HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016-05-09 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL
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Regular Meeting
May 9, 2016
The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council
Chambers at 6:08 P.M.
Present: Berman, Burt, DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Kniss, Scharff, Schmid,
Wolbach
Absent:
Special Orders of the Day
1. Appointment of two Candidates to the Human Relations Commission,
two Candidates to the Library Advisory Commission, and Three
Candidates to the Utilities Advisory Commission for Terms Ending May
31, 2019 and one Candidate to the Utilities Advisory Commission for
one Unexpired Term Ending May 31, 2017.
Mayor Burt: Our first item is a Special Order of the Day which is
appointment of two candidates to the Human Relations Commission (HRC)
and two candidates to the Library Advisory Commission (LAC) and then
three candidates to the Utilities Advisory Commission (UAC) for terms
ending May 31st, 2019 as well as one candidate for the Utilities Advisory
Commission for one unexpired term ending May 31st, 2017. Would the
Clerk share with the Council on the final one, the Utilities Advisory
Commission, how the voting process works for the one single-year term
versus the three years.
Beth Minor, City Clerk: What you'd be voting on first is the three full-term
that will be expiring the end of this month. After that is completed, then
we'll do a final vote for the unexpired term on the UAC.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. We'll go ahead and do the first round of voting.
While the Clerk is tabulating that, we can go ahead and begin Agenda
Changes, Additions and Deletions.
First Round of voting for two positions on the Human Relations Commission
with a terms ending May 31, 2019:
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Voting For Jill O’Nan: Berman, Burt, DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Kniss,
Scharff, Schmid, Wolbach
Voting For Greer Stone: Berman, Burt, DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Kniss,
Scharff, Schmid, Wolbach
Ms. Minor: Both Jill O'Nan and Greer Stone have been elected to the Human
Relations Commission.
First Round of voting for two positions on the Library Advisory Commission with a terms ending May 31, 2019:
Voting For Allan Bennett:
Voting For Sheena Chin: Berman, Burt, DuBois, Filseth, Holman,
Kniss, Scharff, Schmid, Wolbach
Voting For Natasha Kachenko: Wolbach
Voting For Bob Moss: Berman, Burt, DuBois, Filseth, Holman,
Kniss, Scharff, Schmid
Ms. Minor: Sheena Chin and Bob Moss have been elected to the Library
Advisory Commission.
First Round of voting for three positions on the Utilities Advisory Commission
with a terms ending May 31, 2019:
Voting For Chris DiBona:
Voting For Lisa Forssell: Filseth, Wolbach
Voting For A.C. Johnston: Berman, Burt, DuBois, Filseth, Holman,
Kniss, Scharff, Schmid, Wolbach
Voting For Henrik Morkner:
Voting For William Ross: DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Schmid
Voting For Judith Schwartz: Berman, Burt, Holman, Kniss, Scharff,
Wolbach
Voting For Terry Trumbull: Berman, Burt, DuBois, Kniss, Scharff,
Schmid
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Ms. Minor: A.C. Johnston with nine votes, Judith Schwartz with six votes
and Terry Trumbull with six votes were all elected to the full-term UAC
positions.
Mayor Burt: We will now vote for the one-year for the Utilities Advisory
Commission. While we do that, we will go forward with Oral
Communications.
First Round of voting for one position on the Utilities Advisory Commission with a term ending May 31, 2017:
Voting For Chris DiBona:
Voting For Lisa Forssell: Berman, Burt, Kniss, Scharff, Wolbach
Voting For Henrik Morkner:
Voting For William Ross: DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Schmid
Ms. Minor: Lisa Forssell with five votes has been appointed to the unexpired
term that ends 5/31/2017 on the Utilities Advisory Commission.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Congratulations to all the candidates, and thank
you to all the candidates who applied for the positions and went through the
interview process.
Study Session
2. Council Study Session on Sea Level Rise (Continued to May 31, 2016).
Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions
Mayor Burt: We had initially scheduled a Study Session on Sea Level Rise.
This item has been continued to Tuesday, May 31st of this year. We have
no other Agenda changes, so we can now go on to City Manager Comments.
Mr. Keene.
City Manager Comments
James Keene, City Manager: Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council Members. I
wanted to share with the Council—in fact, actually more importantly with our
community and the public. Next on your Agenda you have a Study Session
which is a prescreening related to a project at the address 550 Hamilton.
You've been getting a lot of emails in relation to that project. I did just want
to clarify the purpose for pre-screenings in general, because I think that
there might be confusion in our community about this process itself and
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actually its purpose. Pre-screenings before the City Council are scheduled at
the request of the developer and applicant, and not because City Staff or the
Council have expressed a desire to pursue the proposal at any given site.
The City's Municipal Code allows a developer or property owner to request
initial feedback from Council Members on legislative changes, in other words
zoning changes potentially, on land use or other major projects. The intent
of the prescreening session is to allow Council Members and members of the public to offer comments in a format similar to that of a Study Session. No
formal action is taken. Based on the testimony, the applicant gets a sense
as to how their proposal may be received by the community and the City
and whether it is worth pursuing or if modifications are necessary. There is
not really a discretion that is exercised by the City on these proposals as it
relates to them coming forward. I think that's important to clarify. On the
subject of the Professorville Design Guidelines, on May 2nd the Planning
Staff posted a public review draft of the Professorville Design Guidelines on
the City's website for review and comment. We also mailed postcard notices
inviting all Professorville property owners and residents to review the draft
guidelines and provide comments over a two month timeframe. Planning
Staff will provide information, answer questions and receive feedback at a public meeting tentatively planned for May 26, and Historic Resources Board
Meetings on June 9th and July 14th. The Staff is targeting September for
Council review and adoption of the Professorville Historic Design Guidelines.
The draft guidelines project schedule and other information can be found on
the Professorville Design Guidelines webpage on the City's website,
cityofpaloalto.org/gov/departments, and then you can find your way to it
from there. Did you want me to continue, Mr. Mayor? Are you ready to ...
Mayor Burt: Clerk need a little more time?
Beth Minor, City Clerk: We have two of them back, and then we can finish
while he finishes, if you'd like.
Mr. Keene: I'll keep talking then. Santa Clara Valley Transportation
Authority (VTA) transit service changes. VTA will be hosting a community
meeting in Palo Alto Wednesday, next Wednesday, May 18th at Rinconada
Library, to discuss their next network initiative. VTA or the Valley
Transportation Authority has engaged a consultant to review existing routes
and make recommendations for future routing and scheduling resulting in
the development of three concept maps for public review and comment.
Two of the concepts proposed would significantly reduce VTA bus service in
Palo Alto including one concept that would eliminate all routes except for the
22 and 522 buses along El Camino Real. This meeting will provide an
important opportunity for our community to review their proposed concepts
and provide very necessary local feedback. More information is available on
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VTA's website, vta.org/nextnetwork. Just a reminder and appropriate for
tonight's Council meeting. This Thursday, May 12th is the 22nd annual Bay
Area Bike to Work Day, and the City of Palo Alto of will be participating
again. We hope to see many of you out there riding your bike to work and
school. We've been part of this green commute program for 17 years and
are hosting four volunteer stations at the locations we have been staffing for
years, at key commute locations including the Alma Bike Bridge on the north end of town, the Wilkie Way Bike Bridge on the south end of town,
Downtown on Bryant Street right outside of here at City Hall, and at the
busiest station California Avenue near the Caltrain station. The California
Avenue (Cal. Avenue) is a busy spot, but volunteers are needed at all
stations. To help, email jeffery.heckathorn@cityofpaloalto.org. Folks who
have never made the trek along with the Mayor and Council Members and
myself, for example, can stop at the Bike to Work energizer stations, get a
snack and coffee, pick up a canvas bag, and get details on biking to work.
The 94th annual May Fete Children's Parade was held last Saturday. It was
a big success with this theme this year of Happy Healthy Habits. There were
62 parade entries from local schools, clubs and organizations, and
participants were encouraged to express what they do to keep happy and healthy. The students of Escondido Elementary School and the Green Team
volunteers created an award winning bicycle-powered float using
unrecyclable food packaging from school lunches to display the impact of
how much landfill material is used. Although rain was forecast for the entire
day, not a single drop could have kept the kids from participating on that
fun-filled day. I have—thank you, Roger—some slides to show related to our
Public Art program, in case you've been Downtown this week. Our Public Art
program in cooperation with Public Works and the Downtown Business and
Professional Improvement Association installed five creative seating
elements along University Avenue last week. The sleek and colorful benches
by Walnut Creek artist Colin Selig were created from upcycled propane
tanks. The pieces will be on loan to the City for one year, and members of
the public are encouraged to let the Public Art program know what they
think of the pilot project and if they would like to see more functional,
creative artworks in Palo Alto. There will be a brief celebration with the
artist hosted by the KEEN Garage, that's the shoe store, May 26th at 5:00.
Lastly, I don't know if I've got a slide from the Children's Theatre 2015-2016
Main Stage season comes to a close with James and the Giant Peach,
running for 11 performances May 12th through 22nd, featuring 26 local
youth cast members. The final production of the 2015-16 Playhouse series
in which high school teens perform fairy tales for young audiences on the
Magic Castle stage ends with its final production of the year. We will have
reached more than 4,700 audience members over the nine productions. The
Teen Arts Council's final open mike night will be Friday, May 27th, at 7:30
P.M. at the Palo Alto Children's Theatre. That's all I have to report.
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Mayor Burt: Thank you. Does the Clerk have results from the voting?
Ms. Minor: Yes, I do.
[The Council returned to Item 1.]
Oral Communications
Mayor Burt: We have ten speaker cards, so each speaker will allotted two
minutes each to speak. Our first speaker is Lynn Krug, to be followed by
Hamilton Hitchings. Welcome.
Lynn Krug: Good evening, Mayor Burt and City Council Members. I'll try
and make my two minutes quick. I'd like to say thank you to Ed Shikada
and Rumi Portillo who have taken over labor management, and that means
they're working with myself as Chapter Chair of Service Employees
International Union (SEIU) employees for the City of Palo Alto. We're
grateful for being able to work with them for positive issues and working
forward with the City. The reason I'm here tonight is because unfortunately
I didn't find this out until I saw the Budget a week ago Friday. There's a
position in there that Utilities is promoting that is a heavy equipment
operator/installer/repairer assistant to be converted to heavy equipment
operator/installer/repairer. I've worked in construction 22 years now. I've
worked in heavy and highway 90 percent of that time. Combining a heavy equipment operator with a pipefitter installer is—although it might sound
fine if you don't work in the field, these two jobs have distinct
communication and duties for safety reasons. I'm here tonight to ask you to
pull this Budget item under Utilities Budget Adjustment, Item 3, from the
Budget. It is not a matter of scheduling and employee shortage. We have
seven equipment operators, 20 installer/repairer, installer/repairer assistant,
installer/repairer lead total. One of the issues is whether or not they share a
calendar. The heavy equipment operators, of which there are seven, share
four supervisors. Those supervisors, were they merely to share a calendar,
would take care of any employee assignments. This primarily is a safety
issue. When it comes down to it, the reason I'm here is because I strongly
and firmly believe combining these two job descriptions, one of a heavy
equipment operator who operates equipment that can kill somebody. I've
witnessed someone get hit with the heavy equipment on a loader before.
It's not safe. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Hamilton Hitchings to be followed by John Guisun.
Hamilton Hitchings: Good evening. First, I wanted to thank you for passing
80/30 and taking leadership in climate reduction. I'm very excited about
that and about your action. The reason I'm here tonight is to talk about the
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crossing guards. I just saw a local television broadcast on May 3rd about
the lack of attendance of traffic guards at night. I also read an article in the
Palo Alto Weekly. That's why I'm here. I want to encourage the City Council
and the City Staff to prioritize enforcing the contract with Cypress. The
Cypress employees are often not at their stations at night, and that poses a
risk to our teenagers. Studies have shown a lot of suicides are impulsive
and not premeditated. I really appreciate the City doing the program and allocating significant budget including good salary of $22 an hour, but I want
to request that they start to enforce the contract, consider withholding
payments temporarily and not paying for delivery of services so that we can
have a good implementation for that program. Thank you for your time.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is John Guisun, to be followed by
Andrea Lichter.
John Guisun: Good evening, Council. My name is John Guisun. I live at
225 Middlefield Road. If you've been reading your email, you know what I’m
here to talk about. Middlefield Road from University Avenue to the Menlo
Park border is four continuous blocks of driver mayhem. We have a history
of having serious accidents and dangerous conditions, speeding, congestion,
etc., on Middlefield. We've been working with the City; I've been doing it for two and a half years, other residents for more than 10 years, and we've yet
to achieve anything that makes a difference. Tomorrow morning we're
going to present to the City a petition signed by the residents of Middlefield
North, and I'll read the brief petition to you. The residents of Middlefield
North hereby request the City of Palo Alto implement a pilot road diet on
Middlefield Road from University Avenue to the Menlo Park border in order to
reduce the number of accidents, increase safety for pedestrians and
bicyclists, increase traffic compliance with the speed limit, improve traffic
flow, improve safety of access to our driveways, and improve quality of life
for residents. To date four Council Members have engaged with us, working
on these issues, but no one more than Council Member Kniss. I wish to
thank her for her guidance and support. You're now going to hear from a
group of other residents of Middlefield who will talk about their personal
experiences on this residential street. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Andrea Lichter.
Andrea Lichter: Good evening. I've made Palo Alto my home for 35 years,
and 30 of those years have been on Middlefield Road. You can imagine I've
seen the evolution of traffic. In fact, when I first moved on Middlefield Road,
you could actually park on Middlefield Road, and you were actually able to
bike on the sidewalks. There were signs permitting bike riders on the
sidewalk. It's changed drastically, and it's very, very dangerous. I'm in my
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home every night, and I hear near crashes. I just cringe; I get so concerned
and so upset waiting to hear the impact. Quite often there is an impact. In
fact, several years ago there was a young man driving north on Middlefield—
I live two houses off the corner of Middlefield and Hawthorne Avenue—and
this young man was driving an SUV. He was speeding, and he literally
pulled down our fence, drove up my front yard, took out all the shrubbery.
I'm just so thankful that my husband wasn't out there gardening, which he regularly does. A couple of years ago there was another accident on that
corner of Middlefield and Hawthorne, again coming from Willow where the
cars speed. This time this young man wasn't very lucky; he actually was
killed as he hit a tree at the corner of Middlefield and Hawthorne. That was
a terrible experience for all of us in the neighborhood. Even the other day
there were two cars vying for a space right in front of my house, and there
was an accident. It wasn't reported, as many of the accidents are not
reported. Right in front of my house, two people got out of their cars. One
was a taxi, and the other was a regular car. They were going at it for a
while, but no police were called. That's what happens, a lot of accidents
happen. I'm really concerned, and I'm hoping that you hear us this evening
and could consider our pilot. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Neeraj Pendse. Welcome.
Neeraj Pendse: Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity. My name is
Neeraj Pendse; I'm on 300 block of Middlefield Road. I'm a father of two
preschoolers. My neighbors and I are here in support of John's petition. I
just wanted to talk about two things. Number one, there's a lot of buses
and trucks that use Middlefield Road, and they actually don't fit in our lanes
because the lanes are too narrow. Second issue, there's left turns from
Lytton Avenue—actually two lanes, but the lanes are so narrow that two cars
at a time can't actually turn together. If they try, they either honk at each
other because they get too close to each other or worse. I hear those honks
every day, because I'm very close to that intersection. There is safety,
there is the transportation capacity, and then there is our quality of life, who
live there and can't get out of our driveways. Right now, I think we're way
prioritizing the transportation capacity and completely ignoring safety as you
have seen from the accidents and completely ignoring our quality of life. I
urge you to consider the proposal of a road diet pilot and would love to help
and would love to engage with you. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Mark Eden, to be followed by
Priti Dusane. Welcome.
Mark Eden: Hi, thank you. Just to reiterate some of the things from our
neighbors. I live at 201 Middlefield; I'm directly across from Andrea, about
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a block from Neeraj, and two doors down from John, who has been leading
our effort here. This is just reciting a letter that we sent to Mayor Holman;
my wife sent this to Mayor Holman last December. I just wanted to kind of
go through this again. The letter said Dear Mayor Holman, our stretch of
Middlefield Road continues to worsen to the point of our family considering
selling our home to move to a safer street. Due to the low inventory of
homes in Palo Alto, we would probably have to buy elsewhere. It's distressing this seems to be our only solution. When we purchased our
home 13 years ago, the traffic was nowhere near as terrible, unbearable in
fact, as it is today. Now, after 3:00 P.M. we are reluctant to leave our
home. We close our windows to reduce the smell and ingestion of exhaust
fumes. We advise friends and relatives not to visit during certain times. We
cannot allow our daughter to play outside. This not good quality of life. I
realize the City has made attempts to reduce some of the Middlefield traffic
issues, but they simply are not working. As our neighbors have previously
requested, the configuration of Middlefield Road needs to be changed from
four lanes to two. Why is a two-lane configuration feasible for University
Avenue and Middlefield south of Channing Avenue? Is the safety of those
residents more important than ours? We are now begging you for a solution. Please help. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Priti Dusane to be followed by Jacob Whiting.
Priti Dusane: Good evening, Council Members. This is my first time here.
I've been living on the Middlefield Road, 120 Middlefield Road, for the last
eight years. This is my daughter, Abigail. I'm here supporting the petition
to improve the traffic around the Middlefield area. I've been in this area for
a very long time and noticing gradually the traffic has been, I would say,
negatively impacting young families like mine. My daughter, Abigail, I just
can't see her biking or staying closer to the traffic in front of our front yard,
because there is just so many cars passing by. For me, backing up, in and
out, oh my, God, is just a chaotic. I have to (inaudible) time myself; 9:00, I
should go in and out quickly. If I miss that timeframe, I'll be sitting in my
driveway for a long time. Pollution is another concern I have. I've noticed
with the three lanes, sometimes they're blocked end to end. It takes at
least five minutes for cars to go back and forth. I literally have to tell my
daughter, "Close all the windows. It's going to be all smoky inside the
house," because we're so close to the streets. Lastly, I myself personally
witnessed a casualty right in front of my home where there was a lady trying
to go on Palo Alto Avenue. A guy on Middlefield just struck head-on, and
there was a fire. It was nerve wracking for me. Thank you again for
listening to us. We love the community. We love Palo Alto. Hopefully you
can help us. Thank you.
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Mayor Burt: thank you. Jacob Whiting to be followed by Walt Hays.
Jacob Whiting: Thank you for hearing us tonight. That part of Middlefield,
specifically where it intersects with Palo Alto Avenue, is a dangerous
intersection, and it's one that I think doesn't get on the radar. The number
of near misses and near accidents, I believe, is incredibly high compared to
the number of full-out accidents, which is also high. As one my neighbors
explained earlier, when two cars are trying to turn at the same time side by side, there's oftentimes a collision of the inside car with the curb on
Middlefield Road in front of the addresses 136 Middlefield Road, which is my
address, and also 142 Middlefield Road. As testament to this, you can often
find hub caps and car parts in the couple of addresses that follow that
corner. I see at least one hub cap per month there that's from a car hitting
the curb, trying to avoid the other cars and breaking off. I've spoken with
the Transportation Department; they say that the lane meets the minimum
width, but they say it's far from ideal. They say it's just minimum. Certainly
I would never recommend anyone to bicycle on the street as we're supposed
to do these days. I've lived in Palo Alto for 30 years and at that address for
16 years. I've encountered few intersections and streets that are as bad as
that particular section. I'd like to encourage you to consider this pilot program that we want to do, which is we want to test out what would
happen if we reduced the lanes down to two lanes. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Walt Hays to be followed by Lin Jiang. Welcome.
Walt Hays: Good evening. I'm here just to give a brief explanation about
Item 6 on your Agenda. Georgetown University is administering a program
that will give a $5 million prize to the city that saves the most energy over a
two year period and does so in an innovative way. The segments that are
being measured to achieve the prize are city government, residences and
schools. Since schools are going to be playing a major role in winning the
prize if it is won, the student green teams and the staff, which they are
doing. The sustainable schools committee, which I chair, recommended that
the Utilities Staff recommend to you that if you win, a portion of the prize be
shared with the District. I see they've done that, and I hope you will do the
same. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Lin Jiang to be followed by Sea Reddy.
Lin Jiang: Good evening, Council Members. Thank you for the opportunity
to speak tonight. My name is Lin Jiang, and I live on the 600 block of
Webster. I'd like to express my strong objection to the massive construction
project proposed for 550 Hamilton. My family moved here nine years ago.
Only three blocks away from Addison Elementary and one block from the
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vibrant Downtown, this location seemed ideal for us to raise a family. Our
daughters are eight and 11 months old. Over the years, we've witnessed a
drastic transformation of more and more dense office buildings adjacent to
our neighborhood of residential housing. A quick scan of the Palo Alto
development map today reveals some 20 office buildings currently in
construction, 20 new buildings. We say enough office development already.
My neighborhood is residential with mostly one-story, single-family homes and two-story multifamily homes. The idea of two massive, tall, intrusive,
glass buildings right across the street with no setback from all the residential
homes is truly outrageous. The existing building on 550 Hamilton serves the
community well. The parking lot serves as a buffer from office buildings for
residential homes with many mature trees. This proposal intends to build
out the entire lot, in the process removing many trees including four large,
mature Sequoia redwoods. The density, traffic congestion and noise will
increase significantly. The proposal also presents some serious daylight
plane encroachment issues and intolerable privacy issues for the abutting
neighbors on Webster Street. It is a blatant disregard of careful planning,
transitioning from Downtown commercial into residential neighborhood. We
ask that you oppose this intrusive and massive project. Thank you for your time.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our final speaker is Sea Reddy.
Sea Reddy: Good evening, Mayor and the citizens of Palo Alto and the
communities. I'm not going to take time to campaign on things. I have
things that I want to talk about. As you get the absentee ballots in the
mail—this is happening this week—I want you to really think through to see
why do we need $1 million, up to $1 million, of people's money to find two
representatives to represent us. Think hard. Why is there a revolution
here? Why is Donald Trump getting a lot of attention? We don't need that
money. I think you could give that money to schools, people that are in
need. We don't need to give it to campaign committees, and then they turn
around and give it to the advertisement and put billboards and all that.
Please consider that. We don't need that. You're well educated; you have a
lot of courage to decide who you want. Let it be someone that you really
know, but you don't need to waste that money; you don't need to
(inaudible) that money. What I'm afraid is that you need to do favors when
you get back to Sacramento. The second thing I want to talk about is I am
again saying that if you are running for something, you should go for that
position and give up other things. There are Council Members here, Council
Members in Mountain View, Council Members in other parts of the town, I
request them to resign where they are today and then go for the June 7th
primary so they can decide the people who want to go to the next step.
Thank you.
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Mayor Burt: Thank you. That concludes our Oral Communications. For
those members of the public who are not familiar, the Council is not allowed
to comment on items that are not on the Agenda.
Minutes Approval
3. Approval of Action Minutes for the April 25, 2016 Council Meeting.
Mayor Burt: Our next item is Approval of Minutes from April 25, 2016. Do
we have a Motion to approve?
Vice Mayor Scharff: So moved.
Council Member Berman: Second.
MOTION: Vice Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Berman
to approve the Action Minutes for the April 25, 2016 Council Meeting.
Mayor Burt: Please vote on the board. That passes unanimously.
MOTION PASSED: 9-0
Consent Calendar
Mayor Burt: Our next item is the Consent Calendar. Go ahead, the Clerk
can announce the vote for the fourth position on the Utilities Advisory
Commission.
[The Council returned to Item 1.]
Mayor Burt: We now have the Consent Calendar, and we have one speaker, Bob Wenzlau, who would like to speak on Item Number 5. Welcome.
Bob Wenzlau, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 5: Thank you,
Council Members. I'm here as a Board Member of the Neighborhoods
Abroad organization. I'm joined by Barbara and Joe Evans who are the
Presidents of Neighborhoods Abroad. Basically, wanted to speak in support
of an item on the Consent Calendar to share or donate an ambulance to our
Sister City Oaxaca, Mexico. The timing of the donation will coincide with
probably the 30th or 40 years. Everything in Neighborhoods Abroad is 40
years and going. In this case, we're going to be sending a great group of
young students to Oaxaca to learn and practice Spanish and bring back a
group of students from Oaxaca to equally live in our community. One of the
events that we're hoping this will coincide with is an ambulance showing up
from Palo Alto to be celebrated in Oaxaca and basically save lives in Oaxaca.
It's a great story of older equipment that, by State law, is obligated to be
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retired, but lives probably another 25 years of service. There's actually a
potential that it might even serve Palo Altans down there if you have some
bad Mescal. Thank you very much for considering it. It's a delight to be
able to be part of the project. I hope you see us again someday when we
have another surplus vehicle that we can share with that community.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Do we have a Motion to approve the Consent
Calendar?
Council Member Wolbach: So moved.
Council Member Kniss: So moved.
MOTION: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Council Member
Kniss to approve Agenda Item Numbers 4-8.
4. Approval of a Contract With the United States Geological Survey for
Five Years in the Amount of $60,023 per Year for a Total of $310,315
for San Francisco Bay Monitoring Near the Regional Water Quality
Control Plant's Discharge.
5. Approval of the Donation of a Surplus Ambulance to Oaxaca, Mexico.
6. Approval of an Allocation of $1 Million to the Palo Alto Unified School
District in the Event the City of Palo Alto Wins the $5 Million
Georgetown University Energy Prize.
7. Resolution 9584 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo
Alto (a) Endorsing the Community Plan to end Homelessness in Santa
Clara County 2015- 2020;” and Resolution 9585 Entitled, “Resolution
of the Council of the City of Palo Alto (b) Supporting City Programs to
Encourage and Fund Affordable Housing as Urged by the Santa Clara
County Housing Task Force.”
8. Authorize the City Manager to Execute an Agreement Between the City
of Palo Alto and Team Sheeper LLC, for the Learn to Swim Program for
Summer 2016 at an Amount Not-to-Exceed $236,500, and Approve a
Budget Amendment in the General Fund.
Mayor Burt: Motion by Council Member Wolbach, seconded by Council
Member Kniss. Please vote on the board. That passes unanimously on a 9-
0 vote.
MOTION PASSED: 9-0
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Action Items
9. 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
(Continued from April 18, 2016); Approval of Professional Services
Contract Number C16163533 With Alta Planning + Design, Inc. in the
Amount of $824,542 for Preparation of Plans, Specifications and
Estimates for the Amarillo Avenue-Moreno Avenue, Bryant Street
Update, Louis Road-Montrose Avenue, and Ross Road Bicycle
Boulevard Projects; and Approval of Professional Services Contract
Number C16161534 With Fehr & Peers in the Amount of $544,509 for
Preparation of Plans, Specifications and Estimates for the Bryant Street
Extension, Maybell Avenue, and Park Boulevard-Wilkie Way Bicycle
Boulevard Projects. Environmental Assessment: Exempt From the
California Environmental Quality Act per Section 15301.
Mayor Burt: We will now move on to Item Number 9. This item is 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. This item is continued from April 18th, 2016. It also includes approval of professional
services with Alta Planning and Design in the amount of $824,000 for
preparation of plans, specifications and estimates for the Amarillo-Moreno
Avenue, Bryant Street update, Louis Road-Montrose Avenue, Ross Road
Bicycle Boulevard projects and approval of a professional services contract
with Fehr & Peers for $544,000 for preparation of plans, specifications and
estimates for the Bryant Street extension, Maybell Avenue and Park
Boulevard-Wilkie Way Bicycle Boulevard projects. This project is exempt
from the California Environmental Quality Act. Welcome, Mr. Mello.
Joshuah Mello, Chief Transportation Official: Greetings, Mayor, members of
Council. I'm Josh Mello, the City's Chief Transportation Official. I'm joined
by Hugh Louch, our consultant on these projects, with Alta Planning and
Design.
Molly Stump, City Attorney: Thank you, Mayor Burt. City Attorney Molly
Stumps. Just to alert the public and the Council to the order of the item
tonight. We do have one Council Member who has a real property interest
very close to the Bryant Street Bicycle Boulevard; that's Council Member
Tom DuBois. As a result, Mr. DuBois will not be participating in the Bryant
Street item. That item is segregable under the rules that are provided by
California Fair Political Practices Commission. We'll follow that practice
tonight to both provide for the recusal but allow participation to the
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maximum allowed by law. The Staff has divided the presentation into an
initial general description of the bicycle boulevard program generally. It's
my understanding that the Mayor will allow some Council questions at that
general level. When it comes to the specific bicycle boulevard plans, the
Council will take the Bryant Street plan and the associated contract first.
Council Member DuBois will not participate; he will recuse himself. Once
that item is resolved by Council, then Council will move to the South Palo Alto boulevards and the contract associated with that with Council Member
DuBois rejoining the Council. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you.
Mr. Mello: I'm going to give a brief overview of the Bike Pedestrian
Transportation Plan program, talk a little bit about the progress that we've
made over the last couple of years, and then give you a little bit of overview
of some of the treatments and things that you'll see in the concept plans
that are attached to the Staff Report. As you know, back in 2012, the City
of Palo Alto of adopted the Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan. This
includes a network of bicycle boulevards, enhanced bikeways, and shared-
use paths across the entire City. It's intended as an illustration of what the
ultimate build-out of the City's bike network would be. There's really no timeline associated with the build-out of this network. It would be fairly
expensive to construct the entire network at once. In 2014, funding was
allocated, about $1.2 million per year in the Capital Improvement Program,
by Council. Staff selected several corridors to begin the concept planning
process for. These corridors are shown on the map on this slide. They were
identified from the Bike and Pedestrian Transportation Plan, and they
followed a very logical planning process starting in 2014. Staff started by
kicking off the planning process with bike-alongs through the community.
There was an online mapping exercise where folks could identify different
constraints and opportunities along these corridors and challenges. There's
been a series of public meetings that combined different variations of the
corridors, moved around different meeting locations through the City, and
were held at different seasons and different months of the year, both in
2014 and 2015. Recent accomplishments. Over the last two years, we have
presented several concept plans for your approval. Those include the
Churchill Avenue Phase 1 concept plan, the Charleston Road-Arastradero
Complete Street concept plan as well as Park Boulevard, Wilkie Way,
Stanford Avenue, Maybell Avenue and the Bryant Street extension. All of
those projects, the concept plans for those were approved in 2015. One of
the items that we're requesting tonight is approval of a contract to advance
those projects into final design. This is something we developed at the
Mayor's request, and we're hoping to develop more of an interactive
dashboard so folks track our progress on the Bike Plan implementation. This
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set of graphs here illustrates—as of today, we have 7.9 miles of bike
boulevard corridors in the concept planning phase. We have 5.0 miles that
have had their concept plans already approved by City Council. If you elect
to move forward with all of our recommendations this evening, we'll move to
the bottom chart where we'll have 11.1 miles of bike boulevards in the final
design phase, and then only 4.5 miles remaining where we have not
conducted any work to date. Just a brief primer on bike boulevards. We really had four objectives when we developed the concept plans for these
bike boulevards. First and foremost, these are bicycle projects, but they are
really traffic calming projects at their heart and soul. One of the primary
goals, if not the overarching goal of the entire program, is to reduce motor
vehicle speeds on these streets and to get motor vehicles operating at
moderated speeds closer to the speed at which bicyclists travel along the
corridors. Lower speeds save lives. Study after study shows that your
chance of surviving a collision when hit by a motor vehicle moving at 25
miles an hour is vastly greater than a motor vehicle traveling 35 or above.
We also worked very closely with the Safe Routes to School program. You
recently just approved the last set of the Walk and Roll maps that were
developed by the Safe Routes to School team. Those played an integral part in the treatments and some of the elements that you'll see in the concept
plans for the bike boulevard corridors. We've also looked very closely
throughout the process at ways that we can add vegetation, greenery and
improve the aesthetics of some of the roadways that are involved in these
projects. That's particularly relevant in the corridors in the South Palo Alto
area where there were a lot of wider streets that were built more recently
that didn't really have a lot of street trees or vegetation. You'll see that in
some of the concept plans that we'll discuss a little bit later. Some of the
treatments that you'll see in the concept plans include speed humps which,
in this case, we've elected to identify slotted speed humps. This is based on
community feedback. These look like traditional speed humps, but they
have gaps that are set at about the wheel base of an emergency vehicle, an
ambulance or a fire truck. It enables fire trucks to pass at a higher speed
over the speed hump to reach emergencies. Whereas, a typical passenger
car cannot straddle those two slots. It also allows cyclists to travel through
the slots and not have their travel interrupted by a speed hump. We also
have several curb extension identified along these four projects. Curb
extensions typically are constructed where you have a parking lane and you
have roadway space that you can add vegetation and street trees within the
curb extension. They also serve to tighten up the roadway, and
psychologically drivers tend to slow down when the roadway feels tighter
and more constrained. Several places we're recommending raised
intersections. This would be where the entire intersection is brought up to
the level of the sidewalk. This basically forces drivers to yield at pedestrian
crossings at the intersections, because they have to slow down as they're
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approaching the intersection anyway. It encourages them to yield much
more consistently. Chicanes are where we provide horizontal deflection for
vehicles. This is where the travel path of a vehicle is interrupted; they have
to move either right or left to pass either a center island or a curb extension
on the side of the roadway. In several locations we're recommending
median islands which would serve two purposes. They would slow down
turning vehicles by not allowing vehicles to encroach into the oncoming travel lane. When they make a turn, they would have to go around the
median island. They also provide a refuge for pedestrians crossing at those
intersections. There would be a raised median where a pedestrian could
temporarily pause if they felt uncomfortable or felt as though they were not
going to make it across the entire intersection. Last but not least, mini
roundabouts or traffic circles. We're going to go into a little more detail on
those. Traffic circles or roundabouts. One of the main benefits of these is to
reduce the conflict points. We have a lot of intersections along our bike
boulevard network that are always stop controlled or two-way stop
controlled. A traditional traffic signal control or stop controlled intersection
has upwards of 32 points of conflict. When you throw in pedestrian conflicts,
that almost doubles. That's because there's left turns, right turns; there's through movements, all within the same space and all with the potential to
have a collision or a conflict. There's also the points of conflict at the
crosswalk. Pedestrians are relying on motor vehicles to come to a complete
stop; they're relying on right turning and left turning vehicles to see them at
the same time that they're judging gaps in oncoming traffic. Roundabouts
eliminate all of these decision points. The only decisions you to have make
are whether you're going to yield to a pedestrian upon entering the
roundabout, whether you're going to yield to a vehicle that's already in the
roundabout, and then whether you need to yield to a pedestrian upon exiting
the roundabout. Those are really only the three points of conflict that you
have when you're using a roundabout. When we talk about safety, the only
type of collision that can really occur between vehicles in a roundabout is a
side-swipe collision. Those are the least dangerous type of collision when
compared to a T-bone or a head-on collision, which tend to be the most
serious. Even if there is a collision in a roundabout, it tends to be much less
severe than at a traditional intersection. Throughout the concept plans,
we're recommending the installation of bike boulevard legends, which are
shown on the left. These are not sharrows. Our first proposals that we
brought to the community included the greenback sharrows, which are
shown on the right there. Rightly so, a lot of folks were concerns about the
aesthetics of those in their community. We also had them spaced rather
closely together originally, I think 300 feet staggered. Since then, we've
greatly reduced the number of pavement markings, and we've changed
them to the bike boulevard legend which is shown on the left there. We now
only show them at the beginning of every block instead of spaced every
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couple hundred feet. We're also recommending some strategic parking
removal along the bike boulevard corridors. This is based on observed
safety concerns, both from Staff and from residents that we heard at the
community meetings. One of the things that we're hoping to achieve is
what's called daylighting. This is where you pull the parking back from the
intersections in order to improve the sight lines for both motorists,
pedestrians and cyclists. This is shown to be highly effective. Two studies that we've identified show a 30 percent reduction in pedestrian collisions at
intersections that have been day-lighted. In most instances, we're only
recommending removal of one to two parking spaces on each approach of
the intersections. That provides a really big benefit to sight lines at the
intersections for all users. We hosted kind of a wrap-up public meeting back
in March at the Ohlone Elementary School. We got some great feedback
from the public. We presented the concept plans that are in front of you this
evening. Some of the major comments were around roundabouts. There
were both positive and negative comments about roundabouts, generally
more positive, but there were folks who were concerned about how cyclists
and motorists would navigate them. There were also some requests to
increase our education around bike boulevards and some of the treatments that we're recommending. We're definitely going to look at that as part of
our Safe Routes to School program. We also presented these concept plans
to the Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC) and Palo Alto Bicycle
Advisory Committee (PABAC) in April and May. Again, we received general
comments from PTC and PABAC which include the roundabouts should
include landscaping, which we have always assumed that we would include
some type of landscaping. There were assorted comments regarding stop
sign removal, some concern around the color of directional signage as well
as curb extensions forcing cyclists into the travel lane. That concludes our
presentation on the general overview and general comments received on the
bike boulevard concepts that are before you this evening. The next step in
the presentation will be the Bryant Street update specific elements.
Mayor Burt: We can now entertain questions of Staff on the general nature.
I have a question for the City Attorney. We have a number of public
comments. Do we need to be concerned about restricting which public
comments apply to the general versus the specific Bryant, where the conflict
is?
Ms. Stump: It's fine to take the public comment as part of the general. If
Council Members wish to pick up particular portions of the public testimony
or questions that arise through that process, perhaps you can allocate them
into the various bucks as you respond to Staff and as you sometimes pass
questions onto Staff.
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Mayor Burt: At this time, we'll just be looking for essentially technical
questions of Staff regarding the general elements of the plan and not
specific to the Bryant boulevard. Council Member Schmid.
Council Member Schmid: A general question. You've done a great job in
working with the pathways identified and getting public comment about
them and looking at the details. Let me step back a little bit. When we
originally—you also mentioned that as we move along, the $20 million we've committed to this gradually decreases. These obviously have some priority
as we move ahead. I just want to ask a question about the Midtown
connector. There was a public event around Hoover Park a couple of
weekends ago that seemed to be received well. I noted that Redwood City
has just committed to build a pathway to their Baylands utilizing a right-of-
way roadway, costs $3 million. Where does the Midtown connector stand in
terms of feasibility, thinking about it, working?
Mr. Mello: We're actually bringing the Midtown Connector Feasibility Study
to Council in June. We're going to provide you with a detailed presentation
on the study that we're wrapping up. A lot of it's based on the comments
you gave us at the end of last year. We'll be back in June to give you a full
update on that project.
Council Member Schmid: Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Berman.
Council Member Berman: Just a quick question about the difference
chicanes and speed bumps or humps or whatever we call them. Why would
you use one over another? What circumstance would a chicane be
preferable?
Mr. Mello: Our general thought process along the bike boulevards was that
we wanted to encourage motorists to operate at moderated speeds. Right
now there's a lot of stop and go and speeding. There's a lot of stop sign
control. As we look to remove stop signs, we wanted to put in place kind of
alternating traffic calming devices, so that drivers didn't become comfortable
and know that there's going to be a speed hump. We combined vertical
deflection, which is a speed hump, and a horizontal deflection, which would
be curb extensions or chicanes. We also looked for opportunities to add
street trees and vegetation where possible, and the chicanes and curb
extensions allow us to add vegetation and street trees, particularly on
streets that are really wide and don't have a lot of shade currently.
Council Member Berman: Thanks.
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Mayor Burt: Council Member Kniss.
Council Member Kniss: Thanks for the report tonight. Appreciate it. A
couple of questions on two aspects of this. I think you've addressed
sharrows pretty well. I really appreciate that. I have a neighborhood that
was very vocal about particularly the green signs that would have been on
the pavement. There are other parts of town that are equally concerned
about a lot of signage on the pavement. Will you—because primarily this is to lay out where the route is. The second or third part of this is going to be
indicating what is about to happen or when, which is what the sharrows
would have done, but you have found, I think, a better way to do that. I
think there's some resistance to too much of—I don't recall the exact plastic
name that is used instead of paint. Can you tell me?
Mr. Mello: Thermoplastic.
Council Member Kniss: Thermoplastic, which is now being used in a number
of places in town. Correct? After a certain length of time, it is pretty
unsightly. It cracks, it gets dirty, and it looks like it's going to stay forever.
Paint wears off, and this doesn't seem to do that. Maybe you'd comment
back to that. At the same time, let me ask the second question. Your traffic
circle, which is on page whatever here—I grew up with traffic circles. We called them rotaries where I grew up. This one is particularly attractive, and
a lot of them aren't. After the first question regarding signage and paint and
so forth, the second one would be how do we keep these looking like that?
That's not inexpensive, and it takes water.
Mr. Mello: I grew up with rotaries as well. Your first question, recently we
made a conscious decision to start to limit our use of thermoplastic and
green pavement markings to only areas where there's conflicts between
motor vehicles, which primarily occur on—major conflicts where a bike lane
is transitioning across a right turn-lane or a high volume driveway. Most of
those occurrences are on arterial streets or collector streets. We're not
typically recommending the use of green thermoplastic in residential
neighborhoods anymore. We've also switched to a material called MME
which is an epoxy. It's different than thermoplastic, and it seems to be
more durable and hold its color a little bit longer and not crack, but only
time will tell how it performs. In regard to the traffic circles, City Staff
currently is using a watering truck to water the traffic circles that are in
Downtown north and some other isolated landscape areas.
Council Member Kniss: I hope it's purple water.
Mr. Mello: I think it's recycled; I'm not sure where it comes from. We can
find that out from the Operations Staff, if you'd like. That's our intent for
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these. If any landscaping is added, we have consulted with the Operations
Staff, and watering by water truck is feasible.
Council Member Kniss: I'm not going to beat this to death, but what gets
planted in those roundabouts is really important. I certainly hope they're
watering with recycled water. It would be a shame to do it otherwise. I
think thinking carefully about what goes in there, water-resistant types of
things that they use in the Southwest and so forth. They're very attractive, but they're not attractive when everything in them has died and it's dirt. It
just is unsightly in any neighborhood. I think there are places where
neighbors say they are willing to take care of them and keep them up, but I
don't know if that's a good long-term solution. I think both those things—
delighted with the rest of the Bike Plan, but I think there are these two
aesthetic issues that have troubled me. Thank you for paying attention to
them. One last thing. You're also going to use some type of medallion or
indicator at the beginning of an intersection where you will have the bike
boulevard designated. Correct, or you're just thinking about that?
Mr. Mello: At the beginning of each block, there will be a—it's called a bike
boulevard legend, and it'll be on the pavement at the beginning of each
block. It's just a simple white bike boulevard pavement legend. It was shown on one of the slides earlier. I can bring that back up if you'd like.
Council Member Kniss: It's all right. If you'll just show it to me later.
Thank you. I think that also will help. What I've noticed with Bryant Street
is that people are so used to using that as a bike boulevard that that almost
doesn't need to be either sharrowed or marked in any other way, because
people are so aware of that. I think with the new ones, it is a different
situation. Thanks, Josh.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Filseth.
Council Member Filseth: Thanks very much. Thank you for this really, really
clear and explanatory presentation here. I guess I wanted to sort of
continue sort of the thread that Council Member Kniss was pulling on. In the
plan, there are sort of a considerable range of conditions in different parts of
the City. There's a big range of the number of vehicles per day, the number
of bicycles per day, the average speed of vehicles, and so forth. I guess my
question is how do you decide, at least from 90,000 feet, which basket of
tools to apply. Is there sort of a standard template and we just apply that
everywhere or do we say, "This is one set of conditions. We use this
approach here. A different set of conditions, we use this approach there"?
If it is, is it based on sort of usage or is it based on physical geometry like
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the width of the streets and what the sidewalks are like? How does that
work?
Mr. Mello: This has been a two year process. One of the concept plans in
particular is in its sixth draft. It's in its sixth draft because we have
continually worked to refine every single one of these over the last two
years. We've had over ten public meetings, several kind of professional staff
charrettes where we just laid out the plans, we looked at all of the data. This was consultant staff, City Staff. We even pulled elements from NACTO,
National Association of City Transportation Officials. They have a bike
boulevard chapter in their Urban Bikeway Design Guide. There's lots of
studies out there that have pretty substantial guidance on how to construct
bike boulevards. I would say I think we're more at the 5,000-foot level with
these. We've gotten so enmeshed in the details, and we've gone out and
done nighttime surveys to determine where additional street lighting is
required. We've walked the corridors at all different times, ridden bikes,
looked at parking demand, talked to schools along the corridor, looked at
demand for parking near public parks. I think that's why you'll see that
what we're recommending on the Ross Road Bike Boulevard differs a great
deal from what we may recommend along some of the other corridors, because they are all different contexts, different roadway widths. We did
kick off the entire process by conducting traffic counts, bike-pedestrian
(ped) counts, looking at speeds. There were really only a couple of
segments where we were concerned about speed. The traffic calming is
mainly intended to just moderate speeds and account for some of the areas
where we're removing stop signs. We don't want to remove a stop sign and
then have the travel speed creep up because people are no longer required
to stop. We're trying to anticipate that by putting in some proactive traffic
calming in the blocks approaching the intersection that no longer has stop
control. I don't know if you want to add anything, Hugh.
Hugh Louch, Alta Design and Planning: I think that covers it.
Council Member Filseth: Maybe I could just extend it a little bit and ask it a
slightly different way. Do you look at things and say, "This is a really wide,
busy street, and the cars go fast, and there's a lot of bikes on it. We need
to throw a lot of stuff at it"? In other places, you say, "This is a quiet,
residential street. Not too many cars drive on it. We don't need to do very
much there." Is that part of the formula?
Mr. Mello: Yeah, that's exactly the process. We also looked at the data that
we had around traffic counts and speeds. Some of the streets, just going
out and looking at how wide the street is, you can tell that people probably
travel too fast, especially in the evening, at night when they're in a rush.
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Those stretches in particular, you'll see a lot more aggressive traffic calming
recommendations.
Mayor Burt: Before next question, I just wanted to let the members of the
public know that we have a large number of speakers. We'll be having two
minutes per speaker to speak, so you can time your comments accordingly.
Council Member Holman.
Council Member Holman: Thank you. Following on the prior two questioners and looking at—future reference, page numbers on the slides
would be really helpful, because then we can quickly. The one that has
proposed treatments on it, that slide, if you want to put it up. Looking at
these, I'm looking at, let's say for the moment, median islands and mini
roundabouts. That looks like it has a lot of paint on the street from each
direction. I'm trying to understand if that is what is indicated there and then
how does that work with the—on one of the other slides—bike boulevard
symbol. There are two bike boulevard symbols or legends, one with a
bicycle and boulevard and an arrow, and then one that has a bicycle and just
the arrows. I don't know which ones—how does that all work? If you're
going to have a legend at the beginning of every block, it looks like you
could have all of this plus the bike legend at each one of those four occasions.
Mr. Mello: The bike legends are actually shown on the median island and
mini roundabout graphics that you see. If you can see my arrow there,
that's the bike boulevard legend.
Council Member Holman: That's what that is.
Mr. Mello: There's one on the corresponding—the opposite departure lane
as well. This cross-street is not a bike boulevard, so there's no bike
boulevard legends on that. There's only the stop. A lot of these pavement
markings are existing. The crosswalks and the stop bars and the stop
stencils would typically already be in place. What would be added would be
the yellow center line to guide people around the island. In the case of the
mini roundabout, there's not much additional pavement markings. It's
mainly just civil—hardscape elements that would be added including the
deflection islands and the center circular island.
Council Member Holman: Looking at the mini roundabout, what you're
saying is because stop signs are going out, going away in such an occasion.
The cross strips are already on the pavement because of the stop sign that's
there now, and then you're adding the—what did you call that?
Mr. Mello: This yellow center line here?
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Council Member Holman: Yeah, the center line. You're adding that yellow,
center line. There's also going to be signs in the roundabout, directional
signs in the roundabout?
Mr. Mello: The typical signage in a roundabout would be on each approach
there would be a short, white regulatory sign with circular arrows. It's, I
think, 24 by 24 maybe.
Council Member Holman: These are small roundabouts, because we don't have very many large intersections. A mini roundabout is small. It still
seems like anybody approaching this is going to see the directional—it
seems like a lot still. I don't know; I'm not the pro in this, but it seems like
a lot. Jim, you had something?
James Keene, City Manager: I was just going to say we don't have four stop
signs at a four-way stop which is also quite typical at non-roundabout
situations. We kind of get used to some of these signs, I think. When we
think about a new one, it's very different than what we've sort of been
acclimated to.
Council Member Holman: I appreciate that. What it looks like, though, is
that we've got on the pavement—again, looking at the mini roundabout—it's
as if there was four stop signs because there's paint on each of the four streets.
Mr. Mello: These are just crosswalks that may or may not already exist at
the intersection. If they don't exist, we would probably look to mark them
sometime in the future, if they're near a school or along an important bike
route. I will say that we can definitely, as we move into the final design
phase, we heard loud and clear from the community that there are aesthetic
concerns around signing and striping. We can certainly look to minimize the
amount of signage.
Council Member Holman: I appreciate that, because in this it's not obvious
that it's going to be this plus, then the directional signs at the roundabout,
and they're not very big. You don't quite have side-to-side roundabout
signs, but kind of almost. Talk to us a little bit about raised intersection.
What's the run-up to a raised intersection?
Mr. Mello: It would be a slope typical to a speed hump. You would go up six
inches to the level of the sidewalk; you would go up the raised intersection.
As you entered the intersection, the entire intersection is raised, and then
you would go back down after you left the intersection. It encourages
motorists to yield, because typically there's a crosswalk at the beginning of
the intersection. In this case there would be bike lanes along the corridor
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that you're entering, that's intersecting the street. It would encourage
yielding to both pedestrians and cyclists. It also allows pedestrians to obtain
control of the crosswalk a little easier. They don't have to cross as directly,
and it's not as rigid as a typical intersection.
Council Member Holman: I think just two other questions. Thank you. I
got so used to speed tables, and now we're using speed humps. Are speed
tables not be utilized anymore? They're so gentle.
Mr. Mello: We still use speed tables on collector streets. Speed humps are a
little more dramatic; we use those on local, residential streets. The majority
of the bike boulevards that are before you tonight are on local, residential
streets.
Council Member Holman: Last question. The areas in, let's say, Ross, they
are the wider streets. What did you discover—two things in the same
questions. What did you discover in terms of planting opportunities along
the sides? The other is was there any consideration for any street closures
to automobile vehicles because that certainly seems to slow traffic in these
days of Google maps and all of that. We get a lot more cut-through traffic.
Was that considered as a means to slow down traffic, keep some of the
traffic out of the neighborhood from cut through? Two questions in one there, sorry.
Mr. Mello: We're going to talk a little bit more about the Amarillo, Moreno
and the Ross Road corridors later in the presentation. Those are the ones
specifically where we found a lot of opportunities to add street trees and
vegetation. On the Amarillo Bike Boulevard concept plan, there's actually a
pretty significant curb extension that would add several street trees. Along
Ross, we found a couple of great areas where it made great sense to add
curb extensions and some street trees to break up the wider sections of the
street. In regard to closures, full and partial closures, those were taken off
the table relatively early in the process due to some guidance that's in the
Comprehensive Plan. There are some corridors, I think, where it may make
sense to look at that in the future. Greer Road is one that we're still working
on the concept plan. We should be bringing that forward in probably about
6 months. There's a partial closure that I want to look at for that corridor,
but I'd rely on Council guidance on that when we bring the concept plans
forward.
Council Member Holman: Interested in that. Not just the bulb-outs, but the
further application for trees is what I was kind of looking for too. Thank you
very much.
Mayor Burt: Council Member DuBois.
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Council Member DuBois: Thanks for the comments and the responses. You
guys have asked a lot of my questions. I think when we approved the
National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) guidelines, we
said at that time or the Staff Report said that we'd consider it in the Palo
Alto context. Appreciate your comments that it was kind of the 5,000-foot
level, and now we've been kind of applying it to what we see and what we
hear. It's a good process. In terms of this kind of context for signage, have we applied like a different pattern near schools in particular?
Mr. Mello: A lot of the elements that you see near the schools are actually
pulled from the work that was done by the Safe Routes team along with the
Walk and Roll maps. They were actually infrastructure maps that were done
for all of the walking routes to each school. There were signing and striping
improvements recommended for all of those walking and biking routes. A
lot of the infrastructure recommendations around the schools were pulled
directly from those Safe Routes maps.
Council Member DuBois: I think that makes total sense. You might have a
very quiet street with fewer markings. You get closer to a school, and there
may be more markings, and then it might fade back down as you get away.
Mr. Mello: Yeah. In California, the crosswalks are yellow within a certain radius of a school. You'll see that in the concept plans; some of the
crosswalks are yellow, while ones outside of schools areas are white.
Council Member DuBois: Let's talk a little bit about parking impacts. How
was context considered there? If you're looking at Downtown where maybe
it's office parking versus a local street.
Mr. Louch: We'll talk about this more in a minute. We did do a parking
study for each of the corridors, that looked at observations at different times
of day and different days of the week. For each corridor that we looked at,
as Josh said, the one thing that we tried to do was consider daylighting. At
every intersection where especially if you're putting in roundabouts or you're
trying to create other safer pedestrian crossings, kind of moving the parking
back away from the corners of the intersection. There are a few other
places where parking was removed really to accommodate the additional
street trees and landscaping. That's primarily where parking is removed as
a part of this. There are a couple of other specific examples that I'll get into
in a minute. That's basically what we did.
Council Member DuBois: Did you apply different approaches based on the
context of its kind of Downtown urban setting versus suburban or
residential? Or was it really just based on the occupancy?
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Mr. Mello: We were very conscious of parking impacts to residents and
adjacent property owners as we developed the infrastructure
recommendations. That being said, there were some intersections even
though there's a high parking demand, it really made sense to make some
modifications to on-street parking. We did consider the context of these.
The large-scale parking modifications happen mostly along the South Palo
Alto corridors. Those wider streets where we're trying to add street trees, you'll see there's a lot more impact to parking on those than, let's say, some
of the more congested Downtown corridors.
Council Member DuBois: I guess the other thing is if it's multifamily
apartment buildings versus R-1, were you more hesitant to remove parking
if it was multifamily?
Mr. Mello: We struggled with that, particularly on the Amarillo Bike
Boulevard because we wanted to add greenery and street trees, but we
knew that the multifamily housing at the West Bayshore end probably
generates a lot of parking demand. There's a lot of alternative parking
locations in that area that is a little bit underutilized, and you see that in the
parking study. We actually identified alternative parking locations for each
spot that we're recommending be removed.
Council Member DuBois: Is Ross Road considered a collector or a local
street? It seems to act as a collector.
Mr. Mello: Ross Road is a local street, and I believe Louis is a collector
street.
Council Member DuBois: That's interesting. Do you know why?
Mr. Mello: I think the functional classification map is in the last
Comprehensive (Comp) Plan. We can verify that. I think it was adopted as
part of the last Comp Plan.
Council Member DuBois: I appreciate your answers to my questions I
submitted ahead of time. One of the questions was just really on the
methodology for the parking intrusion and this idea of kind of average
versus peak. I was really just asking for the individual four measurements
when I was asking for the peak. Is that really difficult to get?
Mr. Mello: We have an Excel spreadsheet that we can provide you. When
we get into the specific corridors a little bit later, I've pulled the peak out for
each one of those and highlighted that. The methodology we used was a
little bit of a hybrid. There's no real best practice for a parking modification
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study or parking occupancy study, so we had to kind of develop our own
methodology.
Council Member DuBois: My concern is particularly on residential streets.
You get the peaks at night when everybody comes home, and they're
actually a very common peak. If you average it out where it's empty during
daytime, you're going to really get a false reading.
Mr. Mello: I will tell you based on my look at the data today, each one of the corridors has a different peak period. It's not uniform across all four
corridors.
Council Member DuBois: Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Vice Mayor Scharff.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Thanks. At the really high level, we have the map on
one of your slides of the entire Bike and Pedestrian Transportation Plan for
2012, and then we have what we're currently doing. Maybe you could just
explain—I see we're only doing some of by the bicycle boulevards. What are
our plans to do the rest of this and the context? The $20 million we talked
about, that's just for what we have here. Is that correct?
Mr. Mello: We have several corridors where the concept plans were already
approved last year. We're going to talk about those a little bit later in the presentation. These four corridors will all move into the final design phase.
We also have the Greer Road Bike Boulevard that's in the concept planning
phase, the Homer-Channing enhanced bikeway. There's a couple of
corridors that Google has contributed funding to, San Antonio Avenue,
Middlefield Road South. There's a connection through Cubberley that was
originally part of the Louis-Montrose Bike Boulevard that we haven't moved
forward because of the development plans for Cubberley. I think those ones
will probably follow pretty much immediately after these. Within the next
six months, we'll get those into the final design phase. Then, we need to
have a conversation about what the next group of corridors that we move
forward is. There is sufficient capacity over the next five years to do
additional corridors beyond what's already in the planning phase.
Vice Mayor Scharff: The capacity, is it money or is it Staff time that's really
(inaudible)?
Mr. Mello: We have both. We have Staff capacity and financial capacity to
move some more corridors forward.
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Vice Mayor Scharff: For instance, when I look at Webster is a bike
boulevard on the map, that's not something we've talked about doing other
than we have it in the concept plan, but we're not moving forward on that
yet. Right?
Mr. Mello: No. I think Webster is a great candidate for the next phase
based on the feedback we got on the Middlefield Road corridor back in
January. I certainly think Webster may be a candidate for the second phase of projects.
Vice Mayor Scharff: There's a bunch of these roads that go—I always get
confused if we're going north-south or east-west. The east-west
connections, I'm think of like Kingsley and Everett and those kind of things.
We've talked about doing those as well. Where are we on all of that?
Mr. Mello: There's several other corridors in Midtown, Loma Verde Avenue
and East Meadow Drive, that we're currently advancing concept plans for.
That's separate from the package of bike boulevards that we've been
advancing. We're doing those as part of the Midtown connector project. We
haven't talked about Addison or Everett yet. We're certainly willing to talk
about beginning the planning process for those as well.
Vice Mayor Scharff: The big difference between—maybe you could just walk me through it. We have bicycle boulevards, which I understand what we're
doing. Like California Avenue we put down, I think that's a Class 2 bicycle
lane. What does that mean, a Class 2 bicycle lane?
Mr. Mello: A Class 2 bicycle lane is a dedicated lane for bicycles. It's
typically four to six feet wide. California Avenue, in particular, is going to be
resurfaced in the coming year. We're upgrading those to standard bike
lanes. They don't meet current standards today. After the resurfacing
project is complete, they'll be standard bike lanes.
Vice Mayor Scharff: That's helpful. If we could just go back to the project—
where we had the raised tables and all that kind of stuff. That one. When
would you choose, for instance, to use speed humps versus curb extensions
versus the rated intersection versus the chicanes? Why would you choose
one over the other? What's the thought behind that?
Mr. Mello: First, when we collected our data on speeds, we identified
segments that had an existing speeding issue. In those areas, we looked at
regularly spacing traffic calming devices every couple hundred feet. We
didn't want to provide people with the ability to accelerate between traffic
calming devices. We want to maintain that moderate, consistent speed. We
also tried to vary between vertical deflection, which is a speed hump, and
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horizontal deflection, which is the median islands, the chicanes and curb
extensions. We generally tried to mix it up. We didn't want drivers
becoming comfortable and knowing there's going to be a speed hump every
100 feet. You want to get drivers to pay attention, require them to actively
participate in driving. That was our main goal. The second reason we
utilized traffic calming devices is in a lot of instances we're removing stop
signs along the bike boulevards to facilitate bicycle travel. We didn't want the motor vehicle speeds to creep up, because there was no longer a stop
sign. In that case, we looked at treatments like raised intersections,
roundabouts. Roundabouts are great because they get everybody going the
same speed around the intersection, but they don't cause unnecessary
delay, and they also don't encourage people to—that stopping and
accelerating creates a lot of noise in residential neighborhoods. They create
more of a moderate traffic flow. Any other things we considered?
Mr. Louch: I think the one other thing to say is there are some unique
situations where we considered specific. The raised intersection that's
shown there is really specific to the school that it's connecting to and some
of those kinds of things. There are these sort of general considerations. As
Josh said before, we kind of worked at a pretty detailed level to look at what the specific conditions were and the right improvement that was needed.
Vice Mayor Scharff: If you do curb extensions rather than, for instance,
some of these others, that narrows it so people see it as narrow, so they feel
they have to slow down. That's the theory behind it.
Mr. Mello: That's correct.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Do you ever get situations where—if you're not paying
attention and you go over a speed bump, you're like "whoa" and you're
paying attention. If you hit the curb and go over the curb, you could injure
someone. I'm just wondering if the curb extensions are really—I'm sure
they are or you wouldn't have done them. It just intuitively doesn't seem as
safe frankly, a curb extension, if you're a driver who's not paying attention
and not expecting a curb extension.
Mr. Mello: We consciously made a decision to design these corridors for
motorists operating at the proper speed, which is at or below 25 miles an
hour. If we were to design these around a design speed higher than that,
we would be encouraging higher travel speeds. That's a tricky proposition—
that's something that traffic engineers and transportation engineers struggle
with. Do you want to provide that kind of shy distance and ability for error
or do you want to reinforce the proper operating speed by tightening up the
roadway, designing the road around people that are traveling at the
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appropriate speed? In these cases, because they're local streets and folks
should generally be operating under 25 miles an hour in order to safely
operate around cyclists and pedestrians, we elected to be somewhat
aggressive in our traffic calming treatments.
Vice Mayor Scharff: You didn't quite answer the question, or maybe you did
and I just ... What I heard you say was this—you didn't answer the question
if it's more dangerous, but the implication is it is. If people are driving—if you go over a curb at 25 miles an hour, you could still hart a pedestrian. If
you're not paying attention—obviously when you go over a speed bump and
you're not paying attention, you then pay attention and you then slow down.
If you hit the curb because you're not expecting it, maybe that doesn't
happen, but it seems to me intuitively it could. Even if you're doing 25 and,
in fact, maybe you're doing 30 miles an hour, people do that sometimes.
I'm just wondering if there's a safety issue for going up onto someone's
lawn. If you hit the curb even at 25, 30 miles an hour, can't you do some
damage? I think you could.
Mr. Louch: I think the advantage of the curb extensions really is that you're
more likely to slow people down. People are going to be distracted driving on
a wider street and likely driving faster anyway. All the things that you say could be true, but they would be just as true or more true on a wider street
where they could also take the curb and go up and hit a pedestrian. This
actually creates a buffer and it's more likely that they'll be going slower.
Yes, it's true that people could not be paying attention. I think there's a
certain likelihood of that when people are driving. If anything, this draws
their attention more to need to be paying attention.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Am I misunderstanding? The way it looks on the map
is that there's no curb extension, the street is the wide street. Driving along
the wide street and then suddenly there's a curb extension, and then
suddenly you're like looking at it.
Mr. Mello: The curb extensions are in a parking lane. You wouldn't be in the
path of the curb extension unless you were driving in the parking lane.
Vice Mayor Scharff: I misunderstood that. I though it narrowed the actual
width of the road a little bit.
Mr. Mello: No. One of the benefits of the curb extensions is if the parking is
underutilized and you effectively have a street that's twice as wide as it
needs to be when there's no parking, the curb extensions kind of make that
parking lane permanent and get people driving in the center of the road at
all times of day.
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Vice Mayor Scharff: Got it.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Wolbach.
Council Member Wolbach: Just three questions at this time. In comparing
chicanes to curb extensions, tell me if my understanding is correct. With
chicanes, you allow a cut through for bicyclists; whereas, with the curb
extension, the bicyclist would be forced into the same path of travel with the
automobile. Is that correct?
Mr. Mello: This is something we struggled with throughout the design
process, the concept planning process for this. There are a lot of cyclists
who ride in the parking lanes currently today, because a lot of the parking
lanes are unoccupied during the day when folks are at work. There's kind of
a culture of straddling the curb and then weaving in and out of the travel
lane as they pass parked vehicles. That's not the way we encourage folks to
operate a bicycle. A lot of these streets are intended to be shared travel
lanes, shared roadways. That's the whole goal of the bike boulevard
program, to bring motor vehicle travel speeds down so that cyclists can feel
comfortable taking the travel lane. All of the curb extensions and the
chicanes that you see in the concept plans are in locations where there's a
parking lane. A cyclist really should not be using the parking lane to travel in; a lot of them do. We're trying to discourage that behavior. We do that
in our Safe Routes to School program. The students are taught to follow the
sharrows, take the lane, not weave in and out of the travel lane which
creates a dangerous situation. That's something we struggled with
throughout the concept planning process, do we operate under the
assumption that cyclists are going to be riding in the parking lane, which
could preclude us from implementing curb extensions and adding street
trees and creating these kind of shorter crossing distances, or do we actively
try to encourage cyclists to take the lane and share the roadway. We've
opted for that second recommendation.
Council Member Wolbach: Next question. Do you ever see cases of trees
and landscaping actually obstructing visibility? I'm thinking of a couple of
examples that I've experienced. I'm curious if that's—how do you go about
thinking about that challenge or that potential, especially as trees and
vegetation mature over time? This question of if we take away parking and
put in vegetation instead and over time it grows and ends up with the same
loss of visibility. It's still prettier than parked cars, but you're not getting
the safety benefits which are the best argument in favor of taking away
somebody's parking space.
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Mr. Mello: We do have vegetation interrupting sight lines in quite a few
locations. I think we could make a conscious effort in the final design
process to look at the sight lines and pick species that are not going to
obstruct the sight lines as they mature.
Council Member Wolbach: That would probably be something worth—I
guess I'm veering into comments here—something to consider for the
middle of roundabouts as well, so you can see across. My third and final question for now. Regarding stop sign elimination, are there other options
that are available other than fully eliminating the stop signs, such as
potentially converting the stop signs to yield signs or any other third option
that I'm not considering?
Mr. Mello: You cannot have a four-way yield intersection, which means that
we would put the yield signs on the cross-street approaching the bike
boulevard, which then means the bike boulevard becomes uncontrolled,
which would increase travel speeds along the bike boulevard without some
type of treatment like a roundabout. If we put the yield signs on the bike
boulevard approaches, then the cross-street would be uncontrolled, and it
would require most people on the bike boulevard to stop when approaching
the cross-street. Yield signs don't really get us the benefit of removing control along the bike boulevard corridor.
Council Member Wolbach: Any slow sign or warning or—this is what I'm
asking also. Is there another option aside from—is it just the binary choice,
either a stop sign or a yield sign or nothing? Are there other choices?
Mr. Mello: In some places, we've elected to recommend removal of stop
sign without any additional treatments because there's a nearby stop sign. I
think along Ross Road in particular what we've done is actually just better
space the stop signs. Instead of every block, it's every two blocks. In some
cases, there was a stop sign, stop sign and then no stop sign, no stop sign.
We've redistributed the stop control so that you have one every two blocks;
it's more consistent, but it also reduces the total amount of time that cyclists
are delayed traveling along the bike boulevard.
Council Member Wolbach: Just one quick follow-up then based on that
discussion. Do you incorporate foliage and fencing and building design into
determining whether maybe a stop sign should be preserved even if it's not
convenient for travel, just because there's a visibility issue? Is that
incorporate in your consideration before the removal of stop signs?
Mr. Mello: There were a couple of spots where we wanted to remove a stop
sign, but we elected to leave it in because there were sight line issues.
Again, the far southern end of Ross Road, there's an intersection where
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there's a blind curve. We elected to leave a stop sign in place because of
that curve.
Council Member Wolbach: Thank you.
Mayor Burt: I have a few questions. First, returning to this question on
speed tables versus speed humps or bumps. Back when we had transitioned
toward speed tables, the studies that we were presented at the time had
favored speed tables because cars would essentially maintain a pretty steady speed of 20-25 miles an hour, and the speed humps would cause
cars to slow down to 10 and then gun it in between them. Is your speed
hump proposal today different from what we had had before?
Mr. Mello: I think this might just be a nomenclature issue. These would be
designed at the operating speed of the roadway. They wouldn't be designed
at 10 miles an hour.
Mayor Burt: There were questions around daylighting and shrubbery. I
think I heard you answer about our selection of vegetation. A lot of the
daylighting problems are when people on corner lots have tall shrubs right
out to the corner of the lot. Do we presently permit or have any restrictions
on that in our landscaping Codes?
Mr. Mello: The Chief Transportation Official actually has the authority to remove vegetation that presents safety issues at intersections. We're
hesitant to use that authority unless it's a pretty significant safety concern.
We do have that authority to remove vegetation. We do review new
development for sight line issues with the landscaping.
Mayor Burt: I'm not sure that people even know that this is something that
they should be including in their landscaping plans when they do that.
Mr. Louch: Just one other thing. When we remove the parking and add a
bulb-out, it creates safety just by putting the pedestrian more visible even if
you continue to have auto conflicts.
Mayor Burt: That's where we have the bulb-outs, not ... Where we're
crossing a bike boulevard, for instance on Bryant, does the plan have
additional signage to notify drivers that they are crossing a bike boulevard?
That's one absence that I noticed today.
Mr. Mello: We are recommending adding "cross-traffic does not stop" sub-
plaques to all stop signs that don't currently have them on the cross-streets.
We've had preliminary discussions about testing a new type of sign that
would be more specific to a bike boulevard that would tell people you're
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crossing a bike boulevard. That's not currently in the California Manual on
Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), so we would need to request
permission to experiment with that. We are considering asking for that
permission.
Mayor Burt: I think that's a really good idea. As a cyclist, when occasionally
I drive and cross, I just really welcome the reminder that I'm not principally
looking for cars. When I cross bike boulevard, I'm principally looking for bikes. It's just a different consciousness. I'm trying to remember how long
ago it was. There was discussion at the Council level about whether we
would want to be looking at what are called Idaho stops, which are basically
requiring bicyclists to function as in a yield approach at stop signs. I think
we all see that there are a lot of bicyclists who just blast through stop signs,
and very few who come to a full stop, put a foot down and all that. It
becomes difficult to have an enforcement when we're trying to say,
"Everybody's breaking the law if they don't put a foot down" and we can't
distinguish between those who are just blasting through and really a safe
measure. Are we permitted in California to adopt what's called an Idaho
stop practice for bicyclists?
Ms. Stump: Thank you, Mayor Burt. City Attorney, Molly Stump. The Vehicle Code requires bicyclists to follow all of the same laws as motor
vehicles and does require all vehicles to stop at stop signs. That said, traffic
enforcement is like any other type of enforcement activity subject to a
certain amount of discretion of the enforcing officer. It is likely the case that
good decisions are made in terms of prioritizing dangerous behavior over
behavior that is consistent with good safety practices. I hope that's helpful.
Mayor Burt: Thanks. That concludes questions from members of the
Council. We now have comments from members of the public. We have 14
speaker cards, and we're going to close off comments momentarily. If
anybody wants to do so, they better bring them up quickly to the City Clerk
right here. Thank you. Our first speaker is Kirk Fry, to be followed by Zoe
Hoster. Welcome.
Kirk Fry: Thank you for letting me speak tonight. My name is Kirk Fry; I've
lived for 38 years on the corner of Ross and Moreno. Those are a cross
section of two proposed bike boulevards. I oppose the awarding of these
contracts tonight for four reasons. First is that Ross is a poor choice for a
bicycle boulevard, and I'll go into that in a minute. Then, there's going to be
a larger than expected loss of parking due to uncounted cars when they did
their survey, based on my observations. The excessive costs of these
contracts, and I think it's an example is misplaced priorities. First of all, let's
talk about Ross. Why Ross? This route connects the long proposed and
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nonexistent Adobe Creek U.S. 101 overcrossing via Ross Road to Garland
Drive, which is a small residential area just north of the Oregon Expressway.
Then it just ends right there. I sit there and I watch Ross, and there are no
bicycles on it much. For 38 years, I've watched it. If you look on page 44
and page 61 of the manual that was handed out before this meeting, they
counted bikes and pedestrians at the most popular hours. It turns out that
there are three bikes and pedestrian per hour on Ross in the morning, and six total pedestrians and bikes total going every which way. There's hardly
any traffic at that intersection at all. In the evening, there are six bikes that
are on Ross going up and down. There are 20 going on Moreno back and
forth. It's an odd choice of choosing Ross for a bicycle. Most people use
Ross or use Louis or Middlefield. The other thing is that they're going to put
a mini roundabout in my intersection. Down on Colorado and Ross, basically
they're going to put some traffic diverters, but the signs are still there. Yes?
Mayor Burt: Your time's up. Can you just wrap up?
Mr. Fry: Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Zoe Hoster, to be followed by
Amie Ashton. Welcome.
Zoe Hoster: Good evening, thank you. My name is Zoe Hoster from Palo Alto, speaking in favor of the bicycle and pedestrian improvements that we
learned about this evening. In my view, our ability to bike and walk in Palo
Alto is one of the great advantages of living in this City. I grew up biking to
school in Palo Alto. Now, I bike to work, walk and bike for the majority of
my trips around the City. As we heard from the commenters about
Middlefield Road earlier, especially dangerous traffic and congestion are a
major issue in Palo Alto. Now, we have the opportunity through these
improvements to solve a lot of these issues in a responsible way. A lot of
you asked very good questions about these improvements. A lot of them
are new. We haven't seen them in Palo Alto before, but I'm confident that
they are the right answer to solve these congestion and safety issues in the
right way. As a young and healthy person myself, I'm able to walk and bike
around Palo Alto without much hassle. That's not the case for a lot of
children and for a lot of people who are more cautious than someone like I
am. With these improvements, they will be able to enjoy the benefits of
walking and biking around the City. All of us will enjoy the benefits of
reduced traffic congestion and increased safety. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Amie Ashton to be followed by Penny Ellson.
Amie Ashton: I also wanted to speak in support of the item. I really believe
if you build it, they will come. I bike everywhere in Palo Alto, and it's
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because of these bike paths. I never get in my car, and it's a wonderful way
to live life. I wish more people could experience that. It's projects like this
that make it possible. I just wanted to support it. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Penny Ellson to be followed by Ken Joye.
Penny Ellson: Good evening. I'm Penny Ellson, and I'm here tonight with
Sonya Bradski, who is traffic safety rep at Jane Lathrop Stanford (JLS)
Middle School. Also as an avid bicycler in Palo Alto. Please do not delay implementing the bike network envisioned in the 2012 Bike Pedestrian
Transportation Plan. These improvements that you're considering tonight
come at a time when they are very badly needed. The upturn in the
economy has brought new jobs—that's great—but also thousands of new car
trips into the community. A large percentage of these trips converge with
school commute traffic, making routes less comfortable for students and
their concerned parents, while bike facility improvements have not kept pace
with the needs of increased numbers of bicyclists and the new safety
impacts from growing additional car volumes Citywide. Our 2012 Bike Ped
Plan contains many projects that were in the 2003 Bike Plan, but were never
implemented. In fact, less than 10 percent of the 2012 Bike Ped
Transportation Plan has been implemented to date. We know that each time we've improved bike facilities, especially in school route areas, we've drawn
greater numbers of bicyclists. Tonight, you can approve solid steps toward
rolling out Palo Alto's future bike network. Let's implement the long-awaited
safety improvements families have been calling for. Mode shift will follow;
we know that; it always has. Let's get this show on the road, so to speak, to
provide needed improvements for safety and comfort that will draw more
people to choose active, healthy and sustainable commutes more often.
Please support Staff's recommendation. Thank you very much for
considering my comments.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Ken Joye to be followed by Alex Thompson.
Ken Joye: I'd like to thank you and previous Council Members going back to
Ellen Fletcher for your support of our bicycle infrastructure. I live in the
Ventura neighborhood. My children rode their bikes to Palo Alto Unified
School District (PAUSD) schools. My wife commutes via bike to her job. I
ride to the library, the grocery store and meetings like this on my bike. I
ask you to approve the matters before you tonight, to support Goal T-1 of
the Comp Plan. Thank you for listening.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Alex Thompson to be followed by Neilson
Buchanan.
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Alex Thompson: Hi. My name is Dr. Alex Thompson. I just moved here
from Los Angeles, and I like it a lot. It's a much better place to ride; I'm a
cyclist. I ride to work every day via Amarillo, Louis, California. Those are
the main streets I ride on, sometimes Ross. I think these are pretty
relevant streets at least for me. I'm happy to tell you that I'm a data
scientist at work, and I study car risk, driving risk, so I'm glad to be here
talking about work after work. The packets I passed around show two things. One are some basic traffic stats for Palo Alto, and another thing they
show are some photos I took this morning of the bike racks at Jordan Middle
Schools, which you'll recall is bordered by Louis and also Ross feeds in there.
It shows basically about 300 bikes at the middle school. If you check the
enrollment of Jordan Middle School, it's about 1,100 students. That tells
that around 27 percent of middle school students there are riding to their
work, to school. I think we should consider that it's not if we build it, they
will come. They're already here, and they're short and they need our
protection. The other stats there show that while Palo Alto is the best place
to live in the Bay, it's actually one of the kind of not so great places as far as
traffic safety. It's actually more comparable with Los Angeles than it is with
San Francisco or with Sacramento than Davis. In order to kind of be robust and be the best city in the Bay, I think these kinds of things are really
needed. Thank you very much.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Just to let you know, there are other racks, I think,
at Jordan. We're at about 45 percent bike share. N. Buchanan to be
followed by Eric Nordman.
Neilson Buchanan: Nelson Buchanan, I live on Bryant, and I spend a fair
amount of time not driving on Bryant because of the bikes which, I think, is
a good idea. It's much better for us that drive our cars to take Waverley.
That's one point I want to come back to. I'm fully supportive of this Bike
Plan. I don't understand it all; I do understand the impact on the Residential
Preferential Parking (RPP) parking district area. I'd like to confine my
comments on that. I drive those intersections. Every time we do a Midtown
survey, our survey team goes through every intersection twice, so I have a
pretty good pulse on what traffic's like on every intersection. We can cover
that neighborhood in less than two hours at Midtown. I'm just interested in
how well funded this is. I'm sort of pleased and shocked to understand that
the Planning Department is fully funded and fully staffed. That says loads
about other priorities. We'll get to that later in the evening, because a
shortage of resources will be coming up. A couple of quick things. This
program is probably going to push the large commercial trucks off of Bryant
onto Waverley between Embarcadero and University Avenue. I urge you to
look at that. If any parking is reduced in the permit area, I ask you—we can
look at August 1st—to reduce the 2,000 parking permit limit by the number
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of parking spaces you eliminate from the parking district area. That's only
fair to not increase the density of nonresident cars. It's certainly fair to
reduce the parking spaces as you need them along Bryant. I have no
problem with reducing parking space; all I ask is to reduce the limit of 2,000
accordingly. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Eric Nordman to be followed by Emma Shlaes.
Eric Nordman: My name is Eric Nordman. I've lived in Palo Alto for over 40 years. The bicycle boulevard network is critical to addressing key Palo Alto
goals, to double the bike commute rates and cut greenhouse gas emissions
by 15 percent. This is not just my view. Sam Adams, when Mayor of
Portland, said, "We did a lot of research and we did a lot of focus groups on
what it would take to get from eight percent to 25 percent of all trips by
bike. What we learned is that bike boulevards are the way to go." Palo Alto
established the first bicycle boulevard in the United States (U.S.) on Bryant
Street in 1982. On average over 1,000 bicyclists pass through the barriers
on Bryant and Lowell Avenue, and about 1,500 are on Park Boulevard. Bike
boulevards can be very effective at reducing traffic and parking problems.
Reductions of stop signs that make bike boulevards good for cyclists can
make them attractive for drivers. To minimize car traffic, Bryant has four places where through car traffic is blocked, but due to a City policy this was
not an option to consider in these past ones. It's probably not important for
these ones because of the nature of much of how South Palo Alto is set out.
I think the City should consider allowing blocking on future bike projects like
Webster. I strongly support approval of Bike Plan lines for the bicycle
boulevard and continued funding for the final design phase. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Emma Shlaes to be followed by David Coale.
Emma Shlaes: Hello. My name's Emma Shlaes. I'm the policy manager for
Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition (SVBC). Thank you to Council Staff and
PABAC and the Planning and Transportation Committee and the consultants
for all the work that you guys have done, in particular the extensive public
outreach process. SVBC supports the implementation of the 2012 Bike and
Pedestrian Plan and the vision that it set forth. We urge you to approve
these concept plans and final design contracts. These projects will help to
lower speeds and create a safer street network for everyone, whether
biking, walking or driving. Shifting some trips from cars to bikes can help
the City meet your goals in reducing traffic, pollution, greenhouse gas
emissions and parking concerns. Palo Alto's long been a leader in bike
infrastructure, as Eric mentioned, with the first bike boulevard on Bryant
Street. As also Josh mentioned, vehicle speeds over 20 miles per hour can
drastically increase the severity of injuries and likelihood of death when
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collisions occur. These traffic calming measures, the roundabouts, can help
to eliminate the conflict points. Studies show that there's a direct
correlation between feelings of personal safety and the number and
percentage of weekly trips taken by bike. I urge you to continue your
leadership, increase the already high percentage of bike ridership in Palo
Alto, and approve these important projects. Thanks.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. David Coale to be followed by Richard Brand.
David Coale: David Coale, member of Carbon Free Palo Alto and Bike Palo
Alto. I support the Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan before you this evening.
This plan has been vetted many times by Staff each step of the way along
with many community meetings, and needs to move forward. In looking at
the report, I think Staff did an excellent job in assessing the parking
impacts, which seems to be one of the issues here. Staff did drill down and
identify the potential problems and identified in most cases more than twice
the parking needed to solve the problem only one block away. For those
that would argue that another parking study should be done after the RPP is
in place, I would suggest that, since the RPP is to make more parking
available, this will only be easier once the RPP is implemented, and we do
not need another parking study with more costs, more delay, more Staff time and expense. We need to move forward with this plan. As our Chief
Sustainability Officer has mentioned many times, we have to make other
modes of transportation more attractive than driving. This is exactly what
this plan is trying to do. If we are going to address climate change where
transportation accounts for 60 percent of our greenhouse gases, we need to
move forward with the Bike Ped Plan as expeditiously as possible. This well-
vetted plan will increase a cleaner and healthier form of transportation by
making it safer for everyone. Please approve this plan without delay. Thank
you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Richard Brand to be followed by Celine Heck.
Richard Brand: Good evening. I am here to reinforce what I wrote in my
email to you. This plan is not yet ready. Three weeks ago when this came
up on the Consent Calendar, several of us said there's more work to be done
here. I have to say that myself and Neilson Buchanan and Michael Hodos
who were RPP—I guess we're emeritus stakeholders—sent an email to
Mr. Mello and said, "Would you please talk to us about parking?" No
response. I think there's work to be done here. It also shows in the lack of
answers to several of your excellent questions. I think your questions were
well founded. I think this thing growing from 282 pages to over 600 pages
says that there's a lot of new stuff in here, and it has not been vetted with
the residents and people in the City. I absolutely support the Bike Plan. I
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knew Ellen Fletcher; I love the idea. I watch people go by my house; that's
great. This plan needs, before we throw a lot of money at it, because we're
going to hire a consultant, let's have Staff do some final work. Yes, the RPP
in Phase 2 is changing the parking dichotomy. We've got a little more
space, but we don't have any data yet because enforcement is still catching
with the whole program. I would say that, yes, we need to do this plan. I
support the bicycling but not yet until we get some more work done in terms of outreach to the people that are affected. Thank you very much.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Celine Heck, to be followed by
Stefan Heck. Welcome.
Celine Heck: Hello. My name is Celine Heck; I'm nine years old and go to
Addison Elementary. I love to bike, especially to my school. However, I
think that biking can be scary occasionally because the lanes are not
continuous and sometimes have intrusions by cars or garbage bins. There
also are not always marked out clearly which, from what I saw one time,
almost caused an accident. I really, really like biking, not just to school.
Please support bike lanes. You might already have kids or you might have
kids one day, but either way I would assume you'd want them to be safe.
That's a good reason for bike lanes if they love to bike. It would make things safer for all of us. My friends and I love to bike, and that's how we
get around to each other's houses. Sometimes it's unsafe, and I see cars
whipping past, and I can't ever get across. Sometimes it's a little bit too
small, and there are a bunch of bikers. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Stefan Heck to be followed by Shannon McEntee. I
don't know you're going to top that.
Stefan Heck: I'm not going to top that. She did write that herself; I had no
hand in it. I'm Stefan Heck; we live on Bryant Street. I've been a resident
since 1988. I'm here to challenge the Bike Plan not because of “Not in My
Backyard” (NIMBY) and not wanting improvements in our backyard and our
street, because we already have RPP zoning that requires two off-street
parking spaces. The RPP plan has taken care of your third, fourth, fifth and
sixth car and is actually working quite well. Not because of some inchoate
fear that paint might actually diminish housing value. If you look at the data
of bike studies—this has been done in Omaha, Seattle, Portland, Colorado
and in most detail in Delaware—shows an increase of up to six percent in
housing value. At Palo Alto housing prices, that's a damn good return, I
have to say, and we should do it. As a professor at Stanford and as a Chief
Executive Officer (CEO) of a startup that employs 26 people here in Palo
Alto, half of whom I'm proud to say bike or take Caltrain to work, there's
another old-fashioned reason which is you should look at the data. What the
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data says is that we did a very good job in the '70s with our first bike
boulevard. It was innovative; it was a world first; it was true spirit of Silicon
Valley. Now it's time to go beyond that; it's time to go beyond signs and
paint to actually really add safety improvements and learn from the rest of
the world. If you look at some of those cities, there are two new insights:
reduce the cross-traffic and separate the bikes and the cars. This plan
doesn't yet do that, so I support what's in the plan, but we need to go beyond it. I like the network aspect. I love the roundabouts, because they
do reduce injuries by 80 percent. We should definitely do that. We also
need more dedicate cycle tracks. I'm personally willing to give up some
more parking on Bryant Street to actually have a dedicated cycle track and
really go beyond what we have today and to introduce some safe, green
phases for bikes to cross at intersections and, ultimately also, to be able to
come Downtown on a bike trail, because pretty much the bike boulevard
disappears here. Then, we have a monument worth of Ellen Fletcher. I fully
support that. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Shannon McEntee to be followed by our final
speaker, Bret Andersen.
Shannon McEntee: Mayor Burt and Council Members, I first want to thank you for your good work, for keeping Palo Alto a really healthy and safe place
to live. I want to support this program, and I've been really impressed by
the comments tonight, how carefully thought out all of this is. I'm a
homeowner here; I've lived here for 45 years. The benefits that I see are
obvious, and I think they're obvious to you too, but let me just repeat them.
If we get more people on bikes by making it safer, we'll reduce congestion,
we'll reduce pollution, we'll reduce our parking problems because it's really
easy to park bike. We'll also have health benefits for the people that are
riding the bikes. We'll have health benefits indirectly for corporations and
employers when health costs go down, because people have a more healthy
lifestyle. Also, we'll have safer streets for both pedestrians, for bike riders,
for older people with walkers, for everybody, when traffic slows down and
we get more people on bikes. I also just wanted to say that two to three
times a week I go down Ross Road to that Moreno intersection, and that's a
great street to bike on, because it's extra wide, so you have a lot of
visibility. I feel very safe there, and I can't imagine that making that a bike
lane would cause any problems for the residents nearby. There aren't any
parking problems on that street by the way, as far as I can see. Again,
thank you very much for all you do for this City. I love living here.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our final speaker is Bret Andersen.
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Bret Andersen: Hi, resident of Midtown. I really appreciate the roads of
Ross Road, Louis and Greer getting on the radar for our Bike Plan, because
that's where I spend my time and raise my son. Those roads I use all the
time on a bicycle. They're really important paths to go south into Mountain
View or north in Palo Alto along Greer and Louis and Ross. The other thing I
really like about the plan—I hope you all support it fully as written—is that it
does concentrate on, one, safety to ensure success, but also on removing the obstacles, that is, stops for cyclists. When you're making the choice at
the margin of choosing bicycling versus driving that car Downtown or to an
errand, a lot of it comes down to how much effort and how convenient and
how enjoyable your ride is. Safety is a concern, but also the number of stop
signs you have to go through, the number of dangerous intersections is a big
factor. When you remove those on a bike boulevard, cycling increases
greatly. If we can put more circles in that don't require stops for cyclists, if
we can investigate the Idaho stop concept, I fully support that. I think it's a
very reasonable way to treat cyclists. Practically, you just can't stop at
every stop sign if there's too many. That's just the way people work. We
have to get into a situation where we respect the interests and the limits
that a cyclist has as the slower moving, safe vehicle and the car being the one that has to always give way and should always be treated that way in
any intersection, whether there's a stop sign or not. That's my spiel. Glad
to have the last word.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. On that last word, we get to return to discussion
and a Motion. Who would like to go first?
Vice Mayor Scharff: What are we discussing?
Mayor Burt: I'm sorry. That's right. At this time, we should have Council
Member DuBois leave, and we have the discussion around Bryant, and then
have a narrow discussion there and then have him return and have the
broader discussion. Correct?
Ms. Stump: That's correct, yes. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: When we do the voting, how do we work that? Do we need to
adopt the Bryant recommendations or can Council Member DuBois return to
vote on the entire package?
Ms. Stump: No. The voting should be divided. You should take up the
Bryant, adopt the plan there. Maybe the Staff can clarify. There's a contract
that needs to be adopted; that should be done, and then some plan work.
Mr. Mello: Our recommendations for this next stage of the discussion is to
adopt the concept plan for the Bryant Street Bike Boulevard, and then also
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approve the contract for final design for Bryant, Amarillo, Moreno, Louis,
Montrose and Ross Road.
Mayor Burt: We have to divide those, right?
Mr. Mello: No, that's the first section. The second section is approval of the
concept plans for the remaining three-quarters, and then approving a final
design contract for the previously approved concept plans from 2015.
Mayor Burt: Council Member DuBois.
Council Member DuBois: If you could just clarify that. I appreciate you
splitting these. If you guys could approve the Bryant Street components,
like that second one you mentioned all the other bike plans as well, I hope I
can return for that piece. I'm going to recuse myself because I own
property a block from Bryant Street.
Council Member DuBois left the meeting at 8:21 P.M.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Now we will discuss the first set of projects. Go
ahead.
Mr. Louch: I'll give you a quick review of the Bryant Street Bicycle
Boulevard, and then we can go into the other three. We've already talked
generally about what is proposed for these, so I'm really going to focus on
some of the things that we heard that are specific to each of these bicycle boulevards and some of the comments we got. Just wanted to start with the
amount of time we've been out. Folks have mentioned that already. We did
have a set of workshops that were sort of specific to Bryant Street as well as
a more general workshop just in March of this year that had a lot of folks at
it. That was really for all four of them. We did also bike-alongs; we had a
farmers market; we had web-based input. A lot of different opportunities to
have input in this whole process. For Bryant Street, a couple of the major
concerns that we heard really were around some of the roundabouts,
especially the roundabout at California and Bryant. We had quite a few folks
who were in favor of that and quite a few folks who were concerned about
safety issues there. We had a number of folks also concerned about
parking. I think you've heard those pretty clearly tonight. From the PTC
and PABAC, we also had a variety of concerns raised again. A lot of interest
in understanding what would the parking impacts be from this particular
bicycle boulevard, and then also wanting to make sure that they understood
why roundabouts or traffic circles were being chosen in the locations, much
in the way you all asked about tonight. There were some questions about
do we need speed humps south of El Verano on Bryant Street. I think that
really referred to the low level of vehicle traffic on that. For Bryant Street,
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the parking question is one of the ones that's been raised most frequently.
You've seen a couple different presentations at this point, I believe, about
the parking including a map. There's a small version up here, but hopefully
you all have a larger version of the map that we produced, that identifies all
the places that parking is proposed to be removed. I think what you'll see
from the map is that parking is being removed from intersections generally
one or two spaces along Bryant. There are a couple of other places where there's a little bit more substantial parking removal, but by and large we're
talking about removing, as we discussed earlier, kind of daylighting the
intersections along Bryant. By and large, those have very limited impact.
On this map, the little clip of the map that's up here, the things that are in
black don't have any substantial impact on parking utilization. That is to
say, once you remove those spaces, there's still at least 20 percent or more
available curb space for parking. Those that are in red are places where
that's not the case. What I will do just quickly—you can see here that we
have both as the average, which folks asked about, so 279 average cars
across the observations that we made. We made four observations of the
parking, two during the daytime, one in the evening during the week, and
one on the weekend. Slightly higher, so 279 parked cars in the average and 329 during the peak period. One of the major intersections that folks have
raised of concern is the intersection of Bryant and Everett. We have a quick
graphic that kind of shows you for every leg and every side of that
intersection what is the current parking utilization. You'll remember we're
removing about one space from each corner of this. In some cases, for
example—I don't know how well you can see my mouse here. This corner of
Everett and Bryant, there's significant overutilization of the parking, and that
refers to folks—we counted every car that used the parking regardless of
whether they're parked legally or not. There's some illegal use; there's also
smaller than average car is used. We used a fairly conservative 22-foot
standard for parking, and that really enables more cars to park than you
might otherwise expect. This is a congested intersection obviously. I think
folks are aware of that. There are some spaces right at the intersection
remaining even when you remove the parking that's proposed. If you were
to move a block or two up or down in either direction, there certainly would
also be parking available. I made the ones that are actually congested at
the end of this kind of stand out here. There's sort of five of the legs of
these eight legs that would be congested. That kind of concludes the Bryant
part.
Mr. Mello: Our Staff recommendation for this section of the presentation is
to adopt the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption and
approve concept plans for the Bryant Street Update Bicycle Boulevard, and
also approve the contract with Alta Planning and Design for the final design
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of the Amarillo-Moreno Avenue, Bryant Street update, Louis Road-Montrose
Avenue and Ross Road Bicycle Boulevard projects.
Mayor Burt: We have before us the Staff recommendation. Do we have
either discussion or a Motion? Council Member Holman.
Council Member Holman: A couple of questions please. We didn't talk about
vertical signage, in other words not signage on the pavement but vertical
signage. How much vertical signage is being proposed here? Can you review that for us just quickly? That's also been a concern.
Mr. Mello: I think the majority of the additional signage would be associated
with new intersection configurations, where we're adding roundabouts. The
raised intersection may need some warning signage initially to get people to
adapt to using the intersection. The 2012 Bicycle Plan actually recommends
wayfinding signage along the bike boulevard network. The recommendation
in the Bike Plan is to use purple signage similar to what's on the Castilleja
Bike Boulevard as you head south from Churchill Avenue. However, PABAC
has expressed concerned continually around the use of purpose and actually
prefers the green and white wayfinding signage that's found on some of our
other corridors like Wilkie Way.
Council Member Holman: How frequent are those?
Mr. Mello: Those are at the major decision points, so at the beginning of a
bike boulevard and then when you are passing cross-streets that are other
bike boulevards or had significant destinations along the cross-street.
Bryant and Churchill, for example, would have wayfinding signage to direct
people down Churchill.
Council Member Holman: We're not talking every so many feet along each
block face, which has been previously—okay.
Mr. Mello: No.
Council Member Holman: Parking removal at roundabouts, especially at
California, as was mentioned here. How many parking places are being
removed there? That area is the topic of a lot of conversation, especially
given the uses at the church causing a great demand. How many spaces is
that being removed?
Mr. Louch: I believe that a space is being—eight total spaces, I believe, are
being removed there. That's based from each corner approximately. From
each side of each corner.
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Council Member Holman: Has the church had any input in that in terms of
their assistance with not filling up the ...
Mr. Mello: The pastor has attended the majority of our community
meetings, and he has expressed concern around the parking removal. He's
generally not supportive of it.
Council Member Holman: Not support of this. The one intersection that you
showed, it's like there were more parking—whichever slide it was. The one at Bryant Street and Everett, there was 12.5 (inaudible) but eight spaces.
Removing a space exacerbates that.
Mr. Louch: Certainly.
Council Member Holman: None of the other allocations have much room to
pick up that or absorb that.
Mr. Mello: I think between now and when we go to construction on these
projects, we're going to have conducted three to four rounds of occupancy
data collection for the RPP program within the Downtown RPP district. We
may need to consider reducing the number of permits available if there is
going to be a significant impact on the parking supply related to these
projects.
Council Member Holman: That was my last question. Is the RPP designed such that the number of permits could be reduced in such a finite area?
Mr. Mello: Yes. The Planning Director has the authority to adjust the
number of permits by zone.
Council Member Holman: Zone meaning finite enough to address ...
Mr. Mello: The employee zones that were created under Downtown RPP
Phase 2.
Council Member Holman: Understand that, but finite enough to address the
parking removals on Bryant? That's more finite than a zone.
Mr. Mello: If the reduction in the supply reduces the availability of parking
for residents, I think we definitely need to look at whether the total number
of permits needs to be adjusted based on the impacts of these projects.
Council Member Holman: Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Kniss.
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Council Member Kniss: Not to be too preemptive, but I would actually like
to move the Staff recommendation which you see here, which includes the
CEQA exemption, the concept plans and also the contract with Alta Planning.
I'm going to guess that included in this, Josh, you would also like to have
approve professional services contract that's on the following page. I'm
looking at Page 1 of the Packet. I'm at Packet Page 274. It looks to me as
though you want to include adopt and approve the professional services contract. Is that correct? It's Numbers 1, 2 and 3.
Mr. Mello: Not "3." "3" is in the next section of the presentation.
Council Member Kniss: You don't want "3" now. Moving we adopt the one
that's on the screen at this point.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Second.
MOTION: Council Member Kniss moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Scharff
to:
A. Adopt a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption and
approve the Concept Plan for the Bryant Street Update; and
B. Approve professional services Contract Number C16163533 with Alta
Planning + Design, Inc. in the amount of $824,542 for a period of one
year for the preparation of plans, specifications and estimates for the Amarillo Avenue-Moreno Avenue, Bryant Street Update, Louis Road-
Montrose Avenue, and Ross Road bicycle boulevard projects.
Council Member Kniss: May I speak briefly?
Mayor Burt: You may.
Council Member Kniss: We've heard lots of really good comments tonight. I
think the one that still moves me the most, not that I don't love everyone
riding to work and everyone who gets around and enjoys Palo Alto on a bike,
I think the biggest impact is on kids going to school. There is no question,
even though tonight I didn't see the figures adding up to quite the same
numbers, if you are anywhere close to Bryant in the morning or North
California, which happens to be the area I live in, you would get run over by
the bicycles. I simply wouldn't go in that direction. That's I would hope
would happen; you really want everyone riding to school. You can see the
bike cages are filled. I think that makes one of the biggest differences in our
community, this change from the year '99 to 2000 to taking up this plan and
moving kids around the City in a comfortable way. I think Stefan Heck's
daughter said it so well tonight. If you're that articulate when you're nine
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years old, I can't imagine what she'll be like when she's 19. I don't think I
need to say a whole lot more with this. This is a concept plan. I think we've
given you lots of information, instruction and so forth tonight as we go
forward. There clearly are some concerns about the roundabouts, about the
other kinds of traffic calming devices. I think you've heard that. Also, I
understand that PABAC is very involved with this at the same time. If this
isn't an idea whose time has come, I don't know what would be that idea. I urge us to move forward.
Council Member Holman: Mr. Mayor, point of order. I thought we were
going to divide this and vote on just Bryant and then talk about the rest of it
so Tom could come back and participate. As we just had the presentation
on Bryant alone.
Mayor Burt: Josh.
Mr. Mello: We can sever the concept plans, but the contract includes all four
of the corridors, so we cannot sever the contract. The second item that's on
the screen is the approval of the contract. The first item is just Bryant
Street. The other three corridors will be considered in the next section.
Council Member Kniss: He said we need to separate out Number A from B in
order to allow—the other way around?
Vice Mayor Scharff: He said it's fine the way it is, because you have to
move the contract.
Ms. Stump: Mr. Mayor, it sounds like this is the way that it can be broken
up. It does need to be handled this way. Even though it's overbroad from
the conflicts perspective, it's the way the work is organized. Council should
take it up in this manner.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Vice Mayor Scharff.
Vice Mayor Scharff: I want to thank Staff for all the hard work on this. I
know you did a lot of outreach. I know that you responded to a lot of
neighborhood concerns, especially on the green sharrows, on other areas. I
can tell when we talked about this that you thought carefully about each
intersection. You removed parking judiciously. While I want to say my
heart is with Stefan Heck in terms of remove the parking all along one side
and have a dedicated path, I don't think the community is ready to do that
in terms of losing that much parking. I do think you've been very thoughtful
about this. I think it's a great program. I'm really glad we're moving
forward on our bike boulevards. It's been a long time since we did this kind
of intensive "let's get the bike boulevards done." Thanks for all your work.
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Mayor Burt: Council Member Berman.
Council Member Berman: I want to add my thanks to Staff and to the
community. We've had an extraordinary amount of outreach around this
plan over the past four years, meetings in the community. Staff has been
flexible and has listened to concerns from the community and will continue
to do so, as was indicated by answers in regards to concerns about parking
in some of our Downtown neighborhoods. It's important that we continue to evaluate the impacts that this has on certain stretches of road and adapt as
necessary. That doesn't mean that we throw the entire thing out. It means
that we kind of track success and see what works and what doesn't. Some
folks in the community have questioned the prioritization of this. This has
been a priority in our community for longer than I've been on Council. It
was an integral part of Measure B in 2014 to fully fund our infrastructure,
because this is a critical part of our infrastructure. If we have a
comprehensive Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan, more people will bike, more
people will walk, less people will drive, we'll need fewer parking spaces,
there will be less traffic, there will be less greenhouse gas emissions.
Everybody wins. That's the system we're trying to create here; that's why
it's a priority. Residents voted 76 percent, I think, to pass Measure B, and this was a critical part of it. I'm happy to see that we're moving forward.
I'm excited to see the implementation.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Filseth.
Council Member Filseth: Thanks. My question was really the procedural one
about parsing it out correctly so that Tom could vote. Thank you. Other
than that, I think all my questions got answered, and I'm happy to support
it.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Schmid.
Council Member Schmid: I would refer to the diagram of the Bryant Street-
Everett Avenue parking impact. Three of the eight sides of the side are
typically over-parked. I assume from your response to questions it is over-
parked on the average over the full day. During the business day, it might
even be more. I would ask the maker of the Motion for a friendly
amendment to say that Alta Planning would come back six months after the
data is available for the RPP Phase 2 for an opportunity to relook at the
parking spaces to be eliminated in the Downtown parking district.
Council Member Kniss: Is that going to be a sufficient amount of time, do
you think, the six months?
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Council Member Schmid: Six months after the full data from Phase 2 is
available. That's probably a year from now.
Mayor Burt: May I ask a question of Staff to clarify this? Under the plan as
we would be approving tonight, what discretion does the Staff still have for
these various adjustments? My understanding is we're not locking into each
and every one of these. We're giving a concept plan direction. Adjustment
could be made before implementation, and adjustments could be made after implementation by Staff in response to situations. Is that correct?
Mr. Mello: If you approve the contract award for final design, we will begin I
an approximately one year process of surveying, refining the design, looking
at things like where signage is placed, doing a more thorough kind of
analysis of exactly how long the red curb needs to be. We kind of gave you
a best guess at how many spaces we think will be removed. At that same
time, we'll be collecting the RPP parking occupancy data on a quarterly
basis. We'll be looking at that as we move through the final design process.
Mayor Burt: Did I understand correctly that the final design will actually be
subsequent to additional RPP data?
Mr. Mello: Yes.
Mayor Burt: The other half of my question is after we implement a final design, will Staff have authority to make minor adjustments if we see that
there are greater problems than we anticipated or whatever?
Mr. Mello: Yes. We can also modify the number of permits in the RPP
district. That's another solution.
Mayor Burt: I don't know if that clarifies the intent.
Council Member Schmid: I think my intent is to have a public meeting about
that as opposed to a decision made by Staff.
Vice Mayor Scharff: I wouldn't accept that.
Council Member Kniss: The seconder is balking, so I think that's a problem,
Council Member Schmid.
Council Member Schmid: I'd propose it as an amendment, if there is a
second.
Mayor Burt: I don't see a second.
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AMENDMENT: Council Member Schmid moved, seconded by Council
Member XX to add to the Motion, “Alta Planning to return in six months,
after data is available from the Downtown Residential Preferential Parking
Permit Program Phase 2 (RPP) for an opportunity to relook at parking spaces
in the RPP District.”
AMENDMENT FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND
Mayor Burt: Council Member Holman.
Council Member Holman: I wasn't clear if the proposed amendment was
capturing what I was going to suggest as a friendly amendment, to direct
the Staff to reduce the number of permits being sold in the area as a result
of removing parking spaces. Do that in a proactive rather than a reactive
manner.
Mayor Burt: I think the City Attorney needs to weigh in.
Ms. Stump: Just looking at the scope of the agendized item, I think that's
getting into some specific direction on RPP Phase 2. I think probably the
approach that the Staff has suggested, which is that that's something that
they can take into account in implementing this item. It's probably as far as
we can go on this noticed item this evening.
Mayor Burt: Will the RPP be returning to the Council prior to full implementation of this plan in any way?
Mr. Mello: We're estimating that construction on these corridors will start in
the beginning of 2017, probably around March. That's about the time that
RPP Phase 2 is coming to an end, and Council will be deciding whether to
continue the program permanently.
Mayor Burt: Mr. Keene.
James Keene, City Manager: I was just going to add I think in addition,
despite this provides the direction on the planning, we'll actually have to
come back to the Council for the award of the construction projects
themselves. If the Council is really concerned with what the data is showing
as it relates to RPP, you are going to have an opportunity prior to adopting
construction contracts to raise questions.
AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council
Member XX to add to the Motion, “direct Staff, in a proactive manner, to
reduce the number of permits being sold in the area as a result of the
reduction in parking spaces.”
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Mayor Burt: Council Member Holman, if I can offer this concept, because I
share your interest in that. To request Staff at the time of the awarding of
the contract to provide an update to the Council on responses within the RPP
program as a result of the impacts of this Bike Plan. We would have that
report to Council and an opportunity to review it at that time.
Council Member Holman: That's good.
Mr. Mello: Just to clarify, you would like a report that details based on the latest occupancy study that we've done for RPP, how we anticipate these
projects affecting the supply of parking in the immediate area.
Mayor Burt: And whatever adjustments you're making to the permit sale as
a result of those impacts.
Council Member Holman: I have one other question.
Mayor Burt: Let's see whether the Staff captured that. The amendment
would be at the time of the awarding of the Bryant—how should we describe
it? It's not just the Bryant contract—the Bike Plan construction contract,
Staff will report to the Council how any adjustments that have been made to
the plan in response to the results of Phase 2 of the RPP. I should say any
adjustment to parking. That's what it is.
Mr. Mello: There may be adjustments made to RPP based on the bike boulevard as well. It could work both ways.
Mayor Burt: Or adjustments to the RPP in response to the Bike Boulevard
Plan. Does that get it right?
Council Member Holman: Yes.
Mayor Burt: Is that acceptable to the maker and seconder as well as Council
Member Holman?
Council Member Kniss: Yes. I think that's also going to be interesting. As
you look at the end of Phase 1, Phase 2, tying them all in together could be
an interesting and difficult Staff response to have. I think having it in there
at least takes care of it now, even though it won't be looked at again
probably for quite some time.
AMENDMENT RESTATED AND INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the
Motion, “at the time of the awarding of the bike construction contract, direct
Staff to report to the Council any adjustments to parking that have been
made to the Bicycle Boulevard Plan in response to the Downtown Residential
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Preferential Parking Program Phase 2 (RPP) or adjustments to RPP in
response to the Bicycle Boulevard Plan.” (New Part C)
Mayor Burt: I'll just briefly say that I think Staff and the consultants have
developed a better and continually improved and refined plan in response to
feedback from the community. I think one of the latest things that we heard
is that we're eliminating the sharrows on Bryant, which was a concern that
was expressed by a good number of members of the community. My understanding is that sharrows are not necessarily significant safety
benefits, so there's not a loss to effective safe biking as a result of that. I
think that overall we were national leaders in biking in the '60s and '70s and
remained near the top nationally largely because of the great success of our
Safe Routes to School program. What we're doing right now is the first real
significant reinvestment in our Bike Plan since the '70s. This is a major step
for our community. There's a great deal of opportunity that, as Council
Member Berman stated, benefits everybody. Supervisor Simitian told me a
story that I think I had said recently, but I'll say it again. Back in the '90s
when there was significant discussion on biking. Supervisor Simitian was
very supportive of it. His best friend, Council Member Fazzino, said, "Joe,
why are you so supportive and worried about the biking? You haven't been on your bike in 20 years." Supervisor Simitian said, "That may be true, but
every person who's on the bike means that I've got one fewer car on the
street and one more parking space for me to park. I think it's great that
they're doing it." It really benefits everybody. I think this is a win for the
entire community. I do want to add that back 20 years ago, when I was
involved in neighborhood traffic calming initiatives, there was a study on
roundabouts that I still remember roughly the statistics. I have to dig it up
in my files. Before roundabouts are installed, the support for them is around
50 percent. After they're installed, it goes up to around 90 percent. There
are apprehensions and then the experience is strikingly different from what
the apprehensions were before they went in. I see Council Member Holman
has a light.
Council Member Holman: I'm just going to throw this out there. On these
streets, some of them are wider streets and (inaudible) upcoming, but I'll
stick to this right now. I've also been a proponent, as Stefan Heck's
comments indicated, of separating bicycles and pedestrians from cars. It
may sound like an odd suggestion—it's not even a suggestion. It's a
question. On the wider streets, is there any opportunity to introduce trees,
say, mid-block or along the avenues as opposed to just adding landscape at
the corners? Trees have all kinds of environmental impacts. They slow
traffic. They make it safer for bicycles. It's not exactly separate, because
you're still going to have cars parked at the curb. Interestingly, we have
rolled curbs in a lot of our South Palo Alto neighborhoods. That actually isn't
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the safest thing either. Can you comment on either one or both of those
please?
Mr. Mello: Could you clarify the first questions? Trees within a median in
the roadway?
Council Member Holman: We've got these bulb extensions or curb
extensions and you could say bulb-outs, whatever. In the older parts of
town, they have trees that are in the street. They're accepted. I don't know if there's any way to introduce those in the street or in the parking area at
least in the older parts. Is there any way to introduce trees into those
streets?
Mr. Mello: We could look at additional opportunities to add street trees. Are
you particularly interested in the Bryant Street corridor?
Council Member Holman: The current Motion covers more than just Bryant
Street, but the wider boulevards. It's for two reasons. It's to slow traffic,
make it safer, potentially maybe in some occasions separate bikes from cars.
Also a comment that we hear a lot from South Palo Alto residents is that it's
lacking in street trees, where North Palo Alto has a lot more because of its
design nature. It's related to the bike safety and bike paths, but if you could
look at that and respond. The rolled curb versus vertical curb, that isn't part of this project, but do you have any thought on safety and ...
Mr. Mello: We can look at adding additional street trees as we enter the
final design phase. There may be opportunities that don't affect parking
substantially. As far as rolled curb, we actually just produced an
informational handout that's been posted on the City website, remind folks
the proper way to park at rolled curb. There seems to be several streets
around town where people have gradually migrated up onto the sidewalk
and actually created a wider travel way, increasing speed. We're trying to
get people to start parking more on the roadway itself. I don't think
wholesale reconstruction in the curbing would be a wise investment of the
Bike Plan funding. In the areas where we're recommending curb extensions
and other infrastructure along the curb, we'd probably be installing vertical
curbing in places where there's currently rolled curbing.
Council Member Holman: I think the Comprehensive Plan says that when
curbs are redone, they're supposed to revert to vertical curbs, but we
haven't done that. Thank you.
MOTION RESTATED: Council Member Kniss moved, seconded by Vice
Mayor Scharff to:
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A. Adopt a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption and
approve the Concept Plan for the Bryant Street Update; and
B. Approve professional services Contract Nnumber C16163533 with Alta
Planning + Design, Inc. in the amount of $824,542 for a period of one
year for the preparation of plans, specifications and estimates for the
Amarillo Avenue-Moreno Avenue, Bryant Street Update, Louis Road-
Montrose Avenue, and Ross Road Bicycle Boulevard Projects; and
C. At the time of the awarding of the bike construction contract, direct
Staff to report to the Council any adjustments to parking that have
been made to the Bicycle Boulevard Plan in response to the Downtown
Residential Preferential Parking Program Phase 2 (RPP) or adjustments
to RPP in response to the Bike Boulevard Plan.
Mayor Burt: Please vote on the board. That passes unanimously with
Council Member DuBois abstaining. Council Member DuBois will now be
rejoining us as we move on to the second half of the discussion.
MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 8-0 DuBois not participating
Council Member DuBois returned to the meeting at 8:53 P.M.
Mayor Burt: Would Staff like to kick this off?
Mr. Louch: Thank you. Now we're going to talk about the Amarillo-Moreno, Ross Road and Louis-Montrose Bicycle boulevards. (inaudible) Bryant one,
we wanted to start with just the events that were held that were kind of
specific to these bicycle boulevards. As you see, we had separate events
targeted around Midtown, around South Palo Alto. Again, we had this
workshop that was for all the bicycle boulevards as well as the bike-alongs
and other events that were held. We heard a lot of different comments at
our most workshop in addition to the general comments we've already
discussed. We heard a lot of interest and support for the landscaping along
Amarillo-Moreno, certainly an interest and concern about parking. Along
Amarillo-Moreno is one of the areas where quite a bit of parking is proposed
for removal, mostly due to the school there, the Ohlone School, as well as s
an extension of the park further down the road. Along Ross Road, we heard
interest in, as folks mentioned here earlier, making sure the landscaping is
low for maximum visibility; some interest in retiming the traffic signal at
Oregon Expressway so it better accommodates bicyclists; some interest in
the roundabout proposed at Moreno. Some interests supported that, and
some opposed to that as well as potential to retain some of the stop signs
that were proposed for removal. Finally, on the Louis-Montrose Bike
Boulevard, we heard just one comment supportive of the roundabouts there.
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At the PTC and PABAC meetings, the one comment that we heard was to
look more closely at the Louis Road and East Charleston intersection and
whether that can accommodate large buses that might use that. That's
something that needs to be looked at in more detail potentially. Again, back
onto the parking issue because was one of the more significant issues that
was raised throughout. Again, I've got a piece of a map here that shows
you for these three bicycle boulevards what's proposed. In most cases, you'll see that we're proposing removing at intersections, as before. As I
mentioned, there are a couple more significant removals specifically around
the Ohlone School and then down by Greer Park and then a little bit more
around the mid-blocks of Ross Road. Again, mostly those were chosen as
places where—as was just requested, opportunities to put in landscaping and
trees maybe in the mid-block of some of these wider streets where you can
create some additional landscaping. That's really why those are there.
Overall, 262 parked cars were observed on all these corridors. That's quite
a long of set of corridors, about 300 during the peak and relatively low
average occupancy. Of course, those vary a bit from corridor to corridor and
block to block. There may be some interest and ability to mitigate some of
that. We didn't find anywhere, as we discussed previously, you couldn't park about a block away either on the main street or off onto side streets, as
we were doing the parking studies.
Mr. Mello: Thank you. Our recommendation for this section of our
discussion is to adopt the CEQA exemption and approve the concept plans
for the Amarillo-Moreno, Louis-Montrose and Ross Road Bicycle Boulevards;
also approve a contract with Fehr & Peers for final design of the previously
approved Bryant Street extension, Maybell Avenue and Park Boulevard,
Wilkie Way Bicycle Boulevards.
Mayor Burt: We have a Staff recommendation before us. We can entertain
a Motion and discussion. Vice Mayor Scharff.
Vice Mayor Scharff: I'll just move approval of the Staff recommendation.
Council Member Berman: Second.
MOTION: Vice Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Berman
to:
A. Approve Concept Plans for the Amarillo Avenue-Moreno Avenue, Louis
Road-Montrose Avenue, and Ross Road Bicycle Boulevard Projects, and
direct Staff to move forward with the Final Design phase for these four
Bicycle Boulevards Projects; and
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B. Approve professional services Contract Number C16161534 with Fehr
& Peers in the amount of $544,509 for a period of one year for the
preparation of plans, specifications and estimates for the previously-
approved Bryant Street Extension, Maybell Avenue, and Park
Boulevard-Wilkie Way Bicycle Boulevard Projects.
Mayor Burt: Motion by Vice Mayor Scharff, second by Council Member
Berman. Would you like to speak to your Motion?
Vice Mayor Scharff: I'm not going to repeat the thanks to Staff. Again, I do
appreciate that. I think it's great that we're expanding our bike boulevards
south in this comprehensive way. I think that's something that's really
going to—the community's really going to benefit and be very pleased with
this when it's done.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Berman.
Council Member Berman: Given the time and the comments I already made,
I'll just say I agree with everything Vice Mayor Scharff said.
Mayor Burt: Council Member DuBois.
Council Member DuBois: I didn't get to speak earlier, so I have to talk now.
First of all, if you could, I think we've said this before. A lot of times when
these bike concept plans, they should come as Action Items rather than Consent. I think it'd be smoother, the whole process of pulling it off Consent
and bringing it back. We have a focus right now on parking, transportation.
I would just suggest that. I think a lot of what you're hearing from us is
really trying to strike the right balance of implementing these standards, but
doing it kind of with a light touch where it makes sense to have a lighter
touch. I think we're getting there. It'd be great to just kind of tune that in.
My biggest concern, if you look at Attachment D where you show the parking
intrusion levels, is really thinking about a policy in that sweet spot of 60
percent utilization. When it starts to go red, like it does on Figure 9 and
Figure 10 in particular I'm concerned about, which is Greer Park, maybe
that's the point where we need to really think about the policy and adjust.
This Greer Park one, there's affordable housing there; there's multiunit
housing, and then there's a very popular park. I'm concerned about
permanently removing the parking there. We measured a certain a time of
year. I know in soccer season, particularly on weekends, we want people to
come and use the park when the soccer fields are right there on that edge.
I'm wondering if that in particular is one place you could consider maybe
daytime parking restrictions. During the weekdays and maybe weekend at
nights, we could have more parking.
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Mr. Mello: The section of Amarillo at Greer Park, the parking there is being
removed to add street trees and a curb extension. That's a very sun-baked,
wide-open, wide street. People are coming off West Bayshore relatively
quickly. We wanted to set the tone that they were entering a park area and
a residential neighborhood, so we kind of went heavy-handed with the street
trees on that section purposefully. The result is a lot of parking needs to be
removed in order to accommodate those trees.
Council Member DuBois: It's fairly significant. It's probably my area of
single biggest concern. The other thing is just again the idea I brought up
before of kind of peak versus average, particularly in residential
neighborhoods. When you're Downtown, if you have to park and walk a
couple of blocks to your office building, that's probably more reasonable, but
these are some large residential blocks. People have parked in front of their
house for years. I'm just concerned that a lot of people aren't aware of this,
and they're going to be pretty upset when we say there's plenty of parking a
block or two away from your house.
Mr. Mello: The peak along these three corridors occurs in the evening. Even
at peak, it's only a 26 percent utilization of the on-street parking. They
don't have to go a block; it's probably on the same block face, just a couple—50 feet down the road.
Council Member DuBois: That's good to hear. If we're just sensitive to that
...
Mr. Mello: With the exception of Amarillo. Amarillo, there's a pretty
significant parking impact at Greer Park and at the Ohlone School where
we're recommending a shared-use path connecting the school to Louis.
Council Member DuBois: I like the Ohlone changes myself. The other
question I had is—I just offer this really for discussion. Is Ross correctly
classified? It seems to act more as a collector these days. I wonder if it
used to be more of a local street. I guess I'll offer a friendly amendment.
I'm not sure exactly how to word it, but I would ask that we reconsider
removing the parking at Greer Park and look to minimize the number of
spots that we lose.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Just to clarify, is it Staff to reconsider without direction
to do so or is it direction to do so?
Council Member DuBois: I guess it would be direction to do so. In terms of
how many, I would leave that up to Staff. Just to highlight that it's a
particular area of concern. I'm open to suggestions.
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Vice Mayor Scharff: Does Staff have some response to—is this all or nothing
in terms of this—what do we call it?
Council Member DuBois: Bulb-outs.
Vice Mayor Scharff: It's not a bulb-out. It's a ...
Mayor Burt: Curb extension.
Vice Mayor Scharff: A curb extension. That's what's causing the loss. It's a
large curb extension there.
Mr. Mello: It's a series of three curb extensions and a total of 14 street
trees that we're showing. We're recommending curb extensions at Tanland
Drive, both legs of Tanland Drive. The one at the western leg is actually
fairly extensive along the park. That includes about eight street trees.
Vice Mayor Scharff: How many parking spots are lost? It was unclear.
Mr. Louch: By the park, you're losing about 11 spots on that side of the
street, and then seven on the other. Further down by the school, you're
losing about 10 on one side and about 16 on the other.
Vice Mayor Scharff: I'll accept it.
Council Member Berman: I'm sorry. What is the amendment? Is it to
remove ...
Mayor Burt: It says to reduce the removal of parking spaces, not eliminate.
Council Member Berman: It's not to completely ...
Council Member DuBois: It's not a fixed number.
Council Member Berman: It's to look for optimal ways to maybe—I'm fine
with that. It's to Staff's discretion.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to reduce the
removal of parking spaces near Greer Park.” (New Park C)
Council Member DuBois: Just one last comment. We heard from folks on
Middlefield Road earlier about legally minimum width of car lanes. Stefan
heck talked about this idea of actually separating tracks. I don't think it's
appropriate for these bike routes. In the future, I think we should entertain
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actually widening the road to add bike paths rather than trying to squeeze
everything into the existing space. I'll just throw that out. Thanks.
Mr. Keene: Mr. Mayor, the way I read direct Staff to reduce the removal of
parking spaces near Greer Park, that's not actually setting a specific number.
Vice Mayor Scharff: That's correct.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Wolbach.
Council Member Wolbach: I also wanted to talk about that same intersection. Something I was referring to vaguely earlier in thinking about
intersections and visibility from landscaping. It's actually an intersection
also on Bayshore at the other end, beyond Greer Park and then some
housing, at Loma Verde and Bayshore, where there are bulb-outs and there
are cars that often park half onto the bulb-outs, which raises some safety
concerns there. I won't make it as a Motion, but I'll suggest thinking about
making sure we've got red striping on the bulb-outs themselves, so that
people don't park right up on them. The way the landscaping works at that
intersection, the visibility is a little bit tough. That's something to think
about. At this intersection that we were just talking about as well, really
thinking about what the visibility of adding street trees would do there.
Speeds of vehicles on Bayshore can be quite rapid. It's certainly commonly exceeding the 35 posted speed. Because of that, I do think that having a
really clear anything to indicate that there's a need to slow down around this
intersection, especially given that it's a very popular park. We have kids on
bikes leaving the apartment complex, people are going to the park, jogging,
biking, playing, lots of soccer fields, soccer balls fly out from soccer fields.
I'd suggest maybe even looking at what's going on, on Bayshore itself. As
far as the amendment that was just made, I'd actually offer a friendly
amendment so that it would read "direct Staff to explore reducing the
removal of parking spaces." It gives you a little bit more flexibility.
Mr. Mello: Could I just highlight a couple of elements in the concept plan at
the West Bayshore-Amarillo intersection? We're recommending a chicane
along West Bayshore that would actually force vehicles to slow ...
Council Member Wolbach: I missed that.
Mr. Mello: ... as they approach the intersection, and the installation of a
median on Amarillo at West Bayshore. Turning vehicles would not be able to
make the turn at high speeds; they would have to go around a median.
That would also serve as a gateway to the bike boulevard.
Mayor Burt: Who needs to approve?
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Vice Mayor Scharff: I guess I need to approve it, and Marc needs to
approve it.
Vice Mayor Scharff: I think I liked it better the way it was.
Mayor Burt: It's basically the difference between whether Staff will
necessarily do some reduction of parking spaces or whether they will
evaluate whether to reduce.
Vice Mayor Scharff: I said no.
Council Member Berman: You said no.
Mayor Burt: That is not accepted unless you want to attempt to have a
second.
Council Member Wolbach: I was hoping somebody might second it in that
case.
Council Member Berman: I'll second it and hope there's not a lot of
discussion.
AMENDMENT: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Council
Member Berman to replace in the Motion Part C, “reduce” with “explore
reducing.”
Mayor Burt: Why don't we see if we can vote up or down on this minor
distinction. It is a distinction. The amendment is a difference to direct Staff to explore reducing the parking spaces near Greer Park. I see people feel
obligated to speak to this. Council Member Schmid.
Council Member Schmid: (inaudible)
Mayor Burt: Council Member Filseth.
Council Member Filseth: (inaudible)
Mayor Burt: I'm going to clear the board. Vice Mayor Scharff, do you need
to speak to it? I've cleared the board. Once we vote on this, then you'll
need to hit your button again to get up. Let's vote on the amendment. That
fails on a 5-4 vote with Council Members Wolbach, Burt, Berman and Kniss
voting yes.
AMENDMENT FAILED: 4-5 Berman, Burt, Kniss, Wolbach yes
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Mayor Burt: We'll return to the initial Motion, and I had some lights.
Council Member Filseth.
Council Member Filseth: Just briefly I wanted to weigh in on a point that
Council Member DuBois noted earlier. Appendix D is full of charts which say
target residential utilization. I think we don't have a Citywide standard for
target residential utilization. It maybe that we need one. I see this stuff all
over the place, but we don't have one right now. Thanks.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Schmid.
Council Member Schmid: I just wanted to add a comment to the reduction
of parking spaces near Greer Park. I think the point was made that the
weekends are different. There are six active playing fields where games
take place on Saturday and Sunday. That's the time where you really need
those parking spaces. If you could take that into account.
Mayor Burt: I'll just a couple of final comments. It may be appropriate to
reduce the removal of parking spaces at Greer Park, but I think we do need
to think differently a bit about the impact of having a significantly better
Bike Plan. I think the more likely impact is that we're going to see a shift in
our social norm so that we don't have as many kids and parents think that
they have to drive their kid to the soccer game, that they ride their bike to the soccer game together as a family or as kids. It reduces the demand for
parking. I think there's an assumption that the parking requirements are
stagnant. In fact, I believe that they're dynamic and that we're going to see
less parking requirements on a value basis, aside from all the other
pragmatic impacts of less traffic and less parking as a result of improved and
better biking and more convenient biking in town. The whole notion that
every time we move about town we should be escorted in a two ton vehicle
is a little bit absurd when we really step back and think about it. That's how
we do most of our travel. We get into two ton cars to take us most of the
time individually to our destinations a mile or two from where we're starting.
It'll be very interesting how much we move the needle as a result of making
this more convenient. I look forward to the next phase of this plan. I think
we'll see a next phase soon. I'm really appreciative of the Staff and frankly
the City Manager. When this came to us as an initiative on our new Bike
Master Plan three or four years ago—four years ago, I guess, time flies—I
recall that I was the dissenter in interest of updating the Bike Master Plan.
Everybody was a little bit surprised, but I said, "Why do we need a new Bike
Plan? We've had one sitting on the shelf for almost 10 years, and we
haven't done anything to implement it, haven't funded it." The prior City
Manager really had not commitment to it. Our City Manager said, "No, no,
no. We're serious about this, and we're going to move forward with an
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update and a meaningful plan, and it's going to have a real commitment of
City resources." I said, "In that case, I'm for it." I'm glad to see that's what
we've been doing. I'm looking forward to seeing the implementation of this.
I think it'll be kind of a virtuous cycle. The more we have people who
willingly and enthusiastically ride more because it's safer and more
convenient, the more we'll have people saying, "We want even better
biking." We'll invest in it over time. That's what's happened in other communities. We have healthier communities, and people enjoy it, and they
waste less time in traffic. I look forward to seeing this go forward.
MOTION RESTATED: Vice Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council
Member Berman to:
A. Approve Concept Plans for the Amarillo Avenue-Moreno Avenue, Louis
Road-Montrose Avenue, and Ross Road Bicycle Boulevard Projects, and
direct Staff to move forward with the Final Design phase for these four
Bicycle Boulevards Projects; and
B. Approve professional services contract number C16161534 with Fehr &
Peers in the amount of $544,509 for a period of one year for the
preparation of plans, specifications and estimates for the previously-
approved Bryant Street Extension, Maybell Avenue, and Park Boulevard-Wilkie Way Bicycle Boulevard Projects; and
C. Direct Staff to reduce the removal of parking spaces near Greer Park.
Mayor Burt: Let's vote on the board. That passes unanimously. We have
one more big item, which is consideration of next Residential Permit Parking
Programs, Item Number 10. Let's take a five minute break, if that's all
right.
MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 9-0
Council took a break from 9:16 P.M. to 9:27 P.M.
Council Member Kniss left the meeting at 9:16 P.M.
10. Direction to Staff Regarding Implementation Priority for the Following
new Residential Preferential Parking (RPP) Districts: a Portion of
Crescent Park, the Edgewood Plaza Area, the Southgate and Evergreen
Park Neighborhoods.
Mayor Burt: Our next item is Item Number 10 on the Agenda, which is
direction to Staff regarding implementation priority for the following new
Residential Permit Parking districts, RPP districts: first, a portion of Crescent
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Park; second, the Edgewood Plaza area; third, the Southgate; and fourth,
Evergreen Park neighborhoods. Welcome. Josh, are you kicking off? Who's
kicking off?
Sue-Ellen Atkinson, Interim Transportation Manager: I have the honor of
doing that now. Mr. Mayor, Council Members, thanks for having us here
tonight. I'm Sue-Ellen Atkinson; I'm the Interim Transportation Planning
Manager. Tonight we'll be talking about the process for requesting a new RPP district as it pertains to the petitions that we'll be reviewing tonight from
Edgewood Plaza, a portion of Crescent Park, Southgate and Evergreen Park;
and then the resource impact and timeline for a potential RPP program. Just
taking a step back regarding what drives residents to request an RPP
program. Some aspects and suggestions that we've heard include the
residents are having a increasing difficulty in finding parking in their
neighborhood; they're seeing congestion in terms of vehicles and parking;
there are complaints about loitering and noise; and reported difficulty
passing on narrow streets. Those are just some comments that we hear
that drive people to request an RPP petition and submit. However, an RPP
petition and an RPP program is not a magic remedy for parking issues in
Palo Alto. There are pros and cons to implementing an RPP program. In terms of the pros, it can improve the quality of life for residents by making it
easier to find parking because there are additional empty spots on the
streets. That in turn can lead to less traffic and less congestion if you don't
have people who are driving really slowly looking for that elusive parking
space, etc. Some of the cons that speak against an RPP program are that all
cars need permits including residents. That's something that we've heard
from residents in existing RPP programs including College Terrace and the
Downtown RPP district. They don't wish to buy a permit. If you do want an
RPP program, all vehicles that are parking on the street need to have a
permit. There's also no cookie cutter program that fits all. We're not able to
lift a program from one area of Palo Alto and have it fit directly into another
neighborhood. As we can see, the College Terrace program is quite different
from what's in place in the Downtown area. There's that consideration. Also
an RPP program does limit the public use of public rights-of-way, so it does
in some way privatize the public streets. That's also a consideration to take
into account. There are also options that are available either in lieu of or in
addition to an RPP program, that can be considered. RPP may not be the
perfect solution for all parking issues. Some other options include
engineering solutions such as red curb; you can't park where there's a red
curb. That increase the availability of yield pockets on narrow streets.
Implementing time limits, so time restrictions where people are not able to
park. Other engineering solutions. There are also Transportation Demand
Management strategies that work to get people out of their cars. If people
are not driving, then they don't need a parking space. There's also parking
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management solutions to make better use of existing parking supply. Just a
few things to take into account when you're evaluating the need for an RPP
program. Set forth in the Citywide RPP Ordinance that was adopted in
December 2014, the process for a new RPP district is that first residents
need to self-organize and submit a petition by March 31st. We received four
petitions this year. The residents did an admirable job of self-organizing. It
seems that a number of them are here this evening as well. Second the Planning Director will review the petitions, and then the Planning and
Transportation Commission will evaluate and recommend prioritization. We
went to the PTC on April 27th. I'll discuss their prioritization later in this
presentation. The available resources will inform which districts can be
implemented, and Staff will begin the community outreach and stakeholder
process and data collection for the district or districts that will be working on
implementing that year. The Staff will bring the proposed RPP district and a
City Attorney-prepared draft resolution back to the PTC. The PTC will make
a recommendation to City Council. The City Council will then hold a public
hearing to review the proposed resolution and decide whether to adopt,
reject or modify that resolution. In the Citywide RPP Ordinance, there is a
September deadline for bringing that program back to City Council. Given that we are in May now, that is likely not going to be the case this year, but
this is the first time that this ordinance has really been put through this test.
We may need to make modifications to that schedule in the future. In terms
of evaluation criteria for an RPP district, when we went to the PTC, we did
recognize that there are no set criteria for evaluating and prioritizing an RPP
district. Per the Citywide ordinance, there are four required findings that
must be made in order for an RPP district to be formed, that can serve as a
criteria to consider. The first is that nonresident vehicles do or may
substantially interfere with the use of on-street or alley parking spaces by
neighborhood residents. The second is that the interference by the
nonresident vehicles occurs at regular and frequent intervals, either daily or
weekly. The third is that the nonresident vehicles parked in the area of the
proposed district create traffic congestion, noise or other disruption including
a shortage of parking spaces for residents and their visitors that disrupts
neighborhood life. The fourth is that other alternative parking strategies are
not feasible or practical. Taking that into account, we can move into
reviewing of the four petitions that were received by March 31st of this year.
The first is a small area near Edgewood Plaza that was submitted in October
2015; a small segment of three streets in Crescent Park that was submitted
in January 2016; the Southgate neighborhood in February; and the
Evergreen Park neighborhood in March. First, we had a small segment of
streets near the Edgewood Plaza Shopping Center that submitted a petition.
That shows where those streets are located in relation to the existing
Crescent Park no overnight parking program. Nearby but not adjacent, and
it's also somewhat nearby the Downtown RPP district but further away. The
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petition notes intrusion on weekdays during the daytime and overnight and
on weekends. That parking intrusion was attributed to congestion from East
Palo Alto and also from Edgewood Plaza. The policy implications for
evaluating a program on those streets is that it's a very small area to
implement a permit program, and it potentially sets a precedent for RPP
implementation near small, neighborhood shopping centers. Some options
to consider in relation to this petition are to evaluate in the future after the shopping center is fully occupied. That area could be incorporated into the
existing overnight parking program or could look at a larger area or you
could direct Staff to create a small RPP district that is freestanding in that
area. The second petition received is from three streets in Crescent Park.
These streets are adjacent to the boundary of the Downtown RPP district.
Residents on these three streets submitted these petitions requesting
annexation into the Downtown RPP district. Those petitions were due in
November, and this petition was received in January. The request for
annexation into the Downtown RPP district was past that deadline. The
streets in this petition that are part of the eligibility area that's been
approved for Downtown will be evaluated as part of that process. The
residents were told that these three streets would be evaluated separately because they fall outside of the eligibility area. Although the petition was for
annexation to the Downtown district, the residents indicated interest in
resident permits only, which is not the current setup for the Downtown
district. Policy implications for a program in relation to this petition. A
resident-only program may move employee vehicles to other adjacent
streets as we've seen. It again is a very small area for a new program. The
Downtown RPP boundary is finalized, and we would require Council direction
and an updated resolution to modify. Some options in reviewing this
petition are to expand the Downtown RPP boundary and annex these three
streets or a new RPP district could be created. The Southgate neighborhood
also submitted a petition for the neighborhood as a whole. From the
petition, the residents report parking overflow between 8:00 A.M. to 4:00
P.M. on weekdays, primarily attributed by the residents to Palo Alto High
School students, School District employees, medical office employees and
Stanford employees and students. The residents organized a parking
occupancy count and noted high levels of parking on blocks that are nearest
to Churchill Avenue and safety concerns related to emergency vehicle access
and bicyclists. Here's a screenshot of the occupancy counts that were
submitted showing high levels of parking closest to Churchill. Some policy
implications related to this program are that resident-only permits would not
address the cause of the parking issues and may just relocate the problem.
Engineering, enforcement, Transportation Demand Management (TDM) and
parking management options in addition to or in lieu of permits have been
suggested to residents but have not yet been evaluated. An in-depth
outreach and stakeholder process would be necessary to establish other
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options for the people who are parking in the neighborhood. Some options
with regards to this petition would be to evaluate and implement
engineering, enforcement and TDM options in conjunction with the School
District and to monitor for a possible future RPP program. A second option
would be to combine with Evergreen Park and implement one large RPP
program. A third option would be to create a freestanding Southgate RPP
program through a stakeholder process. Finally the fourth petition before you is for the Evergreen Park neighborhood. Evergreen Park residents
request annexation into the existing College Terrace resident permit-only
RPP district. The resident attribute the weekday parking overflow to the
neighboring businesses, Caltrain commuters and Stanford faculty, staff,
students and visitors. The neighboring businesses there would be the
California Avenue business district. Residents cite safety concerns with
regards to the local bike routes. Evergreen Park residents also self-
organized and did an occupancy count and noted primarily high levels of
parking along El Camino and streets that are nearest to the Cal. Ave.
business district. Policy implications for a program in Evergreen Park is
again resident-only permits would not address the causes of the parking
intrusion. Again, vehicles may move elsewhere. Engage stakeholders and community to create a program that includes both an RPP element and TDM
options. Explore parking management strategies to most efficiently utilize
the existing supply in the California Avenue district and to support the local
businesses on Cal. Ave. Options with regard to the Evergreen Park petition
would be to annex into the existing College Terrace RPP as requested. To
implement an Evergreen Park RPP program with a stakeholder group and
parking management options. A third option would be to combine with
Southgate and implement one large RPP program. Following our discussion
with the PTC on April 27th, Staff returns tonight with at-places memo that
contains this estimated resource impact table that replaces Table 2 in the
Staff Report. PTC requested additional information regarding the estimated
capital and operating expenses related to the RPP district. Here we've
broken out estimated capital expenses and estimated operating expenses for
each of the four RPP petitions that are before you. These are very back of
the envelope estimates, so please take that into consideration. The
proposed budget in the Fiscal Year '17 budget that will be before the Finance
Committee, etc., shortly includes $30,000 in the proposed capital budget for
in-house staff and also $300,000 in the proposed capital budget for capital
expenditures. There's a $50,000 line item in the proposed operating budget
for planning of RPP programs. Those are the funds that have been
proposed. You can the estimated funds for both capital and operating
expenditures for each of the programs. Again, we went to the PTC on
April 27th, and the motions that came out of that passed 5-0, that all
programs should be prioritized for funding and implemented in the following
order. Southgate and Evergreen were both first priority, followed by
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Crescent Park and then Edgewood Plaza. Second, PTC passed a Motion 4-1
that the City Council should direct Staff or the PTC to set a standard for
which to evaluate parking capacity and utilization goals. Based on
comments from the PTC, the goal of the RPP programs is unknown. We
don't know if we want empty streets or if want to be able to have two or
three parking spaces available per block. That concludes the Staff
presentation. We welcome your questions.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. We can have an opportunity for Council to ask
technical questions. Given the hour and the number of speakers, I'd
encourage colleagues to be succinct. Does anyone have any technical
questions for Staff at this time? Council Member DuBois.
Council Member DuBois: Two quick questions. What's going on at
Edgewood Plaza? We don't have a store there. It's completely full during
the day. We need to figure out what's happening. Who's parking at
Edgewood Plaza and on the streets around Edgewood Plaza?
Ms. Atkinson: We haven't undertaken data collection near Edgewood Plaza
yet, and we would if directed to move forward with a parking program in
that area. Colloquially, I visited just before the PTC meeting, and there was
sufficient parking on the neighborhood streets. I ...
Council Member DuBois: I mean the parking lot itself. There's no store
there, but it seems 100 percent parked.
Ms. Atkinson: There were quite a few empty spaces in the parking lot also.
Council Member DuBois: The other question is—looking at these high-level
financials on packet page 886, you're including the capital costs. That's the
total capital cost, right? For the signs and ...
Ms. Atkinson: Right. That's based on our experience in the Downtown RPP
district with signage and materials.
Council Member DuBois: If I look at Figure 1, Downtown RPP, now that
we've bought the signs, we should be highly profitable next year, like
$225,000 revenue.
Joshuah Mello, Chief Transportation Official: I just want to make sure that
you're looking at the at-places memo. That table has been replaced by the
one in the at-places memo.
Council Member DuBois: I did see that. I'm looking at the Downtown RPP
part. We lost money this year, but we paid for all the signs. Next year ...
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James Keene, City Manager: What page are you on?
Council Member DuBois: Page 6 of the Staff Report.
Ms. Atkinson: That's not an indication of loss money; that's an expense.
That's the amount of money that has been paid out to the signage
contractor to date for installation of signs.
Council Member DuBois: I'm just saying next year we won't have that
$300,000 expense, and we'll still have $560,000 of revenue.
Ms. Atkinson: The revenue from permits sold this year is slightly different
than it will be in years to come, because we don't know the number of
employee permits that will be sold in the future nor the permit price,
because this is still a pilot program for the Downtown RPP district. We also
had Phase 1 and Phase 2 permits sold this year.
Council Member DuBois: At a high level, it looks like it's a very quick
payback, a highly profitable year 2.
Ms. Atkinson: Potentially.
Council Member DuBois: Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Vice Mayor Scharff.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Thanks. The first question is on the sign with the black
and the red, page 22 of the PowerPoint. My eyes aren't that good enough. What is the black, red and green? What's the breakdown on that? It's
confusing as to where it—black looks like it's 87 and above. What's the ...
Ms. Atkinson: This is the resident-submitted occupancy counts for the
Evergreen Park neighborhood. They use a slightly different color scheme
than Staff typically uses. I can thumb through and double check, but I
believe that the black is to represent greater than 80 percent occupancy,
which Staff would typically use a red color for.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Red itself is below 80 but above what?
Ms. Atkinson: Per the petition, red indicates an occupancy of 50 to 84
percent occupied, and then black is 85 percent and above.
Vice Mayor Scharff: That's helpful. I wanted to understand a little bit about
what the PTC did. I thought our Ordinance said that the PTC had to
prioritize and give a recommendation. What I see here is not a
recommendation for either Southgate or Evergreen. Was their
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recommendation implicitly to be one RPP district or did they just not do what
they were supposed do which was prioritize Southgate or Evergreen?
Mr. Mello: They elected to assign the same priority to Southgate and
Evergreen Park
Vice Mayor Scharff: I don't think they did their job then. I think that's not
what we asked them to do. When it comes to funding, here a little bit, I
guess my question is if we were to create more funding, then you could do both Southgate and Evergreen or it's not a question of funding, it's a
question of Staff time, so we couldn't do that even if we added an extra
$200,000 to do both.
Hillary Gitelman, Planning and Community Environment Director: Thank
you, Vice Mayor Scharff. Hillary Gitelman, the Planning Director. If you look
at the updated table that we included in the at-places memo and in the
PowerPoint, we have budgeted sufficient resources in the capital budget to
do multiple RPPs. In the operating budget, we have not budgeted for any
RPPs because of discussions that happened during the development of the
proposed budget we had this discussion about should we put in money for
the enforcement contracts. It was decided that we would wait and see
which RPPs and how big they were that we would take forward. Then, we have to have a discussion about how to accomplish the enforcement,
whether by using Staff or contractor and the like. There were ways we just
couldn't estimate what the operating costs would be. Any RPP would require
us to come back with a budget appropriation next year. Separate from the
budgeting issues, we do have Staff constraints. We have one significant
vacancy in the department with Jessica Sullivan's departure. That will affect
our ability to deliver in terms of the time it will take to do multiple RPPs. I
think the Council can prioritize and direct us to proceed with as many of
these as you like, and we will have to just assess the amount of time it will
take to follow through.
Vice Mayor Scharff: We could direct you to do both Evergreen and
Southgate, but it will just take longer due to Staff constraints as opposed to
just saying, "Go ahead and do one of those two." Is that ...
Ms. Gitelman: I don't know whether the City Manager wants to add, but
that's our assessment. As Sue-Ellen pointed out in her presentation, there's
some alternatives for some of these other programs that might be desirable
to pursue first.
Vice Mayor Scharff: It wasn't—this is a technical question that I'm trying
(inaudible). The technical question really is do we have the option to tell
you to do both or do we not have the option. What you've told me is that
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we do have the option because you have the Staff resources; it just will take
you longer. If I'm repeating that incorrectly, clarify. That's what I heard.
Mr. Keene: I think you'll hear from the public too and weigh in yourself. I
think that there's some triage factor here. Everything is not entirely equal.
One of the things we want to think about is how quickly we can improve the
worst conditions. I think those need to be factors when we look at what the
scaling of these projects would be.
Vice Mayor Scharff: If we did have an interest in the Crescent Park one of
saying just go ahead and annex them to the Downtown RPP district, which
then would be subject to the selling of permits and would be that. We could
do that, I suppose, or could we not do that because I heard it was closed. Is
there a reason we couldn't do that tonight on a technical basis? I'm trying
not to give a value judgment. I'm not saying I want to do that. I'm just
technically is that an option on the table or is it not on the table.
Ms. Gitelman: If Council's interested in going in that direction, it involves a
change to the Resolution establishing the Downtown RPP. We'd have to
bring that back. As those of you who participated in the Downtown RPP
discussions know, we're coming back around the August timeframe with a
report back on the RPP for Downtown. It was intended to be kind of a status update or an informational report. It would have to actually be an Action
Item to amend the resolution if that's the Council's desire.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Thanks.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Berman.
Council Member Berman: Thank you. I have a couple of questions about
the cost estimates, starting I guess with Crescent Park. My main questions
revolve around the annual enforcement costs. Would it really cost—we're
talking about a couple hundred yards at most of street. Does it really cost
$35,000 a year to enforce just those couple of blocks?
Ms. Atkinson: That's an estimate based on contracting the enforcement out
as in the Downtown RPP district. If Crescent Park were annexed into the
Downtown RPP district, the cost would be significantly less, because we do
have existing enforcement. If it was enforcement of a new program with
different requirements, they can't simply have an expanded boundary for
somebody to have as part of their beat. It would be an entirely different
enforcement officer.
Council Member Berman: That makes sense. Thank you. For Southgate
and Evergreen, if we were to do both at once, would there be any
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efficiencies in the enforcement cost? That's $165,000 of annual
enforcement. Those are solid neighborhoods, but they're not huge cities.
Would there be any efficiencies with combining the two?
Ms. Atkinson: There may be, but we would have to evaluate that and return
an answer to you.
Council Member Berman: I think those were the main questions I had for
now. Thanks.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Filseth.
Council Member Filseth: Thanks. First of all, I don't see the money involved
here being a show stopper on moving forward or not moving forward. That
being said, I did have a couple of questions on the cost structures. On the
website cost, it's dramatically higher for Southgate and Evergreen than it is
for Edgewood and Crescent Park. Why is that? It's the same website, right?
Ms. Atkinson: That would be for the online permit sales website. It's a little
more complicated than it actually appears. It's different permits that need
to be added in, and it's different user types that need to be added in. When
you're looking at the potential of an area that you would go through a
stakeholder process and potentially have different types of permits. That's a
more complicated website to set up than a smaller, concise area.
Council Member Filseth: Would you have to go through a stakeholder
process to modify the website?
Ms. Atkinson: No, I'm speaking about the type of RPP that may be set up or
may be directed in the Southgate and Evergreen Park areas. If Council
directs Staff to do resident-only programs in those areas, it would be one
type of permit essentially or maybe a resident permit and a guest permit,
what have you. If we did move forward with a stakeholder process and look
at the potential for other types of permits including for employees, those are
different types of permits.
Council Member Filseth: We've set all that stuff up already for the
Downtown program. I don't understand why it's not—we just say some of
those and some of those.
Ms. Atkinson: It may be, but we haven't evaluated the full process for each
yet; these are back of the envelope estimates and what could this potentially
cost. We wanted to make sure that we represented the field of what could
be involved.
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Council Member Filseth: My next question is—I'm guessing it's going to be
the same answer. I noticed the in-house Staff costs for Southgate and
Evergreen Park are like 10 times what they for Edgewood and Crescent Park.
Why is that?
Ms. Atkinson: That would be a potentially more involved stakeholder
process including ...
Council Member Filseth: It's the stakeholder process.
Ms. Atkinson: ... identification of stakeholders, holding community
meetings, doing outreach and gaining input from those who need to provide
input into those programs.
Council Member Filseth: Finally, I want to sort of—I was curious on your
answer to Council Member Scharff's question which is on the enforcement
cost in Crescent Park, for example. You said that if we just had the existing
contractor enforce three more blocks, then it would cost less than that. I
can't imagine a scenario where we wouldn't do that. What scenario would
we not do that in? Irrespective of what we decide for permits and so forth,
that's the contract for the contractor. Is there any scenario we wouldn't do
that?
Ms. Atkinson: That's entirely up to Council to review the petition and direct Staff if we are annexing or if we're evaluating as a separate district. If it's a
separate district, it may require its own enforcement Staff.
Council Member Filseth: Why is that? Because it's a separate—how we
define the district versus how we contract with the enforcement group
seems like two separate things.
Ms. Atkinson: Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the question. If a Crescent
Park RPP were set up independently of the Downtown RPP district, we would
likely need a half-time enforcement office to cover those streets. That would
be the cost that's estimated here. If it were to be annexed into the
Downtown RPP district, it would just be adding three blocks to somebody's
existing route. That would be a significantly lower cost. The cost estimate
was made based on the petition that was for a resident-only permit program
that is not the current Downtown RPP program. If the direction were to
annex to the Downtown RPP district, that cost would be significantly lower.
Council Member Filseth: I still don't understand, but I'll leave the issue.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Holman.
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Council Member Holman: I wasn't going to ask any questions before the
public spoke given the time of the evening it is, but I do have maybe just
two questions. The difference in cost between Southgate and Evergreen
Park because they're essentially the same size neighborhoods, it seems to
me. Either three by five or three by six blocks it seems. Southgate is
configured a little bit differently, but they're essentially the same size. I'm
not understanding why the costs are different for those two neighborhoods. They've both asked for—their suggestions for both neighborhoods is the
same, to be annexed into a residents-only permit program. I don't
understand the difference.
Ms. Atkinson: They are slightly different sizes. Evergreen Park is ever so
slightly larger, so we did estimate a higher cost for the program in
Evergreen Park.
Council Member Holman: The enforcement, you sort of answered this. Let's
just say for Southgate and Evergreen Park—I won't go to Crescent Park or
Edgewood at this moment—are those numbers addressing or assuming
contract enforcement as opposed to Staff, right?
Ms. Atkinson: Yes, for all of these it's assuming that the enforcement would
be contracted out.
Council Member Holman: That's all for now. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Wolbach.
Council Member Wolbach: In particular, I have some questions around
Southgate. First, let me ask you a question about Evergreen Park. We got a
letter from Sven Thesen asking if it's possible to have an exception from an
Evergreen Park district to allow any Electric Vehicle (EV) to park in front of
his home, Project Green Home, because he has an EV charger on the street.
I was just wondering if that's something that would need Council direction in
order to do. If somebody has an EV charger on the street in front of their
house that's available for the public to use. Something to think about, come
back to it later. I'll move on to my other questions while we move on.
Ms. Gitelman: Maybe I'll just say—we are so far in advance of being able to
anticipate what the design of the program would be, that's an issue among
many that we could look at.
Council Member Wolbach: I will move on. There are a lot of nuances here.
Regarding Southgate, given that the concerns here are primarily about
students parking at Palo Alto High School (Paly), some also from Stanford
but particularly from Paly. That's exacerbated by very, very narrow streets
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in Southgate. Three things that I'm curious if it's possible to do either in
addition to, separately from, maybe in advance of, kind of regardless of RPP
in Southgate. One, is there any way to enforce something like—I'll see this
at private properties where it'll say no parking for X. If you park here and
go to the business next door, we're going to tow our car. Is it possible to
have a "no Paly parking" sign set up? I'm absolutely serious. Is it possible
to do something like that? Is it possible to enforce it? Again, I've seen the private property examples, and I'm wondering if it's possible to do that for
public use.
Ms. Atkinson: In terms of restriction by user group, that would be fairly
difficult. That would require technology to determine whose car belongs to
who. What we have seen and what is actually in place, I believe, near Gunn
High School is a time restriction, no parking between 10:00 A.M. to 11:00
A.M., for example. That can be enforced, but we have—I think a user group
restriction would be considerably more difficult.
Council Member Wolbach: Secondly, is it possible to add—because one of
the concerns is people blocking driveways and also parking dangerously at
corners. Is it possible to just add more red pain at the corners of driveways
and the corners of intersections to prevent unsafe and blocking parking behaviors?
Ms. Atkinson: That is something that we can consider doing.
Council Member Wolbach: Also where the streets are too narrow to have a
car parked on both sides and have an emergency vehicle pass in the middle,
it seems to me that you'd want to stop people parking on one side or the
other regardless of who's doing the parking. We'd want our emergency
vehicles to pass through. Is that something that we could also direct Staff
tonight to do? To explore eliminating parking on one side of the street or
the other where the street is dangerously narrow.
Mr. Mello: As currently configured, the majority of the streets in Southgate
will allow an emergency vehicle to pass when both sides are parked up. Two
vehicles cannot pass each other without pulling over in the parking lane to
yield. We did proactively install some red curbing at Castilleja on Manzanita
about a month and a half ago. We saw it as good opportunity. There were
a couple of homes that were under construction, so we went in and cleared
and little bit of yielding area there. We do think there's an opportunity to
create additional yielding areas both for our emergency vehicles and
passenger vehicles. I think that in itself would also take a little bit of a
stakeholder process with the community, because certain property owners
would lose parking in front of their property.
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Council Member Wolbach: As far as timeline, because we're talking about
what's the most appropriate use of our time here—the most expeditious way
to get relief especially for Southgate where there's danger issues and others.
Which would be faster, to explore the signage changing, painting changing,
etc., or to set up an RPP? Which would be able to get on the ground faster
while exploring the other perhaps as a long-term buffer solution?
Ms. Atkinson: I would expect that the engineering solutions would be the short-term solution, and would be able to be implemented faster than an
RPP program.
Council Member Wolbach: Thanks.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Schmid.
Council Member Schmid: I'd like to ask a strategy question. This RPP
program is getting very complicated. It's growing and it's going to take
longer that we thought it would to reach a solution. We have in place a
December 2014 Ordinance for Citywide RPP program. It's likely to bring in
other neighborhoods to us shortly because of nonresident parking intrusion.
Would the City Manager recommend that we suspend consideration of any
comprehensive plan scenario that brings in new jobs above additional
employed residents until this RPP issues is fully resolved?
Mayor Burt: Council Member Schmid, I think we're getting off of the focus
of tonight's discussion. We have coming up our Scenario 5. You're talking
about an action that is outside of the agendized item tonight.
Council Member Schmid: Can we make a decision on RPP without having
some context of what's causing it?
Mayor Burt: We certainly don't have it agendized for discussion. That's a
broad community issue that the public should be able to weigh in on, and
that's really out of order. At this time, I'd like to proceed to the public. We
have a large number of speaker cards, larger yet apparently. We have
several groupings. Per our policies, we allow five members of the public to
combine and then speak for up to 10 minutes. That's usually to help
consolidate—it's two purposes. To allow a group of people to have a longer,
more thoughtful presentation and to be more efficient. When we have this
many speaker cards, we would be limiting the time per speaker to two
minutes, so we don't anything under our current rules by allowing the
consolidation. Nevertheless, it's permitted. I say this as an encouragement.
For those who have consolidated in groupings, you have up to 10 minutes to
speak. If you're able to convey your message in five minutes, that would be
great to allow us to have the prospect of actually completing this item
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tonight, which I know everybody here would like us to do. Our first speaker
is David Schrom, speaking on behalf of Hillary Hugg [phonetic], Robin Bayer
[phonetic], Andrew and Francois Chave [phonetic]. Welcome.
David Schrom, speaking for five people: I want to present Palo Alto parking
from a resident's perspective, and I want to begin by saying that the
residents in my neighborhood feel a deep and sincere thanks to Tom DuBois,
Eric Filseth, Karen Holman and Greg Schmid for their Colleagues' Memo. The way we perceive the current policy is the City Council is taking from
residents in order to inflate commercial landlords' profits. This amounts in
our eyes to stealing, to take the property of another wrongfully especially as
a habitual, regular practice. Happens every day and every night to us in our
neighborhood. We have a reasonable expectation as homeowners that we're
going to be able to park in front of our homes or that our guests are going to
be able to park in front of our homes. That’s been taken away from us and
is promised to be taken away even more as we continue to allow building
without providing adequate parking in the nearby commercial district. If the
City Council makes it legal to steal kids' lunch money, most of us are going
to just recoil from that. At the same time, people who are employed in the
business district think nothing of taking away the amenity and the convenience of our parking and the impact on our property values that they
have and our safety and our health and our well-being. Nor do the
commercial landlords who profit from the escalading rents and who benefit
by not having to provide parking worry about taking from us. Basically,
even though it's legal, I think it's stealing. We think it's stealing. What
we're really effectively doing—commercial landlords typically also own their
own homes, but few residents own commercial property. We're taxing the
less wealthy to support the more wealthy, while we in our neighborhood are
by and large progressive people and we're happy to be taxed in order to
make the world more fair, we feel a little crummy when you tax us to make
it less fair. The Lytton garage which you approved in December 2015
produced 214 incremental parking spaces for $13 million. That's $64,500
per space. In Evergreen Park, we have 240 residential parcels, we have 600
on-street spaces, at $64,500 per space, that's $39 million worth of capital
investment in parking. Admittedly the neighborhood is not currently entirely
filled with nonresident parking, but it's headed that direction fast. The
commercial landlords win, the residents lose. Commercial landlords avoid
$39 million in capital cost. Estimating a 10 percent annual return on this
investment and with long-held properties and rapidly escalating rents in the
business district, that's a very conservative thing, we've got $3.9 million in
added revenue going to them because Evergreen Park residents are losing
$3.9 million in parking services and who knows how much in health,
amenities and safety. A typical residence parcel in Evergreen Park is 50x150
feet with 50 feet of frontage, so you've got two parking spaces plus a
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driveway. That's $129,000 in lost parking capital value per residential
parcel, 12,900 annual lost parking services per parcel, and we don't know
how much lost health, amenities and safety per parcel. The health, safety
and amenity losses are real. We get 1,200 extra auto trips a day to put 600
cars in the neighborhood and get them out. We get noise, air pollution,
injury to people. The gentleman right here witnessed a person hit two
parked cars and drive away from them just two weeks ago. We get property damage, landscape trampled, litter. We can't sweep our streets because
they're lined with cars when the street sweeper drives down the middle of
the street, and we pay for that. We get increased crime, lower property
values, strangers in the neighborhood, less control over public space,
reduced caring and respect among neighbors because we don't interact as
much. We get reduced feeling of safety and inconvenient or no parking in
front of our homes. We expect better. Will all Palo Alto neighborhoods be
improved to encourage (inaudible) on the automobile. That's our
Comprehensive Plan from the Land Use and Community Design vision. The
adverse impacts of automobile traffic on the environment in general and
residential streets in particular will be reduced. Once again the
Transportation vision, our Comprehensive Plan. Parking demand may only be managed effectively when users pay directly for its cost. Are you
listening Staff? Protect residential areas from parking impacts of nearby
business districts. Listen up please. Provide sufficient parking in the
University Avenue, Downtown and California Avenue business districts.
Treat residential street as both public ways and neighborhood amenities.
They are public streets, but I can't ride my bike on 101. It's a public street.
The purpose of the streets in our neighborhood is to provide access to
adjoining property. It's not to be supplementary parking for the business
district. Implement the Comprehensive Plan. Permit parking is everywhere
supported and nowhere opposed by the Comprehensive Plan. With delay the
Council will perpetuate these ills. Every residential street parking space is a
6,450 annual subsidy to somebody who drives to work. The Staff tells us
those cars will just go to another neighborhood. I'm standing here and not
talking just about Evergreen Park. I'm saying fix it everywhere. Let the
cars go away. The City Council was paying hundreds of drivers millions of
dollars to drive to work in Palo Alto this year even as you say that you want
to make that go away. In Evergreen Park with two spaces per parcel, the
subsidy is provided with a $36 daily charge on the adjacent resident and
homeowner. I had some friends here from—one was from Geneva, another
was from New York City. They asked me what I was doing after our meeting
this afternoon because I excused myself at 5:00. I said I was coming down
here to talk about permit parking. The words they used were how can this
be in Palo Alto. It is hypocrisy, incompetence, impotence? We claim we
want housing and neighborhood quality, then we steal from the people who
buy homes and live here. We claim we want civic spirit and neighborliness,
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and then we undermine community spirit by pitting neighbor against
neighbor for relief from abuse. A solution is readily available in adjacent
College Terrace, where resident permit parking has worked for years. The
same sources of the on-street parking that exist there exist in Evergreen
Park and Southgate with very few differences. That program can be
expanded to us. Evergreen Park and Southgate can opt in block by block
using existing rules. Annexation is cheap. Why spend to create a new program in every different neighborhood in the City? We don't have that
kind of money. We've got a successful one; let's use it. Annexation is
cooperative. It leaves enough to go around to other neighborhoods instead
of hogging them to deal with the single neighborhood. Finally, I want to say
that this is really an issue of fairness. If you want cost recovery, up the cost
of permits in the business district. Those are the people who are imposing
the cost. The economist on the Council will tell you that externalized costs
are the bane of free market economics. They are patent unfairness; they're
why we have an environmental problem; they're why we have many of our
social problems. You guys are allowing them wholesale by not putting
resident permit parking all over Palo Alto. Would the people who approve of
what I just said please stand. I want to thank you for listening. I know I was not as delicate as I sometimes am. I hope you understand that after
years and years of putting up with this, I feel some passion about it. Thank
you.
Mayor Burt: Our next speaker is Irene, and I can't make out the last name,
to be speaking for Bradley Horowitz [phonetic], Chi Won Ow [phonetic] and
Susan Spangler [phonetic] and Elizabeth Parada [phonetic].
Irene August, speaking for five people: Hi. I would like to share with you a
visual diary of what the parking situation looks like in Evergreen Park.
These photos were taken on Friday, April 29th, at 11:00 A.M. which is
typically a slow day compared to most other days. Each photo here
corresponds to a block in Evergreen Park, and I've labeled every intersection
and drawn an arrow corresponding to its location on the map. You can see
that every block is full. All these photos are geotagged and date and time
stamped, so you can look at these on your own at this URL:
tinyurl.com/epcantpark. There's a QR code here for you too in case you
can't type in the URL. In this photo album there are several videos where
you can see cars trolling through neighborhood looking for parking, even
though this footage was captured in a short period of time. Karen Holman
asked about Evergreen Park versus Southgate. College Avenue is filled with
apartment buildings and multi-residential properties. You can't just count
the number of streets; you have to look at the number of people living in
this neighborhood. There are far more people living in Evergreen Park than
Southgate. These buildings accommodate one covered parking space per
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dwelling, but most of these residences have multiple drivers which means
that the people who live on this street need to park on the street, which
means that people who work around the California Avenue district push
further out into the residential streets with single-family houses to park.
Here is a photo of Ash at Oxford toward Stanford Avenue. The whole block
is filled; there's only one house on this entire block. It's filled with daytime
parkers. I choose to live in Evergreen Park because of the walkability of the neighborhood. We try to do the right thing by having dense housing. My
household is a multigenerational household of six on an R-2 lot. We walk
and we bike as much as possible. The kids bike to school. Their father bikes
to work in Mountain View. Inevitably, we do have to leave the house during
the day, and we have to drive. For some things there's just no way around
it, especially for my father who at 70 has only one operable lung. We come
back from running errands or from work, and there's no place to park with
four drivers in the household and several apartment buildings across the
street and all along College Avenue and Ash and across from us on Oxford.
Each apartment has one parking space, but most have two drivers and cars.
Residents need to park on the streets, and employees along California
Avenue exacerbate the parking situation. I myself am deeply entrenched in the tech community, and I have long embraced the rise of the tech industry
in our community. I have several friends who work in offices along
California Avenue area. I have invested in some of the companies who have
offices right there. In fact, I joined a startup just three blocks away from
my house, partly because they were three blocks away from my house. I
also teach yoga at Avalon Yoga Center on California Avenue. I see all
perspectives. Let me say this. No one wants people to park in the
residential streets. Of course the residents don't want it, but neither do the
workers, nor the patrons on California Avenue. They feel bad about parking
into our streets. We all sustainable, predictable parking that doesn't reach
into the residential streets. Until you force the issue, they are going to
continue parking here. I mentioned to you the last time I stood up here that
my father had to park four blocks away when he came home from the
grocery store one day. I'll tell you a little bit more about what it's really like
to live here. I get woken up at 1:00 or 2:00 A.M. every night by the man
who parks his car across the street from my house as he's leaving work to
go home. That sound when you unlock your car, it wakes me up every
night. We see cars parked in front of fire hydrants. We have a photo of this
at this website, tinyurl.com/epcantpark. Cars constantly block driveways. I
had a neighbor across the street who had to call the police to help her deal
with a car blocking her driveway. The police ended up helping her negotiate
her way out of her driveway by driving over the curb and around the tree in
her front yard to get out. They ticketed the car that was blocking her
driveway. I was later mortified to learn about this because it turns out that
it was my friend who blocked that driveway when she stopped at my house.
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Now she will never come over. This parking problem has made us even
more isolated from our neighbors, our friends and our community. Most
importantly, this is a safety issue. I've seen and heard stories of people's
cars getting hit by daytime parkers who speed off and have no relationship
or regard for the people who live here. Cars troll up and down the streets in
our neighborhood looking for parking. I almost got run over by a car last
Thursday morning as I was walking to my yoga class, because there was a man speeding through a stop sign on College Avenue towards El Camino.
People walking and biking through the neighborhood are at risk, which
scares me to death when I think my kids riding their bikes to school. The
City Council needs to have a sense of urgency around this. If anyone gets
hurt, that is on you. How bad does the situation need to get before you take
action? I am at my wit's end. I don't really expect my little poster to
change the world or anything, but I don't know what else to do to get you to
take action. As residents, my family pays almost $100,000 a year in
property taxes for the three houses we collectively own in Evergreen Park
and Southgate, and we still can't park in front of our own houses. That just
seems wrong, an egregious lack of oversight and service by the City Council
who was elected by these same residents to act in our interests. We need a timeline with milestones and a deadline to annex Evergreen Park
neighborhood into the College Terrace RPP now. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: One thing I'd like to let members of the public know is that we
encourage the public to neither boo nor clap because there may be people
who are intimidated in being able to speak out if they're strong expressions
like that. Our next speaker is Neilson Buchanan. Each speaker will have up
to—I'm sorry? Can I have the list here? Our next is Christine Shambora to
speak for five people, Cathy McGinn [phonetic], Peter Shambora, Nadalyn
Smith [phonetic], and Jim McFall [phonetic]. Welcome.
Christine Shambora, speaking for five: Thank you. I'm sorry I will not have
any high tech exhibits along with what I have to say. It's just going to be
some words to you. I hope you will take them to heart. First of all, I'd like
to say good evening to Mayor Burt and members of the City Council. My
name is Christine Shambora, and I live at 1565 Castilleja Avenue in the
Southgate neighborhood I'm one of the members of the steering committee
who put together the RPP application for Southgate. I'm speaking tonight to
highlight a few points for your consideration regarding the Southgate
application which is before you this evening. First of all, the obvious. We
sincerely hope you will approve our application and that you have had a
chance to visit our neighborhood just to see how badly things are and that
we need your help in addressing the parking and safety issues. The
situation has reached a crisis both in terms of safety and quality of life. We
ask you not to pit Southgate against the Evergreen neighborhood by
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choosing one over the other. We urge you to find the resources to make
this happen. The Council has stated that traffic and parking are a priority
and approval of these applications will demonstrate that you mean it. I
don't need to remind you that an important bike boulevard goes directly
through our neighborhood, and safety for bikers is extremely threatened
with the current parking situation in Southgate. We have some of the
narrowest streets in Palo Alto. Most are no more than 24 feet wide. With cars parked on both sides of the street, bikers and cars are left with only
nine feet to traverse our streets. As you can ascertain through application,
being adjacent to Palo Alto High School has caused the biggest impact on
parking in our neighborhood. As of today, I mean today, we have had
approximately 100 students parking in our neighborhood every day, Monday
through Friday. Recently we appeared before the PAUSD Board and the City
School Liaison Committee to raise awareness of what we are dealing with.
We've received little response from Paly in seeking a resolution to our
issues. However, the fact of the matter is with increasing enrollment from
1,700 in 2007 to projected enrollment in 2020 of 2,300 students, there will
never be adequate parking to accommodate the students who wish to drive
to school. In 2007, there were 400 spaces for student parking. Today, there are 183 spaces. When construction is done in 2020, there will be 215
spaces. The school needs to address this issue without using Southgate as
their overflow parking lot. We've heard the suggestion that Evergreen and
Southgate applications could be lumped together and that we would both get
the College Terrace solution. Speaking on behalf of the neighborhood,
Southgate would prefer to have its own RPP process so that we may best
find the fit for our neighborhood and the opportunity to work within the
stakeholder process. Thank you for taking the time to listen and
thoughtfully deliberate on this important action.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Neilson Buchanan, to be
followed by Eileen.
Neilson Buchanan: I'm very pleased to see that there has been an outbreak
of neighborhood concern about this that validates the concerns that four or
five neighborhoods on University Avenue have been articulating for 10
years. I think the political time has come that something has to be done. I
wish I had 10 minutes to talk, but I simply don't have the physical stamina if
I had it lined up to talk to you. We've got a lot of experience to offer from
University Avenue parking permit. I think you have a binary decision
tonight. You're either going to ramp up and do a Manhattan-type project to
stem the insult to the neighborhoods from spillover parking or you're not.
The Planning Commission, I was pleased with their decision. They basically
said we have no idea how to prioritize. Staff has not given us any criteria.
We'll let the Council do it. I think that was the right decision. Somehow in
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your divine wisdom, you're going to have to figure this out. Either ramp it
up or kick the cans down the road. Whatever you do—I mean this in all
seriousness—do not transfer the elements of the program on University
Avenue to any other neighborhood. The program is not working well enough
to transfer it to another place. This is not the time or the day to go into that.
In the very near future, the former resident stakeholders are going to get
ourselves together to brief you on how it's actually working in Phase 2. We're not going to wait 'til August 1st to let you know how it's going. We're
going to give Staff a little time to get Phase 2 working. Quite frankly, you
do not want to transfer it to the other neighborhoods. Jessica is gone. Sue-
Ellen, Josh, they need help. You're going to have bring in a lot of help
somehow. I'd like to close with Pat Burt's appeal at a late night meeting two
weeks ago, I believe it was, when he made an appeal for the transportation
tax. He said if you don't like parking and traffic now, just wait two years.
Defer the mitigation and see what happens. The truth of the matter is none
of the mitigation efforts that have been talked about are even funded.
Demand is going to outpace supply a lot. Thank you for the extra time.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Eileen Skrabutenas.
Eileen Skrabutenas: Eileen Skrabutenas, I live at 1044 Hamilton. I am here to talk about the three blocks in Crescent Park that were put up on the map.
I was responsible for circulating the petitions to request annexation into the
DRPP Phase 2 program. At the time, you all in your collective wisdom and
foresight said no way will employees park in that neighborhood because it's
too far from Downtown. Until four months ago, these three blocks did not
have a parking problem. As the DRPPP zone moved further and further up
Hamilton or down Hamilton depending on your perspective, parking has
become a problem for residents. At the time we circulated these petitions,
we were looking for something hopefully expedient. The only thing that was
available was annexation. I'm here to request that those three blocks, 1000
Hamilton, 1100 Hamilton, the 500 block of Chaucer, be considered for its
own RPP. We did not have a parking problem until you kicked the can down
the road and allowed people trying to escape other permitted areas to park
all day in these neighborhoods. Has created a burden on a section of town
that did not have a burden previously. Please after telling me at prior
meetings that we could not be expediently annexed into the RPP, don't come
back now and say it's a lot faster if we just add those three blocks to
something that already exists. Please consider it for its own Residential
Parking program. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Lucinda Lenicheck.
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Lucinda Lenicheck: I'm so delighted to be here. I thank you all for you
thoughtfulness. I've been here since—hours and hours and hours. I loved
hearing about the bicycles. I salute you. My family has been at 342 Oxford
Avenue. This is the middle block between the railroad tracks and El Camino,
one block in from College Avenue. We are as far as the eye can see on both
sides of the street chrome, glass, metal, cars. Every day. I teach cello. My
music students come; they go looking everywhere for parking. If they can, they come into my driveway; they check with me. I have 76-year-old cello
students. It's not fun for them not to be able to park near my home. I
wanted to say that the notion that we could be annexed to College Terrace's
plan, we have already done all the studies, incorporated all the information.
We're trying to make this as easy and as quick as possible and painless and
effective. It's been years and years and years that we've been in the
process of hoping to have our situation remedied. I was absolutely
astonished when the Downtown area got themselves a parking program. I
thought, "Where did they get a parking problem? We've had it for years."
All of a sudden, theirs was remedied. I really hope that you can take care of
Evergreen Park. I hope you can take care of Southgate because we do not
want neighbors pitted against neighbors. We all have problem. I thank you very much for listening to our concerns.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Paul Machado, to be followed
by Mike Meffert.
Paul Machado: Good evening, Mayor Burt and Council Members. Not long
ago the Jay Paul Company proposed the largest PC project in the City's
history. Seeking residents' acceptance, the vice president of the company
held two community meetings. He started meeting with a map and picture
of the project that illustrated how close the bus stops and train station were
to the project, like the residents didn't know. He was trying to sell residents
on the idea of TDMs. During the second meeting, a resident said to him,
"This project like all the other projects in town is under-parked. Your project
is massive; therefore, it is massively under-parked. I live near your project,
and already I cannot park in front of my own house because cars park there
all day every day. What are you going to do about it?" The vice president
said nothing. I cannot prevent my tenants from parking in front of your
house all day every day unless you have a Residential Parking program.
Without it, TDMs don't work. My little neighborhood, Evergreen Park, has
worked very hard on a simple and streamlined RPP proposal. We are simply
asking for the same program that our neighbors across the street have had
for years. The program has not harmed businesses, but it has protected
their neighborhood in compliance with the City policy. Tonight we are asking
for annexation of our neighborhood into the RPP our neighbors have with the
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same rules and respect. We believe our need is urgent and we cannot wait
for years. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Mike Meffert to be followed by Jeffry Hook.
Mike Meffert: Good evening, Mayor, Council and fellow residents. My name
is Mike Meffert. I've in commercial real estate for the last 15 years. I'd like
to talk about the California Avenue district as it relates to Evergreen Park.
I'm also a property owner. While I don't necessarily oppose the RPP, I have probably the distinction that I would like to see it delayed until there can be
sufficient supply. Everything we're talking about so far this evening is
demand and allocating demand, which pits residents against commercial
owners and merchants. I'd like not to see that. What I'd like to see is the
supply of parking increase. We're talking about garages. We have two
garages on California Avenue. There's an opportunity now to build a third
behind the Starbucks next to the new policy station. I'd like to see that
increased in size so we're not in a contentious mode with our neighbors. I
would not like to see my tenants parking in the residential area, but there's
not a lot of good alternatives due to the limited supply. A point that should
be recognized is there's also a special tax put on commercial owners in the
California Avenue core which is maybe not well known. I'd like to see that geography expanded, maybe not into the residents but to other commercial
owners which would contribute to building more parking and sustaining more
parking. I think that's really the gist of my comments. I've had a chance to
meet with Karen Holman and other merchants and property owners who also
share the sentiment. It's not like we have anything against the residents.
We would prefer not to see our tenants and our employees park in that
zone, but we'd like to see more parking. To the extent that we could
increase the parking and delay the implementation of this program against
the adversity of merchants and owners in the district, that'd be most
appreciated. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: thank you. Jeffry Hook to be followed by Tommy Derrick.
Jeffry Hook: Some of you may be old enough to remember the Walt Kelly
cartoon, "Pogo." There's one strip where he famously said, "We have seen
the enemy and he is us." We humans have created quite a pickle for
ourselves. There's a thing called the tragedy of the commons where a
resource held in common becomes increasingly abused because the costs
are not allocated fairly. I'm sure that 50 years ago we didn't have a parking
problem in Evergreen Park, and now we do. We've created this mess by
allowing for unfettered growth of both businesses and population. We're
now at a point where we have to consider that automobiles really should not
be used for commuting. I really applaud all the work that's been done on
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the bike boulevards. I think that's awesome. I really admire everything
that was done here earlier. The streets are no longer worker as an unpaid
for resource. We have to force the people who are using the streets to pay
for it. We have to keep the commercial autos out of the residential
neighborhood. It works. We know permit parking works. I don't agree with
the previous speaker that we need to defer this until there is an increased
supply. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Tommy Derrick, to be followed
by Marilyn Mayo.
Tommy Derrick: My name is Tommy Derrick. I've lived in Evergreen Park
for 39 years, and I was part of the process of getting the restricted street
closures in the neighborhood. Pat, you can add that to you 50,90 percent.
A little over 50 percent approved it when we started, and 95-plus percent
approve it now. I think the same thing is the case with putting a Residential
Parking program together. We're here because past Councils have failed to
do the job. It's time for you guys to step up. Kick the can is a program for
kids. You guys are way too smart, too intelligent, too capable to kick this
can down the street. I urge you to move tonight and move quickly. I've
had many conversations with Staff. They have said to me every time, "We will do what the Council directs." You have the capability of setting up a
Residential Parking Permit program tonight by either annexing into College
Terrace. If you don't have the will and the courage to do that, set up one
for Evergreen Park and/or Southgate. I have opinions on which way that
could go. You guys can figure that out. You can set up a program that calls
for one commercial space available in every block that has ten or more
parking spaces. You do not need an outreach program. You do not need
data. You have all of the data in already, that there is a problem. I can't
believe anybody would say we need to study more to get that done. I urge
you to step above what Staff is recommending, do not put this into the long,
drawn out process that's like Downtown has been. Step up. Set up the
program tonight. Put it in place. There's three parts to this. A Motion, a
resolution and administrative regulations. You know how to make the
Motions. The resolution has already been written. Staff can review it and
provide it back to you in 30 days. We can have this in place in 30 days if
you have the courage to step forth and do it. I urge you to do. Thanks
much.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Marilyn Mayo, to be followed
by Keith Ferrell.
Marilyn Mayo: Good evening, I'm Marilyn Mayo. I live at 404 Oxford
Avenue; I've lived there 35 years, but I've become a property manager in
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the last two years. I manage the parking lot of Oxford and Ash. I have six
cars every day. They come; I greet them about 8:00 in the morning;
they're from out of town. They come; they work on Cal. Avenue. I say
goodnight at about 6:30. They're there every day. Two issues I want to
bring out, though, are the kids on my street. I feel responsible as a good
steward for them. We have the Ananda School on El Camino, and they kind
of go their recess on Peers Park. You can't see them; they're little people. With the cars parked, it's really very dangerous. They come back about
noon, so twice a day these little people—there are 30 of them in a row—are
moving along. I just want to point that out. Also, you have children on
bikes, the little kids going to Escondido School when I'm managing my little
parking lot. The last thing I want to say is I support the merchants on Cal.
Avenue. Many are small merchants. I've gone to their meetings. They
need the parking lots, but they won't use them, the employees, unless they
have to. We've got to have the permits to encourage that. I'm worried
about the security building. When that goes in behind Kinko's and they're
going to tear up behind Starbucks for their parking lot, it's just going to
exacerbate the problem. Please take action tonight. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our next speaker is Keith Ferrell, to be followed by Aileen Yang.
Keith Ferrell: Hi, how you doing. I live in Southgate. I had a whole bunch
of things written up, but so far everyone has covered most of it. It seems
pretty obvious that things need to get taken care of. Mr. Schrom, I want to
hang out with him, because his was awesome. He covered all the things
that we face in Southgate. We are a little bit different, because we are so
close to Paly. We get the occasional—my son had the privilege of riding his
bike to Jordan. There were two kids in front of our house smoking pot.
We've had kids having sex in their cars at lunch. We get a little bit of fun
stuff just to keep you guys awake. We've talked to the school. The staff
says we haven't gotten to the root of the problem, Transportation Demand
Management, blah, blah, blah. We've talked to the school. The school
administration at Paly has told us our only remedy is a Residential Permit
Parking. That's what they've said. There is going to be 2,300 students in
200 spots. Right now they only allow seniors. It's like one spot per 10 kids.
If you take the ratio of cars to students right now and extend it to 2020,
they'll need 380 spots and they'll have 215, which is a shortage of 150
spots. You want to do the biking and force kids to bike, the way to start is
with the kids. The same kids who are driving to Paly are the same kids who
used to ride their bike to Jordan or as sophomores and freshmen rode their
bikes from their bikes to Paly, and now they're driving the half mile from
Paly. We have a kid in our neighborhood who drives his car from Southgate
around to Embarcadero and parks in Embarcadero lot. Last year when they
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didn't have a permit, he drove down the street and parked on the corner of
our block. He literally drove 300 yards and walked 100 yards to school. You
can Uber to every students' house and they will still drive to school. The
root of the issue is you're not forcing kids to bike; you're allowing them to
park. That's the root cause of the problem. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Aileen Yang to be followed by Samina Faheem.
Aileen Yang: Hi, my name is Aileen Yang. I'm here to share the life as a senior in Evergreen Park. I'm a resident at College Avenue. Also we only
have one car and try to take public transportation as much as possible.
Because we are so close to Caltrain station and California Avenue, our street
has served as the parking lot for lots of commuters and business employees.
Sometimes they live their car in our street for weeks. Within last 13 years,
since we moved to this area, we always see service vendors, like UPS trucks,
mailmen, even ambulance that have double park their van or truck in our
street. That is very dangerous as there is a lot of young kids running or
biking around on our street. Sometimes the commuter's car block our
driveway. We have to call police to give citation and tow away their car on
several occasions. This is not good use of our police force. Every week
when my grandkids visit us, they usually have to search around and end up park far away. Despite that, both my husband and I, we are officially
seniors. We still need to unload our shopping bag on other street and walk a
long way to reach our front door occasionally because there is car block our
driveway. This situation is getting worse every day with so many new
constructions going on close our street. We urge you to approve the
Residents Parking Permit program for Evergreen Park neighborhood to get
annexed to the College Terrace parking permit program as soon as possible.
Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Samina Faheem to be followed by Patrick Slattery.
Welcome.
Samina Faheem: Good evening everybody. Thank you for listening to us. I
have been living in Palo Alto for 31 years. I never imagined I would be
facing this kind of problems here. I have been living on Park Avenue. It's a
very small, quiet part of the Park Boulevard. My house is the only one
before the dead end. I have those two huge buildings that have at least
three businesses each and then two residential areas each. There are so
many delivery trucks from water to United Parcel Service (UPS), you
imagine. My car has been hit. That was a big inconvenience before. Since
last two months, my knee has gotten worse, and now it is a health issue. I
am a diabetic, and I am a morning person, so I used to go to my gym in the
morning. Now I don't go to my gym for the last two months. I have not
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been able to do that because I'm afraid when I come back where will I park.
I have a driveway that I could park there, but that's always blocked. If I
was a mean person, I'd be calling the policy every day. Palo Alto Police
would be so busy, but I don't want to do that. Once when I did that, I was
inside my driveway. When I called the policy, they acted like I was doing
something wrong. They asked me am I sure that I cannot get out. I said
obviously not. Please listen to us. This is not just something that we are doing out of convenience. This is a need. I cannot have visitors ever.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Patrick Slattery to be followed by Doug Smith.
Patrick Slattery: In the interest of time and hope for action, I'll pass.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Doug Smith to be followed by Deb Goldeen.
Doug Smith: Good evening. I'd like to—I'm Doug Smith from Southgate.
I'd like to support all the pro comments for the Residential Parking Program
tonight. A lot of great comments have been said; I don't want to repeat
them all. Just want to emphasize that the parking situation really has gotten
bad in Southgate over the past few years. It is mostly due to Paly, but
there's lots of other impacts in Southgate also. The day parkers definitely
take up all the spots on our street. It makes it impossible for our own use
as well as visitors, deliveries and all the other things that are supposed to happen. As was noted, Southgate has very narrow streets. It's a safety
issue in multiple ways. That's part of the reason it makes it so urgent for
Southgate to be addressed. We appreciate what you can do on that. Thank
you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Deb Goldeen to be followed by Jack Morton, our
final speaker.
Deb Goldeen: I live in Evergreen Park, and I've lived there for 30 years. I
am against the annexation. I think we need a different program. I would
like to see accommodation made for visitor parking. The people who are
going to be hurt are my friends who work at Molly Stones and Country Sun
and the hairdressers who drive in from East Palo Alto and East San Jose and
Oakland. They simply can't afford to live anywhere else, and they have to
drive. They're going to be hurt, and I don't like that. I think it's rude and
mean. I disagree with David. In the 30 years I've lived there, I think crime
has decreased because of the number of people on the streets. There's lots
of eyes on the streets. The people coming in are all law-abiding. I disagree
about the traffic hazard. I bike; I raised my kids there. Before the streets
got crowded, there were a lot of speeding cars. You can't speed through our
neighborhood anymore. I have never had a problem getting response from
City of Palo Alto Police with parking. I'm on very good terms with the
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parking officer. I call on a regular basis; they're out there in 20 minutes,
half an hour. There's never a problem. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. Our final speaker is Jack Morton.
Jack Morton: Good evening, Council Members. It reminds of days past. My
name is Jack Morton, and I'm the President of the California Avenue Small
Business Association. I'm here to support the untenable and impossible
situation that Evergreen Park and Southgate face. Those neighborhoods with million dollar-plus homes should be ideal. They walk to an area that
has a shoe store, a bakery, a camera store, grocery stores, restaurants,
dentists, insurance and mortgage brokers, low-income health services,
psychologists, family services. What's the problem? The problem is there is
nowhere to park. Most of those small businesses employ three or four
people of lower wages, and they need to park there. Many of them all do.
Where else do they park? They can't park in California Avenue. If you make
that an area for employees, then there's no place for the restaurants to have
parking at noon. You can't park anywhere between roughly 10:30 and 2:30
in Cal. Ave. I support the previous speaker who suggested you've got to
expand the supply. Instead of waiting to build a parking structure when you
move the police building to Cal. Ave., you need to take action now. If you're going to implement a restrictive parking area, some part of that area has to
go for the employees of small businesses. The ultimate solution means you
have to accelerate the building of more multilevel parking structures. If you
don't, this whole area is going to lose most of the things that make that area
ideal. There are more people who love California Avenue for what it
provides in services. Take a big view. There's not just one problem. Most
of the people that are small business are not high tech; they're not Paly
people; they're not Stanford overflow. They are generally lower paid people
who provide the services that most of the residents love. You have a
problem to solve, and it is time to move forward with a solution. Thank you.
Mayor Burt: Thank you. We'll now return to the Council for a discussion and
motions. Council Member Filseth, is your light on deliberately?
Council Member Filseth: Thanks very much. I was one of the authors of the
Colleagues' Memo. Thank you to all of the people who came out here
tonight and to the Staff for the work they've done. I was one of the authors
of the Colleagues' Memo. The reason we did it was we felt that there was a
dire problem and it didn't feel like we as a City were responding fast enough.
We wanted to spur some action. As we went through this tonight, at some
level it feels like we might have gone back a half step. We're talking about
the pros and cons of RPPPs. I thought we'd moved beyond that. It also has
the tenor of looking at neighborhoods as parking lots. We're talking in terms
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of how many parking spaces are there and how many want them. It's
really, as most of the public has said tonight, more than that. It's about
neighborhood quality, safety, the impacts of having streets that are jammed
with parked cars, and the traffic that puts those cars there. That's the real
issue here. Going through this, why is this so hard? It feels like we're
almost trying to do a custom plan for each neighborhood with all this
outreach. I'm reading here we'll conduct a community outreach and stakeholder process to design a program for each area. I thought the point
of the Citywide plan was that we wouldn't have to do that. We could do
these things fast. We'd have a framework in place, and we could just do
them. If we have to customize, what are the differences? It seems to be
based on differences in stakeholder demand, because that's what we're
talking about, stakeholder outreach and stuff like this. It seems to me
there's two kinds of stakeholders. There's residents and there's
nonresidents, mostly commuters that want to use that parking resource. In
terms of outreach, I think the residents have been very consistent from
neighborhood to neighborhood here. I don't think there's big differences
between the resident perspective. Residents need to be at the top of the
pyramid. This is not a situation where we've got a bag of marbles, and we divide them between everybody that puts up their hand. An unsafe
neighborhood does not suddenly become safe because there's ten other
guys that want the space. The RPP is about protecting neighborhoods as
directed in the Comp Plan. It is the plan for residents. The plan for
businesses is TDM. If City Hall don't believe in that, then we have a big self-
deception problem. This is the plan of record, and the plan of record is the
plan of record until there's a new plan of record. We need to get on with
this. Let's fix the resident problem, and then go focus on transportation. To
me, Evergreen and Southgate seem very, very clear. I think we should
move forward with those as fast as we can. As far as Crescent Park and
Edgewood are concerned, I'd like to understand there's a petitioning process
and are the petitions meet our criteria. I'd like to see us move forward with
those too if that's the case. I don't want to make a Motion yet, because I
want everybody else to weigh in. I think the key elements are going to be
timeliness. Some accommodation for visitors is reasonable as long as
neighborhood quality is protected. One of the members suggested 10
percent is the right magnitude; I think that's maybe a good starting point.
The pricing and the mechanics out to be consistent with the Downtown plan
because that's the framework we've got in place. I'd like other people to
weigh in before we move forward. Thanks.
Mayor Burt: Who wants to go next? Council Member Wolbach.
Council Member Wolbach: I'm also not going to make a Motion yet. I'll
follow Council Member Filseth's lead and say let's—I'm happy to hear what
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others think. If anyone wants to make a Motion, of course I'll let them and
the Mayor decide on when we should do that. Just to confirm, my
understanding is that the College Terrace permit system is for residents
only, but there is short-term parking allowed, so that you can park there for
up to two hours from 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. That's correct?
Mr. Keene: All of our RPP programs would have short-term parking. Almost
every RPP program in the entire region has short-term parking.
Council Member Wolbach: That also means that weekends and evenings are
fully available. Because it is 8:00 to 5:00 with two hours allowed, really it's
de facto 10:00 to 3:00. If you are visiting a friend, if you're a guest coming
to visit your friends, any time until 10:00 A.M. is free and anytime after
3:00. If you park after 3:00, you can stay there as late as you'd like. Come
over for coffee in the afternoon and stick around for dinner with your friends.
If there's a way to incorporate some guest permits as well, whether it's door
hangers or whatever, I'd be interested in hearing what that is. I do think
that the PTC did their job and sent Evergreen Park and Southgate to us on
par with each other, because they're of equal importance and equal urgency.
I fully appreciate that a lot of the residents have been waiting a number of
years. Not all of us have been up here for 10 years, but we're definitely—we'll see as comments go around—eager to see some relief for both
Evergreen Park and Southgate. I'm interested in hearing what my
colleagues have to say about Edgewood Plaza and Crescent Park. I have
less definitive views about those. I do think it is worth noting something
that I've always felt about permit parking systems. They're always a
double-edged sword. There is always a downside. We have heard that,
although there is strong outcry from the neighborhoods, it is not unanimous.
I just want to make sure that we do recognize that. The residents are not
all of the same mind. Some would oppose this. I think if somebody tried to
impose this—if people started circulating a petition in my neighborhood right
now for this, it would probably wouldn't be very successful. In Evergreen
Park and Southgate, it seems very clear that there is broad consensus if not
unanimity in favor of taking action and doing it promptly, doing it in a way
that puts the residents first. As I asked during the question period earlier,
anything that we can do for Southgate to improve safety and provide
parking relief through engineering solutions parallel to the institution of an
RPP system, I think is worth pursuing. It sounds like Staff is already starting
to work on some of those. If it's helpful and allowed for us to incorporate it
into our Motion that tonight we're interested in accelerating that, supporting
that in whatever ways Staff needs, I'll be very supportive of doing that this
evening. Again, that's things like adding red paint at the corners and at the
edges of driveways to make sure they're not blocked, having more passing
areas so that—even if you can't have a car on one side, a car on the other
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side and an emergency vehicle in the middle, if it's an emergency vehicle
and a bike or a car and bike, it gets pretty crowded pretty quick in
Southgate. As just a general comment, I think we should have that policy
everywhere in the City. If we don't already, there are other streets in other
parts of the City where you have the same issues including in Downtown
North. I'm never enthusiastic about taking parking spaces, but for safety I'll
make an exception. I do think that we should prioritize the engineering solutions separately but not in advance of, not to cause delay of RPP. One
of the tough questions I don't have a clear answer on is whether we should
do the same system for Evergreen Park as we do for Southgate. We did
hear from Christine—thank you by the way for those who came both the City
School Liaison Committee where we heard about the challenges there.
Thank you for coming again tonight. We heard from Christine that in
Southgate not everybody is enthusiastic about being part of the same
system as Evergreen Park. I do think that Evergreen Park having a system
that's either an extension of the College Terrace one or a parallel system,
whichever is most efficient, easiest, fastest, cheapest to get done, I'm in
favor of. I don't really care if it's one system that's enlarged or a second
one that's parallel. Whatever gets it done fastest. As far as having a separate on for Southgate, if the community is okay with and seems to
prefer, from what I heard tonight, having a separate process because they
do want to have some community outreach, they do want to have
stakeholder engagement, which would especially Stanford and more than
anyone Paly. In the meantime, we accelerate some of the engineering
solutions. That might be the way to go for those two. I'll leave my
comments at that for the time being.
Mayor Burt: Vice Mayor Scharff.
Vice Mayor Scharff: First of all, I think absolutely Evergreen needs RPP
parking. That's clear. Southgate does too. The question is what is the best
way to approach to this. For Southgate, it seems fairly to me. The person
who came up and spoke and said they wanted to create a Southgate RPP
through a stakeholder process. That's what I heard from that. It seems
reasonable; that's appropriate. I think Southgate and Evergreen are
different. That's where I think we should go on Southgate. I also think
Southgate should get some interim relief for the summer as the Paly kids go
away. There's a little bit more time there on Southgate to do that than on
Evergreen. I don't know if most of you know my office is actually right next
to Evergreen. I've been there for 16 years now. When I first started in
Evergreen, there's always been parking intrusion in that neighborhood.
Always. It's gotten progressively worse. Actually I was driving through the
neighborhood to get to Sven's house to charge my car. This is a true story.
Some women comes out and says there's one parking spot over there if you
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need a parking spot. Obviously some of your neighbors are fairly friendly
about the whole parking thing. I said, "No thanks. I'm actually trying to get
through the neighborhood." It's a little difficult; you have to weave around
to get to Sven's house. There's always been some parking there. I'm very
concerned that if we just annex you into College Terrace that we won't have
that stakeholder engagement process. The other thing I'm concerned about
is we did set up an overall process. We all voted on it. I think it's important that we follow that process. If we're not going to follow that process, then
we should do away with it. I think we should follow that process especially
in Evergreen. I do think we need to get Evergreen done as quickly as
possible. I'm going to push back against you a little bit, David. One of the
great things about knowing David is you get to go have tea at his house.
That's one of the great things I've really enjoyed about doing that. I don't
recall in 2009 when I ran you asking for RPP. I know you didn't, and I don't
recall it in 2014 frankly. I don't feel it's really fair to say to us up here that
we've been ignoring the situation. We've now set up this process; we're
having the hearing tonight. We're moving forward on it; we recognize it.
Could we have done this six months earlier? I think we probably could have.
In the scheme of things, it hasn't been 10 years that we've sat up here and done nothing. It hasn't been the last seven years. You haven't asked me
for it for that long That's my impression of it. Yes, we do need RPP. I do
want to get it done. On the other hand, we do need to take care a little bit
of the merchants. We do need to ask ourselves where they're going to park,
how are we going to get this done. We are going to build a new parking
garage. I think we should build that parking garage bigger and even move
parking out of Evergreen. I do think there has to be some level—I actually
don't think it's necessary for office workers to park in Evergreen. I think the
speaker was correct; these are small businesses with people who drive in
from other places and they need a place to park. I think some of that
parking—I think that's what the stakeholder process is. How much of that
parking so that you get down, so that you can park in front of your house,
that you clear out the parking like we have Downtown. When I now go
Downtown, there's parking spaces. People can park in front of their house.
What we need to do is create that quality of life and move it back to the way
it was 10 years ago. That's sort of what I'm thinking. I don't know the
answers to these questions, but I think it's going through that stakeholder
process. We should expedite that process, get this done as quickly as
possible. I don't think we should just annex you in and not think about how
we're going to do this process and the effect on California Avenue, which
could be dramatic for the merchants. One of the things we really want to do
is preserve that retail, preserve those shoe stores. The people that work
there, they need a place to park. That's my initial thoughts on that. I
actually don't know what to do about Crescent Park. If the person from
Crescent Park said annex me into the Downtown one with the rules or
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whatever, I'd say fine. That's not what I heard. I heard for one street
basically, they want a separate program. That much more difficult to
accomplish given the resources, given what we need to do. I also think that
that one gets a lower priority in my view. If they did want to be annexed,
then we could accomplish that fairly quickly and do that. I'd have to hear
from the neighborhood that that's what they want to do. On Edgewood, I
think we just need to understand what's going on out there. From the presentation—this is nothing against Staff—I just don't understand what's
really going on out there, do we really need a permit program for that one
stretch or is there another way to solve the problems out there once we
understand what the problems are. That's my initial comments. I'll leave it
there.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Berman.
Council Member Berman: Thank you very much. I've been on Council three
and a half years, and I've heard those entire three and a half years and even
before then that we need more parking supply on California Avenue. That's
why I asked to serve on the Infrastructure Committee on Council with Greg
and Pat. That's why I served on the campaign committee to raise the
additional resources to build an additional parking garage on California Avenue which is going to add, I think, 200 spots. We're going to build that
garage before we build the Public Safety Building. I was conflicted out of the
Downtown Residential Permit Parking program because I live Downtown. My
colleagues implemented a plan and recently annexed a large chunk across
Middlefield into this plan that still allows for some amount of parking for
retail workers and other workers in the business core. My question to them
is how do we create one plan for Downtown and a totally different plan for
California Avenue, and what's the justification to those residents that we just
brought into that plan. You guys had a conversation into the early hours of
the morning; I wasn't a part of it. I'll leave that up to you guys to draw the
distinctions. The bottom line is we can't say we want a parking plan that
allows for no workers and yet we want to protect local retail. Those two
things don't work. We know from Downtown that a lot of the people that
park in the residential neighborhoods, as we heard from one speaker
tonight, are retail workers that live so far away that public transit isn't an
option for them. They drive in for their jobs. I'm not saying that they
should have free parking in your neighborhoods; I don't think that. I think
we need to implement Residential Permit Parking, but we have to be realistic
about the fact that that exist. They're not going to disappear. We're going
to try to build more supply; we can try to do that faster in building the new
garage. We also just have to be cognizant of the fact that we have retail
workers that need parking. That's a problem that's developed over decades
that we're now trying to fix. I do think we definitely need a Residential
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Permit Parking program. I think we need to prioritize Evergreen and
Southgate. I'm open to a conversation about the differences between those
two plans. I need my colleagues to tell me where those people are going to
park. Is it going to be Ventura? Is it going to be across Caltrain? How are
we going to provide parking for them? I need to know that we before I can
vote for a plan that just eliminates the ability for them to park completely.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Holman.
Council Member Holman: Thank you. I have a question for Staff. As I
heard the Staff comments and as I read what the at-places memo was and
what the Slide 25 is, it looks like what's in the proposed budget is $30,000
plus $50,000 of what the actual need is—let's just assume it's what's being
proposed here—$300,000 and $380,000 for a total of $680,000. Can you
confirm or clarify for me what those numbers are?
Ms. Atkinson: The numbers that are contained in the proposed Fiscal Year
'17 budget are actually in the draft budget. There's a line item in the draft
budget for $30,000 for in-house Staff for capital expenses. There's a line
item in the draft budget for $300,000 for capital expenditures for RPP in
Fiscal Year '17. There's a line item in the draft operating budget for $50,000
for the operating expenses. That's what's in the draft budget currently. There's a total in the draft budget of $380,000.
Council Member Holman: Thank you for clarifying that. What's needed
according to these numbers is $680,000. Correct?
Ms. Gitelman: The cost will depend on how many of these programs you
wish to do and how we implement them, the details of how the programs are
designed.
Council Member Holman: That's why I said just based on what's here on
this slide, it's $680,000 that's needed. You said $380,000 is in the proposed
budget. That helps. Where to start? It would be easier if the Crescent Park
neighborhood had come across with that application to be just added to the
Downtown. I agree with Council Member Scharff who said that. Some quick
and easy outreach to them to see if they would accept that would be the
quickest solution to that one. As is in the memo drafted by four of us, we
talk about how a RPP program is really necessary because it's how you get—
I think one of the speakers mentioned this too—office workers out of their
cars and into alternative forms of transportation. There are also a number
of projects that have been approved in the California Avenue area and other
places in town that got parking reductions because of TDM program
requirements as a part of their approval process. When projects are
approved, though, and after they're built, it seems like the parking situation
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is exacerbated. I'm not sure that we're having a successful TDM program
without RPP. I think that just indicates further that we need it. I wonder
actually because we've seen in the Downtown how the impacts just spread
and spread. Are we headed to a Citywide RPP? There's some talk about
that. I don't have the answer to that, but I do wonder. It's the whack-a-
mole kind of predicament that we find ourselves in. A couple of questions
that I would have that I've posed to Staff previously. Can we prioritize, going back to the memo, smaller employers having access to permits both
within the district and without district over larger employers? Can we do
that? The purpose of that would be to support the retailers and personal
service, because they tend to be smaller employers. Can the retailers and
personal services businesses share parking permits? Some would say that
doesn't help, but I would say that it does. It means that an employer who
pays for parking permits that employees buy, it's less cost to the employer.
It doesn't take up more parking spaces, because you have somebody that's
using a permit space on Monday and somebody else using a different permit
in the other space on Tuesday. It doesn't create more demand. It is a help.
It is somewhat different, the situations of Southgate and Evergreen Park.
Maybe the answer there is an RPP. Maybe the answer there is an engineered solution. Staff has said that would be a quicker outcome and
maybe easier to manager. I don't know how the neighborhood feels about
that. In addition to the Comprehensive Plan and all the things that David
Schrom brought up about the Comprehensive Plan and how it supports
neighborhoods being protected from spillover parking, I would say also that
our Council Priority of Healthy City Healthy Community also supports and
promotes that. We've heard all kinds of outcroppings of what happens when
there is so much intrusion parking into neighborhoods that aren't really good
situations that promote safe conditions. I think those are my—just one last
comment. Going back to the budget matter, we have in our budget a
number of transportation-related items. There's $2 million for parking
guidance. There's a parking management study implementation, $1.7
million; Downtown mobility and safety improvements, $1.4 million. I could
go on for some others. Surely we could come up with another $300,000
somewhere, not necessarily, if that's what it really takes to help support
these programs.
Mayor Burt: Council Member DuBois.
Council Member DuBois: We have this new RPP Ordinance. We may need to
tune it. I think Council Member Scharff said we have it, let's use it. It's the
first time we've used it, so there may be some things we need to fix. We've
learned that when do we have free street parking, some people will buy
permits, and we're price discriminating parking Downtown and seeing how
far people will park for free and walk in. I'd say let's not recreate that
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experiment in Southgate and Evergreen Park. Also, we're seeing an issue
with this ordinance of pitting neighborhoods against neighborhoods which
isn't good. I think we need to think about that as we go forward. In
general, it feels like this ordinance is just too complex, it's time consuming
and expensive. I know we said we don't want a cookie cutter approach. If
we can only do one or two a year, maybe we need to actually err more on a
cookie cutter approach or a deploy and adjust approach, something that's a little bit lighter weight. In these neighborhoods, we have multiple buildings
coming online. I understand why residents want to get a permit program as
quickly as they can. At the same time, I think we all want to protect our
local retailers. I think we need shift our process a little bit. Right now it
takes too long, take too much Staff time. When you look at Edgewood and
Crescent Park, I kind of feel the same way with Edgewood, we have people
who petitioned, they followed the process, and there's no grocery store
there. What's going to happen when a grocery store goes in? It seems like
is a good time to put an RPP in place so that we can expand it when we need
to. For my colleagues that weren't part of the Crescent Park discussion, we
had a very long discussion about where does Downtown end. We pretty
much agreed that Phase 2 should be where it ends. I think what we heard from the people in the extra streets is they feel that too. At some point,
Crescent Park becomes a residential neighborhood, and we should just
extend the Downtown RPP indefinitely. I know that seems simple and easy,
even the last streets we added didn't want that. They wanted a Residential
Permit Parking program, and they accepted what was available. In the
presentation, it says one of the cons of an RPP is that traffic relocates. If we
did a program in Southgate, where is it going to go? It's going to go to
Evergreen Park. If we do one in Evergreen Park, it's going to go to
Southgate. There's really nowhere else around there to park. I think we
absolutely have to do both at the same time. If we don't, we know what's
going to happen, the other neighborhood is just going to get hammered. On
the Cal. Ave. business district, I think Karen's idea of allowing employers to
share permits among potentially retail employees who don't work every day.
The idea is one permit that just gets shared based on when a restaurant
worker is working. What I want to see is a real emphasis on speed of
implementation. It's a quality issue for the neighborhoods. It really does
put teeth into the TDM. We want to be able to react quickly and help
businesses, but I would say let's put in a program, let's pick a relatively
small number, 10 percent, and then have a way to adjust and maybe look at
how we share permits in parallel so that we can get more parking in the
business district. The other thing with this Evergreen Park area is it starts at
College Avenue. There's several streets that are part of the business
district. There can be business parking that we could utilize more
effectively. I'd support a Motion that gets protection in place as soon as
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possible and allows us to adjust and learn rather than to study it and not get
anything in place for a while.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Schmid.
Council Member Schmid: I agree with my colleagues. We do have an
approved Citywide RPP program. We've invited people to participate in it. I
think we need to move ahead with the applications we have. We need to
give Staff the resources they need to process the applications. I think we need to have them be ready for an overflow parking that might take place.
Ventura Neighborhood and across the tracks are natural places where this
will show up again. I think the Council needs to think strategically about the
questions that they need to grapple with. What does retail health mean?
How much commercial growth do we want. New garages are necessary.
Effective TDM programs. We need to talk with Palo Alto School District
about transportation. Ultimately, who pays, who subsidizes all these
changes? Finally, how do we put this into what we want our City to look like
and be? Through influencing, retailing, commercial growth, neighborhoods'
quality of life, we will be creating the City of the future. We need to put our
attention on that.
Mayor Burt: I'll lend my support for a number of the comments. First both of these neighborhoods need RPP program relief. I think that Southgate will
actually be the easier one to solve because it actually is the place where we
can drive what is essentially a simple Transportation Demand Management
program, and that is kids at Paly should ride their bike to school and not
drive to school. It's not real complicated except that we're going to have
spillover. Those who say, "I don't want spillover, and I don't want impacts
on retail, and I don't want this, and I don't want that," I want things to fall
from the sky too. In reality, we're going to have spillover. The next
spillover will be into Old Palo Alto from both the Cal. Ave. area. As we've
heard from Evergreen folks, there are people who ride Caltrain, either take it
to the airport, park in the neighborhood for days or on a daily basis. They're
not going to be allowed to park certainly not in the numbers they have in
Evergreen. Some will choose to go over on the other of the tracks in Old
Palo Alto. I also suspect we're going to have Paly kids parking on the other
side of the tracks, for both entrances, near Churchill and near Embarcadero.
We're going to have that spillover. I think we need to be objective about it.
That'll be the next impacts. We don't know exactly how much; that's part of
the reality and what we had in the Downtown. We can't predict exactly
who's going to do what. We might have a sense of it based on patterns, but
we're going to see what happens. I do want to address a few of the
comments on this shared permit. I sublet an office on Cal. Ave. I've had a
permit for years, but I only use it once every couple of weeks, because for
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the last three years I almost always ride my bike. I get there faster, and I
park actually right at my stairs instead of in the parking lot. It's better. I
have neighbors in offices who live a mile away and drive their car every day.
When we talk about this issue of residents versus commuters, in some cases
we are talking about commuters that come from elsewhere. In other cases,
we're talking about residents who are commuters. Many of them don't need
to be car commuters to Cal. Ave. Other than the Paly students, those are the other behavior changes that we may see some positive ones in the
nearer term. In the Downtown area, we have the start of this
Transportation Management Agency which is underfunded. We've identified
how we can reduce the car trips. Remember solving the parking problem
also basically solves a lot of the traffic problem at the same time. We get
two wins out of this. There are real benefits to the community of having
Residential Permit Parking; both the quality of life benefits for the
neighborhood and the traffic. Driving the parking out of the neighborhood
won't in itself in any way address the traffic problem unless those people
take other means to get to their work. The shared permit, I don't think my
colleagues have really thought this through very well. If you have shared
permits, it doesn't create any new parking spaces in the Downtown. It doesn't in and of itself utilize those parking spaces more. What Staff now
does is if they believe that they have capacity for permit parking, they sell
more permits. If we share permits, it will simply mean less revenue for the
same utilization of those spaces. Right now Staff says, "We've got some
spaces. We'll sell more permits." That employer has now, instead of one
employee with a permit, they have two. They each paid for a permit. If we
share, they only pay for one combined. That's the impact. There's no
increase in parking by sharing permits. What it can do is if we want to do
something like we've done Downtown is figure out a way to make it more
affordable for low-income workers. That's a different argument. That's not
the same thing as kidding ourselves that sharing permits is somehow going
to in any way improve our problem. It just means less income from selling
permits. We have set up this process. I want to talk briefly kind of at a high
level. Over the last several years, this problem has gotten worse and worse
in these neighborhoods, I'd say especially in Evergreen but also in
Southgate. A few years ago it was a moderate problem. Third years ago I
remember all the issues around the overflow from the gym on Park and El
Camino. This is clearly far and away the worse it's ever been in that
neighborhood for parking. It's not the worst it's ever been in traffic, this
notion that we also have a severe traffic problem because of this. We have
people who go there to park, and those are some car trips. We no longer
have cut through traffic for the most part in Evergreen. We haven't now for
30 years. That problem's pretty solved. Evergreen has pretty low traffic
problems. This whole notion that somehow these people who come here to
park, these workers principally who are working in Cal. Ave. are criminals, I
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think that's really a disservice. It just reminds me of the kinds of arguments
Donald Trump would make. I found that really inappropriate. I want to say
I think that the arguments that Residential Permit Parking should be there
and that the Comp Plan supports protecting residential neighborhoods from
the impact of the commercial development is a sound argument, and that's
why we set up the RPP program and why I support it for these
neighborhoods. The argument that somehow this is a theft of parking is really also a disservice. We don't own the parking spots in front of our
homes. They are publicly owned, and we have a reasonable right to say that
there should be availability of those parking spots on a reasonable basis to
us as residents. We shouldn't have to go a block or two to find a parking
spot in front of our home. We don't own them, and others occupying them
is not a theft of my property. It's not in front of my house where I have
parking all the time for the Children's Library and the Children's Theatre and
all those. I don't think of it as a theft of my parking spot. I don't own it. I
do feel that we should be able to have reasonable amounts of parking in
front or adjacent to our own homes. That's a reasonable expectation. We
want to align the problem with the solution, and we want to stay to things
that are sound and accurate. Those are good arguments. We have good arguments for putting an RPP program and returning a reasonable amount
of availability of parking to people who live there. I would really hope that
everybody sticks to those sound arguments and doesn't get into distortion
and hyperbole that just isn't reasonable. The other dilemma that we have
is—this is the same one that we had in the Downtown. We want to move
from where we are to a solution. If we on Day One said that we've banned
everybody but residents from the neighborhoods, first we'd have a lot of
spare parking space in the neighborhoods. The neighbors know a high
percentage of the parkers are not neighborhood residents right now. What
we do is create an actual crisis for all those workers, retailers and otherwise.
What we want to do is drive the solution, which means get relief for the
neighborhood right away—I support the funding in our budget to implement
this for both of these neighborhoods sooner rather than later—and begin to
have significant relief for the neighborhoods. What we've done in the
Downtown is we've said we're going to on Day One significantly reduce the
amount of overflow parking in the neighborhoods. We sell a certain number
of permits. On Day One those neighborhoods experienced significant benefit,
not perfection but significant improvement. Each year, we're going to
reduce the number of those permits that are sold. We drive this TDM
measure. One of the problems is that we don't have this Transportation
Management Agency or Authority that we have for Downtown. It isn't
expanded for the Cal. Ave. area yet, so we don't really have a solution for
helping to come up with alternatives. I'll give you an example. The
cheapest transit is not the Caltrain Go Pass; it is the VTA EcoPass. Some of
you may have heard, but the Stanford Research Park was able to negotiate
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with the VTA that got the group rate for treating the Research Park as if it's
one company. That same thing could happen for all the Cal. Avenue
employers and merchants who are part of the Cal. Ave. Business
Association, which would mean that each employee would get unlimited VTA
bus pass for $1.50 a month. Not all of them are going to use that, but we
have a good number. The Research Park did what's called heat maps, and
they could see where all the employees worked. Even in the Research Park, surprisingly a lot of them worked within a short distance of El Camino in
Mountain View and Sunnyvale. That kind of program is pretty darn cost
effective. We also Downtown have this ride share app called Scoop. It's
really already having an impact. There's a bunch of measures that go into
actually solving this problem which also solves our traffic problem if we do
that. I'm supportive of moving forward with the budget allocation to begin a
program for both of these neighborhoods and to do it on the model of what
we've already established as our City program and to do it sooner rather
than later. Hoping that the neighborhood will recognize and value that soon
as we get this going near-term, significant improvement is a really good
thing. A long-term solution meeting medium-term each year better is also
very good. We do have tradeoffs that we have to address. I think that's the direction that I'm supportive of. Vice Mayor Scharff.
Vice Mayor Scharff: First of all, I'd like to say I actually agree with
everything Mayor Burt just said. I do have a couple of questions. You have
options Staff put together in terms of this. When you look at Southgate, the
first thing it says is evaluate and implement engineering, enforcement and
TDM options with PAUSD, monitor for possible future RPP, and then you
have two other ones which are self-explanatory. My first question is what
are you exactly mean by evaluate and implement engineering, enforcement
and TDM options. Could you be doing that while also putting in an RPP?
Mr. Keene: In Southgate.
Vice Mayor Scharff: In Southgate. I want to understand exactly what you
meant by that.
Mr. Mello: That's made up of two components. The first would be a look at
the safety issues that were mentioned by the residents, see if there's
opportunities to create additional yielding areas by using red curbing, pulling
some parking back from the corners, in particularly narrow sections maybe
we look at limiting parking to one side of the street. The TDM component
would be to establish a working group with the School District and start to
talk about promoting bike riding by students more so than they do today.
Also addressing some of the staff travel patterns, looking cooperatively with
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the School District at their permitting program and whether they're issuing
enough permits for on-campus parking, things like that.
Vice Mayor Scharff: When we talk about creating a Southgate RPP through
a stakeholder process, I envisioned that part of that would be what you just
talked about with reaching to PAUSD and going through that process. When
you talk about the engineering solutions for safety, that's actually creating
less parking in Southgate. That's what it sounds like. You're pulling parking away. I wanted to make sure I understood that. With that, I think I'd like
to go ahead and try a Motion. See if I can get this right. First of all, I think
we should move forward for a budget allocation to do RPP in both the
Southgate and Evergreen neighborhoods and budget that money. That
would be the first sentence. Then I think we should create a Southgate RPP
through the stakeholder process with the understanding that we would also
look at and implement engineering, enforcement and TDM options with
PAUSD where appropriate and through the stakeholder process. When it
comes to Evergreen, I think we should implement an Evergreen Park RPP
program through the stakeholder group process including parking
management options and through the stakeholder process determine how
many permits should be sold to retail and personal service businesses in the area. The only thing I thought I would add to that is determine if the
Crescent Park group—I don't know if we refer to it as a Crescent Park street
or neighborhood streets—would want to be annexed into the Downtown RPP
or not.
Council Member Berman: I second it.
MOTION: Vice Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Berman
to:
A. Approve a budget allocation for implementation of Residential
Preferential Parking Programs (RPP) for the Southgate and Evergreen
Park Neighborhoods; and
B. Implement an RPP in the Southgate neighborhood through a
stakeholder process including looking at engineering, enforcement,
and Transportation Demand Management (TDM) solutions with Palo
Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) where appropriate; and
C. Implement an RPP in Evergreen Park through a stakeholder process
including parking management options and determining how many
permits to be sold for retail and personal service workers; and
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D. Determine whether the Crescent Park neighborhood should be
annexed into the Downtown RPP or if a separate RPP should be created
for the neighborhood.
Vice Mayor Scharff: On Edgewood I was going see if anyone else wants to
handle that.
Mr. Keene: If I just might say something. It's maybe a little unfair to Staff
for me to be speaking this way. I think that the urgency related to the main purpose, first of all, of this item was to get a prioritization by the Council on
these applications. That Evergreen, then Southgate, then Crescent Park,
then Edgewood. I would say even in the lateral two we have probably a
little bit more validation that would need to take place. There's two ways we
can do this. One would be for you to clearly say on those first two tonight
that you're not dismissing these other two this year. That's one of the
concerns, that the Ordinance spoke about one a year. I think people
misinterpreted that as saying that was going to pit neighborhood against
neighborhood and there was only going to be one winner. Clearly it's in the
Council's purview to establish stuff. The only thing I worry a little bit about
is you say all four of them, and we go away and there's confusion about are
we doing them simultaneously, where's our application. We do have a lot of the same people working on this. If you did want to leave it the way the
Vice Mayor is saying it, I do think we want to be very clear that there's a
sequencing piece here that we would be—we're going to have a lot of the
same people working on these same things. We want to be clear that we're
dealing with the most critical and the most impacted first. Maybe there's a
way we report to the Council.
Vice Mayor Scharff: I completely agree with you, Jim. I meant it to be
they're the most impacted, Evergreen and Southgate. Mostly because
Southgate has that extra few months in there. I don't want Southgate to
walk away from this thinking they're a year away. That's not what I mean
by that.
Mr. Keene: I think there are things that can be done.
Vice Mayor Scharff: I think it's sequencing, Evergreen, Southgate, Crescent
Park and Edgewood.
Mr. Keene: I understand by the proposed Motion at least the basic
recommendation would be to follow your existing ordinance that you have
right now.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Yes.
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Mr. Keene: That doesn't mean that there can't be some expedited
approaches within that. As far as dramatically reframing the Ordinance, I
think the City Attorney would say we may have to bring back some
ordinance changes to actually do that. I would just say we want to be
thoughtful about that, because I know a lot of the Council has talked a lot
about let's establish rules, let's follow the rules. We kind of say those
things, and then we at least then need to follow the process to change the rules a little bit if that's we're going to do. That doesn't mean there isn't
some latitude within there.
Vice Mayor Scharff: I'll speak to it, then I'll help him write the Motion. I
actually appreciated everyone from the neighborhood coming out. I thought
that was great; that's the way it's supposed to be. I thought you all did a
really good job of talking about the urgency of Evergreen frankly. I want to
impress that the Motion—I will probably put something in there just a little
that as soon as possible. I want this to be expedited, and I want it to
happen quickly and all of that. At the same time, I do think we need to go
through the stakeholder process, and we do need to include the merchants
in the stakeholder process. With that, I'll let Mr. Berman.
Council Member Berman: Thank you for the Motion. I also want to thank all the residents from the community. I know we still have a couple left, but a
lot of folks have gone home. I know it's disappointing to people who wanted
an immediate annexation into College Terrace. If I lived in Evergreen, I'd be
advocating for the same thing. Unfortunately, it's my job and it's our job to
weigh all of the different neighborhoods in the area, weigh the residential
needs, the retail needs and try to come up with a solution that provides
immediate relief, which I think this will, but also doesn't create a crisis either
for the retail workers on California Avenue or for the other neighborhoods
around there. There also needs to be some amount of equity across the
City. We've established a Residential Permit Parking program in Downtown
for people that had never had parking intrusion at all. Now they have a
Residential Permit Parking plan that does allow for some small amount of
worker permits on their blocks. We will decrease those as we move on, and
we will shrink the geographic area as we move on. I just don't know how
we would pass one system around the Downtown area and pass a totally
different system around the California Avenue area. This hopefully
addresses at least some of the residents' concerns. This plus the additional
supply that we'll create over the next couple of years will begin to
dramatically increase the quality of life in the Evergreen and Southgate
neighborhoods. I agree with the Crescent Park annexation into Downtown if
they're willing. I agree that we need to figure out better what the deal is
around Edgewood Plaza, if that's just an overnight parking thing. To Council
Member DuBois' point, once that grocery store is fully occupied, it's going to
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be a different situation, but it also makes sense then to see what that
situation is going to be. I'm not sure the neighbors are going to opt into a
program now, until they really start feeling some impact. It's a bit of a
chicken and egg issue. I think we need more info before we move forward,
and we need to prioritize a little bit.
Mayor Burt: Council Member DuBois.
Council Member DuBois: I probably need Council Member Scharff; I have several friendly amendments. In terms of prioritization, I agree with this,
but I think it's critical that deploy Southgate and Evergreen Park in parallel,
or we'll just have students parking at Evergreen Park and walking through
Southgate or we'll have Cal. workers parking in Southgate and walking
through Evergreen Park. I would propose before "Southgate and Evergreen
Park neighborhoods, to be deployed in parallel."
AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council
Member XX to add to the Motion Part A, “to be deployed in parallel” after
“Park Neighborhoods.”
Vice Mayor Scharff: I just want to understand. The City Manager thought
we should prioritize them. Are you suggesting that we would slow down
Southgate, for instance, if Evergreen wasn't ready or we'd slow down Evergreen if Southgate wasn't ready? I personally would rather get either of
them with their separate programs—I don't think they're the same
program—in as soon as possible. I think what you're going to do is slow one
or the other down by saying they have to come out in parallel.
Council Member DuBois: I agree they could be separate district, but I do
think they have to come out together. The green area of Southgate is the
part that hits Evergreen Park. I'm just concerned we're going to be totally
swamped whichever neighborhood comes second. I just think that's an
important goal, that they—they may have different characteristics but they
could actually be enforced as one large district as well.
Vice Mayor Scharff: I'm not opposed to that for me; it's just a timing issue
that we might slow the process down. I'll let the City Manager respond.
Mr. Keene: Can I clarify it in this way? I think the intention is shared, which
is what's the quickest and most expeditious way to achieve both of those.
That being said, we'd be better off being able to be flexible. As the Vice
Mayor said, there are some unknowns that may pop up that would say some
bifurcation for a little bit of time may work better than the other. I think the
objective is we want to get restricted parking in both of these areas. Again,
it's going to be interesting. I don't know how we'll handle the employee
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parking in Southgate in relation to Evergreen. We'll have to work that
through. Do you know what I mean? I understand the problem about
spillover, but the initial...
Council Member DuBois: We're just hit by spillover every time. I think it's
critical that we do them together so it's basically one large enforcement
district maybe with different rules. If it's close to the same time, sure. It's
really a question of how far apart they come. That's my first friendly amendment, that they be deployed in parallel.
Vice Mayor Scharff: I'd be open to something that says "they will endeavor
to have them come out together," so they have some flexibility, but not they
have to open the same day. Maybe it's a couple of weeks with each other. I
don't know. I'm happy to have something that gives a little discretion to
Staff, but gives the impression that that's what we want.
Council Member DuBois: Are you guys having a discussion about this?
Mayor Burt: Council Member DuBois, what if we had something that we
direct Staff to attempt to align the launch of both?
Council Member DuBois: That's fine.
Vice Mayor Scharff: That's good.
AMENDMENT RESTATED AND INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the
Motion Part A, “and attempt to align deployment of both RPP programs” after
“Park Neighborhoods.”
Mr. Keene: Just so we're clear, because there will be staffing logistics. To
be honest with you, if it were me—I will be involved in it. If push came to
shove, I'd say we can get Evergreen out three months in advance of
Southgate versus holding them both up, we would recommend that that's
what we would do, unless there was an implication that seemed too
problematic.
Mayor Burt: The potential implication is whether it will create spillover
(crosstalk) Southgate.
Council Member DuBois: I'll say it as a friendly amendment, but it's kind of
the opposite of what you have. That Crescent Park be a separate RPP.
Having been in the discussion, I think a lot of those people do not want to be
part of the Downtown RPP. I also just wonder if this is appropriate since we
had a bunch of people recused on this.
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Ms. Stump: We looked at that issue and determined that this small segment
of additional blocks, which was a separate application, really shouldn't be
analyzed together in the same way as Phase 2, which was a set of rules that
encompassed the entirety of the Downtown North, Professorville area. We
think it's appropriate that it proceed without recusals except for the one
from Evergreen Park.
Council Member DuBois: Again, I would change Crescent Park—in terms of priorities it would be Southgate, Evergreen Park, and then Crescent Park as
a separate RPP from Downtown.
Vice Mayor Scharff: No, I think Crescent Park should come back to us and
tell us if they want to be annexed, so then we could do it quickly. If not,
then we have to have a separate discussion of whether a small separate
program makes financial sense (inaudible). Having one (crosstalk)
Mr. Keene: (crosstalk) some comment that at least some neighbors would
be interested in the quickest route.
Council Member DuBois: We told them that they missed the deadline.
Mayor Burt: I think that it's problematic to have a separate RPP district for
just a few blocks. On the other hand, I didn’t get to participate in this
because I was 490 feet from the edge of the last extension. I'm not in it. I think that there were two things that maybe weren't done right. One is it
would be less onerous on those residents if the permitted parking without a
permit was three hours rather than two. I can't imagine, if your guests or
workers are there, some Downtown worker is going to go and walk a mile
and back every two hours to move the car. That applies when you're
adjacent to Downtown. That's a risk. It doesn't apply in these extended
areas. What we've done is inconvenience those residents who can't have
guests. They have to get a guest permit for every two hours. I just don't
think there's any negative impact there. The second one is this fundamental
question of when we've created a spillover, should commercial permits be
sold in an area that never had an impact. I don't think they should.
Council Member DuBois: That's the definition of not being in the Downtown.
I don't know if there's a second for my amendment.
Mayor Burt: That actually can be in the same program but with a different
policy on the annexed areas. I don't think it has to be a different area.
That's a more complicated issue. I just want to lay those on the table.
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Council Member DuBois: In terms of priorities, basically I'm almost making
the PTC's Motion that Crescent Park would be the third priority as a new RPP
district.
AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council
Member XX to replace the Motion Part D with, “implement a separate RPP in
the Crescent Park neighborhood.”
AMENDMENT FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND
Council Member DuBois: Actually I have one more.
Mayor Burt: You can offer something else as a friendly amendment, but as
an amendment that we have to take up separately, we're going to have to
deal with this.
Council Member DuBois: As a friendly amendment, we would actually list
Edgewood Plaza as the fourth priority, which is not currently in the motion.
Mayor Burt: That's just a prioritization.
Vice Mayor Scharff: That's fine.
Mayor Burt: That's accepted.
Council Member Berman: (inaudible) one second. We're good.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND THE SECONDER to add to the Motion, “Edgewood Plaza would be fourth priority.” (New Part E)
Vice Mayor Scharff: I wouldn't be opposed to it. If we say it's going to be a
third priority if they don't want to be annexed in, I'm happy to look at it as a
third priority. I think we may need to come back, just like Edgewood Plaza
needs to come back. Are you saying they don't need to come back and Staff
just goes and works on it? If you're saying that, I'm not going to accept it.
It should be the fourth priority, but I think they need to come back to us and
we need to think about it. I'm fine with Crescent Park the same way. They
should be the third priority. If they want to be annexed, I'm happy to do it
quickly. If they don't want to be annexed, then they should be the third
priority, and then they come back. I don't know if we're saying the same
thing or if we're saying something different.
Council Member DuBois: I'm concerned. I think the speaker said it. They
asked to be annexed. They were told they missed the deadline, and then
they were told the quickest way to do it was to apply for an RPP which they
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did. Now we're telling them we'll just annex you, which is what you
originally asked for.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Which is the quickest way to do it.
Council Member DuBois: We also had a long discussion about it implies that
they will get employee permits further out.
Vice Mayor Scharff: It does.
Council Member DuBois: How big is Downtown if we keep annexing it? We had a long discussion about that as well. The five of us that voted kind of
said the Phase 2 boundary is at the end of Downtown. (inaudible) strongly
because we had this discussion without you guys participating.
Vice Mayor Scharff: What you've got right there, I'm fine with it being a
third and Edgewood Plaza being the fourth. Are you saying that you're not
accepting them being annexed even if they want to be annexed?
Council Member DuBois: Yeah. The only reason they would want to is
they'd be told they don't have a choice.
Vice Mayor Scharff: No, no. I'm not saying they don't have a choice. They
know they can come back to Council. The question is what would be
quicker. That's really the question. Otherwise, they're the third priority.
They're probably looking at not this year. If they won't this year, then they should come back. We should do what the neighborhood wants.
Council Member DuBois: I think what they want is to have residential
parking. I will stick with that as a separate amendment. I'd like to have
Edgewood Plaza as the fourth priority. You did something interesting which
was the retail and personal service workers which is different than
Downtown. I think we could generalize that to include Edgewood Plaza. Just
say retail and personal service workers.
Mayor Burt: I'm sorry. Can you point to where you're referring to?
Council Member DuBois: Three lines up from where the cursor is. For
Evergreen Park, it says "permits to be sold to retail and personal service
workers." My amendment would be "in nearby ground-floor districts."
Vice Mayor Scharff: That's fine with me.
Council Member DuBois: That could apply to Edgewood as well.
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AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council
Member XX to add to the Motion Part C, “in nearby ground floor districts.”
Ms. Stump: Mr. Mayor, may I make a comment? In some of these details,
Council may be getting into actually designing the potential RPP district.
That really isn't fully before you tonight. It gets ahead of the Staff process
that's contemplated by the ordinance. To the extent that Council wishes to
offer some ideas that the Staff should consider, I think that works.
Mayor Burt: Actually I think the language says including determining how
many permits should be—that's asking Staff to determine that.
Ms. Stump: Part of that is going to be making distinctions between different
types of workers. We have already a program, and we've vetted it and
established that there can be a means test, income test.
Mayor Burt: I don't think this narrows that. It just says Staff needs to come
back with essentially their recommendations. They determine how that
should be broken out.
Ms. Stump: We will have to look at whether it can be broken up like that in
addition to the quantity.
Vice Mayor Scharff: I actually don't want to accept nearby ground-floor
districts. I just didn’t understand what that means. Why don't we just say personal service and retail in California Avenue. It doesn't have to be the
street. That's too prescriptive.
Council Member DuBois: I think it's called the Cal. Ave. ground floor retail
district.
Vice Mayor Scharff: That's what you mean by nearby the entire California
Avenue retail district? Yeah, that's what (crosstalk).
Council Member DuBois: I was trying to generalize. Yeah, I think we're
being clear that it's not the same as Downtown which included office
workers.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Right, but that's why I already have that retail and
personal service workers. That's clearly not an office worker.
Council Member DuBois: It's fine as it is. I was trying to generalize it for
Edgewood Plaza.
Vice Mayor Scharff: If you (inaudible) your amendment, I need to change
mine, because that makes no sense to me. I would say "if Crescent Park
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annexes into the DP or not. If not, come back as the third priority for a
separate RPP district." That would be what I had intended there. Edgewood
Plaza would then be the four priority. If you want to change your Motion to
make some sense in that context. Your amendment.
Council Member DuBois: I'll strike my amendment if you will accept those
changes.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Okay.
Mayor Burt: That makes it simpler.
AMENDMENT WITHDRAWN BY THE MAKER
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion Part D, “which would be
given third priority.”
Council Member Wolbach: (inaudible)
Council Member DuBois: That's fine.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Based on resident input.
Mr. Mello: Could I offer a suggestion? We have what's called the eligibility
area for the Downtown RPP. That's the larger area that you created as part
of Phase 2. Once an area is added to the eligibility area, it's an
administrative process to be annexed into Downtown RPP. A simpler way to handle this might be to just add those streets to the eligibility area, and then
they could decide to submit a petition to be administratively annexed to the
Downtown RPP.
Mayor Burt: If they don't elect to do that, then it comes back to the Council.
If they do, you don't have to come to Council. You just give it to them.
Mr. Mello: We would still come, but we could put a resolution on Consent I
suppose.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Can you change the language to do that?
Council Member DuBois: Would there be any discussion about how many
permits would be sold in those (crosstalk).
Mr. Mello: How would I change the language? I would say ...
Vice Mayor Scharff: Wouldn't the language say if Crescent Park ...
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Mr. Mello: Recommend that the Crescent Park streets be added to the
Downtown RPP eligibility area.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Not recommend. Shouldn't we just say add the
Crescent Park thing to the eligibility area.
Mr. Mello: It requires changing the resolution for the Downtown RPP.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to replace the Motion Part D with, “recommend that the Crescent Park neighborhood be added to the Downtown RPP
eligibility area and if the neighborhood is not annexed, the residents can
come back as the third priority for a separate RPP.
Council Member DuBois: One last question, Josh. How many permits would
be sold in that area? Would it be part of the zone they're in?
Mr. Mello: It would be proportional to the number of spaces that are on
those streets. I think Sue-Ellen knows the percentage.
Ms. Atkinson: Those three streets would be added to Zone 10. In Zone 10,
we've released a certain number of permits that are proportional to the
number of spaces. Roughly 30 percent of all on-street spaces were released
as employee permits. What we discussed with Council related to RPP is that
when new streets are added to Zones 9 or 10, that a proportional number of permits would be released for sale.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Then you just need to add "if not added to the"—if they
don't petition for that, then they get to come back with their separate RPP.
Female: (inaudible)
Mayor Burt: I'm sorry, you can't speak from the audience after we've closed
the public speaking. If a Council Member wishes to ask a member of the
public a questions ...
Vice Mayor Scharff: I'd be happy to ask. What did you just say?
Eileen Skrabutenas: I appreciate your giving me a chance to further
explain. Your question, Council Member Scharff, has to do with do we come
back and petition. We have already done that, and that is why this matter
came up on Agenda Item 10 for those three streets. Petitions have already
been mailed in requesting originally being added to the RPP. All except five
of you had to recuse yourselves. The entire audience was filled with not
only residents of these three streets but all of Crescent Park that has had
the overfill, saying we need a separate RPP. The ground in your decisions
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are changing from meeting to meeting. It's very difficult as a resident to
know what to shoot for and bring in front of you, because it changes.
Vice Mayor Scharff: The purpose tonight would be to set that direction, so
that you know what we're doing. What Staff suggested, which is easier for
you, is if we say we recommend that the Crescent Park neighborhood be
added to the Downtown RPP eligibility area, that makes it an administrative
process. You don't have to go through the process of coming to Council. You get your petition in. What's the threshold? Staff can probably explain it
better than I can.
Ms. Atkinson: The three streets have already submitted signature pages
and a petition. 50 percent of residences are required to provide signature
for the petition. After the petition, we do a mail survey, which would be the
point at which we would take off with these streets if they were added to the
eligibility area. We need a positive response from at least 70 percent of the
homes on the mail survey.
Vice Mayor Scharff: If 70 percent of the homes do it, then you're in. You're
done and you get it.
Council Member DuBois: You'd have to accept 30 percent employee parking.
Vice Mayor Scharff: If don't accept the 30 percent employee parking, then come back as the third priority. It's probably over a year away. It's really
your choice.
Ms. Skrabutenas: Right.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Berman, you need to determine if you are
also okay with these changes to the Motion.
Council Member Berman: I am.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Filseth. You're good now? If we've solved your
problems, that's okay.
Council Member Filseth: I think all this is going very much in the right
direction. I think we're right to leverage the framework that's been done. I
agree with all the Mayor's comments on why resident-only parking is not the
way we should go. I think we do need to make some accommodation for
workers so long as we preserve neighborhood quality. One of the comments
that Staff made is that 30 percent of the spaces in Downtown are allocated
towards commercial parking, but the intent is that's going to ratchet back
over time to a smaller number than that. I think that's important. The
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question I had for Staff and for the maker of the Motion, the Vice Mayor, in
the Downtown neighborhood, the stakeholder process took over a year. It
was a long time. How can we do this in such a way that it doesn't take
another year until signs go up and so forth? Can we establish—maybe this
is right, maybe this is wrong. Can we establish some parameters now to
start with and adjust them a year from now after we finish the process?
How can we short circuit this?
Mayor Burt: Can I ask Staff a variation of that question? The learning
process that we had for Downtown, how much do you expect it will
streamline that stakeholder process here?
Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Council Members. I think we understand your
desire to move more expeditiously with this RPP. We obviously learned a lot
from the Downtown plan. We're going to need to regroup and put our heads
together and come up with a work plan for this. We will try and keep your
desires in mind and come up with a process that's more efficient. We'll
communicate back with you.
Mayor Burt: Do we think that the process that we went through for
Downtown in all likelihood is going to make this more streamlined because
we've figured some stuff out on how to do this?
Ms. Gitelman: Absolutely.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Holman.
Council Member Holman: "A," I'm assuming that the intention there is to
ask the Finance Committee, because we're in the budget cycle—I'm speaking
to the maker of the Motion here. I'm presuming that is asking the Finance
Committee to identify an allocation for implementation.
Mr. Keene: I think that clarification would be helpful. Ultimately, it's going
to be the Finance Committee's recommendation back to the Council when
the actual approval will take place. It would premature to be talking about
approving it tonight. You would be asking ...
Vice Mayor Scharff: It's direct the Finance Committee to approve a budget
allocation. I'm fine with that.
Council Member Holman: To identify a budget allocation.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to the replace in the Motion Part A, “approve”
with “direct the Finance Committee to identify.”
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Council Member Holman: Under "C," implement an RPP in Evergreen Park
through a stakeholder process including determining how many permits to
be sold for retail and personal service workers. I think this is what Council
Member DuBois was trying to get at earlier. After the word "workers," "from
the adjacent California Avenue Commercial District" and "to be phased out
over time." That makes it consistent with the Downtown RPP.
Vice Mayor Scharff: I'll go with the adjacent California Avenue district. Given that we're not putting any office workers in there at the moment and
given that it depends on how big a parking garage we build, in my mind, I'
fine with phasing it out. If we don't build an adequate parking garage, then
we may not be able to. At some point, we have to figure out where these
people actually go. I'm hoping that we build a big enough parking garage.
That's a question that Council's going to have to grapple with.
Council Member Holman: You'll accept "from the adjacent California Avenue
District"?
Vice Mayor Scharff: Right.
Council Member Berman: Before I do, it looks like Staff's having some
concerns or issues. Is there anything ...
Mr. Keene: We were just talking that the sooner you guys get done with this, the sooner we could get started on a program. I think there's a little
uncertainty about the ability to specify the retail and personal service
workers. We can live with this with the understanding if we dove deeper
into this, if we needed some adjustment to it, we'd have to come back to
you and let you know.
Council Member Holman: Understood.
Mr. Keene: We're going to be coming back to you anyway with the budget
approvals and all of that stuff. There will be opportunities to ...
Council Member Berman: Okay.
Council Member Holman: You're accepting that?
Council Member Berman: If the previous part is what's giving Staff
heartburn, then I'll accept your ...
Vice Mayor Scharff: "The permits over time" needs to come out.
Council Member Holman: It stops after the word "District."
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AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council
Member XX to add to the Motion at the end of Part C, “from the adjacent
California Avenue district, which permits to be phased out over time.”
AMENDMENT RESTATED AND INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the
Motion at the end of Part C, “from the adjacent California Avenue district.”
Council Member Holman: I had a previous convenience with City Attorney about maybe it has to be by the size of employer or something like that.
This is what we're looking towards. This what the goal is. I would imagine
this has to be a separate amendment, but I'll put it out there. An "F" would
be to direct Staff to determine if employees can share parking permits both
within the Commercial District and potentially in the neighborhood."
Council Member DuBois: I'll second that if it's not accepted.
Council Member Holman: Is the maker agreeable to that?
Vice Mayor Scharff: Why don't we just have a separate vote on that one?
I'd like to hear the reasons if we're going to (inaudible).
Council Member Holman: Tom, did you second?
Council Member DuBois: Yep.
AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to determine if retail and
personal service employees can share permits within the district and in the
neighborhood.”
Council Member Holman: If I can speak to that, Mr. Mayor?
Mayor Burt: Yeah.
Council Member Holman: Speaking to that amendment then. I did hear the
arguments about why this doesn't really satisfy the issues. My argument in
favor of this is that it really does mean a lot to the employers, the smaller
employers, to be able to do this. I understand that it doesn't create more
parking, understand that. Understand that it will be potentially some less
revenue to the City, but I don't think significant. It is a large gesture to the
retail merchants in the California Avenue area. It's something they've asked
for; it's something that they want. It's something that would mean a great
deal to them by their own statements.
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Council Member DuBois: I would echo that as well. I was on the Cal. Ave.
Merchants Association last year. This is for lower wage employees. These
are for employees that are parking for free, that would not buy a permit. If
the employer can buy a permit and share it with part-time workers, it
creates flexibility that we don't have in our permit program today.
Mayor Burt: If I might chime in here. This is now focused on not a notion
that somehow this will create parking, which it doesn't. We need to recognize that it will actually diminish revenue. Maybe we're willing to do
that. I think first we need to acknowledge those two things are facts. Then
we have an issue about whether we're looking at a program similar to what
we have in Downtown where what we're trying to do is have lower cost
permits for retail workers or companies with part-time workers. My problem
is that this Motion doesn't carve those out. It's not talking about retail or
low-income workers.
Council Member Holman: My error there is it should be determine if retail
and personal service employees.
Mayor Burt: I'm okay with that.
AMENDMENT RESTATED: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by
Council Member DuBois to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to explore if retail and personal service employees can share permits within the district and in
the neighborhood.”
Council Member DuBois: One last point. This was part of the Colleagues'
Memo, so I think we're just kind of reemphasizing that.
Mayor Burt: The arguments in the Colleagues' Memo were bad arguments
for. It claimed that it was somehow going to address the parking problem.
This is a different issue. This is about helping the economics of low-income
workers being able to have permits. That's different from what the
Colleagues' Memo spoke to.
Council Member DuBois: That's what we were trying to get to. It's not a
loss of revenue if they're parking for free today. We're trying to get them
into a permit that works for them.
Mayor Burt: Let me respond to that. We sell as many permits as we have
spaces for. Right now we sell one permit or more than one permit actually
per space. Now you will sell fewer permits for the same spaces. It actually
does reduce revenue. If you think it through logically, that's what happens.
That may be a decent policy decision. We did something similar Downtown,
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but I just don't to make a false claim that somehow it's not going affect
revenue. Council Member Wolbach.
Council Member Holman: If the maker of the original Motion is going to
accept this at this point? You were looking like you might be headed that
direction.
Vice Mayor Scharff: I am headed that direction. I just think it's phrased
incorrectly. I think it should say something like direct Staff to determine the best possible way—if there's a way. It really to get retail and personal
service workers to be able to afford to get a permit that works in there.
That's a pricing mechanism. You could either say you could share the permit
or you could lower the price of the permit and make it less expensive. It's
not clear to me which is the better way to go without having explore it. I
really want Staff to explore options to ensure that retail and personal service
employees can purchase permits. That' really what we're looking at. It
might be shared; that might be the best way to go. It might also be putting
it at a lower price. I just don't know.
Mr. Keene: Could I add to that? I am getting a little bit worried about the
level of detail we're getting into. At least a part of this stakeholder outreach
process is to figure out this kind of information. We would have it more contemporary with the idea of when we come back with recommendations,
we'd be able to do that. In one sense, we're preempting that stakeholder
outreach process.
Mayor Burt: I would support the broader intention which is to look at ways
to help support the lower income workers.
Council Member Holman: The way it's worded right now doesn't capture
that.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Retail and personal service employees, you want to add
in lower-income retail and personal service workers?
Mayor Burt: I think retail and personal service.
Vice Mayor Scharff: I think personal service and retails workers are by
definition (inaudible).
Mayor Burt: I'm fine with that.
Council Member Holman: Just saying they can purchase permits; they can
purchase permits now. What's ...
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Vice Mayor Scharff: Why don't we say with the idea that it would be
economical feasible for them to purchase.
Council Member DuBois: Karen, I think what we heard—we're talking about
part-time workers. Lowering the price doesn't address a permit for the week
or whatever. I think we're losing that. This was the idea of sharing. If an
employer has two employees ...
Vice Mayor Scharff: Why don't we say "including sharing"? Direct Staff to explore options including sharing. Take out the word "ensure."
AMENDMENT RESTATED AND INCORPRATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the
Motion, “direct Staff to explore options including sharing permits so that
retail and personal service employees can afford permits.” (New Part F)
Mayor Burt: Council Member Berman, you okay with that?
Council Member Berman: Sure.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Filseth.
Council Member Filseth: I was just going to comment that I like the sense
that we're asking Staff to explore it as opposed to prescribing something. If
at all possible, we ought to have consistent mechanisms between the
Downtown plan and the California Avenue plan. I'd hate to see us have a different one for every neighborhood in the City solving the same problem.
Mayor Burt: Please vote on the board. Your light wasn't on. Go ahead. I'm
just trying to get us out of here.
Council Member Wolbach: Just a couple of things. As far as differentiation—
I just want to say this real quick. As far as differentiation between different
neighborhoods, having heard this discussion I do think it is appropriate for
these neighborhoods, especially Evergreen, to be at least in some ways
potentially comparable to what we have in Downtown. I do think it is
appropriate for neighborhoods that are proximate to our major employment
centers to be potentially different than neighborhoods which are very
distance from major employment centers. I like this. I just wanted to offer
a couple of language clean-ups. Suggestions, because it's getting late. I
think we might have missed a couple of things here. I'm worried about eh
level of detail we've required here. Where it says retail and personal service
workers—actually "C" and "F," I was going to hopefully make a friendly
amendment to combine "C" and "F." Implement an RPP in Evergreen Park
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through a stakeholder process, and then get rid of after "through a
stakeholder process." Take the rest of "C" and include it with "F."
Mayor Burt: Why?
Council Member Wolbach: Just to clean it up a little bit.
Vice Mayor Scharff: It doesn't have to be perfect. Staff can do it. Staff
knows what we mean. We're not writing an ordinance here.
AMENDMENT: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Council Member XX to combine Parts C and F of the Motion.
AMENDMENT FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND
Council Member Wolbach: Instead of "retail and personal service workers,"
change it to "lower wage workers." We've done analysis of that for
Downtown, but I don't think we've done that Cal. Ave. It might be more
sensible to stick with the differentiation based on income that we've done for
Downtown rather than switching here to basing it on what kind of business
(crosstalk).
Mayor Burt: I actually that may be appropriate. Say you have janitorial
workers. They're neither retail nor personal service.
Council Member Wolbach: Both places that says retail and personal service
workers, I would make a friendly amendment to change that to "lower wage workers." That would be in "C" and in "F" if we're not combining them.
Mayor Burt: We're not going to try and define what a low income worker is
tonight.
Council Member Wolbach: We've already explored that with Downtown.
Council Member Holman: Can I suggest, as the person who put this in both
the Memo and here, define lower income and you have some people who
work in retail that aren't necessarily lower income but who also we prefer
that they be able to park and facilitate their business than somebody who's
in an office which has a TDM program applied to it. I would hope that we
stop wordsmithing and leave it as retail and personal service.
Vice Mayor Scharff: Why don't we just put in lower income workers and
personal service and retail workers.
Mayor Burt: Lower income including. Is that the intention? You want to
cover retail. He wants to cover low income. How about if we simply say low
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income as well as retail and personal services. Let me suggest that we take
it and run with it.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion Parts C and F, “low income
workers as well as” before “retail and personal service.”
Council Member Wolbach: If I might. I would actually be determining how
many permits be sold for employees. I would actually suggest that "C" just be for employee. As part of the stakeholder process, we figure out how
many of those are office, how many are retail, etc.
Vice Mayor Scharff: No.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Filseth.
Council Member Filseth: I just wanted to comment very briefly on Bullet D
which has Crescent Park. I concur with the Vice Mayor's original suggestion.
The simplest and clearest way to do it is to annex that street into the
Downtown plan. We've done a good job of confusing everybody on these
things. That's probably the best way for that group to get what they want.
If the only reason to try for a separate RPP is to go from a small number of
nonresident permits to zero nonresident permits, I'm not persuaded that's a
good reason. If it comes back to Council, I'm not inclined to support it. Thanks.
Mayor Burt: Council Member Schmid as our last speaker.
Council Member Schmid: I move the Motion.
Mayor Burt: You don't need to; you're the last speaker.
MOTION RESTATED: Vice Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council
Member Berman to:
A. Direct the Finance Committee to identify a budget allocation for
implementation of Residential Preferential Parking Programs (RPP) for
the Southgate and Evergreen Park Neighborhoods and attempt to align
deployment of both RPP programs; and
B. Implement an RPP in the Southgate neighborhood through a
stakeholder process including looking at engineering, enforcement,
and Transportation Demand Management (TDM) solutions with Palo
Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) where appropriate; and
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C. Implement an RPP in Evergreen Park through a stakeholder process
including parking management options and determining how many
permits to be sold for low income workers as well as retail and
personal service workers from the adjacent California Avenue district;
and
D. Recommend that the Crescent Park neighborhood be added to the
Downtown RPP eligibility area and if the neighborhood is not annexed, the residents can come back as the third priority for a separate RPP;
and
E. Edgewood Plaza would be fourth priority; and
F. Direct Staff to explore options including sharing permits so that low
income workers as well as retail and personal service employees can
afford permits.
Mayor Burt: Please vote on the board. That passes unanimously with
Council Member Kniss recused. Thank you to Staff and the remaining
members of the public who have the perseverance that we do.
MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 8-0 Kniss not participating
Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs
Mayor Burt: Our final wrap-up items are Intergovernmental Legislative Affairs. I don't think we have any reporting.
Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements
Mayor Burt: Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements.
Anybody have anything they need to report at this hour?
Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 12:34 A.M.
Mayor Burt: On that note, the meeting's adjourned.