that. If our major issue here is quality of life, which it is, I have never seen a candidate's brochure without soliciting they intended to improve the quality of life in Palo Alto. That's an enormous order. We're saying tonight, "Staff come back to us with something that improves our quality of life." In truth, a lot of people actually like this quality of life or they wouldn't have been here tonight telling you how desperately they need housing. We're doing something right even though I'm sort of hearing some self-flagellation tonight. I think we're actually doing some things right. Should we stay in place? Should we grow a little bit? Are we slow growth? Are we no growth? Are we some growth? I think that's really where we are. Where are we actually going with this whole procedure? I don't know if I can hold it up as well as Eric did. It's going to take me two hand. I went to weigh it today. Is it eight pounds? Is that roughly ... Didn't any of you weigh it? I think it's about eight; I tried to figure it out. It's somewhere ... I think it's somewhere in that. It's almost 900 pages. I would think that maybe Eric is the only one up here that's read it from cover to cover. I know he did. I think this is a good way to go. Jim, I've appreciated your saying good discussion tonight. We've given you a big amount to cover. The last Comp Plan took six years. I think we're only at— what? A year and a half now or two? Three? Ten? I forget, long before I got here. We need to head somewhere, but I want us to really think carefully. You cannot add housing without adding traffic. You can't have the traffic without exacerbating the parking. You really do have to think how are you going to pull this altogether. It's tough. Thank you, Staff, for stepping up to the plate. Jeremy, I'm sure sad you're going. That's it, Mr. Mayor. Mayor Burt: I have a few comments. First, I think this Motion has done a good job of pointing us in the right direction. There's one area that I have been looking for how to fold in the type of housing that we would have under these scenarios. Staff had asked about this. Maybe we should respond to that, just so there's some guidance on the type and location of housing. Vice Mayor Scharff: I thought Staff just said March 23rd we're going to do it. Eric was talking about making the type of housing and (inaudible). TRANSCRIPT Page 71 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Mayor Burt: Are you comfortable with this Motion not addressing types of housing within this scenario? Is Staff comfortable with waiting on that? Ms. Gitelman: I think we understand where the Council is headed. In fact, these scenarios already kind of move in that direction. We'll look to move further in that direction. Mayor Burt: I do just want to say a couple of higher level things and a few specific. Arthur had spoken about a jobs/housing/transportation triad. I think that's a good analogy. I also would say that for those who have been arguing that we should be looking at just addressing the housing supply and not recognizing that the greatest impact on our jobs/housing imbalance that has been exacerbated in recent years has been the rate of growth of jobs, not the rate of growth of housing. In the last few years, we've had significantly less housing built than in the previous seven years. Really the biggest problem has been we've far outpaced housing with the job growth. Trying to have the housing keep up with real fast job growth is really like a dog trying to chase its own tail. It just doesn't work. Second, I do want to respond to characterizations of the choices that we have as being between a mid-size college town and fourth regional megaplex. I think both of those are false. We haven't been a mid-size college town since the '60s and '70s when Stanford Research Park became fairly fully built out and was absolutely the center and the founding force of Silicon Valley. That Research Park has close to 30,000 employees, and it was largely built-out in the '70s. We haven't been merely a mid-size college town, and I think all of us honestly know that when you speak to people outside of this area, they recognize that Palo Alto has a role beyond that. I know of very few people in this community, there are a few, who have any aspiration to make us a megaplex either. I really think both of those are false choices or characterizations. I think the sooner we stop portraying these alternatives in that way, the better we get down to the meat of what we're really trying to address which is how do we contend with not only maintaining our quality of life but in terms of traffic congestion regaining a quality of life. I think that's an objective that we need to have here. The other thing I want to do is really disagree with several of my colleagues who have thought that there's really almost no way to mitigate the traffic impacts. We're sitting here, and we have to distinguish between what's evaluated in these scenarios and the mitigation measures and what we have in the policy behind our Transportation Management Agency which is a 30 percent reduction in single occupancy vehicle trips to Downtown. When we look at these scenarios and if we look down under mode share for Palo Alto drive- alone, the best scenario that we're looking at is a three percent reduction in drive-alone Citywide. We have to realize what's evaluated here is one order of magnitude less reduction than what we have already adopted as a policy TRANSCRIPT Page 72 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 for Downtown. If we don't believe that that's even remotely achievable, then we have an obligation to revise that Policy. I know that Council Member Kniss was one of the people who actually spearheaded that. We've got to realize that our old thinking—when you and others put forward this TMA with this goal, it said no, we actually believe and must address a whole new way that we do things so that we don't have that direct correlation between either housing or jobs and trips. I think that's what we're really looking at. We've had our Study Session and our S/CAP Summit. In each of those, we all went through looking at what the future could look like, both what we could do by turning knobs on addressing this, and what's changing in part regardless of what we do. There was some very fundamental changes. We all know that we have a lot of millennials who not only don't have cars, they don't bother to have driver's licenses. Twenty years ago, when we had urban planners tell us that if we densified Downtown, we'd have a certain amount fewer trips. They were right to some degree, but it wasn't going to be the kind of change that we might have going forward. Just to give a scenario so people are thinking about, as we go into housing Downtown, one of the real advantages of having adopted a Residential Permit Parking Program is that we can do some things we never could do before. If we previously had said, "We think that if we have very small units Downtown of studios and one-bedrooms, small units, we'll get people who will drive less." In going forward in the future, they might drive a lot less. We'd have a real distrust. What happens if that fails? They're just going to park in the neighborhoods. We can now approve projects, whether they're commercial or residential, in the Downtown areas and say they're not eligible to buy RPP permits. It has to manage that. The developer will have to park for what they know or they can't rent the dang places. That's a new way of thinking on it. I just want us to break free from some of our antiquated ways of looking at things that were right in their day and aren't right today. We don't know exactly what the future's going to bring in terms of how far this is going to be able to go. I think that anybody who says, "It's a piece of cake. We're going to be able to reduce it by 30 percent," or do all these things, that's maybe in part wishful thinking. I'd say it's uncertain. It may be achievable, but nobody quite knows it because we haven't done it yet and neither have others. We certainly see very strong trend lines. I want to encourage us to not blindly assume that everything will take care of itself and also not assume that the past determines the future. On that note, I'll support the motion. I see we've got some people who want to speak again to this motion. Let's be real brief. Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: Thank you. Let me say I think I agree with just about everything that the Mayor just said. Stepping back and looking at this—I like this by the way. I do like this Motion. Thank you for giving me a chance to speak to it. What's interesting is this Motion is essentially in many TRANSCRIPT Page 73 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 ways a reframing and re-characterization and maybe a different look at something that was actually rejected by the Council previously, which was the Net Zero proposal. A previous Council had said, "That's scare. We don't like it." I think we've now realized that the focus here is on quality of life. The focus is on net zero impacts on the neighborhood. I hope I didn't just jinx it by pointing that out. I always like the net zero, and I think this is good. I appreciated Vice Mayor Scharff and Council Member DuBois for putting this together and those who have added amendments. Regarding housing which is not mentioned here at all, I understand there's a meeting coming up at which we're going to discuss housing. I'm very much looking forward to that as you can all guess. In the Staff Report, it says that we can do—basically there's the invitation to offer and direct a fifth scenario for about $150,000. Is this our last chance to add a sixth scenario for $50,000? There's basically a two-for-one deal which is the first new scenario is 150 grand. Another new scenario beyond that is an additional fifty grand. What I'm concerned about is that we've lost sight of the core direction that we offered back in January which was to actually talk about jobs/housing imbalance. I understand that some people have maybe changed their views on that since then, referring to it as a straw man or red herring. I still think that the jobs/housing imbalance is important. Scenario Four and Scenario Three had quite a bit more housing, but they also add a lot of jobs so they really don't address that. I don't think that housing and housing cost and housing to jobs balance are impacts that need to be mitigated, that are identified here. I'm very concerned that the idea of some kind of a moon shot jobs/housing balance will not be studied by a fifth scenario as described here. I'd like to see either an amendment that does that or possibly a sixth scenario which would really refocus on what I thought we were going to be talking about tonight, which was jobs/housing imbalance. The question is do we need to do that tonight or can we do that following our discussion about housing. I think tonight is the night to do that, though. Mr. Keene: Could I just jump? First of all, I understand the point. I think it would be a mistake at this stage to add a sixth scenario. Let us come back. I mean, you will look at what is offered, and you'll be able to decide whether or not the scenario you're settling on is complete enough. Secondly, I'm just going back to something that Council Member Filseth said. The more general this is in some ways, the easier it is for us. Unless the Council would say something differently, I didn't see that the focus on quality of life and the kinds of things you've said in general related to housing and for different demographics or whatever is precluded by what this motion is here because it's not explicitly called out. We're not coming back with the fifth scenario. We're going to bring back some more details and some ways of framing these things that will enable you to settle on that. If you really feel that it's necessary, then I would say you better tell us. I was planning on being sure TRANSCRIPT Page 74 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 that the Staff came back with some recommendations related to housing even under this scenario. Council Member Wolbach: In that case... Mr. Keene: That's what I'm saying. I'm also looking at the Mayor. Council Member Wolbach: I appreciate that. In that case, I'll offer a friendly amendment which, I think, dovetails well with Item Six which is here now. The friendly amendment would be to evaluate higher housing growth than Scenario Four. If we're going to look at lower office growth than Scenario Two, then I think we should also balance that out. I don't think it would hurt to evaluate higher housing growth than Scenario Four. That's the friendly amendment hopefully. Vice Mayor Scharff: You know I voted against the other one, but I will accept your friendly amendment. Council Member DuBois: I'd like us to vote on this separately. Actually I do think it's a sixth scenario, what you're talking about. Let's vote on the amendment by itself. Council Member Wolbach: I can offer it as a ... Mayor Burt: If I might jump in. I think that that's somewhat open-ended. If it were "evaluate a higher housing than"—"four" is how many units? Mr. Keene: That's the most (inaudible). Mayor Burt: Higher than the most. Council Member Wolbach: That's the point. "Six" identified lower job, specifically office and R&D, beyond the lowest. It broadened the range of discussion for study. I'm suggesting that while (crosstalk). Mayor Burt: No, I understand what you're saying. I was more interested in something that would be allowing Number Four provided that it had fully mitigated or severely mitigated impacts on trips and schools. Vice Mayor Scharff: That's sort of how I understood it. I'm probably understanding it wrong. I wasn't going to put a cap of up to four. The whole notion of this is that it's fully mitigated. The whole Motion. That was my argument when you guys voted against me on the office cap. (inaudible) on adding the R&D. I'm fine with it the way Mayor Burt said it. I don't think it needs say up to Scenario Four. I just want to see the housing that creates the quality of life, which means mitigated. I think in a lot of TRANSCRIPT Page 75 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 ways is what you and Mayor Burt both talked about which is you build the housing Downtown, you have no parking, and it should show up as no parking. That should be mitigated. How much housing could we have that's mitigated? I didn't expect them to come back with more than Scenario Four frankly, but I wasn't going to say it. If Mayor Burt feels that, then you might want to accept that. Council Member Wolbach: That was not my intention. I appreciate that, but that was not the purpose of hoping to see an expanded study. Council Member DuBois: Just to clarify, the whole idea... Council Member Wolbach: We're not picking here; we're just talking about study. Council Member DuBois: The whole idea of this mix and match thing was any number already covered in here we've got done. That's why we said jobs below what was in here, because that was something new. That's why you're proposing housing above what's in here, because it's something new. Council Member Wolbach: I want to see what the impacts would be. Vice Mayor Scharff: I completely misunderstood. I just was wanting to see what the highest housing number we could have without impact. That's all. Council Member Wolbach: I think this already identifies that, and that's what the City Manager was suggesting. That's why I'm offering this in addition to that. I think that's (crosstalk). Mayor Burt: That's now—has ... Vice Mayor Scharff: I withdrew it. Mayor Burt: He's withdrawn his (crosstalk). Vice Mayor Scharff: It doesn't matter; he didn't accept it anyway. Council Member Wolbach: I'll offer it as a separate amendment. I'd offer ... Mayor Burt: We heard it. Council Member Wolbach: which is (crosstalk). Mayor Burt: We'll just see if there's a second. No second. Council Member Wolbach: No second. TRANSCRIPT Page 76 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 AMENDMENT: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Council Member XX to add to the Motion, “evaluate higher housing growth than in Scenario 4.” AMENDMENT FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND Mayor Burt: Council Member Berman. Council Member Berman: I just want to make a macro statement that we might have to consider it when we come back to talk about housing. We talk here about direct (inaudible) further mitigations along with prospective mitigation and enforcement measures for a scenario that improves the quality of life in Palo Alto. I don't know that we've ever defined what the quality of life in Palo Alto means. We talk a lot about how it means transportation and parking and how many seconds you have to wait at an intersection, but we don't talk at all about whether or not it includes socioeconomic diversity or the ability of renters to stay in their homes or any of that kind of stuff. To me, it does. I'll take this opportunity to say, Staff, to me that's what that means. I think we as a Council need to probably have a conversation about that so that we all know what we're talking about when we throw this term that we throw around every five minutes. One more quick point. Looking at the different scenarios, I'm struck by how—if you look at City total vehicle miles traveled and you look at Scenario Two, slowing growth and you look at Scenario Four, the sustainability tested, that's an increase of 62 1/2 percent in housing, and it's an increase of less than one percent in City total vehicle miles traveled. The decisions that we're going to be making are compromises. We have to decide what impacts we're willing to handle in exchange for what benefits we get out of it. I think that when we have this conversation later on, it'll be really important not just to compare this is worse than that, but what do you gain in exchange. That was very striking to me. Mayor Burt: Final speaker on this. Council Member Schmid. Council Member Schmid: I have a general concern about the Motion. It is very general in nature and allows come back with a variety of perspectives, statements and so on. What's missing is the specifics. Let me try an amendment. We've talked a lot about the jobs/housing imbalance and what happens to housing. Let me propose an amendment that we return to the jobs/housing balance we had in 1990 which is 2.5, two jobs for every employed resident, 2.47. Council Member Wolbach: I'll second it. TRANSCRIPT Page 77 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 AMENDMENT: Council Member Schmid moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to add to the Motion, “return to the jobs housing balance of 2.5 jobs for each employed resident.” Council Member Schmid: Let me make the case. If you look at the history of Palo Alto going through Comprehensive Plan discussions, in 1988 we had the Citywide Land Use and Transportation Study. It came after a two year moratorium and was to deal with the traffic and parking issue. This had on Page One a solution, Transportation Demand Management. It says that this is a way along with some rezoning of getting us out of the traffic and parking issue we had. It did not have a very concrete output; although, it said something about doubling the number of workers that were using Transportation Demand Management. It didn't work. Ten years later, while they're following the Comp Plan that we're currently in, they came up with a notion of a University Avenue Parking Assessment District. Let's build some garages. The business community got around that. They said, "We'll build garages, form this assessment district, build garages.." They added 700 spaces. In a funny clause in there, they got parking rights to 9,100 spaces which they are still using. Plans that don't have concrete, measurable goals have problems. Over the last decades in Palo Alto, we're in the same situation they were in the late '80s and the late '90s. We have this traffic, density, parking issue. We need concrete measures of solutions. Proposal is let's have at least one concrete measure of a jobs/employed resident ratio which is reduced from its current level. Mayor Burt: Council Member DuBois. You seconded that, right? Wolbach, Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: This gets back to kind of what I was trying to suggest. Thank you for making it more articulately than I did. I'd actually suggest a slight tweak, which would be "to study a return" or using the language you used earlier in the motion "to evaluate return to the jobs/housing balance of 2.5 jobs." Would you be okay with that minor change? Council Member Schmid: Yeah. AMENDMENT RESTATED: Council Member Schmid moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to add to the Motion, “evaluate a return to the jobs housing balance of 2.5 jobs for each employed resident.” Council Member Wolbach: I've spoken enough as to why this is important. Mayor Burt: I'm going to actually speak at this time. I want to make sure that we're really understanding the ramifications of this, and it may simplify TRANSCRIPT Page 78 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 the vote on it. Just very back of the napkin, if we froze our jobs and had zero job growth over this period, not modest but zero, to obtain this we would have to add housing units that would be equivalent to about 20 percent of our existing jobs. That's, say, in the ballpark of enough housing units to employ—I'm not sure how the math is going to go. Eric, have you done the math? Council Member Filseth: (inaudible). Mayor Burt: No, that's not right. Council Member Berman: It's a third. Mayor Burt: Wait, use your mic. Council Member Filseth: We've got 28,000 housing units now. It looks to me like we'd have to add about 10,000. That would be another 50 percent of the housing stock (crosstalk). Mayor Burt: I suspect that's actually low when you look at jobs per household. Even if we use that number, we're talking about adding ... Council Member Filseth: It's big. Mayor Burt: ... 10,000 housing units in this period, and freezing jobs growth. For me, it's nice to throw out some number, but I don't think my colleagues have actually thought through the ramifications of this amendment. The maker and the seconder, I'm saying. If Council Members feel they understand the ramifications of this well enough to vote on it, we can go forward. If people want to speak to it, we can speak more. Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I just had a quick question. Was the intent the overall balance would got to 2.5 or just the growth, the new jobs would go to 2.5? Council Member Schmid: The intention was to take the new job growth over the 15, 16-year period. Mayor Burt: No, that's not what this says at all. Council Member Wolbach: I think the goal is to see what kinds of changes over the next 15 years would result in a balance similar to what we had in 1990. Mayor Burt: That's what the motion says. TRANSCRIPT Page 79 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Council Member Wolbach: Fully understanding that this is study, not promotion, so that we would understand just what those implications would be now. Mr. Keene: It's actually evaluate which I'd say is less strong than study. Mayor Burt: Council Member DuBois, did you want to speak briefly to this? Vote on the amendment. That fails on a vote with Council Members Wolbach and Schmid voting yes. AMENDMENT FAILED: 2-7 Schmid, Wolbach yes Mayor Burt: Are we ready to return to the Main Motion? Please vote on the board. MOTION RESTATED: Vice Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to direct Staff to develop a “fifth scenario” for analysis in a supplement to the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) that: A. Adds the sustainability options from the current scenarios, which reduce impacts, including traffic, greenhouse gas impacts, noise, etc.; and B. Includes further mitigations along with prospective mitigation enforcement measures for a scenario that improves the quality of life in Palo Alto by mitigating the impacts of future growth and development; and C. Wherever possible, the scenario will use Palo Alto specific data; and D. Where possible to integrate the Sustainability Climate Action Plan (S/CAP) in the fifth scenario; and E. Evaluate mechanisms for regulating employment densities in existing buildings; and F. Evaluate lower General Office and R/D development than Scenario 2; and G. Evaluate transportation and parking regulation triggers if mitigation measures are failing or exceeding expectations. Mayor Burt: That passes 8-1 with Council Member Schmid voting no. MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 8-1 Schmid no TRANSCRIPT Page 80 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Mayor Burt: Now, we return to the process part which is a question of how we align upcoming Comp Plan and Citizen Advisory Committee meetings in both the schedule and the topics. Not only how we look at what the Council's doing on those topics, but also what the Council's taking up on related matters and how it relates to what the CAC is doing. Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I just had some quick comments. I have a question about the schedule. I think we reviewed the Community Services Element, and some of the feedback was wanted to see another draft before the whole thing was done. That was an easier Element. I want to see the schedule give some time to have a review of final edits. I'd like to the assumptions on land use come to Council before they go to the CAC, which is going to be tough unless we redo the schedule here. The issue of the CAC on the housing discussion, I think one thing we might want to consider is having Council Members go to a CAC meeting or trying to use the time that way. I think housing is going to be a big enough issue that if we do have a joint meeting, that we should still have a separate Council meeting to really deliberate and discuss housing. I see we have a sustainability session in August. Again, I think we've talked about sustainability kind of cutting across the Elements. We're having a separate S/CAP discussion. I don't know if we need a sustainability Comp Plan discussion or we should use that for some of these other topics. Mayor Burt: I'll just say that one of the thoughts I had is we were hearing that the CAC wanted to have a discussion process with the Council. We had our last meeting with the CAC, and it was great to really hear from each member. I think it gave us a sense of the range of viewpoints and the commonality of viewpoints amongst the members, but it really didn't allow for a dialog of nine Council Members and 20 CAC members. I'm not sure how that could occur. A though that I had is that on given topics, if we have Study Sessions with the CAC, that the CAC appoint representatives on each topic, whether it's five CAC members who represent the CAC, so that we could actually have discussions with the CAC. Let them decide who would represent them on given topics. I don't know if that's something that seems like maybe worth trying. I'd be interested in hearing that. That's just a process one. The other thing that I know the CAC has been going through, struggling with committees and subcommittees. I do want to make sure that it's clear to the CAC that as long as they are abiding by the Brown Act, that there's no constraint on them being able to have individuals or small groups meet on an ad hoc basis without requiring Staff or Staff support or noticed meetings. The rules allow them to get together in small groups. For some reason, CAC members are under a different impression as to the TRANSCRIPT Page 81 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 limitations on how they can function. I just want to make sure that that gets clarified for them. Jeremy. Jeremy Dennis, Planning Manager: I can speak to that last point. Hillary and I both indicated to the CAC through the rules and also conversations with them. We said obviously you can be—we tried to discourage ad hoc meetings to some extent, because we wanted to avoid some of the issues that we believe occurred during the P&TC's iteration of the draft, where there were meetings going on and the public wasn't involved and invited. We've said, "If you're going to meet and not tell us, we understand that, but we wanted to preserve an open, transparent process as much as possible." While we haven't been embracing it, we've indicated that we understood it may happen. Mayor Burt: I think your discouragement has been taken to mean that they can't get together as small groups to think about things. Instead, they're limited to a fairly regimented process. It really doesn't lend itself to the kind of problem solving and deliberation and iterative process that occurs if you can allow small groups of people to think about things. They come and in an open way, a minority of a group can say, "We have this proposal." When we have Colleagues Memos, if only one Council Member could come and make a proposal on a legislative direction without having conferred with any other Council Members and thought about it and had that concept mature a bit before coming to the full body, it really wouldn't be very productive. Now, when we bring the Colleagues Memo, it's doesn't mean that it's fully baked. We typically or very often as a Council will modify it, will critique it, we might reject it. I think this strong discouragement is stifling. The process of having 20 people there and you have a given subject and you have a limited amount of time, what I've heard from a number of CAC members is they really don't have an adequate opportunity to have discourse and deliberation. I don't think it's appropriate to discourage them from having discussions that they have a full legal right to do as members and that would not violate the Brown Act in any way provided that they don't. Second, we need to have more opportunity for real discourse and deliberation as a CAC body. Those are a couple of things that I would really want to encourage. Ms. Gitelman: Mayor Burt, if I can just ask a quick question. It had been this Council's direction in the past that when the CAC appoints a subcommittee, that that Subcommittee should meet at a time and place where the public can observe. You're not proposing to change that. If there's a subset of the subcommittee ... Mayor Burt: Just that individual members of the CAC can ... TRANSCRIPT Page 82 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Ms. Gitelman: I understand. Mayor Burt: ... are not strongly discouraged from getting together and talking. They should be then subsequently completely transparent with the CAC. If out of their discussions they think they've got an idea they want to bring forward, then they say, "Several of us spoke about this, and here's an idea." Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: I fully support the comments by Council Member Burt, except that I still think that Subcommittees should, if necessary, be able to meet independently as I moved without a second at a previous meeting. Given the direction that you have from the Council and the comment you've just heard from the Mayor which I've supported—these are just individual comments at this point—do you need a motion in order to relay message to ... Male: No. Mayor Burt: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: I also support the comments that were made by the Mayor. Some of the other comments that I hear and have heard quite a bit is that if we're going to have representatives, which is maybe a workable way to do this, to have a joint meeting discussion with CAC members and the Council. Having those representatives is a great idea. That said, one of the comments that I have heard several times is that the CAC doesn't take votes. It seems to me that it would be important for them to take votes, because it's the culmination of a discussion that they oftentimes talk about they don't have time to have either. I've heard it several times from a number of different people. They come in and everybody makes their own comments, but they don't have the discussion. There isn't like a conclusion that's arrived at, so there's no vote. When somebody comes to the Council to represent the CAC's positions, is that a minority view or a majority view and how would we know if it was both or just one or the other if there's isn't a vote taken? Mayor Burt: My experience in both a number of multi-stakeholder advisory groups and outside of City processes as well as what we had in the South of Forest Avenue (SOFA) One and SOFA Two that Council Member Holman and I participated in was a process of consensus building. The group worked toward a consensus which is not unanimity. You'd have to define roughly what consensus means. I think that we would not benefit from narrow, simple majority votes on a stakeholder group that starts off with perhaps differing viewpoints. What we really want is a group to work toward consensus. Once they have consensus, that's the vote I would prefer to see. TRANSCRIPT Page 83 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 That takes some deliberation. That doesn't just happen when people just say their opinions and you take a vote. Maybe sometimes you'll have that out of the gate. On most contentious topics, it really takes some work. That's what happens in multi-stakeholder groups that are facilitated and work toward that as a goal. Jeremy. Council Member Holman: For me to follow-up on that just before you, Jeremy. Yes, working towards consensus, but that doesn't mean that we won't still have a majority and a minority opinion, especially when it comes to housing. When there are representatives that come to this body and participate, I would want to make sure that both perspectives are represented here. Then again, Pat and I both have been talking about how we get to how those perspectives are identified. Mr. Dennis: Thank you to you both. At least my experience at the CAC meetings that there's a proactive engagement by the Co-Chairs to draw out areas of contention and consensus to a point where, if necessary, straw polls are taken to really define those. We've defined a minority opinion at four members, not less than that. We look for about four members to get to that point. Those issues are then taken to the subcommittees where they have a further discussion refinement. If they can't come to a consensus on a particular issue, that's where we develop kind of a pro and con set of arguments that the subcommittee members themselves put together. We haven't had the opportunity to have that discussion here at the Council yet, because we've only brought forward one Element that was not contentious. My experience, that's what's occurring. Mayor Burt: I think the process you described is good. If you have Subcommittees that represent the diversity of stakeholder viewpoints, then they as a group of five or whatever can hammer out a discussion and move toward—if they can have a consensus and even unanimity, they can probably sell it to the larger group. I agree that that's an effective process. Council Member Schmid. Council Member Schmid: I think one of the values of a CAC is to raise issues as you get involved in the details that might not otherwise appear. I think it's important that the Council get some feedback when there is a diversity of opinions, rather than just the final results. I find it very valuable to hear the points where there's a lively discussion and maybe various points of view. If there's some way of feeding that to the Council, I know you take Minutes of the meeting, maybe if you just make those available to the Council. If there are straw polls, it's easy to identify here's an issue where there's some division going on. I think that's valuable for the Council as we get into transportation and land use. TRANSCRIPT Page 84 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Mayor Burt: We've had some feedback on process. One question is do we need to formalize that or is Staff comfortable with this is feedback. Mr. Keene: I think we can safely say that we're comfortable with this. I would just put one caveat on it. I think the Council is asking that we deepen the process somewhat. The ability for people to have ad hoc conversations—ultimately they are going to want to bring those back and integrate them in the group. Fortunately, we do have experienced Co-Chairs who can do that. That also does put some demands on the Staff to be able to support that, so that those processes work right. Of course, we're losing the lead Staff person we have on this. Mayor Burt: When you said bring it back, you mean not supporting the ad hoc but just helping the integration. Is that what you meant? Mr. Keene: Yeah, the integration within the CAC itself. People are going to come back, and there may be some well-developed arguments that again have to be handled artfully so that the other folks have a chance. I'm just saying we have some Staff support in the nearer term that's going to pose some challenges. Mayor Burt: We've given some process input. We also need to see if there's any specific feedback on the schedule. Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: I note that the Transportation Element is looked at by the CAC already, actually twice. It doesn't come to the Council until April 25th. I'm not assuming but supposing that there might be some comments that the Council might have. It doesn't show that it's going back to the CAC. I note that land use and community design is very different. It comes to the CAC April 19, then it comes to Council June 6th, and then goes back to the CAC on June 21. I'm wondering why the different processes, the different iterations. There's not an opportunity for the Council to give feedback to the CAC on transportation. Also the very tight interconnectedness between transportation and land use, is there any combined discussion of those two at the CAC? It's not indicated here. Ms. Gitelman: Thank you for those questions, Council Member Holman. Just a reminder too. I think I mentioned in my presentation that April 25th date is not going to work for the Transportation Element discussion here at Council, because the CAC's last discussion didn't get to resolution. They're going to need one more pass at transportation, which we're hope we're going to combined into one of these other meetings after heavy-lifting by a subcommittee. We're quickly running up against a constraint here, as you pointed out. We don't have multiple iterations in the schedule of something coming to the Council, then going back to the CAC, then coming back to the TRANSCRIPT Page 85 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Council. If the Council would like to add those multiple iterations both on the CAC side and on the Council side, that's a sign shift. We'll have to evaluate the resources and how we would fit that into the schedule. Council Member Holman: That said, if the CAC didn't conclude on transportation, is there enough direction or conclusion that's been arrived at that it would be meaningful for the transportation discussion that's happened so far to come to Council before it goes back to the CAC for their final deliberation? You know what shape it's in; I don't. Ms. Gitelman: Actually the CAC as a whole delegated to the subcommittee to take it to the next step, to try and develop a polished document. Then it was the committee's expectation it would go back to the CAC for blessing before it came to the Council as a draft. That's the process they're anticipating. Of course, you could ask them to change that process. This meeting happened a couple of weeks ago, and that's their expectation. Council Member Holman: I was just curious about why it was very different with land use. We'll see how that goes. I do have one question in particular about Land Use and Community Design Element. I just want to make sure that there was a Colleagues Memo that was put forth—I apologize, I don't remember who all. I know Vice Mayor Scharff and I put forth, and I think two other colleagues, had put forward a memo having to do with how buildings address the street and incorporating El Camino Design Guidelines and stuff. The Staff for a long time didn't even know it existed. Not your fault. I just want to make sure that that's going to be included in the land use and community design section. It was deferred to the Comprehensive Plan discussion. Ms. Gitelman: I do recollect that discussion and will make sure it's reflected in the policies and programs in the Land Use Element. Council Member Holman: I think that's it. Thank you. Mayor Burt: I want to recognize that we have the Co-Chairs of the CAC here. We'd welcome any brief comments if you have any on this process discussion or schedule discussion. If you want to think about that while I call on Council Member DuBois, that'll be fine. Don't feel obliged, but we welcome them if you have them. Council Member DuBois: I just wanted to react to this idea of it going through two full cycles. I really appreciate the CAC's feedback. This is not a slight at the CAC; I'm just concerned about time. Again, we saw the one version of the Community Services Element. We had a lot of comments about its length, potential prioritization and just—I think Mayor Burt had a TRANSCRIPT Page 86 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 lot of comments about the wordiness and some things were (inaudible). Again, I could envision a process where we see a draft, we give you comments, you polish it up, and it comes back to Council. There might be a process where it doesn't go to the CAC and then back to Council. I'm a little bit worried about getting stuck in an editing loop with changes going from both groups. The overall impact is—at least for myself, I'm more worried about the quality of the product and the timeline. If we need to extend the schedule, we should figure that out. Mr. Dennis: If I could speak to that. That would be wonderful direction, because we are—as I've said in the past—still running under the assumption that we sticking to the CAC concluding its work at the end of this year. If that is no longer the goal of this body, then we'd like to know that now instead of trying to—right now, we're stuffing a lot of new meetings in a limited amount of time. That would be helpful. Council Member DuBois: There's kind of two parts to it. Again, take my last comments about polishing edits, you could wrap up CAC at one point in time, and then we could still be looking at second drafts of things in a further timeline even. That's kind of two questions. Overall for me, it's more about quality than meeting the date. Ms. Gitelman: Thank you. That's good for us to know. It'd be interesting to know if the rest of the Council feels similarly. You look at this whole schedule, we did set this up so the CAC's work would be done in this calendar year. In the first part of next year, this Council would review all the work products again. That's when you would look at the revised and re- edited and simplified version based on your prior direction. Council Member DuBois: Just a last comment. I am concerned about that prioritization process. I think last time you said we'd get the entire Comp Plan and to the prioritization. If we could split that up, that would be better. Mayor Burt: I see the Co-Chairs have approached the mike. I wasn't serious. Arthur Keller, CAC Co-Chair: We took you as serious. Firstly, Council Member DuBois' comments are very important. If we want to keep to the schedule of finishing the bulk of our work by 2016 and considering the number of iterations we're going on—it seems to be more than we expected—then we would have to least increase the number of meetings. That's an issue with the current resources of Staff and also with the expectations of the CAC. I'll just take the opportunity to make one other comment. One of the pieces of feedback from the Council at the meeting where we discussed the Community Services Element, the nature of that TRANSCRIPT Page 87 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Element looked different from the nature of the 1998-2010 Comp Plan. In that Comp Plan, most of the narrative was sprinkled throughout, interspersed with the policies and programs. In fact, there was often a paragraph of narrative after each policy and program. It wasn't all collected at the beginning. When you looked at the Element and saw it all collected at the beginning, you're wondering why is there so much narrative. That's why. It's not more narrative than there was in the old Comp Plan; it was just segregated differently. I think that's worth considering instead of just saying take a meat axe to the narrative in terms of restructuring and refactoring it and incorporating it with the policies and programs and the 1998-2010 Comp Plan was. Thank you. Dan Garber, CAC Co-Chair: Because we're Co-Chairs, I'm going to talk as well. First of all, a general comment. Really great discussion this evening. I can't tell you how helpful this is. I really look forward to it coming back. The additional conversation that you're going to give it is very, very helpful. One of the things that we are beginning to focus on, because we're finally at a point where we can do this particularly with the Transportation Element, is everybody got all their ideas out, and Staff diligently put all the items together. We ended up twice as many policies as the previous Comp Plan. We ended up with a third more programs. Part of the focus is now also to refine, consolidate and make this a cleaner, qualitative document that can be read. Critical to that effort is going to be Staff's involvement in taking a strong hand in helping us craft a lot of this language. We are all amateurs; they're professionals. Getting their ability and their art into it is going to be extremely helpful to us. To that end, we need a Jeremy Two. If you could provide some emphasis there, that would be very helpful to us. Mayor Burt: What if we just had a policy to reduce programs and a program to reduce policies. Mr. Garber: I would triple that. Mayor Burt: I think that we're good enough without taking Motions on this. Everybody okay? That concludes Item Number Four. Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs None. Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements Mayor Burt: We have Council Member Comments. Yeah, report out. TRANSCRIPT Page 88 of 88 City Council Meeting Transcript: 2/22/16 Council Member Kniss: Because I know you're all looking forward to this and I've stayed to quarter to 12:00 to tell you, the bocce ball tournament will be on Wednesday, April 20th. We need a team. We're not meeting that night as far as I can tell. We're not meeting that night. Acterra moved their Friday night event to Thursday night, so Wednesday night is wide open at this point. I hope you'll all think about coming. Definitely, let's put a great team together. You remember this is how the league makes money for their pact in order to influence those kinds of things we'd like to see happen in Sacramento. Mayor Burt: I would like to report out on yesterday's Chinese New Year Event at Mitchell, which was really fantastic. It was easily 500 people. When I had some remarks, I spoke to the crowd about our former colleague Yiaway Yeh. When I sat next to Sheena Chin who is on our Library Advisory Commission, I asked, "What portion of the audience do you think is familiar with Yiaway?" I wasn't seeing a lot of heads nodding. She said, "Most of this community are recently arrived immigrants and new members of our community." That made that event doubly significant. One, Yiaway was really focused on pulling in this very large portion of our community of recent immigrants. That has accelerated in recent years. I was very thankful for that event that they plan on being an annual event. I think it emphasizes for us the need to have deliberate actions. If we just have traditional neighborhood events that new residents don't feel a part of, we're not going to pull them in. We have to be creative in really reaching out deliberately and making people feel welcome. I think there was just a great enthusiasm about the fact that they were participating in a Palo Alto event that at the same time was recognizing a real rich cultural tradition. I think there was a real appreciation and enthusiasm. Just to have us be thinking about that. That's it. Meeting's adjourned. Thank you. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 11:46 P.M.