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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016-04-18 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL TRANSCRIPT Page 1 of 93 Special Meeting April 18, 2016 The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council Chambers at 5:02 P.M. Present: Berman arrived at 6:24 P.M., Burt, DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Kniss, Schmid, Wolbach Absent: Scharff Closed Session 1. CONFERENCE WITH REAL PROPERTY NEGOTIATORS Authority: Government Code Section 54956.8 Property: ITT Transmitter Site, Assessor Parcel Numbers: 008-05-001 and 008-05-005, Palo Alto, CA 94301 Agency Negotiators: James Keene, Lalo Perez, Hamid Ghaemmaghami Negotiating Parties: Globe Wireless and City of Palo Alto Under Negotiation: Acquisition of Easement: Price and Terms of Payment. 1A. CONFERENCE WITH CITY ATTORNEY—POTENTIAL LITIGATION Significant Exposure to Litigation Under Section 54956.9(d)(2) (One Potential Case, as Defendant) – Phase 2, Downtown Residential Preferential Parking District 1. Mayor Burt: Our first Item is a Closed Session, conference with Real Property Negotiators regarding the ITT transmitter site, Parcel Number 008- 05-001 and 008-05-005. We would need a Motion to go into Closed Session on this Item. Council Member Filseth: So moved. Council Member Holman: Second. Council Member DuBois: Do we need a Motion on both Items? Mayor Burt: One at a time. Motion by Council Member Holman, seconded by Council Member Filseth. TRANSCRIPT Page 2 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 MOTION: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member Filseth to go into Closed Session for Agenda Item Number 1. Mayor Burt: Please vote on the board. Cory, you weren't wanting to speak, were you? The light was on. Thanks. That passes unanimously with Vice Mayor Scharff absent. MOTION PASSED: 7-0 Berman, Scharff absent Mayor Burt: We have a second Item for Closed Session which is a conference with the City Attorney regarding potential litigation, significant exposure to litigation under Section 54956.9(d)(2) regarding the Phase Two of the Downtown Residential Preferential Parking District. We'll need a Motion to go into ... Council Member Kniss: So moved. Council Member DuBois: Second. Mayor Burt: Motion by Council Member Kniss, seconded by Council Member DuBois. MOTION: Council Member Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to go into Closed Session for Agenda Item Number 1A. Mayor Burt: Please vote on the board. That passes on a 7-0 vote with Vice Mayor Scharff and—who else is absent? Council Member Berman absent. MOTION PASSED: 7-0 Berman, Scharff absent Mayor Burt: We will now go into Closed Session. Council went into Closed Session at 5:03 P.M. Council returned from Closed Session at 6:23 P.M. Mayor Burt: At this time the Council is reconvening from a Closed Session on Items 1 and 1A, and we have no reportable action. Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions None. TRANSCRIPT Page 3 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 City Manager Comments Mayor Burt: We will proceed with our next Item which is Oral Communications. Sorry, out of sequence here. Next Item is City Manager Comments. Mr. City Manager. James Keene, City Manager: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Council Members. A number of things to report on this evening. First of all, from the Fire Department and our Economic Development folks, I did want to let you know that the City was approached by a mobile fueling business or actually several who are interested in starting operations in Palo Alto. Mobile fueling services have the potential at times for broad public approval as they offer the convenience of having personal vehicles fueled without the need to visit a gas station. A customer would order gasoline—you remember gasoline, that's something we're trying to get rid of, but that's for later on this evening—via smart phone application (app.) and then have their vehicle fueled at their workplace. Currently the adopted Fire Code does not allow mobile fueling except on rural farms or large construction areas. The only product that can be dispensed is lower risk diesel fuel. Our Fire Department in conjunction with the County Fire Marshal's and the State Fire Marshal's Offices has been working through a variety of Fire Code hazardous materials and environmental protection regulations related to this new business model. Our Fire Chief and our Fire Marshal as well as our Economic Development Director recently met with mobile fueling representatives related to the possibility of a trial project in Palo Alto. While we're not prepared to identify when or whether a trial study could start, I did want to let you know that we are discussing this with these mobile fuel operators. We'd need to be able to address community safety and possible updates to the Fire Code before anything like that could happen here. The Planning and Community Environment Department hosted a demonstration of a two-way cycle track on Park Boulevard between California Avenue and Grant Avenue on Sunday, April 10th, from 9:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. The demonstration was held in conjunction with the California Avenue farmers market. This living preview gave Palo Alto bicycle riders, residents and visitors a chance to visit a Class bikeway along the east side of Park Boulevard and ride for two blocks completely separated from motor vehicle traffic. City Staff, consultants and volunteers from the community, Payback and Silicon Valley Bike Coalition assisted guests with navigation and collected their feedback at two information tents. The feedback from cyclists was generally positive; however, there were some concerns expressed regarding access to and from the two-way facility. Residents of a nearby mixed-use building voiced concern regarding the impact to on-street parking in the block between California (Cal.) Avenue and Sherman Avenue. Our Staff will be reviewing all of the input we've received and looking at several alternatives including a TRANSCRIPT Page 4 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 connection through the Caltrain station parking lot in order to minimize the impacts on on-street parking. Just a final announcement and update on the Page Mill Road/I-280 interchange open house that County Supervisor Joe Simitian will be hosting on April 20th to present a proposed Interim Bike Improvement Plan at the Page Mill and I-280 interchange and solicit public comment. The meeting will take place at 6:00 P.M. in the Council Chambers at Los Altos Hills Town Hall located at 26379 Fremont Road in Los Altos Hills. The Planning and Community Environment Department is hosting a one-day pop-up event to present the Matadero Creek greenway for a day. The Matadero Creek channel will be open to the public on April 23rd from 1:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M. between Waverley Street and Cowper Street, that short section, so our community can get a better feel for the proposed trail corridor. This is just a portion of that corridor. I did want to share that the City Council's public hearing on the Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Comprehensive (Comp.) Plan Update is being rescheduled from April 25th, which would have been your next meeting, to June 6th, which will result in an extension of the time period for public and agency comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Report. The EIR was published on February 5th, 2016, and the public comment period is now scheduled to close at the end of business on Wednesday, June 8th, 2016, two days after the City Council's public hearing. Those who are interested in the Comp. Plan Update process are encouraged to review the Draft EIR and provide either oral comments at the City Council's public hearing on June 6th or written comments by the end of the comment period as mentioned. All substantive comments on the Draft EIR will be responded to in a Final EIR which must be prepared and certified before a final action can be taken on the Comprehensive Plan Update itself. Members of the public wishing to provide input on parameters of the Fifth Scenario that the Council has asked Staff to prepare and come back to Council, if you want to make comments on that scenario prior to the preparation of the Final EIR, are also encouraged to attend the Council meeting of May 16th. The fifth scenario analysis will be circulated for public comments this fall, and responses to those comments will also be included in the Final EIR. We moved the Draft EIR off several weeks, actually more than a month, in order to follow the Fifth Scenario discussion. As the Council's aware, the Interim Ordinance establishing an annual limit of 50,000 square feet of new Office and Retail & Development (R&D) space was successful in tempering requests for new entitlements this Fiscal Year (FY), and the 50,000-square-foot threshold was not reached by March 31st as the requirements of your decision had laid out. As a result, there are three separate projects which collectively total less than 50,000 square feet, which will be approved by the Planning Director over the next two weeks based on recommendations by the Architectural Review Board (ARB). These decisions will become final unless they are appealed to City Council. On May 2nd, the Council is also scheduled to consider a site and TRANSCRIPT Page 5 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 design application for a fourth project that was subject to the interim annual limit. I did want to share and present—I'll bring this up to the Mayor that the City of Palo Alto Utilities earned a spot on the national top ten utilities solar list compiled by the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA), otherwise known as SEPA. SEPA ranked our utility third for the number of watts per customer installed in 2015. That's third in the nation. In 2015, Palo Alto saw 1,846 solar electric watts per customer, and a total of 861 photovoltaic (PV) systems came onto the grid. SEPA's ninth annual survey of solar activities includes figures for more than 300 utilities across the country. This is the third time we've made the top ten watts per customer. Just want to— congratulations to your leadership on the Council and our Staff for delivering on your objectives in our Utilities Department. On Earth Day, Friday April 22nd, from 10:00 A.M. to 8:00 P.M. Palo Alto's first pop-up parklet is slated to be shared with our community, on that day, Earth Day, April 22nd. Three local Palo Alto residents wanted to do something special for Earth Day and show the City an alternative to parking lots. This little parklet will be on University Avenue taking two parallel parking spaces right in front of Pete's Coffee, Lululemon and near Chantal Guillon and Cream in the 400 block of University. The idea is to roll out green carpet grass, benches, trees, stools in an Earth Day-inspired activity. We'll also have bike parking in one parking space. If you're unfamiliar with parklets, here's some background. In 2005, Rebar Group created International Park(ing) Day to encourage folks to reclaim parking spaces as mini parks for people. It's since turned into a worldwide movement. Many cities around the world have done that. It's a little example of tactical urbanism. Lastly, let me see here if I've got it. Yes. If you guys could help me. I just want to share tonight's Consent Agenda includes the third street resurfacing contract to be awarded in Fiscal Year 2016. Two more—I'll tell you when to switch, David. Two more street resurfacing contracts will be on the Consent Agenda before your Council break. One in May, the contract on the FY '16 asphalt overlay paving and, in June, the 2017 preventive maintenance contract. With all this work beginning soon, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the progress we've made since the City made its commitment to improve street conditions in 2010. This chart shows the annual Street Maintenance Budget in the green vertical bars and the Citywide Pavement Condition Index, or PCI, as the yellow or off-white vertical line inching upwards toward the far right. In 2010, despite the impacts we were all working through in the great recession, the Council set a goal of improving the City's Pavement Condition Index from an average of 73 to 85 by 2021. Our PCI of 73 at that time was lower than many of our neighboring cities, while 85 is considered very good to excellent. The annual Budget was increased from 1.8 million to 5.1 million per year and has been even higher over a three year period when we've had some additional funding that we've set aside to allow the repaving of Alma and Middlefield with rubberized asphalt. Next slide real quickly. TRANSCRIPT Page 6 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Just go for the pictures and the images for the most part. This shows the street resurfacing work that was completed after the new funding was approved, over the four years beginning July 2011 through June 2015. Actually we did not get the 2011 streets in there, on the map, but you can see some pale yellow sections here, and then both overlay and preventive repairs just over the four year period, giving you a good sense for the City as a whole. Next slide real quickly. This is the map for this current Fiscal Year that we're in, as far as projects again being done around the City. Lastly, if we go just to the last slide, again this graphic shows the progress that we've been making on an annual basis. We anticipate hitting this PCI of 85 two years earlier than the original goal. Our current PCI of 82 is now the highest in Santa Clara County. As we begin to make real strides in addressing the Infrastructure Plan projects like the Public Safety Building and Bike/Pedestrian Plan implementation, we should also feel satisfied about that proactive decision five years ago that led to the success we now have in this area. Can you go back to the very first slide just for a second real quick? The interesting thing is, as you can see, we're actually in a position to begin to start reducing our annual expenditures in the next years going forward, even though we continue on an upward trajectory of improvement. Lastly, I would just say that one of the components in the proposed Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) Tax package that may go before the voters this year includes funding to go to local street and road conditions. In that proposal, any jurisdiction that has a Pavement Condition Index of 70 or higher would be eligible to have those funds be completely fungible to be used on other important capital projects. It could supplement what we want to do as transportation projects. It could go to supplement our push on the funding that could be available for Caltrain and grade separation or other issues. Just another example that investing in the future pays off, and you get to these places faster than you think if you stick to them each year. I want to thank our Public Works Staff and certainly the Council for your direction on this. That's all I have to report. Mayor Burt: Thanks, Mr. Keene. I'll just mention that not only are we now number one in the County at 82, but last year when we rose to 79, that made us the best street condition of any city in the County. We continue to improve on that. I want that last street finished. Oral Communications Mayor Burt: Now we will move on to Oral Communications. This is the period for members of the public to speak on Items that are not otherwise on the Agenda. The Council is not at liberty to discuss these Items because they were not agendized for the public. Each speaker will have up to three TRANSCRIPT Page 7 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 minutes to speak. Our first speaker is Roberta Ahlquist, if I read it correctly. Welcome. Roberta Ahlquist: My name is Roberta Ahlquist. I'm speaking on behalf of the Peninsula Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. I've lived in Palo Alto for over 50 years, and I'm a sociologist. Children learn about diversity, about difference from living it with each other, racial, ethnic, social class, ability, gender and so on. This City is losing its soul as families who are underrepresented—that's a euphemism for Latinos and African- Americans and poor people of color—are quickly disappearing from the City because there is no protection for them from any kind of rent increase or eviction. We are seeing the Manhattanization of Palo Alto, whiter, more wealthy, office, high tech. It's not healthy for any of our kids or for the investment in our future, quote/unquote. Women's International League for Peace and Freedom seeks an immediate moratorium on all office development until low income, not affordable which is a euphemism for whatever the market will bear. Low income is $20,000 to maybe $50,000. If you make $15 an hour, that average is $31,000 a year. We don't house our workers. We don't even house planners who can't afford to live here. I've talked to several, and they live in San Jose or Milpitas or whatever. Housing is a critical issue. We also seek a cap on rent increases and evictions until there's a way to deal with this housing crisis. This crisis doesn't only exist in Palo Alto, but it's Bay Area. Palo Alto needs to do something. Instead of words about affordable housing, get Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funding, seek Section Eight, get help from developers. So far we have no teeth in any of the planning about affordable housing that's being developed. I see around my neighborhood houses being bought up by people who can afford two or three of these $2 million houses, and they're sitting vacant. We would like you to act, not to provide us with good words about this crisis. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Becky Sanders, to be followed by Sea Reddy. Welcome. Becky Sanders: Good evening. Thank you for your service to our fair City. I really appreciate your trying to do the juggling act and balancing all these different needs and hopes and aspirations of all citizens here. Our neighborhood preparedness coordinator, Ken, pointed out to me at a Ventura Neighborhood Association meeting that we have five telephone poles plus a stop sign that are constructed right in the sidewalk. I have a letter here where we're asking you to just have a looky-loo and let us know what you think. The Ventura Neighborhood Association would like to call your attention to the quality of life that we're experiencing on the east of Park Boulevard. There are five utility poles and one stop sign obstructing TRANSCRIPT Page 8 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 the sidewalk between Fernando Avenue and Matadero Creek, namely telephone poles 1304, 1298, 7019, 1296 and 1295. The stop sign is located at the corner of Lambert and Park Boulevard. We would like you to take a review of this and to see how these obstructions could be removed to promote walkability and also to avoid ADA lawsuits, because these narrow gaps are really hard to navigate through if you're in a wheelchair or if you have a stroller or even if you are a regularly built person. Some of them, I had a little orientation issues, so here's a perfect telephone pole. Unfortunately that's the side of it. Try to imagine yourself going sideways. Let's have a look at that. That looks like it's about 30 inches. 1304, let's have a look at that one. That one is also about 30 inches. We can blow these all up. These are all available at the Ventura Neighborhood Association website, that would be venturapaloalto.org. Looks like I have to go. Thank you for your kind attention. We really do hope that something can be done. I'm sure the City Manager is fully capable of taking a look at this. I appreciate that. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Sea Reddy, to be followed by Jeff Levinsky. Welcome. Sea Reddy: Honorable Mayor and the citizens of Palo Alto and the neighborhoods, I have two things to bring it up. Today is the 110th anniversary of the earthquake that we had in San Francisco area. That impacted a lot of communities around here including Redwood City. There is an article about it. Coinciding with that, we had an earthquake in Japan, we had an earthquake in Ecuador. I think we all need to remind ourselves that there is a little bit we could do, be prepared when things happen. We don't know when. I have signed up with KQED, and I have one of these things. I keep it with me and my family. Some of these are—most of you have been trained. This is not the only place you can get this kit. Be aware of it. We would like to be all safe as much as possible. Thank you. The second item is we had an incident in Sunnyvale that was an apartment fire where 100 people, 100 families. It's so sad. It impacts one of my friends, Marshall Childs [phonetic], lives in that community. His apartment is not impacted, but he is out of there. There's a lot of people in our neighborhood helping. I'd like you to be kind, nice and consider donating and helping our neighbors. It's all about helping each other. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Jeff Levinsky, to be followed by our final speaker, Neilson Buchanan. Welcome. Jeff Levinsky: Good evening, Mayor Burt and City Council Members. Many of us have awaited the Business Registry data to understand and help solve the parking, traffic and other troubles in our City. The Information Report TRANSCRIPT Page 9 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 on the Business Registry attached to tonight's Agenda shows promise but also some unsettling problems. Right off the bat, the report contains a stunner that Downtown Palo Alto now contains almost seven million square feet of business space. Just two years ago, the Downtown Cap Study reported that Downtown's commercial space was under three million square feet. If you believe both, our Downtown businesses have more than doubled in size in just two years. Oops. Why does the Business Registry show such high numbers? One reason is that some companies signed up twice. You heard that they didn't want to sign up, but apparently some just enjoyed signing up. It's not hard to spot these in the report. For example, the Epiphany Hotel signed up twice, as did Webster House and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. I'm not sure why the Medical Foundation was even included in Downtown; it certainly skews the total. The owners of the office building at Hamilton and Webster signed up twice. While doing so, they claim their building has a total of 565 parking spaces, which is actually about five times as many as they have. You can't trust the parking totals in the Report either. One of the tenants in that building is a little startup called Quartzy. It's small, but it claimed that it actually occupies the entire building. It has about 25 or fewer employees, so that comes to about 2,000 square feet per employee. That means that you can't trust the square feet per employee number in the Report either. Looking beyond Downtown, the Report contains many other obvious errors. The Volvo dealership on El Camino seems to like big numbers. They claim that their buildings are about five times the size of their entire lot, which is not possible. Caffé Riace, always a subject of controversy, escaped scrutiny just by not registering at all. My personal favorite is Safeway which, despite being the second largest grocer in Palo Alto, hasn't registered either. I could go on and on, but the problem is obvious. While there is some useful information in the Report, it's not a reliable basis for any policy making. Some simple fixes would help in the future, like alerting companies when they try to register twice and when they enter wildly implausible data. Neilson is going to speak next about the budget issues associated with this. Thanks. Neilson Buchanan: Good evening. This is at least the third time I have spoken about the Business Registry to the City Council. In each case, my theme has been how important the Business Registry is and, secondly, how underfunded and under-challenged the project has been framed. I had the opportunity with several of the residents to meet with the appropriate City Staff in the last week or so. I have a pretty good understanding of what resources they've had available to them and how they're scrambling to fix the vitality of the database. Frankly, there's some fundamental problems that can only be addressed by adequate staffing and a really good corrective set of actions. I think my best action is simply go to the Finance Committee and plead a case for proper staffing and resources for the Business Registry. TRANSCRIPT Page 10 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 About 65 minutes ago, my telephone rang. I was one of the citizens that has been chosen for the Transportation Tax poll. I went through a litany of very good questions that are being asked the public on what they think about this, what they think about that. Needless to say, the foundation for part of—one of the tax options is a business head tax based upon the integrity and vitality of the Business Registry. I'll close on that comment. I think the Business Registry has a real future for this City and for the residents to solve problems and set policy, but the City Staff are fighting with one hand tied behind their back with lack of resources. I hope you and the Finance Committee will pay careful attention to it. I have poured over the integrity of the data. We could go on more than Jeff mentioned. You don't want to dig too deeply in it. Thanks. Mayor Burt: That you. That concludes our Oral Communications. Minutes Approval 2. Approval of Action Minutes for the April 4, 2016 Council Meeting. Mayor Burt: The next Item on the Agenda is Approval of Minutes from the April 4th, 2016 meeting. Do we have a Motion to approve? Council Member Kniss: So moved. Council Member Berman: Second. MOTION: Council Member Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Berman to approve the Action Minutes for the April 4, 2016 Council Meeting. Mayor Burt: Motion to approve by Council Member Kniss, second by Council Member Berman. I see no discussion. Please vote on the board. That passes unanimously with Vice Mayor Scharff absent. MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Scharff absent Consent Calendar Mayor Burt: Our next Item is the Consent Calendar. Council Member Kniss. Council Member Kniss: I would be delighted to move the Consent Calendar but with the exception of Number Three which is the approval of a Concept Plan for Bikes and Pedestrian Improvements, etc. Council Member Holman: Second. Council Member Schmid: Second. TRANSCRIPT Page 11 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 MOTION: Council Member Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Holman, third by Council Member Schmid to pull Agenda Item Number 3- Approval of the Concept Plan for Bicycle and Pedestrian Improvements… to be heard at a date uncertain. MOTION: Council Member Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to approve Agenda Item Numbers 4-9. 3. Approval of the Concept Plan for Bicycle and Pedestrian Improvements Along Amarillo Avenue, Bryant Street, East Meadow Drive, Montrose Avenue, Moreno Avenue, Louis Road, Palo Alto Avenue, and Ross Road. 4. Approval of a Contract With O'Grady Paving, Inc. in the Amount of $1,557,662 for the Palo Alto Various Streets Resurfacing Project STPL 5100(022), Capital Improvement Program Project PE-86070. 5. Approval of Amendment No. One to Contract Number S15159331 With DocuSign to Increase the Total Amount Not-to-Exceed $279,000 (from $225,000) Over Three Years by Adding $36,000 to Year One and $18,000 to Year Two for Additional Training and Support Services. 6. Approval of Contract Amendment No. Two to Contract Number C15154454 With Integrated Design 360 for Residential Landscape Plan Review and Landscape Permitting Consultancy Services and Term Extension of One Year Adding $365,535 for a Not-to-Exceed Amount of $878,261. 7. Approval of a Four Year Contract Number C16162436 With TJKM in the Amount of $800,000 and a Four Year Contract Number C16163381 With Fehr and Peers in the Amount of $800,000 for Transportation Engineering Project Support Services, Transportation Engineering Resources, and Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan Support. 8. Resolution 9582 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Scheduling the City Council Winter Closure for 2016 and Setting the Annual Council Reorganization Meeting on Tuesday, January 3, 2017.” 9. Approval of a Wastewater Enterprise Fund Contract WC-14001 With Ranger Pipelines, Inc. in the Amount of $3,386,018 for Sanitary Sewer Rehabilitation Project 27 in the Downtown North, Crescent Park, Community Center and Leland Manor Neighborhoods, and Approval of a Budget Amendment Increasing the Sanitary Sewer Rehabilitation Project 27 Budget (WC-14001) in the Amount of $700,000. TRANSCRIPT Page 12 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Mayor Burt: It's move of approval of the Consent Calendar with the exception of Item 3. Council Members Kniss, Holman and Schmid have moved to have Item Number 3 removed, which passes the Council requirement of three members to request removal of a Consent Calendar Item. Mr. City Manager, do we have any—I take it that we would not be scheduling it this evening. James Keene, City Manager: We would not be in a position to—first of all, the Agenda is too busy for the rest of this evening for us to schedule it, let alone being sure that we've got the requisite Staff here. There is some possibility, but I have to work with the Mayor on this schedule after tonight, for the meeting on the 25th, which would be next week. We are looking at trying to add a Closed Session at 5:00 P.M. and starting that meeting. If we can do that, we also may have enough time, depending upon other decisions you make tonight, to carry this forward to the meeting on the 25th. That's when it would be. If we're not able to, we'd find another date after that. Mayor Burt: I might add for Colleagues that our protocols strongly encourage Council Members to notify the City Manager in advance of intention to remove an Item from Consent. That would mean that more than one would have to. If only a single Council Member intended to remove it, we would not have it removed. In those cases, it would potentially enable an Item to be heard that evening, depending on scheduling considerations. In this case it's a moot point. Council Member DuBois: The Clerk just reminded me that there are speakers for Number 3. Mayor Burt: Excuse me. Before we go forward with a vote on it, we actually have two speakers who want to speak on Item Number 3. Our first speaker is Michael Hodos, to be followed by Richard Brand. Welcome. You have up to three minutes to speak. Michael Hodos, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 3: In spite of the fact that the Item's been removed from the Agenda, I thought I'd take this opportunity to point out five deficiencies in the plan that we've observed over the last several days that we've had a chance to look at it. The plan as proposed is based on parking patterns that were evaluated in mid-February, that do not reflect new parking patterns and incentives that are likely to emerge with the rollout of Residential Parking Program (RPP) Phase 2 that began April 1st. Enforcement actually began today for the first time, at 8:00 this morning. As a result, the data that is currently used in the Report does not reflect the new parking patterns and incentives that are certain to emerge in the weeks ahead as the ten new RPP mini zones and associated TRANSCRIPT Page 13 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 enforcement take place. That's Number 1. Number 2, it's very clear that some of the data is not sufficiently granular or accurate enough to give a clear picture of the effect of proposed changes to Bryant Street parking that may have on the RPP Program. The third is that resident leaders who have become truly expert at analyzing the RPP zoned parking data will need several weeks to accurately collect and analyze the data to bring it before the City Council, so the implications of these suggested changes on RPP Phase 2 will be understood. Fourth, I couldn't find anything in the Report, any comments, to reflect the very real possibility that removing additional parking from Bryant Street and adding additional red zones at the cross streets may actually make portions of Bryant Street within the RPP area less safe by encouraging both cyclists and motorists to run stop signs with even greater frequency than they do now, because they'll be able to see further down the street. This needs to be addressed in the Plan. In fact, it seemed that a major component of the Bicycle Boulevard Concept Plan that's currently completely missing is that there should be funding for more aggressive traffic enforcement of the existing stop signs in the Downtown area for the increased safety of both the cyclists and the motorists alike. Let me say at the outset that I've been an avid cyclist for most of my life and a supporter of cycling and bicycle safety since long before we moved to our house on the 900 block of Bryant Street some 40 years ago. In fact, when we renovated our house, we actually found a way to add a small bicycle storage closet to it, not to mention the fact that for a time I was the manager of the bicycle outfitter in Los Altos to which I rode daily. I think there's a lot of work to be done on this before it accurately reflects the impact that it could have on RPP and on safe cycling as a whole. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Richard Brand. We have one late speaker card, Neilson Buchanan. You'll be allowed to speak. Richard Brand, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 3: Good evening, Council Members. Richard Brand, 281 and emeritus member of the RPP stakeholders group. I appreciate this. I want you to move on to other things and support the Agenda tonight. Just to say, though, I oppose this plan. First of all, when I came in last week to get my—I had a meeting here on fiber to the home. It's absurd how big this is, and it was on the Consent Calendar. I'm sure you all read it, right? You read every page of it. In fact, this is bigger than the telephone book. As Michael said, this is definitely not ready for prime time. It's Citywide. It's an important element. I'm a bicyclist too, as I know the Mayor is. We see each other out on the road. This needs work. What I'd really like to see is the Planning Department coordinate this type of activity, which started under Jaime Rodriguez, with the RPP. Unfortunately, we don't have a stakeholders group any more. I've stood before you and said that's a mistake. I think that this could be worked TRANSCRIPT Page 14 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 out. One of the things that I look at, and there's a new addendum to the 6647 Agenda Item here that shows a map. I look at my intersection, and it shows loss of parking spaces where we've already been pulled back. We've had our curb painted red way back now, to two parking spaces already gone. It's showing removing two more. That means it's going to remove parking spaces down half the block. This doesn't even work. I'm willing to work with Mr. Mello on this. I know that he actually is involved in RPP, but we need a coordinated item. Thank you for removing the item from the Agenda. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our final speaker is Neilson Buchanan. Neilson Buchanan, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 3: Allow me just to add to the previous two sets of comments. If the wisdom of the City Staff and Council would be to remove every automobile parked on Bryant, which is the street on which I live, if it was done in the interest of safety, I would be supporting it without any qualifications. Bicycle opportunities for daylighting at those intersections is really important. I don't object to loss of parking capacity for that reason. What I do object is that the analysis hasn't been done on all the different losses of parking capacity that influence the vast permit parking area. That's what's missing out of this Report. We have actually created ten micro zones, micro climates, for parking. As soon as you tamper with a little bit of each one, then there's just—like squeezing a balloon, the parking just goes down the street. I would propose, when you want to take capacity out of the neighborhood parking, that it be adjusted by the density change. There's a limit of some 2,000 permits that are supposed to be sold over time. If you want to take out 10 or 100 or 200 parking spaces, then it's time to change the goal post and reduce the 2,000 limit. What ought to be constant is what's the density of nonresident parking in the neighborhoods. I won't belabor that point tonight. That's the issue as I see it. It's not the fact that we're losing parking 100, 200, 300 on Bryant. If you need them for safety purposes, perfectly okay with me. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Mayor Burt: We will now vote on the Consent Calendar with the exception of Item Number 3. That passes unanimously with Vice Mayor Scharff absent. MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Scharff absent Action Items 10. Review Annual Earth Day Report and Provide Direction to Staff Regarding Sustainability and Climate Action Plan (S/CAP), Including Feedback Regarding 80 Percent by 2030 Greenhouse Gas Reduction TRANSCRIPT Page 15 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Target, Guiding Principles and Decision Criteria, Implementation Priorities, and Next Steps. Mayor Burt: We will now move on to our Action Items. Our first Item is a review of the annual Earth Day Report and providing direction to Staff regarding Sustainability and Climate Action Plan (S/CAP), or S/CAP, including feedback regarding an 80 percent by 2030 greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target, Guiding Principles and decision criteria, implementation priorities and next steps. Welcome Mr. Friend. Gil Friend, Chief Sustainability Officer: Good evening, Mayor Burt. Good evening, Council Members. Thank you for having me back here tonight. I'm Gil Friend, Chief Sustainability Officer for the City. I appreciate you taking a generous amount of time to dive into this big and complex and very important topic. I'm joined here tonight by Betty Seto from DNV GL, our prime consultant on the project. I'd like to acknowledge of a number of Staff members in the audience who have contributed to this work. Joshuah Mello, our Chief Transportation Official, Phil Bobel, Deputy Director of Public Works, Sarah Isabel Moe, on my Staff, and our Assistant City Managers and, of course, Mr. Keene. I imagine we may have some other people joining us from some other departments. The Sustainability and Climate Action Plan is really an exploration of how we create the kind of future that we want, that's healthier and safer and more sustainable, of course, but also more prosperous and resilient for this community. In the course of doing that, do our part in facing the global climate challenge and plan a future that inspires us and others around us. Some of what we'll present to you seems challenging. Some people say some of it is impossible, but I think we're in a part of the world that creates impossible solutions over and over again. We may have an opportunity here to do that again. Palo Alto's got a long history of leadership around sustainability. I'm not going to read the details on this slide, but we've done a lot reaching back more than a century. More than 150 sustainability initiatives under way right now by the City, many more in the pipeline. Some very large challenges ahead that face us as a specific local instance of challenges that are facing the entire planet, droughts and storms and sea level rise. We've spoken a lot about housing and congestion which bear on this plan as well. Big changes facing the utility industry and the climate challenge that we face as a species. Why is this important now? There are significant risks that we face from climate change and associated events. There's the challenge of building the resilience of this community, our ability to withstand shock and stress and disturbances both predictable and unpredictable. We've got a strong record in that area, in emergency response. Also, there are rewards as well as risks facing us, primarily front and center for most people is a better life for us and our children and their children, as well as the challenge to protect the TRANSCRIPT Page 16 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 prosperity that characterizes this community, to encourage the innovation that we have known for so long, improve our living standards and access to services and really save money along the way by being efficient and effective in the way that we deliver those services. Not least of all, this is the right thing to do. This is an issue facing humanity as a whole We have an opportunity to take actions that will serve our community well as well as contribute our small piece to the larger issue and perhaps even set an example that may inspire others. Whether to act in the face of these challenges, I think, is not an economic decision. It's a moral and political decision. How we choose to act, when we choose to act and in what ways and to do that in the most economically intelligent ways will certainly be something that we need to include. This is something that reaches beyond climate. We could electrify our fleets and eliminate transportation emissions, but we still face congestion from the way we get around. We could become a carbon neutral cityand still risk running out of water. We know that we need to prepare for sea level rise, potential of wildland fires and more. Without going into the philosophy very much, you've all seen the three rings or the three-legged stool of sustainability, looking at economic and environmental and social factors. There's another diagram that I've shared with you before, suggesting that a sustainable city can improve the quality of life and protect prosperity and enhance resilience for this community. The Sustainability and Climate Plan is trying to address all of that. The Draft that you have before you spans ten areas of action. It dives most deeply into the direct impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and climate. Other components touch other areas, many of which we have other planning efforts under way on in the City. The Regional Water Quality Control Plant, the Urban Forest Master Plan, the Zero Waste Plan and, of course, the Comprehensive Plan (Comp. Plan) itself. These all need to integrate. The context of the moment. You're all aware of the Paris agreement in December. Mayor Burt, I know you were there for that. A hundred and ninety-two, I believe it was, was the final tally of countries committed to an 80 percent reduction goal by 2050, a goal already on the table for the State of California. We're facing sea level rise locally, estimated at 1-5 feet by the end of the century, could be higher. That's without the estimates of the rapidly accelerating ice melt in Greenland and Antarctica. Of course, we have the context of the State policy. State emissions reduction targets, renewal portfolio standards which we are already well on our way to being ahead of, the challenge of doubling building efficiency by 2030, of ensuring that all new residential construction is zero net energy by 2020 and all new commercial by 2030. A lot of those actions are—the policies are set at the State level, but the actions and implementations are here at the local level. What you have here in the Climate Plan is a scenario. It's a description of possible actions or events in the future that could bring us to some goals that we may choose to take. TRANSCRIPT Page 17 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Scenarios are a strategic planning method used to make flexible, long-term plans. Why flexible? Because we're facing unprecedented and unpredictable change. We can't nail down every step for the next 14 years; we need a flexible framework for doing that. This is a portfolio of measures. It's a collection of possible moves that we could take. Like an investment portfolio, it's designed to be managed according to the investor's risk tolerance, timeframe and investment objectives. Those are some of the things we'll need to talk about, which elements of this portfolio contribute best to the results that we want to find for the community. This is a Directional Plan. It's a Strategic Plan, not an Implementation Plan. It's starting at a higher frame. There will need to be Implementation Plans to support it, but this is the basis for discussion. I want to state just to be clear, before we go into some of the numbers, that most of the numbers that you've seen in this plan are estimates. They're well thought-through and grounded estimates based on assumptions that Betty and her team have vetted, but they're not precise. Assume that everything you're seeing, there's probably a plus or minus 10 percent kind of number. Transportation numbers probably a bit softer. Utility numbers probably a bit tighter. The direction that we have proposed in the S/CAP and that we're certainly hearing from around the world, the direction is clear. We're looking at how to de-carbonize industrial society over the course of this century. It's a tall order. It's a remarkable transformation, and one that has—we've seen energy systems change in the global economy before, but never intentionally and directed in a short period of time. With that in mind, we've put forward the provisional target of reducing emissions 80 percent by 2030. Just to give you a broader sense of what's in the Plan, I've talked with you before about investigating three scenarios: a 100-percent reduction by 2025; an 80-percent reduction by 2030; and an 80-percent reduction by 2050, the California Plan. This is sort of like the Goldilocks story; we've taken the one in the middle. Many people felt that the 80 percent by 2050 target was frankly not challenging enough given where this City already is. Some people felt that the 100-percent target by 2025 was too steep a climb. Let's start in the middle there. We've got, as I mentioned before, ten domains of action. There are 24 strategies gathered there with about 375 specific actions beneath them. We're obviously not going to go into all the actions tonight. I would encourage us to keep the conversation more strategic and higher level and defer detailed examination of specific actions for another time. The process that we've undertaken here is extensive work by City Staff with our consulting team, both from DNV GL and from the Rocky Mountain Institute, participation from Staff in multiple departments through our sustainability board and individual activities, an Advisory Council of some 22 people who have worked with us from the beginning. Their names are up on screen here. Design (inaudible) early in the process, engaging 40 citizens, an ideas expo with 80 people participating, the Climate Summit that TRANSCRIPT Page 18 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 many of you took part in in January with more than 300 people and probably about 500 people in a couple of polling processes to try to gather input and perspective from the community. As you know, our greenhouse gas emissions are down about 36 percent since 1990. It's a stunning achievement made possible by our efficiency efforts and significantly by our carbon neutral electricity commitment. Here you see the comparison of 1990 and 2030. The emissions that we've already reduced up 'til now, more than a quarter million tons. What it says here, these are decisions that have already been made, both "business as usual" contributions from State and Federal policy, things like the Federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE), fuel efficiency standards that are already in motion already been made here, for example the Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan, the Green Building Ordinances and so forth and, of course, the entire utility efficiency program, things that are already in motion. Those together bring us down to about a 52 percent reduction by 2030, if those programs continue to go forward. To contrast that, the State goal for 2030 is 40 percent. We're sitting very well in connection with the State goal. Between that and the 80-percent target, there are a couple hundred thousand additional tons of emissions that would need to be reduced. More than half of those, we propose, would come out of transportation changes. Almost half would come out of energy efficiency, largely in buildings and a small amount from continuing to forward our solid waste programs. The measures in this plan are characterized, I think, by three different kinds of moves. Some of them involve reducing resource use, traditional efficiency measures to reduce the amount of energy, water, greenhouse gases, what have you, needed to get the job done. Some involve shifting from one resource to another or one technology to another. For example, shifting from fossil fuel automobiles to electric vehicles; shifting potentially from natural gas to electricity as we are currently investigating; shifting from primary reliance on potable water to increased reliance on recycled water; and so forth. Some of the moves are more transformative, really looking at moving from individual car ownership as the dominant vehicle, if you will, for how we get around to something more like mobility as a service with much less individual car ownership. Shifting from a system that provides subsidies for parking at a time we're trying to reduce dependence on the automobile to something that uses a fee-based system, perhaps like Stanford has done, to channel parking revenues into funding transportation alternatives. Little hard to see on the screen here; hopefully you can see it better in your Packet. This characterizes the primary 24 strategies. Right to left, the items on the right have a larger greenhouse gas reduction impact; the ones on the left are lower impact. The items higher on the chart have less cost, in fact many of these have negative costs; they put money back in the community's pockets right from the start. The ones below the zero line have higher costs. This is a simple way, with a caveat on the precision of the analysis, to start to think about priorities. We TRANSCRIPT Page 19 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 would want to emphasize initially things further to the right, because they have larger impact, and things higher on the chart, because they have more favorable economics. You'll notice that many of the measures cluster around the zero line. Those are places where you could say that we need more rigorous analysis or you could say those are pretty, within margin of error, safe bets to be neutral costs; so our dominant factor may want to be the impact on emissions. In all these measures, we have four different zones of control. I think this is very important for us to think about. There are things that we control directly. For example, the City fleet, we specify what sort of vehicles we buy and operate for the City fleet and what we purchase for the City. We have direct impact on our citizens and business residents in the Codes and mandates and Ordinances that we put forward to constrain or encourage their behavior. We have incentives that we provide through Palo Alto Utilities, rebates and so forth, as well as education and outreach which are a more indirect influence that encourage but don't require people necessarily to do anything. Our smallest direct influence but our widest reach is our impact on regional and Statewide policy. Of course, we don't control what happens in Sacramento, but we have been able to help nurture a growing conversation about mobility alternatives in the region, because of going back to a meeting that City Manager Keene initiated just over a year ago here in City Hall. The planning challenge that we have here is that we have to plan without knowing all the details in advance. Traditionally, we like any city government plan in kind of an extrapolative fashion. We look at what the trends have been, and we extend them forward. In fact we're in a world of rapidly changing trends. Here on the upper left is the price of lithium ion batteries, at the right is the price of Electric Vehicles (EV), lower left the projections of vehicle miles traveled. You'll see that there's two chunks to that curve on the right; the projection that the Federal Transportation Administration had made and the one that they revised as they saw the data changing. In the middle, similarly EV sales projected by a professor who's lower dotted line for 2013; he had a change for 2015 because the data was moving faster than what he had imagined it would do. Just as a point of reference, over on the right, the forecast at the bottom, that was AT&Ts forecast of the cell phone market in 1986, and the other one is what actually happened. It's a little lighthearted, but the challenge for us is that we still have to make planning decisions in the face of trajectories like this. We can't wait for certainty. We don't want to be too conservative. We don't want to over-assume where things might go. In the face of that kind of uncertainty, I think there's some basic parameters that can help us think about how to move powerfully in uncertain times. Set strong directional goals; develop clear principles and criteria by which we'll evaluate the programs that we choose to use to move to those goals; deploy flexible platforms so that we can take practical steps now that don't close us out of possible moves we might need to make in the TRANSCRIPT Page 20 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 future; build broad coalitions to do this. As we've talked about before, do rapid and agile prototyping so we can take small experiments and learn quickly, rather than make big plans that take a long time to build and a long time to change. Support all this with timely and transparent performance tracking so that we and our citizens and the creative people in the community can contribute based on shared information. We have a model for this in our Zero Waste Plan from a few years ago, which really proceeded in three stages. First, the Council approved the goal of zero waste. At another point, Staff came back with a Strategic Plan for how to achieve that goal. In a third session, came back with the Implementation Plans or the details of how to do that. I would encourage us to think about a kind of framework approach that gives us a platform for moving incrementally into the detail. I would respectfully invite you to think about a short list of design principles that can guide us in this effort. First of all, focusing on what's feasible while recognizing that both technology and economics are changing very quickly. Focus on using ambient resources, the sun and water and wind that fall on this community. Those are resources available for us. We don't harvest much of that today; we could harvest more. Council has already gone on record some years ago with a policy that the City should use full cost accounting in our analysis. We have already done this to guide some of our financial decisions, for example around our EV first policy, recognizing total cost of ownership rather than first costs. That's a critical decision factor for us. In your wisdom or your predecessor's wisdom, we've also established that we should consider externalities to guide our financial decisions. We haven't done that much because we haven't known how to do it. It's something that's perhaps time for us to experiment with. We need to align our incentives to ensure that we are not subsidizing behavior that we don't want to see, as in the case of parking as I mentioned before, and flexible platforms which I mentioned as well. The decision criteria to guide the individual measures, I would suggest might be a list like this. The impact on quality of life, the impact on community resilience, on the health of our ecosystems and natural environment, the greenhouse gas impact, the mitigation costs of getting those greenhouse gas impacts, economic return on investment and, of course, fundamentally the impact on future generations. Where do we go from here? I think it's going to be up to you in terms of your readiness to make decisions tonight. We'll see where we go over the course of the next hour or two. I think one opportunity is to set a climate goal tonight or soon, to endorse the Draft S/CAP as a launch pad or a strategic framework that's the basis for the deeper discussions, and direct Staff to come back to you with a five year plan, the first of a series of five year plans, because we'll have to reset this as we go forward and specific Implementation Plans about specific elements of this effort. We'll need to incorporate the other City plans that I mentioned in a cohesive, Coordinated Plan. Particularly important is to TRANSCRIPT Page 21 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 integrate with the Comp. Plan. As we have begun to do to both track and trail and advise the Comp. Plan. process, so that there is cross-fertilization and cross-linkage between them. We're looking for your guidance tonight on what you would need to know to be able to endorse this Draft Sustainability and Climate Action Plan as the basis for discussion and further work. To ask if you're ready to set a directional goal to adopt the suggested or a varied list of principles and criteria to guide Staff in the work that we will carry on going forward from here. Perhaps you may be ready to make some decisions around key strategies that we might begin to move on an initial portfolio of actions. The next step would be to bring you specific Implementation Plans, probably mobility as the first one both because of its scale of impact on quality of life and its scale of impact on greenhouse gas emissions and the readiness of many of the measures that are in place already or in development by Staff. As we make decisions, we need to commit and mobilize and, as I said, evaluate and reset, I would suggest at least every five years. Tim O'Reilly, a technology publisher who many of you know, encourages us to pursue something so important so that even if you fail, the world is better off for you having tried. I put that in here because one of our Commissioners asked me some months ago, "What happens if we set an 80 by 2030 goal and we fail?" My thought was better if we set 80 and get to 70; that's way better than shooting for 50 and getting to 50. There's no penalty for failure. The bold goal challenges us to muster our creativity and our ingenuity and our forces to do something better than we might have done without that challenge. I'll leave it there. Look forward to hearing your comments and your questions. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Let's see. Do we have speaker cards that are starting to come in? What we ordinarily do is have technical questions from the Council before commencing to hearing from members of the public, and then come back to a discussion and action by the Council. What I'd like to do—one of the things that we need to struggle with tonight is how do we discuss this topic. On the bottom of Page 2 of the Staff Report, we had some questions and forces to consider. David, can you put up the questions that I ... I took another crack at a set of questions that we may want to use to frame our discussion. Before commencing with the technical questions, I wanted to see if the Council would like to use this, what you'll see on the screen in a moment, as kind of a draft for our discussion. They're just questions; they're not answers. We have them in front of us. They don't necessarily replace the ones in the Staff Report, but I thought this would be one way to—we lost it from our screens. How about if we go ahead and proceed with technical questions from Colleagues to the Staff? When we come back to discussion, you can give feedback on whether you want to use these questions, other ones, or just hoof it. Council Member Kniss. TRANSCRIPT Page 22 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Council Member Kniss: To begin with, thank you. This is an incredibly—I can't think of—robust, yes. As someone said, this is the Wikipedia of dealing with how we deal with our greenhouse gas reduction in the future. I know it's taken a good deal of time and effort and so forth. I have a couple of questions that deal with what I didn't see in here, but I know must be in here somewhere. Help me out with it. Because I serve on our Clean Air Board, I always look for things that deal with air. One of the things that deals with air in particular is compost. We had a long discussion at my meeting this morning about that. Compost in terms of when it is producing gases that are unpleasant to smell, which is something that's been happening in the Bay Area. Could you start with the air and the air quality and so forth and where I would see it in here and did I just miss it? Mr. Friend: Council Member Kniss, we didn't address air quality explicitly in here, because it's covered by so many other activities and jurisdictions already under way. Certainly many if not most of the greenhouse gas mitigating measures that we talk about here are reducing combustion in general, having a beneficial effect on air quality. Betty, would you care to add anything to that? Betty Seto, DNV GL Group: I would add that related to a lot of the mobility measures, taking cars off the road and electric vehicles, I think that's another important area where, as Gil mentioned, we didn't call out criteria air pollutants, but that's an important co-benefit that we could certainly call out more explicitly in the draft. Council Member Kniss: I'd really like to see that called out. At the Air Board, we really spend hours on that. In particular, we were dealing with stationary sources this morning. Diesel is an enormous problem as you know, a public health problem. Especially lately I'd been surprised how much trouble we're having with composting and with attempting to do different mixes with compost. San Jose right now is having a major problem with their facility. I think we should include it in here. Perhaps it's just my own perception and how I see this, but I value that blue sky a lot. I think including something in here about how we preserve it long term is important, at least to me. Mr. Friend: Thank you. Council Member Kniss: The same with the compost. I did see your composting, and I'm sorry that I didn't pull this one right out. Maybe you can tell me what page the composting is on so I could ask you another question about that. No one could not say that this is thorough. I circled it earlier, and I must tell you I can't find it right now. TRANSCRIPT Page 23 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Mr. Friend: On page 36. Council Member Kniss: Thank you. I have it circled, that page. Mr. Friend: Thirty-six and 37. Council Member Kniss: I have that one circled there. Maybe if you could just say a little more about that. You give a good introduction under zero waste and the circular economy and so forth. I know that one of the things that we discussed this morning is this ability to compost, and also to do what you called the circular economy can be pretty challenging, especially as we start that process. It has been—it's probably true across the country. Definitely in the Bay Area, we're seeing some major problems that have to be dealt with as far as how you get into that circular situation and you're able to get rid of all our recycling waste and so forth. Simply maybe adding a few more lines to this would be helpful for me. Thanks so much. Mr. Friend: Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: Early on in—sorry, not very early on. On page51 of the Draft, page 515 of our Packet, it says in talking about adaptation and protection against sea level rise and climate change, see detailed assessment of risks and potential responses in Appendix XX. Clearly a placeholder. There were a number of things like that that seemed to be kind of rough draft in this draft. This one particularly, I think, is important. I certainly feel that and I think many in the audience and the community feel that our defense against sea level rise at this point, given that it's imminent and that it's real, and no matter what we do in Palo Alto, is going to impact our community is probably our, maybe even our top climate change priority, how we're going to react to it. I was hoping to see more of that in this Report. Are we going to see that in May when we have that Study Session? When is that coming forward? Mr. Friend: There will be a Study Session on sea level rise in May. Council Member Wolbach: I saw that. Mr. Friend: Here the appendix is Appendix F. I'm sorry for the XX in the report. We were holding the appendix names 'til last because we were adding and moving appendices around and we failed to go back and insert that. I apologize for that. In Appendix F, you have a fairly substantial— what is this? About 70-page section of detailed Climate Risk Assessment by Betty and her subcontractors. TRANSCRIPT Page 24 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Council Member Wolbach: Where does that start then? Mr. Friend: It's in the appendix section. It starts on Page 34 of the appendix. That's your Packet Page 561. Council Member Wolbach: Got you. When does that section end? Mr. Friend: Around 110, I think. Council Member Wolbach: There is much more in that. Mr. Friend: One hundred and nineteen. Yes, there's a lot there. Council Member Wolbach: Thank you for pointing that out. Mr. Friend: I'm sorry that wasn't clear. There's been a change in how cities are doing Climate Action Plans from massive tomes to shorter reports with supplementary appendices. We did that in the interest of accessibility and readability. We'll make more clear in the future that those appendices are there. Council Member Wolbach: Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: Actually I think Council Member Filseth beat me to the punch. Thank you for bringing this forward. There is a lot of things to digest and a lot of things to consider. I'm going to ask you the questions where I think there are gaps. If you can help me understand what I'm not seeing. One of them, which is perhaps an easy one and perhaps not, is in the report it said that there were 22 members of an S/CAP advisory, I think it was called a committee or something like that. In the presentation, it says that there was an advisory board of 25 people, but the other said there were 22 people. Is it the same thing that we're talking about? It's called something different. Mr. Friend: Same thing called something different inadvertently by me. I think the count is actually 27 once we get down to it. Council Member Holman: I was also curious how these people were chosen. I see a lot of gaps in representation, a lot of gaps, significant gaps. How were these people chosen? No reflection on the people that are here. I'm just saying that a lot of representation isn't here. Mr. Friend: These were chosen in conversation by City Manager Keene and myself with advice from others. TRANSCRIPT Page 25 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Council Member Holman: Advice from others. There was no advice from— I'll just give you a list of some of the representations I don't see here. Residents, architects, horticulture and natural environment folks. There's one person here with land use expertise. There's no Architectural Review Board (ARB) or Historic Resources Board (HRB) person here. Peter Drekmeier is water, but to what extent? I'm talking about water in the matters we've been talking about lately. There's no air quality. There's a lot of absences. You said "and others." It seems to be kind of heavy on some. How was this supposed to be balanced? Mr. Friend: This group was constituted to bring together the range of expertise that we thought could help us build a Sustainability and Climate Action Plan. We figured that the balancing would come in other engagements more broadly with the community. This is a tight working group with, as you see here, a pretty massive technical Agenda that we had to get through with minimal Staff. It wasn't constituted as something like a Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC). It's a different process that we had in mind here. Council Member Holman: I'll hold comments. There are a few other—not to get into too much detail. There are some other things where it seems like—I'm going to sound critical here, but there are just questions that I have because I don't understand why yes or why not. On Page 41 of Attachment A, that has to do with getting smart about water. Again, it's been such a conversation in the community that on Page 41, on the second bolded incentivizing water harvesting and downspout disconnections, it talks about redirecting water in various forms instead of sending it down storm drains. At the same time, there's no mention of how we're dewatering basements, and the water goes down the storm drains. There were two or three areas where I think it was just like we've put our head in the sand, where it's maybe selectively less politically sensitive to go there or something. Help me understand why we're looking at this, not that. Mr. Friend: It's more that there are other processes under way dealing with the dewatering issue. As I understand it, it's not been completely settled, so we figured that would happen outside the scope of this report for now and even be integrated as we came to conclusions about how to proceed. Council Member Holman: It seems like it should be—if this is policy and strategy, it seems like it should be in there. Another one. This will not surprise you at all. Regeneration and the natural environment, again there are absences. It doesn't talk about expanding park space, expanding canopy, rehabilitation of habitat, restoration. None of those things are TRANSCRIPT Page 26 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 addressed. Tell me why is that. I'm not going to go into all the details, but those are some where I just don't understand. Mr. Friend: I guess the simplest answer, Council Member Holman, to this is that we only had as much capacity as we had. We couldn't touch everything. This is already pretty voluminous, and we just couldn't dive into all of it. There are oversights. This is one of the reasons for this dialog, to identify what's missing and get them in there. It certainly wasn't an attempt to exclude those as important issues. Council Member Holman: My question is just because there are some things that are so integral and so central to values of this community that I was surprised that they weren't in here. That's why the questions. Thank you for your forbearance. The only other question I will ask at this point in time is zero waste and the circular economy. There it is. Mr. Friend: Thirty-six, I think. Council Member Holman: It is Page 36-37. Gil, this will not surprise you at all. Why is there no reference about the impacts of demolition and new construction? The only reference to—I know it's only one—recycling and reuse is partner with local nonprofits, for instance GoodWill. Mr. Friend: I'd also call your attention to the bottom bullet on that page, which says emphasize onsite reuse or offsite salvage to provide higher and better use of materials than recycling or disposal. I think that's the point that you've often emphasized, that we wanted to make sure was in there. Council Member Holman: I do, but there's no programs. It's not fleshed out in any way, and it doesn't address impacts of doing one or the other, which in many other ways it does. That's why my questioning. It just seems like an also-ran in things that come forward. Even with the salvage we don't talk about the impacts of construction, which is considerable. Mr. Friend: This is an example, as I said in my opening remarks, of an area that we'll have to address in the Implementation Planning. What we need from Council is direction on where to focus. If you look at the scope of what's in here with 375 actions, there was no way that we could do detailed planning on every one of them. We focused on certain areas. Others will come in the next round if and as Council directs us to do this. Council Member Holman: That's all my questions for now. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Council Member DuBois. TRANSCRIPT Page 27 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Council Member DuBois: Thanks for the report, Gil. You have a set of decision criteria. Some are pretty quantitative, others aren't. You had quality of life as a decision criteria. How will that be measured and how would you balance that with, say, greenhouse gas reduction? Mr. Friend: It's a good question, Council Member. I think how to handle the non-quantitative is a question for you and your judgment together with your Colleagues. You make subjective decisions about quality of life. There's a vast literature of quantitative measures of those, but I think it's something more as a matter of Council and policy and community engagement about what our priorities are here. How you handle tradeoffs, I'll start with –where I usually start on the question of tradeoffs is that rather than tradeoffs, let's look at these as multiple design constraints that we're trying to address at the same time. In my experience, environmental quality and quality of life are not competitive choices to make, if we design well and intelligently. If we put all our criteria on the table and challenge Staff and challenge the community to meet them all with minimal compromise, we wind up with much better solutions than trying to emphasize one at the expense of another. Obviously, the rubber meets the road with specific issues. At a general level, that's how I would answer you. Council Member DuBois: I wanted to, I think, echo Council Member Holman about the construction impacts. It just seems to be a blind spot in the report. Accounting for greenhouse gas effects in new construction, I think I asked you earlier doesn't Berkeley have some regulations around this that we might be able to emulate. Mr. Friend: Not that we're of, but we'll check that. Council Member DuBois: A question on the Earth Day report. There's a chart on Packet Page 708 that shows a huge reduction in residential gas usage. I know there's a note there that says it may be the impact of the drought and not permanent. Might we be seeing a drop in gas usage just naturally even before electrification? Mr. Friend: We may. We think that the other significant factor there is the percentage of people that have signed up for Palo Alto Green Gas. Still a small percentage of residents but, of course, the City has signed up for that, so you're seeing a hit from that as well. Council Member DuBois: Does that really indicate as well the bigger savings on the commercial side? Mr. Friend: Do we have anybody here from Utilities that can speak to green gas? I guess not. We'll have to come back to you on that one. TRANSCRIPT Page 28 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Council Member DuBois: Kind of related to this idea of getting off of natural resources. Has there been much discussion about potentially divesting our gas utility and kind of the timing of that in terms of value financially? Mr. Friend: We've had a couple of discussions with Utility Advisory Commission (UAC) about some of the issues of the evolution and transition of Palo Alto Utilities. That's one of the options that's in a list of options. I don't know that there's been any detailed investigation of that at this point. Former Utility Director Fong, before she retired from City service, was working on putting together, I guess you would call it a symposium, a half day or day-long symposium to look at some of these strategic issues for the utility. That may be something to come forward in the future. Council Member DuBois: Thank you. Mr. Friend: You're welcome. Mayor Burt: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: Thanks. First of all, I think you guys have done a yeoman's job trying to get your arms around the beast here. I think this is pretty cool. One thing on the opportunities here. It's dominated by transportation. I spent probably way more time than I should have trying to sort of reconstruct and reassemble numbers on this kind of stuff. I was not able to. This is kind of a question for the consultant. If you look at transportation, you can narrow it to car trips. Some is accounted for by the State; some is account for by "business as usual," some is accounted for by this initiative, that initiative, this other initiative, and so forth. Some of it parses up to people getting out of their cars and taking alternate transit, some by switching to EVs and stuff like that. I guess my question is, is there a giant spreadsheet somewhere that sort of breaks all this down so you sort of see how it all adds up. Mr. Friend: As fate would have it, Council Member Filseth, there is. We have it. If you'd like to geek out on it, we'd be happy to share it with you. Council Member Filseth: I would love to geek out on your spreadsheet. Mr. Friend: You got it. Council Member Filseth: Thank you very much. Mayor Burt: I have a few questions. One is that this is our Sustainability and Climate Action Plan. There seems to be what I would almost think of as an inversion. In my understanding—I've been involved in this for many TRANSCRIPT Page 29 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 years. In its truest sense, climate action is about a sustainable climate. It's really a major, highly important subset of sustainability but the plan, so much of it, seems to be a Climate Action Plan and then interjected various pieces of other sustainability. I want to ask about what is the relationship in your mind between our Sustainability Plan and our Climate Action Plan? Mr. Friend: I think I'd answer just the same way that you phrased it. Sustainability is the broad, wrap-around concept; climate action is one of the pieces, one of the elements of that. It happens to be one that is front and center, urgent and critical right now which, I'll confess, has captured my attention as well as that of many other people. After we spoke this morning, I looked back through the plan. Though it gives the impression of being focused on climate, about one-third of the pages of recommendations in here are specifically climate focused; about two-thirds are what we'd call more generally sustainability. I think part of the problem is that the framing sections that I wrote, the foreword and the introduction, emphasize the climate piece. I think we could reset the context of this and perhaps address your concerns, while taking a closer look at the balance and seeing out of the ten domains of action that we're looking at here, three are specifically greenhouse gas-focused, seven are touching other issues. I think the concern is a valid one. Let's look at how to convey that more clearly in the next draft. Mayor Burt: We also have in parallel this major community effort of our Comprehensive Plan. We have a Citizen Advisory Committee as well as our consultant task force on that. In the way that you just addressed that this is about sustainability and, to a great degree, that's what our Comprehensive Plan is about, designing a sustainable community, what is the process to integrate these efforts as they're going forward on parallel paths, but not necessarily very integrated to date? Mr. Friend: The process, frankly, is not good enough yet. It's a bit ad hoc. There's good intentions among all parties. I participate in the weekly meetings of the Planning Department team with their consultants. I've attended a number of the CAC meetings, spoken at some of them. I think we have a challenge there. We have two, as you say, very related but different efforts with different charters, different timeframes, different levels of resourcing and frankly different approaches. I think one of the big opportunities that we've already seen is an opportunity to cross-fertilize and build awareness. If I could be specific about one example there. The first CAC meetings that I went to about transportation, people were raising concerns that they were familiar with and alternatives that they were familiar with relating to parking, congestion and the like. They hadn't encountered the mobility as a service concept. The TMA had not gotten TRANSCRIPT Page 30 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 underway yet. As more and more of those ideas came to the table, the conversation at the CAC shifted to incorporate them as people recognized here's a larger toolkit of ways to address our needs. As I understand it, the Comp. Plan is building off of a prior Comp. Plan and making improvements to it. The S/CAP is taking more of a normative approach, standing in a future of significant greenhouse gas reductions, asking how might we get there. The challenge is to bring those two together. Like the Transcontinental Railroad meeting back in 1869, tracks coming from the past and tracks coming in the future have to hook up. We're having a meeting tomorrow among some senior Staff to look more explicitly at how we more formalize the relationship between these two. It's an area where we certainly need to do more work. Mayor Burt: Before I ask a next question, I see that we've had a lot of people arrive and are standing. Can we ask the audience to scrunch together and make some seating for some of the people who have come more recently? You'll get to know your neighbor. Thank you. Just a more particular question I had was to what extent—I know that the plan, for instance, through mobility as a service has looked at how emerging telecommunications technologies can be utilized to provide innovations and advancements that we will embrace as part of the plan. There's another dimension to that, the degree to which societal trends, through transformation and telecommunications principally, are affecting our patterns creating new challenges and new opportunities. For instance, I didn't pick up anywhere in the plan where there was an attempt to identify changes from traditional bricks-and-mortar sales to online purchasing, and what does that mean about how we receive goods, how we make trips, how many trips we make, where we go, and does that change the mix of vehicles. We're all seeing a great increase in common carriers and in private bus systems. To my knowledge, neither we nor other communities have take that on as saying that's a real growing trend and, yet, there's nothing that's driving those new transportation concentrations in new directions to be clean vehicles, for instance. Has there been any consideration of these impacts, whether they be from—what's the impact of videoconferencing on future long-distance transportation trends or on getting in cars to go shopping and then how might we respond to those patterns? Mr. Friend: It's a great question, Mayor Burt. There's been a lot of work on that, not by us, by other consulting organizations, organizations like Business for Social Responsibility working with the transportation industry. Certainly the common carriers themselves are making efforts in these directions of cleaning up their fleets. We're seeing the emergence of drone technology as a delivery option that Amazon is exploring. I think we basically decided this was beyond our can at this stage, given all that we had TRANSCRIPT Page 31 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 to wrap our arms around. That area is both so speculative and really outside the ability of the City to influence in any direct way. Mayor Burt: When we come back to discussion, I think I'm going to be interested in exploring more what we might be able to do as a City and what we may be able to do through regional government in collaboration with cities to trigger greater conversion to clean fleets in these bus systems and in the common carrier vehicles that just keep becoming a bigger part of our transportation footprint. I think at this time, we're going to hear from members of the public. I do want to recognize that we have Boy Scout Troop 52 here. Everybody raise your hands, if we can. Hello and welcome. The troop is working on both communications merit badges and citizenship in the community merit badge. Couldn't have picked a better evening to join us. If anyone wishes to speak, can you come forward and fill out a speaker card at this time? We need to be able to anticipate how long we can have to speak. We're going to cut off additional speakers in the next two minutes we'll say. Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak. In the interest of us trying to move things forward, don't feel obligated to use all three. Our first speaker is Yoriko Kishimoto, former Mayor. Welcome. Our next speaker is Winter Dellenbach. Yoriko Kishimoto: Mr. Mayor and Honorable Members of the Council. I'm here tonight because actually the year I was Mayor was the year that we adopted the Climate Protection Plan. I used the quote often that year by Jonas Salk. He said the brontosaurus went extinct, but it wasn't its fault so to speak. If we go extinct, it will be our fault. It is up to humankind to evolve in order to survive. That year we did adopt bold goals at that time. It was to reduce greenhouse gases for City operations by 20 percent by 2012 and for communitywide emissions by 15 percent by 2020. As you know, the community ignored those goals and blew right through them. We've achieved an amazing 36 percent drop for communitywide emissions. I think that's worth a pause and appreciation for what we've accomplished. Tonight you have some fresh analysis before you and some fresh aggressive goals. As you know, climate change is here today. There's no doubt. I'm very excited to see all the proposals for transportation and energy reforms. It gives me assurance that the path to reform is available and does exist. It's just one thing that I would suggest to improve the Sustainability and Climate Plan, better integration of this plan with the larger ecosystems. For example, more integration of the Urban Forest Master Plan issues and wetlands restoration and thinking about how we fit in with the larger system. Tonight is not just another political tradeoff. Please enthusiastically embrace the 80/30 goals, 80-percent reduction below 1990 by 2030, and direct Staff to work with the community to bring back the Implementation Plan. Thank you. TRANSCRIPT Page 32 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Mayor Burt: Thank you, Yoriko. I thought you were going to say that the Stone Age didn't end because of a lack of stones, and the oil age won't end because of a lack of oil. It'll end because of new technology. Winter Dellenbach to be followed by Sandra Slater. Winter Dellenbach: Hi. I'm from Barron Park as you know. I support the 80/30 goals, and maybe, for really totally selfish reasons, I support the 125 goals. That's because I might have a prayer of still being alive in '25; '30, it's starting to get a little dicier. That's just me. I could go with the 80/30. I understand that the Sustainability/Climate Plan is largely based on established standards. They seem to leave out, as almost all of you have brought up in your own little way things that weren't addressed here. Not that I thought that everything should be addressed here. As I was reading through it and reading through it, I had a million ideas, some of them regarding a carbon tax. Carbon tax good. Since I'm so involved with the Buena Vista issue and issues like diversity and economic diversity in this town, I'm really sensitive that whatever we do over the years through this, we keep our eyes on the prize, but we also have to remember the people that are going to be carrying this out and are going to be subject to it. We're going to be in different positions. It's going to have to work for people of different economic classes. Hopefully the Buena Vista people will still be around but an ever diminishing group of people. Please keep that in mind. This is, in the end, very human; although, we're talking about very technical sorts of things. I did miss talking about expanding the marsh and wetland restoration. We know that it's nearly the gold standard in terms of protective barrier sponges on our whole eastern margin of our City. We have to be ever vigilant about what we're putting near the Baylands, in the Baylands. Also no net water use. How about when big new development comes in and we're looking at this water thing, maybe the drought will come, go, come go, but we're going to have water problems from now on. We need to think about water use maybe in some ways the way we think about car trips. I want to throw that into it. I also want to throw in the idea of landscaping. I don't want landscaping to get a bad rap here, thinking that we'll conserve by not—the thing about landscaping is we know that, whether it's algae, trees, plants, microbes in the soil, they're some of the best things we can have in terms of these issues that we're thinking about here together tonight. We need to have smart landscaping. We need to keep our green lung in all of the various ways. I agree with Councilwoman Holman about the construction thing. Both demolition and new construction, there are real impacts on both ends, and we have to take it seriously. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Sandra Slater, to be followed by Nicholas Shafer. TRANSCRIPT Page 33 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Sandra Slater: Thank you, Mayor and Council Members, for allowing me the opportunity to address you this evening about the most important issue of our time. This is your moment to decide if we're going to be bold and lead the City to a low-carbon future. The latest meeting in Paris was clear. The consensus was that cities and citizens need to act quickly and boldly to combat climate change. We've run out of time to debate. Every day the news is even more dire. It's time to act, and it's what the science tells us we must do. We don't have to be all doom and gloom. You have before you this evening a goal and an opportunity to change the course of the City's history, to be bold and to declare that Palo Alto will again lead and reduce our carbon footprint 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2030. This is a big task to be sure, but there were many on the S/CAP Advisory Committee, if not a majority, that were calling for an even bolder and audacious goal of 100 percent by 2025. Stu Bernstein, Tony Ciba [phonetic] and others on the Advisory Committee told us repeatedly that with good policy this can be done, both financially and technologically, but we need you to lead. There's some skeptics who say there's no way we can implement these policies. We heard that before, as Yoriko said, about 10 years ago when the last plan came before Council. It passed, and the goal was met years before anyone could have imagined. Just a few years ago, far-reaching green Building Codes were considered a death knell for the building industry and ubiquitous electric cars were a figment of the Jetsons' imagination. Even if we don't succeed, the reach will be worth the lessons we learn, and we can continue to push the envelope. Don't be afraid of falling short. The biggest failure would be to adopt safer goals. I invite you to imagine a Palo Alto where we get to our jobs, schools and social activities in clean, quiet electric vehicles or cycling on safe, dedicated bike lanes. Imagine our energy needs being met with clean and renewable sources that power our cars, heat our homes and cook our food. Imagine our streets no longer congested with the traffic that we deal with daily, but used for riding various forms of public and private transit. Imagine we're connected with our neighbors to help each other in times of need. Imagine that we are resilient, and the shocks that we know are coming with climate change coming our way. This is the future we envision for these Boy Scouts here today, this youth, for our children and our grandchildren. There are many citizens in these chambers tonight who share this vision and want you to take bold action, an 80-percent reduction in our greenhouse gases by 2030. I invite all citizens who want to act boldly to please now stand and show your support of this goal. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Nicholas Shafer—Slater, excuse me. Nicholas Shafer: Shafer, you're right. TRANSCRIPT Page 34 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Mayor Burt: No, Shafer. To be followed by Debbie Mytels. Mr. Shafer: I may only be 19 years old, but I cannot pretend to be innocent. I've seen the damage that we're doing to the world, that's already been done to the world, and the cliff that is fast approaching. We all know it. You can't really debate it; people try to. As a native Palo Altan, I am proud to say that our City has already done so much towards responsible environmental stewardship over the past decades. Yet, the question on my mind, which I promise I see every day in my classes and in casual conversations, is that we wonder is it ever even enough, like kind of what's the point to all of this. We get paralyzed. We are facing rising tides, ecosystem collapse, food shortages, drought, disruption of global trade on a completely unprecedented scale. We know that decisive climate action and sustainable practices are necessary for our future because, without them, there simply isn't one. Yet, our youth including myself don't show up at City Halls or advocate as much as we should, because we forget that importance and turn a blind eye to the issue at hand. Why? Because we feel like we're victims, paralyzed. We fear that no matter what we do and that no matter how much we shout and cry that nothing will happen. What's critical is that we do know how important this is for our future. There are those among us and the people all over the world that fight against this paralysis every day, whether it's the lawsuit in Oregon which got a victory this past week, brought by 21 children and young people against the Federal government for protecting our future and generations to come; whether it's the successful divestment movement which has happened at Stanford and other institutions across the United States and the world. It is our future that is being created. The legacy that you create for us is the greatest gift that you can pass on. We inherit not only the ramifications of the policies that you adopt and decisions that you make, but also the culture that you choose to create and step forward with. Palo Alto is on the forefront of innovation and design in the world. Taking this path before us will be in the spirit of that heritage. By setting the high standard of an 80-percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, we can set an example for the rest of the world and the United States and a viable path forward towards a better future for all of us. To those of us including maybe some of the people who are here today, the young ones too, one of my teachers at Foothill College, Scott Lankford [phonetic], told me this quote when I asked him these same questions. It's a Churchill quote, it's no use saying we are doing our best. You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. I'm sorry. It may not apply this evening, but we have a request that we generally make of the members of the public to not cheer in case that it would discourage others from speaking. We may not TRANSCRIPT Page 35 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 have that situation tonight, but just to share that with you, if you would. Debbie Mytels. Debbie Mytels: Thank you. I'm a Palo Alto resident, 2824 Louis Road. I'm speaking tonight with two hats on, one on behalf of Peninsula Interfaith Climate Action (PICA) and the other on behalf of Acterra. PICA, as you may know, is Peninsula Interfaith Climate Action. We came to you as a group of about a dozen local faith-based congregations working together in a variety of ways to protect our planet, to ask you last year if you would support a resolution to divest CalPERS assets from fossil fuel industry, and you did. We really appreciate that groundbreaking effort that Palo Alto did. As Pope Francis so clearly stated last fall, climate change really is a moral issue. How we treat our Earth and all its inhabitants, both human and otherwise, is really a profoundly spiritual question. Climate change relates to those kind of eternal issues such as what is our long-term connection to our children, our grandchildren, all of our progeny. It relates to issues of social justice, such as how we respond to those who have fewer resources both within our own communities, and our country and around the world. What's going to happen to all those people in mega cities along coastlines when sea level rises? These are very profoundly important questions. Those of us in affluent and educated communities like Palo Alto really do have a moral responsibility to lead the way, to show what can be done and that we can protect the ability of other species and other people to survive on a habitable planet. On behalf of the faith communities, we actually appreciate and support the 80 percent by '30 goal and support the goals and are ready and prepared to educate our congregations as we move forward. Acterra too is interested in working on behalf of S/CAP. One of the issues that we have found is that a lot of people have been concerned about the requirement or the suggestion that we do fuel switching, moving from the use of natural gas to electricity. We've put together a program coming up next Wednesday to begin this community education effort. In collaboration with Menlo Spark, we're doing a program next Wednesday evening which will feature two residents who have changed to heat pump technology for heating their water and space, and also we'll have an energy engineer and a contractor to answer people's questions. I'll give a copy of the flyer to the City Clerk. Hopefully she can distribute it to the Council. We have other flyers available for people in the audience on the back table. Thank you very much. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Bruce Hodge, to be followed by Catherine Martineau. Welcome. Bruce Hodge: Good evening. Bruce Hodge from Carbon Free Palo Alto. Our collective actions in the next 10 years are absolutely key and will dictate the future of our climate and the levels of our oceans over the next 10,000 years TRANSCRIPT Page 36 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 or so. There's no undoing our emissions. Once the deed is done, there is no going back. What do we need to do? Among other important activities, we need to replace our existing energy and transportation infrastructure with our electricity-based infrastructure with the energy coming almost entirely from renewable resources. The challenges are significant, but we believe that Palo Alto can make huge strides toward significant de-carbonization in the next 10 years. Palo Alto is a perfect storm for addressing climate change. We have a high educational level. We have very high environmental awareness. We're economically advantaged. We have a long history of environmental action, and we have our own utility. Perhaps more importantly, we have a huge head start. Our carbon neutral electricity is a unique building block that provides a solid foundation for the electrification of devices that consume fossil fuels. Please consider this. If not Palo Alto, who? In essence, the S/CAP is providing a structured portfolio of strategies that we can pursue to de-carbonize. It's not really a detailed, actionable Plan, but it gives a sense of what kinds of approaches can contribute towards solving this issue. What is really crucial at this point in time is to pick a goal and a timeline for achieving that goal. We back the Staff recommendation of setting the goal to be an 80-percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2030. We would like to see a vote on that either tonight or very soon. We need a goal and a timeline in order to start sensible and reasonable planning activities. By the way, this timeline closely aligns with the current recommendations of the climate scientist community. Will we ever have a 15-year plan? Of course not. If we don't hit the goal in the prescribed time, is it a failure? Of course not. Will the City be sued or held liable in some way? I don't see how. We believe that City government can play a key role in this transformation by educating, encouraging and cheerleading the entire community to become engaged in transformational activities that will drastically reduce our impact upon the climate. We urge you to set a goal and a timeline tonight so that we can start the process of forming detailed and robust plans. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Catherine Martineau, to be followed by Mark Roest, I believe. Welcome. Catherine Martineau: Good evening, Mayor Burt and Council Members. Good evening, City Manager Keene. Thank you for having us here tonight. It's exciting. I want to talk mostly about something that has already been mentioned by Council Member Holman and Ms. Dellenbach. I'm here representing Canopy as well as I am a member of the Urban Forest Master Plan team. We would like to see more about the natural environment and especially the role that the urban forest plays in climate action. Trees contribute directly to climate action in two ways. I have some numbers here—it's going to be very short—to tell you to give you a sense. Of course, TRANSCRIPT Page 37 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 it's not going to have the same impact as transportation or energy swaps and so forth. It has an impact, and we don't want to lose this impact. We do not want some other action to have unintended consequences on the (inaudible) of the urban forest. For example, you may all know already, because I probably have said that here before, carbon storage and—there are two ways that trees play a role in here. The carbon storage and the carbon sequestration is one. The other one is avoidance of emissions. On the carbon storage and sequestration, on an annual basis street trees sequester about 2,500 tons of CO2. Because they've done this for many, many decades and sometimes centuries, the total carbon that is stored or the total equivalent CO2 stored in trees is 40,000 tons in the City of Palo Alto. Because this is just street trees and it's only 10 percent of the overall forest, you can imagine that what we're talking about is 1/2 million ton of carbon stored. I also have numbers in terms of emission avoidance, but these numbers are pretty rough estimates. I think it would be really good to work on them and integrate them into the Climate Action Plan so that they can inform how we can manage this particular resource for its climate action contribution. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Mark Roest to be followed by Adina Levin. Welcome. Mark Roest: Thank you. Mark Roest. I live in San Mateo. I grew up in San Jose. I've been here for a while. I'm with SeaWave Battery Inc., which is a battery technology startup. I'm a member of the Electric Vehicle Charging Association and on the Board of the Green Fleets Group. I spend a lot of time peering into possible futures. I'm going to focus on mobility and battery electric vehicles. I project that take-off begins in 2017 when the Bolt and the Model 3 are actually going into production. That's going to put it in front of people's faces. That's also when we expect our batteries to start hitting production and be competitive with the leaders, Tesla and (inaudible). They can go into new cars, sure, but a bigger deal is conversions. The 90 million-vehicle fleet in the United States can double or triple its lifespan by letting it run out the engine and then converting that, as long as the rest of the body is in decent shape. Converting it into a full battery electric vehicle and then allocating—people can choose ones that have the range that they need as well as using things like Uber and other car sharing. It saves from the beginning with financing, whether that comes from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District or the California Energy Commission (CEC) or private funds such as government financing. There's $200 million available for conversions and any solar charging controls, etc., through the Green Fleets Group that can be helping with getting things changed. Buses are a good target for conversions, trucks, private and municipal fleets. There's a structure called the captive column that was TRANSCRIPT Page 38 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 partly developed around here, in Mountain View, which makes it possible to throw solar over parking and streets without spending anywhere near as much money as current construction methods would spend. We could then have battery charging directly below those. We could have solar and the batteries over the streets, particularly on the critical routes. We can also do elevated bikeways on critical routes. That way you don't have to stop for intersections, just shoot right on through and not risk getting hit by a car. Racks under truck trailers holding enough batteries to power the trucks for the number of hours the drivers are allowed to go between breaks. We throw up a lot of solar racks over the truck stops. You're starting to see a systems effect at that point. I guess that's where I have to stop. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Adina Levin, to be followed by Jeb Eddy. Welcome. Adina Levin: Good evening, Mayor, Council Members and Staff. Adina Levin with Friends of Caltrain. I was one of the people who did serve on the Advisory Committee on the S/CAP as these recommendations were worked out. Here to support the aggressive goal of 80-percent carbon free without offsets by 2030 and in particular supporting the transportation recommendations in the plan including making it more convenient not to drive by developing responsive multi-modal service-focused transportation, shifting subsidies from free parking to support non-single-occupancy-vehicle (SOV) travel, and supporting land use patterns that reduce congestion and climate impacts. The Staff Report calls out advantages that the City has and progress that has already been made, including commute mode shift reduction from 75 percent to 62 percent in recent years, including a 55 percent mode share Downtown, dramatically reduced driving to City schools with a great Safe Routes to School program, and our region is on the way to get Caltrain electrified which will reduce the emissions and increase the capacity of the system and another trend under way. Many of the younger people who have come to participate, the number of people with driver's licenses is really plummeting. There's a cultural change under way. One of the questions that this plan grapples with, when you think about transportation is isn't this a regional issue, what can we do at a local level. In fact, Palo Alto is one of the leaders in a trend in our sub-region for cities to take charge of traffic and parking issues with the Transportation Management Association strategy. Another opportunity is to change what we've been subsidizing. The way that parking policy has worked until now has been a subsidy to driving. There's a possibility to shift the subsidy to more sustainable modes that also generate less traffic. In terms of having an integrated transportation system, Palo Alto and other cities can help provide the glue to connect local services to regional services. As Stefan Heck has been saying here, we have a great opportunity to reduce waste in TRANSCRIPT Page 39 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 transportation. I like to support the various transportation and land use recommendations and urge the City to adopt the aggressive goal. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Jeb Eddy. Just to let everyone know, because of the number of speakers on both this item and the next item, we're running behind in the meeting. On the next item of the Single Story Overlay, for people who are here we will be opening the hearing and taking public testimony tonight even if we do not have time to act on the item tonight. That's our plan. Jeb Eddy. Jeb Eddy: Hi, I'm Jeb. I want to thank you guys for a very, very impressive lot of work. Some of you may recognize this as Buckminster Fuller's model of planet Earth. This is why we're here. I won't ask for a show of hands of how many of us are parents and grandparents. This is a wonderful symbol of why we're here. Three extremely important words from the United Nations report recently are these: severe, pervasive and irreversible. I have those three words on my refrigerator at home. I think they summarize better than anything else I've heard what we need to do. They're a little on the negative side; that's okay. We can have one hell of a good time working together. I seem to be the only person wearing the hat of evangelist in chief for electric bicycles. I would really like to have some other people wearing the same hat. As a lot of you know, over on the Stanford Shopping Center parking lot starting this Friday for three days is going to be one of the world’s greatest electric bicycle expos. It's traveling around the country, dozens of vendors, many of them from Europe. A great place to see what's coming. I invite those of you, when it's budget time, to give Jim the spending authority to buy a fleet of electric bicycles and start experiencing how much fun they are. Several of you on this side of the room have had the benefit of riding one of my electric vehicles. The first significant rider of my e-bike was Steve Jobs. I gave him a ride on my first bike more than five years ago. The person on this side of the room who has and, I believe, holds the speed record on one of my bicycles is the City Manager. Last item. Just about 50 years ago at this time, I was finishing three years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines. I have recently been elected the head of a brand new group. There are more than 200,000 returned Peace Corps volunteers now. I'm the head of a brand new group called Returned Peace Corps Volunteers for Environmental Action. I look forward to bragging about the courage and clarity of purpose that this City shows in addressing the terrific collection of issues that we now all face together. Thank you very much. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Amy Sung to be followed by Heywood Robinson. TRANSCRIPT Page 40 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Amy Sung: Good evening, Mayor, Council Members, City Manager and Staff. My name is Amy Sung. I am here tonight to represent only myself as somebody that lives in Palo Alto. I'm also a local realtor. I fully support all these wonderful ideas and Climate Action Plan. I am supporting it from another angle. I am here to oppose the mandatory point of sale environmental upgrades. It is for practical and simple reasons. First of all, is it going to create a—it is really burdensome of the homeowners. Many of our sellers in Palo Alto are cash poor and house rich seniors. If it becomes a mandatory improvement, that means that a seller will have to make construction before the home is on the market for sale. That will slow down the sale. Also it will oftentimes create waste. What happen is that oftentimes the buyers purchase a home in Palo Alto with the intent to remodel. If that is the case, the first round of this upgrade will create waste. That in itself increase the greenhouse gas pollution. I also wanted to say that probably I think that if this Sustainability and Climate Action Plan is important, it should apply to all and not mandatory to apply to the homeowners who are selling their homes. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Heywood Robinson to be followed by Doria Summa. Heywood Robinson: Good evening. It's nice to be here. I was on the Menlo Park City Council in 2008, the same time as Yoriko was over here. We followed on the heels of Palo Alto and formed a Green Ribbon Citizens Committee. We couldn't use the exact same name; we copied plenty. I just want to commend you for continuing to carry the torch that was started decades ago, the environmental leadership in this area. We really do look to Palo Alto to really push the needle and really lead, both here from the dais and also from the community and from Staff. It's really wonderful to see such a bold Staff Report that goes beyond things that are easy to do. I'll note that many of the ideas here are things that have been discussed and kicked around and proposed for many years. Many of them are not easy. Adina pointed out many of the important things and important area of transit. So much of our energy goes into transit. As we electrify that becomes even more challenging to the burden that puts on our electric grid and that infrastructure. We're going to have to plan for that. It also means that we really need to think about how to make public transit really work. Adina mentioned Caltrain; we love Caltrain. It's great, but it's only one line up and down the Peninsula. We need other public transit to be part of this. You have a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) proposal here in Santa Clara County. It's certainly not an easy thing. I don't envy you trying to wrestle with how to balance that, but it is something you need to take a close look at. Finally, I'll just finish by saying the late Steve Schneider [phonetic], a former Stanford professor and member of the Integrated Pollution Prevention TRANSCRIPT Page 41 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Control (IPPC)—I would talk to Steve and say, "How are we going to solve this? This is daunting." Steve would say, "You're right. We may not get it below 4 1/2 degrees or we may not keep below that, but we have to try. Everything we do will make a difference." Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Doria Summa to be followed by Shani Kleinhaus. Welcome. Doria Summa: Good evening, Mayor, City Council, Staff. I want to thank everybody for this presentation, especially Mr. Friend and his team. Though it's not yet specific, this plan, I look forward to the process where more specificity comes out in terms of programs and plans. The goals presented here are all positive. In general, it's a very fine document. I do appreciate the enormous amount of work that went into collating all of this. I look forward to seeing the document that Council Member Filseth spoke about, just to kind of get my head around how you actually approach this. I do have a concern—I should mention I'm a member on the CAC, but of course not representing them. I do have a little bit of concern that some of you other speakers have mentioned about the timeline of the S/CAP and the Comp. Plan process. The CAC hasn't had a chance to date to really work with the S/CAP team. I think it's essential that the two documents work together and not be at odds with another. I am concerned about the concept of zero impact growth. All growth has an impact; you simply can't escape it. I think true sustainability will be one that finds a balance within sustainability goals and growth. In 2030, I hope we exceed our goals today, but I don't want to see a Palo Alto that will have reduced its ability to provide habitat for our native flora and fauna and backyard habitat that's so important, and our urban forest I would roll into that. I don't want to see a reduction of views of the hills and the skies. I want this to continue to be a healthy, great place to educate and raise future generations of Palo Altans. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Shani Kleinhaus to be followed by our final speaker, Rita Vrhel. Shani Kleinhaus: Good evening, Mayor Burt, City Council. My name is Shani Kleinhaus. I'm the environmental advocate for Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society and speak on their behalf. I'm also a resident and a member of the CAC, but don't speak for the CAC. The S/CAP is an excellent document. It's very impressive. In the time I have to speak, I cannot possibly describe the many well-deserved praises that it deserves. I am glad there is a consideration of nature and species other than the human species in the sustainability discussion. The S/CAP proposes to provide a healthy, resilient environment where all species can thrive and enjoy life, but TRANSCRIPT Page 42 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 the solutions, as pointed out by Council Member Holman and other speakers, are anemic. We are facing cataclysmic extinction event on this planet. The S/CAP proposes synergistic and some conflicting elements. I would like to see further analysis of how we plan to sustain more than humans and maybe farm animals into the future. We cannot assume that carbon reduction alone will take care of our ecosystems. I also would like to second some of the comments about need to allow water for landscaping and wildlife and Catherine Martineau's discussion of carbon sequestration. Wetlands, grasslands and trees all help with that. I didn't see enough discussion of carbon sequestration solutions in the Plan. Since there is no life without water, if we are going to sustain life in our City, then we need to be able to allocate some water not only for human purposes. I think that's something that we really need to start looking at. I can see some companies in the area that are starting to look at how do you provide water for others than human consumption and use. That's really important. I would like to second Doria Summa's suggestion that there would be better discussion at the CAC, because we haven't really had time to have any discussion of this Plan at all. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our final speaker is Rita Vrhel. Rita Vrhel: Good evening. I'd like to thank City Council Member Holman for bringing up the idea of sustainability as far as water is concerned and also the idea that there's a huge cost to tearing down an existing house and rebuilding it, even if you rebuild it green. I think one of the things that is missing from this report is the concept of rampant consumerism. I think it relates to so many things that we're discussing tonight. When you see a property in Palo Alto that most people would literally die to live in torn down and then replaced with a building that is three times as large, possibly as big as 7,000 square feet, with a basement that is or is not going to require dewatering or you see a basement that is 3,454 square feet like the house on 736 Garland, which right now is sending 300,000 gallons of water down the storm drain a day, it makes some of the conversation that has been held tonight seem not sustainable. I think everybody in the world is for sustainability. I think the question is how do we get there. If you have a 9,000-square-foot house, even if you have net neutral electricity, that is a lot of electricity. It's certainly a lot more than, say, a 400-square-foot apartment, which the City Council is now looking at for tech workers. I would like to—the idea of dewatering will be coming up again. I would like to request that the City Council consider, when it comes up again, the idea that all buildings that have basements go through an independent review process. Basements are not counted right now in the floor area space unless it's part of a garage, and they have many impacts on their neighbors and on the whole rain storm, drain, flood situation. I'm hoping that basements will TRANSCRIPT Page 43 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 be considered in the floor area ratio and that dewatering of basements particularly will be looked at with a critical eye. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Thank you to all the members of the public who joined us tonight and for all your comments. We're now going to return to the Council for discussion and potential action. I think maybe what I'd like to do is return to the Staff for hearing again what actions you're really looking for us to take tonight. The Staff Report was somewhat general in that regard. Gil or Mr. Keene, either one. Mr. Keene: I'll let Gil start and then pile on. Mr. Friend: Mayor Burt, to recap what I said before. If the Council is ready based on what you've read and the discussions we've had so far, I think it would be very helpful if you would choose a goal. We're putting forward 80 by '30 as a possibility there. Second, that you endorse the S/CAP Draft as a framework for the continued discussions and planning and along the lines that many of you have outlined tonight. Specifically, I think it would be helpful to Staff and community if you would weigh in on the proposed design principles and decision criteria; let us know if those are on target or on track. Those can help guide us. One of the things that's clear from this discussion is there's a lot that's in here. As Council Member Filseth said earlier, there's a lot that's not. We're having to make decisions all the way along the way about where to focus our resources. Your guidance along those lines would be really helpful. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Mr. Keene: Pat, can I just ... Mayor Burt: Mr. Keene. Mr. Keene: Can I just add to that and amplify a few things. I'll make a couple of comments that aren't explicitly in the form of what action do you want us to take. I think it provides a context for where we are right now versus where we could go with this item. First of all, you've heard from Gil, and you've heard from a lot of the speakers here tonight that you could endorse a goal, making the case that you could make a goal without having the plan itself necessarily in place or adopted. That's there for your consideration. My own sense is that, looking at the clock and the next item that you have tonight, your ability to actually adopt this plan in any form would be really out of the question. I do think that as much direction as you could give us in the form of your support would be helpful. As Gil said, an endorsement of the S/CAP as a draft framework that could frame subsequent tasks that we would need to pursue and come back with. The TRANSCRIPT Page 44 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 development of the first five year Implementation Plan to be considered for specific decision-making so that we get some real kind of near-term meat on the bone, so to speak, of what we could do and what the implications are. As part of our coming, you would be expecting that we would expand the discussion of sustainable issues like water, adaptation and sea level rise and resiliency and a number of issues that need to at least organize in more explicit clarity. Also you would expect that—it has been mentioned here that we would pursue the more formal integration and alignment of various other planning efforts, like the Urban Forest Master Plan, our existing Zero Waste Plan, all of the plans we have in development around the Regional Water Quality Control Plant and the Comp. Plan itself. On that last matter, I would say that it would be good for us to get clear. We can't work out all the details of the relationship between the Comp. Plan and the S/CAP right now. My recommendation would be to recognize that the S/CAP should generally track and trail the Comprehensive Plan discussion with the ability to inform both the discussion at the right moments of invitation from the Council or the CAC or whomever, and that we ultimately design what the level of the formal integration would be down the road. I think it would be difficult to invert that and do that in the other way. I do think we need some directions on being more explicit on those two. I don't think you have to do that tonight necessarily. I do think any sort of statement that recognizes the importance and the need for us to be able to mobilize our Staff and commit to future decisions that may be difficult decisions without having to be specific about there. Those would be important too so that the idea of accepting the framework of a plan and acknowledging we're going to have to put a lot of work into it. At a minimum, that would be helpful to have tonight, if you're able to do that, with this recognition we're going to have to schedule, I think, subsequent discussions with the Council on the S/CAP itself. Mayor Burt: From what I've heard from the two of you, if we look at Page 17 of the Draft Sustainability and Climate Action Plan, which is Page 481 of our Council Packet, and then the following Page, that has the Guiding Principles which have major subsets under them. The Guiding Principles, design principles and decision criteria. I think that if we were to even on that element get into endorsing each word of this, we won't escape tonight. The question would be whether we endorse those in principle tonight and return subsequently for more detailed discussion of both those and the balance of the plan. Second, whether we endorse in principle the framework of the S/CAP. That's really at a high level what we have before us, but not the details. Finally whether we are willing to endorse a goal tonight, whether it be the 80 percent by 2030 or a different goal. Let me put those three things before the Council to see if that's something that we are comfortable with. If a Council Member wishes to place some or all of that TRANSCRIPT Page 45 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 before us in a Motion, that would help expedite the discussion. Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: Hearing what the City Manager just said, I'd kind of like to flip around the way you positioned it, which would be to say what if we approve the goal with a request that an updated draft came back with, say, the first five year plan. At that point, we would review the principles, criteria and strategies. Not even necessarily adopting all of those tonight, but maybe agreeing to the 80 by '30 and then having the first five year plan come back in more detail. At that point, we'd have time to maybe talk more about principles and criteria. Mayor Burt: I certainly think that we'll need to come back to talk about the specific programs and implementation aspects of it. When we look at the page and a half of the Guiding Principles, design principles and design criteria, they don't look very contentious to me. If ... Council Member DuBois: I'm concerned that they encompass a lot and that there may be more there. That's my take. I'd love to hear what other people think. Mayor Burt: Council Member Kniss. Council Member Kniss: I think, Tom, you're on the right track. I think that if we were to agree on our 80 percent by 2030, I think the rest of this falls into place far better than we might think. If we make that our specific goal and we commit to that as a Council, but then do as we have said, come back with more specificity about what we can actually attain and win so that we have benchmarks along the way, I think that's what I could go with tonight. Mayor Burt: Council Member Berman. Council Member Berman: I guess I have a question for Staff. You might have covered it in here already. When were you planning on coming back with the more fleshed-out five year plan? What's the timeline for that? Is there a timeline for that? Mr. Friend: No, that's to be determined. We're going to have to regroup after this conversation with you and determine what that's going to take and also see where on your calendar we can fit it. Council Member Berman: Kind of ball-parking, how long do you envision that? Is this a year-long process? Is this a three month process? Council Member Holman: You'll still be on the Council. TRANSCRIPT Page 46 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Council Member Berman: Will I? Mr. Keene: I think it's hard for us to say that right now. I think easily we're talking about we wouldn't be back before the fall on something like this. That being said, if I just might say while I really appreciate Council Member DuBois' suggestion, I actually can't imagine us being able to make an expeditious process in the right direction on the five year Implementation Plan without having been back for some further discussion with Council along the way. I think that will be essential. I would just sort of restate again, I think if you could adopt the goal, if you want to, and endorse the S/CAP in draft as a platform for framing subsequent tasks and discussions, of which one would be the first five year Implementation Plan, of which there may be others that you would—even if you don't identify them tonight, subsequently you could say, "We need to have a discussion on this." That would be very helpful. Mr. Friend: If I could just build on what Mr. Keene has said. To the point that we'd benefit from another discussion with you before doing the work on that initial five year plan, the sooner that can be scheduled the better obviously for us to be able to get moving on that. Council Member Berman: I could easily go on for 10 or 15 minutes about the importance of this and the critical nature of it to protecting the environment for future generations and everything that I would love to say, but given the time and the audience who's here to hear another item, I'll just say that I agree with everything my new 19-year-old friend in the front row here said. I thought he said it very eloquently just on the importance of this and on the importance of Palo Alto continuing to be a leader for other communities to look to. What I would say—I fully support the 80 percent by 2030. I appreciate Staff recommending that. I know all of us really want to continue to push the envelope and be as ambitious as possible, but I think it's also important that we be realistic and set stretch goals but not set ourselves up to fail. I think, from everything I've read, that seems to be the most reasonable approach and one that's supported by a lot of members in our community. I'm perfectly comfortable supporting the Guiding Principles, the design principles and the design criteria. The one thing that I would just emphasize under design principles, bullet one is focus on what's feasible. I would also say focus on what is necessary for additional success. An example of that is the expansion of EV charging stations throughout Palo Alto. I read an article a month ago about how the leading rideshare company in San Diego was switching from a full fleet of EVs to a fleet of gas- powered cars because there weren't enough charging stations in San Diego to keep those cars on the road. That's terrible. Let's make sure that we do everything that we can to promote and facilitate the adoption of these more TRANSCRIPT Page 47 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 beneficial technologies. I think that should be earlier in the process so that we can build that foundation for future success. I'll leave it at that for now. Mayor Burt: Council Member Schmid. Council Member Schmid: I assume I can make a general comment about the S/CAP. I support the 80/30 goal and the people who said tonight that this is the most important issue of our time. That's why I think it has to be connected to our Comp. Plan. You say they're effects, different efforts, different approaches. Let me make a case for connection now. Important step of our progress to date is what we've done with electricity, reaching zero carbon. If you turn to Packet Page 707, there's a dramatic slide that says over the last four years our hydro power has forced us to go out into the marketplace to buy gas from (inaudible) and off set it by RECs. That makes sense. What it says is we're part of a State, of a region. If we have to take gas to feed our heating, we can offset that elsewhere in the State. That's an important principle of what we're doing. Yet, when we get to the Land Use Element in the current S/CAP, Page 489, land use you say has a miniscule impact over the next 15 years, roughly one percent of a savings we can make. There's text in there that says patterns that provide shorter commutes are so significant they must be included here and discussed and resolved in the community. Land use, that ties us, that's a plea to let's work with the Comp. Plan. Yet, on Page 489 where you get to the details on TLU- 1 [(Transportation Lever) Pursue Jobs-housing Balance], you say let's use the 3:1 ratio between jobs and employed residents for the next 15 years. Let's use that from the "Comp. Plan to date." That makes us one of the largest commute centers in the United States, and we say let's keep doing it. It seems to me the same thing on electricity, if we can say if we can work regionally to make a difference, suppose for example we take the unanimous vote of the Council to put a cap on commercial growth in Palo Alto and extend that 15 years, in other words move 5,000-7,000 jobs to San Jose or to San Francisco. San Jose has a 1:1 ratio between jobs and housing. San Francisco has a dense, walkable community, transit-rich community. What would be the greenhouse gas impact of that? It seems to me it would be dramatic. Our S/CAP should tell us is that an option that we should be looking at, instead of just assuming let's become a 19th century commuter center, get more and more people from outside whose greenhouse gas emissions are counted somewhere else outside our borders. What's the implication? Our Comp. Plan is going to have a discussion of that next month. Why isn't our S/CAP a part of that discussion? Why can't you give us some leads? What impact would that have if we thought differently about it? Let me just throw out one other example, water. You mention on Page 604 that we are in the midst of a drought, and it looks like it could get worse over the long run. It has a continuing impact on our hydro supply, our TRANSCRIPT Page 48 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 carbon-free electricity. It also has an impact on available water. In June of 2016, we have to approve, Council has to approve our Urban Water Management Plan. Why isn't S/CAP helping us deal with that issue when we have to vote on our Urban Water Management Plan? In June of 2018, we're going to have to deal with San Francisco under our interim water supply limitation. What is San Francisco going to say to us? Are we ready? Is S/CAP going to help us deal with that fundamental issue of our future? That's why I would encourage S/CAP to tie into our Comp. Plan and deal with these critical issues of land use and water supply, two things that we have control over and will have a major impact on our future and our reaching our goals that we all agree are strategically important. Mayor Burt: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: Thank you. Let me go back to the issues of the goals and framework for a second. I think you sort of said this is central, and I agree. In terms of the S/CAP draft as a framework, a platform to move forward, I think the big thing that this document gets absolutely right is to try to break down the problem in a systematic and quantitative way, identify where savings can be achieved and design programs to go after those, and try to congeal all that into specifics with specific, quantitative, data-driven, predictable outcomes. If that's what we mean by framework, then I think this fits the bill and we should adopt it. Also within this plan, within this draft, there are a lot of programs. I think some of these ideas make a lot of sense and could go to the level of definition tomorrow. For example, I don't think anything stops us from designing a program right now to incentivize people to swap out their gas water heater with an electric one, for example. There's some other places that need more work. It's not clear to me how all the numbers add up. Maybe the geek worksheet solves that problem. Some of the reduction here relies on some assumptions that let me use the word speculative on. I think Greg mentioned one. There's one policy that says if we grow our population twice as fast as Association of Bay Area Government (ABAG) says we have to, we're actually going to reduce emissions. I think that one sort of needs to get fleshed out a little more, at least for some of us. The other thing is, I think also Greg pointed it out, there's some major policy implications buried in here. For example, it stipulates Comp. Plan Scenario Four. If we accept this document as a framework, are we implicitly accepting Scenario Four? I hope not. We shouldn't put the City in a position where somebody comes back and says, "You have to do double ABAG growth because the S/CAP says so." As long as that stuff is not part of the framework, then I think this makes a lot of sense as a framework. Let me talk about the goal for a second. Full disclosure, I've been a manager for a long, long time. I'm sure it puts blinders on my thinking, so don't throw too many tomatoes here. The 80/30 TRANSCRIPT Page 49 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 goal. I think the Plan makes a legitimate case that we can get to 80 percent in a reasonable timeframe. I think we should adopt that. I think we should talk about 2030. Let me give an outlier argument. I actually think we could do 80 percent much faster than 2030. We could do it next year. Ban all gas cars in Palo Alto tonight. That would do it. We would never do that, because the community won't accept it. The point is what the community is willing to accept and when is it a critical element of any successful plan. I think Gil's trying to get that in his list of decision criteria. The question isn't can we achieve 80/30; it's is there a reasonable chance to achieve 80/30 in such a way that the community will accept it. That's a much more complicated question. I don't think what we have in the plan yet gives us enough information to adopt that. At least, I don't feel that as a manager. I understand people saying it doesn't matter if we hit it or not. I think it does matter if we hit it or not. I don't understand what we'd be signing the community up to if we did that tonight. The 80 percent, yes. 2030, I'm a little ... There's another issue here. I worry a little bit that if we have a formal City target of 80/30 even as an aspirational one, it might get used as leverage to try to impose programs on the community that the community actually might not want. We risk people saying we need to do this in order to meet 80/30, never mind whether the community wants it or it fits in the Comp. Plan or whether it complies with Gil's list of decision criteria and so forth. I worry a little bit about that. I think we should consider those two may not necessarily have to be joined at the hip. Relation to the Comp. Plan is mandatory. Finally, you asked about where to focus and maybe this fits in the five year plans and so forth. I think some of these things—we could pick of the lowest hanging fruit programs and go execute them now. I'd like to see us do that. Thanks. Mayor Burt: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: I think the comments made by Council Member Filseth just once again show the wisdom of our community in electing him to Council. I agree with pretty much everything that you said, if not everything. I think 80 by '30, I think we could get there. In principle, I support that. I do have similar concerns—I won't repeat everything that was just said since I just said I agree with it. I do want to stress, though, that if it's a goal, does it box us in a corner, if it's a goal as opposed to a mandate? 80 by '30 is a goal, but we also have Guiding Principles, most of which I certainly support as well and the same with design principles and decision criteria. Staff's done a really amazing job in bringing—this is a lot of information to bring forward. You've done a good job in that. That said, also some of the things that I have real concerns about that aren't in here leave real gaps for me. Council Member Filseth, again as we were exchanging comments earlier, reminded me that the impact of new TRANSCRIPT Page 50 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 construction is 75 pounds of greenhouse gas per square foot of new construction. That's not to say that we shouldn't ever build anything new, but we should not put our heads in the sand about what the impact is. We need to be accounting for—let me put it this way. They aren't value statements about new construction; they are factual and oftentimes mathematical analyses and calculations that could be done that we need to be accounting for in whatever we do in this community. For instance, in the manufacture of concrete in many things, we're really putting the greenhouse gas impact off onto other communities, because we don't make concrete here, for instance. It's made not so far from here, and it's quite a controversial issue. We need to be accountable not just to what specifically happens in this community, but what we might also be off-putting into other communities as a result of what we do here. I don't think that we want to consciously or even unconsciously have that kind of impact on other communities. As far as getting input, I agree City Manager has said and other Colleagues have said too that the S/CAP needs to track with the Comp. Plan. That's absolutely critical because the S/CAP should not be driving the Comp. Plan. They should be working together. There should be a back-and- forth discussion. How that happens, I don't have the answer at this moment. Certainly it should be looked at and commented on by the CAC members. Also, I commented earlier about the advisory board. They're really some huge gaps in the expertise. I mentioned some of them earlier. It seems to be pretty heavily loaded in one area, which doesn't make those people invaluable, but it is not a very inclusive group. When you look at what the impacts are and interests are that we're talking about in the S/CAP, I don't see those interests and issues addressed in that advisory board. One of the members of the public talked about a carbon tax. I think we need to be thinking about that. How do we address some of the impacts and how do we account for those and calculate them and how do we address them to the best of our ability? I think those are my comments at this point. You've heard enough about the things that aren't included, that I don't think should rely on existing plans, because some of our plans are either in draft form or aren't complete. I think if you pay attention and not just the reference to the Urban Forest Plan, for instance, which has some lacking. If you listen to the comments made by the public and made by the Council Members, those things should be a part of what comes forward and integrated into those other plans. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: Thank you very much for this Report. A couple of things. Is it possible for the City Clerk to put up slide six from the Staff presentation on this? It was one of the ones that had three circles on it. While City Clerk is working on that, just a couple of things I wanted to TRANSCRIPT Page 51 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 mention that I heard discussed, that I'd like to respond to. One is there are lots of Environmental Impact Reports (EIR), Environmental Impact Reports, demonstrating that locating housing near jobs does reduce vehicle miles traveled, but I do agree with my Colleagues that it would be great to see that in greater nuance, just to prove the case. As far as new construction and the greenhouse gases associated with that, I would point out that the world's population is growing, and new construction will happen somewhere. When we're thinking about what the climate impact of new construction is, let's think about where it's going to have the most impact versus the least impact. I would argue that when new construction to accommodate population growth happens in places like Palo Alto as opposed to, say, building another Fresno or another urban sprawl community, that would actually be environmentally beneficial for a couple of reasons. One, we restrict urban sprawl here by protecting our open space—thank goodness—in our Foothills and in the Baylands, so new construction here would be infill which is more sustainable and environmentally friendly. Second we have leading edge, state if not nation leading green standards for a new building. We are continually improving our green building standards, and they don't apply elsewhere. If we force construction to happen elsewhere, it's more likely that it will be done with less green standards in construction than we have here. That said, I think that making sure that we do as much salvage as we can, that we continue to upgrade our green standards is important. A couple of other comments. One, on Renewable Energy Certificates (REC), renewable energy credits. This is something that we lay on pretty heavily for achieving our net zero greenhouse gas, electricity portfolio. Some have raised some concerns with me about whether this is truly the highest green standard that we can be using. I know in some discussions about community choice aggregation in San Mateo County, they're working on putting that project together. I think they're not looking to use RECs as much as we use them here, maybe even not at all because they might not be as green a standard as we might want to hold ourselves to in the future. I'll put that out there for consideration. One area that was actually mentioned by one of our speakers—I think Ms. Sung mentioned this—is the question of mandatory point of sale or at the time of sale requirements on single-family homes in particular. That's something that I would probably be very reluctant to adopt. Requirements around say auditing and having some information for the future buyer of a home to understand what the sustainability impact of the home they're buying is, that's, I think, appropriate. I want to make sure that if somebody is, say, house rich but income—we have actually quite a few people in Palo Alto who are below the poverty level when it comes to their annual, but they have a lot of net worth, but it's all tied up in their home. If they're trying to sell their home and we tell them at some point, "You're going to need before you sell your home," they'll say, "I won't have the money to do that until I sell my home TRANSCRIPT Page 52 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 and move to somewhere cheaper." That's just something I want us to think about. That ties into the third "E" here called social, but it's often referred to as the three "E"s of sustainability. Environment, economy and social equity. That ties into the next point I wanted to make. Climate change and climate adaptation—thank you for helping me find it. This Appendix F might actually be, to my mind, the most important part of all of this for Palo Alto's future. How we prepare ourselves for the coming impacts of climate change really—I argue that that is one of the four key challenges we need to focus on this decade. The other three being transportation, housing and income and wealth and equality. They all tie together very closely. We see them tying together right here. It's interesting. I'll just make a quick point that I'm very proud of Palo Alto in being leader on rejecting climate change deniers and climate change obstructionists. I think we can identify at least five common arguments that I don't hear very often in Palo Alto about climate change. One is it's not a problem. Second, I don't believe the scientific research, some people say. Third, even if it's a problem, addressing it would be too difficult and too damaging to our way of life. Fourth, why should we do something here when it's a bigger problem than us. We should let somebody else really take the lead on this. Five, it's too late, and that's too bad, so the best we can do now is protect ourselves and our interests, and let others fend for themselves. I think it's admirable that Palo Alto is not a place where those arguments take root around climate change. What's interesting to note is those five arguments are also used often to obstruct even allowing housing development in Palo Alto, all of those same arguments. I am glad to see that as a community we are starting to move past that. As a Council, we've started to give direction to Staff to move past that attitude about housing, recognizing the importance of the three "E"s of sustainability including social equity. In both cases, responsibility really requires intellectual humility and honesty and commitment to both the short term and the long-term action. To mitigate the damage of these crises, of course we need to protect our most vulnerable. On climate, we need to plan to protect homes, businesses and infrastructure from sea level rise, because climate change is here, it's getting worse, and it's not going to turn around immediately. That's why this Appendix F is so important. On housing, it's important that we do what we already do, but do more to protect renters from displacement through renter protections, through below market rate housing. This is very much tied into this topic. This about sustainability, and it's referred to in the documents here tonight. It's important that we also, of course, add below market rate housing. Even if we had a lot of supply, it'll take time to build. Families in our community are suffering now. It's also important that we reduce the overall scale and duration of manmade crises by aiming for a more balanced, sustainable future. On climate, that means limiting greenhouse gases by shifting away from fossil fuels and enabling alternative modes of transportation, recognizing we have TRANSCRIPT Page 53 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 decades of bad policy to compensate for. This will be hard, and it'll take time. I'm glad we're taking leadership on that. On housing, it means frankly as a region and as a community we need to allow and build lots more housing over time to keep pace with demand, recognizing that we have decades of bad policy to compensate for. Again, this will be hard, and it will take time. By being intelligent about land use and transportation policy, we can contribute meaningfully to reducing our greenhouse gas numbers, contribute meaningfully to reducing our jobs/housing imbalance, and contribute meaningfully to our quality of life. Mayor Burt: First I want to respond to a couple of concerns that were raised by Colleagues. One of the really very significant achievements that we've had in our community over the last 15 years or so, that has been under- acknowledged, is what we've done in water use reduction. I don't want these statistics to reduce in any way our focus on moving toward a truly sustainable water system through even greater conservation and landscaping that will not only reduce water use but help reestablish the natural environment in our urban setting and the great potential we have for significant amounts of water recycling and potable water recycling driven on the backbone of renewable electricity system to power that. We have from 2000 and 2010, with the growth that we had in our community in that period, reduced our water use by 27 percent. Not per capita, but Citywide. In the last two years, we've reduced it an additional 24 percent. Phenomenal reduction in our water use. We started with a high baseline. The notion that we have in jeopardy our water allocation, that's not the strongest reason for us to proceed in that direction. I also want to address this concern over RECs. Maybe that's a misunderstanding that's going on there. Our 100 percent carbon neutral electricity system is not based on RECs. It is based upon Power Purchase Agreements; the last one is coming online next year. It was originally scheduled to be online this year. The RECs are only a bridge. They are not the plan. The more important question is around what's the meaning of a goal if we adopt this climate action goal as part of our Sustainability Plan, a major component. We have had a whole series of environmental goals over the last 15 years. They are not binding programs. The good news is that, even though they have not been binding programs for the most part, we took goals that looked like they were stretches at the time, and we have outperformed them, exceeded them in generally very cost-effective ways. There is kind of a reasonable apprehension about what might be the cost impacts of a goal or whether it's attainable. We have a track record in first adopting a 20 percent renewable portfolio, which we then upped to 33 percent, and then within budget we got up to 55 percent renewables on top of our 45 percent hydro. Did all of that ahead of schedule and below cost. As I mentioned, we've done a similar thing with our water supply. Frankly, we had a goal of a 20-percent TRANSCRIPT Page 54 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 reduction in greenhouse gases, which was extremely ambitious by comparison to other communities when we adopted it, and we have far exceeded that. The goal is not binding, but it is—in the end, we've found time and again that it is more obtainable than we anticipated and that we've neither needed nor taken a path of saying that we have an explicit program and a binding obligation to meet those goals when we adopted them. They are goals; that's why we call it a goal. I want to make sure we're making that distinction and not using that as a basis to not proceed on what is before us. I want to put out some components to a Motion. First, a goal of an 80-percent reduction in our greenhouse gases by 2030 calculated against our 1990 baseline. Second, Staff will return within two months with a process for the integration of the S/CAP Plan with the Comprehensive Plan process. Third, we will support tonight the general framework of the S/CAP Plan. Just as an aside, that does not mean we're supporting the specifics within it. Finally, we will support the Guiding Principles within the S/CAP Plan and those Guiding Principles are to be reviewed and formally adopted within six months. The aside is that, once again, we're adopting them as written but not that they have a finality of that being our principles. Council Member DuBois: I'll second it. MOTION: Mayor Burt moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to: A. Adopt a goal of 80 percent greenhouse gas reduction by 2030, calculated utilizing the 1990 baseline; and B. Direct Staff to return within two months with a process for integration of the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan (S/CAP) with the Comprehensive Plan Update; and C. Support the general framework of the S/CAP; and D. Support the S/CAP Guiding Principles, which are to be reviewed and formally adopted within six months. Mayor Burt: I think this goal that we would be adopting tonight is no more of a stretch for what we have as a community than a whole series of previous goals that we have done. What is still a challenge ahead, but with a certain amount of reassurance, is we have seen that advancements in technology and innovation in how we can achieve these goals has allowed us to generally exceed our prior, very aggressive environmental goals and to do so ahead of schedule and under budget. I don't have a great apprehension, even though this next goal is going to be a great challenge. Frankly, what we saw in the Paris accords was an international recognition, by 192 countries, that what we're adopting as what seems like an ambitious—it is TRANSCRIPT Page 55 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 compared to most other cities to day—is what all cities and nations must do if we're going to cap the increase in global temperature at the 1 ½-2 degrees Celsius range. It is nothing more than our fair share. It's not doing beyond what our obligation is. This can have a great impact. As some of the speakers have mentioned, communities that lead the way do just that. We see that other communities see by our example and by our models what can be done, and they embrace it as a result. There's a tremendous amount of leveraged impact that our actions have on other communities. When we leave Palo Alto and this area, we actually hear that. It is very significant. I'll just say one final thing. In 2009, we had the Conference of the Parties (COP) 15 conference in Copenhagen, which was at the time a great hope that the outcome of that would be the significant international treaty that would lead us on a path toward climate protection. At the eleventh hour, it blew up. A year later at COP 16, there was a lot of discouragement at best, that we would not have another opportunity for a real international treaty for another 5 or 10 years, and that the only hope was for corporations and local and regional governments to take leadership in driving forward these changes. In Paris in December, that initiative was recognized by the United Nations (UN) as a principal driving force on why we had the most significant environmental treaty in human history adopted this last December. That treaty is an agreement on what must be done. Now we have to do the actions to actually carry it out. I think that this is not more than our obligation; it is our obligation to our community and to our future generations. I encourage my Colleagues to support this. Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: Thank you. I was responding earlier to a process question, so I appreciate the opportunity to comment here briefly. I am sensitive to the next item. I do want to say I agreed a lot with what Council Member Filseth said. I wholeheartedly support the Motion. Appreciate you making it. I think the 80/30, having a big, hairy goal, I agree with that concept. I think you've heard a lot of support for that. For me in the Motion, though, Item D is really the clincher. I think during a conversation you heard maybe several principles that we might want to add to the next draft. Kind of the four that I heard, one is maybe an update on the complete greenhouse gas accounting principle that already have, to include the impacts of new construction, the benefits of reuse, retrofitting. The second principle, I actually agreed with Council Member Wolbach's comments about making it explicit that we want to minimize the use of offsets and even bring in the idea of applying offset money locally. I know it's kind of in the plan, but I would almost elevate to a principle. The third one is not really in there directly. I think it would benefit from being explicit, which is kind of a process principle of organizing alignment within the City and the City departments so that department goals and incentives are TRANSCRIPT Page 56 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 aligned with the S/CAP. I think that's a combination of top-down as well as bottom-up kind of buy-in. I'd like to see kind of a strong buy-in. The last principle—I think several Council Members said it—to make it explicit that the S/CAP is driven by the Comp. Plan. It can inform it, but it's kind of the Comp. Plan first, S/CAP second. Happy to support the Motion. Looking forward to the next item. Thanks. Mayor Burt: Council Member Berman. Council Member Berman: I'm happy to support the Motion as well for all the reasons I laid earlier. When we have that conversation about the environmental impacts of new construction versus possible reuse, I hope it's a comprehensive conversation that also identifies the reality that not all buildings can be repurposed and the greenhouse gas and environmental benefits of new construction especially under the really strict building standards that we have in Palo Alto and in California. I also want to reiterate the point that Council Member Wolbach made; I also don't support point of sale requirements. It's difficult enough and there are enough disincentives to people selling their homes, especially in Palo Alto. I was surprised to see from a letter we received that we have the lowest turnover rate of homes in the area. I don't want to make that more difficult for people. Mayor Burt: Council Member Kniss. Council Member Kniss: Several things. Thank you, Pat, for making, I think, what was an important and extensive and very comprehensive Motion. To pick up on something that you mentioned, I don't want us to think of ourselves as too precious. The region really does look to us for guidance. I'm surprised, as I'm out at regional meetings, that that really does happen. I have always wondered how everybody sort of found Palo Alto who have very much the same values, the same cultural sort of tendencies. It always amazes me. I look out at you, and I know you all recycle. If you don't recycle, standup. I know that you all recycle. You do. We buy into what is a certain way of life in Palo Alto. We prize it. What we're trying to do tonight is say, "As we go forward from 2016, can we improve this dramatically by 2030, but also we're leaving this for our kids, their kids." Somehow we want there to still be a planet that exists, and we're in danger of that not existing after a certain length of time. We are here to save our planet. I want to not go on and on tonight, because we've all had a great deal to say. I would certainly support point of sale, by the way, just so I have that said. I also want to mention that I knew a Southern woman very well when I was actually on the Board of Supervisors. I'm going to see if I can quote you just what she said. The sin is not in not reaching your goal. TRANSCRIPT Page 57 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 The sin is in not having a goal. I think that's what we're talking about tonight. Have a goal; it's aspirational. We may falter some along the way. Heaven knows I hope we have more rain in the future. If not, I think we really have to look much more substantially to purple pipes and to recycling water and to even looking at that famous toilet to tap thing that we will have to look at in the future. We have to look at how we can reuse our water. We need to look at how we can reuse almost everything. It is tempting, Eric, to give up even my Prius and go to electric. I think one of the areas that we have to look at is where are we going to have charging stations sufficient enough that people will feel comfortable buying that electric car and being able to depend on getting it charged wherever you are. With that, I think we have really done a benchmark piece of work tonight. Thank you again, Gil, for putting this out. As I said, it certainly is a Wikipedia of how we can go forward with climate plans and with an S/CAP. Thanks. Mayor Burt: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: Two things. For "B," was the intention of that "direct Staff to return within two months with integration" to return within two months with a plan for integration? Mayor Burt: Yes, you're right. It should have been a plan. Mr. Keene: A process for integration. Mayor Burt: Or a process, excuse me. Thank you. Council Member Holman: Council Member DuBois, the four points that you made. Were you intending those as amendments to the Motion? Council Member DuBois: As part of the discussion of "D," when it comes back, we would potentially ... Mr. Keene: I didn't think that those needed to be explicit amendments to the Motion. They were additional kind of texture and context for us. We'll be able to, again when we come back, be able to respond to those. Mr. Friend: We've captured them, and we can incorporate them into the net round. Council Member DuBois: My understanding of "D" is that will be the opportunity for Council to propose amendments at that time. Council Member Holman: As I mentioned earlier, it's like how to get on your advisory group the integration. Again, I won't add that as an amendment. TRANSCRIPT Page 58 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 To get that expertise that you heard a lot of it here this evening that would be helpful in that. Jim, did you have a comment? Mr. Keene: Could we just leave it to come back for a discussion about the intentions of the group? There's different constituencies we're serving. There may be a different approach you want to use also. Council Member Holman: Sure. Just two quick comments. I also would support whatever it's called, the real estate point of sale with making changes. I also would support that. I agree with Council Member Kniss that other cities do look to Palo Alto. That's why, when we do our analyses, we need to be circumspect in what our goals and what our impacts are. Nothing is as simple—even the best intentions are not as simple as they seem on the surface. If Council Member Kniss changed to an all-electric car, then what happens to her Prius? You have to consider that; it is a full circle. I'll leave it at that. Mayor Burt: Council Member Schmid. Council Member Schmid: I support the Motion. I like Item B which has a concrete date on coming back with the process, and also "D" which supports the Guiding Principles. The Guiding Principle says we'll work with neighboring communities to address common concerns and pursue common interests. I assume that means that they will look at the 3:1 jobs to housing ratio and say, "Is that good for them?" Mayor Burt: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: I just want to say, first—actually a couple of comments to the Mayor. First, thanks for the clarification about RECs. Also, I will support the Motion. I think it hits the key points, and it is elegant. Mayor Burt: Council Member DuBois was just asking for a clarification that the intent on the Guiding Principles was that—that's a larger heading—the design principles and design criteria are subsets of the Guiding Principles. Correct? Everybody understand it that way? Let's vote on the board. That passes unanimously with Vice Mayor Scharff absent. Thank you to everyone for (inaudible). MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Scharff absent Mayor Burt: Let's take a quick five minute break before we commence on our final item. Council took a break from 9:40 P.M. to 9:48 P.M. TRANSCRIPT Page 59 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 11. PUBLIC HEARING: Adoption of an Ordinance Establishing a Single Story Overlay District for 202 Homes Within the Royal Manor Tract Number 1556 by Amending the Zoning Map to Re-Zone the Area From R-1 Single Family Residential and R-1 (7,000) to R-1(S) and R-1(7000)(S) Single Family Residential With Single Story Overlay. The Proposed Royal Manor Single Story Overlay Rezoning Boundary Includes 202 Properties Addressed as Follows: Even Numbered Addresses on Loma Verde Avenue, Addresses 984-1058; Even and Odd-Numbered Greer Road Addresses, 3341-3499; Even and Odd- Numbered Kenneth Drive Addresses, 3301-3493; Even and Odd- Numbered Janice Way Addresses, 3407 to 3498; Even and Odd- Numbered Thomas Drive Addresses, 3303-3491; Odd-Numbered Addresses on Stockton Place, 3315-3395; and Odd-Numbered Louis Road Addresses, 3385 to 3465. Environmental Assessment: Exempt From the California Environmental Quality Act Per Section 15305. The Planning and Transportation Commission Recommends Approval of a Single Story Overlay for Royal Manor. Mayor Burt: At this time we're convening a public hearing. Can the members of the public please go to the lobby to continue your conversation. At this time, we're going to move on to Item Number 11 which is a public hearing. It's regarding the adoption of a prospective Ordinance establishing a Single Story Overlay (SSO) District for 202 homes within the Royal Manor Tract Number 1556. Welcome to our Staff. I'm sorry. Before we continue, we have two Council Members who need to speak. Council Member Schmid. Council Member Schmid: I have a home in Royal Manor and should not participate in the meeting tonight. Mayor Burt: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: I also live right in the middle of Royal Manor, right around the corner from Council Member Schmid. It's great to see so many of my neighbors here tonight. I've never seen so much of Royal Manor here. It's wonderful to see you all. I'm sorry I won't be able to weigh in on this important discussion. Council Members Schmid and Wolbach left the meeting at 9:50 P.M. Mayor Burt: Before hearing from the Staff, I should share for the members of the public here what we anticipate will be the process tonight. Because of the hour, we think that what we will be able to do is have our Staff presentation. We will not have Council Member comments preceding hearing from members of the public. We will hear from members of the public. Because we have 57 speaker cards—some of them are combined, TRANSCRIPT Page 60 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 but it won't really save us much because we have a policy that allows five members of the public to combine for 10 minutes. In this case with so many speaker cards, we would be limiting each speaker to two minutes. We're not saving anything by letting people combine. What we would do is continue to have the public hearing open to the next date that we will be rescheduling it for. I don't know, Mr. City Manager, if that's firm on when we can continue the Item to or not. James Keene, City Manager: I'd be uncomfortable nailing down the date. We had some flexibility on your next meeting on the 25th, but we pulled off that other Item tonight. I think you and I just need to talk about that tomorrow. We'll get the word out. Mayor Burt: We'll be getting back to the public on the continuation date. What we will do is have members of the public who wish to speak tonight, can do so. If members of the public would like to withhold their comments until the next meeting, they can choose to do that but not to speak at both meetings that are essentially the same hearing, I should say. Mr. Keene. Mr. Keene: By Palo Alto standards, it's not even very late. It must be getting late. I forgot the fact that if we do not this evening specify the date on which we'll come back, we'll actually have to re-notice the meeting. I may over the next half hour just try to look at what the schedule is. Mayor Burt: We'll see what happens as we go forward. Let's return to the presentation by our Staff. Ms. French. Amy French, Chief Planning Official: Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Amy French, Chief Planning Official. I'm the designated Staff processing all of the single story overlays that come before you. This shows you the single story overlays in town of late. You've adopted two of them, Los Arbores 83 homes, Greer Park 72 homes. Fair Court is scheduled— that's 50 homes—for next week's Commission hearing. All of the tracts of Greer Park, Royal Manor and Fair Court are within the flood zone. This means that a higher finished floor and a taller maximum height are allowed for new homes. This slide indicates the zoning districts within Royal Manor. There's two of them; 18 percent of the homes are in the smaller lot category, and 82 percent are in the larger lot, that is 7,000 square feet or greater. The proposed Royal Manor boundary encompasses 202 1950s Eichler homes. The last of the tract, the 203rd home, is 1068 Loma Verde, and that's a two-story, non-Eichler that was built in the 1960s. It was excluded from the single story proposal because it is not of similar age, design and character as the remaining homes that are forming this identifiable Eichler neighborhood where 90 percent of the homes are one TRANSCRIPT Page 61 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 story, and the rest are one-story Eichler with second-floor additions. This shows the support level by owners of the 202 homes at the time of application. The support level was 71.2 percent at that time. The signatures of support are in Packet Pages 792-824, that the applicants gathered over the course of six months in door-to-door meetings. This level of support met our requirement to be considered a viable single story application. Note that if all 203 properties in the tract had been included within the proposed boundary, the 70 percent requirement was still met at the time of application. What happened then is some erosion of support by the time the Planning and Transportation Commission (P&TC) forwarded their recommendation to the City Council. It had dropped to 69.3 percent, just moments before the Planning Commission hearing on February 10th. Staff did report that this was the level of support at that time. The Planning Commission asked that the Council adopt the single story overlay but consider the appropriateness of including properties fronting Stockton Place and Loma Verde Avenue. Here we have the support as of Friday, last Friday the 14th. What this reflects is 130 homeowners or 64.3 percent. That number and percentage is still holding true today as of the end of the day with a couple of changes both ways. I do have some notes on this slide that indicate what the Stockton Place support level is and the Loma Verde support level is, because those were the two streets the Planning and Transportation Commission called out to the Council to consider as far as peeling those off perhaps. The remainder of homes within the subdivision held at 66 percent if those two were peeled off. For discussion. It should be clarified that the Municipal Code allows two ways of coming forward with a single story overlay. One is by property owner or owners, and another is by initiation of the Planning Commission or Council for rezoning. Staff's role in this is to first verify that the application is complete and eligible to forward to the Planning and Transportation Commission, and then forward the Planning and Transportation Commission's recommendation to the Council within a very short timeframe after recommendation by the Commission. The Code does set forth the single story overlay purpose, which is to preserve and maintain single family living areas of predominantly single story character. The purpose language notes it is desirable that homes within the boundary be of similar age, design and character. It should be noted that the City Council has directed Staff to include an Action Item in the Comprehensive Plan (Comp. Plan) to consider alternatives and improvements to the single story overlay process. As the slide shows, the support level has dipped below 70 percent. Again, that was a Code requirement for initiation or application. The eroding support level reflects some controversy in the neighborhood. You'll hear more from the public on that. Some of the concerns voiced by the reversals are up on the screen here. There are reversals of reversals now. We've had a few of those where people have gone back to being supportive. The Council's not required to TRANSCRIPT Page 62 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 ensure a 70 percent support level. That's not in the Code. The Council's basis for adopting an SSO is broad. It's based on the Comprehensive Plan, the zoning purposes for single story overlays and whether the rezoning will serve a public purpose. The Council options are that the Council may wish to hear from the speakers and, depending on the number of speakers, provide direction to Staff on next steps since you may end up continuing this, especially with the number of speakers. If Council does not adopt an Ordinance, we'll look forward to hearing your direction. I'll just put up the four options as we see it. You can adopt the single story overlay at its 64 percent current level. You can reject the single story overlay as proposed. You can adopt a revised Ordinance for a reduced single story boundary. Option is direct Staff to assess level of property owner support for either Options or and return for a decision at a later time. That concludes Staff's Report. I would like to mention that Commissioner Gardias is here to present on behalf of the Planning and Transportation Commission. He would like to say a few words. Mayor Burt: Welcome, Commissioner Gardias. Przemek Gardias, Planning and Transportation Commissioner: Thank you for having me. Mayor Burt, Council Members, I would like to just give a quick summary of the discussion that Planning and Transportation Commission had on the subject, and also summarize briefly the Motion that we had on the floor. The Motion that we had had two elements, was recommendation to the City Council to remove Loma Verde and Stockton from the boundary of the SSO boundaries. That was number one. Number two element was directed to Staff to provide mitigating measures between the SSO boundaries and not SSO boundaries recognizing that however we structured the boundaries there may be an impact between one boundary or buildings or houses within one boundary onto buildings that are on adjacent boundaries, given that one side would decide to build taller houses. That's about the Motion. We also talk about some other Items. Before I get to them, I would like to justify why we decided to do this. The meeting that we had was very contagious [sic]. We had also many speakers, and many of them were very passionate about exclusion of the Loma Verde and Stockton. For the Commission, it was very clear that those two should be excluded. Also, what we heard from the public, those two streets were pretty much socializing with the other neighborhoods, not with the neighborhood that was within the boundary of the original tract. That was the reason why we thought truly that that boundary of this neighborhood naturally excludes those two streets. Thinking about this, I would like to recommend that the Council for your discussion on the boundaries excluding those two streets—I believe that the (inaudible) resolution lies within the inner boundary as opposed to the outer boundary that would include those two streets. That TRANSCRIPT Page 63 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 would shift the entire discussion. Also there was one lesson that we drew out of discussion, that tract boundaries as originally designed by Eichler were not truly the boundaries of the neighborhood; the true boundaries of the neighborhood were truly excluding those two. I think that this comment should provide input for the Council discussion tonight. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. At this time ... Mr. Keene: Mr. Mayor? Mayor Burt: Yes, Mr. Keene. Mr. Keene: If I just might interrupt. I think that looking at the calendar, if we don't take this up next week on the 25th, we could easily be into June before we could find the right amount of time. I'd rather work with you, and if we need to reschedule the Bike Plan Item to another date, if it doesn't work, that we would put this on next week's meeting, the 25th. It would be one of the first Items on the Action portion of the Agenda. Mayor Burt: This Item will be continued to next Monday. For the balance of this evening, we will hear from members of the public. As I mentioned, we have a rule that allows for a group of five speakers to combine their talk into a single 10-minute presentation. We have three groups who have chosen to do that. Our first is Katherine Smolin who ... Katherine Smolin: I am not a group. I'm an individual. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Ms. Smolin: Do you want me to speak now or do you want groups first? Mayor Burt: Just a moment, ma'am. Our first group will be—representative is Andrew Pierce, speaking on behalf of the group. Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: A procedural question please. This is not like a development application. Does the applicant not get 10 minutes? It's a question please. Cara Silver, Senior Assistant City Attorney: Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. Cara Silver, Senior Assistant City Attorney. This is a legislative matter, so we would suggest that you just open it up to the public and not distinguish between applicants and members of the public. Mayor Burt: It'll be Andrew Pierce speaking on behalf of Jay Bosely [phonetic], (inaudible), excuse me, Marer-Garcia [phonetic] and Holden. Welcome. TRANSCRIPT Page 64 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Public Hearing opened at 10:02 P.M. Andrew Pierce, speaking for a group of five: Good evening, Mayor Burt, Members of the Council. I'm Andrew Pierce. Some of you know me from my days in Palo Alto; I was on the Human Relations Commission (HRC). For 18 years I lived here, and I lived in a single story overlay neighborhood, one of the first ones. Single story overlays are always controversial. There was some division in my neighborhood near Greenmeadow when it was first adopted 20-plus years ago. Some people found as their families grew that they could no longer live in the neighborhood because they could not build a house that was the proper size. The single story overlay always imposes burdens on homeowners no matter where you adopt it. They're especially difficult on extended families and large families. Again, in my case when my mother-in-law had to move in with us and we had four adults in the house, we had no choice but to move. We could not build an extension practically to stay in Palo Alto. That's why I'm in Portola Valley now. There's a reason we require a supermajority to even consider an application like this. The rezoning we're talking about will tie up the property permanently, long beyond the life of the people who are here tonight. It affects not just subsequent buyers, but also the heirs and the children of the people living in the neighborhood now. It presumes to discern the preferences of people 10, 20, 30 years from now. It is not easy to reverse. This Ordinance requires a 70 percent petition to overturn the single story overlay once it is adopted. That's right in the Palo Alto Ordinance. The hardship on individual owners who might need or want a second story far outweighs the benefits to the neighbors on an individual basis. One person can't have the house they want; the other just has a view problem. As you heard, the Planning and Transportation Commission had serious doubts about the proposal as proposed and suggested reducing the size of the single story overlay. I'm not here to advocate for that, because the group of families that hired me includes families on both sides of that line, not just on Loma Verde or Stockton. The Planning Commission understood that if you take those two streets out, you might reduce overall support for the proposal because many people would lose the benefit of the proposal if you take those two streets out, because they are backdoor neighbors. We believe the Council should deny this application and forego taking any action until there is a clearer consensus of a supermajority of 70 percent or more supporting this action. There is no rush. The Staff Report indicates there are no second-story applications or projects in the works. If the single story overlay is adopted it will likely end any effort to come up with an Eichler area guideline for this area. For example, if this is adopted, people are going to be forced to build out to their setbacks, which may or may not be consistent with the neighborhood. They can't build a taller structure that might actually look better for the neighborhood. As Staff has noted, there's nothing close to a TRANSCRIPT Page 65 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 70 percent majority now. Many people have reversed their votes, and the support for the proposal is clearly eroding. Now why is that? There are serious questions about the process by which the signatures are gathered. I think all of us have been subjected to our neighbors coming to us and asking us to sign something. If you don't want to irritate them, you might sign it without thinking too much about it. Four of the original signatories who were in that original 70 percent wrote a check to pay for me to come here tonight. That's how seriously they felt in opposition to this proposal once they got a good look at it. The initial FAQ that was sent out to residents that most of the people that I represent read wrongfully stated there would be a subsequent yes or no, up or down vote in the neighborhood. That was not the case. There's a second corrected FAQ, but many people never saw that. It apparently was not sent to people who might be perceived as potential switches on the vote. The proponents only had to provide one signature per household. That means if they came around and the wife said no, they could come around and get the husband to say yes. That counts as a yes vote. Of course, if there's more people in the household, they just had to get one to be counted. I don't think too many people are going to go down to City Hall and say, "My wife or husband voted for this. I'm against it. We have to change our vote." The proponents told the neighbors that a single- story home could be built with the same square footage as a two-story home. That may be true for one or two parcels. It's not true for the majority of the parcels. The setbacks in this neighborhood are severe as I'll talk about in a minute. The materials about the single story overlay were distributed only in English. Many of our newer homebuyers, that is not their native language. Information was circulated indicating that single story overlay properties appreciate more quickly in value. There's no actual proof of that. No appraiser has said that. No realtor has said that. There are no defensible statistical methods to prove that. It is certainly true that smaller homes in Palo Alto are likely to be appreciating faster, but that's in spite of their being smaller, not because they are smaller. Sometimes the most courageous action the Council can take is inaction. The Royal Manor area is unique in providing homeowners with very little option other than to build up if they want to increase these 1,400-square-foot homes. All of the homes are in the flood zone. You cannot have a basement. Many are hemmed in by setbacks, particularly on Loma Verde. There are also utility lines and utility setbacks that the City really cannot relax, even if you wanted to give people a break. There are serious questions about whether the neighborhood supports this. There is no crisis or emergency. The sacrifice being asked of here is not being made equally. Some families are larger than others. Some parcels have room to expand; others do not. Some may not have their value or ability to develop affected much at all, while others will have no room at all to expand. In some cases, these homes even already have two-story houses next to them. They still will not be able to TRANSCRIPT Page 66 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 build a two-story home because of the size of their lot and even though they have a two-story home next to them. There are 18 two-story homes in this neighborhood already, 18. This proposal could result in litigation over the process by which the signatures were obtained, whether the 70 percent was truly achieved. Because some people are going to be severely affected by this, there could be an argument for inverse condemnation. I'm not going to tell you anyone's hired me to do that, because nobody's hired me to do that. I haven't told anyone to do that. There are law firms around town that are being consulted on that. We know that for a fact. There are other ways to protect the character of the neighborhood. There are ways of protecting the Eichler status of the neighborhood. The single story overlay may end up causing people to build in a way that's entirely different from the way they would have, because of the setbacks and the other issues they have. Based on that, many, many have banded together and gone to the step of hiring a lawyer to come represent them here tonight. I think they were all going to tell their stories, and you'll hear a lot of evidence for what I've been saying already. With that, I think I've finished my presentation. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is David Hanzel, and David will be speaking on behalf of Ann Hanzel, Jeffrey Willits, Heidi Lerner and Ben Lerner. David Hanzel, speaking for a group of five: Actually I'm speaking representing the applicants. We have a presentation. Mr. Mayor, remaining Council Members, good evening. My name is David Hanzel, and I live on Loma Verde Avenue, one of the at-risk streets. I am absolutely supporting the single story overlay. I'm representing the six neighbors who have been working on this project for almost two years and also the majority of Royal Manor residents who would like to protect their Eichler neighborhood. Soon after I was born, my parents bought a brand-new Eichler in Terra Linda in San Rafael. That house on Wake Robin Lane is now protected by a single story overlay. I'm hoping that my Palo Alto Eichler can someday have the same protection. Royal Manor is a large, original and cohesive Eichler tract in the northern corner of Palo Verde. All the houses were built at the same time. One of the most remarkable things in the 60 years since they were built, not a single one has been torn down in contrast with the City as a whole, where almost 10 percent of the Eichlers have been torn down. A few, less than 10 percent of the houses, have had second-story additions put on, mostly in the 1970s. Ours is quintessential intact Eichler neighborhood that retains its original character. It's really easily identifiable from the sky. The flat or nearly flat roofs contrast with the diversity of the other houses. At street level, Royal Manor retains the distinctive look of rows of mid-century, modern homes right out of an Eichler brochure, except for now the trees are much more mature. Our neighborhood is abutted by both the Swim and TRANSCRIPT Page 67 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Tennis Club and Palo Verde Elementary School. Both the school and the Swim and Tennis Club anchor the strong sense of community that we enjoy. Joseph Eichler went to great trouble when he built these tracts to ensure that houses were situated such that individual owners retained their privacies and their views. It was designed as a single story and is optimized for a single story. Different styles were mixed horizontally to ensure an interesting look but remained a cohesive identity. Joseph Eichler welcomed all buyers. He was one of the first builders to have a non-discriminatory Conditions, Covenants and Restrictions (CC&R). The essence of an Eichler is to move in and out, to seamlessly connect the inside and the outside. Our views are very, very important to us. Our light and our privacy are very important to us. We live in glass bowls. Actually, I suggest if you have an opportunity to see—there's a trailer for the movie, "People in Glass Houses." Monique Lombardelli is here in orange over there, who produced this movie. We're currently experiencing a renaissance in the popularity of Eichlers. Realtors tell us that buyers are asking them for a name and paying a premium for those in protected neighborhoods. I believe other speakers are going to speak to that later. Can a classic Eichler meet the needs of families? Many of the Eichlers in Royal Manor have been enlarged. It works quite nicely. It's flat; it's level. I've had in-laws come and live with me for years. It's worked out quite fine. Many of the opponents are concerned that they won't be able to build, and they won't be able to extend it. The house over my fence has been enlarged twice in the last 15 years. Most recently this year, 900 square feet were added on the single floor. The extended the footprint extensively. Clearly they can. For most of the lots in Royal Manor, they can increase living space about 40 percent while sacrificing less than 15 percent of their yard space. Mention came up about this. This is the same data that I presented in November but with three months more data. This is looking at median house values from Zillow using all the available data, the best available data. It doesn't say that a single story overlay increases the value of your house, but it clearly shows that a single story overlay—20 years of single story overlays in some neighborhood cases—does not in any way compromise it. It does appear that it slightly increases it. Certainly it is not compromising it. Despite the fact that the opposition is very concerned that somehow having a single story overlay will reduce the value of the home but provides no factual or quantitative data. Perhaps the reason that Eichler neighborhoods with single story overlays are so desirable is because they're protected. The integrity of the community is protected. Most of us in Royal Manor are very concerned that if a two-story house is built next to us, we're going to lose our privacy, our skylight. My photovoltaics are going to be shaded. This is not something that we want. The opposition proposes that instead of a single story overlay, perhaps the Individual Review (IR) process will work just fine. It's not clear to me that this is a successful solution and that this type of home is compatible with a TRANSCRIPT Page 68 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 large Eichler neighborhood. On a road that abuts Royal Manor, here's three typical little Eichlers before and two years after. It was this house that actually and several others in our neighborhood that inspired us to actually pursue a single story overlay. We didn't want this. As a matter of fact, this house has now gotten—its neighbors are now applying for a single story overlay, and they're in the process of that. In conclusion, we've examined all the alternatives. As best we can tell, the SSO is the most viable alternative to protect our neighborhood. It does not protect any individual Eichler. They can be torn down, but it protects the neighborhood as a whole. The good thing about please is we have over 20 year’s experience with single story overlays. In those neighborhoods, very few tear-downs actually occur. Privacy is preserved, and people seem to like it. A single story overlay must not be so terrible, because in 23 years not a single one has been rescinded. Not surprisingly the process has become a point of contention, so there's a few points I'd like to expand on. We started two years ago, but in March of 2015—this is the guilty FAQ. It had a process—it says we had a mistake in it but we said in it this has not been approved by City Planning. It was under review, but it was not approved. We did not use this to collect any signatures. This was our first approaching of our community to see if there was any support. We couldn't collect signatures because we hadn't actually created our petition yet. We did ask people to respond if they supported it or not. They could either email or they could drop it off at Ben's house. 80 percent of the people that responded supported the establishment of a single story overlay encouraging us to carry on. We went on with that. Amy actually was a great help. She actually created our mistakes. She approved our petition, and we started distributing that. It was only two months later that we started collecting signatures only with this FAQ which was completely correct. The nature of the petition is unambiguous. You're signing for support. We submitted and then went to the Transportation and Planning Commission which we got their approval, which brings us to this hearing. It's important to note that the Royal Manor single story overlay application was complete in all manners and has achieved every requirement in the Code. The elephant in the room really is the eroding support; it's come up. We've lost some; we've gained some. In this slide, there's a slightly different one. We have six houses that are yellow, and those are non-responders. Those are people that after months, we were never able to actually connect to. They are all absentee landlords. Some of mine, I've sent scores of emails once I figured what they are. As you can see, there's an awful lot of blue. We suggest that the Council approves the application in its entirety. We recognize some of our friends and neighbors disagree with us. We are willing to compromise. We believe that maybe there can be a process or some guidelines. We're supportive of that. We do believe it would be optimal if the Council approves the application and its completion. If we do develop guidelines, TRANSCRIPT Page 69 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 neighborhoods will have the opportunity to either use them instead of a single story overlay or in conjunction with an overlay. Thank you very much. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Zoe Joyner Danielson, speaking on behalf of Michael Smolin, Anish Desai [phonetic], Babak Yari [phonetic], Sara Smith [phonetic] and Don Danielson. Welcome. Zoe Joyner Danielson, speaking for a group of five: Ladies and gentlemen of the Council and the Mayor, I am not here with a happy thing for you tonight. I am not a laconic speaker as so many erudite people that you have heard. I'm going to speak tonight about the application process and its issues, the unique disadvantages faced by my neighborhood and Royal Manor, and the impact on diversity and community. The Royal Manor application process has serious deficiencies in the process of signature collection, and it has never really reached 70 percent level of support. Please don't pass it. Royal Manor has unique restrictions, a flood zone, small lots that do not compare to other SSO tracts. We want to establish Eichler-specific design regulations that have broad support. My particular thing is to point out to you that we already have existing homes on Torreya Court that are two-story Eichlers designed by Mr. Eichler. You could use those as a basis for a design review. Currently the Ordinance requires 70 percent of support; now it has only about 63 percent. Nineteen houses revoked their signatures. The Ordinance requires properly collected signatures. Signatures were collected through pressure and misleading information and statistics. Many more would have revoked their signatures if there had been a comprehensive outreach to all 202 houses. We were misled by a false promise of a ballot. The fact that we received or some of us received—I didn't happen to receive anything. Said that the City would send postcards to all of the homeowners asking if they opposed or supported the single story overlay. If someone didn't return their card, it was supposed to be counted as a no vote. Many people didn't read the second FAQ because they had already read the first FAQ, and they did not never find out that there would be no ballot, that signature collection alone would cause them to lose their property rights. Reasons cited for voiding signatures included didn't know there would not be a vote later, signature collectors never responded to questions. Here are some specific ones taken from particular pieces of property. One, misinformed about proposal, pushy signature collectors, and the desire to avoid confrontation. Signatures were gathered At Places like block parties where people were actively supervising young children. Individuals showed up at my door in a team of three, pressuring me to sign the petition with only about seven minutes spent for me to think about it. No materials arrived ahead of time, talking about this. No materials were available in languages other than English. The people who don't speak English in my TRANSCRIPT Page 70 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 neighborhood were completely left out. This is a violation of their civil rights. We have been flooded with misinformation that a 7,000-square-foot lot allows a one story to be 2,850 square feet. Before the SSO, the possibility was expanding to 2,900 square feet. After the SSO, on this particular piece of property that actually exists at the corner of Stockton and Loma Verde, there is only enough space to expand a home to 1,900 square feet. From a Staff Report, if the homes were included in the boundary with the Eichler homes, the level of support would dip. This is in response to the arbitrary removal of a house to bring support to 70 percent at the time of application. With the two recent changes noted below, the proposed boundary would no longer meet the SSO eligibility requirement of 70 percent support level. Therefore, the removal of this home appeared reasonable, and the Staff supported the removal. Our neighborhood is Royal Manor. It includes all of the homes in Royal Manor. The City Council is being asked to do a serial amputation, struggling ever mightily forward to succeed in hitting the 70 percent. The 70 percent has not been attained. It was never attained. It only was in the imagination of the people who thought that they had to have this. Our neighborhood is going to be truncated again. It is going to have Stockton and Loma Verde removed from the neighborhood, because plainly they don't support Ben Lerner's proposition. Since it's not going to be Royal Manor anymore, it's going to be another tract that is invented by this Council. I suggest you call it Lerner Land, because it will be completely organized around what will make this pass. We have significant restrictions, the special flood zones and the very small lots. This is my house. This house was built to accommodate our four children, all of them boys. At one time, we had over 600 pounds of boys in our house when we had a 12 year old, a 14 year old, a 16 year old and an 18 year old boy, all living in our house. There is no way that we could have fit them into the three-bedroom, two-bath house that we originally got. Here it shows the current value of a home in Royal Manor with three bedrooms and two baths. This is taken off of Zillow last week. The original house is now worth $2.2 million. The current value of our house for five bedrooms and four bathrooms is $3.3 million. The increase in total value is $1.1 million. This is an actual fact; this is my house. I know about it. I will tell you that I am not ready to donate $1.1 million to the cause of architectural uniformity. If you want to spend $1 million on architectural uniformity, good for you. You can throw your money in the street, rake it into a pile, and light it on fire as far as I'm concerned. I don't think architectural uniformity is a reason to do anything. Here's an example of a one-story house that was built. This is an example of a house that will not bring happiness to people who are in favor of all Eichler-ness. This is total possible under the SSO guideline. The SSO will not bring the privacy people hope, because our homes are so near sea level. We have to be 10 feet above sea level. In my house, that means that if we rebuild it as a single-story home, we would be in the position of having TRANSCRIPT Page 71 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 to dump yards of earth and build our house up. The 17 feet would start from a pile of dirt that could be up to 10 feet high, depending on how close you are to 101. This overlay will hurt diversity. There will be no more room for families living with grandparents, young couples with children. Many families in our group wish very much to expand because they want to have a multigenerational household. This is something that simply can't be accommodated in most of the lots in our division without going up. The summary request to the City Council, the Royal Manor SSO application has serious flaws in the process of signature collection and in the effects it would have. Please do not pass it. Royal Manor has unique restrictions with the flood zone and small lots. It does not compare to other SSO tracts. We can establish Eichler-specific regulations that have broad support. Why ban two stories while Eichler built a lot of two stories? This is an example of a two- story Eichler. It is actually designed by Joseph Eichler, so he didn't have a prejudice against two-story homes. I would like to conclude by saying what I really believe. This is not what everyone else signed for me to say. I think the main thing here is racism. A bunch of old, retired white people want to keep their Indian and Chinese neighbors from expanding their houses for a multigenerational family that cannot be accommodated on these small lots and with no basement in any other way. Thank you very. I would like all of those people who are in favor of no SSO to hold up your signs and stand up so that the City Council can see you. I must tell all of you that I felt we were very badly used by the Transportation and Planning Department. We also appreciate the help that Amy French gave to those of us who consulted her. Thank you very much. Mayor Burt: To members of the audience, we try to discourage both booing and applause so that we don't intimidate other speakers and discourage them from feeling comfortable with raising their perspectives. I would also just like to encourage speakers to make your cases to facts and try to avoid accusations about the motivations of others. I think that's just the most constructive way for us to move forward. Please, that also should not be— no applause there either. Thank you. Our next speaker is Katherine Smolin, to be followed by Sudhir Rao. I should say if anyone wishes to defer to next week's meeting, when I call your name say I'll speak next week. We'll put your card in a separate pile and call you up at that time. Welcome. Katherine Smolin: I'm Katherine Smolin. I've lived at 3428 Greer Road for 31 years with my husband, Michael Smolin. We purchased our house. We chose a house that could be expanded. At that time, I hired an architect, Richard Elmore, who was familiar with Eichler houses, and said, "Where can we expand? What do I need to leave so when we know it, we can go up?" He showed me in the house where we could put a stairwell. I've left all of that alone. Currently we're aging. We are our own granny unit right now. TRANSCRIPT Page 72 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 We're the grannies who are living there, and we are looking forward to our son and daughter-in-law and the two children moving here to help take care of us, because we both have chronic diseases. We will hopefully be in our home, which we have planned on being in. We'll need two extra bedrooms. Since my largest bathroom is 5 x 7, we need a disability-equipped bathroom. That's not possible with what we've got. We have to go up. I'm asking people to consider that there may be people like me who may need to be in our home. We can't afford to move to any of the assisted livings or things in Palo Alto. Even if we sell the house and have all that money, you still can't move anywhere close and be with our doctors. They are very important people to us at this stage of the game. Thank you. I have a comment from my husband. He says, "I’m probably one of the oldest residents of Royal Manor. For 30 years, we've lived in one of the smallest Eichlers. It was a family plan to age at home, extending the house upward as was our right when we purchased the house. This single story overlay doesn't seem to accommodate people like us." Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Sudhir Rao, to be followed by Litsie Indergand. Sudhir Rao: Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Sudhir Rao. I am an owner of a house on Thomas Drive. Our home was included in the first list of 70 percent which was provided to the Council. I just wanted to say that it was said that some people withdrew. Actually, we didn't withdraw; we never intended to vote in the first place. We thought it was a survey, and my wife just signed it when I was not at home. Later on, I came to know. I don't think our home should be included. This is our address; it's on Thomas. Should be included in the first list of 70 percent, so that's the main thing I wanted to say. Our home was included in that list. I just wanted to say that we should have a ballot, and that's what we were promised. That's the only way to find out if there is 70 percent support. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Litsie Indergand to be followed by Amir Dembo. Litsie Indergand: Good evening. My name is Litsie Indergand. I live at 336 Ely Place in the Walnut Grover neighborhood which incidentally is not a total Eichler neighborhood. Although all the homes look exactly like Eichlers, they were not built by Eichler. They were built by a firm of architects called Burke and Wyatt. Burke and Wyatt came to Palo Alto and saw all the Eichlers and said, "We can do that." They managed to buy about two square blocks of land that's Walnut Grover. They tried to build houses exactly like Eichlers. They look very much like Eichlers; they're just a couple of very small differences. They only built about 35 houses, because they decided TRANSCRIPT Page 73 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 that while they could build houses that looked like Eichlers, they couldn't do it for the amount of money that Eichler was able to build them for. They gave up and left those few houses. About 1990 the house next door to us was torn down all of a sudden. Nobody knew anything was going on. One of our neighbors came home one morning and saw a truck out there pulling all the gas lines and everything out. She said, "What's going on?" They said, "We just tore down the house." We tried to find out what was going on. It turned out that the people who had just recently bought that house really did not want an Eichler-type house; they had hired an architect, and they had a 39-square-foot house that was going to be 3 ½ stories high, going to be built next door to us. We said no. I'm sorry. I guess that's all the time I get. Anyway, I was the first one to get an overlay because one of the City Council Members told me about overlays. I have a bunch of newspaper articles here. We were famous for being the first neighborhood in the City to get a single story overlay. We're very happy with it, by the way, and we've had no complaints from any of the 130 houses there. Mayor Burt: Our next speaker is Amir Dembo, to be followed by Monique Lombardelli. Amir Dembo: Dear City Council, my name is Amir Dembo. My wife and I live on 3350 Thomas Drive. I'm here to strongly support the single story overlay initiative. Twenty-five years ago as a young man of 30, I was hired to the faculty of Stanford Mathematics Department. Being cash-poor buyers then, we bought our Eichler that was of a modest size. We raised three kids and hosted extensive visits by our parents. In 2001, we have extensively remodeled our house, adding nearly 600 square feet, one bedroom and two bathrooms to the maximum allowed floor area ratio. We preserved the original design including many glass windows and kept our house to a single story. This is even though our house sits on a corner lot with wide setback on both streets and utility easement on the third set. The initiative proposed will preserve the neighborhood intimacy and maintain attractiveness to family like ours that stay for the long run and care about privacy and California indoor/outdoor housing design. I hope you will take this point of view into account and follow without delay the wishes of the silent but strong majority of the neighborhood in approving this initiative. I want finally to note that six percent of 202 is 12 and not 19. Thank you very much. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Monique Lombardelli to be followed by Zeev Wurman. Monique Lombardelli: Hi. Thank you so much for allowing me to come and speak. I have to say that I am really, really saddened by how many people TRANSCRIPT Page 74 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 are here and do not support this. I'm here for three reasons. I am a broker. I am an Eichler specialist. I'm a real estate agent. I am here to speak for the people of the younger generation who absolutely love these homes so much. It's something very, very important to us. I wanted to show the demand of these Eichler homes. I think that people here have been very, very misinformed about your property values. I was trying to address certain things that have been brought up here. If you look statistically at Google searches, what homebuyers want, Curb magazine actually put out an article just last year saying that Eichlers and mid-century modern architecture is the number one search from homebuyers. If you look at statistics that I will happily send anybody here, I will show you stats of original Eichlers and Eichlers that have had second stories put on them or been remodeled horribly. They sell for a higher price; original Eichlers sell for a higher price. I just want to make that very clear. I see it every day. I have so many things to say to counteract all these other things that have been said. As far as what homebuyers want, the average home on the market that's over 3,000 or 4,000 square feet sits on the market. These buyers that I see every day, on average seven per week, have around $3 million just to purchase an Eichler, and they will not live in anything else. I had sent some example; I don't know if you can put them up, just images showing you examples of all these stats that prove this. We are in our primetime, and the problem is that the realtors that were selling these 10 years ago still think that the buyers have the same mindset. They don't. I just really would like to stress that this so important to us. We really are in our primetime. For our posterity. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Our next speaker is Zeev Wurman, to be followed by Gay Baldwin. Zeev Wurman: Good evening. My name is Zeev Wurman. I live on Stockton Place. I'm an owner of two-story house, so I'm grandfathered. I should be happy. Why should I object to other people being limited? It just increases my house value. However, I object to the SSO because I think it's unfair. My own story is like many people already mentioned. I started with a small house; I had two kids, then I got twins. Guess what? I should have bought a bigger house, but I couldn't afford it in Palo Alto. I could afford to add a second story. That's what I did. We added it in what I consider a very considerate manner. We put a setback. Our windows on the side are high, so kids cannot look down on the neighbors. The window to the back have high trays. Very simple, no big deal; it can work. It worked very well for us. Now, somebody mentioned that no Eichler was demolished over 60 years. We tell this is so, so clearly people are not doing crazy things. We have only 18 two-story houses, it was mentioned before. That's nine percent (inaudible) a friend of mine who is for; I'm against. Clearly the TRANSCRIPT Page 75 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 community works as a community. It slowly develops and change as necessary, but it's not frozen in amber as some people would like you to make us. We cannot do it this way. This is not a wise move. Truly, it's not very generous of the other people to want to limit what they feel they don't need. I don't think this is wise. Maybe the last point that I should mention here is pay attention to the age of petitioners from both sides. Putting this overlay seems to encourage gentrification rather than gentrification. Older people generally with some exception don't need extended houses; younger people do. Watch for the age. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Gay Baldwin, to be followed by Sudha Nagarajan. Gay Baldwin: Hello everyone. My name is Gay Baldwin; I live on Thomas Drive. I lived there for the last 24 years or so. I grew up in Redwood City, so I have a lot of experience of living in this area. As all of you know, the changes have been immense during my lifetime in the Bay Area, particularly in Palo Alto. From the financial point of view, I don't really have a big fight about this one way or the other. I don't really care. We bought our house because it was in the lower price range and in Palo Alto when we needed to have a house where our kids could enjoy the humane special ed. programs in Palo Alto. We didn't really care if it was an Eichler or not an Eichler or anything. We bought it because it was affordable. Eichlers were built as affordable housing. Most of them are really quite old now, and a lot of them are going to be needing replacing. You can prop them up and make museum pieces out of them for a long time. Eventually, they will need replacing. The main reason I don't like the idea of the second story overlay and the single story requirement is because it doesn't make a lot of rational sense for the long term. For the short term, yes, some people might be able to enjoy views and the indoor/outdoor thing and all those lovely Eichler design features that meant absolutely nothing to me when we acquired the house and had five children in it. We were sad that we didn't have the money to expand upwards, and we didn't have the square footage to expand outwards very much. The main thing is that in the future, particularly thinking about climate change and the fact that we're in a flood zone, it doesn't make a lot of sense to limit the flexibility of anybody who's building there. In fact, I think the zoning should be relaxed there. You should be able to experiment with more types of housing for people how can't afford large lots, etc. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Sudha Nagarajan to be followed by She Shen [phonetic]. TRANSCRIPT Page 76 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Sudha Nagarajan: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to come here and talk to you today. I'm one of those Eichler people who have a two-story house already. My kids love the space, I have to tell you. We are surrounded. I live on Kenneth. I have four neighbors actually around me, two on Loma Verde side and both sides have my neighbors. No one complained so far in 20 years that they have lost their privacy because we have a two-story home. For me, it's like make a fair decision. I think that is really important. I'm one of those who actually revoke the signature, because the same thing happened. I signed off, and my husband comes and tells me, "Are you crazy doing this?" Eventually we want to retire in that house and then also maybe retire there and also have our kids there, visit, etc. My policy is live and let live. I think you should consider a fair decision for the next generation who are coming. Just like we enjoyed our house, I would see other people also come in and enjoy their homes as well. That's all I have to say now. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. She Shen to be followed by Jian Zhou. Welcome. Lisa Kuang: Hi everyone. My name is Lisa. Actually, I'm speaking for my husband, (inaudible). We both oppose the SSO. I'm here to oppose the SSO. I just want to be quick because it’s late. The reason is we would like to have the option open for us, like in the future if we have ability to improve our house, we want to have the option to have the two-story house if we can afford it in the future. I just urge the City Council Member please do not take away our right to improve our homes. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Is your name Jian ... Ms. Kuang: My name is Lisa. Mayor Burt: Lisa, sorry. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jian Zhou, to be followed by Jing Chen. Welcome. Jian Zhou: Dear Mayor and also Council Member, I'm here against SSO. I feel like the thing is we don't have enough facts before we actually sign the petition. That's why there's a lot of people—there's few people actually withdraw the application. I'm for harmony of the community structures, but I'm also for the design guidelines just do a simple SSO. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Jing Chen to be followed by Carol A. Lin. Jing Chen: Dear Mayor, City Council and Staff, good evening. I am Jing Chen. I live in 3320 Thomas Drive. I have one wish tonight. I sincerely hope that by making a decision one way or another our City Council can unite the Royal Manor neighborhood, rather than dividing it. The last thing TRANSCRIPT Page 77 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 we want to see is neighbors turn against each other in this neighborhood we all love. There are two ways I think the City Council can unite all of us together. Number one, please unite us all behind a legal and properly executed process. This issue is very important to us. The people in Royal Manor neighborhood should make this important decision for themselves through a legal and properly executed process. I can testify this process was executed with significant flaw. The first flyer was very misleading; I never received the second one. Without knowing this critical information, how many families actually support this proposal as of today? Why do we even want to make a decision one way or another? I hope City Council can consider additional processes in this case, to validate the true will of the people of Royal Manor. Whatever result come out of that process, it will be accepted by each family in this neighborhood. Number two, please unite us all behind Eichler design guideline that truly preserve Eichler. Most families in this neighborhood love Eichler. That's why we move here. Many families support SSO because they thought it will protect Eichler. However, SSO has nothing to do with preserving Eichler. If someone tear down Eichler home and build an opposite of Eichler in architectural style, SSO will do nothing about it. We would work together to create an Ordinance for Eichler design guideline that actually preserve Eichler homes. I have analogy for this. Mayor Burt: I'm sorry, we have ... Mr. Chen: Just one more sentence. Approving SSO is like a doctor prescribing the strongest antibiotics to treat a patient with common cold. It cause lots of damage, collateral damage in your body, and it doesn't really cure the disease. Thank you very much. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Carol Lin, to be followed by Diane Reklis. Welcome. Carol Lin: Hi. My husband who is Chinese and I live on Louis Road. We bought the house 25 years ago. We were like Monique's buyers; we wanted to simplify our lives. We loved Eichler. We love, love, love it. We want to support this so much because it defines our lives. It define the way we live, every part of that house. I have four children, seven grandchildren. Our yard is our family room; it's our dining room. We spend enormous amount of time out there, growing our own food, picking our fruit and vegetables. When I told my grandson that this was a possibility, he said, "But that changes everything. That changes our lifestyle, grandma." He's right. I really hope you will support the one story overlay. It would mean a great deal to us. Thank you. TRANSCRIPT Page 78 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Mayor Burt: Thank you. Diane Recklis to be followed by Soo-Ling Chan. Welcome. Diane Reklis: Hello. I'm Diane Recklis, and I just had to duck out of here and take our 99-year-old neighbor, an original Eichler owner, who wanted to speak in favor of it, but he had to go home and go to bed. Simon is not here; he would have spoken in favor of it. We live very happily in an original Eichler with an extended family. My daughter and my grandson live with us. We're making it work without any particular changes to the house. There's a lot of different values that homes have. It's not just about the money. We tend to forget that. We look on Zillow; Zillow gives us one number. Monetary is one way that homes are valued. Another is the community, and the third is the livability. The Royal Manor homes continue to sell for crazy amounts of money, and they sell within a week or two of going on, and they sell for more than is asked for. It's hard to say that anything about keeping them the way they are is causing a financial hardship. The schools, parks, jobs and involved citizens lead to community value. You can make a big difference on our community value. Again, that's not really the house, but it certainly is part of what we live for. Mid-century modern design including the back and side yards with privacy and the fact that you can actually live outside and not worry about people seeing into your yard where you're sunbathing or whatever. This also contributes to your monetary value, but that's very different. If my house went up to two stories, six of my neighbors would lose privacy. They'd lose a whole bunch. To me, that's just not acceptable. Please focus on the needs of those who actually want to live in our neighborhoods. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Soo-Ling Chan to be followed by Janice Henrotin. Soo-Ling Chan: May I submit a photo? It's a monster house in process, a monster house that is done and looking out my window of what horror it could be. It's a low buffer zone. I'm Soo-Ling Chin; I live at 3469 Greer Road, Palo Alto. I'm in support of the single story overlay. I feel badly there are vocal opponents who have been rallying and spreading misinformation on the review process, misinformation on home values. This shows no respect towards neighbors. My family were immigrants in 1888 in California. My family could not buy or move into La Jolla, California, in 1960. There was a restriction code against selling to Asians, Jewish, Blacks, Mexicans to purchase property. Then the Civil Rights Act passed. My family could build a home in La Jolla. My point is when my family could finally build a home, we were taught to have respect towards our neighbors. We were aware of property rights and privacy rights on a home design that would enhance the neighborhood. Coming from a community where we were the only Chinese family in town, I ironically moved to Palo Alto in 1974 for the TRANSCRIPT Page 79 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 diversity, the best schools, the caring neighbors. I have lived in my Eichler for 42 years. I brought up two sons in the School District. I worked for the Palo Alto School District for 13 years. My son and his children will eventually inherit my home that they grew up in when I drop dead. My point here is I have a permanent stake in my community. I am very concerned that maybe my neighbors might sell to someone that has no stake in the community and will eventually sell their home thinking there's more monetary gain and they wish to tear down and build up next to me. Then I am left with a monster home next door forever. A two-story home will be overshadowing my home with no sunlight for my art, no privacy, no possibility to install solar power, no architectural continuity. Thank you. The current process does not protect Eichler neighbors. Perhaps this process needs to be reviewed and strengthened. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Janice Henrotin to be followed by Nicola Willits. Welcome. Janice Henrotin: Good evening, Mr. Mayor and City Council Members. My name is Jan Henrotin, as you said. I live on Loma Verde, which I hope will not be excluded from this proposal. I am a proud Eichler homeowner, and I do not want to see my neighborhood defiled with any more second stories put on top of Eichler homes or new two-story homes. I have two points to make. The first has to do with my own home. I value the light and privacy it provides. It do not want a second story to go up on either side of my home or behind it, blocking my light and invading my privacy. My second point has to do with the Royal Manor neighborhood. The uniformity of the homes provides a sense of community and identity. It is also much more attractive than a hodge-podge of different style, two-story homes would be. Once again, I am a proud Eichler homeowner and believe that our homes are very special due to their architectural uniqueness and should remain the way they are with no second stories. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Nicola Willits to be followed by John Potter. Welcome. Nicola Willits: Good evening. I'm Nicola Willits. I live at 3396 Greer Road, and I want to speak in support of the SSO. I'm a native Palo Altan. I grew up in a family of six in an Eichler. Loved it. I've lived in Europe, Asia, the East Coast. My husband and I decided we wanted to move back to Palo Alto and live in an Eichler. He grew up in an Eichler as well. We are raising our family of three boys. We find the houses are big enough. Our next door neighbors are a blended family, so they had five children. They managed to do a very, very sensitive remodel that fits with the neighborhood perfectly. They got five bedrooms, three baths in there. It's possible. Front yards, TRANSCRIPT Page 80 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 nobody needs that lawn out there. All it does is soak up water. You can't let your kids out to play, and there's some very creative things that can be done with a front yard to create more space for a house. Just recently my next door neighbors were having some work done on their roof at 8:00 in the morning. Suddenly there were workers up there. I hadn't gotten dressed for work yet. I realized I had glass, glass, glass, glass, glass. I was trying to figure out where I could go to get dressed, because there are no shades in my house. I bought the house because it opens to the outdoors. I'm thinking this would be horrible. It actually gave us more incentive to work on an SSO, because it would just wreck what we treasure in the house. The fact that it is open to the outdoors. The fact that it does open to the outdoors means it doesn't need to be so big, because we spend much of our time enjoying the outdoors. I think that it should be possible to get a decent amount of space. I've watched my neighbors who had two sets of twins also do a remodel that accommodated everybody. I very much hope that you will take all of this into consideration and pass an SSO for us. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. John Potter to be followed by Nisha Potter. Welcome. John Potter: Hi. I'm John Potter; I live at 3421 Greer Road. I want to speak in support of the SSO. We purposely bought an Eichler; we've always loved Eichlers. When we moved out to California, it was one of the things that attracted us as kind of a California house. We should really be encouraging their preservation. I think that a lot has been made of the fact there's existing two-story houses. I think the ones that are going to be built in the future are going to be very different. The fact that we have such small lots and we're in the flood zone means that the houses are going to be extremely tall; they're going to be 30 feet tall probably. That's definitely going to block out light and private around us. I really urge you to pass this SSO. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Nisha Potter to be followed by Heather MacDonald. Welcome. Nisha Potter: Hi. I'm Nisha (inaudible) Potter. I own 3421 Greer Road, and I previously rented 3407 Janice Way. These are both houses in Royal Manor tract. I'm in favor of the SSO. It has been mentioned that these houses cannot accommodate large families. Both of the houses that I have lived in have been renovated successfully by remaining one-story Eichlers. My current house has a second master suite that was added for in-laws previously by the owners, and which I can move my immigrant parents into. I have also been in other renovated Eichlers, including one that has two adults and four very large teenagers and pets living in it very comfortably. TRANSCRIPT Page 81 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 While many of these houses add second floors, they lose valuable floor space and have to create strange floor plans to squeeze in extra rooms. The homeowners on Stockton and Loma Verde have asked to be excluded based on the fact they live across the street from houses that are not Eichlers. While I understand their position, it is one thing to look across the street and see a different a house. It's entirely a different matter to have two stories next door and behind you which is what would happen if they were excluded from the SSO. Houses across the street do not look into my property; my next door neighbor's and the houses behind me do. I appreciate that everybody has rights to their own property, but I feel like I have rights also. My house is two-thirds glass windows, and I see no way that a two-story house would not look directly into my side yards, back yard and house, giving me no privacy at all. I don't think there are ways to architect around this. Already with my fence at regulation height, in the winter I can look out of any window in my house and see the roofline of every house around me. These houses are very close together to begin with, making two stories would only make privacy worse. Finally, I worry about the property values for someone who doesn't have the resources or the desire to go up to two stories. If they're surrounded by two-story houses towering over their properties, how is that going to affect their property values when all they can do is look out of the windows at other two-story houses? Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Heather MacDonald to be followed by Barb Gaarsma. Welcome. Heather MacDonald: Good evening. My name is Heather MacDonald, and I'm a homeowner on Janice Way. I'm speaking in support of the single story overlay in Royal Manor. I have owned my home for over 20 years and did my own research before making the decision to support the SSO. Our neighborhood's small lots mean that our homes are very close together. We currently have very limited privacy. When a two-story home is built, especially in the floodplain, the resulting home is quite high. A few years ago the house next to ours was sold. It was in very bad shape and was at risk of being torn down. Fortunately the family that purchased the home valued the character of the neighborhood and renovated the home in a consistent manner. It made me realize how close we came to having a large home block our sunlight and compromise our privacy. I felt like at the time, after 20 years, I had almost no control over what happened to the enjoyment of the home that we had owned. My research also showed that the main arguments that people have against an SSO, lower property values, losing the right to add square footage, and an irreversible decision, are not accurate. I also understand that there are compromise and tradeoffs on both sides of the issues. I don't believe that the Individual Review process provides adequate protections for existing homeowners as TRANSCRIPT Page 82 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 evidenced by new homes built nearby. Therefore, I support the single story overlay. I thank you for your consideration. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Barb Gaarsma to be followed by Boaz Maor. Barb Gaarsma: Hi there. I'm Barbara Gaarsma. I live at 3335 Stockton Place, which is a street with nine homes and one two-story house. That two-story house, as much as I adore the people how live in it, towers over my home. I can look out two sides of my home, and there are the windows from their house. They block my geriatric antennae. When we moved into the house, it was 1958 and my grandmother, my parents and me. My grandmother died there, and my parents died there. I have every intention to die there. Right now, I'm living with two sons, two grandsons and assorted young women who come and go. There's plenty of room for all of us. We haven't added any more rooms. I'm sorry; I didn't mean to be funny. We're doing great. We can expand out if we want to. Everyone else has spoken so eloquently in favor of this SSO, and I am totally with them, every step of the way. Please do not take Stockton off. Please don't take Loma Verde off. I don't want to be surrounded by monster houses. My neighbors behind me on Kenneth sure don't want it either. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Boaz Maor. Boaz Maor: Good evening. My wife and I used to live here in Palo Alto between '96 and 2006, then went away, came back in 2013. When we did, we looked at many towns around the Bay Area, chose Palo Alto for the diversity and quality of life. In particular, we felt that in most areas of the City the enormous wealth owned by many of the residents is not paraded in the streets and in the houses. This is specifically why we liked Midtown and chose to live in this area. We bought a house on Janice Way. Those who live in this street know that this house was not in livable condition when we bought it. We spent a lot of money to renovate it and keep it in the Eichler style because we feel that the unique style, the single-story Eichler homes, give value not only to the property but also to the quality of life within we live. We accommodate in this house our three kids, even though our youngest came to us and asked if we are poor since we don't have a second story. We also have a lot of foreign parents of myself and my wife who come to visit us, and other relatives. We see no problem with the size of the house that we live in. It will be a shame if this magic of the Eichler neighborhood is getting destroyed by building a hodge-podge of different style houses. If we don't protect it, it will be destroyed. This is one of those things that is hard to build and so easy to destroy. Please keep the SSO alive. TRANSCRIPT Page 83 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Mayor Burt: Thank you. Coco Matthey to be followed by Lynn Drake [phonetic]. Welcome. Coco Matthey: Good evening, Mayors, Council Member and City Staff. Thank you so much for having me here. My name is Coco Matthey. I live in 3498 Janice Way. Six-plus years ago I was pregnant, and my husband I dreamed to live in Palo Alto. I told my husband I want to make Palo Alto my home and want to raise my children here. There are multiple reasons. At the time, it was because our grade school were here. After moving here, my parents—I'm Asian origin. My parents have lived with us for a while to help me raise my children. We find this house is big enough. I'm in favor of SSO. While we are having modest life, my husband and I put together a solar roof in our house, and we have (inaudible). We run our house is zero percentage. After so many years and living here, I realize what attracts me to come here is this community. SSO is part of it. Also this great history and this great sense of community. They drive the school better. I have been volunteering a lot for school, and I want to be part of this community, to bring this spirit. I have seen a lot of overseas investing company. They come here; they get money, and they want to buy this house and make big money. They buy the house in cash and try to turn around and invest it. People come here to do the investment. They will not contribute back to the community. That's what I want to say. Thank you very much. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Pat Hanley to be followed by Margarita Merz. Pat Hanley: Hello. My name is Pat Hanley. I live at 3493 Kenneth Drive, and I support the SSO petition for Royal Manor. First, I wish to address comments that have been repeated many times regarding a gathering which was a block party. It has been stated that undue influence was exerted to obtain signatures for the Royal Manor SSO at the event. The event was not a block party, rather it was a private party at a residence on Kenneth Drive celebrating a woman who had just received a teaching position at Stanford. At the time I was canvassing the neighborhood, handing out materials about the SSO and requesting signatures in support of the petition. The woman who answered the door when I knocked was a former colleague with whom I had worked for many years at Palo Verde Elementary School. Her response was enthusiastically in support of the SSO petition, which she signed and then she urged other homeowners at the party to also sign the petition. At a later date, three of the ten homeowners who had signed the SSO for Royal Manor changed their minds and decided they no longer wished their names on the petition. Their request was honored, and their signatures were removed. Second, it has also been claimed by opponents of the SSO petition that the value of homes in SSO neighborhoods are reduced. Ken DeLeon, a top realtor in California, addressed this issue in his March 2016 TRANSCRIPT Page 84 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 DeLeon Insight periodical. Based on a comparison of home sales prices between an SSO zone in South Palo Alto and South Palo Alto in its entirety, there is less than a 1 1/2 percent difference in price, and three days on the market. There are 11 SSO neighborhoods in Palo Alto, consisting primarily of Eichler homes which have the unique design of two sides of the building having glass walls. Fair Court 3 and Fair Court 4 neighborhoods are currently in the SSO petition process. These neighborhoods along with Royal Manor wish to maintain the privacy and natural lighting afforded contiguous Eichler structures. Should not lose their privacy and lighting and architectural integrity. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Margarita Merz to be followed Stephanie McGraw. Margarita Merz: Good evening. My name is Margarita Merz. I live on Greer Road. I live between two double-story houses. I can tell you what that's like. On the bedroom side, I have my drapes drawn all the time, and I have to switch on my lights. On the other side, on my living room side, when I sit at my dining room table and I look out of my window, there's a huge wall all the way up to wherever—I can't see it—with a window. Luckily my neighbors are very kind and considerate, and they leave their drapes closed, but I don't have any privacy into my house. My backyard is the same thing. There's absolutely no privacy. I support the SSO completely, because I think that's really the way that we have to go. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Stephanie McGraw to be followed by chuck Kubokawa. Stephanie McGraw: Hi, you all. I've lived in Palo Alto 35 years, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you about what that experience has been like. To the City Staff, I appreciate all the work you've done to prepare for this. I hope that there won't be a lot of dissension in our neighborhood whichever way the vote goes. Tonight started with a long and drawn out talk about what we could do to be environmentally friendly, what could Palo Alto do more. Building two-story houses on very, very small lots, 30 feet in the air is not environmentally friendly. I'm very much in support of the SSO because, if the houses on either side of me and over the back fence go up 30 feet, I'll have to do as Kitty said and put curtains up on my windows. I've never had to have curtains up on my windows. It would impact all the wildlife that I see. There are titmice; they're all over the place. Goldfinches. Please preserve our neighborhood. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Chuck Kubokawa to be followed by (inaudible) Ayed [phonetic]. Welcome. TRANSCRIPT Page 85 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Chuck Kubokawa: Honorable Mayor and City Council and administrative people from the City of Palo Alto, I really appreciate you taking the time to hear us out. I wrote all of you an email, and I hope you read it. Some of it will be repeated in what I say. I came to Palo Alto in 1958, September the 28th to be sure. It's the hottest day of the year, and we are moving into the Eichler. Prior to moving in, I used to go to the site to hit a few nails into the studs to make sure that the studs will stand up in an earthquake. I just marvel at the structure that was made. It was made very smart, unique and with quality wood. You call these home Eichler homes. He was a developer, but the true architects were (inaudible) Allen and a couple of other architects. All the students that studied under Frank Lloyd Wright, a world- renowned architect at Taliesin in Arizona. If all these people came after 1958, they would know that the structure is on a flat concrete with radiant heating in there. That was one of the things that sold me the house, aside from the fact that my wife and I spent a month and a half looking for a tract home. No one would sell to us because we were of Japanese descent. Eichler was the only one that accepted us, and he asked me one question. You got the gilt? I said, "I got the down payment." He sold me the house, and I'm very glad he sold me the house. I'm a proponent of Frank Lloyd Wright, so I love the house. It's truly unique. It's something that everybody should be proud of, because it won many, many awards. Thank you. Incidentally, the Warriors won. Mayor Burt: Thank you. (inaudible) Ayed to be followed by Amitab Sinha [phonetic]. Sonha Metha [phonetic]. Abita Sayed [phonetic]. Jayesh. Welcome. Jayesh: Mr. Mayor, Council Members, thank you for your time. My name is Jayesh. I live on Kenneth Drive in a lovely Eichler home, if I may say so myself. We love everything about our neighborhood and think it's perfect just the way it is. I believe that's so because we already have the mechanisms in place to oppose every monstrosity that comes up. It is in the form of plan approvals, in the form of oversight from the Planning Committee, as well as in the form of comments that we seek from neighbors as part of the IR process. It just needs to be enforced stronger. Even so, when the SSO proposal was presented, I initially signed, believing it was a Motion to put it on ballot. This clause was later struck out. I don't believe it was meant to be deceitful in any way, but it has caused a lot of misinformation. It is why I chose to withdraw my support, and I urge the Council to take the time on this one or put it to ballot. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Bina Shah [phonetic] to be followed by Chenghao Pan. Chenghao Pan. Welcome. TRANSCRIPT Page 86 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Chenghao Pan: Good evening. My name is Chenghao. I bought my house in 2015. I live 3464 Janice Way. I just want to speak three reason to oppose SSO. The first reason is when I bought this house, nobody told me there is a potential restriction. My point is if I know this potential restriction, I will go away, I won't buy here because it waste this amount of money. I could buy a house somewhere in Palo Alto. Second point is after I move in, somebody come in and knock on my door and introduce SSO. They only talk about advantage of SSO. They never talk about other side of if you against SSO, what is the advantage and the disadvantage. Third point is I look at the PowerPoint, so majority of people sign SSO. Their lot size larger than 7,000 feet. I think that they have a potential to build single level because of their lot size. For my family, we don't have that larger size lot. That will limit my home and the value of my home. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Malati Raghunath. Malati Raghunath: Thank you, Mayor, Council. My name is Malati Raghunath. I live on Kenneth Drive. Many of us here have come before me and talked about multigenerational family. I'm one of them. I live with my in-laws. It's been a little bit challenging, because we're on the side of Kenneth where there's an easement also. There's no way I can build outside. Also when these proponents of SSO came and told me about how I should sign, I was almost given to believe that it's something that would go to the ballot. Also, after a few house calls while I'm serving dinner to my kids, I felt really guilty, believe me, when some of these people came. One of the things that the person said to me is, "Don't you want to preserve this Eichler beauty?" I had the chance and the thought to tell her that my idea of Eichler beauty is very different than her idea of single-story Eichler beauty. In my mind, a proper design guideline from the City can enable us all to preserve that privacy, the light, the sunlight, everything that we've heard so far, and yet accommodate a six to seven-people multigenerational family like mine. Thank you very much. Mayor Burt: Next speaker is Lucille Klesner [phonetic], to be followed by Barbara Childs. Barbara Childs: Good evening. My name is Barbara Childs. I live in Royal Manor in a single Eichler which I adore. I like the privacy and everything. At first I was going to go ahead with the SSO, but I started thinking about it. I thought when people—I've owned my house for 25 years. When we bought our houses, we knew what we were getting into. We knew if we had CC&Rs that said you cannot go up. We knew we were in a flood zone. Of course, we didn't know everything. We didn't know what we would be when we turned 74 and that we weren't going to have parents living with us. TRANSCRIPT Page 87 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Things change. Also this thing about—there's a lot of dissension. For instance, I never went to—I learned that I signed a petition at the 4th of July party. I don't have any recollection of that. I have been told by two of my friends that they didn't know that I was an absentee owner. I said, "Where are you getting that?" That's what it says on the list, that you're an absentee owner. There is so much miscommunication about this issue that it is tearing people apart, which is really too bad. I'm so glad that we're going to have the time now on the 25th, so a lot of people can go to the Planning Department, they can have their questions answered. It was really done very badly. Thank you very much. The Planning Department should be sending out things too. They could do a lot. They're going to need to do a lot with what's happening with the second story. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Unmesh Vartook [phonetic]. Our next speaker— thank you. Ian Fraser. Welcome. Ian Fraser: Thank you. Council Members, I'm here to oppose the SSO. I think that a lot of my neighbors here are concerned about the look of the neighborhood and the build-out of current homes, existing homes, under the existing 25 percent rule, which says your second story, first addition has to be 25 percent of the footprint of your foundation. That could be applied to new construction where a second story would be limited to maybe 50 percent of the footprint of the foundation. With the 25 percent improvement on the roof for an addition, you can build again five years later and add 25 percent of the remaining, which is what my neighbors have done on both sides. I think with a little bit more planning input and some review by the neighborhood of buildings that are going up, I think we could eliminate the whole problem. I oppose the SSO because there's young families in the neighborhood, and people should have the right to improve and gain the equity that that provides. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Venkat Dokiparthi to be followed by Yukeo Fraser [phonetic]. Venkat Dokiparthi: Mayor and Council, I prepared a speech to talk for three minutes. After hearing some of the points that were already raised, I want to change and talk about a couple of points that weren't talked by other people. One is I want you to think that everybody loves Eichler and there is the great thing out there. I want Council and everybody to think how many new houses are built in Palo Alto in the last 10 years and how many of them are Eichlers. Why people are not building Eichlers if that is the best thing in the world. The second thing, (inaudible) talked about values appreciating. Values are appreciating in every single corner of California right now. You need to look at prices. Everything is going up in Sunnyvale. It used to be TRANSCRIPT Page 88 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 $400,000 five years ago; it's a million now. When everything is going up, you cannot just say SSO is also going up. When the market is not good, how the SSOs are doing. That's the research nobody has done, just people talking about it. One point I want to make about the process, which has to be improved. They (inaudible) the neighborhood really badly. I hope people—I love my neighbors, and hopefully we'll still have the good relations. One comment that is made on Nextdoor Palo Verde that really talks about it. Let me read out this for you. "While the opposition occasionally represents themselves as poor, multigenerational immigrants, what they really appear to be is foreign-funded opportunists looking to make a quick few million by tearing down these treasures." I just want to say that it really hurt me, because this is (inaudible) in our neighborhood. Just want to say a lot of people in Royal Manor are not like that. I came with $300 in my pocket, and my wife and myself saved every penny to buy a house. We don't want to lose the right we have today. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Yukeo Fraser to be followed by Marjan ... To be followed by Jeff Williams. Welcome. Jeff Williams: Hi. I'm Jeff Williams. I've been a Palo Alto resident since 1959, currently living in a house on Janice Way that was bought by my family in '62. We have three generations living there now. Strongly in support of the SSO for all the reasons that you've already heard. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Richard Willits to be followed by Jackie Angelo Geist. Jackie Angelo Geist. Jackie Angelo Geist: Hello everyone. I've lived in my Eichler for perhaps 45 years, at least, and been extremely happy there. The first reason that I'm in favor of the single story overlay is to keep the integrity of the Eichler neighborhood as originally designed and intended. That is important to me. Some degree of uniformity of design makes an attractive neighborhood, and each home is extremely marketable. We've see that happen. The second reason is to keep the inside/outside living style alive by maintaining privacy and light that can come into your home. Our family has lost that privilege that we've enjoyed all these years, because directly behind us on Louis Road there's a monster home, as we call it. Hopefully no other homeowners will have to live with this kind of giant home looming in their backyard, blocking our privacy because we too do not have drapes in our living room. We enjoy the glass, being inside/outside. Taking away our light-infused living spaces. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Sidney Simon [phonetic] to be followed by Nancy Hancock [phonetic]. Mike Blum [phonetic]. Andrew Lookingbill. TRANSCRIPT Page 89 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Andrew Lookingbill: Mr. Mayor and Members of the Council, thank you so much for your patience and attention tonight. My neighbors have made excellent points on both sides of the issue. They make wonderful points actually. I'm here tonight in favor of the SSO. The reason is actually a little surreal for me. I'm not from this part of the country originally. If you had told me a few years ago that I'd be here and I'd be speaking on behalf of tract housing by somebody of a certain name, I'd think that was pretty strange. I'm a convert. I live in this house with my wife and young daughter. I'm amazed that I can stand anywhere in the house, anywhere in the backyard, and there's no line of sight to anyone in any of the houses around me. It's a bit of a magic trick, and I don't know how he did it originally, but it's something I really appreciate that. That's why I'm here today in favor of the SSO. Thank you so much for your time. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Shekhar Kapoor. Welcome. Shekhar Kapoor: Thank you, everyone. Thanks Council Member for giving me the opportunity. I don't know what to say. Whatever could be said has been said. It's late; I may be babbling a little bit. I just want to say one thing. Something about statistics. A lot of statistics have been thrown at us. Somebody said once that—sorry if I'm being a little lighter—statistics is like swimwear. It reveals a lot, but hides the most important part. I guess the most important part is all about home is very personal to everyone. Everyone has their own dreams about their home. When we bought the house in Palo Alto after how many biddings. I was humiliated in one of the biddings; there were like 28 biddings out there. I think I was second last in that bidding. We kept trying and finally we got a house in Palo Alto. Eichler homes were the most affordable at that time. I tell you one thing, we have fallen in love with the home. We love this neighborhood, and we love the much-maligned block parties also. There's a balance that we need to create with the need of each individual while at the same time making sure that the community's needs are not violated. I understand the all the privacy needs. I understand we need to maintain the architectural look and feel. I think the human need is also very important. For example, I am looking at a possibility I may be taking care of parents on both sides who will be coming and staying with us. There is no option given all the restrictions which are already there but to look at going up. This is one thing that I want to have the flexibility open. Yet, I think the opportunity is front of us to work together to create a balance. Thank you. Mayor Burt: Thank you. Hobart Sea [phonetic]. Paul Gilman. Eric Smith. Finally Abrar Hussain. Welcome. TRANSCRIPT Page 90 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Abrar Hussain: Thank you. Members of the City Council, Mayor and all the Staff, I hate to be the one person standing between you and your pillow. I will make this short. I live on 3477 Thomas Drive. I am here in support of the SSO. I couldn't have said that a little while ago. I was actually against the SSO. The reason why I wanted to speak and frankly be the last one to speak is to leave you with this one thing. The reason why I made this decision is because this is not a one-to-one issue. You see people here on both sides. You see that some people are going against, some people are going for it. The key here to remember is that every house that comes up has a benefit for one person, the person building the two story, but it is a detriment for all their neighbors. It's not a one-to-one relationship. It's a one to at least three, at most six. You are here and elected to literally balance. You have to make a decision. There isn't an easy one that's going to satisfy everyone. What I will tell you is that it is not a one-to-one decision. Each one house has an impact far greater than the benefit, and that is finally why I decided to support the SSO. I hope you do too. Thank you very much. I hope you sleep well. Public Hearing continued to May 2, 2016. Mayor Burt: Thank you. That concludes the hearing for tonight. We will keep the hearing open to our meeting next week. Mr. Keene. Mr. Keene: Mr. Mayor, in the spirit of nothing being simple or easy on this issue, you have two Council Members who are recused. We're down to seven. My understanding as of now is that we will have two Council Members who will not be at the meeting next week. We will be five if that holds. The City Attorney may want to just let you know what five means. Molly Stump, City Attorney: Thank you. City Attorney Molly Stump. You can go forward with five. To pass a resolution does require five votes. Four or three members of a five-member group could give the Staff direction, if that was the Council's decision after hearing the matter next week. Mayor Burt: I'm sorry, repeat that. A majority of the five members present can give Council direction? Ms. Stump: Could give direction to the Staff, yes, to do some work and come back, for example. Mayor Burt: But not to pass an Ordinance. Ms. Stump: Right. Passing an Ordinance or a resolution does require five votes regardless of absences or recusals. TRANSCRIPT Page 91 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Mayor Burt: Why don't we take a moment to discuss this then? I think out of fairness for the process, we can go into the meeting essentially requiring a unanimous vote. In order to be able to have the possibility of passing the Ordinance without, at this point in time, commenting in any way on the merits of either side, is that really the best process? Council Member DuBois, did you want to weigh in? Council Member DuBois: One thought is we've talked about potentially allowing Council Members to call in. I don't know if anybody that's going to miss next week would be able to dial in. The other comment, I guess, would be about Council Member Scharff, I don't know if he's next here next week. Mr. Keene: He would be counted in one of the ones who would make five. Council Member DuBois: He didn't have the benefit of public (crosstalk). Ms. Stump: He does need to review the record and, exactly, watch the video. Council Member DuBois: I am uncomfortable doing this with just five. If there's a way to increase that number, we should explore it. Mayor Burt: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: Of course, the other way is look at the May 2nd Agenda. Right now there are four Action Items on the May 2nd Agenda. I'm wondering if the site and design review could be bumped. Is there a timeliness to that? So we can address this with larger participation. Mr. Keene: We could push that Item, but not too far, Jonathan says. Is it a public hearing that we've already noticed it? You need to check that. We actually have five Agenda Items. We also have the receipt of the transportation tax poll results and discussion. Mayor Burt: Which will be very time sensitive. Mr. Keene: You do have a Colleagues Memo on Evergreen Park, and we are going to be taking that up separately on the following week, on May 9th. The neighborhood petition, so you could combine those. Mayor Burt: Mr. Keene, I realized after our pre-Council meeting today that from a process standpoint with a Colleagues Memo, we're not to take action on it. It would naturally be potentially referred to May 9th, if it was taken up on the 2nd. I didn't think of that earlier today. That's probably the right process. TRANSCRIPT Page 92 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Mr. Keene: If you could discipline yourselves to quickly take it up and vote to refer it on the 9th, then we could shorten the time allocated to that Item. Mayor Burt: That may work. The site and design review, that can be pushed out? Mr. Keene: Yes, we can do that. We're going to have to figure out when we can do it, since everything is really busy. We can push that out. If we find out tomorrow morning that we've actually publicized the public hearing, we'll just have to put a notice out that it's been continued to a date certain and we'll have that date. Mayor Burt: We were polling about starting that meeting at 5:00 P.M. Beth, did you get results on the ability to start the May 2nd meeting at 5:00 P.M.? Beth Minor, City Clerk: On May 2nd to start at 5:00, I have three yes and one maybe. That's it so far. Mayor Burt: Can we orally poll right now on the capability of starting that meeting at 5:00 P.M.? We can start it at 5:00 P.M. We should be able to have this Item go to May 2nd instead of this coming Monday. We're all in agreement? Mr. Keene: Yes. We will, of course, get the news out. Obviously, we'd ask any of the neighbors to share that info with neighbors for those folks who left early and heard that we were going to do it on the 25th. Just so everyone knows, it's moved to May 2nd. Thanks. Mayor Burt: The Agenda Items for next week are the Bike Plan and then the budget overview and a Colleagues Memo on safeguards on technology. Thank you, everyone from the public, for participating tonight. We will continue this Item to May 2nd. Can we give people a sense of—we'll get the word out. Do we know the sequence on May 2nd? Mr. Keene: I don't see any reason why we couldn't take it up as the first Action Item, and do the budget after that. Make it the first of the three Items, on the Action Items I mean. It would be approximately—we're starting at 5:00, so 6:20? Mayor Burt: The Agenda will be on the website, but it'll be fairly early in the evening. Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs Mayor Burt: No legislative matters to report. TRANSCRIPT Page 93 of 93 City Council Meeting Transcript: 4/18/16 Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements Mayor Burt: Council Member Comments. Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: Three comments quickly. I think three of us went to the Cooley Landing Ribbon Cutting this Saturday. If anybody hasn't been out there, it's really a fabulous facility and gorgeous setting. It was a great turnout and had a lot of high-level elected support there. Sunday the Magical Bridge Playground celebrated its first anniversary. There also was an announcement made today that they have formed now the Magical Bridge Foundation. I encourage everybody to go to their website and check that out and what their plans are. Sunday also at the Mitchell Park Community Center, Blossom Birth held a family event. Something like 600 families turned out. It was quite an amazing, amazing turnout. Great events this last weekend. Mayor Burt: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: This is more of a question. I wondered if we could get an update on the Polling Committee that we appointed. Maybe not tonight but soon. Mayor Burt: The next thing is the polling results come back. That's the Agenda Item we talked about. Council Member DuBois: That'll come back on the ... Mayor Burt: To the Council. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 11:54 P.M.